Hail, hail, the gang’s not all here

Carolina in Nederland is just back from a three-week hiatus during which time she was caring for her newborn foal, Evie. Well, actually, Evie is Naloma’s foal, not Carolina’s. Carolina was more of a midwife.

Sam Gerhardstein of Columbus, Ohio, has taken a little hiatus of his own to undergo retinal surgery. Get well soon, Sam. Blogland isn’t the same without you.

Michael Burns, having left Dateland, Arizona, and Deming, New Mexico, behind, is once again out on the open road with La Coachacita (his RV) having another one of his don’t-you-just-love-everything-about-America moments, about which he fully intends to write if he ever lands in one place long enough.

Personally, I haven’t a clue what jinksy, a.k.a. Penelope Smith, is doing. Probably holed up with her keyboard in a dark, musty room somewhere in the UK, looking around for new subjects to write poems about. Good luck, jinksy.

Jeannelle of Iowa (not to be confused with Eleanor of Aquitaine, the mother of Richard the Lion-hearted) is undoubtedly driving various tractor behemoth thingies around her unbelievably humongous dairy farm, at least 73 acres of which she recently planted with corn, leaving God-only-knows-how-much room for the Holsteins, unless she made her escape and is roaming around old barns and deserted schools and charming churches and quaintly worded tombstones with her camera at the ready.

Mary over at Annie’s Goat Hill is busy making all kinds of scented, handcrafted soap and nursing kids (the four-legged kind) and capturing the marketable assets of Saanans, Alpines, Nubians, and Boers (which is not, by the way, a law firm).

Richard Lawry of Mena, Arkansas, has more than enough to keep him busy lately replacing glass all over town in the aftermath of the F3 tornado that ripped through Mena on April 9th. Richie, you are one of the good guys. You get a pass.

When Ruth Hull Chatlien isn’t getting another book published or planting squash, cucumber, and basil seeds or taking stunningly beautiful photographs of her gorgeous flowers or sketching a little something incredible in her sketchbook or tossing off a quick vest or two on her knitting needles in her spare time, she sits quietly by her window and looks out at birds.

Yorkshire Pudding of Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, has become completely confused since returning from a quick Easter vacation to Hong Kong. Case in point: He intended to spend a quiet evening at home enjoying the poetry of Arthur Hugh Clough but wound up in a cinema instead watching a perfectly dreadful film about someone named Brian Clough, who apparently was a manager of an obscure British football team. YP was so upset that he walked the two miles back to his home in the pouring rain.

Ian (a.k.a. Silverback), who spends half the year in Florida, and Daphne, whose father was a Communist, have traipsed off to London for a couple of days to watch a friend of theirs perform in the thea-tuh, leaving Daphne’s husband Stephen with no one but Froggie to keep him company.

When last heard from a week ago, Vonda out in Oregon had a sick baby and was just sitting there on her little egg farm listening to the rain and the wind and watching the flowers grow. If she was also hoping that her chickens would lay a few eggs, she never mentioned it.

Tracie down in Florida reports that a lot can happen in the six months after a woman cleans out her purse.

Dr. John Linna of Neenah, Wisconsin, claims daily that Pigeon Falls, a little town where the trains still run, dragons fly, and life is back to normal, is in his basement. I always thought this was a figment of his very fertile imagination until a woman named Melli published photographs that prove it is true.

Mr. David Barlow of Ephraim, Utah, is still up to his antics, but I try not to notice. His friend, Loren Christie, who doesn’t know where she is, likes shacks.

Pat is definitely in Arkansas.

This has been an odd day. A very odd day indeed.

I’ll try to get to the rest of you another time.