July 29, 2004
Need to get organized for my final push on my two books which are due soon. Worked until around nine last night, stacking up all of my reference photos and clip art. Created about ten piles and started in. Got up this morning and finished at about 11. Here are my basic filing categories:

• Mexican cliffs and dramatic skies (I’ve probably taken at least 500 shots of sunsets, monsoon storms and Divisidero-type canyons. In fact I took 12 rolls on just one trip to Copper Canyon in 1996)
• Comics (from original Beadle’s Dime Novels to 1950s comic book titles, Kid Colt and White Savage)
• Tribal Training (runners in the dark, swimmers, bow and arrow shooters, hoop and pole gamers, etc.)
• Cavalry scouts and horse soldiers (original photos of Fort Huachuca cavalrymen, oodles of assorted Apache War participants)
• Oddities (calves with two heads, cartoonists actually working, stuff like that)
• 1880s Characters (miners, cowboys, Mexican vaqueros, Apaches and fledgling adobe towns)
• Flag Drapery (almost everyone has wrapped themselves in an American flag at one time and I’ve got the reference to prove it)
• Tombstone reference (the town, the graves, the Earps, the Clantons, the movies, the O.K. Corral)
• 1950s Road Reference (Route 66, Kingman, Bulgemobiles, Montgomery Wards catalogues, goofy teenagers with low pants and white t-shirts, fast girls with rocket ship bras)
• Horsemanship (old and new photos of riders, cowboys, movies, Indians and SASS shooters)
• Snobby Commentators (random clipped photos of newsmakers being pompous, outraged, holier than thou and pathetic. Huge file, great stuff)
• Dogs, coyotes and one-eyed wolves (plenty of goofy shots of Mexican dogs, Buddy Boze Hatkiller, Peaches, Smokey, Dusty, Apache, wild wolves, scraggly coyotes and assorted mutts looking scraggly and game)

Need to go home and pack for trip to San Francisco tonight. Kathy and I are flying out at four. Staying downtown, going directly to Sam Wu's in China Town and Skoma's and Cliff House. Oh, and don't forget The Argonaut Bookstore. Can't wait. One of my favorite destinations.

“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”
—Beverly Sills