I’ll keep it short and sweet: Grandpa’s Letters is now officially under contract with the University of Nevada Press! My editor anticipates that it will be released sometime during the Fall 2027 book release cycle. The book is more or less finished, but I will have a month and change to tweak the manuscript and get my author paperwork in order.
The path to publication for this particular book was not always easy, but I have to express my deepest thanks to my agent Barbara for sticking with me throughout the process. And while I still have a few weeks to agonize over my acknowledgements section, I would not have gotten to this point without the support and encouragement of my family. JoAnna, Clementine, Mom, Dad, Dave, and of course Scruffy . . . thank you for all that you do.
Finally, this book would not exist without the many readers who originally took an interest in the Grandpa’s Letters blog. Thanks to A.I., pretty much anyone can be a writer these days . . . however, being read is a privilege, and it is one that I do not take for granted. Thank you for joining me—and Elmer—on this journey.
Anyway, a year and a half sounds like a long while, but it takes time for a publisher to craft a beautiful book. I’m also going to need all the time I can spare over the next few months to give this book the sort of roll-out I think it deserves. I probably won’t have much to say about it for the rest of this year, but 2027 is going to be very exciting.
Back in late 2023, I did an interview for a documentary on the Pony Express. The producers flew me out to Denver, where I spent a day in a nice, woodsy house talking about the legendary (if short-lived) transcontinental horse-powered mail route. It was a fun experience.
Over the next couple of years, I would check online every couple of months to see if the documentary actually came out. It was going to air on the INSP Network, but I don’t have cable so I figured I would catch it sometime later. Every time I searched for my name on IMDB, though, I did not find anything new under my existing listing.
So today, I was surfing through my LG streaming channels in search of the Rose Bowl broadcast. I did not find it, but apparently we do have a number of cable channels at our disposal. When I came across INSP, I figured I would search again. And as it turns out . . . the documentary was released nearly two years ago! But while the other historians and I spent several minutes talking on camera, none of us were listed in the end credits, which . . . I don’t know . . . is that normal industry practice, or just a weird oversight?
Well, anyway, not only did it already air, but the documentary is now on Amazon Prime. You can also rent it for a few bucks if you don’t already have a Prime membership. In any event, I watched it this afternoon, and the filmmakers did a great job with it.
I was undecided until, well, this afternoon on what kind of post to make for New Year’s Eve. Should I do a retrospective for 2025? Should I predict weird stuff for 2026? Should I just shamelessly promote myself, or talk about my dog dying, or brag about us going to Iceland?
Hmmm . . . why not all of the above?
Here are 25 thoughts, in no particular order, about the past year as well as the year to come. I wrote this in a rush, so . . . hopefully it all makes sense!
(#1) 2025 was . . . sad. This year we lost JoAnna’s Great Aunt Margaret (who for me had become a surrogate West Coast aunt) and our miniature poodle, Eddie. We had Eddie for over 13 years, which is close to a third of my life, so to say we miss him is an understatement. However, sometimes I will feel him in the room with us, hanging out and watching our front yard for predators and mail carriers, only this time he can fly so watch out.
(#2)2025 was . . . adventurous. This past summer we spent two weeks touring Iceland, another week in Newfoundland, and several days in Denmark. We also took a Spring Break trip to London and Paris using some of our accumulated AmEx points, and in May we visited Denali National Park in Alaska. In terms of solo travel, I went to E11 in Utah for the second time. Although a severe dust storm forced us to flee leave earlier than we wanted, the experience solidified my desire to make it an annual tradition. By the end of the summer we were a bit traveled out, though, so for the last few months we’ve been enjoying some extended time at home.
(#3)2025 was . . . professionally discouraging. This past year sounded the death knoll for the HUX MA Program. Although I have high hopes for reinventing it at a different institution, it’s been difficult to reconcile myself to its impending closure, especially after all of the work I put into starting it.
(#4)2025 was about . . . improving myself. On a perhaps related note, I was diagnosed with depression earlier this year. My counseling training has given me the ability to see depression in other people, but I had a hard time realizing that I was suffering from it myself. Medication, exercise, and a series of projects have made things significantly better, but I am going into 2026 with the recognition that neither physical nor mental wellness can be taken for granted.
(#5)2025 was about . . . improving my surroundings. My depression diagnosis was a surprise, but my ADHD diagnosis last year was not. Still, though, this past year has forced me to revisit those things that help me—as well as those things that do not help me—cope with it. One of the nice things about this process was realizing that a lot of my academic shortcomings during my childhood were a direct result of my ADHD, as well as understanding the role that hyperfocus plays in my day to day life. But there are many things that I can still improve upon, and so this last year has been an exercise in searching for and implementing new tools to help me better organize (and live) my life. This is a work in progress, obviously, but when I look back on this year I see a lot of progress in my work.
(#6)2025 was about . . . my daughter. As it turns out, Clementine has ADHD, too. So in addition to figuring out how to better navigate my own path, I am also relearning how to help my kid navigate hers. While this has not been the easiest journey for our family, I do not doubt its outcome. Our love will see us through.
