State park trail entry point.

Journey Home

Tales from the pilgrimage.

Writing

Writing about writing, autobiography, cross posting selected work from other places.

  • A Walk On the Lake Shore

    Last night I spent time reading in a Discord group. That means about seven members of the community got together on the platform, set a timer for 45 minutes of quiet reading, then had a discussion after we finished. A couple of things stood out. The time went quickly, and it was fun to know… Read more

  • Writing Break

    It’s time to shift gears and focus on getting the garden planted. That means my long streak of daily posts may break. I’m okay with that. The rest of May will be devoted mainly to gardening. Making a daily post to prime the writing pump has worked. I added 20,000 words to the book draft… Read more

  • Artificial Intelligence Experiment

    I tried using Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence query for the first time last week. Then I tried ChatGPT. This post is about what the ai software returned with a query of “Tell me about Paul Deaton Johnson County, Iowa.” The responses are at the bottom of this post, yet I think my commentary may be… Read more

  • About Newsletters

    There is an obvious, intentional flight among journalists and others from working at a news organization to producing a newsletter. Many use the platform Substack, yet there are others. They all can attract viewers, and importantly, have a subscription component that can generate revenue. What they do not do is replace the collaboration of working… Read more

  • Spanish Moss

    A foundational childhood memory is driving with my family through South Georgia and seeing Spanish Moss hanging over U.S. Highway 319 between Thomasville, Georgia and Tallahassee, Florida. Here is an excerpt from my upcoming autobiography where I wrote about this. Our family drove from Iowa to visit Tallahassee, Florida, the place Father lived after re-uniting… Read more

  • Cranes

    We mapped our house   in a township      with a lake         and a preserve            for native species…Then structures came on wheels   manufactured halves      parked in a cul-de-sac         while the foundation cured            waiting the arrival               of the cranes…When the schedules converge   on that day… in this plat:      the dwelling,         planned by convention and            executed in compliance,               is… Read more

  • Writer’s Weekend

    I got out to the garden on Good Friday. In years past, I would plant potatoes that day as part of remembrance of my grandmother’s gardening folklore. Potatoes are an inexpensive food, readily available at the grocer, year-around: a simple carbohydrate in a life when I need to reduce my number of carbs. I enjoyed… Read more

  • Round and Round

    The sound of their tricycle on cement, “Look Daddy how fast I’m going!” Clockwise, now counter-clockwise in early afternoon.Round and round pedaling, pedaling looking at me then gliding to a stop.They are almost too big for it. Soon they will need one less wheel…Better to move around the expanding circles until they are on their… Read more

  • Tulips #2

    Empty milk bottles, an empty wine bottle and a salad dressing bottle… filled with water and white tulips — whose time will soon be past.There is a dead spider in a milk bottle. I remember those milk bottles being left on the back porch, filled with milk. How it was…Contemporary life has changed.We drive to… Read more

  • Tulips #1

    I cut the white tulips. They were almost gone. Petals dangling down, ready to fall to the ground.They still smell fresh, as flowers do… in the clear glass vase where I put them on my desk.Others bloom now, still others are yet to bloom now and next year.It’s time I left them for a while… Read more