This is the first of a new series of eletters about life as a writer, at home in the Texas Hill Country. I’m planning to send quarterly updates, with the seasons.

For us, the coolest thing in this super-hot summer: a visit with son Michael and family from Juneau, Alaska. They stopped in to see us on an adventurous west-to-east camping trip that took them east to the Big Apple and beyond, then west again and home on the Al-Can Highway. They even managed to time their travel to avoid the Great Alaska Ferry Strike. It’s always wonderful to see the grandkids, who have computer skills and interests that would have been incomprehensible to me when I was their ages. Their generation–its promise, its potentials–is incredible.