Nothing to Write

Today is my day to post to this blog. Unfortunately I have nothing to write. We've been expecting rain since around noon, but then they changed the forecast to say we wouldn't get any till around 9:00 p.m. this evening. It finally started a few minutes ago, just in time for me to walk out to the car without a jacket. That's okay. Clothes, skin, and hair all dry without being damaged. Hopefully I'll be able to keep my papers from becoming wet.

Today I spoke to the engineering seminar class at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. This is a weekly, 1 hour class that features practicing engineers coming in to talk about a significant project. Back in August the call came in to me to try and set something up to support this professor and his class. I wanted someone else to do this, but got exactly zero responses to my e-mail, so I did it. Actually, I got one response to my e-mail: on Tuesday of this week—just a little late. I talked about the engineering challenges with the Crystal Bridges Museum, focusing more on the flood control issues than anything else.

The class had around 30 people attend. I knew two of them: students who interned with us this past summer. Actually, I knew an older man who attended. He's a practicing civil engineer in Fayetteville, where the U of A is. I recognized him, but couldn't remember his name. He came up after the program and introduced himself, and I recalled where our paths had crossed before, perhaps 8 years ago.

Tonight Lynda and I will participate in another live training webinar for stock and options trading. Following recommendations from this service, I placed a trade this morning that would go up in a down market. It gained close to 20% in the sharp downturn today. Had I not been on a conference call when the market opened, I could have made even more. I got in after 9:15 instead of at 8:30.

Other stock trading training will consume a lot of time over the next week, and even up to six month's time, as we work through this training. I'm hoping the time commitment will taper off some after the first two weeks, but we'll see. People who know about this have asked me when I'll write. I tell them I don't expect to write anything for the next 6 months. Should an hour or two a week present itself for writing, and should I have sufficient brain power left to actually work on something, my order of writing work will be:

- prepare Father Daughter Day for publication and publish it
- research my next Thomas Carlyle book, and begin working on the essay I'll include in it
- get back on my civil war book in the Documenting America series.

I should probably look to short stories, given that I'll have so little time, but that would mean beginning another project rather than working on a present one, and I don't think my head would stay together if I had another project to do.

Well, the rain has stopped; it's time to go home and see about supper and webinars and dream about leisure. Not much of a post, I know, but it's what I got today.

Living In The Past

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how I spend much of my time in the past. Reading history will do that. Studying genealogy will expand it. Reading Romantic and Victorian Era writers will exacerbate it. When I get home at night my mind is geared towards times no closer than 50 years ago.

Last night I hosted an on-line, back-to-school party for my high school class. This was held at our class Facebook page (which I created). 25 people showed up, with about 15 of those contributing posts. That's out of a group membership of 106 out of a class of 725. So not a great attendance, but I think all who posted had a good time. We came from two different junior high schools to the same high school, so there was lots of cross-town rivalry stuff going on. Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of the eve of our starting junior high (not really; we started the Wednesday after Labor Day, which in 1964 was Sept 8; but seeing as how today is the Wednesday after Labor Day, it was an anniversary of sorts).

That took a lot of time last night. As group creator and host, I felt I had to be there and contribute. By the end of the evening we had over 300 posts. Those who didn't contribute will some day stop in the page and see what we all said.

Then, I've been beta-reading/editing the memoir of a cousin of mine—a memoir of childhood. At least the first part is. I've read up to the teen years. I believe the latter half moves into the adult years, but for now it's all about events more than 50 years in the past. I know the people mentioned. I know some of the circumstances which this cousin has shared with me. But the details are new. I'm enjoying my reading; and I enjoy editing. Tonight I can spend enough time on it that I'll either finish it or get close.

My current reading has been of old works. I just finished my second reading of Thomas Carlyle's Chartism, in preparation for a publishing a book on the subject. Lynda and I, in our reading aloud, are reading through the Sherlock Holmes canon. So my reading is of things old. When I'm not reading those, I'm reading my Bible. Talk about old. Next, however, is a couple of magazines I bought last time I was in Barnes & Noble, so I'll be shifting to reading something modern. Plus I have some articles to read in a back-issue of a literary magazine, from several years back. Maybe this reading will tug me into the future.

The other thing that causes me to dwell in the past is my genealogy work. Ever since I've been writing creatively, genealogy has taken a backseat. Every now and then, when a relative contacts me, or I sense an urge, I do a little work on it. That's what's happened recently. Yesterday I took time to prepare two new family group sheets, based on new information, and to edit the one for my family. Two of these three are to present accurate information to a newly found relative; the other information about that relative. This reminded me of how much work I have to do. My genealogy notebooks are a mess. I have unproven information in them that is speculative enough that I need to trash it. I have trial family charts that I later updated, but haven't discarded the older versions. I need to spend hours doing nothing but that.

Then, the last month or so I've spent time with old photographs. I may have mentioned before that my house has become the accumulation point for old photographs from both my and my wife's families. We have them in boxes and bins. Some are labeled, some are not. None are inventoried. These go back to our great-grandparents, in some cases older than that. They are for five or six family branches. Some I know I have, but haven't seen them for years. Add to this are all the photographs Lynda and I have taken over the years. They are scattered throughout the house: in dresser drawers, in boxes, in albums that are incomplete and mostly not labeled.

Oh how I want to inventory our photos! Put them in a database that will: identify the photo and who or what is in it; identify who took it; indicate if a negative is available, and if so where the negative is; indicate the family branch it came from; identify or speculate on the date the photo was taken; state where the photo is in the house, including which album if it's in an album. Unfortunately, that task is so huge I don't think I'll get there this side of retirement, and perhaps not for twenty years into retirement, should I live so long.

So, right now I have my feet firmly planted in the past. Writing tasks await me. Writing is a current activity, though of course my Civil War book is of a past activity. Hopefully I'll come back to the present sometime soon. But for now, I'm enjoying my time machine.

Rain Today

Weather forecasters say we're supposed to get rain today. Although, the heavy storms that, last night at bed time, stretched from Wichita to Oklahoma City and beyond, seem to have dissipated by this morning's radar. Right now it looks like a weak system that may or may not make it here with rain.

Sure enough, I just checked he forecast, and the chance of rain has been reduced since last night. Maybe we'll get some, maybe we won't. If we do, it's likely to be a lot less than at first predicted. At least, that's the way things look at 7:42 a.m. at my desk in my office in Bentonville, Arkansas.