(#7) 2025 was about . . . longevity. JoAnna and I celebrated our ten year anniversary last March. Time flies when you’re having fun!
(#8)2026 will be . . . a change year. Stay tuned . . . hopefully the changes will be (mostly) good.
If you don’t know much about ADHD, here is your chance to change that!
(#9)Things I am looking forward to in 2026: Finishing and traveling around in the pop-up camper. Going on a Nile River cruise with my mom in March. Visiting my 50th state (North Dakota) in April. Watching Season 5 of For All Mankind. Taking a long summer road trip (possibly cross-country) and spending a week or two in Saint Louis. Starting work on our upstairs renovation. Going on the job market.
All sorts of things.
(#10) Things I am NOT looking forward to in 2026: Relentless political ads and an endless barrage of text messages asking for money. Economic and political uncertainty. Forcing my kid to learn her multiplication tables. A hotter and longer summer. Having to wait until at least 2027 for Season 2 of Pluribus. Going on the job market.
Stuff like that.
(#11) My “Capital R” New Year’s Resolution for 2026: To read one fun book each week. I’m sure I am not alone in saying that Academia has mostly killed my desire to read for fun. After all, when reading is work, and when work is reading, then reading for pleasure tends to take a backseat to less intellectually stimulating activities. However, as I begin writing again, I also want to begin embracing writing as a craft again, as opposed to something that checks off a professional box. But writing from a place of enjoyment requires being able to also read from a place of enjoyment. So, throughout the coming year, I want to read 52 “fun” books that have absolutely nothing to do with work. I don’t think I have ever challenged myself to do something like this before, at least since Summer Reading when I was a kid.
While I already have a sizeable backlog of books that I’m planning on reading, if there is a book that you think absolutely needs to be on my list, then please let me know. BUT: you can only recommend ONE book, so be sure that you can vouch 100% for whatever you decide to suggest . . . 🙂
(#12) My “I need to have at least one good health habit resolution” resolution: To start going to the gym at least three times a week AND/OR get back into jogging. I have already had both of these habits at one point or another, but over the past few years I have let professional concerns (and, well, some lethargic depression) disrupt them. The easiest way to do the former is to hit the gym after I drop Clementine off at school, so I plan to resume this habit next week when she returns. However, our neighborhood park has a new concrete walkway that weaves around its outer perimeter, and I am excited to find out how many laps I would need to do on it to train for a 5k.
(#13) Random thoughts about the past (and the future): I miss the old AM Coast to Coast show with Art Bell. When I was a teenager, I would stay up several hours past midnight on New Years in order to listen to people calling up the show with strange predictions about the future. Does anyone out there still do this? There’s a strange, perhaps even harrowing, intimacy to listening to cranks, truckers, and insomniacs call late-night talk shows with their own pet theories about life, the universe, and everything else.
(#14) My favorite movie from 2025:Sinners. It’s phenomenal on so many levels . . . definitely worth watching.
(#15) My favorite movie from 2025 (runner-up):Rental Family
(#16) My favorite movie that I won’t admit to most people is my favorite movie of 2025, but it may very well actually be my favorite movie of the year:The Naked Gun.
Rental Family is one of my favorite movies of 2025 . . . Fraser is a tour de force.
(#17) A Brief Story about the Most Inaccurate History Book of all Time: When I was a teenager, my mom worked at the Booksource in Saint Louis. As a book wholesaler, she had access to thousands of unsold books whose front covers were stripped in order to facilitate their return to the publisher. I got all sorts of “free” books this way.
One of those stripped books was Prophecies for the End of Time, by Shawn Robbins. When I was a kid I was really into books about Nostradamus and other weird stuff (like listening to Art Bell at 2 in the morning on New Year’s), so my mom correctly assumed that I would be interested in it. I remember reading this book, which the author alleged at one point would be the “Bible of the Future,” with rapt attention. For instance, Robbins claimed in 2001 that Puerto Rico would become a state and that surgeons would use pig hearts for the first time to save human lives.
That’s it. Nothing else. She made no other predictions for 2001.
Anyway, at that time I thought it was pretty cool, but in 1999 I went off to college and subsequently forgot about it while I was immersed in reading actual history at Southeast Missouri State University.
Well, I’ve nevertheless wondered about the book a few times in the intervening years, and earlier this year I decided that I would try to find it. And my friends, once I did . . . it did not disappoint.
Here’s a scanned image of the author’s predictions for 2024 and 2025. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether you should take its predictions for 2028 and 2030 on the following page seriously:
A scanned page from Prophecies for the End of the World, by Shawn Robbins. Surprisingly, she was way off base.
One other thing I’ll add: the original book apparently contained a yellow envelope so that readers could send $20 to the author for a personal astrology reading. The copy I bought on eBay did not include it, so hopefully the original buyer threw it in the trash.
