Hair Of The Dog

Wind coming from the south-east with some rain and low clouds, yet still pretty warm. Summer wetness. The salmon berries are growing heavy on the bushes and there are a few moldy ones rotting on the vine. Birds are fat. I turned over a shovel full of dirt in our garden plot and found three fat worms diving down into the black soil. This morning the cheery tree threw water off it’s limbs like a mustang sheds drops from its mane clambering from the river. The wind feels wet even when it’s not actively raining and the ground is soft underfoot.

Today my exercise was cleaning house: dishes, vacuuming, laundry, moping, (Freudian slip “mopping” obviously) bathrooms and toilets. It was too wet for mowing the lawn. This ate up more time than I expected, because dot an my feet have brought in more dirt than I expected, plus bones, and sticks, and chewed up toys, shoes, and squeaky toys encrusted with mud with the squeakers sucked out of their guts. Jan keeps asking me where I come up with all these things and I don’t know how to answer her. I just love to chew squeaky toys, guts out. It is starting to wear on her patience.

There are two super yachts off our beach. No cruise ships all year. But these two yachts travel together. Both were built in Australia and just put in the water last year. One the catamaran is 80 meters and it is the support vessel for the 85 meter single hull. The catamaran carries all the toys for the other: Helicopter, submarine, hydroplane, fishing boats, jet skis, kayaks, experimental displacement hull vessels including a fifty four foot littering boat. The support vessel also has rooms for twenty crew and a few guest state rooms as well as a dive center with a decompression chamber, as well as a hospital with medical staff and surgical theater. The decision was made that it would be better to keep all the hubbub away from the main ship where the owner and the guests can just chill. Which I think is thoughtful. My intel has told me that both these vessels are owned by “financial interests from Las Vegas.” So… now I’m thinking that they aren’t going diving or windsurfing at all but I’m imagining the main ship is full of high rollers playing Texas Hold’em. But I don’t know for sure.

The only thing that makes me really think about it today is that I doubt they have a lot of dog hair on their carpets and I bet they don’t have a bunch of nasty old marrow bones under their couches either, and some of their throw rugs don’t smell like pee, either.

They don’t know what they are missing.

Life is in the good and the bad that’s what I think. Not that I am not curious about life on a super yacht I’m just not betting it is what I want my life to be. I’ll take mine with some dog hair and a few worms in the yard.

Here is a recording I made reading from a lovely novel called Fifteen Dogs, by Andre Alexis. It won a lot of acclaim and several important prizes. It’s about fifteen Canadian dogs the Gods gave human intelligence to on a bet. I love it.

Warm wind from the south

the cherry tree waves its arms

as if its on fire.

jhs

Reading In The Time Of Covid

Blue sky and lovely temperature today. Rain last night again but sweet smelling in the morning. Friends are bringing in fish or working on their boats. Gardens are lovely with flowers, including ours. This year we put up pots around to keep them away from our nosey dog, which seems to work. Dot still loves to dig and eat unspeakable plants and animals. She is in for another vet visit on Monday because of an infected lump in there jaw which is probably from a sliver of stick or clamshell from her crazy diet. She is still plenty active and happy no matter how full we keep her with antibiotics. But she is getting better with the chewing and eating. She doesn’t seem to eat cans anymore where I swear, she used to consume aluminum cans before we could grab them out of her mouth. Now she might give one a bite to suck the soda down and then spit it out. She reminds me in many ways of a black bear. She still loves to dig and eat clams at low tide and will scrape a rock for mussels with her teeth and swallow every thing down. Her poop is a geological wonder.

Anyway… life feels good today. I made a big pot of chili last night and we have fresh cornbread. We will have that for a couple of days I’m sure. Jan is working hard on plans for the fall and I’m back at the blog while I’m waiting for news from Soho Press on the next Cecil book. I’m also taking notes and filling out three by five cards for the next Cold Storage book. It will be set in the early seventies, when the Hippies started to show up in the fishing fleet and a Trappist Monk from Kentucky came to Alaska thinking about settling here then he went to Thailand and died under what some thought were mysterious circumstances. This book will have some of my favorite old characters from the series, Ellie, and her niece. Slippery and the old cop who followed them up to Cold Storage. We get to find out how they settled in to life on the outer coast. No prisons, no wars, just old time Alaskan stories as were told to me.

I love books and reading but I’m having a hard time with my attention span for serious books during the time of covid 19. Even if the writing is particularly good, my attention weanders reading an entire book all at once. I stop and start. I think I’m reading about six books at once right now, and I keep buying more, because that’s just the way I am… but also I’m hungry for good writing and intelligent stories…. Yet…. I have the attention span of a fourteen year old boy on the first day of seventh grade. “What happened to all these girls over the summer?!!” Life just seems so weird. I’m reading about life in Italy after World War II and then I’m thinking about the upcoming US election and what it means, what’s going to happen, and then suddenly I’m day dreaming of a racist America and vote by mail. Jesus H. Christ… what happened to post war Italy?

Is anyone else like this?

Then why can I troll Netflix and watch one program from every Star Trek series every night, when I don’t even like Star Trek? (Though I have to say what peaked my interest in all things Star Trek was watching the latest Star Trek: Picard which I found out was written by Michael Chabon and his wife Aleyet Waldman. Both terrific writers… Michael C of Wonderboys, Caviler and Clay and The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, fame. He is also one of the executive producers of this new TV series. I had the good fortune to meet him once when he was touring with the NY T’s and he came to Sitka after Policeman’s Union. He was a very good guy, incredibly smart and hospitable, and he did me a couple of favors after that.. Anyway I thought I would give the new Picard a try and thought it was great: The writing was really tight and snappy. He understood the genre and the world of Startrek it seemed to me. He wasn’t condescending towards it, but he elevated the production values to make it really beautiful. He let Jean Luke really show his stuff and I loved how the old characters had aged so gracefully. His wife is a terrific crime writer and I did a reading with her in Nevada City, California once.)

