The Ways Of Love

Fog, light rain, high clouds. So much more of the same it is tempting to call it fall time around here. Yet the salmon berries in the yard are opening up. I would have mowed the lawn (really I would have) but it never stopped raining long enough for the mossy front yard to dry out. My shoes sink down with that squishy sound as if I were walking on sponges still. We have been taking Dot and our beach chairs to the recreation beach down the road so we can run her on the cobbles and eat our sandwiches under cover for a change of pace. Dot is still tentative about swimming. We found a dead cormorant on one outing and Dot barked at it until I threw it up into the woods so that we could get some peace. The next day the bird was gone, so I suspect some collector or a large animal gathered it up. It appeared the cormorant died of a broken neck with some wounds to it’s body which could mean it had been killed by an eagle but I could not examine it in detail.

Saturday was the day that had been planned for a day of remembrance for Richard K. Nelson. People were planning to fly in from all over and we were going to have a big old celebration of life. But the virus put the kabosh on that. In stead Jan, Liz McKenzie (Nels’s old partner, co-producer and permanently listed in Facebook under “it’s complicated”) met at the rec area and toasted him with tears, root beer, and peanut butter and salmonberry jam sandwiches. Then tried to work into our conversation every one of Nel’s favorite expressions, “Balls on a heifer!” (for something surprising) “Balls to the wall!” (for working really hard) Fine Thank You Fine. (The answer to Howareya?) Sitka, Alaska 99835 (The answer to where is the best place on earth?) There are others but many are not appropriate for airing before eleven o’clock. Nels had kind of a classic farm boy sense of humor.

Fine dining al la Richard Nelson. I think he ate a pb and j sandwich every day of his life or would have given the choice. He grew up with an incredibly bland midwestern palate. He told me he grew up never eating salad dressing nor condiments at home. His mom sold potato salad at a gas station that was famous in the region but she had never tasted it because it had mustard in it! Too spicy. He told me he never ate Catsup until he went to graduate school in California, so too Pizza, or a taco! Later he virtually lived on venison burritos.

The radio station did an excellent broadcast of an old encounters show and a show that I thought was very moving about the making of Encounters. You can cut an paste it here:

https://www.kcaw.org/2019/11/15/encountering-the-life-and-work-of-richard-nelson/?fbclid=IwAR17iYxDJl1k-h9MeFvE_2PM-yMna1KkdSGNDrgVhSCbCbfqvVgOPnPfZzw

It features the voices of Lisa Busch and Ken Fate who helped Nels get the show up and running. I thought the reporter at Raven did a terrific job putting it together even though he didn’t know Nels other than through his work.

If you want to hear more original Encounters programs and learn what else is going on in northern audio field recordings go here: https://www.encountersnorth.org

This site is kept up by Liz and has many of the old shows, they truly are unique and capture the genuine enthusiasm for the wild, that Nels embodied.

This is my little offering to Nelsapalozza

 PRESENCE

You had sun in your eyes,

energy so intense that shadows formed

behind whatever you were looking at,

“Un-fucking believable!”

as if blue unicorns were prancing with diamond saddles

through your berry patch rather than

a pair of Anna’s hummingbirds flashing in their

mating ritual at your plastic feeder outside

your old office window.

“Look at them! Oh my God!

Imagine, their hearts! Imagine their muscles!”

Two feathered jewels had you caught in the sunlight,

and I was staring at you,

your attention fixed and taught as a wire.

nothing else in your mind but the blue green dance,

rapid skulling wings, the needle beaks, muscled chests

dipping, probing, ecstatic, and you mouth open, chest open

being filled with light and sound.

A philosophy student once tried to explain

the concept of Heidigger’s  Dasein to me while

we were on an island near your old cabin,

“Imagine that all this,” and he gestured to the trees

and the ocean, the seaweed, the otters eating urchins near the beach

“Imagine, that all of this was your authentic consciousness,

and all the rest… the story you keep telling yourself,

your talking head, inside your head

was just an artifact of culture putting you to work, with language.

 I think of you now, Richard King Nelson: a presence.

A living pair of binoculars, the expensive kind,

that let in more light than most people can see. 

jhs

Here is a recording I made reading from the beginning of my third novel. You can hear Dot bumping around on the porch. She is calming down a bit.

Love, Like A Mountain

More rain today, coming from what looks like the same high clouds. The grass is clearly growing now and I can’t deny it. I will have to mow the next time we have sun enough to dry the place out. and the leaves now want to uncurl their fists. It is happening, with, or without the sunshine. Spring is happening. Slowly.

Jan needed to go in for an MRI this morning and I drove her down. Dot charged right back into the house and jumped up onto the counter and started eating the butter in the dish. We had a serious disagreement about that then she jumped onto the couch without getting dried off first which I was crabby about and when she nipped at me when I began drying her with a towel, I would say our differences escalated into full fledged physical conflict. When I went down to get Jan from her appointment Dot and I were not speaking and Jan agreed to act as an intermediary. It was suggested that I take “the dog” out during a break in the rain and try to run some of the “piss and vinegar” out of her. Which I did by kicking a soccer ball sized fishing buoy back and forth in our yard for about forty five minutes. This developed into kind of a soccer gave which got us both running back and forth and when she would catch up with me all I had to do was make a long pass to my imaginary team mate whom Dot would wrestle to the ground as she gathered up the ball in a series of summersaulting motions then grabbing the ball by the hard plastic eyelets or “ears” and bring right back to me with a kind of jubilation and pride. After about a half hour of this we were both tired enough that there were no hard feelings on either side. After forty minutes we were both ready for a nap under pretext of “working at our desk” where Dot made only one attempt to get up on my desk to eat my sticky notes, which I now believe she thinks are pats of butter, and then she fell right asleep in front of my fake electric fireplace which has a rather comforting rattle next to the fake flames.

