Today, this hobo pulled the last of the carrots, turned over the compost pile and am busy cleaning the quarters I’ve inhabited these past ten weeks, and backing up files.

My editor tells me there are about a hundred emails in my in box. As I ready to travel by Nevada and California to Portland, Oregon I wonder what will be there, in the ether box, when I open up the new laptop at the dive bar on about November 1.

This has been an odd endeavor. Out there, many hundreds of them smarter or wiser than I, are some few thousand readers, who come to this reading place to take in what I have written, written some time ago. I am proud that many of these men are writers themselves.

It was a studied act of cowardice to stop writing about current events and to schedule posts at one article a day. It has kept me from some trouble it seems. I hope it has not vexed you. I realize that part of the appeal of reading here is that these are the thoughts of a weird kind of traveling avatar. I have had many people tell me that they are envious in part, of my ability to put everything I own on my back and move on. That this, my shameful failure to make enough money to rent a room in a place where I could survive, that this is a state envied in part by many men I have talked to and lived and worked and trained with, makes me sad inside.

The most money I ever made in my life was 80K a year, to be precise, 40k in my last 6 months as general manager of a 100 person outfit. My second best was 55, third 52k and fourth 50k. [The lowest paid store director in the entire business.] Every other year of my working life, which averaged 75 hours on the clock, I made between 9k and 40k, mostly in the area of 25k. I was never good at making money and when I stumbled into a profitable gig, I could not handle the pressure of imposing my will on a building full of people and quit just shy of four years in. The point is, in a money world, to see people I care about envious of my failure strikes me like a dark curtain drawing down over our shared space. I feel somewhat like I did when I was a bench warmer in little league football, watching my team lose the game as a member incapable of helping them win, and seeing then far sadder than me, who just sat as a bemused cipher as they actually suffered.

Today, as on many days, this homeless process grinds as a rampant burden, a panic that I have forgot something, having to throw away something useful, like my rain gear, because its too heavy. The Johnsons have taken me in as part of their family, even threw a party for me on Sunday, a going away ritual. I am giddy, on edge, nervous and wondering when my mind will slip another notch, when something else is forever forgot, when one of the creaking knees will finally pop and this life has to stop.

This web site is now scheduled out to Saturday, May 6th, 2023.

Weekends are devoted to fiction:

January, Write Hate

January-February, Confessor

March-April, Holiday Blue

Weekdays are scheduled out to the 5th of May.

January is Crackpot Mailbox dialogues from emails and texts sent to me in July and August. I feel bad about that.

When I open that email box in November, there will be engaging questions and comments offered by some of you, that will not be scheduled to post until May. That feels wrong. I will make sure that after I write the piece I will email it to you to do with as you see fit, even post it if you wish.

February is Real History Month, with all the weekday posts being historical articles for you curious crackers.

It is a curious thing to work remotely for an audience, and I am driven by the monkey on my back to tender a report.

Since arriving in Utah on August 13, with the Johnsons I have written or completed the following books:

-Cox & Swain, historical novel

-Awes West, journal

-Moonbow, journal

-Graphomania Diaries, journal

-Songs of Arуas, history

-Destination Winter, journal

-Dalogues at Dusk, journal

-Holiday Blue, science-fiction novel

-Plantation America, history

-Annotated the Gymnastica by Philostratos

Additionally, being blessed with a solid six weeks of excellent eye health, I edited the following novels, so that dear Ms, Lockhart will be able to get them into print sooner:

-Beyond the Pale

-Confessor

-Ghost Snatcher

-The Last Good Cop

-Seven Moons Deep

-Sorcerer!

-Writ Hate

-Wake Christopher

…

I would like to thank you for your support and apologize for:

-Not having email access for the past two months

-Never reading comments posted to the site and otherwise failing to engage. Incognegro and our Webmaster here have both told me that failing to read and answer comments is incredibly rude and breaks internet norms and podcast courtesy. I’m sorry, and will continue in this neglectful manner, and am sorry in advance for that.

Today I mail packages, checks to grandchildren, dried berries and jarred syrups made from what I forage out here in the Rockies to a handful of my hosts, the increased postage making this list shorter each year, and will send off the flash drive with those 18 titles to Lynn Lockhart.

SaySay says she has a computer for me in Oakland which should restore my email ability, a small one I can travel with. As I consider landing in Portland, where I train with Portland Joe and a few other men, I recall that a man from Portland contacted me about getting together. This happened during the short time I owned Flop the Zero Phone. When Flop died, I lost all contacts gained in that period of June thru August. There were two other men as well.

If you are one of these fellows and I have not alienated you in the interim, feel free to text me at 443-686-0598. I can then call you and put you in as a contact in Trad the Tranny Phone.

I saw credible news yesterday that a New England University developed a killer strain of brovid jiveteen in the lab, with five times the infection rate and 80% more deadly. Anger afflicted me for about five minutes. Then I recalled that if this one gets me my bad ideas will yet post one a day to afflict the World of the Gay.

There are two goals for a wheezing and geezing Spring, if it comes:

-to meet Clark Savage, author of The King of All Things, on the way back east, and

-to have my final fights at Man Weekend on May 20.

Thanks again.

James, Oakley, Utah, October 19 2022