My year of living dangerously

It is Good Friday and I feel a little bit funny because at the same time I am observing this solemn occasion, I have something to celebrate.

Today I have been keeping this Web log exactly a year! That is a picture of me up above, keeping my Web log. If the picture looks weird it is because we took it at Big Blue.

A whole year! I cannot get over that. And I have not missed one (1) day other than once when I was in the air, to or from to see Leonard Pennario, and I could not get to a computer. And in that case Howard Web logged in my place.

Remember when he used to track my plane crossing the continent? I will have to try to find that so I can link back to it.

Now my life is not that exciting to an outside observer because for months on end I never leave my area code. For whole weekends I do not leave my Zip code!

Remember Mr. Zip, back when they used to encourage you to use your Zip code?


Most letters in the huge pile written to Pennario have no Zip code. I love that. Now is the more sedentary part of my literary adventure, when I spent vast amounts of time at my desk, poring over ancient newspaper clippings, filing things, deciphering dead people's handwriting, trying to get people to call me back.

I do not write about it all that much because it is sometimes so embarrassingly slow and painstaking. Just the getting people to call you back. It makes me feel bad for all the times I have not called people back, I have to say that. It is God's punishment. I am mending my ways.

Robert Wagner never did call me back! Well, he did that one time. But it was just like, "Hi, this is Robert Wagner, you missed me, bye."

I am listening to that "Good Friday" link above and it is to the "Good Friday magic" music from "Parsifal." Pennario loved Wagner and "Parsifal" was the Wagner opera he loved the most.

Here is a video artist trying to turn the famous "Good Friday" music into a political statement. I love his description: "With pictures of pollution and stuff."

Listening to the music makes me misty and reminds me that this crazy adventure I am on continues, even though it turned very quickly into something different than what I thought it would be, and something much greater and more intimidating, I have to say that. And even though Pennario died last June. Can you believe, I do not know what day he died? And I was there! I do not know if it was June 27 or 28.

But as I said the adventure did not end when he died. Even though I am now sitting here in Buffalo instead of in a hot tub in California. As Byron Brown...


...put it, this is not the end. This is just the beginning.

As the music from "Parsifal" builds and soars...

Here is one thing that cracks me up. In the very first entry I wrote, I said breezily that I was going to wrap this book up in the next month.

Ahahahahahahahaaaa!!

Does that ever sound silly now!! Well, the rules were different then. Pennario was still alive and he and I had this hare-brained idea that we could get this done fast and then go sit on the beach. Honest, that was our plan. That and we were looking forward to going on TV where we could make speeches and spout our opinions.

So I was pounding out these chapters and flying back and forth with them and not fussing too much over the whole thing, because I just did not have time. That was where I was at, as we like to say here in Buffalo, a year ago today.

Sometimes I think I should go back to that way of thinking.