How I Spend My Time (short form)

A string of hot days that have been taken up by news of the Democratic convention, fund raising pleas, flying a kite with Arthur at the beach, Dot getting sick from fox tail ingestion, rats nesting in the Camellia plants, rats wreaking havoc to my sleep by running across the shed roof, rats waking me from my sleep by being caught in the big snapping traps on the shed roof, reading books in the cool of my room during the heat of the day…. the books I’ve been reading: California and Other States of Grace by Phyllis Theroux Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson, and Palm-of-the Hand Stories by Yasunari Kawabata. Jan and I had our first real dinner party where we made a banana soufflé, Alaska Cajun Shrimp and rhubarb crisp as a back up desert for our three guests who are the three people we’ve made friends with in the almost two years we’ve lived here.

California and Other States of Grace is a memoir written by a woman who grew up on the Monterey Peninsula, who somehow captured the feeling of central California without resorting to any type of cliché or overused descriptions stolen from John Steinbeck.

In Reading Genesis Marilynne Robinson lays out a literary interpretation of the book of Genesis. Robinson is a contemporary Calvinist, and is perhaps our greatest American novelist, something I have a mind bendingly difficult time in understanding. But I enjoy reading her even if I spend a long time looking up words and laboring over her meaning.

Last winter I read Snow Country by Yasurnari Kawabata and loved it. His Palm-of-the-Hand Stories might be called micro fiction but I rather think of it as applying the principles of haiku to the novel. Very short stories that have complete thoughts and characterizations of human beings who live with the help precise word choice..

There is a short pros form I’ve dabbled in called Haibun. Here there is a short pros piece that is followed with a haiku. it is not up to Kawabata’s standards but I enjoy them none the less.

Here is my Haibun entitled :

Hardcore Haibun

She was a big girl, almost fat, with piggish eyes accentuated by her thick glasses. Her pinkish skin gave her a shivering and vulnerable manner.  I didn’t know it then but she was wanted for questioning in an ugly murder in our little town:  a man in an abandoned building had been found with his head smashed like a pumpkin with a claw hammer.  I had been looking for her to ask a few questions about her boyfriend who had been a witness to a petty crime and was just then blowing town. When I found them the boyfriend  was climbing up on the truck with his duffle bag headed to the ferry.  I introduced myself but he refused to talk. As I tried to ask again he banged on the top of the pick up and the driver pulled away. 

 When he was gone the big girl started crying , turning to ask me,  “Have you ever been in love?” 

 “Yes I have,” I said.

 “You want to have a cup of coffee?” she said through her tears.

 “Of course,”  I said.

 Spring…

            your lover leaves.

  In a broken down building

cats pad through warm blood. 

Here is an older presentation I recorded on a cold winter day in Sitka..

Overwhelmed by News

After a few cooler days with maritime fog in the morning todays morning broke with sunshine and heat. I saw a group of Canada Geese flying overhead headed north which I didn’t read to much into because I think the Geese like to migrate from the valley to the ocean every day, spending the nights near the ocean and their days in the open fields up the valley.

This is the window in the “New Room” in our little room at Deetgem’s Big Sur Lodge.

View through the window into the redwood trees.

I haven’t been writing in this space for a few weeks partly because it was my birthday on the 23rd and we took a trip down to a lovely lodge in Big Sur which was a very good time. But mostly I didn’t write because I was overwhelmed by the news. Joe Biden deciding whether or not to stay in the race, the assassination attempt, then Biden being replaced by VP Harris. I was tempted to write about all of these stories but then I started to read the political coverage both in the established press and on social media, and I couldn’t write a word.

Years ago I gave up on social media. I don’t keep up on facebook and I barely read the postings on X. I find the postings on social media to have some value when big stories are breaking right away but not so much when I’m looking to make longer term sense of the events. The tone from both the left and the right seems to be both chaotic and mean: non sensical conspiracies, bitter hate baiting, self righteous breast beating. I see why people are drawn to it because it is like watching car crashes… you just can’t take your eyes off of it. But I find the tone to be overwhelming particularly when I don’t really care about the horse race aspect of the events, who are the losers and who are the winners. But when genuinely important events are happening which threaten to change our world, I want to know the basics, what actually happened and why. In the end to most socially responsible thing to do is wait. Let professional news gatherers and investigators do the hard work and let them report to the rest of us.

