it's slowly turning to my favorite time of year: early november. i love the back end of the color splash, when bright red leaves turn dull pink, when the bright yellows turn to burnt yellow. i like it when leaves make noise beneath your feet and even when they rot or mold a little causing some inconvenience. reluctantly i'll rake some of them up and maybe even put them in bags for the city. really i wouldn't mind just having them around all winter.

the dogs seem to be ok with a limited amount of exercise, since it's both cold and rainy, and the two little ones are asleep in the living room with me as i type. the big one, who is actually a puppy but has grown to twice the size of the others, got a good workout earlier in the day when he got me to play fetch, and got jen to take him to the dog park. he now is asleep too. late afternoon, and almost everyone's asleep, except maybe for the fifteen-year-old daughter, who has her boyfriend over.

lately i've been giving a lot of rides - to the boyfriend, who lives about six blocks away, and to my son's friends, some of whom live way across town. today i gave a ride to one who was about ten blocks or a mile away. i felt like saying, in my day, i wouldn't have even asked. this is especially true for the boyfriend. six blocks, flat, small town, no reason he can't walk. but they live in a different generation. they don't like to walk. i'm not sure what it is. tonight i have to leave for the evening, and i think they will be on their own: either they'll curtail their activities significantly, or, they'll walk. even when it's cold, i don't see the big deal. when it's icy, i'd actually rather walk. the cold doesn't bother me that much, and i'm more secure with my feet beneath me.

nevertheless, i generally never say anything. i'm like the driver in those movies, who is always polite and never interjects or imposes any ideas on anyone. my kids, rather than wanting "shotgun" as we used to, sometimes prefer "princess" which is to me sitting in the back, with someone but isolated from the driver, free to do things that are out of my sight when i'm driving. i say nothing. sit where you wish. i allow a certain amount of alienation from parents and unwillingness to engage, which in this case is sometimes more my fault than theirs. i could mix in every time. but the problem is, my hearing is bad and i'm often getting in to more conversation than i can understand.

high holy days, and traveling. tonight i take the interstate, to go to a nearby small town, to babysit with step-grandchildren, all of whom are charming in their own way. they will most likely leave me totally alone while they watch some show or another, but i could inflict myself on them a little or at least try to do something with them. i have no plan at the moment. i'm a little sad that it comes to this: a gulf between family members. but it's partly a function of the fact that i've got ten kids, the last few of them wringing the life out of me, and i'm just plain tired. i want to write, but in a way, i'm too tired for even that.

there's a kid staying here who's suffering a lot. he's suffering because his close friend, a girl about sixteen, died recently in childbirth. the story was actually quite alarming but over time we began to put it together.

he was staying with us for unspecified reasons; he really didn't want to talk to us about the situation he himself was in. his mother knows he's here, and she's ok with it. he's in no hurry to leave. but one night he invited his friend's sister to come stay with us too. she had been sleeping around on couches, he said, and she ran out.

this girl is fifteen, almost sixteen, and regularly attending school, but sleeping on couches. why? she couldn't go home anymore. her mother had fallen into despair after the death of her older sister (back in early september?). she also had a brother who had died long before. for some reason the mother is so dysfunctional, the girl can't go back. or won't.

we don't always know the whole story, just from the story told by the girl, or by the boy, one of her best friends, who is staying here. according to them, the mother doesn't care. i don't believe that: what mother doesn't care about her only remaining daughter? more likely, the mother's given up. or the mother is an addict herself. or the mother is angry and the girl gets the brunt of it when she's around. i would believe all of those. i don't believe she doesn't care.

we take the girl to school days. at night she looks around the kitchen in wonder, that there's food, dishes, or maybe order. she can't stay here though; we have a house full of boys. we don't have the space. so, this is kind of a layover, a rest stop, a breather. she can spend a day in the bathroom, and then move on to her next couch.

i guess what surprises me is, if she's such an obvious candidate for foster care, why isn't she in it? surely we're not the first ones to say, this girl needs a permanent home. this to me is one more indication that we don't know the whole truth about her parents. if her mom is unable or unwilling to take care of her, they'd snatch her in a minute. if her mom was angry and refused, there'd be nothing they could do.

for whatever reason, the girl won't go home. to me, that's a trafficking risk. save that girl. but i don't know that we're in a position to do anything. hide her, maybe. she's a sweet girl.

i sit here on a recliner in the corner of a decent size family room which i generally have to myself. my half of it is a living room with two couches and a fireplace beside me; the other half is a kind of sitting room with furniture removed temporarily. on that half is the windows to the front, on broad street; i can see it from here but mostly look out, to the side, at the corner of broad and mary. the dogs often get up on the couch and bark at whatever is out there on broad or mary, or at the house next door, which is on the corner. this is our little world.

but on the computer, my facebook takes me around the world. from clicking "like" on pictures from switzerland and norway, i get a lot of switzerland and norway in my feed; i also get pictures from all my friends and the various places they go. one friend lives on the beach in southern mexico. another lives in qatar but travels to exotic countries regularly. my facebook is no end of stunning pictures, and there's a lot of history too: history of baseball, history of the usa, history of native americans.

i took a break from reading recently. i had one pretty good book but its main character was a wishy washy woman who had affairs going with both a german officer and a french resistance outlaw; yet she was wishy-washy and nonpolitical, and while the writing was good, being inside her mind was driving me nuts. so i put that one down for a while, and finished a number of others which i didn't even feel like reviewing and which are therefore still on my table. the last day or two i haven't felt like reading at all, and that's unusual for me, so i backed off from reading a little and just did some other stuff. i wrote a few disney stories. i did some other kinds of marketing. i put time into just keeping this house up; i mowed the lawn.