The incomplete Dot, I didn’t capture her nose.. As I was taking this she began to wake up and I didn’t dare take another! Notice the open eye. I thought she was going to go all velociraptor on me.

Jan and I have come to an agreement that Dot enjoys getting up on the counters now just because she can. It’s as if you suddenly grew so big you could dunk a basket ball and everywhere you went were balls and hoops, you know you would be doing it all the time, no matter how irritating it was to others, who couldn't dunk. Come on! You know you would. Anyway… we have two cubes of butter with Dot teeth impressions. We have salvaged the useable butter from them. I’m going to take the remaining parts with Dot Cooties all over them, and place them in “harms way” near the edge of the counter with a good dose of extra XXX HOT sauce right on the butter and see if that has any effect on her. Before you turn me in to PETA remember this is a dog who eats poop and ROCKS without any problems.. And a battery. it won’t hurt her.

Then we will continue our training using strong language for the negative and lavish praise, smooches, (in spite of the above mentioned poop eating!) and treats for the positive, as well as my obscure discourse for moral guidance (“and boredom” Jan would add) Last night Dot continued her latest bad behavior of barking at us when we sit down and eat. (Note: I feed her before we eat, she has food in her bowl. I REFUSE TO FEED HER AT OUR TABLE. NOT HAPPENING) Anyway… we sat down and started eating and I swear this is the only time she barks but she starts in barking at us, and I yelled, “STOP BARKING AT US, YOU LITTLE BITCH!” and Jan turned to me calmly and asked?, “What happened to “Dot, this isn’t a barking situation? ALSO…Just put the butter in the fridge after you use it.” Great, now I live with two females who are smarter than I am.

Dot’s new enclosure, where we lower the live cows down to her.

Maybe it is because I was raised by alcoholics and I enjoy an element of chaos in my life. Or maybe its the ketamine, but I love this dog. She makes me laugh. She irritates me just enough to take me out of my own sense of having everything figured out. She gets me to the point of “Okay that’s it. I’m at my wits end! I’m taking you to the animal shelter!” Then she does something so endearing that she reminds me that I was never in charge of anything. What was I thinking? We are all just animals, doing the best we can, we want food and attention and freedom to play and be in the moment. For what am I so uptight? I should chew on more bones.

Rain like tears

falling on the windows

while the black dog sleeps.

jhs

Here is a recording of me reading another short story I wrote for John Harvey. It stars Cecil Younger and a time he had to serve some papers on a guy up in Talkeetna. Give a listen. Dot was very well behaved. She slept the entire time.

Big Things Overlooked In Small Spaces

High clouds with rain in the morning but warm in the afternoon with sun breaking through. The mossy grass was wet in the morning and Dot luxuriated in it on our morning outing so that she was soaked when she came in. I dried her off but she was still a wet dog during our morning snuggle until Jan called her upstairs for her lie down on the heated floor. Dot found new things to drag out of the weeds and the woods yesterday it was some very strange fungus I had not seen before: white with what looked like tree bark on one side. I put it up high so that I could save it and take it in to a botanist at the University when the time is right. Dot also has found new ways to break out of her new enclosure, I keep plugging holes under and through the fence and she finds new ways to tunnel under and around. She would have been useful in a POW camp, though she doesn’t go far enough, she almost always comes straight to my office about fifty feet away, and frolics around just happy to show me what she has accomplished, which would not have been a good thing for the soldiers in Stalog 17.

The Cherry leaves are opening and so too the salmon berry leafs. Slowly. The salmonberries in town about five miles from here have full leafs, but here we have a bit different exposure and more cool wind. I like to tease my town friends that we live further north in “the real Alaska.” The ground here is still cold and wet but just today with the smell of warm rain and the wind off the herring kelp, I am feeling spring actually stirring and not just flirting with me, actually touching my knee maybe and not just calling me on the phone late at night. Yes you are right, I am becoming a little desperate.

I love our little yard and I don’t mind spending the rest of my life here. Years ago when Jan was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease after the numbness wore off I asked her what was the very last thing she wanted to give up because of the disease and she said, “sitting right here at this table, looking out these windows.” It was pretty clear. We moved here in 1982, We transformed an old 20X 30 boat building shed into a cabin and lived there until 1989 and then after the Hazelwood case and a baby we built another house next to the shed and brought in a crane then lifted the old house on top of that and had the two story place we live in now on the beach near Old Sitka Rocks. Finn was born in Sitka Community Hospital and came home to the old cabin. He was a toddler when we lifted the old house and he had each of his first day of school photos taken in this house. (as a science nerd Jan used to put a measuring tape in each of his early baby pictures for scale… she stopped doing that by Middle School) As Jan’s disease has progressed we’ve added handrails, and higher toilets, a nicer bathroom with the oft noted heated floor. Soon we plan to add a hospital bed downstairs. We’ve talked of moving but there are still more thing to learn here.

The seasons are still mysterious, and the names of the birds still elude me. I am amazed each year by how spring unfolds differently, and how the animals ease in and around our habitation. I will start mowing the lawn this weekend and in the growing season I have the feeling of encroachment as if the life around me pushes in and would overrun all the space we claim as ours if I didn’t beat it back continually. Jan and I lived for four winters in a cabin on Admiralty Island in the 1980s doing bird and whale research. It was a flimsy cabin 12x16 made of plywood. When we finished they burned the place down. Ten or fifteen years ago we took Finn to see the spot and there was nothing there to tell we had ever been there. The cabin site was completely overgrown. it was humbling. Our own house would be like that if left alone for three years I’m sure. It would be a tangle of alders, salmon berries, spruce trees, hopefully there would be an old cherry tree and an apple, our only contribution. I would like to think of it that way, with only the familiar sound of the waves and whales breathing off shore. Today I saw daffodils I had forgotten about in the berry bushes. Dot brought out an old toy arrow from the berry patch from the era when we had a twenty dollar bill taped to a target out front and a standing offer to anyone who put an arrow through it got to keep the bill. Kids and adults were coming by all Christmas season all day and night to try their luck. They had to shoot from the deck. It was only about a fifty foot shot but we didn’t have very good equipment…. AND you had to use OUR equipment…. which was decided after some wise guy showed up with his father and his father compound hunting bow. My twenty dollar bill and MY rules. Dot found one of the old arrows that had been missing in the berries for twenty years today. So too when we were building the fence I found a horse shoe off to the left of the horse shoe pit that had gone missing for longer than than the arrow.