So… I can watch TV now, I can read short fiction and poetry easily but novels I have to read periodically. Visit the world and then comeback to mine right away, then back to Italy. Here are some of the books I’ve been reading:

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Fererante is a lovely and atmospheric novel about two girls growing up in Italy. It’s the first of a trilogy. I love it, the way I love rich food, right now but as I said, I come back to my real life of cheese sandwiches and chili often enough. You also see Ghost Month by Ed Lin….terrific crime novel set in Taipei. Also great characters and setting: Food, smells, action and historical/cultural background enough to be a good vacation. You will also see, a new edition of Ed Ricketts From Cannery Row to Sitka, Alaska. This is the book Jan Straley put together with new essays and revisions. More material, new artwork and a new design. I also have a piece in this wonderful book because I slept with the editor.

You can get this book also at Old Harbor Books (907) 747-8808 or on line.

Dot being sniffy on the Cross trail.

I took Jan to her physical therapy this morning and then Dot and I went for a nice walk up on the cross trail behind the ball fields and the old City Dump site. It is a very lovely trail, wide enough to give good distance for cyclists and people concerned about social distancing. Dot enjoyed the walk a great deal but for some reason she was very sniffy, and her hackles were up often. This could be because she saw her first mountain biker ever and that was a little strange for her, it was a person I knew and he said hello to us and I think that was why she didn’t bite his front tire and try to herd him down off the hill. But she did bark twice and follow him for a bit. She stayed sniffy when I whistled her back.

This of course made me think off bears. There have been bears reported up there recently, and I started to run through my mind what we would do if we ran into one. I didn’t bring any bear spray or anything. As a good liberal and a Democrat I’m sure I would have tried to remain calm and reason with the bear. As an anarchist I think Dot would have let things ride on how much mutual respect was shown by the bear to us and then risked trying to kick it’s ass, which probably wouldn’t have worked out well. Bur she is a big strong dog, we both could have held our own for maybe ten seconds before we were munched up.

But it was not to be. There were plenty of people besides the rattling bikes and barking dogs. Sensible bears were up the hill, and the sensible puppies and old men made it back to the car just in time to get a frozen coffee drink at McDonalds for Jan and an order of French Fries for Dot. French fries are Dots favorite treat. We made it back to the physical therapist where we sat at the picnic table and Dot sat, laid, down and stayed for french fries until Jan came out. Then she ate all the rest straight out of the bag. Jan and I drank our frozen coffee drinks and it was a happy, happy day, because we had french fries and we didn’t get eaten by a bear.

Bright sun through the trees,

a brown bear eating berries

between dappled leaves.

jhs

Here is a recording I made of me reading a bit of the beginning of the second Harry Potter Book. As all of them do, this book creates the perfect world for underdog kids to believe in their unexpected powers.

My conversation with Nels

Sun, with blue sky today. the long grass holds last nights rain from the top of the blades to the soggy ground, but the morning sun makes pearls of the rain drops. Ravens are calling high up in the tree and eagles soar overhead from the trees near the road up over our house then to the shallows of the cove out front. Small boats are fishing out past the islands and from their reports the Pink salmon are gathering near shore but are still bright and worth keeping. There are also sharks in the sound robbing some of the trollers of their catch. This is not that unusual for this time of year, but always a topic of conversation at the bar.

The world is deep green and blue grey out to sea. The clouds show a whispy white and the weather fronts have yet to hit with much of a wallop. Summer. Early deer season and most hunters go high in the mountains, where the deer are fat and the bucks have not started to go into rut. Does are likely to have small fawns still with them. The salmon have not started running in the rivers so you could run into a hungry bear almost anywhere and hunters are likely to carry larger caliber rifles just in case.

The sun still stays up for long afternoons and there is time to hunt. But I’m not going anymore, I lost the vision in my right eye, and I’ve been thinking about getting myself a lever action gun that could be used for deer and protection, perhaps a .45-70 and I could teach myself to shoot lefty. Its a heavy round with enough stopping power, but it’s a slow round and not good for distance, which doesn’t matter because I never took long shots anyway. Nels taught me to hunt and I never shot more that thirty or forty yards away, usually much closer, by calling them in, and I never shot at a moving deer and always aimed at the head, with a large round so death would be sudden and painless. I didn’t bring lots of deer home, never more than one at an outing. But I always was happy with what I got and enjoyed the processing.

I know many people don’t agree with hunting but I always felt that if you eat meat you should understand the taking of meat. The killing, and the processing. I took part once in killing and processing a cow on a ussubsistence farm, but it was a group effort and I didn’t do the actual killing. I just helped with the packaging. Very shortly after the animal is dead, it transforms from creature… to meat. But there are some steps that should be maintained some gratitude should be shown to the animal: Nels said thank you in Koyukon and put grass in the deer’s mouth as he butchered it. I just said thank you each time and promised the corpse that I would use all I could and not take any of it to the land fill. I alway tried to take any waste, bones and hide I didn’t give away… I would take back into the woods where I took the deer. Or I would sink it away into the deep ocean. I tried to be mindful, just so I wouldn’t end up wasting the life I had taken.