I didn’t have anything to add when these stories were breaking but I was almost obsessed with the stories themselves. What is the president thinking? Who was the shooter and why did he act? But even today days… weeks after… no one really knows. While the stage is turned over to those who are guessing. This was why I didn’t write anything in the last couple of weeks. I wanted to get on line and do my own guessing and I didn’t think that fair to my handful of readers here.

I think is a fair thing to do is to write about what I actually know, and have experienced. While I’m happy now that Joe Biden dropped out and Ms Harris is running for President, I am not a Trump fan but I am glad he was not killed by the strange and enigmatic young man, I still know almost nothing about, the actual facts and my my observation/ opinions on these events don’t matter much, even to me. What matters, I suppose is patience in letting the fact finders of the world do their work as best they can and let us in on the truth as soon as they can. Realizing that there are some events which don’t lend themselves to knowing the truth.. I’m still not sure of the truth of the President Kennedy’s assassination and that occurred when I was ten years old. I bump up against this reality all the time when thinking about crime writing. Almost every time an event includes a particularly disturbing death everyone who comes up against the facts has to face the eventual black hole of information that may or may not lead to the truth. This is the essential fact of mystery in a murder case.

The first Advanced Readers Copy came in the mail, so I took it out for a drink.

What I do know for a fact is that my newest book, BIG BREATH IN is inching closer to publication. Last week I got a box of advanced readers copies and have been sending them out to friends who can help. I sent one to Nita Couchman who is a terrific proof reader who has read almost everyone of my books before publication. I send books to friends who might be able to get a book noticed or reviewed. If you know anyone that you think could help get this book noticed or reviewed write to me at jhstraley@gmail.com and we can work together on making that happen.

This afternoon, I plan to go down to the river and set up a chair so I can dabble my feet in the water. I plan to let the politicians have the stage again and stop stressing about the news.

Heat

Sunny day and in the nineties during the afternoon. The sky has a hazy blue color that seems hard as stone. I hear the birds singing only in the early morning, by noontime it seems the small birds have moved on down the river to get to the cool bends where the estuary meets the ocean. Dot and I walk in the morning but she lays in the shade of our house until the evening cools the air.

Drive down to Big Sur to cool off.

In Sitka, a hot day was seventy five degrees to eighty. People there went crazy in their short shorts, packing coolers down to the the tide flats, swimming in the 48 degree water. Skin which hadn’t seen any sun for perhaps ten months is exposed for hours at a time, leaving bright red patches on white skin in the Alaskan summer. Here in the Carmel River Valley mothers and babies stay covered in their white cotton shirts and under the umbrellas by the pool. Californians have learned from years of public service announcements to avoid the sun at all costs. There is no sunburn which is considered a good sunburn. Only older people seem to lay out to brown their skin.

A dip in a little creek.

After almost fifty years in Alaska the ninety degree heat seems exotic. For me the heat brings on a kind of lethargy that I cannot quite compute. Shoes are a must for my feet are far to sensitive for the sidewalk or the pool deck surface, while shade is a cooled down delight. I both love it and am mystified by the heat. To be clear I’m not complaining about it I’m just registering the strangeness of life over ninty degrees. Two days ago we drove about an hour north for a doctor’s appointment and there in the “southern valley” where Jan’s neurologist office is it was one hundred and two degrees. This felt like a NASA experiment. Getting out of an air-conditioned car the heat was as oppressive as the Mexican desert in mid July. No amount of water seems to wet you down. Only shade and conservation of energy seems to help survive the heat. It’s fascinating to me and yet the lethargy seems to effect my brain and my body. Some days I nap in the icy embrace of air conditioning

A stop at the Henry Miller Library/bookstore, in Big Sur.

