Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

*****FINAL UPDATE***

"Woo," he said, adding, "Hoo!" It's 3:55 p.m. Sunday, and: --30--.

To wit: 25 pages, 9,475 words, counting footnotes.

That's on the book chapter. I'll work on the article proof tomorrow night.

--ER

*****END FINAL UPDATE*****

***UPDATED AGAIN***
I *know* y'all are just on the edge of your seats! LOL. It's 10:55 p.m., and I'm down to 30 pages, but just realized I need to add at least three new pages! Baby killin' continues after church tomorrow!!

***END UPDATE AGAIN***

***UPDATED***

Woo hoo! At 6:30 p.m., I've got 100-plus pages from three different pieces crammed, reduced, rewritten and sloughed into 38 pages, for the book chapter. The goal is 25. Got to start killin' babies now. On paper with a red pen, since it has come up a cloud and I reckon I need to shut down this 'puter.

Oh! Looky what I found while lookin' for something else: Famous Bugle Calls. Very cool. I'd never knowingly heard most of 'em, not even Boots and Saddles, which is what Libbie Custer called her biography of her famous husband, George.

***END UPDATE***

When it comes to crastinating, I've become a real pro.
A month ago, a perfessor of my acquaintance at one big regional research university, out here, who is working with another perfessor at another big regional research university, back east, invited me to submit an article for consideration as a book chapter for a book they're puttin' together.

I met the one perfessor at a conference where I persented a paper. She remembered me when this book deal came up. I was honored to be asked. I am not an academic. I am not a grad student. I do travel at the very edges of academic circles. But I am a practicing journalist (I hope to get it right some day), a mere ink-stained wretch (now with video!)

The research topic is right up my neck of the historical woods: the American Indian press. (Pictured: Alex Posey, turn-of-the-19th-century Creek journalist and poet).

That was a month ago. It's due Tuesday. I figger I better get started.

She wants 15 to 25 pages, Turabian. It's a matter of takin' about 100 pages of stuff I've already written for various and sundry projects, and rewritin' and crammin' and sloughin off a bunch of it to get it down to size.

What finally got me off my backside was this:

Yesterday, the editor of a history journal that is fixing to publish one of my articles, havin' to do with Indians and the Plains Wars and the press, e-mailed me a galley proof, with some marginalia, and she wants it back next week with a few fixes. (Pictured: He Dog, Lakota, a chief during the Plains Wars 1876-1877.)

My work is cut is out. Coffee's on. Western Channel is on, volume low, for inspiration. Wish me well and adios. I can't come up till both are in hand.

--ER