Dropped by to see Ed Rouse today and bring him a copy of my novel (I don’t think he will read it, but Michelle will). He had finished chopping corn, was cleaning out the barns, was fixing a tractor, had been up all night with a sick cow. Nother day at Big Valley Farm. “Where you been?” he asked. I said hanging around with him makes me very happy to be a writer. He said he wasn’t coming to the reading tonight at Northshire, but would catch me later at a local bookstore in Cambridge. Good man.