I’ve been working hard on getting the new book ready for it’s release date in November of 2024. The Advanced copies are getting ready for shipment. Soon enough those will go out to reviewers and book store owners. They are meant for promotion of the book. Sometime collectors will get their hands on them and will contact me to sign them.

If you or anyone of your friends have a copy of any of my books you like you are welcome to send them to me directly along with postage, return address and any instructions for a specific inscription you would like in the book…. do that and I’ll be happy to sign/inscribe them and get them mailed back to you. Just remember to send along return postage.

My address is

Straley

137 Hacienda Carmel

Carmel, CA 93923

Walter wakes up with his bottle while sitting in the air conditioned room.

Here is a new poem I wrote in the heat.

Solstice

Seventy degrees and sunny here in the Carmel River Valley. In the last three days we had high clouds and lower temperatures. The dog walkers were wearing their parkas and the crows sitting on the phone lines had a kind of threatening Van-Gogh-in-the-wheatfields kind of vibe. But the last two days the clouds burned off by afternoon and we sat outside enjoying the longest days of the year.

In Alaska solstice came and went with a lot of notice. On one hand it marked the longest day of they year and on the other it marked the beginning of the race towards darkness. It usually came with drum circles on the beaches and picnics which lasted well past midnight. The semi pro baseball team in Fairbanks plays a solstice game starting at midnight without turning a single light on in their little stadium. There are poetry readings and all night croquet tournaments, Chamber musicians will sit around fires and and play in quartets until the wee hours, while rock and rollers will sing themselves horse by morning.

I celebrated by trying to take notice of my surroundings and what’s going on in my interior life as well. I tried to photograph the flowers that bloom outside of our well kept gardens. In the field next to the property wild radish flash yellow in the tall grass and arsenic is scattered throughout the fields. Poppies lay down a sweet kind of overripe smell along side the trail and three days ago I saw a skunk lope across the trail in front of me. At first I wasn’t sure it was a skunk, all I saw was a squarish body and a bushy tail. But when I came to the spot where the animal disappeared the sour smell was intense and I knew I had seen a skunk. There are tons of birds to be seen from buzzards gliding the thermals in the hills, to tiny nut hatch-ish types hiding just above the mole hills in the brush. In the middle there are ravens and crows and Jays and even a paragrin or two. Two days ago a long snake was sunning itself in the middle of our street and a group of neighbors got together to haze it out of the way of traffic, explaining to a small child that it was a “good snake, that we like to have around” because it ate gophers.

On the inside I’m having vivid dreams. Yesterday I woke up dreaming that Jan and I were sailing a small sailboat in a fierce Alaskan storm. The boat had a small cabin which didn’t have the solid heft of a well made boat. In the dream I think we were riding out the storm in a vessel made of eighth inch plywood. I didn’t feel well rested when I got up.

This morning I dreamed a poem . I just remember the first few lines:

Though I am decidedly agnostic

on the existence of the divine

my car believes believes in God.

It sees every parking lot as an

opportunity for silent fellowship.

and every deserted country road

as a moment of prayer.

Buckeye Blossom

Dream poems never come to me fully fledged. They are mostly coded messages from my subconscious and never make much sense. This one seemed to have the divided heart of a solstice poem. I’m consistently anxious about driving in California and maybe that’s why my car needs to believe in God. I don’t know.

Solstice is about happiness in the moment while at the same time experiencing the outrider of dread: the first day of the countdown to darkness. These ambivalent feelings appear to be more pronounced in the far north where the darkness and the light are more extreme.

As you can tell I’m trying to discover what the central coast of California is trying to tell me about solstice dreams and poetry. I had forty-five years in Alaska to read the signs. I’m going to have to be a quick study with California. As William Stafford once wrote, “The darkness around us is deep,” even here in California I suppose.

Wild radish

Here is an old poem of mine:

Big Breath In

Another sunny morning. More swallows dipping in and out of the grass in the field next to the berm which surrounds the property.