(#18) A Brief Lesson Learned (and One that I Clearly Ignored) from the Most Inaccurate History Book of all Time: I received my reader reports for Grandpa’s Letters last year, but I could . . . not . . . muster . . . the wherewithal . . . to finish the necessary edits.
One of my more typical ADHD proclivities is to try to avoid work that I believe will be less than perfect in execution. Books are solidly in that category, and I would not have submitted Never Caught Twice to my editor had it not been at my dissertation advisor’s urging. This time, though, the credit belongs to my wife—and to a certain book of prophecies from the 90s. After all, mistakes and inaccuracies are inevitable in any history book . . . it’s par for the course. When you’re dealing with thousands of facts and documents, it’s virtually impossible to error check them all. That being said, though, there is no way that Grandpa’s Letters will be even remotely as inaccurate as this book of prophecies, which still somehow saw the light of day from the inside of a bookstore. It’s a small comfort, but it was enough for me to hit “Send” on my email to my editor with my revisions attached.
Anyway . . . without further ado, here are my own predictions for 2026. Hopefully I won’t look quite as stupid a year from now.
(#19) Prediction #1:The Democrats will win the House and the Senate in November. Most pundits are predicting this. Historical midterm data suggests that a “Blue Wave” is all but preordained. However, the margin of victory is less certain, and to that end I think the Dems will win closer to 30 than 3 seats.
That being said, surprises do happen, so it’s more important than ever that we all show up and vote this coming November.
(#20) Prediction #2: At least one California State University (CSU) campus will announce plans for closure. It makes me sad to write this, but the CSU system is not in good shape right now. As some of my colleagues have told me privately, “It is going to get worse before it gets better.”
(#21) Prediction #3: Scientists will find a cure for Alzheimer’s. Perhaps this one is more wishful thinking (and speedy FDA approvals) than anything, but recent studies seem to suggest that a cure might be on the horizon for one of humanity’s most confounding, and bleak, diseases.
(#22) Prediction #4: The Cleveland Browns will make the NFL playoffs this year. Just a gut feeling . . . I really like Shadeur Sanders and his progression over the past few weeks. Giving Sanders an offseason training regimen with first team reps plus a draft-augmented Offensive Line will do wonders for this team. But then again, these are the Browns . . . no one will be less surprised about me being wrong than I.
(#23) Big things are coming in 2026! (Self-Promotion #1): I’ll conclude this list of 25 “2025 thoughts” (and hurry up with writing this so that I can join my family for the midnight countdown) with a reminder to stay tuned for updates about Grandpa’s Letters! It’s probably a little late to get it released in 2026, but I hope it will land on bookshelves sometime during the first half of 2027. Fingers crossed!
(#24) Big things are coming in 2026! (Self-Promotion #2): I finally have a project in mind for my Grandmother’s Letters . . they will be coming soon to a brand-new Substack account! I hope to launch it this spring. Stay tuned . . .
(#25) Big things are coming in 2026! (Self-Promotion #3): Last but not least, my writing goals for 2025 include sitting down and finally churning out a script for Earthshaking, which is the story of Iben Browning’s infamous 1990 earthquake prediction in Missouri. But don’t be surprised if it ends up being a podcast instead of a documentary . . . time will tell.
OK . . . finishing just under the wire here . . . thanks as always for reading, and of course, have a Happy Ney New Year!
Twas the night before Christmas, and all across the yard . . . The dead leaves were stirring, for the wind blew quite hard. Our pop-up camper was safely packed away, Its contours shone dimly in the wet driveway.
While inside the house our family stayed dry, Watching old movies as Christmas drew nigh. Our daughter stayed up as late as she could. Will she ever get tired? Her parents wished that she would.
Once bedtime finally tucked her away, The work of stocking stuffing prolonged our day. The lion’s share of gifties went straight to the kid, And I swear, she got more than I ever did!
Then Jo went to bed as I stayed up later, Which has been the norm since I started to date her. Yet now I had still one more present to wrap, Not that we needed to get any more crap.
The package arrived just a few hours before, Since Macy’s didn’t stock this gift in their store. It was a small houndstooth London Fog duffel, And I hoped that the styling wouldn’t cause a kerfuffle.
My main consideration in choosing this was size, Though a 70% discount made it an attainable prize. This bag could hold two days of clothes with no sweat, Plus a few other things, so she’d be all set . . .
But the best part was that it fit just like a glove Into our camper’s bedside cabinet, plus a USB Hub, a small hamper, and a comparable bag for myself. All four will nest together with the aid of a shelf.
My thinking was simple: before we’d depart, We’d pack the bags full and then fly like a dart. While camping our luggage would live in its space, So we wouldn’t scatter clothes all over the place.
The pop-up is small, thus there’s no room to spare. But a pair of these bags could squeeze under a chair. I hoped she’d agree they were a solid investment. We don’t want our camper to look like a tenement.
I dropped hers into an oversized bag, fluffed tissue on top and completed the tag. While the package was small, the gift loomed conspicuously, Making its neighbors look comparatively tiny.
