(1) Grateful for the local family-owned cafe, where the kind Christian family provides for poor people who can’t always afford coffee. It’s wonderful to be able to come here after a long dark night, sit down over a cup of Joe, and chill.

(2) The head of the School of Journalism just approached me with a cheery salutation, not having seen me for several months during his recent sabbatical. I surprised myself by greeting him with a hearty hug, being as I’m not a hugger in general. This indicates to me more and more that I should cease to hang around the relatively random residents of my neighborhood, and finally begin to hang around professors, journalists, pastors, teachers, writers, and people more like me.

(3) Hunger was aggravating my mania at around lunchtime yesterday, when suddenly all kinds of hot dogs and chips were brought into the Recovery Center. God provides just when it is needed (sometimes).

(4) Grateful for a professional relationship with an amazing young singer named Keva Shull. She could have gotten any hot young accompanist on the block, but chose the O.G. out of respect. I have also been impressed by her fortitude. She had her pancreas removed at the age of 22, is left with Diabetes Two for the rest of her days, and yet hopped right back on the saddle. Thank God for Keva and for people like her.

(5) Thursday evening I will be returning to Pullman WA to attend the Neil Simon comedy Plaza Suite. Being a guy without a car, I am grateful to be attending with my friend Kurt–also a professor, newly retired–and his wife Ellen. They’ve also agreed to take me out to dinner before the show.

If all goes smoothly, I will have sent them performance tracks for the first two scenes of my musical by the time I see them. If all goes well, Eden in Babylon will still be produced at the RTOP Theatre. If not, somebody somewhere will do it. But mostly, I am grateful for all the many fine professors, journalists, pastors, teachers and writers whom I have met throughout the past six years.

For they are the ones who have impressed upon that I am not a dirtbag, that I am not a piece of shit, that I am not worthless homeless scum, deserving of death in a gutter. It does not serve my purpose to hang out with anyone who does not see this. God free me from the grip of those who do. AMEN.

“It’s always darkest before the dawn.”
— Anonymous

Please pitch in if possible.
The O.G. is too set in his ways.