Dot and I walk in the morning and I spend some time drinking ice water in the sunshine on our back porch. I read Tom Lake by Ann Patchett this week and I watched the Paul Newman production of Our Town. Then I started listening to the audio book of Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah. The problem experiencing good books or plays is that they can come with a rise in my own writer’s block. Nothing I write can ever measure up to some of these books.

Bur what the hell? I never claimed I was as clear as spring water as Ann Patchett or as timeless as Thorton Wilder or as funny and culturally relevant at Trevor Noah! If fear is the little death than these comparisons I’m making with other writers are killing me.

So I decided to share a section of my newest book that at the moment is in production at Soho Press. The book is called Big Breath In and is about a woman named Delphine who is based on the life of Jan Straley. In this scene Delphine rides a motorcycle through Seattle to keep her mind off of her illness.

           " Delphine woke up on the couch. She had the keys to the motorcycle in her right hand. It was four in the morning. There was just a smear of light in the sky. The world was holding its breath, and she wanted to swim out into the last of the night and feel the cool air against her face.

            She squeezed the keys and stood up slowly. Robert had let her drive the bike when he was on the back, but she had never ridden it up and down the hills by herself. Once, she and Robert had dumped the Sportster when they had to stop on a steep hill coming up Pike Street. She clambered off and Robert picked it up using his back and his legs. “We’re both about as weak as kittens, ain’t we? If I can’t get this up off the pegs, we might just slap a for sale sign on it and hitchhike back to the hospital.” But he got it up, turned it around, and allowed her to clamber on the back. They let it freewheel downhill until they could make a left turn, turn the engine over and come around from the south where the hills weren’t that steep.

            The Sportster weighed about 530 pounds fueled up. She could probably stand it up if she had to, but she didn’t want to risk it. Her arms were thin now and her back was weak. She wore the old Bell helmet without a visor, but she put some old ski goggles on her face to protect her eyes. She had a patched and rumpled jacket that was traffic cone yellow. She tucked her tee shirt into old canvas pants, which were clown baggy now, and laced her logging boots up tight to give her enough ankle support if she did have to lift the bike.

            Delphine really wanted to drive the bike. She wanted to feel its strength energize her body. She wanted to move, to accelerate with the suggestion of weightlessness. She wanted to feel one with the machine. But fear gripped her. What if she couldn’t do it? What if weakness was going to define the last portion of her life?

            Outside, the shadows in the streets were like pools of water. She smelled the old pizza in the dumpsters. The streetlamps had an opaque ring around the lights because dew point was high enough that the fog would build as the morning temperatures rose. Only when the wind came up would the fog blow off.

            She approached the bike and unlocked the chain with some trepidation. It felt as if she were approaching a balky colt on a cold morning. Her wrists and hands felt weak as she grabbed the padded grips, threw her leg over the saddle then sat the bike. She turned over the engine with the electric starter: a wheeze and a chugging followed by nothing. She made certain that all the fuel ports were open, she checked for fuel in the tank. She twisted the throttle and tried again and the engine caught fire with the blend of air, gas and spark. A thrill rose up into her chest and sizzled her brain.

            She sat astride the seat and let the 1200 cc engine thrum. When she wrapped up the accelerator, the bike blared into the damp air. The sound bounced off the buildings and returned to her. She could feel it in her chest. She banged the shifter with her foot to make sure she was in neutral. Her hands were shaking as she gripped the clutch lever. Then, with the heavy toe of her boot, she shifted into first, disengaged the clutch let the bike freewheel downhill. Then she released the clutch and the engine lurched into life.

            Delphine always went too fast on a big bike. The torque curled like a clockwork spring in her back. The engine screamed and echoed. She stopped for all the red lights as she headed south towards Boren. The air smelled of coffee brewing as she let the Sportster off its leash a little bit. An old Black woman was pushing a grocery cart downhill towards the Goodwill store. The cart was heaped high with what could have been rags or dirty baby clothes. She was jay walking in the middle of a crosswalk and Delphine blasted by her like a train.

            “Fuck this,” the Black woman said aloud.