But just then I heard the pitter-patter of feet, and an expression of claws at a pretissimo beat. Startled, my brain wandered up to our roof, where I imagined the clomping of a reindeer hoof.
Our Christmas tree was to the right of our chimney, It was perhaps just big enough for a sliding Santa shimmy. But we weren’t using it cause we had to clean the flue. If Santa asphyxiated in our fireplace, then what would we do?
The horror of the thought gave me quite the fright. I imagined doing police interviews all through the night. Would they blame it on neglect? Would they not see the irony? Also, did Santa have diplomatic immunity?
Then I came to my senses as our shih-tzu appeared, coming to see if our dinner crumbs were cleared. Still I looked out the window and, I have to say, The outline of the pop-up looked a bit like a sleigh.
As for my own gift, it was a season of fun: The pop-up was my Red Ryder BB Gun. Of the restoration’s outcome I had no doubt, Though I’ve already almost shot my own eye out.
But my real gift was going to be time with the gang, A reason to camp and a nice place to hang. Cause despite our exertions, when push comes to shove, The most important part of a pop-up . . . is love.
Apologies again for yet another long absence from this space. Work, family, and travel are all keeping me busy, and as the to-do lists grow the need to update the blog falls further and further down the priority queue. Nonetheless, it is my Grandpa Luckett’s birthday today (he would be 104 years old), so it would be a shame to pass up the opportunity to wish him a happy heavenly birthday!
In any case, as long as I am here, I might as well update you on some of the things happening in my personal and professional life, and hopefully soon I can get my act together and begin elaborating on some of these things:
Grandpa’s Letters update: Good news . . . we have a publisher lined up for Grandpa’s Letters! Last fall I received peer reviews for the manuscript, and my goal is to get my edits done by Memorial Day. I don’t know if it will come out next year at this point, but if the edits are accepted and the contract is finalized then it will probably be approximately a year or so before the book becomes available. More information when it’s ready, but I am looking forward to sharing the final product with the world!
Other writing and research projects: I have not been consistently updating my blog, but that doesn’t mean I am not writing. I have been working on some other things as well, including two journal articles and a book chapter for an upcoming prison education collection. I have already submitted drafts for two of those items, and the third should be finished this summer.
I am also collecting research materials and reading foundational literature for my next scholarly book project, which will explore the cultural history of punishment in Hawaii. As with my approach to horse stealing in Never Caught Twice, I like to tell chronologically sweeping stories: this book will cover the history of punishment on the islands from Polynesian settlement up through the recent reboot of Hawaii 5-0. I’ve been working on this since last summer, when I presented a paper on Queen Liliuokalani’s famous Iolani Palace quilt and its place within the praxis of carceral education at the Pacific Coast Branch meeting of the American Historical Association in Honolulu. I don’t have a timeline for completing it, but I am excited to continue working on it.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit that part of the reason why I wanted to focus on Hawaii for my next book is that my family and I enjoy spending time there, but overall it is an appropriate area to combine some of my passions: prison education, cultural and legal history, my family’s attachment to Pearl Harbor and the community we share with other survivor families, and getting a sense of place when I write about something. I felt like I successfully accomplished the latter when I wrote about Nebraska, and I want to replicate that experience with Hawaii.
HUX Program: This probably warrants a separate post, but I have some good news/bad news about the HUX Program.
Let’s start with the bad: due to our university’s budget struggles and my program’s higher-than-average staffing requirements, we have decided to close the program after teaching out our remaining students. This was an incredibly difficult decision for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that as the inheritor of a program that’s over five decades old I am in the strange and sad position of closing it down a second (and most assuredly final) time. This fantastic program, which has functionally been a stand-alone department since its inception in 1974, has graduated over 5,700 students over the years. Moreover, the newest iteration of HUX—the prison education program—will graduate as many as 18 students by this summer. It has a deep, rich legacy that long predates my tenure as program director, and I wish that there was a scenario in which we could realistically keep it at CSUDH.
Well, that was pretty bleak . . . but there is light at the end of the tunnel. The good news is that the administration and I are working together to try to find a new institutional partner for some version of HUX, which I hope will not only continue to operate as a Humanities MA degree, but will help it grow and evolve in other ways that make humanities graduate education more vibrant, desirable, necessary, and urgent. In my mind, 2025 is nothing if not an indictment of the myopic mind . . . K-12 students and adult learners alike need to learn critical thinking, information literacy, civics, and a host of other soft skills that the humanities have historically excelled in teaching. Although I am passionate about prison education for its own sake, my ulterior motive is to help make my carceral classrooms a proving ground for what intelligent, capable, efficacious, and empowered students can accomplish under even the most stark of circumstances. Once these students show the world what they can do, I hope that the world will take notice of what they learned to get to that point.
