Adding a chapter

It feels about 80 degrees already this Memorial Day morning, and the June 1st deadline for Writing on the Bus: Using Athletic Team Notebooks and Journals to Advance Learning and Performance in Sports looms. My home office is stuffy and still--not at all comfortable for a pup with a fur coat. But he's here, wrapped around the legs of my office chair, breathing softly--keeping me in my chair as I add a new and necessary chapter to this book at the last minute. In case you wondered, dogs edit, too....

After the run...

Bailey's had a sore leg for a couple of weeks, but now he seems recovered. We ran for about 45 minutes at Black Mountain... he looked so happy to be sprinting up and down the cross-country trails. After the run, Bailey lounged in a stream's pool and then, while the old guy stretched, he took a snooze in the parking lot. It's good to have sunshine, warm weather, and a healthy dog.

Happy Birthday, Bailey.

Happy Birthday, Bailey!

Bailey had a great Birthday week starting with two daylong play dates with his buddy Pete, a run at Black Mountain, followed by a lounge in a fresh water pool in the stream next to the lodge. He's a happy happy boy... so am I.

One writer's desk...

I believe it was my brother Fred who described our grandfather's office desk and the assorted trappings of a writer's life: an L.C. Smith typewriter, pencils, notepaper, pens, paperclips, and stacks of paper and books.... Grandpa Burt wrote five books and taught marketing and advertising at Boston University and Northeastern. His most popular book may have been–and probably still is–The Story of Mount Washington (1960, Dartmouth). He also wrote one called Watch Out for the Racketeers... I find mention of that book in the dust cover of the Mount Washington book, but I don't think I have a copy.

But Grandpa's desk... I know I walked through his study countless times as a boy. In fact, as I write this morning, I can picture the second-floor passageway leading to his office from my grandmother's bedroom. I see shadows of that desk, but back then I wouldn't have understood those papers or his writer's life.

Through most of my writing career, I have kept a messy desk. Every six to twelve months, out of frustration or a new project, I spend a day cleaning the office and that desk. As this book reaches the final stages of revision, I have have begun to clean, sort, file, stack, and discard... it's like living the book in reverse, seeing the connections, the learning, and the moments without a clear path forward and times when the words just appeared. That's writing, I suppose. Or a desk's story, anyway.