Your kind remarks warm the soul of a man my age, with my stark understanding that everything I might accomplish has been done. Or not.

It's dark here in my home office and very quiet. Even my lazy dogs are asleep. After I make a fool of myself, I'm going to wake them up because I will enjoy the company.

For all of my adult life, I have felt the need to explain the path from rural Indian country to the rewarding careers I have enjoyed as a judge and then as a teacher. It took a cancer diagnosis to get me off my ass, but I had one more juicy piece of luck when I won the race with my own mortality and published the memoir that had been demanding to be written for so many years.

It was at that point the luck window was slammed in my face by COVID 19, the virus that shut down all the normal methods of flogging a book without paid advertising. So what I intended as my testament became a bug on the windshield of publishing history. I am embarrassed to use your comment in this way and I'm acutely aware of how rude it appears when I tell the world to ask Professor Google for a cyber-trip to my publisher, Miniver Press.

No. "Appears" is a weasel word in this context. Using you to flog my book IS rude and I know it. If I find myself unable to refrain, I can only give my reason and apologize.

I am sorry. I feel like I am punishing your kindness--and this is not even the worst I've done trying to bring attention to my story. I should have just awakened the dogs so they could do their jobs keeping me connected to the world, but, having painfully confessed to the impulse, I'm going to hit "respond."