            “Sorry,” Delphine said to herself as she rattled past.

            The Sportster dipped down toward the international district. At first her lower back was tight, but as she warmed to the sensation of the bike’s gravity and speed, her muscles relaxed and she laughed out loud. The colorful streetlamps stuttered by and she took the bike down, past the train station and into the area around the baseball stadium. Now she was on the flats. She opened it up some more. The bike rattled between her legs. She was doing this. Further south, forklifts crossed the streets with little heed. She swerved around one to avoid a wreck, and the forklift driver gestured with a closed fist to his face.

            “Hey, what the hell, lady?” His voice was hoarse.

            Her back tire broke free for a moment as she sped up to keep forward momentum. “Keep upright,” she thought. The Sportster felt as if it were going to lay down. She steered into the fall and increased her speed, stood the bike up again and watched the forklift driver become smaller and smaller in her mirror.

            When Delphine came to the river, she turned back to the north. She found a freeway entrance and cranked the engine up in the early morning gloom. After a short trip on the freeway, she went down Jackson and toward the international district again. She stopped at a streetlight. Her legs felt weak, and her hands shook a bit. She stood with both feet on the pavement as she idled the engine. Now that she was stopped, her head felt numb from the drugs that clogged her system. She caught her breath, weak but exhilarated. The tank was still full. She blasted down onto the industrial flats by the sports arenas and then sped across the bridge to west Seattle.

            It was almost dawn by the time she reached the shore of Puget Sound. The streets of west Seattle that ran parallel to the cobbled shore were empty. She stopped at a beach, shut down the bike and took off her goggles and helmet. Gulls cried their two mournful notes in the dark. The wind felt as if it had blown down from Alaska: cold, salty and pregnant with oceanic life.

            Her hands shook as she remembered her old adventures out on the water. Her yellow skiff with the hundred horse engine bucking the weather. Birds in the air. Seals in the ocean, damp wind combing her hair. “

Big Breath In is due out in November. It is a stand alone novel and is not a part of my other two series.

Love, Music, and Champagne

Dear Nancy,

On the day of your funeral we drove out of Carmel, through the fields and truck farms just north of the dunes and came to Moss Landing where the Western Flyer is moored. The Captain is a lovely man named Paul Tate who is in his eighties and he loves to read. One entire bunk is laid out with books about your dad and John Steinbeck and the boat they chartered down to Mexico.

He laid out food and opened a bottle of good champagne and we tuned his computer in to a zoom call of your funeral which was held in the Episcopal Church in Sitka, Alaska. I have gone to many funerals there in my forty five years living on that island with the fishermen and Brown Bears. But yours was the only funeral where I drank champagne and ate smoked salmon during the service. It was a first.

Above the galley table was a lovely black and white photograph of your father Ed. For the Western Flyer has apparently become ground zero for Ed-mania. Ed Heads come from all over the world and stand at the dock just to stare at the old boat.

I loved the touches you insisted upon in your funeral: more music than preaching, More love than obedience. More obedience coming through love than from fear. More singing than chest pounding.

The musical choices were perfect. Or at least I think they were for the connection that came through the computer was thin and the tinny microphones had a hard time capturing the wheezing of the organ and the voices cut out periodically as if it were being picked up on a short-wave broadcast. Which I liked actually. I thought of you dancing on top of your father’s shoes to the music on a small radio there on forth street in Pacific Grove. I thought of your dad dancing to Jazz music with all the pretty women who came to his lab. I thought of the pleated pants, strong arms and sturdy legs under silk skirts, cold beer and sandwiches, while the dancers bowed the floor of the lab: the snake in its pen preparing to eat a rat, while people sat in front of the cage smoking cigarettes and taping their feet in anticipation.

Love without restraint is what your father believed in. I’m convinced. Love as a gift to life. Love in the soft growing tissue of the body without apology. Love as ecstasy. Love as biology. Love as attraction and the rhythm of the moon, the stars, and the earth. Love as the tidal cycles, and the soft billowing flesh of the sea anemone when the tide pool becomes ripe with just enough water surging through to encourage life in it’s fullest..