Besides relocating the program, I am also hard at work doing something that I probably should have been doing a better job of all along: fundraising and finding scholarship opportunities for my students. When we relaunch the HUX program (or when someone else comes along to offer their own MA), I intend for every student to have access to a larger funding ecosystem that does not rely on one basket of money or another. I’ve already laid some of the groundwork, and there will definitely be opportunities for readers to contribute to this effort! More information will be posted here when it becomes available. But for now, please keep it in the back of your mind, and remember that 100,000 people donating ten dollars apiece raises the exact same amount of money as one person writing a check for a million bucks.
The MFT Program: I am almost done with my counseling degree! It has taken me twice as long as everyone else in my original cohort, but pursuing one graduate degree while running a graduate program elsewhere is no easy task. In terms of how I am going to use it, well . . . I already am! Counseling has given me much deeper insight into some of the problems my students face, both before and since their incarceration, and it provides perspective and training on how trauma-informed education can transform outcomes for our students. Some of my recent (yet to be published) scholarly work on prison education pedagogy reflects this new positioning.
Although I am not considering a path towards licensure as a therapist at this particular time, I have recently begun training for and learning about the world of professional mediation. In many ways, this path echoes and builds on the work I have already been doing for years as both a historian and as a prison education program director. However, the addition of my counseling background combines my penchant for systems thinking and creative problem solving with a therapist’s ability (as one of my professors at CSU East Bay would say) to “enter [the] client’s world.” To that end, I recently completed my training to become an officially licensed mediator in California, and this fall I will be teaching a course for the Negotiation, Conflict Resolution, and Peacekeeping (NCRP) program at CSUDH. Even though we academics are living in increasingly uncertain times, I hope that between my writing, my prison education work, and my growing experience in conflict resolution and mediation, I will be able to evolve and adapt as needed.
Travel updates: It has been a very busy travel year so far for the Luckett-Wall Clan! In April we visited London and Paris for spring break, and this week we just got back from a brief trip to Fairbanks, Alaska and Denali National Park (my forty-ninth state . . . look out, North Dakota, I’m saving the best for last!). We booked both trips using airline miles (I use The Points Guy and The Thrifty Traveler to get updates on credit card offers, conversion opportunities, etc. . . . pro-tip: if you have to pay for your own tuition for grad school, you can open a new card, charge your tuition to it, collect the bonus points, pay off the card, and then fly your family of three roundtrip to Alaska during the offseason for next to nothing 😁). Later this summer, we will be traveling to Newfoundland for a wedding, and in July we will be driving the Golden Circle around Iceland with the grandparents!
Anyway, they say the best part about traveling is going home, and that definitely rings true for us. We are very privileged and fortunate to be able to have so many adventures, but it is always lovely to come back home and see how excited our dogs are to see us. 🥰
Thanks for indulging me on this long, overdue post . . . and Happy Birthday, Grandpa! I will have some cookies in your honor.
Scruffy and Eddie, snuggling after a long day of doing nothing.
I’m sorry for not being more active on this space . . . it’s something I am working to rectify as my new program direction duties become a little less chaotic and my attention starts to swing back towards research and writing. So instead of promising to write things and not doing it, I am writing things and hoping to release them in multiple posts later on. My first series should be ready soon. A lot of my writing is going to cover prison education, the humanities, and graduate education in general, but I do plan on doing some “grandparent” stuff as well. Stay tuned!
In the meantime, I wanted to let you all know about Toro Giving Day. My university, California State University Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), is one of the highest-ranked schools in the United States for social mobility. One of the best (and possibly few remaining) values for a student’s tuition buck these days, CSUDH offers a wide range of programs, from business and STEM majors to theater and history. The school itself was founded during the aftermath of the devastating Watts Riots, and ever since the school and its community have been hard at work educating waves of first-generation college students and creating opportunities and wealth in one of the Los Angeles basin’s most historically neglected regions.
Although I no longer live anywhere near campus (I moved to Sacramento six years ago), I still visit often, and I try to keep abreast of all that is happening down there. It gives me great pride to be a part of this community and to share in the University’s important mission.
CSUDH Homecoming Celebration.
Unfortunately, while schools like CSUDH offer a better value (and an extremely comparable education) for students when compared to almost all of the more expensive private schools, it is also far more susceptible to variations in the state budget. One of the sad ironies facing state colleges over the past few decades is that they have survived despite declining state support and rising tuition costs, while more prestigious schools like Stanford and UCLA (which, admittedly, I attended for my PhD) raise hundreds of millions of dollars for capital investments and donor-specific causes. As a result, CSUDH’s endowment is woefully inadequate to the University’s – and its students’ – needs, and with the looming budget shortfall in the State of California is seems likely that the people most likely to suffer are the students, faculty, and staff whose hard work is critical to making CSUDH such an amazing place. You can learn more about what our Toro friends are doing here: https://www.csudh.edu/.
Toro Giving Day offers us an opportunity to balance the equation just a little bit by supporting this dynamic and vital academic community. I often hear from my former students there, and they are doing all sorts of incredible things: practicing law, teaching, starting businesses, and even serving in state and local government. CSUDH is one of the reasons for their success, just as I would be ill-equipped to do what I am doing today if not for my baccalaureate education at Southeast Missouri State University.