But I never enjoyed the killing, and I never fully believed that the deer was fully a “gift” to me in the same way that Nels believed. I felt I had been lucky to be able to shoot a deer, and that perhaps there were ways that I could move in ways that encouraged my good fortune in that regard but in no way did I feel that the deer had given itself to me. I was always left with the feeling that I had violently ripped the deer from this life. Why am I not a vegetarian then? Well for one thing I feel the same way about Carrots and Brussel sprouts. When I eat a fresh carrot I am likewise ripping it out of it’s life. Also I’m robbing the carrot from the wild deer by fencing them off, while also endorsing whatever industrial farming and transportation infrastructure which brought it to me. There is no blameless way to consume calories. If we are indeed interconnected then we in fact eat ourselves. Honestly I think this is true. There never was a golden age of perfection where humans and animals lived in perfect harmony, if there is an original sin… this is probably where it begins.

But still, I’m not going to buy and new rifle. I just don’t like the killing anymore: killing the deer or the carrot, or the cow, but I do what I can by trying to be mindful of how it comes to me. I try to shorten the supply chain, thinking of the labor of how it got to me, I try and avoid waste, but there is no perfect solution in this western model I live in. I admired Nels and his attempts to live a true subsistance life. He did more that most: he ate a lot of gathered food, but clearly he was not truly a subsistence person, he traveled so much by jet, and a great deal of his food came long distances, no matter how much venison and salmon and berries he had, there were eggs, and oil and avocados, and bread and tortilla’s , and peanut butter and Lord… the ice cream by the gallon that he almost worshipped, that came to him via jet fuel or barge.

I’m not saying he was a hypocrite, because he did more to raise awareness of conservation issues than almost anyone, and he walked the walk as best he could. He was well aware that his skiff was powered by gasoline, he made reparations by donating his permanent fund to the conservation movement every single year he could. He was an honest and ethical man, and I loved him.

But the point I was trying to make… was this. I’M not going to buy a new rifle because I don’t enjoy the killing anymore. I am quite happy to be a hypocrite now. I will let others do my killing in my stead as hundreds of millions do around the world.

I spoke with Nels this morning on the Rain Phone. He died last November. He sounded good today. The conversation started off awkward again, much like the one with my mom. I was so conscious of the dead silence, I felt stupid. Then I realized I always felt kind of stupid when calling Richard Nelson. I almost always called him to ask him something that I knew he would know. I was about to hang up and try again but I just said, “Hello, Nelsie?”

“John Straley! I’ll be damned! How are ya! How are ya? How are ya?!!”

Now to be clear… I don’t really hear his voice, I’m not psychotic. I imagine his voice. But I have no time to make up what he says, I know I’m imagining his side of the conversation but it comes to me so quickly, in my imagination, that I have no clue that I’m making up what he is saying. Some of what he communicates to me doesn’t come in formed sentences but in the chunk of an idea, as if it was a message directly downloaded into my brain. I just know what he is telling me, just like I know what is happening in a book I am writing while I’m writing it. It down loads as chunks into my head and it’s then I just have to write it down. This is how these people talk to me, but I’m not aware of my brain making it up.

Anyway…. as my Mom said from where ever she was, it’s hard to understand.

I started off with telling Nels all the news I thought he would be interested in: the weather, the birds that I had seen and what they were up to. (he always thought my bird reports were funny because often I didn’t know the proper names, I would sometime say, just: “those little bitty grey fuckers that have a nice song.”) I told him about the waves at Sandy Beach. (flat…no good surf in a while) we talked about the berry crop and the bears on the trail system. I told him about the news with his friends.

He was a little more forth coming than my Mom about his situation. When I asked him how he was doing he said, he was doing okay, it was pretty amazing and all but he really missed being here with “us”. He said he really, really missed “wildness". Which, upon thinking about this made sense to me. Nels said that he was thinking about looking into reincarnation. I asked, “Can you do that?” and he said, “I think I can. It’s just that not many people where I am want to do that, But heck, wouldn’t it be In-fucking-credible, if I could be a Peregrine Falcon?” I said, “Yeah, but what’s the process for that? Isn’t that going backwards? “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” and he started rattling off facts about falcons as if he was doing a radio show on the birds. “THESE BIRDS ARE AWESOME!!!” “Yeah… “ I said, It would suit you too, for a while at least.”

Well we talked about it for a while. He said that he was going to look into the possibility because he said that he “really missed us’ and by “us” he meant all of the sentient and biologically interconnected world.

I told him that I missed him too, but that I was staying strong. I told him to find out what he could about the whole reincarnation thing and I wanted to talk with him more about the pros and cons before he many any rash decisions.

He said he understood my concerns and that we would talk again soon. He seemed very certain about that so I’m not to worried he will be unavailable next time I call.

Just one small apple

hidden in the waxy leaves

hanging onto life.

One Way Or The Other.

More warm rain today. Hazy grey clouds right down to the water. The wind blowing from the west lets the sky clear perhaps once every couple of hours and then back to the rain, The fireweed sticks up through our berry patch and towers over my head standing on the lawn, Drops drip down the staircase of flowers until they disappear into the thicket.

I took Dot for a long walk in the Historical Park down town after checking the mail. We were three quarters of the way done when we ran into a Park Ranger in uniform with his Ticket pad in his had and I was working on defenses for whatever it was he was about to accuse Dot and I for doing. Dot was on a leash but she had barked at a woman with two older labradors and it was possible that could have been a Federal Offense we hadn’t heard of. But no. The Ranger was very nice he just asked me if we had “noticed any bears, in the park.” I told him that Dot had taken a good long sniff at some pretty fresh seeming poop and had gotten wound up in her leash for a bit on the other side of the river. He said he had a report of an adult bear in the park just a few minutes ago and was looking for it. Again he was very nice so, I didn’t ask him if he intended to give the bear a ticket for pooping in the woods, but I didn’t. It’s been my experience with some law enforcement types that attempted humor can sometimes be a Federal offense. But Dot and I agreed to keep our eyes and noses out and would be sure to let someone know if we caught wind of the bear. What I really wanted to do was chase the bear out of the Park and help her/him avoid getting a Federal ticket which is a pain in the butt to contest if you want to, seeing how the only Federal Court is in Juneau, which is hard for a bear to get to these days with the bad ferry service.

