up early this morning, a thunderstorm is rolling through. illinois thunderstorms are wonderful, and the rain is just now starting to pound; lightning has been fairly constant for about a half hour. i will write as the rain pounds. it's five thirty in the morning.

i read a little about the overturning of roe. all i have to say is, they should never have had to ask me, or clarence, what we thought. it's entirely a woman's business, not ours. but in the wider picture it's just a battle in a protracted war. once people have rights they don't like giving them up and will do what they have to to get them back, or at least i hope so. and the new pill will probably render the whole question moot.

in galesburg it's railroad days starting today, but it's not entirely clear to me, maybe it started yesterday and/or due to last all weekend. this is apparently a huge deal. but at the moment i'm glad we're in monmouth as i'm not entirely crazy about taking spoiled kids to such things. the money you spend is all kind of pointless except for the sugar and even that is, well they have more than enough sugar. we could go to see jugglers in the street, or in my case, go to a book signing of a friend of mine who is an author, but it's a lot of trouble and one huge side of me would rather just stay home.

my daughter plays anime movies on her phone or on the wide screened tv in the small living room, and the sound is annoying especially if i wear my hearing aids. so i often take off my hearing aids when i want to share the living room - obviously i can't sit outside now - and this makes me pleasantly deaf. but my wife hates that as she has to scream at me if she comes out of her room and wants anything. another thing that's happening is that i'm taking the dogs for longer and longer walks. a couple of them can use more than the half mile i committed to give them originally. no one else seems inclined to give them anything at all. they for their part love the flowers, the grass, the smells, the other dogs of the small town we're in. they occasionally run up against some social life. for example yesterday our black lab, who is very old, almost blind too i think, came upon an extremely aggressive unleashed black lab, only much younger. that lab was extremely excited to see her. but she stuck close by me and didn't step out much to explore that other dog. i think it was the first black lab she's seen in maybe ten years.

my son is similarly getting used to seeing other black kids around, and that's really unusual. like he can step out on the street and not have people stare at him. it's sad that it comes to this, but i think he's traumatized by years of being the only black kid in miles. and it may take a while to undo that.

another summer day dawns - this one a little wet.

monmouth, illinois is laid out very simply: broadway and main are the two big streets, broadway east-west right through the middle, and main north-south right through the middle. in the center of town, a very orderly roundabout circle guides people and everyone goes wherever they want that way. there is virtually no use to getting off those main roads to cross town, so almost all the other streets are entirely residential. and they have, for the most part, big old houses or at least interesting-to-look-at houses throughout much of the town.

i set off with my dogs, one at a time, from a small house on the near-northeast quadrant about two square blocks from downtown. i try not to take the dogs on the same street another dog just went on, but i know the streets well enough so that i avoid some for lack of shade, or for just having houses i don't like. most of the houses in my neighborhood, i like. and i can take streets or alleys, which gives me a lot of choices for four different dogs. sometimes, the third or fourth dog goes into the southeast quadrant, or the northwest one, or even if i'm adventurous the southwest one. this of course requires crossing broadway or main, or both, and sometimes twice. or i can take them right up through the roundabout to the fountain in the very center, and all of town gets to see what well-behaved dogs i have.

they occasionally poop, and i try to bring a bag to pick up the poop but sometimes forget to bring it, or they poop twice, and i've managed to leave a little dog-poop around town. but mostly people are friendly to me, and my dogs generally get along with theirs or at least refrain from clawing each other's necks out. i've seen much of monmouth this way but to be more specific, i've seen a lot more of the northeast side than any of the others, and have to wait to see the rest of it for when i have a car and no dogs.

but i must say, illinois in late june is beautiful. lots of flowers, good weather, sunny and blue skies, grass everywhere - the dogs love it. it's a cornucopia of smells. every day they're dying to go out in it.

galesburg will be the same, only bigger. monmouth is ten thousand, galesburg is more like thirty-five thousand. it has a bookshop and a coffee house; it has more of a downtown. trains are big in both towns. in monmouth you can hear them at night. but in galesburg, railroad days is the big event, once a year. stay tuned, and i'll give a full report.

early sunday morning, and the rain is pounding outside our little house in monmouth, illinois. everyone is sleeping in especially the dogs, who had an overload of excitement when my stepdaughter, husband, three daughters, and my own two daughters all came for a huge visit and birthday party. the girls lavished attention on the dogs, and especially one dog who considered himself the personal guardian of my two daughters, just overflowed with excitement. there was a healthy racket all through the small house as everyone ate and the birthday girl opened presents. the cake disappeared in a flash.

