Posted October 14, 2023: Minnesota me is coming to the surface. Any moment I’ll break out in a “Yeah, ya betcha” or “Sure, I’ll borrow you my car.” It’s cloudy a lot and chilly and most of the leaves are gone. Life in the north was a bit hectic at first, visit with Robert and Marsha, over to my friend’s house in Blackduck (about 60 miles from Grand Rapids), back to Grand Rapids, back to Blackduck. Carrying stuff up and down steps…it seems everyone has many steps up to their front doors here. Wonder why? Snow piled up in the winter I guess.

In addition to reveling in pure Minnesota, I’m working on Window Seat, the forever-being-written book. Making progress.

I’ve been making excellent writing progress, in fact have a decent draft with nearly everything in final form…well except for the introduction, a last chapter, the epilogue, and a few bookish inserts here and there. And narrowing the number of pics scattered throughout down from 70+ to 30 or 40. And getting a few permissions for the use of a song and two poems. It’s very long. But, hey, I’m very old and I’ve traveled a lot. And there’s a big long dancing chapter (making up for the lack of sex, violence, celebrities, and failure to use AI).

I do have a publisher, generally self-publishing, but as a trade publication so it’ll be available all the ways books are available. It’s a British firm that specializes in travel guides and literature. It’ll be more expensive than I would have liked, but obviously if I had ever thought money would be connected to the project I would have worked faster!

Friends and family and the ‘old place’ coming up in next posts..for now a Minnesota road pic and food. I actually think driving on two-lane highways through prairie or forest is what calms me! And roast beef.

I find the effect that being ‘home’ in Minnesota has on me interesting and a little odd. Calming. It is calming. Not just the driving…the people. The woods. The food. From long chats with old school friends, to driving miles and miles between the small towns of the north—not much traffic, eyes peeled for the suicidal deer so plentiful in the endless woods, these weeks just being with my brother and sister-in-law—we’re so good together now that we’re old and realize our time together is finite so there’s no time for criticsm or annoyance or anything really but appreciation and kindness.

Supper at Rob and Marsha’s. I fully intend to try being a vegetarian again. But not until I leave R & M’s. After I watch Robert pickle some pike. Really?