Anyway, then we went to the fish market, and the Drug store. I bought salmon, and shrimp, and a wrist brace as well as some potassium because apparently my blood pressure medication eats up potasium and causes my muscles to cramp and could be making my tendinitis worse.

The solution to every problem carries a whole host of new problems on it’s back, like a snail carries it’s house.

Jan and I had a good conversation yesterday. Her health is getting worse. Her mobility is growing worse, The drugs are reaching the end of their effectiveness and so to the deep brain stimulation. So that she really doesn’t walk anymore but shuffles and teeters, she falls periodically and freezes up completely, particularly when she is downtown. Her mental functions are still good. No dementia or memory failures out of the ordinary for a 66 year old scientist at the top of her game. Jan is incredibly, strong, stubborn and brave. She is also a workaholic. She is dedicated to her research and the people who depend on her: her students and former students. She is ferocious about the accuracy of her work and how it is presented in the world.

So… She doesn’t like to talk about being sick. In fact noticing it makes it worse. Here is an example: A few weeks ago someone saw her crossing the street very slowly, and called the police to report that there was an “drunk old woman” holding up traffic. The cop came and he was very nice and once he saw that she had a disability(Parkinson’s) he apologized for bothering her and was on his way. But as you can imagine this bummed Jan out. She vented to me, and I asked her if I could write a letter to the editor in the paper suggesting people get some more facts before calling the cops on a slow person…. I might have worked it up a little more elegantly than that but hey, it started off a lot rougher. Anyway she told me not to do that. I asked her about writing in my blog and I think she agrees because she doesn’t read my blog and doesn’t believe anyone else does either.

Anyway… that’s not the point. The point is now she is really self conscious walking down town because she doesn’t know who is watching her and who might call the cops or the FBI or Homeland Security. Self consciousness is the enemy of this mobility situation. For it’s a brain thing, not a muscle thing, the brain is not sending the right messages to the muscles and you cant move. If your brain freezes with self conscious anxiety for Jan at least, she freezes up completely. SO… after that. episode with the cops, she and Nancy were walking from under the bridge back towards the Home. Neither of them are exactly speed demons, but Jan was slowing way down. Finally she had to cross the street. A car comes up and stops. More cars stop. Her anxiety level rises. I am way up ahead with Dot waiting for her because she usually hates me and Dot to call attention to her in these situation, even by noticing her slowing down. So… the driver of the first car, a very nice man leaves his car in the middle of the street and offers to help Jan… this freaks her out…. more cars are lining up behind his car. He’s fine. He doesn’t care, and truthfully I doubt any of the Sitka drivers on that day cared, but Jan was freaking out and she couldn’t move… not an inch…. not a centimeter. Jan tried to explain this to the man and he was having none of it. He starts directing traffic around and finally Nancy wheels up with her walker and they make it to the other side of the street one inch at a time with the help of the nice man. Nancy waves to me down the block and Dot and I come down. Jan is a combination of profoundly sad and angry. She knows there is no one to be angry with other than the fate who gave her Parkinson’s. I talk with her and Dot snuggles her on a bench for a while. I go get the car and we make it home. That’s the story, but what happens is that Jan stays kind of angry and depressed for weeks…. and what does she do when she is angry and depressed?… she works all that much harder at everything, household stuff, her work stuff, chores that need doing and chores that I had no idea needed doing. I of course am mostly depressed all the time but I am more depressed, and what do I do when depressed? Sleep, read, sleep and write. Not the greatest situation to figure things out. We don’t talk about Parkinson’s for fear that she will get angry/depressed all over again, and she doesn’t talk to me at all… and why would you if you are slowing to a stop because of an incurable disease and you live with a big fat depressed slug? I mean really?

But we did talk about it yesterday. I just asked her to talk about it and she did. I won’t tell you what she said, but I said much of what I wrote above. That I admire her strength and her stubbornness. That she is dealing with an impossibly hard situation, and I don’t know what the solution is. But I know that anger and depression do not help her live the life she wants in these years of her life. We talked about what I could do to help her and what she could do to accept help from me, and from good well intentioned strangers, for in fact most people are well intended. I apologized about being such a worry wart about her illness but I wasn’t likely to change, but I would try not to irritate her but I will not stop trying to help her in the most appropriate ways, just knowing her, nudging her towards accepting aid when she needs it, and being patient when patience is called for, I also promised to exercise Dot more. That’s what she asked me to do.

Then Jan went back to talk about the nice man who got out of his car, “But he just made it worse for me, he was stalling cars. Then he started TALKING ABOUT THE WEATHER!” I just added because this is how I think… “Look. Honey, our deaths are right out there. We know this is true. Patience and stalling is a wholly acceptable way to deal with this problem right now. He was a good guy, he was a blessing… i honestly think if you can accept that you will move a little easier. But… Jan… it’s totally up to you…. you know that, I will love you either way. But I will not be happy loving you by ignoring your suffering. We have to be connected, one way or another.

She agreed, or at least I think she did. She seems happier today and so does Dot with all the extra walks and all.

