Well, it's been a while since my last post. I've been just off stage all along, however, too busy working on a novel, currently in its fourth draft, that I hope eventually to hew into some semblance of shape and substance. And then there has been helping my wife plant and then tend our garden, weekly jaunts into the mountains with members of our hiking club, nighttime reading and/or movie watching while helplessly, hopelessly becoming a political junkie via the Internet and Democracy Now!. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I get a dose of concern or outrage every weekday morning by listening to Democracy Now! over Kootenay Co-op Radio while sometimes having to choke down my breakfast.

But heck, life is still good, still worth the struggle. At age 75, I still have my faculties and reasonable physical health. I have a loved and loving wife and family, and live in one of the beautiful places in the world. There's a Spanish saying that Malcolm Lowry put in Under the Volcano, his great novel set in Mexico, and that I've taken to heart: No se puede vivir sin amar. One cannot live without loving (or without love, as some translate it). Yes. I recite that to myself almost every day. And live on in the teeth of climate change, perpetual war, and political, economic, and environmental disaster. What can you tell us about life? William Faulkner was asked after he'd emerged from obscurity by winning the Nobel Prize for literature.

"It goes on," he said.