This post will be a bunch of miscellaneous thoughts, the things running through my mind at the moment. I'm thinking of making a stock trade today, a one week option play on U.S. Steel. I ran the numbers a little while ago, and it looks good. Of course, I'll need to see how the market opens and what happens with the price before I place the order. Last night I read some in the Battle of Shiloh battle reports. Read one from a subordinate general on the Union side, but it was hard to follow what he meant without a battlefield map in front of me. Last night Lynda and I also listened to a stock trading webinar, a live one. It was good, but will take some more study before we can implement anything from it. So for now I'll keep going with what's working fairly well for me.

Yesterday was a busy day at work. I was asked to help out on two projects, which consumed most of the hours in the day. One was where a resident next to a large project which I served as contract city engineer on in Centerton has sent a letter with a bunch of questions on the drainage report. I checked the report, done by the company who now serves as regular contract city engineer (so they couldn't check their own work). I spent some hours looking back at the report, comparing it to the resident's questions, and formulating responses. This will take more time today. I'm enjoying it; it's a reminder of the type of work that once consumed half my work hours.

Just before 5:00 p.m. a man came to me with a question on a site lighting specification. I suggested to him how to handle the situation. He was back in my office a little after 5:00, still struggling with how much he needed to change the specification, which wasn't meeting the needs of the project. I pulled that guide spec up on my computer, and together we edited it, taking ten minutes to do so. He left with a nearly completed spec and his project in a position where he could send it out before the end of the day.

One negative of the day was how my knee is hurting. I don't remember if I posted it or not. About five or six weeks ago I quit taking my rheumatoid arthritis medicine because of how I became nauseous and frequently threw up in the days following when I took my weekly pills. The nausea stopped, but as the medicine worked its way out of my body the pain in my right knee came back. This isn't actually rheumatoid there; rather joint deterioration. A knee replacement awaits me somewhere in the future. But so long as the medicine was controlling the pain, the surgery was a long way off. After quitting the medicine the knee got progressively worse, until last week I could barely walk. I went to see my rheumatologist—actually his nurse—last Wednesday and was shown how to give myself the medicine by injection. I took a dose. Friday I puked twice.

So maybe the medicine does that to me even if I don't put it directly into my stomach. I've been taking up to six Aleve a day, which seems to have done nothing for the pain. I took my second injection on Wednesday. So far I've been okay. Had some nauseous feeling last night, but it passed fairly quickly as I walked it off around the house. Right now I'm feeling slightly nauseous. I'll have to get up and walk around the building here in a moment. In anticipation of this, I've been eating less over the last few days, trying to empty my stomach. The reason this medicine is causing that is because one of my diabetes meds, Byetta, delays the emptying of the stomach as a means of controlling blood sugar. So my stomach stays fuller than it should. Then when the methotrexate hits it, boom: vomit.

So, I'm still in the experimental stage with the injections. If I get through today without vomiting, I'll feel good about it. The pain in my knee may be marginally less. Or maybe that's wishful thinking, feeling what I'm hoping for. But for sure the reduced eating has helped in the weight loss department. Today I weighed-in at a 22 year low. I had kind of stalled at weight loss. Now I'm losing again. My blood sugar has been well under control. If I can just get my knee working properly, all will be right with the world once again. The strange thing, none of my joints that are bothered by rheumatoid have started hurting. So it's all very strange indeed.

Well, enough ramblings for one day, a day late from when I was supposed to post. Too busy yesterday, no gumption.

Staying Busy - Helped by the To Do List

If you've read this blog for very long, or my other blog about my writing life, you know I stay busy, really busy. Most of it is of my own doing, as I choose how to live my life. Some of it is "have to do stuff," such as maintaining house and vehicles. I'm pretty good at preparing and following to-do lists at work, not so good at home. But I do make them for outside work, and sometimes they help me. Last night was a perfect example.

I left the office around 5:30 p.m., stopping by the bank and grocery store on the way home, needing only a few items. Earlier I had prepared a to-do list for the evening, and knew, without referring to the list, all the things I needed to do. Among those things only one was something I could do that day and only that day: pick blackberries.

Okay, so that's an exaggeration. I can pick blackberries any day. But only today will I find certain blackberries at a perfect stage of ripeness. A day later and they'll be over-ripe; a day early and they'll not be as sweet as they could be. Yes, picking blackberries in the roadside bushes around the neighborhood was on the to-do list, even though I picked a pint at work on my noon hour.

But as I looked at the items on the list, I realized picking blackberries was perhaps the least important of all I had to do. So instead I did the following.

• Continue clean-up of the debris from our recent tree topping. I finished moving one pile to the street side, where on Saturday I'll load it in the pick-up and take it to the stump dump, and I drug another pile off into the woods. Some of the piles are so far down the hill that bringing them up to the street is much too much work. Easier to take them into the woods. Then I cut some of the larger limbs into moveable lengths/weights, and continued to pile them for later cutting into firewood length. I still have much to do on this, but it's looking better, much better.
• Continue to enter our expenses into my budgeting spreadsheet. I allowed myself to get way behind on this, as well as on filing. Night before last I picked up this long neglected task and made some progress. Last night I did the same, with additional progress. At the rate I'm going I'll be caught up on the spreadsheet early next week. Then I'll see about filing.
• Work on Documenting America, Civil War Edition. I completed chapter 1 in this, and worked on proper entries in the writing diary for it. This is early in the process, but I'm pleased with how it is at this time.
• When I finished my work for the night on DA-CWE, it was 9:30 p.m. Lots of time left in the evening to do something else. But what? The written to-do list wasn't in front of me, but I had it in mind. I remembered that I have two books I want to format for print editions. I decided to do this work on In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. It's not hard at all, though it can be tedious. I chose paper size, changed the "Normal" style for font, input headers and footers, and added the front matter. This brought me to around 10:30 p.m. I quickly went through the book to look for oddities, and found and changed some. Then, I noticed that I had mixed up the left hand and right hand page headers. So I switched those around, chapter by chapter. That took me to around 11:15, which was later than I had intended to work on it. But it was done, or mostly done. Tonight I'll look at it and see if anything needs changing. But for sure it's very close.

That was far from everything on the list. And the blackberries didn't get picked. I decided a few can just get over-ripe, and the birds and bugs can have them. I'll try to pick a few tonight.

Genre Focus Disorder - is it real?

I've said it before: I have Genre Focus Disorder (GFD). I called it by another name before, but GFD seems more appropriate. The experts in the publishing business say you should stick to one genre. Make a name for yourself in it, carve out a niche, become known, build an audience, and you'll do better. If you write in multiple genres, fans from one genre most likely won't follow you into another genre, and you will have to build separate audiences, carve out multiple niches.

On the other hand, some publishing veterans say experimenting with different genres during your pre-published time is acceptable. Once you sell something, however, use all your efforts to concentrate on that. This is said more from a trade publishing perspective than a self-publishing perspective, but it somewhat applies to the latter as well.

