sunday morning, and i'm reflecting on the fact that it would be my father's birthday - he would be 96 but didn't quite make it this far. the queen, too, would have been 96 on my birthday, but she didn't make it either. instead i turned 69 and here i am, with puppy (below post), a cold spring morning, and a lot of books to read and write.

on my to-write list are three that are all in progress. the first, biography of john leverett, is doing ok but mired in too many facts. i began to rewrite it so it went right through telling a story, and that makes it a little better. now the global order is more the order of the story, and the other facts will have to be placed in as they come up. Many of those will go in footnotes.

second is a book of haiku about nine eleven. i'm trying to get a hundred so i'll have a whole book, but i only have about thirty. how many season clues can one find that all point to early september? i've used up most of the ones i have and need a few more. i also need new york city geography, loaded as it is with connotation and character.

the final one is a love novel that documents my experience teaching esl in carbondale. i have to say, those eighteen years were the most important of my working life. there were six more in kansas, four in texas, a few subbing in the alamogordo schools, and a summer here and there (ohio and minneapolis, to be specific), not to mention korea, but the eighteen in carbondale were big and they're on my mind. the trains, the steamy weather, the riots, i'm not sure how much of that is going in there, but as much as possible. mostly the view of language and its difficulty for internationals, some of whom were very bright and yet still having difficulty with its general irrationality.

on the reading side i found one about nine eleven that is really helping me. it's somewhat repetitive but at least it hits the profundity of losing so many firefighters and first-responding personnel to such a huge tragedy. what i'm trying to pull out of it is the smells, the sights, the feelings, the enormity of the mess. no kigo, or season clues, in there at all. but the author is in the same business i am - documenting it for all eternity. it's like the holocaust - something we must never forget.

another, stunningly well written, is called the last orphan. i often read three or four at a time, and when i grow impatient i simply flip to another one, for example, when an author makes a mistake i can't bear, or if the fantasy angle is simply too much. with this one, i'm not even reading it for any obligation - i simply pulled it off facebook or somewhere, free, and started reading it - but i truly can't put it down. it's set in both utah and arkansas and has a heavily geographical outlook which i enjoy; also, it's thoroughly about the mormons and their culture, which i've always found interesting. but it hits a very difficult dilemma head on.

the other things i'm reading are simply to do business, which i always try my best to tend to. i got a few sales this month; it's not all bad; but, pretty slow in general. i need to finish that third book, the novel, since novels give you something to market and they keep the counters jingling. unfortunately it's difficult to finish. all my other author friends are cranking things out one after the other, and i sit here, opening up one of the three and having difficulty no matter which one i'm working on. difficulty in the sense that i encounter larger issues as i'm writing and i'm just not prepared to resolve them when i'm writing. i need to step back, get the overall plan, address those issues, and go back to work with a solid plan in place. it's a matter of process and getting that process in order.

back to my general sunday morning doldrums. family chat will start in minutes; i always look forward to that. i love my brothers and sisters and stay very involved in what's going on in their lives. they too will have plenty to say about mine. later in the evening, there will be cloud quakers, which will make it a total zoom day, and that's good too. it's what sunday is all about.

the writing issues, hopefully, will resolve themselves. and it will warm up a bit outside, where it's still rainy, blustery, windy, cold, very spring on the winter-side. all that is temporary. the bright greens and colors will be back in force, soon enough.

i'm a little stirred up because tomorrow's my birthday; i'll be sixty-nine, and that's an important age for several reasons. one is that seventy is now staring me in the face. a neighbor had a fire that burned the back end of the house, and there's still glass in the yard, and the bricks have an unsighlty burned charred look. my wife just said, "they think the son did it," and i thought she said "they think the sun did it."

mowing season has started with a passion, and both my neighbors have already got on it, but not me. i was stalling a little, but that's going to have to end. it's cloudy and overcast; looks like rain; that's my excuse for today. might have to mow tomorrow though even though it's my birthday. a better way of looking at it is celebrating the return to grass country. i feel that way about dandelions, random wildflowers, tulips, things that are coming up all over the place.

