Aside

 I don't even know how long I've been at this. Years ago already, I thought to shore things up, so I went through years of Stuff in the Basement posts, picked out some I thought might have some relevance someday, dumped hundreds, then erased thousands of others, and, sort of, started over fresh. I think I undertook that trimming post-retirement, so if I would follow the last reach of what's here below the page, I'd run into blog posts put up here about a dozen years ago.

At 76 years old, sifting through the stuff in the basement is even more prudent than it was when I walked out of the classroom. Someday--maybe soon, maybe not--one of my children will come down here and turn on the computer--I hope the old thing doesn't stumble along and take all day like it often does for me. Chances are, it'll be my son. He'll use the passwords I'll leave for him, then call up siouxlander.blogspot.com and sit here pensively--at least I hope so--before he hits the delete button. One of our kids will have to do that, so why not make the event less difficult and do it for them--after all, I'm the crazy who put all that stuff up. 

I've learned some things through all those years. I've learned, for instance, that short stories don't generally do well in the day-by-day blog-post format. Almost inevitably, if I put up a story, even a story that will last only four days, like "Light and Life," inevitably the clicks fall off, largely because short stories have more import if they can be read at one sitting and not sectioned into 15-minute segments. 

I've also learned that obituaries score greater numbers than almost anything else, especially when the deceased has a following among those who frequent Stuff in the Basement. Makes me wonder if local newspapers would say as much. In a dark way, that's comforting.

Anything about Trump generally draws something of a crowd. I don't know if there are any Trump supporters among those who stop by daily, but I rarely get any angry retorts. You certainly shouldn't think I'm creating clickbait when I put his royal Orangeness up some mornings. Color me addicted. It's awful to have to admit it, but I've likely read more about the daily horrors of Donald Trump than I have any other single topic or subject since he and his wife came down the elevator. 

Blogging, I'm told, had its day. When the internet had more wide-open spaces, a ton of people like me determined to try the blog. Originally, I started Stuff when I returned to full-time teaching, having been half-time for a half-dozen years or so. I knew the change would end long projects, and I didn't want to shut down completely. Blogging was a new thing--and sort of like getting up to greet the dawn. I found it a joy, have ever since really, except when things get tight when I get busy. Otherwise, I've long ago fallen in love with a ritual that pushes you to be creative when first your feet hit the floor (actually, I do most of my plotting the day and night before).

You shouldn't think some major announcement is forthcoming. I'm not quitting quite yet. I thought to thank those of you, my most faithful readers, for wading through four days of a short story. Fiction just doesn't work in this genre, I guess. Then again, maybe "Light and Life" is a lousy story. Whatever the cause, it's not unusual to see the numbers drop off with each passing day when I'm running a piece of fiction. I wasn't surprised.

A kid told me the story of his sister's letter in his mother's drawer and his mother's inability to tell her husband even the good news--a long-ago student told me that. Almost any fiction has prototypes. This story was just too much a projection of a sad tale one of my students told me. There was a time in my life that I couldn't help but try to write something like that out, to make sense of it, to build some sort of order out of chaos, which is the aim of most art, or so it seems to me. But with this one, I'm pretty sure it never appeared anywhere because I wanted to avoid the consequence of appearing to break that student's trust. 

It's old. Like I said, the only copy I have is in dot matrix print on yellowing paper. 

Tomorrow? On my way to Bancroft, Nebraska, yesterday, I listened to a kind of biography of Harriet Tubman. The speaker at yesterday's gathering at the John Neihardt Center was going to be talking about Nebraska's role in the Underground Railroad, and I thought I'd just listen in to the story of Harriet Tubman. I remember hearing that she was raised in a Dutch Reformed household; about that, I was wrong--that was Sojourner Truth.

And it turns out that there isn't really a definitive edition of Harriet Tubman's life, which seems impossible given her reputation and the temper of the times (and all the talk about CRT, although it's subsided a bit since the demise of De Santos). Harriet Tubman worked the underground railroad with such frequency and passion that she was sometimes called the Moses of her people.

Tomorrow, something about Dred Scott, just one time the Supreme Court and, for that matter, the Bible went sadly off course. You may want to tune in.

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And what of the picture atop the page? It's got nothing to do with the price of eggs. Just another taken in front of that Lake Michigan cottage we inhabited a week or so ago. It's what I was doing, early morning, when "Light and Life" was running.