When we first moved here it seemed there was a Blue Heron that lived here and perched on the island out front, then there were no Blue Herons for twenty five years, now the herons are back. Why is that? The starfish had a wasting disease and now they don’t but they haven’t returned to our rocks yet. I’m not leaving until I see the return of the healthy starish. Same too for the abalone. There were sea otters thick around here for a while and they ate the abalone but then there were several native hunters thinning them out so abalone came back to Old Sitka Rocks.. But if the tourist trade goes belly up will the native hunters slow down, and the sea otters come back to OSR and our abalone like wise disappear? There is so much going on in the intertidal. You can see why Jan wants to stay put. So much to keep an eye on.

Our Cherry Tree this morning

MY FINEST WORK

Twenty-five years later

we went looking for our cabin site

but there was no trace of the place

where we had spent four winters

reading Russian novels

and playing dominoes in that sooty lantern light. 

We had chased after radio collard geese

and photographed Humpback whales

shoaling in the bay.

We had eaten our first deer

and had rebuilt an outboard motor.

We bathed in a Hobbit hole of a sauna

and kissed naked while the north wind

blew our towels off the boughs

and froze the hair on our bone white skin.

This had been our precious world

twelve by sixteen feet with seams taped up from the inside,

and it was gone

completely,

dissolved into the steady drip-drip in the forest’s under story

no trace of the novel

I wrote in pencil

nor the letters we wrote home.

No trace of the arguments

or plans for the sumptuous 

meals and long baths we would take in town.

No trace of how our memory

had burned a place in this cool

green world.

All that was left on the site

was a pile of wood I split just before I left

jumbled and slick

as uniform as a pile of bibles

and more readable

than anything

I have ever written.

jhs

Here is a recording I did this morning. I read an old short story I wrote for my friend Dana Stabenow and a collection she put together of fantasy crime fiction. I was honored she asked. I wrote a story from the point of view of a raven. I used some information I had leafed from Tlingit friends and from some scientific reading and I made up a bunch of stuff from just watching these fascinating birds. Dana’s readers thought my story was gruesome. I thought it was fun to write and pretty great. See what you think.

Earth Day

Hard rain today. A soaker. I can hear the rain on the roof from downstairs. The wind blows the rain onto the windows. My pants get soaked walking the fifty feet from house to office. Dot refuses to come with me. But the grass appears to be growing now.

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day. I attended the first Earth Day in Manhattan, my junior year of high school. It was just another demonstration in an age of demonstrations, just another reason to skip school for the afternoon. I remember a stage set up by the public library on Fifth Avenue near 14th street and speakers predicting dire consequences. I remember one in particular being that we would run out of oil by 1986. This seems strange because this was just six years before the Alaska pipeline began pumping and the north slope came on line. I don’t think anyone was imagining that we would run out of places to store oil and the price per barrel would be in the negative dollar range by 2020. But they would have predicted that the burning of carbon would have threatened the global climate. The air in southern California was horrible, and the water in Lake Washington in Seattle was unswimable. The East River in New York accepted huge pipes from Manhattan that funneled sewage direct from the toilettes of America’s Greatest City directly into the river and then the harbor. My friends and I used to stand at the dock and watch prophylactics as they floated to the surface by the hundreds. It was horrifying then and now as a memory.

There were more hikers on the Pacific Rim trail in the North Cascades of Washington then than there are today. More people hiked in the wilderness, then. More people took pack trips. Now more people mountain bike and run in the wilderness areas. More people do adventure sports than traditional camping, fishing and visiting. Not enough of a rush in flower sniffing. We have a much higher nature consciousness now, and our cities are cleaner. But less of a wilderness experience. We think more about the environment, and we watch more of it on our tiny devices than we used to. Fewer people work out in it. There are fewer farmers. There are fewer guides, and people who log, or gather, and work in sustainable ways out doors. Though in spots there are growing sustainable farming and boutique food producers, which make money for the hard working who are willing.

Lake Washington is now a good place to swim and there are salmon swimming in it. Salmon have become a totem animal of sorts for the environmentally minded. We worry more about salmon now than we enjoy eating them, or than we worry about the upland farmers who Roosevelt wanted to save from the dustbowl when he electrified the great basin of Washington during the depression. Progress is a push and shove and I’m good with that. I like covering over the irrigation ditches to save on water for fish. I also like preserving wetlands and shallows for fish and birds, But it doesn’t do much further inland where the huge industrial farms still buy out the small farmers and turn all the small towns to gas stations and mechanics shops for combines and tractors, with no schools or real communities in sight. Rural America has become Industrial instead of pastoral.

The future is hard to predict. It always has been. When Alvin Toffler wrote “Future Shock” around the time of the first Earth Day, he was right about the speed of cultural change but he had no mention of the personal computer or the micro chip and the miniaturization of technology. Toffler was a friend of my Dad’s and I suppose they saw the future as just more of what they already had. More and better., sleeker and faster. Being a futurologist is a tough gig, for you rarely predict the thing that surprises everyone: The tiny computer that everyone wants. The Pandemic that wrecks the economy. The President that harnesses stupidity and anger. Nope, that’s why they call them surprises.

