Dear Reader,
My co-writers, ie: folks that occasionally give me a break from Granny Gear, my rural end-page humor column in Vintage Truck Magazine, are a Hollywood screen writer, a surgeon, and another owns a True Value Hardware store with something like 40 employees. My beautiful young girl photographer of 10 years grew up, got married and moved away. My new photographer of the same description has a work-from-home office job, the responsibility of caring for three large dogs and is training to be a "dent gypsy"—one of those mysterious automotive dent repair people who appear out of nowhere after a bad hailstorm...and don't even get me started on editors. All of these people insist on having lives of their own apart from my magazine, newspaper and Substack columns and newsletters—imagine!
I was beginning to be accepting of this silent mutiny, but I never expected it to hit so close to home. Web manager (and youngest daughter) Emily is the owner of another rapidly growing business which is consuming an ever larger portion of her time. I guess that I shouldn't complain, this business will probably help sustain me when I get too old to pick up a wrench.
This means that Emily will be turning the computer related duties related to Far Muse over to me. One problem: I was living off-the-grid when this whole cyber revolution happened. Then there was the period when only geeks and nerds used computers so it was easy to occupy myself with things more real than Pac Man and Max Headroom.
As computers totally saturated society, I was too busy fixxing farm tractors to give much thought to owning a PC. Later, as my writing gained recognition, I found "computer illiteracy" to be a unique perspective for a writer. Besides, I've never been impressed by so-called high technology. The physical principles and material elements that make this technology possible have always been there for us to discover, created by someone much smarter than us. Now, He impresses me!
Anyway, Emily is going to show me the way to submit stories and other material such as photos, videos, and tech material from my large library of mostly antique manufacturer's shop manuals. We haven't set up a date yet as she is hosting a delegation from Nigeria (actually her in-laws). In order to avoid igniting an international incident, so easily done these days, I won't force the issue until the visit concludes. When the new arrangement takes on momentum, we can go back to weekly story installments. In the meantime, Emily says that she can handle one Far Muse story per month before she turns the reins—or whatever—over to me. Please bear with us—it can only get better!
Okie dokie!🚜