Students completing their work inside a prison. Image courtesy of CDCR.
One last plug:if you feel the urge, you can ask that your money be donated directly to my program, HUX. In the “If you would like to specify your gift designation other than the Toro Fund, please list below” box, type “Humanities External (HUX) Program (8410).”
The HUX program has long been the only graduate program of its kind for helping incarcerated students build better lives for themselves and their families. To facilitate our mission of empowering system-impacted learners through a Master of Arts degree in the humanities, we have built partnerships with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and other private and public organizations in hopes of ensuring the program’s long-term success. After completing our program reboot last year, we began admitting students in Fall 2023, and we are preparing to admit our next cohort for the coming year.
Although our students are currently receiving support from other sources to cover their tuition, they (and we) still have many unmet needs. Specifically, any donations made to the program will go to support future student scholarships and grants, books and reference materials (such as college dictionaries) for prison libraries, digital resources and subscriptions, emergency grants for students, and other items. All donations are tax-deductible.
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book? It took me years to write, will you take a look?
“Paperback Writer,” The Beatles (but also me)
Hi all,
It’s been a busy couple of months! For one thing, a couple of weeks ago we moved from our two-acre horse property in Orangevale to a brick Tudor in Sacramento. It was the right move for our family, as it puts us closer to my wife’s work, my kid’s school, and Kings games downtown (for me). We loved hearing the roosters crow every morning and we are going to dearly miss our old house, but we wanted to split the difference between our lives there and the lives we had back in West Los Angeles. Our new home is a perfect compromise: it’s a spacious house with a yard big enough for gardening and other projects, but close enough to rapid transit and other amenities that we can hear the train crossing bells from our backyard.
Anyway, I apologize for not posting any more photo essays (hopefully I can put a couple more together at some point), but fortunately I may have as many as three or four big announcements to make over the next few weeks. There are lots of good things happening with respect to my projects, and I’m excited to let you all know where things stand with them.
So, without further ado, here is the first: Never Caught Twice: Horse Stealing in Western Nebraska is now out on paperback! This is exceptionally good news, since it means that 1) my book is now much more affordable, and 2) it is now a permanent part of the University of Nebraska Press’s back catalog. A lot of academic titles never make it to paperback, let alone within two years, and since it was released in November 2020 I had to forego all of the in-person marketing events and signings one usually does with a new book. Anyhow, I guess what I am trying to say is . . . THANK YOU! I am so grateful to you all for your support and for helping Never Caught Twice get to this point.
You can purchase the paperback edition at Amazon or at the University of Nebraska Press website (HINT: the promo code 6WHA22 should be good through at least the end of the day today for a 40% discount). You can also order it from your favorite neighborhood bookstore. Alternatively, if you are a bookstore owner in California or within a few hours drive of Denver, Omaha, or St. Louis, then please get in touch with me if you’d be interested in me coming to you for a signing event. Finally, if you already own a copy and you’re sick of reading posts about it, please take a couple of minutes and leave a review on Amazon, Google, Goodreads, or your book review site of choice. The more reviews I have, the more heavy lifting they do in terms of promoting both my already-released work and forthcoming books.
Thanks again for all your support over the last couple of years, and for your patience regarding the blog. But stay tuned . . . there’s more good news to come, and maybe some more Beatles-inspired blog post names as well.
I clearly enjoy writing a lot, but I love doing photography. Although I still have much to learn about the technical side of taking a good photograph, I think I have some of the fundamentals down: proper framing and staging, the rule of thirds, optimizing light and other conditions, and most important knowing that sometimes the most mundane scenes can lead to the most incredible photographs. One of my favorite side projects while doing book research is taking photographs along the way—not just of archival documents and historical sites, but of everything else I see during my travels.
Unfortunately, of the half dozen or so photographs I submitted to be included in the book, none of them appear in color. I was told that the production price of printing them in glossy color would be too exorbitant, and frankly I am OK with that . . . cost pressures dictate a lot of decisions made in publishing, and I am not here to complain about the give-and-take of the publication process. However, it would be nice to send these photographs out there in their natural, colorful state, and perhaps include some other pictures I took while researching Never Caught Twice. Western Nebraska is a visually arresting place, and its landscape is full of contradictions.
In honor of Never Caught Twice’s paperback release on December 1st this year, I am going to post a series of photo essays each week on my blog in order to promote the book and show readers what the pictures in the book look like when displayed in full color. I will talk a little bit about the places I shot, how the photographs fit into the story, and what happened on some of those adventures through the Nebraska Panhandle.
Look out a week from today for the first essay. In the meantime, if you have not already purchased a copy of Never Caught Twice, you can now pre-order a paperback copy by visiting the University of Nebraska Press website: https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496205148/
In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve started posting again. One of my goals has always been to find some way to put all of my grandpa’s letters on here so that they can be publicly available. Since I’ve been busy writing elsewhere lately for school, work, and my book project, I decided that I might as well start posting the letters here, one after another. With that in mind, I have started posting these letters exactly 80 years after they were written.
