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  San Francisco attracts the ambitious, but it can also be the city to which someone flees thousands of miles to escape ambition and the pressures of love, as in my story Distribution, which has just been accepted by The Bloomin’ Onion. My thanks to editor Daniel Groves. I’ll post a link when it’s out. #SanFrancisco

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  My thanks again to Libby Feltis and Madison Betts. My story The Gift of a Ring is out today in Issue V: Rebirth, of their magazine Tension Literary. Some of my stories take structural risks. This one takes a different risk. Have a look: https://www.tensionliterary.com/

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  Willie Brown’s ‘99 mayoral campaign HQ was in Walter Wong’s building. Wong was building an addition with a non-union steel contracter. Ironworker organizer, I obtained picket sanction. My local’s Business Manager told me I couldn’t use it. I went to Willie’s HQ, asked for the manager, gave her my card. I told her, Here’s my campaign contribution: I’m not picketing this f’ing building. #SanFrancisco https://missionlocal.org/2026/07/walter-wongs-kingdom-sells-to-porn-baron-a-strange-and-terrible-s...

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  Four varieties of lettuce (Thurinus, Flashy Trout Back, Cherokee, Red Sails) in a homemade starter flat at the start of thinning and weeding. The lettuces at bottom, toppled by their neighbors’ departure, will stand back up in a couple of days. The neighbors have gone into a salad. #SanFrancisco #Gardening

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  Exacting Clam has accepted my story entitled and beginning “EYES” for likely spring ‘27 publication. I violated tons of rules and conventions in the story but thought it worked. So, apparently, did Charles Holdefer and Exacting Clam, with my gratitude. In this one, more than the waters of the Golden Gate divides #SanFrancisco and Marin County. (Photo by Honza Reznik, unsplash.com)

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  My story “Distribution” rides San Francisco Muni’s 14-Mission to perform an important and liberating task. It’s out now in The Bloomin’ Onion. Thanks to editor Daniel Groves for working with me on this: https://www.thebloominonion.com/featured-story-3 #SanFrancisco

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  The challenges of growing tomatoes in #SanFrancisco include not just cool summers, but rats, so soon after the fruit starts to change color I bring it inside to finish ripening away from long nocturnal incisors.

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  Likely first peelings of meal prep just now by a hawk (gone by the time I looked) in the pine above our back garden. I’m guessing the feathers are from a Eurasian collared dove. #SanFrancisco

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  An advantage of cool #SanFrancisco summers: Red Sails lettuce from my garden for tonight’s dinner.

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  With some recent success in the short story after a hiatus of decades to support first a family, then the labor movement, I went back to review work of mine published in my twenties. “In Here, Out There” appeared in 1985 in Berkeley Poets Cooperative, now long gone. Bulb Culture Collective specializes in publishing work from defunct literary magazines. My thanks to them for resurrecting the story: https://www.bulbculturecollective.com/read/in-here-out-there-michael-thriault

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  Word has arrived that my short-short story “A Glass of Grappa,” mourning, power, and conflict in an urban setting, has been accepted by Literary Garage, which looks on the noir side of things. I look forward to sharing it with you. My thanks to editor Kevin Christopher Michaels.

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  Busy literary 24 hours . This morning Twin Bird Review published my story “I and the I-not-I.” A roving lineman who can no longer rove finds an alternative self who can, and so fulfill a task: https://www.twinbirdreview.com/issue-32–winter-2025.html My thanks to editor Amanda K. Horn, and my congratulations and admiration for my co-contributors. And last night the magazine drip, driplitmag.com, accepted my story “And So a Terror.”

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  Got up in the night for old man reasons, heard what was clearly an owl but didn’t recognize its hoots. Sad experience has taught me that what I encounter in thought or fact at night doesn’t survive by memory alone into day, so I made a note of the rhythm of the hoots. My wife has insisted I post them. The Audubon app says it’s a great horned owl. I’ve heard them many times before, but not in this particular rhythm. Also, beyond hooting, this one barked almost like a dog.

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  Ours is not a bad-looking town. We took a room across it from our house for an early anniversary celebration. We had sushi for dinner and moules marinières for lunch and I had a shop reopen the piercing of my left ear, which closed up a couple of years ago when I left the earring out because I was getting x-rays so often for a fractured neck. Good to be alive and with the woman I’ve loved so long. #SanFrancisco

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  In which I demonstrate to myself that at 70 this is still possible to me on a bicycle, and wonder if still more is.

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  I came through Burlingame CA on my bike ride today & the suburban high school kids were flooding the intersection by the Catrain station & carrying signs, MELT ICE etc. I raised a fist for them & one even responded in kind, skinny arm, small fist. From such tender beginnings good things may come.