By the brown river

big puppy smells the bear poop:

happy all the time.

jhs

Off And Running: A Short Review

I’m going to give you a few snap shots of what’s been going on during the blog hiatus.

Dot keeps getting bigger. I took her in to Dr. Vicky and she was spayed. That was three weeks ago and she was eighty pounds then. She is much better walking on a lead and does not lunge out to chase cars on the road. Yet she still cannot stand the lawn mower and every time I mow the lawn she insists on biting the front tires and trying to heard me (and the mower) back to the shed.

She still plays with her best friend Oscar and she loves meeting all kinds of other dogs. She is unafraid of big dogs or mean ones but doesn’t want to tangle with the older grumpy dogs. I’ve never seen her growl or nip at anyone. Except by accident during play she will swing her lunky head into someone… dog or person… and there may be some contact but no real aggression that I’ve seen. Still good with all the commands but if there is food or play happening she forgets everything she has learned and runs around in circles, grabs her own tail and rolls in the grass.

The warm summer days gave way to lovely sunsets in the yard.

Richard Nelson’s old office. He sends his regards to everyone.

Jan and Dot decided to mount an expedition in the cone. There was some discussion of going to the high Arctic, but this trip turned out to be a shake down cruise.

Life goes on during the time of covid-19. I’m still trying to keep my head above water. I sent my book out to five readers and rewrote the manuscript using their notes. I’ve done several on line interviews. I’m trying to express how I don’t care about others expectations… but of course that’s not completely true. What I mean I suppose… Is I just have to keep myself alive. That is the first priority, and to do that everything must have that swing. That’s the most important thing: that swing, bounce…. happiness. That’s what keeps me and the writing going. Even if it seems grim. The books keep looking for that swing.

Rain in the morning

more rain in the afternoon.

Warm as a first kiss.

jhs

After several actual hot days, back to rain. Summer westerly weather. Not dangerous for the fishermen but uncomfortable at times. The leafs on the cherry tree are a deep green and slippery with warm rain.

Dot is more than eighty pounds, at eight months old. She much better behaved but still a big lunkhead of a puppy.

Dot and Jan slept outside to look for the comet on a couple of warm nights. Dot loves camping but peed her bed one night then muscled Jan off her cot. Dot is quite pleased with the arrangement.

My 67th birthday came and went and I got my phone that I asked for. Norm Campbell built the Rain Phone’s kiosk and it has gotten some pretty good use. I called my Mother who died in 2000. At first I was self conscious and thought it was a bad Idea but then I just imagined my mother and whaat she would want to talk about, she asked me how Jan and Finn were and we were off and running. She wouldn't tell me anything about where she was or what it was like for her where she was, “She just said, “Oh Sweetie, you don’t need to know those things now. There will be plenty of time for that. Besides it’s complicated and I doubt you would understand. Tell me about Donald Trump.” So I did.

Our good friend Susie Fero bought us all an inflatable ice cream cone for the hot weather.

The hot days were a wonderful gift. Nancy Ricketts had a social distance book release party for her memoir “Becoming Myself.” which Thad Poulson of the Sentinel published. We all gathered on the lawn of the Pioneers Home down town. Nancy stayed well up on the porch and all of us with our masks on stayed down on the lawn. Nancy had a microphone and I had a bull horn, which was kind of comical but I did an interview with her about her book. Nancy insists on this… which I think is a smart thing because she gets quite anxious about public speaking and writing prepared remarks. She is 95 now and devoted to accuracy but her memory is not great. I can ask her questions that only require facts that I know she is certain of, and help people understand her book. It was a lovely day and perhaps fifty people turned out to honor our precious cultural resource, Nancy Ricketts.

Her Memoir is “Becoming Myself” by Nancy Ricketts. I wrote a very short forward. The —best place to find it now is Old Harbor Books, in Sitka:

(907) 747-8808

Watch This Space

Some sun and some rain today. Right now the sun is slanting down through the berry patch that is three feet over my head in the garden. The berries and lucious and ripe. Summer is deep green and damp underfoot.

Today is my 67th birthday. I have heard from so many good friends that I feel wonderful, and the world of frustration and troubles seems so far away. Thank you all.

I got the best presents! A shirt that fits me from my sister Martha and Susi next door gave me a stuffed hippo and colored lights that go on my finger tips! Jan and Finn got me something I have wanted for some time: an old pay phone!

A bit of explanation here. On a small town in northern Japan after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami there were many dead and missing. By happenstance a year before a man had built a phone booth with a phone in it.. The phone was not hooked up. Soon after the tragedy his neighbors started coming to use the phone booth to make calls to their missing and presumed dead relatives and friends. Hundreds of them came and lined up to use the phone the man named “The Wind Phone.” (more on this here: https://allthatsinteresting.com/phone-of-the-wind)

I was very moved by the story and decided to make one of my own. My friend Norm Campbell has agreed to help me build a little kiosk on my office porch next to a tree that grows through the porch and the roof.

I’m going to call this “The Rain Phone” after my friend Nels who kept a journal about the rain.

Friends will come by and be able to call anyone they want that is difficult to reach. I will keep you notified as to our progress.

I’m also writing to let you know that my new Cecil book is almost ready to send off to New York and when I do I will be back writing this blog five days a week. I have missed our interactions and hearing from you all. It is currently with my friend Nita Couchman who is an incredible line editor. She is very precise and careful, and will catch all the spelling and punctuation errors so as to make the manuscript easy on the eyes for my editor. I keep learning that no matter how good you think you are, this is necessary. New York editors read so much they have very little patience for mistakes and it puts them in a bad mood. No one can afford that, particularly when you want to push the envelope in other ways. Yikes.

