this was my weekend. in essence, i picked up two sons, got on the midnight train out of chicago, went east to erie pennsylvania for a family wedding celebration, and came back on the same night as we'd got there. got back in galesburg early this afternoon, somewhat bleary eyed but happy i went.

the train from galesburg to chicago was eleven hours late, so we chose to drive my little honda to chicago and one son found a place to park: relatively cheap. it was down by union station, in the loop, yet very accessible. we were at the union station maybe four hours, a long wait but with beautiful architecture and very high ceilings. the place was full of Amish: maybe they were going back to pennsylvania? they had been in iowa, or further parts west?

the train chugged along at pretty decent speed; it went through toledo, where i spent years 1955-1965, at the of 1-10, and clerveland, where i was actually born in 1954. i also lived in pittsburgh and buffalo, which meant that erie, our destination, was in the center of the four towns. an intersting combination of total familiarity in essence and lack of familiarity in detail; in other words i didn't know the city at all, but in a deep way i knew it very very well. i told my sons about somne of my experiences growing up. they were impressed by the fact that when we got to pennsylvania it was hilly and wooded. it felt different from the midwest, and was.

someone had stolen the presidential deck of cards in union station. i looked everywhere for them to no avail. all that information, about their years, etc., gone. no problem, there was plenty to do and look at on the train. it rolled through indiana, toledo, and cleveland on its way to erie. i woke up suddenly in toledo at about three. then again in cleveland at about four thirty in the morning. all i saw were sleepy industrial cities splayed along the tracks. somewhat sleepless upon arrival in erie, we went down to a local diner for breakfast. i had my sister and my two boys with me. it was the old part of town, very pennsylvania, lots of character; i told my boys i was happy to show them where i'd grown up, though i hadn't grown up in erie itself. a man turned his swivel chair toward us at the door; he was wearing a hat that said VIETNAM war veteran, quite loudly, as if he was challenging me to tell my story. i knew right then he must have been one of my older classmates, who had gone off to the war and come back damaged or didn't come back at all. his hat said to me, tell your story. but that wasn't the time to tell my story. we were hungry. we sat down and they served us breakfast. i ordered a philly steak omelet.

i laughed to myself, not knowing what they'd think of that. i know they were all watching us, they could tell that i knew the place, i felt. they wouldn't pull the story out of me but if i told it they'd listen. My sister was full of vitriol about the family we grew up in; i didn't argue with her. she needed to tell her story; i need to tell mine.

i was in pittsurgh when i became aware of the war. i was in buffalo when i was drafted, in 1972, my senior year. my guess is that this guy was in that class or the one above. some guy in the class above me lied about his age, joined, and was killed. i had a low draft number, 42, and i found out in january of my senior year. this ensured i would go. canada was only 20 miles away but i didn't want to go to canada. one could also just go to jail but i didn't want to do that either. i was a pacifist and against the war but knew nothing of quakers. i decided i'd just go. i'd make a lousy soldier but they'd be stuck with me. and if i died i died. i'd been reading up on the war and why we were fighting it. i still didn't have a good reason but if they did i would just have to die for theirs. i was worried about it.

but then, right around senior skip day, they canceled the draft. they didn't need us anymore. the camps were full and they were pulling out of vietnam, didn't even need the boys that were already in the camps. one guy in my class tried to enlist, and they turned him away.

on senior skip day i was elated, free, alive. some people told me not to go skip school on that day but i took a stand and skipped school. it was probably the only time i did. it was almost like i was free, an adult, celebrating being alive, and it was pretty close to my eighteenth birthday. i can't remember what i told my mom. there wasn't much she could do about it. besides, i went back to school the following day. in general, i was a good boy and i passed.

back in the restaurant i paid the bill and gave a substantial tip. not the time tell that story. i'm not even sure the guy wanted to hear it, though he said hello and definitely noticed i was there. in the ensuing years i became a quaker, i decided if something tells you not to kill, don't kill. thou shalt not kill. if you kill then you have to live with the memory although that can be done, and i don't blame him for what he did. we were all there, we were all faced with a choice. it could have been me that was there in vietnam doing whatever he did; i certainly did nothing to stop it. all those guys are still back there, in pennsylvania and new york, living with their choices. and here i was, stopping in to say hello.