I’m no better and I’m not judging anybody harshly for not predicting how things turned out. Humility is the quality that is called for in the face of the future. The Greeks and Roman’s knew that. So too the native Americans. I would much rather burn some meat on an alter or dance in a circle than write a book and claim to be certain of what is coming.

But better than predicting we can act with common sense. We know that dumping poison in the air isn’t going to work out in the long run. We just know that. We’ve already done it long enough. We don’t need proof about what exactly is going to happen. It just can’t be good. If it kills you when you pump car exhaust into your garage then it can’t be good to pump it into the atmosphere forever with a bajillion cars. It just can’t be, and then if scientists who have studied it say, “Hey listen… it really is bad!” Then it doesn’t take a genius to believe them. Just like it didn’t take a flipping genius to know not to go swimming in the East River in 1971 with all the turds and the rubbers. Just one look told even the dumbest teenagers THAT.

I love this wild beauty of the Tongas National Forest. I also like being able to work out in it, and I’m certain there are ways to do both, we just can’t strip it bare at the cheapest possible price point. Something has got to give. Sure it was more expensive to treat sewage. But we woke up and we did it. We can protect the air and the climate. It’s not a matter of whether we can or not. We know that now. We can do it. We can restrain our selves. if this pandemic crap has taught us anything it teaches us this. We can restrain ourselves to make things better. Nature is what it is. It’s not playing with us, it just is what it is, and we have to deal with it, just as we have to clean up after ourselves. It’s not fancy, or political. It’s just common sense to me.

Yes, I am the prophet of the self evident.

Daffodils

filled with rain, like teacups

left out all night.

jhs

Here is a reading I did this morning of one of my favorite contemporary poets. Pattiann Rogers sings the praises of the earth and asks hard questions like no one else:

Humor In Hard Times

Fog, low clouds and rain today. Walked on a different beach today while the rain let up for a few minutes and some friends showed up with their dog. All the humans wore masks. The dogs ran back and forth on the cobbles like crazy, rolling and chasing each other as if in wild delight, rain or no rain. The other dog was happy to swim after a thrown ball and Dot gave it a try but never got out to actually swim but came close, letting the little waves wash up over her shoulders and wet her face, then backing up so that she would have her feet firmly on the good earth. She doesn’t have the water dog instinct but she is getting more and more comfortable in the water. Crows, and eagles watched her from the shore and gulls wheeled overhead. She is more than sixty pounds now but still flops around like a puppy and the gulls seem to taunt her from the sky. She got good exercise today. Jan and I carried camp chairs down and set them up under cover and ate sandwiches for lunch before we had to get back for one of Jan’s many phone meetings back home.

We had a fine time watching the dogs and seeing friends we haven’t seen in weeks, Even if we couldn’t get close or see their faces through the masks it was good to share their company for a few minutes and see that they were well.

We spoke to our son, Finn last night and he is getting ready for a big show that he is taping with a friend. It is not his usual stand up routine but something new that will address the new life during the virus. The tape will be shown along with other comedians work at a fund raiser for front-line medical providers on May 1st. It is a virtual gathering and fund raiser. This is the new way of things and Finn is happy to have the opportunity. I don’t know what his new material is yet and hope to see it when it shows. Finn is always reticent to share new work with me, and I don’t blame him. There is a stage with all creative work when you can’t really talk about it, I know this well because if it doesn’t get the response you want, it just shatters your confidence and can make you go back an tweak it when that is the worst thing you can do. Especially my feedback because I am not anyones target audience anymore. Finn knows that I’m too old, too eccentric, and way too close to him to be a good judge of contemporary humor. I think almost everything he does is funny. He was a funny baby. We used to call out for him to do “Monkey Boy” and he would shake his head and scratch under his arms before he could speak whole sentences. Then there was the “big diaper dance” which always KILLED. So you see, I’m not that great of a judge of sophisticated club scene hipster humor.

When I was a little boy, we lived in Montclair, New Jersey and my parents took in a family who were refugees from Hungary. We also took in a pair of twins, but they were not able to stay with us long because their psychological damage made them extremely shy, they needed a quieter less rowdy house than ours, and the social service organization found them a more suitable place, or at least that what the children in our family were told. The family which stayed with us were survivors of the Shoah or the Holocaust and in the greater New York area they had many friends who were survivors. They had gatherings at our house and my parents made sure my older siblings sat in on these gatherings. My parents also had friends who served in the war and one friend in particular who had been a doctor in the army who had married a jewish woman who was liberated from one of the camps. This Doctor had treated her when she had been pulled from one of the mass graves. She held a piece of jewelry on which she had etched the words in English, “I live!.” This American doctor treated her and then married her. They too would come to these parties. The only thing I remember from these gatherings was that there was a lot of smoking, drinking, and a lot of laughing. I also remember the stories that my parents told me afterwords.

My parents wanted us all there, even me. to bear witness I suppose. The one story I remember was a story that my parents found very odd. Odd because the survivors found it so hysterically funny. It was full of irony I suppose, studying it now. But it always makes me think about how much people need to laugh even in a dark way, the tension that must be resolved, even in the face of the darkest circumstances.

The story concerned a fat man. He was hugely fat. He was Polish I think. He went into the camps and he was possibly three hundred pounds. Immense. Chin, upon chins. He had a terrible time in the camp, but he survived. I can’t remember what camp it was but it was awful. He lost all of his family but because of his weight he did not starve to death. Yet by the time the Americans came and liberated the camp he was skin and bones. A skeleton. Nothing but bones and flaps of loose skin. He was wandering around the streets of the camp stunned that he had survived. The American soldiers were throwing chocolate bars off of their trucks and everyone was going crazy to get them. People were clambering to get chocolate, and of course the former fat man raised his arm up from the crowd and called out for some chocolate. The army private heard all the voices yelling for chocolate and tired of throwing the bars one at a time just heaved a case of chocolate bars off the truck. And of course the case hit the formerly fat man on the head and instantly killed him!

