On my lunch hour yesterday, outside in the heat with my cruddy cell phone, I interviewed a musician I’ll call CB because, well, those are her initials, too. I hadn’t arranged anything ahead of time — an organization that CB is affiliated with had provided her number, so I just dialed, began talking to her answering machine, and became my own charming self when she picked up the phone.

CB was delightful, eager to talk, and happy to pass along the number of VR, another musician I had hoped to interview — in fact, the two of them had just happened to speak on the phone earlier yesterday morning. It gave me a warm feeling to know that, 60-odd years after the events on which I’m basing my story, folks who were on the scene at that time are still a part of each other’s daily lives. That I even noticed this warm feeling amid the 90-something-degree temperature outside is really saying something.

I mentioned the other day that I had a couple of projects going on right now. Well, now I’ve got only this one (codename: Toast). Now that I’m doing Toast right — by getting in touch with people who were there, by Google-mapping myself silly to get a sense of the proximity of the locations the story may include, by developing a connection between myself and the characters and places I’m writing about — I can’t imagine diverting any of my piddly mental energy to that other project until I’m finished with this one.

And so, multitasking loses another round…