i've kind of got the blues, and a pouring-down rain interrupted much of my hard work, so I've been simply shut up in my room working on my various writing projects.

on the writing front Prairie Leveretts is just about done, and so along with it I have to pull together Accounts and Genealogy of the Leverett family, a volume that publishes lots of the sources i've been working with, taken from crinkly brown paper back in the genealogical files. I don't want to publish the book until I publish the accounts, for some reason, namely that I've drawn so much from the accounts that to say they're out there when they're not, or to put wrong page numbers on them, seems wrong. it also seems wrong to come out with a Leverett book after a nine-month hiatus from publishing anything, when lots of fans are waiting for me to produce anything. Maybe it's time to write that novel instead?

the parking in the living room of the 19-year-old has caused some stress and consternation. for one thing, he intimidates his mom and makes it difficult for her to rest. she loves him dearly and will literally make anything he asks for in the kitchen. meanwhile she'll actually tell me not to leave in fear that he'll want a ride, need a ride, she'll be unable to give it to him, and he'll blow his stack so to speak or become very upset. He's notoriously impulsive but really it's more of a question of whether she can handle those sporadic episodes of unreasonable stress that seem to center around his not getting something he wants. so we're hostages? that sounds kind of silly but it's kind of how it feels.

so i set about going through the crinkly-paper file (old genealogy) and much to my wondrous surprise there are all kinds of treasures in there, mostly related to things Will found or sought as Pottawattamie County Historical Society secretary (?) seeking information. the paper in many cases crinkled right as i handled it. i got lost in some of the contents and there went the afternoon.

when i sit on the bed, as i'm doing right now, because that's the best place in the house to type these days, the puppy comes up and joins me, curled around, and up against me. he's sleeping with one eye open. he knows i might pet him at any minute, and that he has to hold his spot in case another dog comes along demanding attention. still, he gets pretty comfortable and doesn't want to be budged from his spot.

as part of my accounts book i have to gather in some different documents and type them. this may be my next project, because i find my sight declining and i won't be able to read these crinkly papers forever. it's a race against time, you might say, though by going back into it, in order to understand this stuff, one risks not coming back, or coming back altered by awareness of things in it. it's a different world, for sure. lately i've taken a kind of solace in it, as if all these old white guys trying to reconstruct their pasts and their ancestors is a kind of antidote to the world i live in, with young kids falling prey to constant hunger and desire for more money or drugs. or mcdonalds. we all have our monkeys on our backs.

i'm in a tight spot, as they say. actually i'm full of stress. my son, nineteen, disabled, says he doesn't feel safe in his house and needs to move back here. but he's all jangly, very demanding, very difficult to live with, and i'm not sure i can take it. in fact i'm sure i can't.

he has good reasons for not feeling safe. it's not that he is trying to torture us though he is well used to using intimidation or whatever works in order to get his way. what he'd really like is to have his friends move in too and all have a good old time, in our house, like they used to. with us feeding them and getting them whatever they want, whenever. it's not going to happen though. we're tired and can't take it.

to most kids, having some independence is desirable. get your own place, manage it, come and go as you please, invite your friends over and talk. what went wrong is that a roommate has an older brother who knwos some shady characters. some of these characters came around and took advantage of him. they got in trouble and got mad. he doesn't feel safe and i understand that. but i don't have another place to put him, i'm not going to put him here.

i don't blame him for being upset, or for needing us, or for pressuring mom to get what he needs. a kid has to use what a kid has. the kid has to survive himself and he knows it. he is not good at survival skills so he has to stick by mom get his basic needs met. it's tragic actually because these should be the years of coming out into adulthood.

i keep nodding out at this computer. i can't seem to write at all these days except whenever i open the diary of parenting a DMDD kid - i tell the absolute truth to the diary. i have a bad attitude and i let it know. i spill out all my true thoughts, and actually today is its anniversary (also my wife's birthday) - I've been at it for seven or eight years now. he has actually been mentally unstable that long and it's been a long haul. i have other mentally unstable kids as well. it wears on me.