The whole table gathered at our house dissolved into laughter. Tears of laughter. Wheezing plumes of cigarette smoke, and choking down drinks from coming up their noses. They loved this story. The American chocolate bars killed the fat man. Of course it did!

I’m not saying my parents understood it then, nor do I say I understand it now. Maybe it had something to do with the fat man being Polish or maybe it has some cultural coding that made it clear that the fat man was a buffoon. I don’t know. I think it had more to do with the chocolate bars being American, and the rich irony of that… but whatever it was, there was something sweet and delicious about being alive for them in that story.

I have tried to understand almost all my life what the key to humor is, All I know is that provoking laughter requires tension and release and other than that it requires a delicate sensibility to what an audience is feeling at the moment. It’s not slight of hand, but I think it is closer to real magic.

Soon Finn, will be making pandemic jokes. we all find things funny in this when there are things that are not funny at all. This is part of how mysterious life is and how great our transformative powers can be. Love, Humor, Genius, Courage and Patience, I capitalize them because they name our greatest weapons in this war.

At least that’s what I think… those things and Chocolate.

Dot watching her new fence being built.

Hard rain, my neighbor

takes out the garbage in her

bright pink underwear.

jhs

Here is a reading I did this morning from P.G. Woodhouse, which got me thinking about humor. Dot got so excited she had to go outside. I hope you like it. Again I’m sorry about my goofy accent.

We Can Do This, Because We've Done It Before

Fog today after a cold sunny weekend. Spring gives nods and faints as if it is here but then it retreats back into the shadows. I heard a humming bird buzz around our feeder yesterday but that was it. Our neighbor says she has several at her’s which is only about forty feet from ours but still I have not seen the little beggars. Fat Robbins appear on the lawn then disappear. Sapsuckers bang on drainpipes consistently and eagles play their broken flutes every morning. Friday night the stars were amazingly clear and the air seemed surprisingly warm when Dot and I went out for our evening walk. I thought sure the next day would be spring-like, but it was a two sweater day, in dazzling crisp sunlight. Beautiful walk in the estuary but no birds in the sparkling river.

In the morning Dot stretches for a few moments and then she rolls and summersaults on the moss rubbing her pretty coat hoping to carry the smell of earth on her the rest of the day.

The news is full of talk of “opening up the economy” and people are protesting their rights to go out and both get and spread the corona virus. “End The Government Restrictions!” I understand their frustrations, but I don’t see it as the Government’s fault. Who will they be angry with when their family members get sick and die? Who will they blame when this gets worse and they see for themselves that we need to do something, for longer and longer? They will blame their enemies, I’m sure. The strangers, or the ones they see as the haughty and elite. I don’t blame them, it’s only natural. It’s a shitty situation. But what can we do? Really…. what can we do to protect each other and ourselves?

We are being asked to be patient, and to support the scientists who can develop not just cures and vaccines but can develop mass testing and complex plans which will allow us to gradually be able to open up and shut down, open up in spots and shut down in spots. We are not good with slow and complex measures, but that is the best we can hope for in a battle against this indifferent disease. American culture is not good at waiting, or long term solutions, it’s not our strong suit.

Saturday, on the bridge over Katlian River

Yet, during the Second World War we found our grit. We found patient determination. Is it time to dig deep and find that again now? How did we find it then? I suppose because we had no choice. The Axis Powers were not going to stop. We lost more than one hundred thousand people in that struggle. We are likely to lose more than that in this struggle and there is no indication that the virus is not going to give up. We found the patience and the grit to perserveer for four years in the Civil War and the Second World War. We found the grit in the depression and the Spanish Flu and the First World War. We found common cause with people we didn’t know and we made sacrifices.

I believe to say that our individual right to do what we want; to go to restaurants and ball games is more important than the right of others to live, is tan amount to advocating surrender during World War II. “War Bonds are too expensive!” “Rubber Drives are too much work!” “The Draft is Not Fair… and it asks to much of ME for the benefit of some European!” “I Just Don’t Want To Go!… It Should Be My Choice!”

The big difference here and now, is that corporate America is being asked to make real sacrifices, and citizens are asked to stay at home to protect each other. In War Time corporations got rich and citizens volunteered their lives. We should be able to find the will to save our own lives, don't you think?

Saturday walk up Katlian River

Of course none of this is easy, and I’m being didactic. But I honestly do believe we are a generous people when called upon. Republicans, and Conservatives, Liberals and Democrats, Libertarians, and Independents, Priests, Saints and Convicts are going to die in the coming months. People we know, and people we have never heard of, after it is all over… and it will be over someday, we will have to ask ourselves what did we do to help staunch the suffering? Did we do the minimum to save lives, or did we stand up for our individual right to spend money on non necessary items, and our right to get and spread a implacable disease which killed our neighbors?

What would our parents have chosen? What would our great great grandparents have chosen?

A tug boat anchors

far out on a foggy night

her light burns like flame.

jhs

Here is a recording I made late morning. You can hear the noon whistle. I read the opening of The Curious Eat Themselves. I also spoke about some of the inspiration for the book, I forgot Larry McMurtry’s name, but now I remember.

Little Things

Heavy dew on Salmonberry buds Friday, April 17, 2020

Heavy dew this morning for our early outing. Then the sun burned through. The grass just decided to grow. It became warm in the afternoon and we went for a little hike and visited with Nancy out on the street again. We ate Chinese food from Kenny’s. Jan loaded up folding chairs and a card table so we could eat in style on the sidewalk of Lincoln street. Nancy was happy to get out on the first warm afternoon of spring. She stayed bundled up in her sweater and heavy coat but Jan, Dot, and I were stripped down to our tee shirts and collars for our sidewalk luncheon.

