Blessings

Taking a break, uploading video files at Starbucks. Lots of grunt work this morning, organizing and downloading text submissions to our staff. Still a ways to go. After it's all downloaded and organized, then it's the grunt work of formatting everything and uploading it to the server, a much faster process for text files, of course.

Also counting my blessings today. I try to do this every day. Despite everything that moves aching, despite having outlived my closest male friends, despite the usual ego frustrations that distract a writer at the end of a career, in the larger scheme of things I have to be thankful for many, many blessings from the gods.

I was thinking how much fun it would be to do a kind of "Travels with Charley," or my own "Travels with Ruby" that I wrote for Northwest Magazine in the 60s or 70s, with video, a video doc on traveling across the country.

I am really excited about the new OLR, doing all video. I think this can evolve into something special, and I especially look forward to having time now to do more ambitious mini-docs of local writers and such. This can be a significant contribution to our regional record.

Lots of disagreement among commentators about the future of Iran -- whether the protesters will "win" or be eliminated by force. I hope they win, of course. We'll see.

H has a solo show opening July 2, and I'll cover it on video for the new journal. Putting up a pilot issue as soon as I can after the regular issue goes up.

Haven't heard from my friend in Bali for a while. Don't know if a net connection is hard to do for her or whether she just stinks as a pen pal.

I have 2 weeks to get up the new issue. Looking at the progress I may with text submissions this morning, I think I can meet the deadline as long as I put in at least a few hours every day. The sooner I get it up, the sooner I can work on the new look, which is where my passion is now.