Today I took a day off, sort of. I didn’t go to the Meeting House. To me, this constitutes a day off. But it was a day off in terms of location, but not much else.

My day began with me making BLBP phone calls. We are on a roll in terms of getting books out there. We sent 27 books to Barrow last week, and we’ll be taking 27 boxes of books to the Knik Charter School tomorrow. And this morning, I took three boxes of books to the Sutton Post Office. Two are going to the village of Mountain Village and one is going to Bishop Gibbons High School in New York. The kids at Bishop Gibbons sent me thank you notes, so I am sending the ones who thanked me, Alaskana books.

My hope is that they’ll want Barrow pen pals.

Little Lending Library in Mt Village

I came home and I walked all the horses and all the dogs around the loop. The sun wasn’t shining but the sky was light. The temperature was in the low 30s. I wore the old, knitted sweater Pete gave me. I was warm enough.

I had an epiphany as I was walking the Hrimmi, the last horse out. My subconscious, always dependable, shot the answer to a long time question to the forefront of my brain. There was a message there from the head of the Kachemak Bay Writer’s Conference scholarship committee. He or she (the name was Erin) said sorry, I didn’t get a fee waiver.

Woosh, suddenly it was déjà vu all over again. I had not experienced it in some time because I had not been making writing-related requests. That was the feelings that I experience in getting rejections. I am always first mystified, then pissed. As I have said before, I was once told that the closer one gets to getting an acceptance, the harder rejection is to take. This is true.

I continued to think about this as I was walking the dogs. I stopped writing when I began salvaging books because I was tired of the lack of affirmation. Years and years of it – I could no longer ignore the adage, “don’t let the bastards wear you down.” They finally had.

The book project, it has been almost all affirmation. Everyone loves it. The articles that I have written, which have been related to the project have been accepted. Another came through right before I started working on this dispatch.

I have been doing what I do for the affirmation. At the same time, I’ve been doing it for other writers. It’s way easy to toss a textbook or self-help book in the to be shredded shopping cart or books to be pulped Gaylord. And sometimes, our attitudes about this are somewhat flippant. But if you take a close look, say, at a textbook, you will see the hard work that went into it. Not to mention what it may have taken in order for a publisher to consider it.

So yeah, I’ll keep attempting to do what I do, which is to continue to write and get books into the hands of appreciative readers.

Next: 62. 3/3/23: Keep them Doggies Moving