Just To Say Anything

I thought I should at least let everyone know that I am still alive. It's hard to say what direction I'm taking right now as it pertains to writing. I'm not in the place I was before about writing, and yet I don't want to give it up. In fact, it is still very much my ambition to write a novel, and perhaps a contest or some other form of inspiration will kick me into high gear. But right now, I'm just content. I have a great story in my head right now, but it really has two parts, and that other part isn't totally clear to me. The concept is catchy and pretty amazing, but it's like two slices of bread that needs some meat to finish the sandwich.

Definitely do not interpret this as me being down. I'm not. I feel good actually. My guitar lessons are coming along and I'm really picking up on things. My birthday is coming at the end of the month and I've "asked" for a recording device that comes with two microphones that plugs into the computer so that I can record what I am up to. I am planning to put some of what I am practicing here, so stay tuned. Right now it's pretty much bluegrass music, so don't get too excited. And it's not that bluegrass is my thing either—though it comes close—but technically it's a lot of fun.

Yesterday I got my hair cut at the local barber shop. Joe, who usually does the job, was just finishing up with a customer so I was feeling fortunate with my timing. However, the older fella who owns the place popped out of his chair when he saw me, all smiles. His buddy, to whom he had been chatting said, "Time to go to work, huh?" Something in his manner persuaded me to give him the business.

I'd been to him once before, the first time I had ever been to the barber shop. He reads Civil War fiction and loves history. And when I had seen him last, he had offered me his copy of Killer Angels. So I asked him conversationally if he was the one that liked this kind of thing, which of course I already knew he did (but it had been a long time ago), and we started in on Gods and Generals, Gettysburg and a few others.

Where I live it's mostly white bread and I don't see too many people of color around. And so it was with some surprise that as I was talking about how General Sherman pioneered the concept of attacking the enemy's infrastructure and thus crippling its ability to sustain a war, I noticed that a colored man was in the chair opposite me. The entire conversation I was just having replayed in my head, and I felt guilty that I had brought up the subject matter. It was innocent, a total coincidence, but I was convinced that the man was thinking that the first thing I thought of when I saw him was the Civil War. I was further convinced when he glared at me on the way to the register. I felt like explaining, but what could I have said.

Maybe he reads my blog?

My son took his first lesson. I gave him my first guitar—the guitar that I learned with. I just saved three hundred dollars if he quits. But somehow it seems that by giving him mine he is more excited that if he had gotten his own. He actually practices. I've started him off with the first song I ever learned: Greensleeves, or the Theme From Lassie, neither of which he as ever heard of.

And just call me a glutton for punishment, but I am coaching again, but this time it's flag football. The program is sponsored by the NFL, so I got to choose which NFL team I wanted to be. You'll never guess which I chose. And just to mess with me, the other coaches kept trying to tell me I had to be the Eagles or the Redskins. In the deep south they would say, "Them's fightin' words!"