I decided to celebrate with a bunch of photos I took this morning and some little poems I had in my drawer.

Day after Easter,

And I put the snow shovels

Back behind the shed. 

 Moving as one bird

Turnstones fly above the waves,

White sparks, disappear.

 Pale spring light through our

Open window, your brown hair

Falling in my mouth.

Warm day, walking home

Ravens eating corndogs in

The back of a truck.

 Before bed, I pee

under the hanging fucia.

Blue Heron fishing.

Late night, on the road

A doe and a spotted fawn

Frozen by headlights.

Red chairs knocked over

Rain-dappled in the sun

And a finch…singing.

 Sunlit morning,

The glass I left outside

Trembles full of rain.

 A tiny grey wren

Hops through last night’s cold ashes

Dabbing for meat scraps.

 The Chilkat River

Runs colder than death in spring.

Milk white ghosts, singing.

 Warm morning rain,

Only crows are calling now.

The boat takes you away.

 Above rounded hips,

Aurora Borealis:

Like green satin sheets.

Gulls sing

Over herring egg rocks

taxes should be due.

Bright stars in a clear sky,

Dogs bark at a shooting star

And we are alive.

 Whales blow in the sound

And waves crash against the rocks.

You type letters at the kitchen table.

The heron unfolds

Herself onto the mirror.

Where am I going?

The herring are in.

Our cove smells of ripe spawning.

We linger in bed.

 How lonely I was

As I scraped ice off my car

Hearing a thrush sing.

Cherry Tree buds, Friday April 17, 2020

Fish bones on the beach

As if they were an idea

Which is all used up.

Light snow, stone gray sky.

There are rumors of new crimes

Coming every day.

 On this foggy day

the white seine boats look like ghosts

chugging through the clouds.

Storm waves break on shore,

Churn white again and again.

How do you find love?

 Bright sun, cold shadows:

It is hard to tell the truth

About anything.

  Suin on the hemlock boughs:

A raven calls in the woods,

Where the shadows sleep.

 Late spring, foggy day

The gray cat in long wet grass

stretches, licks her paw.

 Long grass, pearls of dew

Slowly sliding down the blades

wait… wait a moment.

Dot on her walk up Indian River today.

 Here is a recording I made after getting back from our little hike. I read from my second published book: The Curious Eat Themselves.

Women in shirtsleeves

put beer out in their gardens.

Not for you, dear slugs!

jhs

Part Human, Part Dog

Fog and mist all day long. Not enough rain to clear the sky, just sponge like mist that wets a canvas coat during a short walk. The mossy ground is squishy with water and the holes where Dot has dug in the ground are turning to mud. It looks like some big animal tramped down a corner of our berry patch and the way Dot had her hackles up zigging and zagging around the house with her nose to the ground, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a brown bear on the lawn during the night. Our garbage cans were all upright on the road but people are pretty good about not putting food waste out until the morning of garbage day.

I enjoy foggy days. I like how birds emerge into view and disappear like a vanishing thought. I also like how the curtain of fog doesn’t stay the same all day long but allows some islands, some trees to become visible for a few moments as if the weather were just auditioning them. Dot and I walked down the road for about a mile and a half working on her leash technique. She is so much better than she used to be that walking her on a leash is becoming almost enjoyable and does not leave me with a painful lower back from being hauled around by her enthusiasm. She reminds me of Richard Nelson in that whatever new thing is out there she MUST go see it, study it, sniff around for a good bit and then pee on it.

We then clambered down a steep trail which is tricky with the two of us, because with the right moment of imbalance on my part Dot can pull me off my feet now. But we did fine and we got to a quiet beach where she could romp around by herself away from cars. She enjoyed, sniffing things and eating barnacles while I made todays recording. Then we went home, there were quite a few cars and trucks on the road. I think summer lodges and fishermen are getting ready no matter what the virus is doing, I say that because there seem to be a lot of trucks piled with stuff in the back of them zooming around. Dot and I worked on not trying to lunge out in front of the trucks by sitting by the side of the road and every time a car went by and she didn’t lunge, I lavished her with praise and gave her a treat. When she did lunge she came to the end of her new training collar. She never yips or shows any pain, but at the end of about an hour, I can safely say that she seemed to enjoy the treat more than the lunge. But still, I think she suspects that every pick up truck is coming down the road at forty five miles per hour (our top speed limit) is traveling to expressly to deliver her their load of sirloin steaks. She is so sure of this, she wants to get in front of them so that they will see her and stop, when they don’t, she is both heartbroken and excited to chase after each one to correct their mistake, “Hey, it’s me! I’m right here, Wait, wait, wait!”

Someone has to teach her that life is full of these type of disappointments and that falls to me. Somehow she hasn’t understood my long verbal explanations about what would happen if she ran in front of a truck, with the vivid and frightening descriptions, meant to scare the puppy pee out of her. That doesn’t work. See Gary Larson’s cartoon, “Blah, Blah, Blah. Dot, Blah, Blah, Blah.”

So it’s treat or twitch. Treat or twitch. So far I think the most effective training experience happens when she gets ready to throw her body in front of a speeding truck and the truck pulls off the highway before it gets to us. “See?” I say, “Not everyone is coming to see you. They have other places to go,’ and she looks up at me with kind of shocked and sad look in her eyes like, “Really?”