For me, however, I've found I have to write whatever I have inspiration for. I have mapped out books and short stories into the future that will probably consume all my writing time till old age claims it. I write sort of how water, when released from a container or hits land during precipitation, runs downhill or seeks its own level. That's good for productivity, but probably not so good for audience building and sales. Since I'm self-publishing, when I complete something, I publish. The 16 items I've self-published so far are in ten different genres. Of course, genre definition is difficult to pin down. Another person reading all my pieces may say they are in only eight genres.

Only eight?

So what has happened this year in my GFD? In March I published Thomas Carlyle's Edinburgh Encyclopedia Articles. This was not for sales, though I've sold three copies. It was for practice at editing, formatting, cover creation, all things publishing, and it helped fulfill my fasciation with this Victorian behemoth. It was good practice. But what happened afterwards? Ideas for four different follow-ups to it came to mind, one of them book-length. That one wouldn't let me go. For three weeks I worked feverishly at it: researching the subject, contacting people, obtaining copies of documents old and new, and putting a bunch of stuff in a MS Word document. At the end of the three weeks time I had a book diary with many entries, and a file that is probably 70 percent of the eventual book, though subject to formatting. At that point I said "This is madness" and went back to other projects. But by that time the GFD attack had run its course.

So I completed three other projects. One was my novel, a sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I had been working on it since October (I think), so it was good to get it out of the way. Then I did the work of formatting The Gutter Chronicles for print and publishing it. That was okay as it was always on the schedule. The next thing on my publishing schedule was to add "It Happened At The Burger Joint" to my items for sale, which I did. My schedule then was a little imprecise. I could pick up the novel sequel, Headshots, and edit it. I could work on the next short story in the Danny Tompkins series, or the next short story in the Sharon Williams series. Those were on the to-do list, and made sense. I knocked out the Tompkins story, and published it this past Monday. Even made my own cover.

But then, GFD reared. Actually it reared even before I had finished the short story, "Saturday Haircuts, Tuesday Funeral". I was in Little Rock last week for a two day conference, and was in the hotel room in the evenings without much to do. I had brought a number of things with me to fill my time, as I always do, not knowing for sure what I'll want to work on. One of them was a volume of the Annals of America series. I used this series to find source material for my book Documenting America. When I published that in 2011 I saw it as the start to a possible series. I thought the next one would be from the civil war era, and the one after that would be from the pre-constitution era, focusing on the development of the constitution. But I had no hurry in doing either. Well, I suppose the civil war one could be considered subject to a deadline, since we are in the period of the civil war sesquicentennial and books about it might do better if released then.

But really, it wasn't necessary to work on this. I had my completed novel manuscript with me, and could begin editing in the quiet of the hotel. But the civil war book wouldn't let me go. I spent the first evening scanning documents in the Annals, and figuring out which ones to use as source material. I know how long I want the book, how long I want each chapter to be, thus how many chapters I need, and, knowing a fair amount of civil war history, know what subjects are needed. In one long evening, including getting to bed much too late (but who can sleep when GFD is at its strongest), I had the whole book planned, all but six or seven of the source documents identified, and even some specific parts of some source documents marked for extraction. I thought, Ah, GFD has now run its course. Back to my publishing schedule.

Not so. Monday and Tuesday of this week I was prohibited from working outside (I have much yard work to do) due to a combination of rain and a fall resulting in minor injuries. So what did I do? Instead of picking up and editing the novel, I worked on finding more source documents for the civil war book! And this morning I created the Word file. It is now officially a writing project. The pull of this book has become very great over the last week. What's going to happen for the rest of the week?

I really need to get back to my novel. I'd like to have that published in July, and need to give it two full rounds of edits before doing so, maybe even three rounds. I'm hoping to begin editing it this weekend, maybe by reading it aloud with my wife. So that gives me only a couple of days to allow GFD to run wild. I can handle that. Perhaps it will burn out. Then, when the civil war book comes up in the publishing schedule, which is maybe in October, I'll have a nice start to it and be able to build on. GFD flare-up concluded.

Except, I may have found a cover illustrator for my poetry book, Father Daughter Day. Which means I'll have work to do on it. Argh! Is there no end to it?

Irons and Fire: Cliche Alert

When you can't think of something to write, use a cliche, let everyone criticize you, and move on. Then come back and try to think of another way to say it, without the cliche, make the edit and move on.

That's my advice to myself today, so I used the irons in the fire cliche. Yesterday evening all the things I'm trying to accomplish kind of came crashing down on me. I won't go into too many details, especially not about the many things that are not writing related. My to-do list is fuller than normal, let's just put it that way.

One iron was taken out of the fire this morning, sort of. Having not heard from the new managing editor of Buildipedia about the status of my monthly column (previously semi-monthly), I sent a third e-mail. I still worded it fairly nice, but said I needed to hear about whether they were going to publish the column I submitted based on my last contract, and that if not I would like them to pay me the kill fee. She responded very quickly, in very nice words. She said they will honor the contract and publish the column, but that would be the end of it. The analytics just don't support the column. She encouraged me to find other things to write about for them.

The "sort of" comes from what I did next. I asked for the rights to my construction administration articles so that I could cobble them together into an e-book on construction administration. Since the contracts I wrote them under describe them as essentially works-for-hire, I don't have rights to reprints. But I have enough material published there that, if I could get those rights released they would make the nucleus of a very nice e-book. She replied that she would check with her management, and that she would support me in the release of those rights.

Assuming I get that release (which is not a given and may not happen), I'll have around 13,000 words already written. If I could get that up to 25,000, I think I'd have a viable e-book for the engineering community. But that's work. It's taking the iron out of one fire and putting it in another. Oh, well, I won't likely hear for a while, and even if I receive those rights I won't likely work on it for six months to a year.

I'm in the process of trying to finish the two print books I recently proofed. Hopefully tonight I'll find the hour I need to work out the pagination on the homeschool edition of Documenting America and upload the new file. It would be nice to get that out of the fire for a few days. Then I can put the marketing iron for it into the fire.

The work needed for the print version of The Candy Store Generation is proving more difficult than I expected. The graphics are the problem. In order to improve the quality of the many graphs to make them look decent in print I need to go through a software contortion for each that would make a sideshow performer lame. The book has 18 graphs. All but three need improving. I generated about half of those using Excel, the others I pulled from websites. I'm reading in a guide on how to improve or maintain the quality of graphic files pulled into Word. It includes a software step for which I don't have the program, but for which there's a free program work-around. I don't think tonight will give me enough time to do it, but maybe tomorrow and the weekend.