back to the nearby house that lost half of its backside. further down the street, about five blocks toward town, is a place where an entire house burned down, and took a nearby garage, several cars, and a piece of several other structures with it. it was a huge, colossal, burnt rubble when i happened upon it with one of the dogs one day. that fire had started, apparently, at about four in the morning and was raging by the time the fire department got to it. next to it was a house with sixteen people, almost all kids. maybe one of them started it. all of them survived it apparently, but several of the cars in the household didn't.

the one that's nearby got damage in the back porch area, but that area is close to where i walk the dogs and it irritates me that the broken glass is still sitting there what, three weeks later. my dogs don't have a problem with it; they just walk around. the owner strikes me as somewhat trumpish but i wouldn't swear to it. and, i haven't seen them around. it's like they moved out, after the fire happened and they realized it would require extensive remodeling.

i'm all about fixing up the lot so that ours looks at least as good as the ones around it. right now i'm resting from having swum, actually i swam four days this week, and i come home from that not all eager to go outside and do things like mowing and gardening which i'd really love to do. instead, i sit around and read my books which i do for marketing. i read theirs, someone reads mine. i've taken a wide tour of the indie world and enjoyed the feeling of retirement. the problem is, life keeps going fast by me, and i'm just sitting here reading.

my daughter has just walked home from school. will wonders never cease. it was about a mile and a half, and i didn't thik it would ever happen.

the picture (below) is part of my advertising campaign for all from before is now obsolete. it is a very quick campaign; it will only be on sale for a day or two. but it's important to me because i like the picture, and, at the beginning of april, it starts a big month for me. april rocks!

it's also i believe my aunt emmy's birthday; she would have been 101 today or near today, but died about a month ago. i will find her picture and put a memorial up as appropriate. i've always associated her with this time of april and always remembered her.

the book is about the april that covid came and descended upon the world. i feel about it somewhat how i feel about 9-11 - we should never forget. how quiet the world became! how nature came up in spite of the utter lack of people anywhere. how we cowered inside worrying about the slightest exposure (not saying there wasn't good reason). it was nothing short of amazing.

the marketing world is wearing on me. i read a lot of stuff and i'm only interested in about half of it. the temptation is great to simply cut corners. i have achieved some success though. in the haiku world if anyone reads your work ever you can get up to #1 though of course you don't stay there. a little ratings jump makes you feel pretty good, not to mention that someone is finally reading the poetry....it may be that they are coerced by circumstances to do it, but on some level it doesn't matter why. at least i'm not forcing someone to read a ransom note.

i have a friend whose kindle account was simply shut down. a practicing author, busy releasing a new book, and the whole thing just canceled, everything became not available. this would be my worst nightmare, but fortunately it has never happened to me. i have no idea how it happened to her or what she will do to sort the mess; i will have to follow, and see what happens. in the meantime, don't sleep for fear of nightmares.

big storm coming in tonight. i hate to sound certain, as, around here, they're always closing school and then the storm wimps out. that may happen tonight too. we are certainly in the path, but it doesn't always stick to the path and even when it does, sometimes it just changes its path midstream. i think they have sirens and are pretty alert about these things up here. i think it's basically just another spring storm, with chances of doing big damage, but not necessarily likelihood. we'll find out, as they say.

meanwhile the iowa women's basketball team came home, having lost the final match; they gave us a wonderful run all the way up to national championship game, but then lost that last one. back in iowa a storm was damaging small towns but nobody cared; everyone was watching the game. a relative of mine was on the team and she will be one to watch as she's only a freshman, and things will go from good to better as she approaches her senior year, as long as she doesn't get injured. one has to worry about such things, yes, but not as bad as in football, where concussions are a routine part of the game, and everyone's mind turns to mush. she's bright, friendly, beautiful and young. unlike yours truly.