Of course you didn’t say all this in your letter to the priest but it is what I felt as I drank the champagne under your father’s picture on the old boat which has been resurrected. Come back to life. Hauled off the bottom of the ocean, scraped clean and reconstructed. Alive again with it’s keel resting in the mud of it’s shallow mooring there in Moss Landing . A find slab of a boat now, a keel, straight as a carpenter’s rule, fastenings holding tight as you held on to your love of music. To your love of God, right up to the very end of your life here on earth.

Thank you for inviting me to your funeral, it was fun.

For more information about the Western Flyer check out: https://www.westernflyer.org/

Nancy Ricketts November 28, 1924- June 1, 2024

Nancy Ricketts died yesterday June 1 2024. She was born November 28, 1924. She was almost one hundred years old and she had experienced many of the most important events of the twentieth century. Her father was Edward Ricketts who was a friend and inspiration for John Steinbeck. Steinbeck was one of America’s great writers and Ricketts helped co-create some of the most wonderful characters in American literature: “Doc Ricketts” in the novels, Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday were the most direct borrowing of Ed’s personality but it’s pretty clear that almost every one of Steinbecks books had a philosophical character who shared opinions and passions with Nancy’s Dad. Steinbeck loved Ricketts and it’s pretty clear that he stretched the truth about his friend over the years. but Nancy understood that the exaggerations came from an excess of affection. But over time it became more important to Nancy that readers know that Ed was a good father, a point that could be skipped over when reviewing the literature which was replete with drunken adventures that Steinbeck liked to recount, think of the the wild frog hunt that Ed’s friends put on as a favor to “Doc” which ended up with the near destruction of the lab.

Nancy certainly loved her father and had an rightful claim to his reputation. She remembered him reading to her and her brother in the house on fourth street in Pacific Grove. He read the Illiad and loved to teach his children about plants and animals. Through her eyes growing up on the Monterey Peninsula in the 1920’s was a magical time where the desert country met the sea. She loved listening to her dad talk with friends until late in the night. She said she never remembered anyone raising their voices in anger, but enjoyed discussing ideas and listening to ancient music on their family record player. Famous men and women would come by the house and alcohol was consumed, cigars were smoked but Nancy didn’t recall any drunken arguments. She remembers her fathers social scene being civilized in ways that Steinbeck did not render in his stories. But perhaps she was a heavy sleeper and simply missed out on the parties when they turned rough. I thought to myself as I listened to her recount those remarkable times when the artists and thinkers of the day chatted in her living room while she drifted off to sleep in her bed. At any rate she was a loving and a loyal daughter, and a good friend to many. I will miss her beautiful smile for the rest of my life.

Nancy’s room in the Pioneers Home in Sitka, Alaska: the scene of many of our conversations.

I will be writing more about Nancy in the future. If you want to revisit her world you should read or re-read Cannery Row by John Steinbeck. It may not be the thing itself but it is what the thing should be. You can also contact Old Harbor Books in Sitka (907) 747-8808 and ask for a copy of her memoir Becoming Myself. You can also ask for Ed Ricketts: from Cannery Row to Sitka, Alaska. Which has a fine autobiographical essay in it.

I have a short reading from that essay here:

Memorial Day

Cool with marine weather back up in the valley. We had a big picnic in our community. Veterans wore blue caps with the names of their ships or their Units where they served. Little flags lined the streets and the giant lawn in the center of our little village square. The temperature was about fifty-six degrees according to our phones and most of us wore coats to protect us from the chill. It is Memorial day and even though some little kids threw bean bags around or whacked at croquet balls, it seemed a somber occasion to me.