Unfortunately the iron I have to tend to right now is my day job. Possibly I'll get back to this.

The Library Says, "We're Sorry"

Back on December 5, 2011, a few days after I received the twenty copies of Documenting America that I purchased, I took a copy to the Bentonville Public Library, to donate it for their holdings. The lady at the desk took the book. I don't remember what she said. She may have asked if I wanted to see a librarian about it. If so, I said no, no need to bother one of them. Just put it in the pile for processing.

About the middle of January I began checking on the book. Each time I went to the library, which is about every two weeks, I first checked the e-card catalog for the listing. It wasn't there. Then in early February I began to check with the clerks at the front desk, asking them if I had missed it in the catalog and when I might expect it to be added. Always the answer was they didn't know, but that these things take some time.

Finally last Monday, the 12th, I asked more forcefully about it. The lady at the front desk said she didn't know anything and I would have to talk with a librarian, but that none were there right now. On Monday the 19th I called for a librarian, but did so late in the day, and left a voice message. Promptly at 9:00 AM yesterday, the hour at which the library opens, a librarian called me. After she found out what I wanted, she said:

Oh, didn't they tell you at the front desk when you dropped the book off? We rarely, if ever, add a self-published book to our collection. This is not a reflection on the quality of your book, but most self-published books are not up to the standards the Library expects. We look at any self-published books that come in, but almost all of them we just give to the resale shop. I'm so sorry they didn't tell you this when you donated the book. They're supposed to tell everyone that who donates a self-published book.

I was sort of stunned. Probably a few days after I left the book, one of the librarians looked at it, saw it was self-published, and brought it to the resale shop, which is in a nook of the library. Naturally it's closed on Tuesdays. In fact it's closed most days. It opens for limited hours on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. Was my book still there? Could I buy it back and add it to my inventory?

Today I went to the library to find out. The resale shop opens at 10:00 AM, and I arrived about 10:30 AM. The shop was closed. A few racks of resale books were in the coffee shop, but my book wasn't on those racks. I checked with the lady at the front desk. She called someone in the library, but couldn't get any information. When I told her I had made a special trip just to shop in the resale store, she said,

I'm so sorry this happened. The resale shop is run by volunteers of the Friends of the Library, and we don't have much to do with their schedule.

I left and went back to work. It was only two miles each way, and I managed to do two other sort-of-necessary errands along the way. I'm tempted to write that this is a sorry library, but in fact it's a fairly good library. Hey, it's got a coffee shop, two great meeting rooms and a number of smaller meeting rooms. It has more computers than you can shake a stick at, and it has many feet of empty shelves onto which they can expend their collection for years and years and years.

Live and learn. I'll know better than to give this library anything in the future.

The Sacred Calls of Country

As I write in my Documenting America series, I read much in historical American documents that does not ring a bell as having been covered in my history classes. Why is that? Is it simply a matter of time—too many decades passes since freshman year at URI? Maybe they were covered and I just can't remember. Is it that my interests have changed? Rather than merely wanting to pass a class, I want to know the history of this great nation. History was a favorite topic for me, but the needs to pass the class often precluded the joy of mere study. That pendulum has swung, never to return.

Is it the experience of years? Maybe I now know that a history book covering one semester can't possibly hold everything that's important. The historian, or the history book writer, must sift through mountains of material to result in a manageable amount for the purpose at hand. Or is it perhaps the perspective of hindsight? Forty years of watching the USA in action, observing politics and all that politics affects, and five years of living in the Middle East gives a man a perspective markedly different than a student.

For any or all of these reasons, or perhaps for reasons unstated, I find myself drawn to these original documents out of America's history. My entry point was James Otis' court argument concerning the Writs of Assistance. This took place in 1761, a full fourteen years before the Revolutionary War broke out, fifteen before we declared the thirteen colonies to be independent, twenty-two before the treaty that established the USA in the roll call of nations, and twenty-eight before we had a working, sustainable government in place. This was, in my judgment, the opening step in our march to independence. While only a part of the argument is extant, what we have is a great example of legal and political rhetoric, and inspiring to this American, and should be to many others. I give this short quote to illustrate:

The only principles of public conduct that are worthy of a…man are to sacrifice estate, ease, health, and applause, and even life, to the sacred calls of his country.

Magnificent.

So how come this wasn't covered in my history classes? Why have I not, for forty if not fifty years, put James Otis on the pedestal next to Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Franklin? Is the fault that of the student, the teachers, or the history textbook writers? Who knows?

The bigger question for me, having found this among a treasure trove of documents now available in the Information Age, is will my book(s) make a difference? That only time and sales will tell.

"Documenting America" Kindle e-book for Sale

So Sunday I uploaded it. Twenty-four hours later they said it was accepted for publication. Another twenty-four hours and it went live, for sale at a bargain price of $1.25. Do I sound like a shameless self-promoter?

Here's the link:
Documenting America, Volume 1

So far I have two sales! One coming from my Facebook announcement, and one from my announcement on the Suite101 forums. I'll probably do more promotion for this than I did with "Mom's Letter", and see if that results in better sales. A 40,000 word book for $1.25 will seem like a better deal than a 1850 word short story for $0.99. That might help sales. I wonder, too, if the recent taking out of Osama bin Laden will result in a surge of American nationalism, which in turn might help sales. I don't say that I'm hoping his death feeds my sales, just thinking out loud at what the possible reaction of the American buying public might be.

I still have so much work to do. I have to figure out how to get a properly formatted Table of Contents for the book. I have to get it—and "Mom's Letter"—formatted for and uploaded to the SmashWords distribution platform. And I have to get DA formatted though CreateSpace to have a print-on-demand book for sale.

But I'll take an evening to enjoy the moment, and dream a little.

So Little Progress on a Weekend

Saturday just past dawned clear, but went cloudy quite fast. Then the sun broke through. I was up around 8:30 AM, as usual for a Saturday. Read my devotions, then went outside for my normal yard work. The sun was out, then behind clouds, then out again. The wind blew in gusts, then it was dead calm, then it blew again. I did such minor things as clean a little in the garage, then pick up sticks from the front yard (a rock yard), then pull weeds from the front yard. Then I was ready for my weekly sawing on the downed tree on the wood lot next to us.

Prior to my current health kick, improving both weight and blood sugar, I was lucky to be able to saw one section from this tree. The diameter is only 8 inches or so where I'm sawing. Then, two weeks ago, I was able to saw two sections, and felt good at the end. Saturday I decided to shoot for three sections, which would finish the tree. And I was able to do it, feeling at the end that I could have done another if I wasn't down to the stump. That was such a good feeling: to finish the tree, and to see my arm strength and stamina built up from even a month ago.

