the afternoon passes slowly as i didn't have to do the driving and won't until tonight. our place is isolated with lots of fresh air and the sun passing into the west, melting lots of the snow and giving everything a nice gentle soak and a good smell.

i have about fifteen projects on the table as usual but am taking a little break from all of them as my son is visiting and working out his future. i try to keep the marketing up but even that is hard. sometimes i just pick up the quilt now and work on that as working with my hands is one of the more relaxing things i can do. the bog is good too; i play with my son and sometimes my brother way over in pittsburgh joins on our team. this and working and walking on the land are my main joys.

the driving is steady and constant as we take kids to school, pick them up, let them hang around town, whatever. they are not completely safe, we're pretty sure. there are seven cases in the village or the area at least, and i'm convinced it's only a matter of time before it hits home. i'm hoping people they know get it before they do, but i'm not sure we'll be so lucky. then on my part i constantly try to minimize risk, making as few trips as possible as a general strategy. it's a general plan to stay alive until i can finish at least a few of the projects on the list.

four of them are family genealogy related though i have to finish the big civil-war era one first. i could move right up past the 1920 pandemic with my dad's side of the family, and do the people in council bluffs to continue my overview right up to my dad and his dad and grandfather. i could do my mom's side; they were the wallaces, and came from scotland to settle in western pennsylvania. i also have one about dedham massachusetts, upstream from boston, and another about patience - daughter of william brewster, separatist leader of the pilgrims, and grandmother great to maybe the thirteenth power. and there are possibly more in there as well; after all, i haven't even begun to look into an entire half of the tree.

one thing about non-fiction is that you have to do considerable research before you write, and you have to hold on to some of the knowledge in hopes that you won't bend it around or misrepresent it when the time comes to put it on paper. i am always questioning the degree that i project things, and put what i want to be true as opposed to what i know to be true.

and finally, got some old postcards from the nineties up. that's because my son helped me with the scanner, and i am now able to scan onto the computer some things that i've always wanted online. these were not so much masterpieces of graphic design - in fact the good scanner i got from my dad makes them show the tape, which irritates me - but they were fun to make and represent a time in my life that i have to gently relive, since it had its ups and downs. but let's get on with the reliving. i'm going through a shed full of scannable items.

and meanwhile, the sun sets gently, the moisture soaking into ground that was so, so dry.