Making Good Progress

Yesterday was another long day at my desk working on the new issue of the Gypsy Journal, but I’m making good progress and beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. That’s always a good thing.

Laying out the first half of the paper, which consists mostly of Letters to the Editor and the Meandering Down The Highway travelogue is pretty straightforward and usually goes rather smoothly. After that, things slow down because it becomes kind of a jigsaw puzzle fitting the different sized stories and their accompanying photos into the pages available. The goal is to fill the page or pages in such a way as to end the story at the bottom of the page so there is little or no carryover to the next page, where the next story begins. Of course that doesn’t always happen, but that’s always the goal.

And then there’s getting the right mix of stories. Terry and I are history nuts, and if left to our own devices, every issue would probably be nothing but historic sites, historic homes, history museums, old battlefields, and things like that. But not everybody appreciates the same things, so we try to mix it up with a little bit of this and a little bit of that so that, hopefully, there is a good variety in every issue.

And then, we try to have stories from different parts of the country. One complaint we got a lot of when we were traveling fulltime was that if we were on the west coast and our stories were about that part of the country, the folks in the Southeast or Midwest were upset because we didn’t write stories about their region. And, of course, when we are in those areas the people out West or in New England or wherever wanted us to write more about their part of the country. Sometimes you just can’t win. But it’s always fun trying.

So what do we have in store for you in this next issue? Well, we’ll spend some time in Texas with a visit to Fort Davis, which played a major role in the Indian wars, and also at the nearby McDonald Observatory. Then we will be talking about California’s starkly beautiful Joshua Tree National Park. Now, don’t you folks in the Midwest start to feeling slighted, because there is also going to be a story about the Corps of Engineers Visitor Center in Duluth, Minnesota. And while I don’t want to give all the secrets away, I think there’s a story or two that might please the folks in the southern part of the country. And what about New England? I’m not saying, you just have to wait for your new issue to get to you and see. What, you’re not a subscriber yet? You need to click here and subscribe now. You’re missing out on a lot of good reading!

Have you entered our latest Free Drawing yet? And this week our prize is not one, but two great RV books. John and Kathy Huggins from Living The RV Dream have donated autographed copies of So, You Want To Be An RVer? and So, You Want To Be A Workamper? To enter, all you have to do is click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening.

Speaking of books, my pal former Border Patrolman Billy Kring is one of my favorite authors. Billy brings his vast expertise protecting the border to his excellent Hunter Kincaid series. When you read one of Billy’s books, you feel like you’re right there on patrol with Hunter. So I was excited to hear that the fifth book in the series, Hunter’s Moon, is now available on Amazon. You can bet I was one of the first people to download it!

A lot of you do your online shopping by clicking this Amazon link or the Amazon Search box at the top right sidebar of this blog. We appreciate that, because when you purchase an item on Amazon any time of the year from one of our links, we earn a small commission, which helps us offset the cost of publishing the blog.

Thought For The Day – Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing. – Helen Keller

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