So then it was inside to see what else I had to do and to write. I pulled up my latest Documenting America file, and decided to have one more go at the Introduction. I knew I needed to add something about how I came to select the documents included in the book. So I did that, then went on to some work on Essential John Wesley. Two hours later I found it was time to head to Wal-Mart for the weekly acquisition of groceries.

Saturday evening was devoted to my Wesley studies, as well as preparing to teach Life Group on Sunday. The Wesley reference book I have out on inter-library loan was due Monday, and I was determined to get my $2.00 ILL fee's worth. So I read through the slim book again, taking some different notes. This continued into Sunday. To make sure I "got my money's worth," I wrote a review of that book for this blog, and posted it Saturday. I may have spent too much time on the slavery writings of Wesley, but I consider the research not only for EJW but also for future articles or essays.

Sunday afternoon I went through the work of formatting and uploading Documenting America for and to the Kindle Store. It's there, not live yet (as of this writing), but in the review queue. Should go live Monday evening or sometime on Tuesday. I still don't have a decent cover, so I'm just using the one I developed with my limited graphics skills. But I can change the cover at any time, so I decided to upload. Upon review I realized the spacing in the Table of Contents was messed up, but I decided to run with it. The Kindle uploading software allows for a separate TOC upload. Somehow I sensed that wouldn't be easy, so I decided to put it off.

Sunday evening was devoted to Wesley studies, in an old article I found about him as a literary man, and in his journals. That meant I did not do any writing in the Wesley book. That gave me a feeling of lack of accomplishment. All together, this weekend I wrote less than 1,000 words, including the blog post. I need to get in 3,000 on the weekends to have a prayer of ever finishing anything. Other things I wanted to do was to look into Amazon's CreateSpace, to have a physical book for Documenting America. I have a feeling it's not too difficult. I also wanted to look into the Barnes & Noble e-book tool, and SmashWords, so as to have my stuff available on multiple e-reader platforms. Alas, I didn't get to any of that.

Why is it so difficult to make writing progress on the weekends? With Saturday evening and Sunday all day being rainy, I couldn't walk, so I had plenty of time to write. Yet production was minimal. All I can do is try harder in the future.

Oh, and I was right about creating a TOC for Kindle. Just did some research into it, and it involves HTML code—simple stuff I think, if any HTML can be considered simple. Well, I'll let the book get up, then see what I can do.

Status of Two Works-in-Progress

So these are my two current (that is, I'm actively working on them) works-in-progress:

Documenting America, hopefully volume 1 of several, an historical/political non-fiction books

Essential John Wesley, a small group study, such as for an adult Sunday school class, of Wesley's writings. The title is a place-holder, and not necessarily final.

I am finished with Documenting America. I could upload it to the Kindle store tonight, with its imperfect, self-created cover. I was hoping to get some critique on it from the new writers group, but, alas, we ran out of time Tuesday. I don't really want to wait two weeks to get the critique and then upload it. This weekend is supposed to be rainy. Not much chance of getting significant outside work done. I think I will do the formatting and uploading Saturday.

The John Wesley study is in its infancy. The outline is done, including the addition I made today. One chapter is done, except for tweaks I might do. That chapter is Wesley's stand on slavery. Today I found two scholarly papers on the topic, read them, and will likely make a few changes to the chapter. A second chapter is well along, the chapter on Wesley's other political writings. I have the excerpting fully done, and have much marginalia in my copies to form the basis of the rest of the chapter. I anticipate I'll have it done by Sunday, and will be ready to think about which chapter to work on next.

I can already see that this will be a larger book than I at first anticipated, probably 100,000 words: half of them Wesley's, half of them mine. But it can't be helped. The project is too important to me not to do it in a way I think is right. I also think I will have a separate volume, much smaller, to serve as a leader's guide. I'm just beginning to think of some things for that now.

One thing not yet clear to me is if I will be able to work on this Wesley study continuously, or if I will have to take breaks from it. As I said a few days ago, the pressure to have it done for teaching around September 1st is off. I've probably got till the first of the year, possibly longer. But that still means I need to do two chapters very three weeks, or a minimum of 3,000 words a week. I'm not sure I can keep up that intensity that long. Plus, my novel beckons, as does volume two of Documenting America and a sequel to "Mom's Letter". Cursed day job!

So why am I writing this post? I've talked about these books several times, perhaps ad nauseum for some readers. I don't really know. Maybe it's to "clear my head", do a self-appraisal of where I am with my writing career, or at least to be putting this in writing as a sort of accountability. If so, I guess that's a good reason for writing.

A Cover for "Documenting America"

Okay, loyal blog followers. Today I finished those few things I needed to do to call Documenting America, Vol. 1 done. Completed the Introduction, added a few lines to the quote in one chapter, and typed all the quote revisions--or maybe I finished them last night. Printed a copy for my final review and reading by my wife.

That gave me time to think about a cover. My thoughts were to have the title, subtitle, and my name superimposed over one of those documents in the book. I chose the 1816 letter of Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, which I downloaded from the Library of Congress (a public domain document. Try as I could, I couldn't get done in Paint what I wanted to get done. So I pulled the picture file into MS Word and did what I wanted with a text box and a footer, screening out the document picture using the Word picture editor. You can see the result.

Obviously, I am not a graphics designer. I'm just trying out the concept. If this is a valid concept for a book such as this, then I'll see about getting a proper cover made according to the concept. I wanted to make something that I could, in a pinch, upload to the Kindle publishing platform and make work for a while during the wait for a proper cover.

What say you, loyal readers? Is the concept for this cover valid? I'm not looking to have the background document readable, just there for show. Let me know in the comments, if you would. Try to look past the specifics of these graphics to the concept.

Progress on Documenting America

My non-fiction book Documenting America continues to inch its way toward publication via Kindle, Smashwords, and hopefully in print via CreateSpace. Last week I did almost nothing with it. I was consumed with meeting date-certain demands of the IRS, and the Arkansas DFA. What time I spent on writing went mainly to the small group study on John Wesley that is my next project. I know, that was probably not the best use of time. DA is a few hours of work away from being ready to upload, whereas the Wesley study is hours of work and months of time away.

But I can’t fully explain why I go off on whichever project seems to command my attention. I wanted to make some progress on Wesley, something beyond just gathering materials. The planning was essentially done, so I mainly had to pick a place to start and start. I did that with Wesley’s views on slavery. This was actually going to be part of a chapter on political and health writings by Wesley, but after reading Thoughts Upon Slavery and some other items, I decided this needed to be a chapter of its own. So I redid the outline/table of contents, and set to work on Wesley on Slavery. I managed to identify the basic excerpt I’ll use, and write a few hundred words of text. I did this in manuscript, with typing to being soon.