in the end, i just told everyone. i put it right on facebook - i got a cochlear implant at the u of i hosps. i got a lot of likes. my former bandmate down in carbondale wrote and said she hoped it worked out.

well, nothing "works out" when you lose your hearing; when it's gone it's gone and it won't come back. having electrical impulses in my brain instead of hearing works in the sense that i will be able to hear people talk. but i'm not complaining; i have something, and that's better than a lot of people, and i'm still alive, and i have my family.

one of the calls i got was from my ex-father-in-law. my first wife, for whatever reason, has decided never to come back to illinois, and therefore he is up there in chicago getting very old, and not talking to her, as they don't talk anymore. he has two sons and they still talk, but one is moving to michigan and the other is already in california, has been for years. in the end it could be my son, one of his grandsons, may be the only person remotely close, and he's in saint louis.

well, he called to say that at 98 he's considering getting a cochlear implant. i told him everything i knew about the operation, the recovery, the period of adjustment, and i told him, be sure you get a doctor who's straight with you and whom you trust. i was lucky that way. my doctor was good. the whole thing was a pain but i figured i had ten to twenty years to enjoy good hearing and being back in the game, so to speak.

> well, he said, but i'm 98, and don't have that much longer. this put me in the difficult position of helping him decide how much longer he thought he would last. there's no telling, i said, and that's true even for me at seventy, i could keel over tomorrow. but it's optimistic to do the best you can, get one, and enjoy good hearing in your final days. also i said, i think you look good and healthy and you'll last a while, so i'm still for it.

the whole thing gave me an odd feeling, him knowing he's on the edge there, that he doesn't really have all that long, and making a gamble that a couple of weeks of discomfort, with anesthesia, being knocked out, etc., all of which might be very hard on him. in some ways again i'm lucky. relatively healthy outside of my ears, i was able to recover from that other stuff ok and get back on my feet. i'm here, almost unable to take his call while i adjust to the new implant, but i'm definitely coming back, i'll be healthy, i'll have a life back even if everything goes wrong with the implant. he might not have the same luxury.

so i told him in the end, you have to do what's best for you, and i can't really judge that. but i also felt, well, i'm family, and he's always been family to me, and still is, and i don't want any problems between my first wife and me to come between us. i think, whatever advice i've got, he's more than welcome to it.

that's why i told him about the train station. my son and i, we'll be there, union station, friday afternoon from two to five, we'll be on our way to erie, pennsylvania, and if he wants to come talk about it he will. it may be more trouble for him, a 98-year-old, to find his way down to union station than it woulld be for me, only 70, to find my way, with my son, up to the north side where he is. but i told him i'm not confident leaving union station at that time, and also, by the way, you never know about these trains, maybe they'll be on time maybe not. so we'll see what happens, and i'll give you a report.

a somewhat traumatic day in iowa city has left me exhausted, overwhelmed, a little not quite myself.

it was a pleasant drive up there through the fall cornfields, and i was looking forward to having my cochlear implant turned on, or activated, through a process where they would measure my hearing and make its settings appropriately. i've come to like the hospital as it has a lot of very nice art and people are very friendly and in the nature of iowa in general. i had every reason to be in a good mood.

but the first step was a cat scan, about noon, and i went into this room, took out my hearing aids and glasses, and laid down on their bed for them to scoot me back so my head was in this kind of radiation container. so far so good. i shut my eyes and let them measure my head.

but when i got out and put my hearing aids back in, nothing. absolute silence. i jiggled them a little, turned them off and on, nothing. it was dead silent.

now at that point, waiting for the activation in the left, i had almost nothing in the left anyway. the right had about 20% and that's what i was counting on. but i had nothing and it was a very scary feeling.

they told me i was about to see the audiologist (true) and they would straighten it out - they eventually did, and it wasn't bad - but in the meantime i got a cup of coffee in total silence, and the worker said a few words to me which i entirely missed. people know when you just miss what they say, and usually they just let it happen. it's too much trouble to go back and shout in your face. but that's what i would have needed.

i jiggled them again at the table, and this time, with my coffee, i got something out of the right one. had it simply been de-activated by the cat-scan room? or had i lost a filter (possible?) - or, had the cat scan melted all the wax in my ears and settled it in so nothing else could get in there?