now the rains pound outside, and i wonder if there is ever too much of them, or if the rivers shoot their banks. it could be that we didn't plan this out carefully, in terms of the house we are about to buy, as it is maybe five blocks from a stream called cedar creek, and doesn't appear to be on a hill of any kind. times are a-changin' and a lot of people are endangered now who would in the past not have considered themselves endangered. it's all about insurance, as they say in new mexico, where lots of regions are just simply uninsurable, and as a result of generally ballooning insurance rates there's just the very rich, and the uninsured. and insurance itself hinges entirely on very tenuous volunteer fire companies.

up here the rivers have water, and probably, at times, have too much, which at first, i didn't even think of. i was so grateful just to see rain that i almost went out and just walked the dogs in it, and one or two of them didn't mind a bit, and still wouldn't mind if i did it again. the rains bring the weeds and the weeds bring the smells and all of that is good for them, as they go after the little frogs and such that live down in a weed patch and it's a lot of excitement added suddenly to their dreary life of guarding the inside of a house.

there are trains here in monmouth, and they make an enormous racket, but only once or twice a day, and apparently galesburg is more and worse and bigger in the train department. and galesburg has railroad days, coming up, which i will keep you apprised of, and even get a few photos if i possibly can. railroad days apparently is big. it puts galesburg on the map. but hey, it's already on my map. as gas gets over $5 a gallon, i figure people are going to be staying in one spot more, traveling less. such things as the trip last night from brimfield to monmouth will be more expensive and therefore rarer although at the moment we are using old values with today's prices, and of course that will run everyone broke very shortly. you'll see this in the whole country. it went from about $3 a gallon to $5 a gallon pretty quickly and people are not completely adjusting their habits though they will soon enough.

the pounding rain gives me a sense of peace. i can get some work done this way, when everyone's asleep. mostly i like to just sit here, and do this, but nevertheless it's working for me. i'm happy to be back in illinois. better to have regular showers, than to get used to none at all.

late night, and the rain has driven me indoors where we are all cramped in a two-bedroom house. this means i'm on an ample couch, but my daughter is also on it, and she's been watching something on netflix, which means i've taken out my hearing aids and am now in a kind of cricket-ful oblivion. the rain outside has been off and on. mats are getting soggy green from so much rain, and people are mowing like every three days instead of five. it's incredible to me, yet it's the illinois i love, and i'm glad to be home.

the town of monmouth is very pretty, with old victorian houses and a variety of different shapes and colors around town. it's actually a county seat of a very small county, warren county, but it's considered part of galesburg for all intents and purposes, being only fifteen minutes away. the college is small, presbyterian, and presumably liberal. teachers i presume occupy a fair number of the houses.

i found a writers' event already - here in monmouth, on wednesday. a local teacher writes mysteries, and writes cliff notes too. she's going to talk about writing mysteries. hopefully i'll be able to walk over to the downtown locale - i'm only about four blocks away - and hear her talk. this will be an interesting treat.

meanwhile my read-marketing has come back as we finished moving and i can relax a little. we haven't bought the new house yet but are working on it. we haven't sold the old one yet but are working on that too. totally in transition.

and the rain has a gentle noise, and i'm completely into it. i'll even walk in it, if i get the chance.

Monmouth

arrived!

landed in monmouth illinois with four dogs, two cats, a teen, two moving vans, two cars. one of the cars started showing a check-engine light toward the end and we towed it instead of the other one with the tow wagon on the moving van. but that turned out to be not a problem; both cars are fine. i suspect that with the old honda, that showed the check-engine light, either it was because she was running air-con full blast with the windows open, to indulge the pets, or because she kept using the cruise control, and something was wrong with that. no telling. in any case, we are here in monmouth.

monmouth is a tiny town maybe four square miles. it has a little roundabout in the center and then the two main roads, broadway and main, go out about a mile in each direction. our house is about two blocks north of downtown and it's just barely big enough for all of us, but they were ok with the four dogs and two cats and we moved right in. we were careful not to make too huge a scene in front of it, as it seems to be prim and proper, everyone concerned about their lawns and appearance.

the prim and proper may come from its presbyterian roots, as monmouth college is the presby college in the same division as knox and cornell, where i went. the town reminds me of mount vernon, a town in iowa where i lived for a few years, as it's full of beautiful old houses and many of them are very well taken care of. but they use roundup like water here, and i don't trust it a bit. one lady told me to keep my dogs away from it - yes, but it's going right into the ground with every rain, right? someone's making a killing selling this weed killer, but, someone else is being killed, i'm pretty sure.

not to put a damper on the experience. the rain, the grass, the green, the trees, the lush gardens with flowers blooming all over the place - all this is new if you've been in new mexico long enough, and we're enjoying it. the dogs are enjoying it too. the kids are not even wandering out the front door.