It's official ... Amazon has the book listed ... .

... and I can hardly believe it.  I'm the author of a first book! Still, here's the cover, and the copyeditors at Hay House New York are completing their work, the photos are being selected, the book jacket in the design stage, and a release date of February 6, 2018 is the date.  It is being held for Black History Month.

This will mean, of course, a major course correction in my life -- with some changes under consideration -- after all, gotta stretch these final years in all ways possible.  Feel, sometimes, like it has needed the elasticity of a rubber band to accommodate all that I've been adding-on in this final decade.

Need to be realistic, though, life is now viewed mostly in my rear view mirror, and any sense of future has vanished.  Living with all of the turmoil of a normal life now added to by a strong and urgent  determination to continue my work with the National Park Service while needing to make room for an expanded schedule to accommodate what is now new and untested.

That work will continue to be the anchor around which all else will have to fit.

That little Berkeley store Mel and I started back in June of 1945 -- and that is still standing after all these years under the guidance of our son, David -- will host the launching of my book.  Reid's Records has been limping along for all these years -- mostly on fumes from the pride of ownership and legacy -- in a time when "records" are now back there stored with gas lanterns and the old drip coffee makers, and the awesome power of a behemoth of a mega-company, Amazon, with which to compete.  Impossible?  Nah.  Try tellin' that to David.  Some dreams take more than one generation to crush, even modest ones. For the sake of family, we're thinking of a book signing somewhere in Berkeley or Oakland.  We'll just ignore the existence of Jeff Bezos and his Amazon!  Family comes first.  (Reids Records, 3101 Sacramento Street, Berkeley, CA 94702 - 510.843.7282, email - reidsrecords@yahoo.com.)

We'll  invite Tavis,  of course, because it was he who made this book possible.  It grew out of the PBS interview a year or so ago.

After that we'll fulfill the book-signing schedule that I've agreed to in my contract with the publisher, and let whatever future is left fend for itself!