still don't know, but i was entirely traumatized. although total deafness is not the end of the world, at this point it represents one of my deep fears and it is, after all, what i'm going all the way up there in order to avoid. it's like the exact opposite outcome of what i'd wanted. and i know lots of people live just fine with total deafness every day, day in, day out. but i couldn't take twenty minutes of it.

today, sitting around, marketing, somewhat depressed. i need life to get back to a natural rhythm.

images from a pr campaign for 'devour that spaghetti.' it shows a little of where my pop art is going, but to me also reflects the fact that i eat pretty well around here on a day-to-day basis, and get some enjoyment out of contemplating it and working out the variations in pop-art. 'devour that spaghetti' is a book of stories.

i'm sitting in my chair by the window, which is different from what it had been for a couple of years. basically i've moved upstairs. i type in my room. i look out at an intense canopy so that i'm going to watch slowly as the leaves turn.

i basically moved upstairs because a son was staying downstairs for almost a week, and we have frequent visitors down there. my little mess - notebooks, books, kindle, pens, etc., was ok for them but i virtually had to move it up in order to keep functioning, and while i was up here i noticed a couple more things: i'm slightly more productive when the chair is not as comfortable, and i'm also encouraged to get out of it more often. also, i'm much less distracted. the dog knows where to find me, and so does everyone else, but i'm less likely to be drawn into random dramas that i want no part of.

upstairs i have a small, less comfortable chair, but i have a small bookshelf that i look directly at, that has my favorite of all-time books, just a few. inspirational poetry, quaker things, a baseball almanac, cartoons, a fine selection. it's wonderful and i'll keep the shelf dusted. to my side i have my books, or what i've managed to collect of them. i've invested in my own books. they are my inheritance. i like to be able to see them as i sit here.

i sit here waiting to go to iowa, basically. in iowa they put in a cochlear implant two weeks ago, and today they'll turn it on. they'll give me a cat scan too to make sure my head is functioning right. people get all excited about 'activation day.' i am just eager to get on with the show - if i'm going to get any hearing out of this, i want it to start as soon as possible. in peace i sit here in my new corner, out my right eye, the courtyard canopy, with all the trees on the little front-porch roof that i look out on; on my left, my own books, and straight ahead my little bookshelf. i now have my quilt makings near me, and also my quaker-pamphlet makings, which needless to say, i often neglect. life is balance; i need to get these things integrated into my life.

but i have a lot more going on. for one, i've found my life work - writing on language as a self-organizing system - and now i want to work on it every day, consistently, a chapter a day. i also have some shorter more creative works i'd like to crank out. i have my marketing more regularized, more consistent, though usually it doesn't get much in the way of results. and finally, i get on the consumer-survey situation, so i have gift cards to invest in my books. i tell them what i think of their logos and how likely i would be to buy their product, and in return they throw me a few pennies of amazon gift card that go directly into putting a book on my shelf.

my dashing has become intense at night. two and a half hours a night, and i make anywhere from about forty to about fifty. sometimes less maybe, especially as fall falls, i'm not sure of the factors, but summer was jumping and it may not stay that way. no problem on the dwindling income. most of this is now house budget problems, and i am more than willing to turn over the money and worry a little less about how my wife can redesign the kitchen or keep our son fed with all his various hungers. he is slowly coming to realize that, as a normal nineteen-year-old, he should be feeding them himself. but i let her remind him. when i do it, that triggers him.

time to go. it's a wonderful, beautiful road up to iowa. you start out in western illinois cornfield; you turn west in the quad cities, crossing the river in a place that is stunningly beautiful. iowa itself is very busy, trucks all over the place. perhaps they have all found that world's biggest truck stop and go out of their way to come and go from it. but iowa city, ah, iowa city, my old friend, now incredibly hustle-bustle, but still with many many of my old friends whom i dearly love. slowly, one at a time, i'll reconnect. i look forward to it.

i woke up this morning and did my numbers like i always do on saturdays. a big fat cup of coffee, my little notebook, and my ratings for all 28 books that i now have on the market, USA only but both kindle and paperback. it's gotten so that i know what i'll find and usually i'm not all that surprised. but if a sale happens overnight or somehow i missed it, i might have a pleasant surprise. no pleasant surprises this morning.

