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.

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.

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.