So what of Documenting America? Early last week I left it at the proof-reading stage, about 1/3 done. Over the weekend I finished the proof-reading, did a little editing, and typed all that. In the course of this I found a few things in the quotes in most chapters that I want to verify against the original document. Today in my before-work private time I began doing that. I’m through exactly half the chapters, and so should finish that today. These changes are minor, so I should be able to make them tonight, print it tonight or tomorrow, and begin the second review. I’ll ask my wife to read it and see what she thinks, as I value her opinion. It would be nice if my three or four beta readers would get back with me.

Beta readers are a problem. I’m not one to push people. I put out a call for beta readers, and several people said, “Yes, I’d like to read that, and will give you my opinion.” However, so far none of them have come back with comments. I’m just not going to e-mail them another time and push. That’s not in my nature. So I’ll wait a little, then forge ahead. Right now it looks as if I’ll be ready to upload to Kindle next weekend, assuming I can come up with a cover.

So this is kind of exciting. It will be my first book-length eSP work, and later in book form.

A Few More Tasks During this Time

As I mentioned in the last two posts, I'm in an interim time presently. Documenting America is done; the next project is to be decided. During this time I'll be proofreading Documenting America, working on my income taxes (okay, not writing related except for my writing income and expenses), and deciding on my next writing project.

However, as I've thought about it, that's not the only things this writer will have to accomplish over the next month. Here's a few more I've thought of.

• File my many source documents for Documenting America. I printed off a lot of pages of as many as twenty documents. These are in piles here, piles there, in my carry to work portfolio, and some who knows where. I have a small hanging file box ready for these, so this should be a relatively quick project. File the obvious ones immediately, and move the others there as I find them.
• Set up my writer's web site. My son has been bugging me to get this done, says he'll even help me. Said if I made him an administrator he would be able to do updates. And he promised not to post any communist/socialist propaganda on there. This is something I know I need to do. With freelance work in four different publications, engineering articles in three others, plus a few newspaper features, I need to get this done, now especially that I have "Mom's Letter" up for sale. I haven't felt like going to the monthly hosting expense until I was really, really sure I needed it. I think it's time, probably past time.
• Format "Mom's Letter" for the Nook reader, and any other e-reader (Sony, Apple) that could generate a sale or two, and get it listed.
• Related to that last one, some better research into the whole self-publishing arena. I've crossed the first hurdle in Kindle eSP, but I've far from mastered it. The other e-readers may all support Pubit, which would be nice. Then there's the paper self-publishing as print on demand books. There's a couple of different platforms available: Smashwords and CreateSpace are the two I know by name, but much more research is needed. After Documenting America goes up as an e-book, I plan to make it a POD book. Plus others in the future.

As I said, I've no shortage of things to do. None of this is going to be done quickly, and income taxes take precedence over all things writing, with my proofreading tasks holding second place. It's good for me to list these, however, lest I think I have some free time available and goof off.

Time to Move to a Different Project

Documenting America, Volume 1, is finished, all but the Introduction, which I started last night and should finish tonight. My attention will now turn in three directions.

One is to proofread Documenting America and get it ready for self-publishing. I intend to go through it slowly, both my text and the text I'm quoting, looking both for typos and better ways to say things. I'll also hope my beta readers give me some comments.

Second is income taxes. I need one evening to file trading papers for the year (those not yet done; I have some filed), one to assemble all my documentation, and a third to actually begin. I think all my spreadsheets are built, so I'm ready to go.

Third will be to turn to another writing project. Unfortunately I don't have time to rest on my success of completing Documenting America. Gotta keep writing, keep researching, keep pressing on. I will call the Buildipedia.com editor this week about my next batch of assignments, and I may write one or two articles for Suite101.com. Those are on-going freelance work and I don't count them as projects. I also have a prospect to write for a legal website, concerning construction law. Don't know if that will come through or not.

I have to decide on my next writing project I could divide my available hours between two project for a while, but one must eventually have supremacy. The projects I have going, in various degrees of completion, are the following.

• In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, my baseball novel. I've written around 15,000 words on the way to about 85,000 words. Haven't looked at this for at least two months.
• Screwtape's Good Advice, a small group study. I have the introduction and four chapters done, on the way to 32 chapters. Given that the Narnia movies are being rolled out, which gives a little increase in the interest of all things C.S. Lewis, maybe I should finish this and self-publish.
• A Harmony of the Gospels, a non-commercial project. Last week I gave a copy of this to our new pastor, which has renewed my interest. The harmony is done. I have about 40 pages (estimated) to write to complete the appendixes and passage notes. It's tempting to plow ahead with this, even though it's not for profit.
• Essential John Wesley, a small group study. I've done some of the research, and would love to get this done and teach it next time my turn to teach our Life Group comes around. We have about twenty-two weeks of lessons lined up, so that's the time frame for completing this. This would be partly a labor of love and partly a ministry/commercial project.
• To Exile and Back, a small group study. I've done "all" the research on this, and outlined the project. Time to start writing. I put "all" in quotes because I'm sure as I write it I'll find holes in the research.

So, what say you, faithful readers of this blog, and drop by readers? Does any of these look like a good direction for me to go next? Anything that sticks out, positively or negatively?

A Fulfilling if Tiring Day

It's only 5:15 PM as I start this post. My daily work log includes lots of items. I began the day with my Bella Vista water transmission main project, trying to do the work needed to tie down some remaining easements needed. I shifted to my Bentonville flood study, the bane of my existence. I'm on Revision 5, which will be the 5th submittal to FEMA. I then shifted to a citizen complaint in Centerton concerning drainage problems that have been hanging on for four years, and a floodplain issue from the last three months.

Through all this, I shifted back and forth to filing papers for the Bella Vista project. I thought another man was going to manage the project under my direction, so I was letting him file as he saw fit. That didn't happen, however; he was assigned to other projects, and the papers mounted. Earlier this week I re-did the project filing system to my liking, and began to dribble a few papers into the notebooks. Today, any time I finished a pressing project task, I shifted to the filing. I must have stuffed a 150 pages in those notebooks. I've got double that yet to go, but I feel much, much better about it.

The usual parade of people needing senior engineer advice came by or called. A backflow prev enter problem, a paving overlay problem, and some floodplain issues in Rogers took up some time. Then there's the project from almost nine years ago that wasn't constructed per the approved drainage report: one storm sewer run was reduced in size. For lack of another body carrying a brain of adequate intelligence, I wound up doing the calculations and mini-report over three days this week. That came back with another request today.