a loving thing to do would be to be understanding, give him what he wants in terms of a little spending money or fast food, don't worry about where he is at the moment and just try to survive the times. it may be that we can find a place to put him where in essence he'll have everything - he'll be able to have his toys (electronics) with him; he'll be able to see friends once in a while; he'll be taken care of. i don't have that much hope though. such places are hard to find for the disabled. we have one in town and it's still hard, hard to get into it anyway, even if the kid has disability.
br> i don't know this for a fact though. some work is called for here. what's called on for me is to hold a steady ship, not panic, be calm, try to allow. the kids will grow up, work things out, figure out how to do it without us. one can only hope. i'm tired.

late saturday afternoon. i spent some time clearing out the strangleweed in the front, and now my legs burn. i put water on them - that usually helps - but they still burn. might take a shower and yet some more work. the weeds in illinois don't give up without a fight.

there's a chance i may go to hanna city - as i did last night, on the way back from the airport. you can look it up on the map - peoria airport, hanna city, back roads to galesburg - all pretty country during the day but a long slog at night. one tries to stay awake on back roads. i'm especially peeved because a daughter wants to just latch on to another one - that other one has a life - and i feel that if you want a life, you have to go out and make one. i can be accused of not understanding depression - no, i understand it, but i'm reacting against it, i'll admit that. to me if you don't want to be depressed, stop being depressed. that puts it all in a driver's-seat perspective like one can simply change one's mood. perhaps you can't, i don't know. to me it's sad if you have to accept depression as a way of life.

all the different writing projects are somewhat stalled. one of my favorites was a doordash story, barely started, but i so mangled truth and fiction that i immediately lost my spirit to continue. let's face it, galesburg is not going to be the center of a huge crime mystery, and why should i even make it that way? I'm more inclined to make it pure reality, and have the drama set around something personal, small, whimsical. sanity, maybe, or endless coming-and-going, and fast food. dashing makes for this coming-and-going fast-food background but the true drama, the essence of the book, has to be something pure and fitting, not the murder of somebody in the picture. by the way i am kind of dealing with that - a local kid, my son's age, was murdered recently, and they're still getting to the bottom of it - but why should I mix that in, or, how can i mix that in without making it too obvious it's based on reality? and by the way i know almost nothing about the true particulors of the case, or about police process, etc.

the family project has me back at the turn of the century (~1899) when one of them was running a hardware store in council bluffs - it sold stoves, foot balls, that kind of thing. it advertised heavily and the ads are very entertaining. the other relative was working at a bank which folded and was taken over by a rival bank. he was also planning and publishing a magazine for the trans-mississippian exhibition of 1898. this magazine was big - it hit town in february 1897, but after the exhibition, it kind of went by the wayside, as did the whole region. not sure how or if i can spell this out decently.

i'm not sure what has stalled me on that one, possibly just that i don't know what happened after 1900, or at least don't know much for a long several-year stretch. the story gets thicker around the time of the great war, and then again in the depression and the second big war. i've got plenty of material for the 20s and the 30s, just nothing for the aughts. and i think it will be an interesting book.

another one has to do with disney, and is almost done. it's thirteen short stories all putting disney in a different light, by different kinds of narrators. i'm not sure i can unite it around that idea - right now it's just stories - but i could all make them have different narrators pretty easily, since most of them do. one thing blocking me on this one is that i haven't ever been to disney, so i feel guilty and nervous about publishing something that basically might contain things that couldn't possibly be true. i just don't know enough to be sure. and i often find things that i don't know. for example, it is possible that you can just see mickey walking along, in costume but in a hurry? it may be that if they are traveling fast through the park, they're not in costume, and save the costume for performances. but how do i know?

here, work continues steadily on two houses, but i'm tired, all this traveling to hanna city happening. that and my legs burn from the weeding. so i'm not quick to get up, run over there, and do something on either house. i'm just feeling like i need a rest.

