a short visit to albuquerque - about four and a half hours, and i'm back home, in the stunning fall weather, with a lot of stuff to do, starting with mount laundry, which seemed to grow but fortunately not crack a chasm with volcanic lava.

the occasion was the arrival of my grandson in albuquerque - he is traveling with his parents, my son and his wife, from portland oregon, and they live a relatively isolated life there, so their opportunity to visit albuquerque was actually bringing him out of a shell. these pandemic babies will have the characteristic of growing up their first few years in isolation - no daycare, no parents' groups, just safety. at one point we were all out on the lawn of the botanical garden listening to a blues band - my friend - and the under-twos found each other and ran around a bit. it was outside - no masks, sunshine everywhere - but people were still wary, including his parents, who were wearing masks, and who noticed that the other children's parents were not. i was a little more relaxed - I and mine are vaccinated, but the same cannot be said for anyone in the two-year-old range. so i can see the parents' wariness and general hesitance about all social interaction.

the day was beautiful, the garden was beautiful, the grandson was beautiful - it was the garden's harvest festival, and albuquerque's balloon festival. off in the distance over the neighbor's house we saw the balloons - but the young family had gone closer to the balloons the day before and almost gotten run over by someone who was chasing one. they of course were colorful and interesting and attracted the fancy of the young lad who of course is still discovering the world around him. his time indoors was occupied by walking from door to door, testing each doorknob, turning doornobs and pulling, trying to get doors to open and shut. he did this repeatedly, as he was still getting the hang of the process, but of course all the while he was watching his elders and noticing what kind of extended family he had around him. for my part, i took him my favorite book, yertle the turtle, and tried to get him to let me read it to him.

the new mexico countryside was wide and empty and beautiful. but, on the way to the city, we encountered one remote junction where people were staging a demonstration. i assume it was a "freedom" demonstration. i sense something very disturbing about this.

first, you have about thirty cars and thirty people standing at the junction with illegible signs, presumably anti-mask, anti-vaccination, pro-freedom. i have no problem with the freedom of speech angle. if all they want to do is protest and let their feelings be known and gather a majority to shun mask mandates, let them, they'll be gone in a few years or badly depleted. but it's more sinister than that. all these people have guns. people travel hundreds of miles to organize and stir up rallies in these remote places. in the fresh air, away from town and away from being recorded, they recruit. and what happens to these right-wing groups, recruited? you can guess. i hope the government is infiltrating them, is all i can say. i'm not eager for another january sixth.

the grandson loves the balloons. he loves yertle the turtle. he loves his uncle corey, who he knows is family and who he'll let hold him. he probably doesn't love four or five hours a day in the family car crossing the vast dry west. it's like utah is only the middle days of the trips. that's two days without coffee. hope those parents survive, and make it back to oregon ok.

it's gotten cold, gotten october - snow on the ground, or at least hail, and snow up in northern new mexico in the mountains. time to get going and let the cold air get me moving.

going to albuquerque tomorrow, to visit my grandson, along with his mom and dad, my son and his wife. the kid looks just like his dad did, but he clearly has his own personality too. i'm going to have a blast. it's a long drive, though, and it takes precious time out of my busy schedule.

i actually got to running around taking clothes into the school, and forgot my meeting at the lab, and that was a tragedy as i've done that a few times. as writing and promoting my writing take more out of my attention, other things are giving, and that's not good though i imagine it will level off after a while.

what has happened is that i've taken on these books to read, i read somebody's book, and somebody else reads mine, and it's all very addictive in terms of the fact that i'm getting lots of new readers and they recognize my writing for what it is. sure there are a lot of five ratings but i'm giving quite a few of those myself, and i don't always trust everyone's absolute honesty in that arena, since we are all kind of inspecting each other and hoping people will be generous with us as well as just read the darn thing. it's nice that i'm getting a lot of fives, i will tell you that. i guess that if i believe my books are five-quality material, then i shouldn't worry about the sincerity of people's judgement. but yes, sometimes i question the sincerity of mine.

i did a whole round of stats on the blogs, as i do the first of every month. as i reported here, a huge july is working its way through the system like a mouse gone to the tail of the snake that swallowed it. it is still affecting the rolling averages, but no doubt august and september were back to normal; september in fact was the anemic level of before july. it's like people have gone to work and are no longer poking around from a google search just reading things for fun. somewhere in there i figured out that i have about 36 of them, six of them commercial, very few of them truly successful in blog terms. they are making a slow conversion, from representing my academic interests (chat as a topic of linguistic study, for example), to blatantly commercial, having different topics but all pointing one way or the other to my writing. this one will get dressed up too, eventually, and point to my autobiography (scroll down), which has out there in its name. the problem is i've never been truly enthusiastic about blatant commercialism, so i'm kind of dragging my feet. ah well.
albuquerque will give me a blast of fresh air, or at least the drive will. it's about five hours of nothing between here and there, with a place called oscuro about halfway - that's the road to the trinity site - also the site of wretched winter winds that have at times blown whole trucks off the road. i'll say my prayers as i go across that plain and then down across the bosque at a place called san antonio, that is, unless i take the shortcut which also goes through some cool old spanish towns, but risks getting lost...oh well, don't know what i'll decide.

one way or the other i'll get that grandchild on my lap and read him a book.