Here I am, Lauer

I'm just now ever so grateful for having survived the long dark road, just now home from the far eastern side of Missouri, from visiting Mason Ridge Elementary over in the environs of St. Louis. It was pointed out to me, by an alert reader, that I've been slacking, blog-wise. Because it feels so pointless sometimes. And then again, one's feelings are not the best indicator of what there is to be done. And not done.

That being said, gosh, how grateful and happy I am to get to gas away at innocent, delightful school children - THE best part of my job, THE most fun - I adore talking and drawing and making kids laugh, sharing w/ them the virtues, the pure joy of reading, learning, knowing, imagining those who have gone before. How grateful I am that no distraught deer hurled itself in front of my headlights out on I-70. How grateful I am to have been away, doing what I got to do today and to be home again, home again, rich in happy memories.

So. I meant to write yesterday, honest, because all day long it was the 17th of September, 47 years since Charlie Finley, the owner of the KC Athletics, brought the Beatles to town. Why couldn't I go? Because we were living in a ratty old farmhouse, made worse by my messy family moving into it, down around Chilhowee, a good 60 miles from KC. I was 13. Couldn't drive. No friends. No money, but rich in anguish. My poor old long-commuting dad brought me a couple of Beatles singles. One was a Vee-Jay 45, the other a Capitol.... very, very, very nice of him, especially considering all the crap & ridicule I took off of him re: those long-hairs.... And I found out some time later that 17 Sept. 1964 marked 102 years since the Battle of Antietam. Nearly 23,000 men, lost, killed, wounded, just one day.

Just.

One.

Wretched, bloody day, poor souls.

And I got to participate [talk. sing (!), make people laugh - shoot, cut me off another slice of that! I love talking to a bunch o' people] in the annual author breakfast at the Reading Reptile. If you're ever in Kansas City, go there. You won't be sorry. You might think that you're walking into a bookstore. You'll quickly realize that you're entering Pete's & Deb's living work of art. I hurried home afterwards to take Mimi outside to relieve herself then got down to painting. Listening to The Good Earth. Boy oh boy, that Pearl Buck. no matter what else she wrote and she wrote a lot; she'd written her masterpiece. She was magic. [read it if you haven't] It's like no matter what J.,P.,Geo., & R. did, they'd been the Beatles to the world & carved their songs into the culture.

so I didn't write a word yesterday. didn't even sign a book. Nobody bought one.

Hard times, but there are compensations.

starting fresh

So, it seems fitting to revisit this blog this week, being a time for new beginnings, buying school supplies, sharpening pencils. After a very long inertia siege, I've taken up one of my several unfinished novels. Beastly it is to conjure characters into existence then leave them languishing in my hard drive. I've a painting [for a handful of historical panels hereabouts, in the Queen City o' the Trails - did you know that a man who had worked long & hard to buy his freedom ended up building many a wagon, intended for the long trails to Oregon & Santa Fe? that he became a most prosperous businessman just a few blocks from where I sit typing?] to do, a sculpture [I've been taking myself weekly to a ceramics studio] to complete, and a massive revision to do, for a book having to do with the Gold Rush, when my hometown was far and away livelier than it is these days. So heck, why not blog?

I can think of lots of reasons....

Mid-May Madness

So, I've lost count of how many days until I turn 60, but it's creeping up on me and after all, does it matter? I'll still be the same doofus I am now, but by then, God willing, I shall have this manuscript done. I'll have found out tomorrow that the illustrations I mailed at the US Post Office on Saturday morning made it to New York. Somewhere there is a publisher at which I still have a contract for a bona fide picture book, its publication long delayed. And what happened on this day in history? I'm not sure, but I'm willing to wager that loads of people were born or they fell in love or they died too soon. Or long after they prayed to go. All of the above. And outside, in the dark, purple irises are in bloom.

57

The spirea are blooming as they doubtless were 127 years ago when Mittie Truman gave birth to baby Harry down in Lamar, MO. Mimi and I hiked up to his Presidential Library yesterday morning, a big fat thrill for a little black & white dog, getting to run, run, run all around the great green lawn. For me, it was more of a Rocky Balboa deal, trudging, huffing, puffing up the slope to the however many steps there are to the front porch to peer in through the big windows to see the tremendous Thos. Hart Benton mural that gleams from the wall within. What a glorious painting it is! Then back home again, all sweaty & breathless, Mimi panting & both of us eager for a cold drink of water. Out walking again this morning & determined I am to keep it up and get a good deal thinner than I am today, please God. Never have I been so .... well, I'm not going to type that particular F-word. I didn't expect to be so becalmed, unable to move through lack of wind in my sails, i.e. umph, at this stage of life.

BIRTHDAY

SO, yes, today would have been Elaine Harness's 83rd birthday if she hadn't gotten her ticket punched back in the autumn of 1992 and glad for her I am, bless her heart, that she was able to pass away when she did. In the many years after this picture was taken, she had six more children, gained SO much weight, and got terribly, terribly sad. Life wasn't all she hoped it would be when she went to some California photo studio with little me. Some 13 years later she would tell me 'don't be like me.' Okay Mom, I pretty much ran with that little piece of advice.

How pleased and proud she always was, by the way, that she shared a birthday with the great and marvelous actor, Gary Cooper, who, had he not passed away way too soon in the spring of 1961, would be celebrating his 100th BIRTHDAY this very day. As for me, today makes 59 days before I turn 60, 59 more days in which I intend to make it my business to better observe poor Mom's sad, soft, thick, trapped, checked-out example as life has a way of catching up with a person if you're not careful, when you're not paying attention.

65, I think

So, wide open popped my eyes when I switched on the BBC about 1 A.M. and heard the news that the old renegade had been surprised by intruders, shot in the head, & dropped in the ocean. So long Osama, it's been bad to know you.

Off I need to be going in the next little while, off driving across Missouri for to talk to three groups of sleep-deprived middle schoolers about books & such. Will they want to know that yesterday [today] marked 119 years since flying ace of aces, Manfred von Richthofen, THE Red Baron was born? We'll see, but I doubt it. Still, aerial battles. 80 victories, intense young pilots - pretty goddam thrilling. Will they care that today [tomorrow] is a birthday shared by Bing Crosby [who?] and Golda Meir [ditto]? But it'll be Pete Seeger's birthday. And Sugar Ray Robinson's. Oh well. I'll tell 'em about books, about history, its role in our lives, our role in history. After all, look how one person, caught up in a wide sequence of events, can bend it, as today's [yesterday's] death dude so demonstrated. Glad you're gone, O.b.L., you rascal you.