so i play endless bog. i try to limit it to 3 games at a time. if some pro-trump player is on there, i change my name to "he knew she was 13" - i won't tolerate pro-trump, unanswered. i use that name for a while, usually they go away. if the screen is non-political, i don't, and just go by the usual moniker (team wheresboofer - g-burg) and go with it as long as there are no other political names. pro-biden names i don't mind, but i don't count them. it's the pro-trump ones i'm looking for to answer. my main problem with him basically is that he knew she was 13 - he has no morals, no compunction about screwing anyone in any way. he would very easily sell out the entire country just for his own desires, which are what, unloading all this debt, and, becoming the "savior" of america, how, deporting a third of the workforce? not sure how this is going to work out. but i do know he has wretched morals, and basically doesn't care about us or what happens to us in the process.

restless puppies hanging about. but as i sit here, i'm not going to hanna city, which suits me just fine. it's too much driving, for a guy who still makes a living driving. i've been dashing most nights, and kind of need to sit back and take a break.

the night's so steamy, it hangs in the air, pushing against you in oppression like a straitjacket. everyone's glued to the national news. i'm keeping the dogs in, no walk, i can't even bear it it's so sticky, even at night. yet i saw the police actively pulling people over and i know it's hopping out there. i took a night off dash, but i suspect there's plenty of business.

my writing has ground to a halt, practically in antagonism. i'm writing about the turn of the century and various people who occupied it, but i've stopped the writing. i do some reading of old 1898 newspapers but mostly i just play online boggle addictively as i can worry on several planes at the same time. the national scene is especially disturbing.

it looks like democracy is doomed, but have a little faith, i tell myself. people have hope even in the darkest times, they have to. and the same goes for the hurricanes and the horrible heat waves. true, we ain't seen nothin' yet. but have a little faith. the world's young people will deal with it because they'll have to. and finally, political violence is back, and likely to get worse. but yea, i say, have a little faith. the american people can get through this without violence. it's a little ridiculous to always blame each other for each incident as if one side actually caused the problem. in this case, everyone is armed to the teeth, one random guy lost it, and the security ring fell apart. all of those are well in the bounds of likely things to happen.

the dogs are kind of expectant. i can't blame them. they actually don't care or don't even notice if a huge storm is coming in, which it is. not sure if they remember any kind of promise like i somehow said i'd take them as soon as i could. don't feel like i can, tonight, it's just too darn sticky. and i'm a little too tired.

once again, took my son over something to eat and he'd fallen asleep. he has a way of not making it as long as it takes me to make it there. he and his friends, they all kind of live out on the edge. his friends have parents who barely feed them but do occasionally send some money, or buy a train ticket, but the real problem is, they've gone a whole life with virtually no skills, nothing they've done. they couldn't begin looking for a job, and neither can my son really. they're kind of doomed to sitting around begging or hoping some grownup will just cover it. some people say this is a blueprint for trouble - it's only a matter of time before they go out taking what they need when they have no other way of getting it - but these boys so far are sticking close to the grownups and hoping they don't have to do that. i'm hoping they don't too. i'd like to write a book about living on the edge, trying not to fall into what the others like them are doing, stealing, robbing, that kind of thing. a few of them are working, more power to them. most of them would be, if we could find something for them to dig into.

the rain is supposed to cool it off, then go up to 94 sometime tomorrow. this will be very hot for here. to me the big adjustment is to the humidity but i'm a wimp for the heat too and find myself shutting down, playing a lot of bog. turning on the a/c. not going for a walk. stay calm, get by. fall is coming.

i was in new mexico for six years, so no surprise that i was out of touch a little with the development of fireworks shows and fireworks culture. in new mexico they're strictly forbidden but we could have gone fifty miles to see a show on a lake; we never did. they did have them, sometimes, unnder extremely controlled conditions, but this year half the place burned down including the place they used to shoot them off, so if you mentioned fireworks they'd probably give you a sick laugh.