my operation has healed slowly although there are still bandages on my skull and i press my glasses into one of them when i put them on. it's really more the hay fever that makes me want to retreat into my room and sit by the air-con, but going out has become somewwhat unpleasant with my almost total deafness and i frequently have to just tell people, hey, i don't hear much at all. at least i know how to say it, being part of the speaking world for sixty-nine years of my life. but it's no fun at all. and i'm a little impatient with them if they don't catch on and shout in my face when there's something they want to tell me. this is especially true on door-dash, which does require a little oral communication in the passing of food from their hands to mine. these are about the only people i talk to. my wife shouts in my face which is pretty much what you have to do.

activation day is next friday. that means i go in there, to iowa, and they turn on this cochlear implant that they inserted into my head. once they turn it on apparently i'll hear much better, at least after i get used to it. i may still have to do listening exercises or some such thing, all this makes me want to sit in my room with the air-con blowing in my face and avoid the world and all stress.

the biggest problem is hay fever season, to be frank. back in illinois, i got a break last year as my body just wasn't that familiar with it; i'd lived in the southwest for ten years. it used to torment me in iowa where i took to smoking a lot of pot in late august/early september, but i don't smoke pot anymore, and this constant coming and going, leaving the house, driving around, means i encounter quite a bit of it. it should be over soon, with the first frost if not sooner. but it couldn't be too soon for me. my sinuses are full; my head weighs too much. i have to hang close to the airconditioner, no walks out in the weeds for me.

there's a chance i'll start working on a quilt again. this actually cheers me up. i am on my fourth one, and it's been stalled for several years. but i have plenty of material, scissors, and even time, if i never leave this chair. as i retreat to my airconditioner (i will have another operation before long, for the other ear, i'll find that i can really do a lot more than play boggle and write my books. i've been somewhat obsessed with writing a book, but there's only so much i can do and pretty soon i'm going to want to do quilting or something i can do with my hands while i sit here.

i made a quilt for layla, and bayleigh, and kenna; now I'm stuck on maya's quilt as i never got back off the ground after i finished kenna's. it's barely started, in other words. and she's kenna's twin. but she knows it will be a while, and she's ok with it. they're coming over tomorrow, so i feel like having something ready. a plan, maybe, or some fabric that i intend to cut. i'm working on it. but i've had to hang around the garage finding this stuff and an afternoon working in the garage left me very sweaty and head full of sinus problems from the ragweed in the neighborhood. i retreated. more time in my chair.

and then i read the news and you have this raving maniac yelling about mass deportations. when they figure out what will happen when you deport every hotel worker in the country people are not going to be so crazy about it, as it will cause a labor shortage and prices will skyrocket. they'll have to. the people who would be affected would be much wider than just the population of illegal migrants, which is actually not that huge. But the illegal migrants are related to lots of people and are well established in the economy, which means that really forcing them out will cause all kinds of disruption. he doesn't care; disruption is his gain, as it keeps people off balance and allows his thugs to move in and take control.

fortunately people see this coming. he's a raving maniac and we have to do something about it.

spent the morning reading about alexander grothendieck and his work, after which i felt obliged to say something intelligent, which you can read if you wish. he is the picasso of mathematics. it's kind of a detour into abstract thinking and it derailed my present project which i will explain.

really i've been staying home mulling over the idea that i will soon have my head cut open in a cochlear implant surgery (friday) and much of it is unresolved including the time and possible price. i think my wife will pay any price to have me back in the world of hearing her, but i myself am much more hesitant to pay anyone anything to cut my head open even if i trust him and believe it's all in the cause of better hearing for my last ten years. i have a lot of trepidation about it but it will probably work out ok.

meanwhile with a little extra time caused by my taking about five days off of dashing, due partly to a frozen ignition, i have virtually finished another book. this one, have a magical day, causes some trepidation in me partly because one of the stories involves real people, and partly because i have never actually set foot in disney world. how could you write a book about some place you've never been, when almost everyone else has been there? well. i had a lot to say. it's my exploration of fantasy and magic in general, and i could only do it through one of the world's best marketers of it. i don't think disney will be mad at me; i don't really slam disney at all, even though it's a huge corporation, has gone through numerous questionable changes, etc. in other words it's fair game for criticism but i'm not really in the business of criticism (and i would say this about mcdonalds and walmart too). i write these books partly because after thirty years of representing american culture i want to take a certain angle of looking at it and exploring it. some of the issues are of course unresolved - look at the state of the american family for example - and i can't hope to resolve them or even make a meaningful contribution. well, meaningful maybe if you consider just putting it on the table as being a meaningful contribution. we are what we are; disney represents it; it puts entertainment and movies right up there as its primary product, and a whole generation doesn't read much anymore.

