Hello Family

another picture of lyle. i love this dog. he didn't want to be in the picture so i made him......
so, thought i'd send a shout out to all me peeps. lets hear it indiana! now you utah, yeah! bring in the massachusetts! oh yeah.
ok. as nancy has indicated it is still summer here in the sonora desert, big surprise. the light is very autumn though...you know that filtered light? i'm all moved in to a little one bedroom apt in the downtown area not too far from nancy and dave and lyle. schools in full swing and alot of my time is focused on studies. when i do get free time i write songs (i picked up a used xylaphone at a thrift store, now all the songs i record have xylaphonic accompaniment), read or bike around town reading plaquards and going to local museums (inspired by sarah vowells 'assasignation vaction). the museum downtown has john dillingers arsenal and bulletproof vest. yeah, its pretty cool. he and his crew got busted here in tucson, afterwhich dillinger escaped from prision and then was shot and killed outside of a movie theater in East Chicago. there's also a big statue in the presidio of the mormon battalion gang. i didn't know that the President, Wilson i believe, organized the battalion to appease brigham's requests for financial aid to move out west. the mormon battalion reached tucson in 1846 and after a short time in San Diego returned to Utah. alot of them were then sent back to arizona to settle in towns like young, snowflake, and thatcher, the latter being the death place of great great great grandfather James Monroe Moody who died in 1886. small world, or more like small west. i'm planning a trip out to see GGGGrampa's grave in a couple of days, its only an hour or two to the east. JM Moody if ya'll care to know or didn't know was Grandpa pax's grandmother's (Urilda Pool) father. Urilda married William Reed Horizon Paxman, and they popped out William Monroe Paxman, etc. alrighty, enough geneology.
I went to philly to visit my friend sochi who is quite ill. she just moved there a couple of months ago from NYC and before that she was in Portland. anyway, she doesn't really have family to help her out and she was lonely and sounded like she was giving up, so i found a cheap ticket and flew out for a visit over labor day weekend. i kept thinking: this is so grown up of me. we had a great time and i was gaoot (that's 'happy' if your right hands drifts one position to the left on the keyboard), to see her in good spirits. we went to the mütter museum in downtown philly otherwise known as the medical oddity museum, which coincidentally is mentioned in s. vowell's recent book because they have a piece of charles guiteau's - pres. garfield's not very famous assasin - brain in a bottle AND a piece of john wilkes booth's thorasic vertebae, who is supposedly related to us through grandma paxman's side but i can't find any evidence yet, and i've been looking pretty hard. Philadelphia is a beautiful city and so is sochi (not a city though, she's a girl). i want to go back soon. i love you all!
ok bye
-chris