March 16, 2008
Busy weekend. Had a speech at the Phoenix Writer's Club on Saturday. They meet at the Fish Market on Camelback for lunch. Sat through their business meeting. The treasurer said it costs them $17 a person to have lunch but they are still in the hole after expenses by about $50. I raised my hand and offered this suggestion: "Have you considered a table dance?" I don't think the treasurer appreciated the suggestion, but I would have paid at least $25 to see her shake her tail feather. Talked about getting paid in a free content culture, plus all of my writing tricks, the main one being, "Write every day, without hope, without despair." I have been crediting this little gem to Julia Cameron, who wrote The Artist's Way, but last night I perused the book and couldn't find that quote. Now I'm not sure where I got it, but it reminds me of this quote:

"The art of creativity is remembering what was said, but conveniently forgetting who said it."
—Old Vaquero Saying

From the speech I motored over to Mike Torres' garage for our last Exits Exit rehearsal. The big Kingman blowout gig is this coming Saturday night. Worked on a dynamic opening to "Pretty Woman" by Roy Orbison, as a tribute to our late bandmate Wendell Havatone. Roger Enrico, MIke Torres and Steve Paroni created a Tina Turner motiff (think "Proud Mary") to open the tune as I set the scene, then we launch off on the big, fat drum beat. If we pull it off as good as we played it Saturday, there won't be a dry eye in the house. If we flub it, there probably won't be an occupied seat in the house at the end of the tune. But that's Show Biz.

Status of The Top Secret Project
In 1888, while riding on patrol with Lt. Powhattan Clarke and his 10th Cav soldiers, artist Freddy Remington soaked his sketchbook in a river crossing on Black River. He tried to salvage it by drying it out on bushes at the evening campsite (believed to be southwest of Seven Mile Hill, near Fort Apache), but in the morning, the sketchbook was gone. It has gone missing for 125 years, until now.

Here is one of the waterlogged pages, this one of Tom Horn who we know was on the patrol. Note that it says, "Packer • Horn• Fort Apache" This confirms what historians have believed for some time that in 1888, Tom Horn was a packer, not chief of scouts as he later claimed in his controversial autobiography.



"The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery."
—Francis Bacon