in addition, certain fairy tales are now frozen in time and space as disney's production in many ways confirmed the fairy tale, and became the dominant image people have of it. most of these fairy tales were told in various iterations over the years but whatever disney did pretty much set them in cement, since they may not be redone for twenty years or more and since millions upon millions will watch disney's movie and now have disney's interpretation of whatever happened. disney is the master of fantasy: these movies are good, well-made, with excellent animation and characters that draw you right in based on their decades of research on what works and on how to portray good and evil. they are the masters. in the same way mcdonald's and walmart are the masters at their own particular field. my hat's off to them, i'm not sneering at them.

but it isn't wrong to put your book of stories right inside their empire, i hope.

the weather has become calm and cool and beautiful. i'll need to mow, for sure, and this will set off a round of anguish even though it's much cooler and pleasant outside. anguish because basically august 15-september 15 is hay fever season. i am refamiliarizing myself with full sinuses.

may wait to publish this book until after the operation, friday. that's because it's an ordeal to run it through paperback, kindle, etc. and it takes a lot of energy to get it out there on the market. it is almost done though. have a magical day it's called and it's just getting its finishing touches. people may look back at this book and say, this guy never went to disney. or they may look at it and say, he writes good short stories, even when he doesn't know what he's talking about.

going to enjoy my labor day weekend, don't know if it's going to be by dashing tomorrow or not, but in fact i'm already enjoying it though demands have rained down on me from all sides.

the two main demands are one son wants me to go to abingdon, and a daughter wants me to go to hanna city. both trips would require at some point a return trip, so four trips out into the illinois countryside. they could possibly be combined; though they are not directly in each other's path, they are close. abingdon is south and hanna city is southeast, but way more east than south. going to hanna city or back through abingdon could be called "the back way."

i actually went to a party last night, one in which my wife brought marshmallows and the kids were thrilled. they roasted those things on the open flames until they burned and then took them around, running off their youthful energy and my wife became the saint who delivered them from the boredom of adults all talking. it was an interesting party. the problem is that my hearing has gotten so bad that i'm almost useless at parties, since i can't sit around yakking with music in the background - just about all i can do is admire young children who don't seem to mind my getting in their face when i want to say something. these were perfectly normal children and i kind of liked that aspect of it.

took an extended break from dashing when my car broke down sometime around wednesday, and i was forced to just put it down for a while. it might have been thursday. anyway the ignition simply froze and all i could do was just pay them and then be grateful when it was finally returned to me. what can you do? sometimes you stick your key in there and you can't budge it. i knew when i was defeated. and i needed the break, so i took it. now the question is whether to go back to work tomorrow. i'm already off for today, sunday. tomorrow is labor day.

i've become slightly more traditional in some ways. i always take sunday off. i attend church services (my own, granted) every week. i try to get to bed by about eleven or at least by twelve. i sleep all night and usually sleep in. i take a shower every day.

i enjoy my little room and spend more and more time here sitting by the aircon letting it easy my hay fever symptoms, and trying to get some work done on my books. i am finishing a set of stories. i have a book just out and i'm enjoying some traffic from that, it's like the world then remembered that i was there and had written other stuff too. got a few page reads and a sale here and there. i like to get out there and say i'm 100% indie. that means i do everything myself - covers, proofreading, marketing, etc. so what if marketing is weak, and i only have a tiny corner of what i deserve? i have never been in it for the money. so i muddle along - i check my numbers obsessively, but i don't expect much, and i don't get much. it's all ok. i'm down to 28 on the market - took 3 off but put one up there - and i'm working on feeling better about what i have. i may be producing some new covers soon.

on the personal side, having a cochlear implant operation on FRI. getting a little worried about it. preparing to kick back and rest a little, take another break from dashing. one has to take a window, and like they do in korea, enjoy the fall clear cool weather right when it comes in. gather up your soul for a long winter.