On Thursday, July 13, 2006
while the Kissers played a humid outdoor show at the rooftop garden of the Monona Terrace, Israel invaded Lebanon and the entire fucking world started marching, irrevocably, to hell.

On Wednesday, July 12, 2006
he read the following bit by Cormac McCarthy:"In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting."

On Tuesday, July 11, 2006
in a steady downpour and slept on the couch and at the end of the day, opened an unsigned letter that read "Common sense is a faith in simple explanations."

On Friday, July 07, 2006
Leonard Cohen wrote him a letter. It began:

"I think you are fools to speak French
It is a language which invites the mind
to rebel againt itself causing inflamed ideas
grotesque postures and a theoretical approach
to common body functions. It ordains the soul
in a tacky priesthood devoted to the salvation of a failed erection."

On Tuesday, July 04, 2006
he could hear the fireworks but not see them. It was like a war just over the horizon. He remembered seeing an ambulence as a kid and learned later that the rocket had taken the head off the man in charge of the fireworks. Off all the ways to go . . .

On Sunday, July 02, 2006
a lightning storm unfolded at his feet, wide across the desolate plains of South Dakota.

On Saturday, July 01, 2006
he wanted to show her the store in Butte with the antique knives and guns but it was closed. And the day was left to its mountain tours on switchback gravel roads.