And over all this was the Bentonville floodplain engineering. I'm going back and forth between the model and the map, seeing where they don't agree, tweaking the model when that makes sense and marking up the map for changes when that makes sense. It's getting close. Thirteen more cross-sections to go for the 500-year floodplain, then a recheck of the 100-year floodplain and the floodway to make sure they didn't get out of whack due to the last changes. Then there will be a short engineering report, maybe four work hours to complete. That's a Monday task.

I'm so sick of floodplains. If I never saw another one I wouldn't mind. Yet I've got three more to do in the next year. In fact, I'm coming in to the office tomorrow and Sunday to try to get something done on the Rogers flood study that has been backed up due to the Bentonville flood study that was backed up due to the Centerton flood study. Then there's another Rogers one to do and then another Bentonville one to do. I'm so sick of them, I feel like going out in the rain, standing in the worst portion of Tributary 2 to Little Osage Creek, and just ride the flood wave downstream.

But instead, I think I'll review two more cross-sections then call it a day. With Lynda still in Oklahoma City, tending to grandbabies, I'll head to Barnes & Noble, browse the remainders table, look at shelves where someday I might have a book, grab a couple of mags, drink a vente house blend, and just relax for two hours. Then home to write the last (or maybe next to last) chapter in Documenting America. Oh, yeah, before the work day began I found a document I needed, a full version of one of John C. Calhoun's speeches. Of course, that led me to another speech of his, which I may use instead of the one I intended. Ah the tentacles of research.

Signing off. I'll have this post in two hours, when I will be firmly b-i-c in the B&N cafe.

The Federalist Papers as Source Documents

I don't remember much coverage of The Federalist Papers in my history classes. In fact, I guess I don't remember my history classes much at all. But I'm reading these as possible source documents for my book Documenting America.

For those who don't know or remember what this is, The Federalist Papers were a series of newspaper editorials written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, in 1787-1788 for the purpose of convincing the citizens of New York to approve the new constitution that had been proposed by the Constitutional Convention. They felt that New York was the key to getting the constitution approved as the law of the land, but they were concerned that New York would not approve it.

So these three founding fathers agreed to publish editorials/essays in the New York newspapers to convince the electorate to convince their legislature to approve the document. The essays were published under the name of Publius. History tells us, however, that who was writing the editorials was known at the time. Starting with reasons for having a stronger central government than they had under the Articles of Confederation, they moved on to each branch of government, and all the major provisions passed out of the Convention.

In a way these gentlemen failed in the task. New York the constitution in a timely manner. Yet, it still became the Constitution because enough other states ratified it. Eventually New York came through with a late ratification (not as late as little Rhode Island, which didn't ratify it until two years after the other states, and then only through bullying). It turned out that New York was not as critical as everyone thought.

I haven't read all of these yet. I read the first three, then jumped ahead to the chapters on the Judicial Branch, for another project. But what I've read has been outstanding. The case for a stronger central government was clearly made in the first three, IMHO. Government was essential, Publius said, to the securing of rights. Weak government, weak rights. Stronger government with adequate checks, balances, and separation of power, protected rights.

Should I be considering these as source documents for USA history? After all, they have no official standing as government documents. The three men were acting in official capacities in one way or another, but the editorials seem to be more private than public. I have decided that they are source documents. They are perhaps the clearest indication of what was in the Founding Father's minds for our Constitution and the republic that it created. No doubt many of them also wrote letters that would reveal their minds, but these are scattered—and they are no less private than these. I could go through the minutes of the Constitutional Convention, presuming they are somewhere on-line, and I may do that. I have a book that gives the minutes of the ratifying convention for Massachusetts, and hope someday to glean something from that.

For now, The Federalist Papers form the basis of four chapters in volume 1 of Documenting America. I anticipate using a similar number in all subsequent volumes.

Ben Franklin in Paris

I first wrote Chapter 16 of the first volume of Documenting America five or six years ago. Well, it's chapter 16 now that I added some before it. I think it was eleven or twelve originally. The documents of the chapter were two letters written by Benjamin Franklin from Paris on May 1, 1777. He was ambassador for the thirteen colonies, then fighting for their independence from Great Britain.

Franklin had been there less than three months, but he already had measured the political landscape and formed conclusions. England was having trouble recruiting troops. Mercenaries from Germany were available, but hard to come by. France, and her ally Spain, were preparing for war against England, but for the moment would not move. Since reports from America told him of improved prospects for Washington's army, Franklin was optimistic that the American forces could hold off the British.

Franklin also concluded that continental Europe was on the side of the colonies. Even those nations and people who did not live in liberty were pulling for us. We were "the cause of all mankind." If we won our liberty, formed a government, and stayed free among the roll call of nations, perhaps liberty for them was possible.

As I reviewed this chapter last night in preparation for expanding to full length this week, I knew I needed to see the Franklin letters again. So, through the miracle of Google Books, I found an 1818 volume that had them. They really weren't much longer than the excerpts I had planned to use as a newspaper column, so I decided to use the full letters (minus salutations and closings). However, I saw in the old book that Franklin wrote a short letter to a third man that day. It was just as good as the other two, so into the chapter it went.

The longer amounts of letters, and some expansion of my commentary, brought the chapter up to 1478 words, and the book up to 35,447. I have one more chapter to expand, and I think two more to add, bringing the total chapters to thirty, and the word count to around 39,000. That doesn't include an obligatory introduction, or table of contents, title page, copyright page, etc. Nor does it include some advance notice of volume two. I've learned recently that novelists who e-self-publish a series will add something of the plot of the next volume to the one at hand, creating some anticipation. Sounds like a good idea to me.

So, my first e-self-published book comes closer to completion. I project I'll have it done by Saturday or Sunday. I'll then print it and begin a couple of weeks of proofreading while waiting for my beta readers to review it and give me feedback. At least, I hope they do that. So far, no word.

It's late, and I really need to get to bed. I want to read a little, however, and prepare for tomorrow's writing work.

Still Working Hard on Documenting America

Last night I spent nearly three hours in The Dungeon, writing on Documenting America. Having just written and type two new chapters over previous days, I decided to spend last night expanding some chapters that were either newspaper column length or that I started years ago but never really completed.

The three I picked were chapters I drew out of a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to his Virginia colleague Samuel Kercheval on July 12, 1816. [Note: A couple of transcriptions of this on the Internet erroneously have the date June 12, 1816.] Kercheval had written Jefferson, asking for his opinions on changing the Virginia constitution. Kercheval thought certain parts of it were not as good as they should be, and seems to have been one pushing for a constitutional convention. But, the Virginia constitution was Jefferson's baby, having been based on his own work. Heck, he may have even written most of it. What would Jefferson think about his baby being revised?

