Whew! After several days of

7/8/08 -- Whew! After several days of trying to figure out why I couldn't log onto my web site, I've finally figured it out. So now I can finally update this here blog.

I'm back from the KY and SC trip. The family reunions were fun, as was the weather. Hot? Yes. But not in the usual like-a-suana way. Humidity was fairly low. Yahoo!

I generally did my writing in the afternoon, though. Got lots done.

But also took time for walks on the beach. We hitched a boat ride to a wilderness island and visited Boneyard Beach, where storms have washed away the land away and drowned the trees in the surf.

Made a new friend, too, although I thought he had a bit of a crabby disposition.

On the way back to KY to catch our flight to Oregon, we stopped in the mountains of North Carolina to visited the home of Carl Sandburg. Talk about a great place to write! Given the itinerate writing life I'd been living for over two weeks, the following lines of one of Sandburg's poems especially spoke to me. I'm not particularly good at memorizing, but I think it goes something like this:

The eternal hobo ask for a quiet room,

And a little paper he can dirty

With birds who will sit where he tells 'em.

My writing digs sure don't compare with Carl's (that's his house above), but I'm glad to be home and working on STORM MOUNTAIN in my familiar quiet room.

Now if I can just get those birds to sit where I tell 'em . . .