Carl Jung wrote that in the earliest weeks of human development a baby child does not really understand the difference between themselves and their mother. The mother and the baby are still one being, connected. He wrote something like, “When the mother holds her child and they catch each other’s gaze, in a sense they are looking through the same eyes.” The baby reacts to the light and to stimulation and assumes that they are reacting as part of the mother. I’m betting dogs do the same thing. Dot was just emerging from that warm wiggly oneness when I snatched her up from the breeders. Left free the mother would have snapped or butted the pups out of the way of danger, and I imagine the pup experiences the pain as some natural pain just suddenly visited upon the body, like a back twinge and would try to correct something so as not to have it happen again. Just as I change my gait to accommodate my sore back. Our body teaches us how to move. Our mothers taught us how to move early on, we just didn’t know they were doing it. But now, I have stepped in and it is up to me to teach survival, to this pup. This is a big one: speeding cars are indifferent. They could easily kill you. Just like a virus. Neither really care about your safety. I do… this thing that ripped you out of your safety zone and yells at you, gives you treats, then inflicts a twitch of pain. I’m the one who cares about you. Love and Fear. Love and Fear.

Welcome to your new life, Dot. You are now part human. That’s domestication for you.

We made it back home and Dot is now sleeping peacefully in the office. She enjoys my fake electric fireplace, and I fill my head with thoughts of her. Perhaps, hopefully I am becoming part dog. Maybe she is domesticating me as well. Tomorrow we will have more lessons,

A blue heron lands

loosely, like a string puppet

on its reflection.

jhs

This morning Dot and I made a recording at the beach where I read from Bob DeArmond’s book about his trip from Sitka to Tacoma in a dory in 1931. Highly recommended book, particularly if you have spent time on the water in southeastern Alaska. Dot was quite well behaved during this recording.

Radient!

Another day of low clouds and light rain. The grass on my lawn shows no real sign of growing up through the moss, but the buds on the cherry tree seem a bit larger and a little more willing to unclench their fists. The temperature is mild and I wear my canvas work jacket over a tee shirt comfortably outside, as long as I avoid the more severe rain squalls. Fishermen are stocking up their boats with gear and food hoping to catch their black cod quota and everyone is speculating about when and if the salmon season will commence. Will the processors in the Cold Storage plants be able to hire their outside workers to process fish? Will they be able to quarantine them effectively for the first 14 days, and do they have adequate plans to deal with testing and treatment if someone does get sick? All this is on the minds of people here. Tourist season looks bad, Carnival Cruise Ships just announced cancelation of their ships for the entire season. The salmon lodges are facing uncertain bookings, We have three legs to our economy on this island: Fishing, Tourism, and Government/healthcare. This pandemic could knock out two for the entire year. What would the effect be in a State which is already reeling from ridiculously low oil prices which is Alaska’s only state tax base, or used to be anyway. Our economy is in trouble and everyone is going to feel it.

But… not today. Today we just need to survive another day. Dot needs more exercise than I’ve been giving her. I walk too slow and not far enough for this strong young dog, so I will have to walk longer and keep training her so that she keeps thinking she has a job to do, I have to keep working with her because she boors easily and then she gets nutty, with the zoomies, with barking and jumping on top of me every time I sit down. Which is harder now that she is almost sixty pounds. More exercise, more stimulation. . Yes…. all these things I know, but Good Lord she has so much more energy than I do. I wish I could teach her to read.

Today we walked and romped in the morning for a half hour. Then a ten minute training session. Then I had to do some reading and answering my mail. Then Dot and I went down to see Nancy Ricketts for one of her smoke breaks from the Home. As long as neither Dot nor I touch her and stay at least six feet away from her, AND wear masks, we are allowed to be with Nancy. I tried to get Dot to wear a mask just for a photograph but she would have none of it.

The McDonalds drive through was too crowded to pick up coffee for Nancy on the way. We don’t make coffee at home anymore because we only drink a little instant coffee with our hot chocolate anymore. I stopped drinking coffee almost twenty five years ago after I hit a daily high of twelve to fifteen cups of strong coffee a day, while I was working for the Public Defender and writing, “The Curious Eat Themselves” in my off hours. My stomach rebelled finally. Anyway… Dot and I got to go into the snack shop and buy coffee for Nancy. It was a bid day for Dot who had never been on a leash indoors, other than at home. She was quite well behaved surprisingly, but she refused to walk past the soft drink cooler. I don’t know why, she was walking along fine, and she just lay down and refused to move. Something about the cooler seemed to frighten her, perhaps the sound of the fan, or the color. The only way I could get back to where the thermos of regular coffee was kept was to go all the way around the back wall and sneak up on the coffee. She didn’t bark or pull or make a fuss, she just absolutely refused to walk the three feet down the isle where the cooler ghost or whatever it was… was.

Nancy and Dot and I sat on a bench on Lincoln Street under cover of the storefront and drank coffee and tea and after I was done I gave Dot my cup to chew up. We talked about lots of different things. Nancy loves wide ranging discussions. She will talk about herself and her feelings but she much more enjoys good discussions about subjects she is interested in. Today the sun was coming out for a bit and we discussed the Dali Lama. Cars went buy and people waved. Three people stopped by to talk to Nancy and to Dot. No one really seemed to want to talk with me, which I am used to in Sitka. In my home town I am known mostly as the husband of Jan Straley the whale biologist. They could ask me questions about whales but why would they when they know it would be better to call Jan. If they know that I write books, and I suspect they do because on those times when I introduce myself they mention something about my books, but when this happens it’s always a bit awkward, because they don’t want to admit that they have never read any of my books OR if they did they weren’t crazy about them and how do you bring that up? .