Jefferson wrote back in detail, saying he agreed with most of what Kercheval did (which must have been based on something Kercheval wrote in his letter; haven't seen it yet) and so he didn't mind weighing in privately, but didn't want his views showing up in the newspaper. In his letter, Jefferson threw his "baby" under the bus, saying it was indeed time to change it.

This is such a good letter that I was able to draw three chapters from it, on the following themes:
1. Constitutions might be good, but they are not perfect, and should be subject to change at regular intervals. Flaws in constitutions are overcome by active participation in government by an informed citizenry.

2. The best republican government is that which includes the broadest possible electorate, the most equitable representation, and fairly frequent elections.

3. Public debt is a bad thing, because it results in higher taxes, which results in citizens having to work so much to pay their taxes that they have no time to participate in government.

This letter is, in my opinion, one of the most important documents from United States history. Everyone should read it, internalize it, and remember what Jefferson was saying. A good transcription can be found here. A scan of the original letter starts here and continues for several pages. The same Library of Congress collection says it has the Kercheval letter, but I checked it and it was signed by a Thompkins. Perhaps Kercheval published under an alias the pamphlet he sent to Jefferson, but Jefferson knew who he was.

Close reading of the Jefferson letter last night and today convinced me that I have some more work to do on these three chapters, not so much my analysis but the quoted portions of the letter. I've got a lot of overlap between the three chapters, and I need to separate them a little more. I guess that’s part of tonight's work.

Meanwhile, a little bit of easy browsing turned up more sources, outside the Annals of America. One of those is a collection of letters sent to Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P Chase at the outbreak of the civil war. I skimmed a couple of them, and found good fodder for other chapters. The other is a series of letters written by Ebenezer Huntington from 1774-1781, when he was first a law student and then an officer in the Revolutionary War. I skimmed some of these too. They seem kind of drab, simple reports of what’s going on where this soldier happened to be. But drab during a war for independence is historical, so maybe I'll be able to use these as well.

So, the research continues apace. There's so much out there it’s almost frightening.

Research for Documenting America

When I was on the working vacation recently, Moses Austin went with me. Moses wrote a journal on his trip through the Ohio Valley and on to Saint Louis. That trip took place during the bitterly cold and snowy winter of 1796-97. He started out from the mountains of Virginia, then into Kentucky, then territory that would eventually become Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri (still under the control of Spain at that time). His return trip was by way of Kentucky and Tennessee.


An excerpt of this journal is the first item in Volume 4 of the Annals of America, an Encyclopedia Britannica publication. My analysis of that document, or rather of that excerpt, is a chapter in Documenting America. I took that volume with me for research reading material. Lynda drove some on the first day of the trip, so I pulled that out of my reading bag and started at the beginning. Later, at our hotel in Orlando, I was able to finish the excerpt and write two chapters in manuscript.

Now, a journal of a trip, even a trip through wilderness areas, may not be inspiring writing. When I began reading it I wasn't sure it would be good material for a chapter, let alone two. But I did find it to contain information that I thought readers of Documenting America might want to know about. So I read the whole thing and wrote. After returning home I typed the two chapters, no. 27 and 28.

My research didn't stop there. First I made a trip to Wikipedia for a brief bio. Now I know a lot of people moan about Wikipedia and inaccuracies. I'm sure they have some, maybe many. But for initial research and sources of information, I've found it to be a good place to go. Austin's bio was brief, but certainly longer than the paragraph in my source. It gave me some good background, subject to confirmation if I used any of it.

As I said my source gave only an excerpt of the journal. Those ellipses that the Encyclopedia Britannica people use don't tell me much. Was there good material in those left out sections or not? They took it from Vol 5 of The American Historical Review, which sounded like a publication. A search through Google Books turned up the volume. Talk about instant library loan, without the $2.00 search fee! Downloaded in five seconds, and the applicable pages printed in another hundred or so.

Before the journal was a biographical sketch of Moses Austin, written by his son, the famed Stephen F. Austin, and edited by one of Moses' grandsons. Only a few pages long, it was an excellent short bio. It blew away the information given in the Annals and in Wikipedia. It's tempting to join Wiki as a contributor, just to be able to flesh out Moses Austin's biography. Maybe later.

The full journal, in all its glorious, archaic language full of long paragraphs, inconsistent spellings, and poor punctuation was there, having appeared in the April 1900 issue of the magazine. I scanned the full journal before typing the chapters. Some of the removed material was good, and I included it in the quote portion of the chapter. The except had been six or seven pages. The full journal was twenty. Should I read the whole thing? After all, the chapters were written, complete except for any editing I will do upon later contemplation. And having written two chapters from this document, I'm not likely to write another.


I was fascinated by this journal, however, and decided to read it all. I'm glad I did. Much of the removed material was of great interest to me. Austin described his route, including the towns he stayed in or the isolated farms he either found hospitality at or was rejected. I was able to trace his route on my road atlas. Some of the places still have the same names, such as Crab Orchard Kentucky.


Austin described the towns, and gave thoughts on their economic prospects. It's interesting to see what he wrote about the prospects for places such as Louisville, and how he was correct about what it could become. I also found his constant bemoaning of the American government's neglect of the areas he traveled through to be quite interesting (sorry, Joe F and Mrs. Rosen). The US government was busy trying to establish its place in the roll call of nations, develop governmental institutions, and figure out if a self-governing republic would really work. It was kind of to do all that and establish regional or civil governments in Cahoika or Kaskasia, or even Vincennes. I found in Austin's words a third chapter, on the idea that even back in the late 1700s there were people who wanted the government to guarantee an outcome. But that chapter will have to wait for another volume.


The purpose of Austin's trip was to see the lead mines in eastern Missouri. This was under Spanish dominion, so he needed certain letters and permissions to do this. I never knew that sixty miles south of Saint Louis, thirty or forty miles up from the Mississippi River, were rich lead deposits that were easily mined. But there was. The place names today reflect that: Leadwood, Irondale, Iron Mountain, Old Mines, Leadington. Missouri has an historic site there, called Missouri Mines State Historic Site. So I learned something in this extra research.

One other item of research to mention, something I haven't done, and probably won't. In The American Historical Review are many footnotes concerning journal entries. Mention is made of various original documents, such as American State Department papers, that would probably be good reading. Various secondary documents that further illustrate the points Austin makes are also cited. How wonderful it would be to find some of these documents and study further!

But, that would not make Documenting America a better book, I don't think. I'm not writing a scholarly work, but a popular "history", bringing lessons out of historical documents to see what lessons they hold for today's America. Research for my own enjoyment won't further that goal.