My new hippo. As yet un-named.

It is lovely here and today I am happy. If you care to hear from me you will be able to read and listen to this blog soon. I’m thinking early next week for sure. I look forward to it.

A big young dog

rolling in the wet grass

happy all the time.

jhs

No recording this week but a reminder that I will be doing a book event with a terrific writer Ed Lin. It will be on July 29 Wednesday at two o’clock Alaska time. 6:00 eastern. Check Soho Press or check it out

here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/227947024941799/

or go to sohopress.com and look for this:

Ed Lin who writes about Taipai, Juliet Grimes, the head of Soho Crime and moi. Wed/7/29 at 2:00 Alaska. You have to check in before and they will notify you when it’s live.

Summer deck of office. Future home of the Rain Phone.

Back To Work?

Foggy again this morning but wind and sun blows it clear in the afternoon. The wind is coming from the south west which makes me suspect that there is indeed rain coming as the forecast has been suggesting for days now but the rain has been holding off shore. But maybe not for much longer. The grass is growing longer and the leaves of the cherry tree are stretching out.

We have been eating from our freezer for a few days and the inside of the refrigerator has that funky smell of some old vegetables we didn’t use up in time. It’s time for a good clean and trip to the store. Neither Jan nor I have been to town all week. Post Office but not town. Dot is bored with us. She is getting tired of our soccer game, and she has started chewing on non chewable items: like steps and loose boards on the fence. Cribbing, I think you call this if she were a horse.

Next week I will spend working on my new Cecil Book. Monday I have a meeting with my editor, and I will be working on the new Cecil, unless I have torn it up in a rage and moved to Idaho with Dot to become a sheepherder. (which was a thought I had this morning… Dot and me living in a wagon in the Rockies herding sheep for the rest of the pandemic, with a brown gelding named Buster and two mules named Spic and Span. (Wow… Where did that come from?) Jan will live in town and manage her whale grants and Dot and I will bring her mutton every ten days and take baths, get drunk then go back in the hills to live on sardines, rice and mutton till snow flies. All Dot and I will drink is clear icy stream water, and we will read cheap potboiler mysteries with half naked people (and dogs) on the covers. See? I have a fall back if this editorial meeting doesn’t go well.

This is what my lawn looks like up close. Holy crap, there is not much grass in this meadow!

The truth is I’m not really great at working on too many things in detail. My work method is like getting a frozen locomotive running in the winter. Particularly when it comes to rewriting a novel. I sit and stew a lot. Think…. think… think…. then make some changes…. think… how does that change the things that come later? Look at those things. Think, think. Eat a sandwich. Do some line editing, just grind that out make simple changes, grind grind grind. Then stew. Get depressed about the whole thing. Go for a walk. Start another book in my mind. Stop that. Think about the book at hand. Wish I was smarter than I am. Scold myself. think. think. think. Make more substantial changes. Delete. Delete. Delete. WAIT. Move deleted sections to a separate folder to save in case needed later… this usually takes WAY more time than I thought it would. Do more line editing suggested by editor. Jesus I make a lot of mistakes. No wonder she hates me. Grind Grind Grind. Look at my original notes on my characters. Look at my original notes on book. Write new mission statement. Write new one footed statement of what the book wants to be/do. (“What is this book about?”while standing on one foot. Then, “What makes this book interesting ?” (same: on one foot.) Then I will usually write something on a three by five card like “Keep It Simple, Stupid!” (these words from my old editor Juris Jurjevic. Or “What’s getting in the way of the flow? Take it out.” Then go back to the top and start over. The discipline is number of hours per day, not number of words as it is with a rough draft. I usually shoot for four hours a day, four to six if I finally get that bastard thawed out and chugging.

I will do that all week but I will write you a blog and do a reading on Friday next. how’s that sound?

Salmon Berry blossom.

As I said, I don’t know what the future will bring. I might be a sheepherder in a month. Soho Press might dump my ass. In fact they might go into the sheep business, who knows? Nobody really knows anything, except that about half the country appears to be fucking crazy and carrying way to many guns and the other half half appears to be timid and enjoys listening to NPR. That will probably remain the same. (Now I know that some of you gun lovers listen to NPR so don’t write me.) But I will be writing to you again next Friday with an update. Remember that Bill Stafford poem I read a while back? “The signals we give, yes, no or maybe… should be clear, the darkness around us is deep.” Well wait for my signal. It will be coming, and of course I would be happy if you sent me one too.

Naturally, mine will be very clear, but it will most likely read, “Maybe.”

with love,

John Straley

Flattened berry canes

and garbage cans tipped over.

Dog growls at shadows.

jhs

Here is a recording I made of me reading from my novel, The Angels Will Not Care.

Urge and Urge and Urge...

Cold with low clouds and some fog. Calling for scattered showers which could mean anything in terms of rain but so far only a few drops. I left the door to my office open with the heater on most of the morning but then it became too cold now the door is closed and Dot is raging around on the porch barking at phantoms. There is a slight westerly wind and this morning I saw Ernie and Gaylen heading north in their boat to Pelican for their home up there in Sunnyside to plant their garden and start their summer chores. Ernie has a saw mill there too and if things break well he will have a couple of grand kids to chase around up there, and the kids are loud enough to keep the bears away from the house. Gaylen plants a wonderful garden, Jan and I hope to visit them sometime this summer if the weather and the virus breaks our way.

