Well, not literally. In fact, as I sit here pounding on this defenseless keyboard, a cool breeze is wafting through the front screen door. No air conditioning needed round these parts!

What is hotting up is my website maintenance and writing work. I've been nusier than a cat with nine rats lately, authoring three new genealogy websites for USGenWeb, starting a new newsletter for the Friends of the North Coast, wiring new blogs on We Live in the Natural World, and keeping up with the ever present and growing Santa Cruz Online. Not to mention learning about Google Analytics and updating SEO settings on all websites.

Who said this was going to be easy?

A writer should have a really, really good blog on his/her web site, right?

One might think that, though in the every day, day to day world, subsequent events intervene ... always!

Lately I've been working on a web site for a local non-profit environmental group, Friends of the North Coast. More, correctly, I've been resurrecting a web site that has lain fallow for a couple of years. As it turns out, editing and reorganizing an existing web site is harder and more time consuming than starting a new one. I guess that makes sense in a wu wei sort of Way.

As part of this work, I've researched Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Now I know how to do that on this platform, and so I must, alas, do it!

Taking more time away from writing, of course, but hey, I'm writing right now!

Check out my new "Blogs" and "Web Works" sections.

My next project is organizing and digitizing my Earth First! and other environmental writings, such as:

Wally Weally Wants Wolves Wasted

Go HERE for the growing collection.

I've added the Thoughts and Ramblings category to the menu up there, and populated it with some older jottings from the Days of Yore.

It's fun to read the the old stuff, and inspiring, too. I've said these things over and over, over the past 40 years or so. I have to remember that there are many adults using the internet these days that were yet to be born when I wrote them!

No wonder my fingers and wrists ache so!

Nevertheless, it must be repeated, and it must be read, and it must be acted upon.

Never too late, never too soon, never too often.

In a fit of nostalgia, I've been surfing the waves of past writings, and I'm organizing them under the Thoughts and Ramblings menu category.

Fun and inspiring stuff!

The world, or at least this bit of it hereabouts, is beginning to peek out from under the Covid covers, and look around at what is left of what once was normal.

Oddly enough, or perhaps not, the lockdown, if that's what it is, has not been conducive to writing. Plenty of time for reading, walking about, doing errands, and such, but limited opportunities for those broadening experiences that give writing flavor and texture.

So, in order to wile away the tedium, I've been reorganizing my files, reintroducing my self to my past scribblings, and building the urge to once again, unmercifully batter this tired and smudgey keyboard.

We'll see what happens this time around.

Things are a bit on the weird side these days, what with Covid-19 restrictions, and now big fires north of us, with evacuations spreading our way. It probably won't get here, but it gives one pause, and reasons to write.

Ecocentrism has been on my mind of late, looking at the work of folks such as Joe Grey and a few others who are keeping the flame alive. It seems like the pandemic and now the fires would encourage others to give a think about our relationship with the natural and how the way humans live is so out of step with the way the natural world works.

But then, one would have to think, wouldn't one?

Anyway, stop in at Searching for Balance and The Way of Nature for the continuing saga.

Well, I've got the reading part down pat. I've been pouring through books on Quantum physics and implications for interconnections in the macro world. Pretty fascinating stuff, but, so far, hasn't lead to much writing.

I've been gathering this stuff in my blog The Way of Nature, where I'm searching for a Way for our time and place, a compilation of te many philosophies that I've come to know over time.

Oddly enough, this all goes along with quantum physics, which demonstrates that what we think of as "The Universe" is actually Universes, and what we think of as discrete physical things, separated from every other things, from quarks to galaxies, are interconnected and indistinguishable one from another. When one plucks a flower, one really does trouble a star.

This, of course, is totally incompatible with the macro world we experience in the here and now, the world of cause and effect. Even so, it's more real than my fingers on this keyboard and the scintillating electrons that appear on the screen before me.

Yes, it's weird, and it's life.

Writing takes reading, just as a pump needs priming to keep it flowing and efficient, keep the algae from building up, keep the leathers moist and flexible.

To that end, I've embarked on rereading all of Ed Abbey's writings, at least those on my bookshelves and in electronic files on my computer. It's been an interesting project, a dip into the past, a return to the deep well of inspiration. I've found that I write best in reaction to something I've read, or, at best, to something I've observed that strikes a cord. I think this is why I'm much better at faction than fiction.

In the process, I've been reorganizing my piles of electronic correspondence from various web sites, discussion lists and email communications. It's fun and often surprising. Did I write that?!

I'll be adding some these electronic scribblings here on Words Arranged, as I extricate them from their electronic boxes and display them in all their scintillating reality, if anything on the Internet is real.

I'll also be putting up new pages of links to Abbey's web presence, including some contemporary discussions about Ed and his writing on Facebook and other sources.

Onward!

It's November here on the Central Coast and last night we welcomed our first significant rain of this season. Yes, welcomed. One can only take so much sun and blue skies.

The words haven't been flowing much of late, as distractions and procrastination are handy excuses for ignoring the muse. I've been concentrating on environmental missives to our so-called representatives in local government, plus inexhaustable  genealogical research. And then there's daily walks, cloud counting and wildlife appreciation that must be curated and filed.

I'm reading Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein once again, for the umpteenth time. Always something new to grok in fullness in this book. This is the original version as Heinlein wrote it. It was subsequently edited down for publication. Heinlein's daughter republished the original manuscript, which contains extensive passages that didn't appear in the first publication. I recognize several phrases that I have adopted and forgotten where they came from!

When James Michener was working on Alaska at Sheldon Jackson College, he told me he was more of a researcher than a novelist. He found turning the historical and natural history materials into epic prose a hard and onerous task. I understand that feeling. I love the research and I find fiction writing difficult and tedious. I suspect I've never been much of story teller.

Every now and then, The Muse grabs me by the wrist  and drags me to this poor defenseless keyboard, to pound away the thoughts that wake me up at four in the morning. The words flow onto the screen unforced and natural. It feels good. But then, what to do with them? Haven't worked that out yet.

Meanwhile, it's easier to sit here and create on a grey and drizzly day. Maybe I'll get something put together after all.

​Stay tuned, and stay dry.