I turned eighteen in 1971 and was in the last of drafts. I signed up for the draft that summer. The war was still happening and I was not eager to go to Vietnam. I knew a kid named Roy who was a year ahead of me in school. He was not a big kid but was sort of short and chunky. Roys parents were Polish and they were virulently anti-communist. Roy was too and he wanted to go to Vietnam in the worst way, so he lied about his age and went through Basic training. He had quit school early so he came back to school wearing a silk jacket with the map of Vietnam embroidered on the back. He was fit now and tan, the rest of his unit helped get him through Basic training and he proudly told us he was going to “Go Airborne” and he couldn’t wait to go. He made in country and his very first time in the field, he rushed out of his helicopter and was shot by enemy fire and died in the long grass where he lay.

In 2020 our then president is reported to have told a former general and his chief of staff that he thought the soldiers who had served and died in battle were suckers. They had been reviewing a great European cemetery, with long rows of headstones for the people who had died in the later months of the First World War. “Why did they do it?, What was in it for them?”

I am ashamed to say that as the years went by and I thought of Roy I wondered the exact same thing about the dead Veterans of that war. I looked up his name on the Vietnam memorial and I cried. The question poses one of of the great moral conundrums of my life.

We never destroyed Communism of course. Putin (a powerful communist and an inveterate expansionist) is the great ally of that same man who was our President then. But Communism, simply changed form as the world changed with it. Ideology can flow and change through populations, Ideology in a sense is fungible.

I never had to make the hard choice. I signed up to be a conscientious objector but I suspect that I may have just been a coward. I don’t know. My draft number was 365. Fate let me off the hook. Unlike the way it treated Roy.

I knew many people in my life who have served. Some joined up voluntarily to try to avoid the worst of the assignments the draft could deliver. Some joined for the benefits. Some joined for the guns and the opportunity to use them. Some of them wanted to be heroes. Most I knew that ended up in combat were simply young and unsure of what to do with their lives which were difficult from the beginning. Some were just young and dumb, just as I was , thinking that I was really a conscientious objector when the truth was I didn’t know what it meant to die for a cause. I wasn’t Thomas Merton, I was just young and didn’t want to die for that war.

The best reason I have heard was from a new, young recent recruit who said words to the effect of, “We will always need soldiers to protect our nation’s interests. It’s naive to think otherwise. If I don’t go, who will? And what does it mean about me if I let him or her go and they and die in my place.

Most who serve are not moral philosophers. Most who go believe they are protecting their home territory. Maybe they were. But they can’t know the answer to that until the shifting face of history offers up its judgement.

So today, I cry again for Roy. He gave his life for his country and we need soldiers to do that. Maybe he didn’t in fact save his country in that tall grass of Vietnam but that was not his decision finally to decide. He just offered himself up and let fate do with him what it will.

Bless him. Bless them all.

Here is an old poem of mine.

Old Friends

Warm, sunny day. It feels like the first of summer’s long day of fussing in the garden and making jam from the strawberries which were picked yesterday. Barn swallows fly west to roost in the trees near the estuary in the evening. and crickets make their voices heard in the dark.

Suzie is here to visit and she is good company. We enjoy much of the same things: berry picking, napping, playing with young Arthur and helping out with the dishes. Truly a joy to have her around being an easy low impact guest. Having one old friend makes me hungry for more. So on some of my dog walks I take the opportunity to call some others.

A friend from high school lost his wife to cancer and I called him the day after mother’s day to see how he was doing. Another friends from Sitka has had his own problems and I called to check in with him to see if he was still playing in various bands. Both conversations were wonderful in their own way: trading news and yes, sometimes complaining about the ravages of old age, but mostly laughing about the strange times we live in now. These are the lucky reminiscences, in that we are still alive and strong enough to still being able to laugh about our health and prospects for the future. Some of my reminiscences are much more one sided, and more meloncholy.

There are some old friends I miss everyday, and they have gone so far out of reach that there can never be new news about them. No amount of gossip can bring them into better focus. I’ve been lucky that many of my friends who have gone on were hard working and creative people that left a fine record of themselves so that they have allowed their friends to keep learning new things, or feeling the old things freshly as if they had just come from wherever they are for a nice long visit. So I spend a part of each day reading their books or listening to recordings they made in life that lets me feel just what it was about them that made me love them in the way I did; funny people, smart and passionate about their subjects. How lucky and rich they made my life. Tonight we will make Angelfood cake with fresh strawberries to remember one of them in particular.