This letter is exactly 80 years old today . . .
At some point I will have to backtrack and post all of the letters that predate March 1, 1942, but that’s a problem for a different day. In the meantime, I will simply post scanned pictures of each letter, along with an audio recording in which I read the contents of that letter. For a variety of reasons I want to avoid having to transcribe them all, at least for the time being, but since I want these letters to be accessible to anyone who is unable to read them I am also including the audio narration below each letter. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to to enhance their accessibility.
I have also made some changes and updates to the website. For instance, I took out the “Teaching” section and replaced it with a “Media” section in order to highlight some of the reviews I’ve received and interviews I’d done for Never Caught Twice. I’ll try to keep this site up to date. Meanwhile, if you are a student, you can contact me via the “Contact” form on my page or via my institutional email (hint: it is in your syllabus 😉).
I also removed all of the previous Grandpa’s Letters blog posts. I did not do this out of meanness or insecurity, but rather because I have started the process of marketing my manuscript to publishers and I don’t want my old posts to suggest that my book is merely a physical instantiation of my blog, which of course it is not. But even so, I have made a lot of updates, additions, corrections, and other changes to my previous drafts . . . I would much prefer that everyone read the book when it comes out and, as my grandpa would say, “get the straight dope,” rather than pinball back and forth through an arcade of outdated posts. I appreciate everyone’s interest in these month-to-month installments, which were instrumental in establishing this blog and spreading interest in my grandfather’s story. However, it is time to turn my attention away from the old blog and back toward putting these letters out there so that anyone, anywhere can access them.
I hope to have some announcements in the not-to-distant future about the book, its progress, and its destination. Exciting things are happening on that front. In the meantime, I hope that you enjoy reading my grandpa’s actual letters—the straight, straight dope, one might say—and that you and all your friends and loved ones are safe in these uncertain times. And since it would be weird to write a big blog post without any kind of picture, here’s a shot of my Eva’s Pride peach tree budding. I planted a small orchard over the winter, and this little guy is the first to emerge from dormancy. Come by in five years if you want plenty of fresh fruit!
Anyway, take care, stay tuned . . . and Slava Ukraini!
Hi folks, Today has been a busy day on my end. I’ve had a final exam to complete, urgent work matters to sort through, and a child who really wanted Winter Wonderland pancakes from IHOP this morning. I only have a few minutes to write this, at nearly 6pm in the evening, before I have to attend to other matters.
Although this day is mundane in its hustle and bustle, it is certainly no ordinary day. Eighty years ago, on the morning of December 7th, 1941, a Japanese attack on the United States forces at Pearl Harbor catapulted America into World War II and changed our nation’s history forever. As you know from this blog and my book-in-progress, it is a story I hope to continue telling to the world, thanks to my grandfather Elmer K. Luckett’s testimony, interviews, and letters.
A few years ago I had hoped that my book would be out now. Unfortunately, the pandemic had other plans, and I still have yet to obtain various documents I need to finish it (some of those archival centers remain closed). But the pandemic did something else, too: it stacked a new heap of history on top of the old. September 11th now seems almost as remote at the Kennedy Assassination, and Pearl Harbor might as well be the start of the Civil War for some of today’s kids. My book’s job, and this blog’s, is to help preserve and echo that history across time and generations.
But today is not that day. There are still Pearl Harbor survivors out there, living their best lives and perfectly willing and able to tell their stories. So let’s listen to them and thank them for their service and sacrifice.
Thanks as always for reading, and I will be in touch soon.
Hi folks, I just wanted to post a quick announcement about some wonderful news I received last week:
Never Caught Twice is a 2021 Nebraska Book Award winner for Nebraska History! Thank you to the Nebraska Center for the Book for considering my work and to the University of Nebraska Press for submitting it! I will be joining the other winners in Lincoln, Nebraska next month to accept the award, sign copies of Never Caught Twice, and celebrate the Cornhusker State’s deep and ever-expanding literary heritage! Incidentally, this will be my first in-person book event since my manuscript’s publication nearly a year ago . . . because of COVID-19, I have not been able to do any of the traditional book release activities (e.g., book signings and launch parties). While I am obviously excited to finally have the opportunity to participate in a non-virtual book event, I am thrilled that the reason for this particular event is to accept a book award in one of my favorite cities with several other amazing authors!
Hi folks, I apologize for being so negligent over these past few months in writing or contributing to this blog. It’s been an interesting few months here in Orangevale, and for all of us I suppose. What’s up with you all? Well, on my end, let’s see . . . I built a fence, I lost a little weight, I was diagnosed with a hernia (the same kind my grandpa had!) and will need a surgery for it soon, I taught several classes, I took two more, I got vaccinated, and I turned 40. Clementine and I traveled to St. Louis for the first time in over a year, which was nice (my dad hadn’t seen his granddaughter since late 2019), and I made my first trip to LA since the pandemic started. Like everyone else, the pandemic has affected me in ways that I’ve barely even begun to appreciate. It has been both disruptive and transformative, scary yet hopeful, stultifying yet revelatory. But now that my wife and I are vaccinated, we are looking forward to hopefully enjoying some semi-normalcy in the hopefully not-too-distant future.
