I missed posting yesterday, Michelmas Day, the day after which it is not okay to eat fresh blackberries until next year. I was looking for blackberries.

No, I was not looking for blackberries, I was in Klamath Falls, buying produce at the last farmers' market of the year - baby bok choy!!! the cutest Macintosh apples, the size of baby fists, etc. I found the local NPR station, 90.9 (this may be wrong, my brain is slightly hazy from the absense of oxygen in the wood stove heated innards of the Chiloquin Community Center.)

There is a used bookstore here, run by a man named Richard, who told me it only took him fifty some years to find out what he wanted to do with his life. He opened the bookstore fifteen years ago. The bookstore is labyrintine, and packed floor to ceiling with books and more books, including one area I did not dare enter yet full of old and rare volumes. By here, I mean maybe half a mile from my cabin. He has placed the business and finance bookshelves in the rest room. I think he said he has 100,000 books, but I was slightly delirous at the time so I may have misheard.

I am taking a pine needle basket making class this Thursday from a woman named Hope at the Curio Shop that shares the building with the bookstore, (together they're called the Chiloquin Art Center.)

I spent two hours reading my poems aloud to myself last night, and talking aloud to myself about them. I was practicing for the community reading/welcome Tuesday night, but I felt entirely comfortable opining about myself aloud. Do tell me if you notice me doing this in a public place. Speaking of public places, the Klamath Library is pretty swell, and I found some good books there while listening to a three-woman flute ensemble that was part of the dedication for the memorial garden outside the library yesterday. I'm still feeling a bit hazy and not quite here, not entirely due to my slightly aged woodstove and less than Annie Oakley cowgirl fire laying skills. Though I leap to tell you that I'm one mean beach fire builder.

The train goes through town several times a day with horn blaring, and it does not stop. How does that register with a person growing up here? Do you not hear that horn after awhile? Everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance, everybody thinks it's true is what Paul Simon says, but he didn't grow up here. I wonder what these kids have to say about it.