Poppies that look like fried eggs, sunny side up.

This afternoon, Finn and Emily brought their two boys over. Jan and Arthur played in the garden repairing the damage Dot had done by grazing in the carrots. I held baby Walter and shuffled him around in my arms. The women wore floppy sun hats and I squinted behind my old fishing cap. Just yesterday Jan and I gave our salmon fishing gear to the skipper of the Western Flyer and all day I was thinking of the days I used to fish with friends. We acknowledged how lucky we have been and how we hoped we have been able to extend our luck for at least a few more years. The afternoon had that loopy feeling of a Christmas day. Our tools and toys were scattered about because we didn’t want the feeling to end: Jan in her sun hat noodling around with her cane and Arthur who is a precocious two year old sometimes sat with her in her wheel chair, bending down to pull weeds out of flower boxes, laughing and talking to himself in that never ending narrative his life has become. “Grandpa, where is your Da Da?” “Your brother Walter is named after my father… so I suppose he is right there with your mom.” I told him.

No matter our health, no matter our circumstances we are lucky to be alive and to still be able to taste the sweetness of our friendships and the fresh strawberries.

Here is an old poem.

Peace As A Virtue

Warm day, cool shade in the morning. Feeling tired in the afternoon after my two walks, In the dark of night frogs calling out in chours down by the shallow river and in the morning there is birdsong from the fields and forest to the south: crows, redwing blackbirds and chickadees (I think).

I’ve been struggling to say something about the war in Gaza but I keep tearing up each draft and starting over. The situation is so ancient and intractable that it makes our smartest experts seem either cruel or hopelessly naive. What can I possibly add? I cannot speak for or against those who are suffering. I can’t imagine anyone who wants to listen to someone who cannot fathom the grief that is building up, like floodwaters behind a feeble dam straddling Israel and Gaza, but still I feel compelled to write something before a full fledged war engulfs us all.

A harmless Gopher Snake gave me a start on my morning walk.

So many angry voices are eager to define themselves as pro Israel or pro Palestinian that we ignore the the killings and torture that occurred on October 7 or the killing of innocents which continue to this moment in Gaza. We are so busy choosing up sides that we forget about all the killings which both sides will propagate tomorrow and in the near future, unless some real commitment to peace breaks open in the hearts of the combatants. Killings like these are the enemy of civilization and nothing of consequence can happen until the killing stops. This is almost cliche it is so obvious.

The best part of any day is when I get to hold my grandson in my lap and feed him a bottle. He is two months old and he snorts and chortles as he sleeps in my arms. How many babies just like him have died in this war so far? How many fathers and grandfathers (or mothers and sisters for that matter) will be moved to take up arms to avenge the innocent deaths?

Who will forgive us if we let this battle spread out into the region, the hemisphere and finally to the world? The sad truth is that in the fog of war, both sides feel justified. Both sides will continue their cruelty unless something can be done to have them turn from their suffering and choose peace and security rather than murder.

Please… I don’t mean too sound smug, because I know that none of this is easy. I know that there are genuine grievances held by both sides. Leadership on neither side speaks out for a two state solution anymore. Does that mean that prospect is dead? I don’t know, but I hope it will work, though I know it’s not my decision to make.. I just know that we need to choose peace as a virtue not as a defeat. Peace is the good thing that will protect the innocents. Peace is the only thing that will keep all the babies safe. I know we live in a cynical and hateful era. But I have to believe that we need non-violent solutions on the table and by “we” I mean all of us, combatants on both sides and all the citizens with a stake in the matter. All of us have plenty of work to do. Peace is not easy it takes a long and committed vision while war is an impulse towards the death of a child you are holding in your arms..

I only ask that everyone involved when it comes to the important decisions that are to be made will consider the pathway to long lasting security and non violence before they resign from the table and walk away into the rubble.

jhs

Here is a new poem.