Geez - this was so long ago - late 50s perhaps. My sister is helping me take a photo - doesn't look like I'm too interested. 

 I'm adding this picture because it was taken near to the time I am writing about, the late 1950s. I pull myself into a place I barely remember and try to conjure up the feel and smell of that time. Surrounding myself with the music and photos of that time helps. Ah, life is sweet.

 

I've spent most of the day working on the second book in my trilogy THE TRILL OF THE RED WING BLACKBIRD - and don't mean to sound maudlin, but writing history, the history I know, is such a fine place to be. I like the journey and I suppose that since I have my own cadre of characters, I can expand the truth as I like. By truth I don't mean so much actual events, but the feel of the time, the mores of the time. 

I remember when I was about 8 or 9, picking up a piece of butterscotch candy from the candy dish and unwrapping it. "Wow," I said as I held the cellophane to my eyes, "the world sure does look sunny through this." I remember my father making some kind of philosophical comment. And yes even at that age I understood the analogy.

  Geez, this is so much fun!! God is so good to me.