Raymond posted on Facebook he was in El Paso!

Wow! Well, his whirlwind week in Phoenix is over and he and Baby are headed for Austin, Texas. An actress friend wrote on FB a few days ago, "You are in Phoenix?" Plaintively, she responded today, "El Paso??" You had to be fast to see the man. As near as I could tell he was meeting with people every day. We met up three times, and I had a real good time with him. I was so happy that he was able to connect up with brother Gary and stay with him. He missed his sister Ronda. I felt bad about that. He and brother Dan got together several times, and he even got to hang out with his nephew Jamal one night.
But I am already thinking about my grandson Dante's Thanksgiving visit to town next week from the Lucerne Valley in Calif. near LA. I hope I get to hang out with him and his dad, son Dan. We haven't been to the movies together for a long time.
I am catching up on my sleep lost from traipsing out at night and so on. Napping in my chair.
Later: It's six AM Saturday morning and I, a farmer's daughter, am up with the chickens getting ready to go get my veggies and other groceries at the market. I checked on FB to see if I could locate my son Raymond and asked him if he spent the night in a motel, his truck, or in a bush.
Have checked out a few blogs. Boy, I was exhausted from a hectic week for me. I dropped by Mary Patrick's who mentioned she had not seen me lately and she told me she and Paul will be moving in a few days to a house her daughter is buying. I must say I was a little relieved as she had to go to the hospital last month to have another stent put in and there was no one to stay with Paul, or at least not anybody to be found easily. Paul has multiple health issues from not only having been blasted in the abdomen with a shot gun by the Phoenix Serial Shooters but from suffering a major stroke during the trial. I have really enjoyed my chats with Mary in the patio and her apartment out in the patio. I will miss them.
We discussed the patio situation and agreed that some residents were still prone to throwing temper tantrums making civilized discourse difficult. She did not blame me for taking a vacation from the patio round table visiting. She is leaving and I don't know when I will return. She told me weird stuff was still going on. A woman kept passing her apartment door which is on the 5th floor by itself, with only one other apartment up there. She finally went out to check on her, and the woman said she could not find the elevator!!
A confused woman resident asked me the other day if this was a prison. I said no, she said a hospital? I explained that it was a HUD complex which is a little different than an ordinary apartment complex. There will be more confused people living there. Ha.
My neck has still not recovered enough for me to return to the Silvercrest to play pool. Maybe next week. I don't like to go over there just for lunch. I like to play some rounds of pool with the guys. I missed Thanksgiving dinner which was served this Thursday instead of next.
I will be going down to Doc's very shortly to look at the video he insisted on making yesterday. I did not feel like making a video and threw a big fit while on camera. He said it was pretty funny. He likes to put stuff like that on his old Geezer channel. I am more responsible on mine.
I read in the Writing Blog II that Mark Twain's autobiography which is a huge book is selling so fast they can't keep it on the shelves. Surprised the publishers. I loved his autobiography written years ago about his early years. This one has been long anticipated after being suppressed all these years by his heirs and so on who were trying to keep the lid on some of his views about rich capitalists thinking they would not go down well with the American public and might ruin his reputation as the most popular author America has ever produced. I am glad they finally got over their fears, heirs, publishers, etc.
I watched James L. Haley talk about his book, "Wolf, the Lives of Jack London" on Books and C-Span yesterday. You can find the link in Ann's blog Beauty in Art and the Unusual. I am going to have my son Dan teach me how to make links the first chance I get. It is just ridiculous for me not to be able to do that. I had just mastered the process over on AOL and we moved over to blogger and I forgot how. Anyway Haley was comparing Jack London's controversial social views with Mark Twain's, only he quite recklessly risked his earning power by expounding on them in lectures, books, etc. I think "Martin Eden" is Jack London's novel to read if you want to get that side of him.
I want to talk more about his views about bisexuality gleaned from his years sailing on ships, riding the rails with the unemployed, and hunting for gold in the Yukon. He says he had observed that any time men were thrown together for long periods of time without the company of women they would quite naturally begin to turn to each other for sexual outlets. I thought at the time I read it that in "The Sea Wolf" Jack created a character in Wolf Larsen who was erotic for him with his sheer physical power, dominating personality, and sailing know how. But I did not know that Jack London had explored this area of human reaction so seldom even to this day discussed in books. I wondered if Haley were not gay or a bisexual as I doubt that a heterosexual biographer would have been interested in that aspect of London's personality. Indeed, that could be a major reason Haley was interested in exploring London's personality and psychology in biography form.
I did not know before about Jack London's relationship with a San Francisco poet and astute critic and writer named Stephens who he talked about as the ideal close male companion he had been looking for all his life. I wondered what Charmian thought about this relationship which she was of course forced to accept if she was to continue to be London's main woman. Charmian was a very intelligent woman, a classical pianist and a simply marvelous secretary who typed up all London's manuscripts after she arrived on the scene with the greatest of speed and skill. He needed her worse it was plain to see, so Stephens gradually took a back seat. Charmian was with him in his last years and it was she who tried to keep some of his more controversial views out of sight. Probably those included his views about bisexuality. Haley says neither man ever said whether their relationship was sexual or not, but with Charmian on the scene discussing that would not have been very gentlemanly.
Charmian did have a daughter by Jack but the delivery had to be by forceps and the baby was so injured during the difficult birth that she only survived a very short time. Charmian miscarried a son. Jack was not close to his two daughters by his first wife as they never got along very well.
Of course learning about the complexities in his character only endeared Jack London to me more. With my past I could relate to that part of him some might call the shady side, but which I thought was merely a reflection of the hard life he lived and the kind of work he was able to find. After all men have sailed the seas for centuries, but not many are bold enough to talk and write about what they do for sex when no women are on hand for months.