My new fence gate.
The pandemic and the quarantines have helped guide and inspire me to make some changes, however, beginning with this: starting next fall, I will be studying for my Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy Counseling at California State University East Bay. After I finished my PhD, I swore up and down that I was done with graduate school. A terminal degree is a terminal degree, after all. But I also told myself that if I ever did decide to go back to school, it would be to get a Masters in Counseling. That way I could maximize my opportunities in higher education administration, earn a degree that immediately qualifies me for a wide range of other jobs, and perhaps one day open my own private practice.
I promised myself (and my family) that if I were to get another gradate degree, the program would have to be nearby, convenient for working adults, affordable, and well-established. CSU East Bay checks all the boxes. It isn’t exactly down the street, but with classes meeting only two days a week I can commute via Amtrak and get some work done on the train. The program itself is well-regarded, so I feel like my cohort and I are in good hands going into the fall. And it is affordable, which means . . . no student loans! But even if I did have to take some out, the degree itself would cost considerably less than the new Subaru Forester I bought a few years (and have since paid off).
Regardless of the program’s good fit, I realize it is still a big leap. Yet it makes sense. On the one hand, although I was in no rush to do this before the Pandemic, the switch to online teaching forced me to reevaluate my career trajectory. For instance, what I missed the most about teaching in a traditional setting was the impromptu, one-on-one meetings I often had with students who wanted to talk about school, history, and whatever else. Moreover, I had the creeping feeling that my teaching load in the future will continue to be, one way or another, increasingly virtual. While I am reasonably well-versed in online teaching (I’ve been teaching online for years), I am happier in a classroom. History is a narrative art, and I prefer telling my stories in person. Finally, I do not want to spend the rest of my professional career teaching courses as an adjunct. Like many other contingent faculty over the past year, I’ve come to terms with the stark realities of the tenure-track job market and the demands of tenure-line labor. Not only is it exceedingly unlikely that I will get a tenure line job, but it is even less likely that I will get one in a place that I like more than where we are in Northern California, or that I would come to enjoy working 60 hours a week for not much more money in exchange for job security. If I’m stagnating as an adjunct and no longer interested in finding a tenure-line position, then I need to reconsider my path.
On the other hand, I am genuinely excited about becoming a therapist. I’ve always wanted to hang my shingle someplace and be my own boss. I’ve always wanted to have a career in which I am able to help people, but with more impact and immediacy than what I have as an instructor. And I’ve always believed that I do a better job of helping people find their best versions of themselves than of constantly fighting the worst versions of people. That might be a controversial declaration these days, given our nation’s deep cultural, racial, economic, and political divides, but I know where my strengths lie. As a therapist and as a member of my community, I believe I can make a tangible difference helping people becoming more accepting of themselves, and therefore by extension helping them become more accepting of others.
Since it’s Memorial Day weekend, it’s also a good time to mention that one of the populations I’m most interested in working with is veterans. We have a lot of veterans in my community, many of whom do not seek treatment for one reason or another for PTSD, depression, and other issues. I’ve posted on this blog before about Give an Hour, an organization that gives veterans, disaster victims, and other at-risk persons with free counseling while simultaneously destigmatizing mental illness in the community. I’ve been happy to donate to this organization and write about it here, but I want to play a more active role in this important effort. Unlike my grandpa, dad, and brother, I never served in the military, but I hope that by doing this I will be able to offer a different kind of service to my community and country.
As I prepare to go back to school (again!) and start my 40s as a college student, I hesitate to frame this next step as a decision to “leave academia.” Like so many other contingent faculty across the country who have already left or who are in the process of leaving academia, I am wary of spending the rest of my career teaching without a true professional home, or teaching for less money and nearly no security compared to my colleagues who have the same credentials I do. However, I still do want to teach, albeit less. I want to be able to teach because I decide to teach a class or two, not because I have to teach four or five.
I also want to continue to write and create. I loved writing my first book, I am enjoying the process of writing the second one even more, and I eventually want to write enough books of my own to fill a small satchel bag. Again, though, I want to want to write. I don’t want to have to write, if that makes any sense. And if I could make those things that I like—big writing projects, small teaching loads—orbit around a new professional home, my private practice, well . . . then I’d be living the dream. In any case, it will be interesting to see how my new professional path informs my historical scholarship. Considering that I’ve already been writing quite a bit about paranoia (e.g., vigilante responses to horse thieves, collective freak-outs over prophecized Midwestern earthquakes, etc), I believe my new intellectual curiosities will remap, rather than erase, my preexisting ones in novel and hopefully interesting ways.
More to come in this space, both with respect to my research/writing and to other things happening in my world. But for now, thank you all for coming here and for reading my little blog, and take care of yourselves!
