2022

Here we go trudging into the third winter of our time of pestilence. But we have survived much, and we’re stronger—we have reason for optimism. The Omicron variant is burning through humanity (a flash in the pandemic?) and optimistic smart people say that we will thereby achieve some global immunity while the virus evolves into a less dangerous critter with lower death rates. COVID-19 would then be deemed endemic rather than pandemic.

 

Lord . . . what a time—thrust upon our house in the evening of March 8, 2020—we held our breath for two weeks, now stretched out for 22 months. It quickly became a time of frenetic distancing: outdoors on forgotten highways; in salt, sand, sunshine, wind, rain, and snow, from Hatteras to Black Mesa, Chama, Bryce, Zion, to Stanley and back; from Edisto Beach to Fort Pickens to Presidio to Indian Pass and Mile Creek. Then vaccination. And a one, and a two, and a three.

 

Focus on survival is distracting from other interests so writing waned. Readers continued to step forward. The most viewed pieces at Old Ones Dream, ranked by viewers, for the 22 months, are:

• German Prisoners of War In South Carolina
• The Best I Ever Had: Scalloped Oysters
• Why: 34 Foot Climbing Walls and Jump Towers
• Small Grain Harvest In the 1940s
• The Near Extinction of the American Bison: Do the Math
• The Parable of the Wrong Mountain
• The Best I Ever Had: Cowboy Beans

Focus is somewhat reestablished, I am somewhat unstuck, sharing of pieces at Old Ones Dream will recommence—no politics, no religion—but no promises on health and the environment.

My book is deemed complete, has found a publisher, and will be launched soon—subject to supply chain issues. Stay tuned.