fall is turning here; the peak, i think, was a day or two ago and now it's turning to its browns. a spectacular tree that was obviously a bright red had dropped leaves that were rapidly drying out and turning an off-pink, and i found that quite spectacular but didn't have my camera on me while i was walking. i had a good walk earlier and for that reason may not take the dogs, though it's supposed to rain soon and it would probably be good if they both went out for a bit.

i think sometimes whether i'd rather be somewhere else, where i could get more work done, unimpeded by my frustration with the way things are working out here, and my lack of control over it. i want things to happen just so, and they're not; i want my writing to get a little more off the ground, and it's difficult. i thought maybe if i had an office or a place to go to, that would solve the problem. but it may be that it wouldn't. and i'm not sure that we should get another place to keep up, when i have trouble keeping this one up. maybe a better idea would be to move to the attic, or the basement.

in any case, i'm not feeling trapped. i can open my facebook and be in switzerland, or norway, or even new mexico or mexico, with no trouble at all. and because i've been to some of those places i have no problem looking at a picture and imagining myself being there. i can save all that trouble traveling, finding lodging, spending a fortune, etc., just by calmly flipping through my facebook and enjoying where it takes me. my dogs are in agreement. they are perfectly happy here in this living room, guarding me against any action on mary street, tucked up near me and taking a huge snooze. they don't need the sights either although they wouldn't mind a good walk. rain or no rain, they like to go out and smell what's going on along the city's sidewalks.

and so the sun sets on another peaceful galesburg evening, a warm, late-october one. this town is nice to be in and if it takes people a while to meet us or get to know us i'm ok with that, as there's something to be said for the security of a small town without the knowledge of everyone's personal feuds and such. some people have trouble just getting by, and for them this isn't exactly a peaceful town or even a gentle, forgiving one. for us, if i spend a while longer in this chair, struggling with what i'm trying to do and finish, it will probably not be so bad.

monday morning, and miraculously enough, we got three kids off to school; only one was ours. another of ours has dropped out but we haven't given up on him. he's an entirely special kid and i've been a little depressed about how it's turning out. but i must say, he's home, he's not in jail, he's not even causing trouble, and he's eighteen. i should be grateful.

the cold has come in but it is due to warm up again before i think a big halloween chill is coming in. my wife keeps wanting me to leave the hoses out but i, more used to the vagaries of midwest/northern illinois weather, think leaving hoses out is playing with fire. it's an old dispute and my point of view comes from my own add, because of which i'm likely to forget all about them right at the crucial time. she in general is better at this kind of stuff but also tends to not worry about hoses their being my business. to her, why not wait until the last minute, since it's easy to keep track? easy for her to say.

the depression over the state of affairs plus the cold front chilling everything led me again to make my second cup of coffee before the tens even finished, and i'm sitting here, wishing i had my old computer with word on it, so i could be working on my puritan book and printing pamphlets. the charger on that one walked away and i am frozen until i get a new one. finally ordered one on amazon this morning along with some books, but they say it won't arrive until saturday. and, i put it on the wrong card, so my wife has to juggle accounts to make sure it doesn't overdraw. lots of trouble just managing to keep going, but, one way or the other, i'll get this show on the road.

with no puritan book to work on, i'm left to do disney stories, so i'm working on the one with cinderella castle in it. cinderella has to be the epitome of american folk tales, the first one that comes to mind when you mention the word. why is it so popular? what does it say about step-parents and what does it do to their image? and what's all this princess stuff - is everyone enchanted with the idea of being a princess? Maybe this story will address some of these questions.

the puppy is more than eager to occupy my lap on this cold morning - we made the mistake of cutting his hair too short right before the cold weather set in, and the groomer was mad at us for it, as she knew it would cause him to shiver on a morning like this. he's just a little thing and though we always consider his hair to be voluminous and fast-growing, he'll go a week or two before it really fills out and that might be a chilly week or two. right now he's parked right in front of me where i can pet him every ten seconds or so, and that suits us both pretty well.

off to moline later in the day, to fix a car that won't turn off. when the power's on, the key won't go all the way back to its start position, and it just will use up the entire battery sitting there unless you disconnect the battery at the port. well that's a heck of a state of affairs. worth a trip to moline, if nothing else.

Local author fair

september was a blog month for the record books. over 58,000 people popped in on this blog alone, which was incredible and maybe twenty times the highest ever monthly figure. where did they come from? it's possible that a couple of them just liked the be-there-be-square function and went exploring, because a lot of blogs are up, and, it's possible that every time they came back here i scored another hit. i have no idea, i'll admit it, but i welcome you. this blog is part of a system of 27 blogs, and about 9 more that are commercial, and a few dead ones that i haven't deleted. there's a whole museum worth of them out there that i'm struggling to save; they are ones i used in teaching back in the early days of blogs, and i've written extensively about the use of blogs in teaching and i'd like to catalogue that too. but this one is at the top. it's got the most overall hits. it's been here the longest. it actually has a book - just passing through - autobiography and true stories from out there - and this book references this blog and a lot of the stories from this book are in here in this blog, deep within it, somewhere (see template).

the thing is, blogs are not the most anally organized structure; they're organized by the time that you posted. so if you want to know how to find something, you have to know when you posted it, which is ok if you are looking for a travel itinerary and can say, well, it was january 04 or something like that. if you are just looking for family, or for posts about one topic (i don't use titles, generally), you're out of luck. if i don't organize on the surface to help you find that stuff, you won't find it.

i post a blog report every month (this one is here) but i'm finding i often have to just guess at where the wild numbers are coming from. for some reason everyone is piling in and i can't say i object, but i don't totally have the house in order first. so i'm going to scramble around a little, clean up if i can, organize this museum before google organizes it by deleting it, and see what i can do fast. the sense of urgency is on. leaves are changing, winter's coming, and there's a lot of work to be done. happy show-your-colors month!