here, the forests are green, the grass green, an abundance of rain, and they were shooting them off on the lake. people sat on the green hillside and you could tell it's beenn raininng a lot. the first ones were above the treeline but then they got more intense unntil finally the grand finale was right over our heads and in our faces. impressive, very well done i thought.

but the ride home was a little bizarre. several accidents and emergencies blocked one lane for a good part of the way and ambulances came to retrieve someone, who knows what had happened. finally the traffic freed up a little and we drove through town. when we got to the south side there were various fireworks shows in people's yards - and these fireworks competed with the city's. literally fireworks all over the place. the neighborhood show was impressive in that they were going off in maybe seven different locations and they were pretty high-grade fireworks. this was the other big change from eight years ago. at the show 80 or 90% of the kids were wearinng lights of some kind, flashing or not, but in the neighborhoods most of the houses were putting on some kind of show or another.

i'd taken my son and two of his friends, all black. my son had wandered off at the show but fortunately we found him as he was way blacker than most kids and was just wandering somewhat aimlessly. he was hungry so i took him to casey's when it was over, it was like he was a kid. some cop behind me was very impatient, i was going too slowly. i was actually glad to be out of the fireworks mess, just moseying down the road.
back home, the kids will probably stay up late if not all night. out there by the railroad tracks, they are experienncing america right up close. i must say, i can't blame them for being a little aliennated, no jobs, no money, nn hope, no school, no nothin' but they seem to stay cheerful and i think they like a good show as much as anyone.

back inn new mexico, my cousin got paranoid and turned off all electronics. they lifted the fireworks ban in her town annd she didn't know it, got in trouble for going to chew out the neighbors. down there, a fireworks ban is a good thing - why lift it? maybe people really really need a little gunpowder.

one has to keep an open mind about things like fireworks, though because i have dogs i'm kind of inclined against them. the dogs have pure open hearts and they sound to dogs like gunshots, and you notice whatever ptsd they might have, it'll be right on their sleeve so to speak. you can't blame them for being a little jumpy and you have no idea what experiences they had with guns in their last lives.

the question is really more what to do on the evening of the fourth, when the town no doubt puts on some kind of show probably out at the lake where there's no danger of burning down the place. do you take a teenage daughter? against her will? or other kids? does everyone want to go?

i read about forest fires popping up in california randomly and, suddenly, 25,000 acres are ablaze uncontained. same where we came from in new mexico. it's all dry as a bone, drought for twenty or thirty years, a single bolt of lightning takes out a whole valley. in ruidoso, one of my favorite places, whole valleys were scorched and many businesses lost.

Drought, scorching heat, hurricanes in the caribbean, and this country prepares to vote in a guy who doesn't even believe in climate change, much less have a clue how to deal with it. he thinks windmills are something you tilt at. and he's the saner, more coherent of the two. his opponent has one foot inn the grave, the only part of him not declining being his stubbornness. which is as strong as ever. the rest of us are victims, because one of them will win. there could be some surprises in the time ahead but somehow i think we're headed for trouble.

it's steamy with the chance of rain. reminds me of this time when i was a kid, i lived in a town about the size of galesburg, toledo ohio. we went out to see the fireworks because what the heck. but the rain started and then came down in torrents. on the way home a power line had fallen right in the street we were using to get home. my father got out and was scraming in the pouring rain at people who didn't seem to recognize the gravity of the power line situation. we children were worried because we so rarely saw our father get truly worked up about something. it was about saving their lives, though.

now of course i'm at the age where i'd just as soon stay at home and let others do all the running around, but i did somewhat obliviously sign up for a 7-9:30 dash or something like that, so if i do nothing about it i will be out there working at the peak of the fireworks. these days i relate to the town as a doordasher. i've gotten to know a lot of restaurant proprietors and share working with them. that is my town, really, all the people i know out there, who recognize me a little when i show up.

tonight i was dashing and i saw some firworks off in the distance. someone couldn't wait to get started. the country's going to hell, but they're blowing off stuff. another night, and the summer gets a little steamier.