Everything’s Coming Up Josey Read Online Free PDF

delete the last two lines.
    The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is tracking the population of the male gypsy moth using pheromone traps, green triangles set into trees, designed to lure the little suckers— Delete, delete— to lure the insects to their demise and calculate their decline or increase in numbers. Their findings will be reported to The Natural Resources Research Institute at the University of MN-Duluth.
    I spell-check it and hit Send before I’m tempted to add any more “editorial.” Like why their numbers should be counted, why all measures should be made to exterminate—
    I sigh and lean back in my leather desk chair. I purchased it myself after the old one, a 1952 squeaker that used to belong to the school, dropped me onto my backside. I stare out my window. The sun is low, and turns the lake to cobalt-blue as a slight wind bullies a scattering of cirrus. It’s a warm day, but I keep the window shut, and let the fan propped on the file cabinet behind me dry the sweat off my neck. Gull droppings aren’t my favorite scent, and at the moment I’m trying to avoid further inducements to fleeing.
    Not fleeing. Finding new opportunities. Chase has gone back to Montana, where he’s been studying the Kootenai people in a village somewhere in Glacier National Park. He took Elizabeth with him, grr.
    I wonder how the gypsy moth population is doing in the mountains.
    Behind me, in the one-room Gazette office, Myrtle is tapping on her keyboard. She’s laid the Dear Ruth column and a new recipe on my desk. I glance at the recipe.
    Edible Modeling Clay
    Â½ cup creamy peanut butter
    Â¼ cup honey or syrup
    Â½ cup instant dry milk powder
    2 tbs powdered sugar
    Mix and knead into a pliable dough, adding more powdered sugar to taste.
    Â 
    Okay, how pitiful am I that that actually sounds good?
    â€œI’m going down for a cup of coffee.” I push away from my desk and don’t look at Myrtle. It’s okay, she doesn’t hear me anyway. I pick up my satchel, bulky application folder stuffed inside and stroll down the back stairs.
    There are two good things about my job—Number One, Java Cup is located below our office, and they let me drink unlimited cups for a free block of advertising in our weekly. My favorite is their house breakfast blend, but sometimes I take a stroll on the wild side and go with the flavor of the week.
    Today it is a vanilla chai. That sounds exotic. I order one and find a perch next to the window. It overlooks our main street—three cafés surrounded by an antique store, a quilting shop and a dime store. Obviously we take food very seriously in Gull Lake.
    Number Two, Myrtle Shold is my father’s aunt, his mother’s sister. Thus, I’m allowed excursions to Java Cup, the Right Moose Café and an occasional walk down the Gull Lake pier.
    She’s okay, Myrtle. She’s been the editor of the newspaper for nearly thirty-five years, and to her credit, knows what Gull Lakers like—the fishing report, weather forecast, recipes, school news, obituaries and an occasional editorial by a pastor. There are five from the stock Gull Lake churches—First Baptist, Our Savior’s Lutheran, Gull Lake Congregational, First Methodist and Holy Rosary Catholic. It’s a good mix. Not a lot of fighting, except when there’s a new baby born to a mixed family. Then we’ll get a slew of infant baptism op-eds. Myrtle edits those, to keep everyone happy, being that she is an agnostic.
    Myrtle lives just up the road, on land owned by the Berglunds, in a two-room cabin. I remember as a child being enthralled by her lawn art—a display of Bambi and all the forest animals that looked so real I always found myself sitting in the middle of the crowd, chatting.
    Maybe that’s why she hired me. My active imagination.
    I’m going to need it if I hope to fill out this application.
    I slap the folder onto the