Update on work weekend and other matters.

My apologies for waiting so late to brief you on the upcoming work weekend/barbeque (5-7 February) at the Vanderboegh place, but I have been increasingly struggling against weakness and pain. Here is where we are at the moment:

Thanks to generous donations that came in subsequent to David Codrea's appeal, I have arranged for local folks to fix the garage doors (done), remove and replace the back upper deck and fix the back wall (in process) and to repair the back eaves and replace the gutter in the back (next in line).

This still leaves much to do in both outside jungle removal and inside organization and packing (books and papers that I am donating to the Vanderboegh collection at the Birmingham Public Library Archives), not to mention help carrying out the logistics of feeding those folks who show up during those three days.

The weather report for that weekend is as follows:

10 day forecast for Pinson.

Bob Wright is bringing in a small crew to help with outside yard work and various small repairs (electrical and plumbing) inside jobs. Thus, I will not have room in the house to shelter anyone else, and any volunteers who come that are not local will need to make their own arrangements for shelter. I hate it, but that is the way it is. We will of course feed you while you're here. A larger group from my church will be assisting in the jungle removal and I'll have local friends who will run the pickup/trailer combinations to the dump as the cut brush is generated. Volunteers who still want to come should bring those tools necessary to remove the brush: chain saws, lobbers, etc. Of course anyone else who wants to bring an open-top trailer to facilitate brush removal is appreciated.

As I said, I'm getting weaker by the day and I have a doctor's appointment on 1 February to see if he has any strategies to counter that. But beyond shuffling around and telling folks what they should be doing, don't expect any help from me. I will have some Three Percenter gear to give to any volunteers who want it, but that and some good Alabama barbeque is all I can offer in return.

After the weekend, I will immediately put all my efforts into finishing Absolved, then polishing a couple of non-fiction manuscripts. If God gives me the time, I am still on track to travel north, first to the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot one last time and then on up to NY and CT to stick my thumb in the eye of the beast in armed civil disobedience actions there in early to mid April. We still need more freedom-fighter grade magazines for both actions. (Or I might reverse the itinerary, starting in NY and working my way back south.) Sometime in there I expect to go to Ohio and see my Mother and my oldest grandson and Matt will be coming in from Germany to spend a couple of weeks in February or March.

That's as much as I can tell you at the moment, for as they say, man proposes but God disposes. This is of course, barring a miracle (and please keep me on your prayer lists). For those of you who still intend to journey south all that way, I can only say I am grateful for such friends and look forward to seeing you all.