My Prescott, AZ trip got postponed, which frees me up to get more work done here. I went yesterday afternoon to a meeting in Fort Worth with folks from the deaf advocacy group I'm going to try to help do some fund-raising and members of the theater group whom they hope to get to do "The Signal Season of Dummy Hoy", the play about the historical 19th Century deaf baseball player. I have never done "grants" type fund-raising, though I have a nodding acquaintance with it, but instead have only done a slight amount of the more routine populist "folks can you pledge" type organizational fund-raising. My sentiments are always in the "get x,000 people to pledge 10 dollars" camp rather than "get 8 foundations to pledge x,000 dollars each" way of thinking, but I know that my way of doing is impractical This should be a learning experience for me. I hope I can learn about grant writing while I am at this.
Two people paid for "Vibrating Electric Fields" through eBay and Paypal, and one wrote a very kind e mail. I packaged up their orders, as well as some of the LJ friends mailings that did not make the first mail-out. I also got
asphalteden's re-addressed to his new homestead, so that he can warm his house with the whirring hum of vibrating metal.I mailed one out to a fellow I know who reviews ambient CDs, who actually asked me for a review copy. Maybe I should ask the Dallas Observer to review the thing as well. I have a few more to mail out to LJ folks, but I'll knock it out steadily.
I seem to have run through my next mini-print of jewel case inserts, so I'll have to get some more done up. In the meantime, I'm sending them out jewel case and disk only.
A very nice chess poet sought me out by IM with complimentary words about my poetry about chess. I believe that I must have some AOL Hometown website of Chess Poems still up and running,
about which I had forgotten. She complimented me on my poems, and referred me to a website with her own. I'll check it out later this week.
Meanwhile, "Chess Poems for the Tournament Player" has a purchaser for the third auction in a row. In fact, there's a bidding competition in play, for which the highest bid is now the princely sum of 5 dollars and 50 cents. Because my deal with my (self) publisher is that I keep one hundred percent of the royalties, I figure I stand to clear upwards of 3 dollars here. I will endeavor to spend it in more than one place.
I'm closing in on finishing that Burns biography. People live such complex lives, even "simple men". I am concerned that in many ways my life is not picturesque, but I'll live with the knowledge in good grace.