Sunflowers. Lots and lots of sunflowers blooming right now. They seem to thrive on the heat, although I'm sure they'd like a brisk summer shower. Nothing on the horizon until the end of the week, when our rain chances shoot all the way up to--wait for it--20%. Wow.
The project I mentioned yesterday (and promised to tell you about today) isn't exactly new. If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I spent all of 2008 writing a journal-for-publication, with the idea that the University of Texas Press might be interested in the manuscript. I finished the manuscript and handed it over to Theresa May at the Press at the end of March. She sent it out to two reviewers, who just returned their evaluations. Both recommend publication--with plenty of suggestions for revision, of course. Armed with their notes, I'll be spending the next two weeks going back through the manuscript, getting it ready for final review. If all goes well, the book will be out in September, 2010.
When I originally pitched the project to Theresa May, I had it in mind that an "extraordinary year" would be about growing older ("sage-ing," as my friend Judith calls it). It was my 69th year, the first year of my eighth decade--a landmark year in anybody's life, wouldn't you say?.
Well. I had no idea.
For me (and I suspect for most Americans) 2008 was truly extraordinary. We elected the first African-American president. We watchd gasoline prices soar, oil production peak, the banking system go belly-up, and Galveston get totally whacked by Ike. We looked with astonishment at our 401Ks, melting faster than the polar icecaps, and at the forest of for-sale signs and foreclosures invading our neighborhoods. We began to count food miles and species extinctions and diminishing water resources and think about becoming locovores, ecovores, gardeners, chicken keepers, and seed savers. The electric car began to seem possible again (after it became extinct in California a decade ago), and wind turbines mushroomed across the West Texas landscape.
So forget the part about me being 69 and counting. Turns out that 69 is a pretty ordinary event. Everybody gets to do it once--those of us who live to be 70, that is. But 2008 was an astonishing year, a wonderful/awful/incredible year to document. Journaling it made me even more conscious of just how amazing it was.
So. Beatrix #7 gets printed today and mailed tomorrow. And I'm back to my extraordinary year, reliving 2008, for the record.
Reading note: When we look back, 2008 will be a momentous year in human history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us “What was it like? What were you doing when it started to fall apart? Could you see it? What did you think? What did you do?"--Paul Gilding
