I will get the schedule up as soon as possible. Looks like I will have to be gone from home for two weeks! Auriel will take care of Gradycat, I am hoping to leave Buck and El Donko in Evelyn and Pat’s pasture down on the Seventy and Girl Dog? Haven’t figured that out yet. It all begins the first of October; first to Asheville NC, then Houston, the Minneapolis, then St. Louis. From St. Louis down to PB with Susan and Mark and then Susan and I will get our Ozark Trail ride in, a little early. Then home.

Of course you want to know what this is. Okay. The roundish object is one of the moons of Saturn, named Daphnis. Daphnis is about five miles in diameter. In the rings of Saturn, there is a gap of clear space. It is called the Keeler Gap.  This is a computer simulation of Daphnis sailing along in the Keeler Gap. You are richer for this, you know. Your mind has been expanded. Woooooooo.

Picture or photo by Kevin Gill/Flicker.

Looking forward to an e-conversation with Tracy Chevalier, an interview with an editor at Kirkus, opening the launch in Houston October 4th, a reading in Asheville NC, introduced by Charles Frazier (really looking forward to that), then Minneapolis, then from there fly to St. Louis the 13th for Left Bank books, then 4 days riding with Susan in the Ozarks, then home. It’s going to be a pressed, busy trip but I think I will be okay.

The video is up at newsoftheworldbook.com. I love it.

Haven’t been riding for a month except one day a week ago, when it was so hot, got on for 15 minutes but both Buck and I thought, ‘this sucks’ and turned around. Then all of a sudden, I think it was, August 11th, Thursday, after it had been 102 F. for a week, the rains came. The temperature dropped to the eighties, so far have had five inches or so. I am working down in the pasture when I can, clearing an area, it’s like landscaping or interior decorating. Exterior decorating. I am making a good place for the equines under two very large, old cedars.

The music group is going to have to do without Chuck for September. Working on my piano scales. Started a new work about a quartet in the post-apocalypse. What good is singing when the world is collapsing? Answer; a great deal.

The thing about inventing a world for sci-fi or dystopia is that the writer loses all that wealth and complexity of dialect and jokes and songs and references and slang that makes up much of our daily life. And you can’t invent that without it sounding false, so you must do without it, and your dystopian world is fall less rich in language and reference than that of a historical novel. Unless you have characters that incessantly refer back to the ‘old world’ — i.e. ‘this ancient song, called I Ain’t Got No Satisfaction’ etc. but that gets heavy and forced after a while.

Lovely, lovely rain.

It’s at newsoftheworldbook.com. What a time we had making that video! The truck died, Dolly became terminally ill, I was at my wit’s end, but all went well. Especially with Ev O’Hara’s help. I think it’s interesting, it has horses, running river, green trees, and so on. Not so much pontificating from me, but when people turn a camera on you and ask for your words of wisdom it is really tempting to blather away and get onto your favorite themes and inform the world of things the world ought to know. Temptation must be rigorously banged on the head.

So it looks good, the website looks good, and I am very happy with it all. Great quote from Charles Frazier.

And here we are — the POP band!

Much activity down at the park in the middle of town — a new rock wall and these lovely cutout sculptures are being put up. My guess is that the wide rock wall will become a sitting-place. The park is too open to be comfortable in the summer heat, but the wall will be entirely in shade. The only shade is the gazebo visible behind the central deer but, as I said, the rock wall will be shady.

The big cypress is the one that is lit up for Christmas.

This is my favorite. It’s on top of the rock wall at the south end. A scrub jay and quail and metal cutout sculpture of a fencepost and probably real barbed wire.  The building on the far side of the park is the volunteer fire department/EMS ready room, where they have their radios, classes, computers, some bunks I think for those on duty.

Buck is in the backyard this morning, mowing the grass. Nice to have him up here at the house with me. My air conditioner in the study died, and without it, it gets to be about 120 F up here. I bought a new one, but getting the dead one out of the wall up here in the second story was daunting and I had no idea how to go about it. It was a big 16,000 BTU monster. It was flush with the wall inside and stuck out of the exterior wall about two feet.

Thought of just shoving it right on out of the wall and into the yard below. Called Mr. Brundage and he came with his son and he looked at it, then removed the guts, or the interior works, out of the housing, the frame, carried up my new one, and just inserted it into the old housing/frame. Problem solved. Duh.