But it was a wonderful morning. Nancy had read a book of a conversation between the Dali Lama and Desmond Tutu which she quite enjoyed. She particularly liked that the the 14th Dali Lama described himself as an atheist. “Don’t you think that is wonderful?” She asked me smiling, “I just think it’s wonderful how humans can believe anything they want.,” now if I were talking to any old 95 year old woman, I just might simply agree with her and move on to the weather but Nancy counts on me to liven things up a bit. “Well, of course he said that Nancy,” I said,” He believes himself to be the bodily reincarnation of the Buddha of Compassion, and he is treated as a deity by his followers, “What else is he going to say? What would God say if asked if he believed in God?” Well she laughed at me but we were off to the races anyway… talking about Chinese history and Tibet, talking about Mao Tse Tung and his famous comment to the teenage #14 that, “All religion is pornography.” Then we talked about whether the Dali Lama really wanted democracy for Tibet. and she said, “I suppose it’s easy to advocate for Democracy when your people worship you like a God. You aren’t in danger of being voted out.”

We had a fine time, and both ended up agreeing that we would like to meet his Holiness and if he ever came to Sitka we would try to wrangle an audience. We both agreed that he seemed like he had a good sense of humor and was certainly very kind. Then a lady who used to work at the Grocery Store Nancy lived near stopped by and wanted to talk with Dot. Apparently she wasn’t interested in Tibetan Buddhism, but Dot wanted to give her a smooch and did. Dot is overflowing with compassion. Then she and Nancy visited about the people that used to work at the store and their whereabouts. By the time she left, my coffee cup was pretty well shredded and I picked up all the pieces and threw away the trash and we walked back to the Home.

First we stopped at the Book Store where they had put a book I had ordered out on the steps in a bag with my name on it. The manager, who is very aware of the virus rules opened the door but didn’t come out. She wanted to see Dot because she was shocked at how much Dot had grown. While she was out there, Nancy ordered another copy of the Tutu and #14 book because she wanted to give it to me, and I ordered Seven Years In Tibet for her. The manager nodded and promised to put in our orders and would give us a call to tell us when the books would appear on her steps again. Then she gave Dot a dog cookie and Dot started dancing on the end of her leash. While filled with compassion Dot has a long way to go in overcoming desire.

Nancy Ricketts went back to the Pioneers Home and she was met by a nurse in a mask who would take her temperature and make sure that she washed and disinfected her hands. Nancy had commented earlier how the staff cleans the door handles and hand rails in the Home ever hour. Something about this made her kind of sad. “I’ve never been that particular about that kind of thing,” she said, “I’d much rather have people and their germs around…. but of course that was before… all this stuff,” and I told her I knew exactly what she meant.

We waved good bye from more than ten feet apart, she turned and rushed in without lingering. I know she felt like crying, because I did. I can’t bare to think of her dying alone in there, she wants the old Episcopal priest, Father Dave to be by her deathbed, but that will probably not be possible for a good long time.

I promised to call her on the phone tomorrow and she said, over her shoulder, “Okay, Sweetie,” and then she was gone.

Light rain, crocuses

unfolding in the garden.

No past. No future.

jhs

Here is a recording I made this morning where I read, and tried not to talk too much about one of my very favorite books. Dot misbehaved badly during the reading which I found kind of ironic because the book is about taking care of a very good pig.

A Poem, A Stink, A Noise

Light rain today. Low clouds, and it would be easy to be sad if I did not keep busy.

In thinking about memory and stories, particularly fiction, I thought of one of my favorite books that I read in Junior high school, then several times since.

Cannery Row, influenced me as much or more than any other novel. It’s romantic tone, the characters, the setting seemed somehow familiar because I had been in beach towns and my parents were intellectuals and also drinkers. The kind of boozy chaos that Steinbeck evokes in the book, the sunny kind of drunkeness where things go wrong, but not so wrong they couldn’t be put back to right with a day of clean up and a really good apology, was somehow parallel to the emotional climate of my growing up. I think my parents aspired to be the kind of intellectual bohemians that “Doc” Ricketts engendered. So, even though I wasn’t of his generation, he became an inspiration to me and to thousands of others.

There are many “Ed Heads” around the world. People who venerate the character and the man. I’ve written in other places about Ed and Jack Calvin, John Steinbeck and Joseph Campbell and the women who shared and in many cases helped shape their intellectual lives. I’ve mentioned that Jan is working on a second edition of Ed Ricketts: From Cannery Row to Sitka, Alaska, and that book should be available by summer, if we catch a break with the virus.

But today I wanted to talk about memory a bit more and talk a little about Cannery Row and think about what it tells us about memory.

I recorded a reading and a talk below. I hope you find something in there that strikes a cord. I think this book sent many people in search of the nexus between science, spirit and the imagination. I know it did me. But just now I want to start with the questions: How much if it is real? And, does it even matter?

Of course I don’t really know the answer, but if asked today I would say this: I suspect Cannery Row is a dream John Steinbeck had in order to hold on to his love of a time, a place and a man, that made him happy. It is a beautiful, funny and enduring dream…(even if it is dated now in some aspects of Steinbeck’s genuine respect for “the boys” of the story, Sorry but I feel compelled to add that) All of the details he selected helped him create what seemed a specific and actual world for himself and his readers. The book remains a little jewel of sensual and sympathetic writing. This is a great achievement for any writer to accomplish and I suppose that’s all you can expect when you invite a novelist to your drinking party in a lovely beach town full of genius. But you also can’t blame a daughter for feeling that there were liberties taken with the father. Her father she was separated from too soon and who she loved dearly, The man that none of the grown ups really knew… but thought they did.

I hope you get something out of the reading and the talk, of course the topic is so broad there is no resolution or conclusion to the question of “How much is real?” but if you know that, that is what you get with me. There is always more to talk about. Particularly when it comes to the real.

Take good care.

Ed Rickett’s books at Hopkins Marine Lab

Ed Ricketts photograph at the Hopkins Station Library in Monterey .

One of Ed Ricketts Books inscribed by the author, a Mexican Marine Biologist and colleague.

No cherry blossoms.

I know you were angry,

but not why?

jhs