Life goes on and friends get sick without the help of coronavirus. I remember when my parents were my age and they stopped making friends their own age. I didn’t understand it at all. They had loved having people over and we used to have lovely large dinner parties with all kinds of friends. Then it became only gatherings of family, and friends of their children. They were all interesting people but there were very few people my parents age. I asked about this once and my father wouldn’t answer. My mother waited until he was out of the room and then all she said to me, was. “Your father does not like hearing stories about peoples gallbladders. Which I probably could have figured out if I had thought about it for a while. conversation around my parents house was almost mandatorily upbeat. There was absolutely no whining allowed. If you had a problem, it wasn’t discussed at the dinner table. Problems were to be solved individually, or among ourselves. If you needed money you could discuss it with our mother and borrow some. If you were sick again you could talk with her and a doctor’s visit could be arranged, but you should never forget that other people had suffered far more than we had and we had nothing, nothing at all to complain about. Which was okay with me, of course until the time that something went wrong, then I talked to my sister or my friends.

Growing Beets

But my parents were terrified by disease and did not like to talk about it. My mother had cancer and it was kept a secret until she got out of the hospital, when I was in the fifth grade. She had a breast removed and it was a big deal. My father insisted it mattered not at all to him and that she was the most beautiful woman in the world and he took her on a grand tour of Europe, Greece and Turkey. My father had been on a Classics kick and insisted that I read parts of the Oddesy with him. My mother was very emotional during this time and she said that I could grow my hair out “like one of the Beatles” while they were away in Europe and I could keep wearing it that way when they got back if the school would allow. That was a huge thing for her to say to me, not just for her to say it but for her to wring such a concession out of my father, which she had surely done. My chest felt cold when I heard those words, it was the first time it dawned on me she had must have been near death.

It didn’t matter, much because I had curly blond hair, and it wasn’t working for a Beatles cut but the battle of the hair and sideburns was delayed for a few years anyway.

My peers certainly talk about our diseases. Of course, we are boomers and are noted whiners, we are apt to even blame our whining on our parents repression. We blame our parents for everything. But the truth is I doubt that we are much better prepared to deal with death and disease than any generation. But of course I don’t know. My father was born in 1913. He experienced the Spanish flu pandemic World War I and II. though not in battle. He remembers Veterans day parades as a child seeing old men who were veterans of the Civil War in the parades, men without arms or legs. He had good friends who served in war and were revered. When I was young “Playing War” was a staple for boys. My best friends had fathers who kept their old army gear at home. Photos of the D Day landing hung in the house. Fathers who drank too much, I knew. Fathers that had short tempers when they drank. I didn’t know why, but now I know they had seen too much of death.

Here is how old Walt W. put it during the Civil War in Song of Myself:

There was never any more inception than there is now,

Nor any more youth or age than there is now,

And will never be any more perfection than there is now,

Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.

Urge and urge and urge,

Always the procreant urge of the world.

Then he goes on to say a hell of a lot more. But I’ve always like that quote. We pretend to understand the mechanism of all the emotions of this and all young poets want to be as brave in our stance as Walt Whitman, but were we ever really? We have friends who survived AIDS or live with it still. We live with war orphans of wars that aren’t recognized as “official wars.” We all have friends of all ages widowed or orphaned by cancer and we accept it as part of life, yet on we struggle, constantly afraid, constantly dealing with the blind box of our own mortality. We can say we are ready but we fear death, maybe not for ourselves but the others who grieve now or will grieve soon.

The funerals are usually dreadful, duplicitous affairs. for the families and friends. “All the grief and the pancakes after.” the Russian poet said. We talk and talk and talk as if we were not knocking on a door that will never open. Of course everything we know about death. Every thing we actually know about anything is the providence of the living. That much is obvious. That is why we have the imagination in the first place and the fiction writers to make our world bigger and broader to include the possibility of more, I suppose. It is our minds that are naturally duplicitous when it comes to death. I know nothing special about death other than surviving it and having seen some good people die gracefully and some other’s die hard and awkward. It’s not a judgement on either, it’s just how it went and I don’t have near as much experience as many. Not the fathers home from war, nor my good brother who sat by the bedside of so many of his cancer patients. There is nothing to learn from death. There are only more things to learn from living.

Okay enough. Good friends get sick and will die soon enough. The most we can do is love them while we can which, honestly we do for ourselves. Which is why my mother wanted me to grow my hair and my father took her to Europe, to which I say “Bravicimo!” She beat cancer. My father almost drown in Puget Sound around that time and he didn’t. He drifted out to sea with a friend who died but my dad didn’t. The Coast Guard Pilot ignored his orders to come back to base and landed his sea plane to rescue my dad. To which I say “Hooray and Well done!” Not every story is a modernest tragedy, nor a dark comedy, nor a bleak existential tale where the long suffering are collateral damage of capitalist greed.. Sometimes things just work out, and people survive a little longer, enjoy a good meal with someone they love a few more times, or get to pet the dog a while longer, or just get to rest some more.

Sometimes.

Deer hearts, out my porch this morning.

Fog… a bit of rain.

Boats coming in to sell fish.

Will I see you again?

jhs
Here is a recording I made this morning of me reading from a terrific novel called Lean On Pete by Willy Vlautin. He is a wonderful, soulful writer who I think gets it right.

Patience

Fog this morning. The sun wants to burn through overhead and the fog lifts in the early afternoon, but still curtains of fog drift through the trees very much like the setting of a Shakespeare play. You could find witches or a pair of lovers at cross purposes: a maiden dressed as a youth, and a youth looking for a nurse to carry a letter. It’s that kind of day.

