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.
