Well, it's about midnight on Tuesday. I tried to fly out standby but the airline said no go. I don't know why. My return ticket is for Thursday, so I have to stay until then. I have been running around Lincoln, visiting the federal courthouse.
Then Mark V and I went to the state office building so he could get 10 years of annual reports from the state tax department. He is working on a technical article on a Nebraska state tax law that exempts certain big business. Looks very good. (That's the one he wanted to show Greg Hayden.)
Tomorrow I have nothing planned. Will probably spend the day transferring my interviews to my hard drive and perhaps listening to some of them or doing a little writing.

Temp

Last night's interview took place in a thunderstorm, but still not much rain.
Interview last night was first interesting then boring. John Schulte was the only one to highlight an earthquake danger, but then shoots himself in the believability foot with conspiracy theories. His kids appear to be onto him.
He also has a reputation as a very hard worker, and has an almost-new Pergo floor in the kitchen.
This morning I ran into Lowell Fisher and he took me out for coffee. (Lowell got nationwide attention in 1991 when he went on a hunger strike for a month.) Lowell says it is so dry that Boyd will probably lose another few families. He has started feeding his cows hay, which he usually doesn't do until November. But of course hay has to be bought and is expensive because of the drought.
Now I am doing laundry and some scanning. This afternoon I want to take pictures of Mankato. (A ghost town.)
The Metro continues to surprose me. Last night I discovered it has has no inside or dash lights and, according to the cop who pulled me over at midnight, no brake lights, either. He said I was lucky the car was white.

Might be Rosedale.
Back to Lincoln on Sunday, home Tuesday.
Tonight I interview the guy that thinks the government controls the weather, and we are in for a wild thunderstorm.
Will bring flashlight and unbrella in case I get stuck. Fortunately, he lives near a paved road.
My interview this morning had a narrow dirt driveway 6 1/2 miles long.
Metro sounds like a 747 revving for takeoff when it drives on dirt.

Rented a wreck -- a 5-year-old Metro. Drove up here yesterday. Can't type well from Zidko machine so will revise this when I get back to Lincoln.
Discovered new town today, called Rosebud.

Check out my co-author Greg's web site at the university.
http://www.cba.unl.edu/faculty/ghayden.html
A headline in the Lincoln Journal Star touts a new "fumble-proof" football.
I'm renting a car from Rent-A-Wreck this morning and driving to Boyd.

Hot, sweaty, dripping wet, out of t-shirts. Today Mark and I are going to Omaha to do research at the Omaha World Herald. I can't wait to spend some quality time in an air-conditioned car.
Nebraska of course is also having its worst drought of a long time. Grass is brown, litter overflowing from bins, streets deserted.
We went to a movie on Sunday just to get out of the heat. Something with Hugh Grant as a bachelor, reprising his role in 4 Weddings. Cute script. Forget the name of the movie.
Tuesday, 6 August 2002, 3:40 PM.
Mark V and I spent the morning doing research at the Nebraska Geological Society and the newspaper archives at the University library. I spent about $80 on materials at the geological society. After I am finished with them here I might mail them back to Fred Rogers so he can review them. He told me once that he would. There is some pretty old stuff here. One of the geological maps (and one that I paid $7 for) dates from 1960. But I suppose that the geology of Nebraska hasn't changed that much in 40 years. The water maps were much more recent and several of them look suitable for framing.

The newspaper research done through ProQuest computer searches, and then you can have individual articles e-mailed to wherever. I got about 125 articles at the rate of about 4 a minute. That was pretty cool. And free. Now I have to read them and catalogue them.

Tonight Hally has invited Mark and I over for dinner.

I ate dinner with Mark and Hally at her place, and then Mark took off for about half an hour so I could interview her on tribal dance. (Mark is thinking of doing this as a quicker and more commercial product after he finishes the Schuyler film.)

Tomorrow I am picking up a car first thing in the morning, and driving up to Boyd County. Four and a half hours, with my usual stops:
Seward: Wal-Mart
Schuyler: Barb & Jack Pokorny, Patrick Rea
Norfolk: Wal-Mart
O'Neil: McDonald's

If any of you have an atlas or a map of Nebraska, note that from Schuyler I go straight north on a secondary road as far as Pilger, and then take a left. The "Birthplace of Johnny Carson" sign is right outside the Norfolk city limits.

In Butte County I will be interviewing several people that are important and dignified, including the former mayor of Butte, the Butte town historian, and several people that have made important contributions to the waste dump fight one way or the other. But I am most interested in interviewing John Schulte. Mr. Schulte thinks that the U.S. army controls the weather, and is forever sticking iron rods in the ground to prove it. He knows there are mysterious waves and ionization that he can't see. I understand how he feels, because sitting in Mark's apartment, I can make Public Radio from Omaha go on and off by just how I move around the room. (It is a week signal.) Despite Schulte's odd obsessions, he is the exact opposite of a loner/survivalist. Gregarious, friendly and popular, he shows up to every city council meeting to demand that someone do something about the weather. The city council responded by including him in every agenda and advertising him in the tourist brochures as an attraction for "conspiracy buffs." Then he goes to the bar and complains there. Craig Zeisler says that, when Schulte starts to make sense, the bartender calls time, and everybody goes home.

THIS POST IS UNFINISHED.

Met with Greg this afternoon. Almost missed him because we were supposed to meet at Subway and then talk in the Student Union, and I didn't realize that there was a Subway in the Student Union, so I went to the one nearby on 13th street and then, when I realized my mistake, I was late. Greg was wearing dress pants, a white shirt, a tie, suspenders, and a straw hat. I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt.
We talked for a while, then went back to Mark's apartment to pick up some documents I had borrowed.
Well, unfortunately Mark didn't expect me back for several hours and had decided to take a bath. I unlocked the door with the key and flung it open, and Greg and I got a brief glimpse of a naked man streaking to the bathroom. (Mark quickly put on shorts and came back out to say hello.) Mark had been planning to ask Greg to co-author an article with him, for which he had already done the research and most of the writing. But, as he described the article to Greg, he faltered a couple of times and Greg was non-committal. After Greg had left, Mark confided to me that all he could imagine was Greg thinking "must humor the naked man."
Hally came home today. Hally is Mark's girlfriend. She had been attending a Tribal Dance conference and workshop in Portland, Oregon. Hally is nearly as tall as Mark (who is 6'3"), and has a large bone structure. She works during the day organizing cleaning crews and cleaning homes, and spends her spare time dancing. She is very strong. Well, I didn't realize how strong she was until she grabbed me to give me a kiss, and picked me up about 4 inches off the floor. I felt about as big as a Westie. (West Highland White Terrier.)
I didn't tell Hally about Mark's streaking.