At some point I have to ask myself just how much of this not being sure of the future can I possibly take. But I suppose I’m pretty well set up for it. Jan is working from home. I am working from home, and my publishing company “is taking a pause” whatever that really means. I’m not spending money on trips or restaurants or frivolities. I make almost a whopping thousand dollars a month on my retirement, plus I get health insurance which is great. Our house is not quite paid for but it works out okay as long as the rent comes in. We are not home free but we are good, is what I’m saying. I stand to make hundreds of dalliers from my writing this year. We are good. I can get Dot a job, I’m sure there is something she can do. Night watchman, Rat catcher… something to bring in a dime or two. But just not knowing how to plan, how to imagine that blank space over the horizon. That is beginning to bother me.

Now they say they are going to open up. Well I’ve never been one to care much what “They Say”. I suppose I will let them open up and I will stay tucked in here with Jan and Dot and see how it goes. I will watch the numbers and stay tucked in for a good long while after that. I will do my part for the economy. I will buy local, as I have always done. But I’m not going crazy. I’m not going to any crazy gatherings or raves where I’m bouncing around with glow sticks and sweat. Not that I was doing much of that before Christmas of 2019 anyway. We do have to go to Seattle to get Jan a new battery for her brain. Her deep brain stimulation control battery needs to get swapped out and then she needs a whole bunch of tests to see how her Parkinson’s Disease is progressing. We will stay at the Inn at the Hospital which is always a big Hoot. But It’s better than going back and forth from a Hospital and infecting my family. So that is a plan of some sort.

At some point I will have to devote more time to writing a book. Which may cut into this nice routine I have of blogging. But… as Scarlet O’Hara would say, “Oh fuck it. I’ll do it tomorrow.” She said that didn’t she?

More color sneaking into the wild garden.

Summer is a good time for putting things off usually but now everything is all strange. Things have been put off and now odd things are popping back up on the calendar. Is this going to happen or not? This seems to be the question. Is there any sense for rescheduling anything? I pity the organizer. People that I know that actually DO things all report zoom fatigue. Which I get. I don’t like it much. Seeing someones facial expressions twitching several micro seconds slower than real time is surprisingly unhelpful. It is to intimacy like kissing through a tea towel. I mean it’s something but not something I would recommend.

I get why people are all antsy to open up. I would love to go out for a cocktail, and sit across from some one I barely know and talk about something interesting and new. I’d like to hear a whole new set of jokes from somewhere. I’d like to laugh really hard without a mask on. I’d love to hear some live music and sit close to the band. I’d like to flirt with my favorite wait staff and tip them big. But no… I don’t want to do that if there is any chance that I might get them sick or they would get me sick or they might get Nancy Ricketts sick, cause that’s how it might work isn’t it? Some slippery little bug might just stick from some visiting Sitka to work in a Fish Plant to the wait staff to me then me to Nancy. Boom. Nobody means any harm but one of my dearest friends in the world and a cultural treasure brings a plague into a rest home, where culture treasures of Alaska are sheltered. Fine. I’ll be careful, and I won’t put that off.

And that’s not just being a worry wart. This Virus is sticky. It gets into an area no one can control it. There is no way to cure it. We still don’t know how it works on different populations even.. You can’t blame the Republicans for the virus. You can’t blame the Democrats, you can’t blame the Chinese… I mean you CAN… but it won’t stop anyone from getting sick. So we are left with the same problem; what is the best way to approach this problem of people getting sick and dying? So far 180K and climbing in three months. So far it’s: social distancing, testing, tracing, isolating the sick and those in contact with the sick. It’s very old school and slow. In the age of miracle cures and immediate results it seems unfair, but there we are.

Dandelions

            on the green lawn

turn their faces

            to the sun

rolling its way to the western

            side of the horizon.

As the sun slides down

            the flowers close up

for the night.

They do not know anything

about a virus which kills

human beings

            but still they wait

head’s down anyway,

            without moving

until sunrise

and then their bright

dumb faces open up

            smiling patiently:

“Hello

            you!”

jhs

Here is a recording I made from a recent crime novel by a wonderful woman writer named Mette Ivie Harrison. The novel is His Right Hand. It is both a who done it and an exploration of the Church of The Latter Day Saints and a meditation on Gender. It not like anything else out there.

My Lit 101

Another fine day. Dot escaped confinement on my little porch but only to sleep in the sun amongst the dandelions. I think she was tired from pestering Jan all night long. I’ve found that Ice is the thing on my lower back. I think the dandelions read my blog yesterday and have sent word out that there is a friendly host in our yard for it appears to be a national convention here today. Which is fine by me but our neighbors seem to be walking a picket line with weed killer and flame throwers. I will mow the lawn again this weekend but of course that will not help things at all. particularly since I mulch and do not bag. I just help propagate the little devils. It’s too bad I have never enjoyed any concoction made from dandelions. Wine, Jelly, Jam. Awful, if you ask me. Or just an excuse to consume a lot of sugar, which I don’t need any more excuses for right now. If I want to eat sugar I will stick to Hagan Das Coffee Ice Cream. I don’t need to eat weeds, Thank you very much.

Back in the nineteen eighties when I told my father that I was going to live in Alaska the rest of my life and I was going to pursue my dream of being a writer of course he didn’t much approve. Well, that’s not fair, He didn’t think it was possible. My Dad read a lot and he had never heard of any Alaskan writers. “Who are the really influential Alaskan Writers?” my father asked me then, with not a little bit of a condescending tone in his voice. I had been waiting for this question from him and had been working on this answer. Here is what I told him at the time and what I still tell people about why I stay in Alaska:

The Land. and the Ocean is still telling us a lot. It is still the number one storyteller. I know you don’t find that satisfying as an answer but there is so much wild country here you can’t ignore it’s presence. It would be like trying to ignore London or New York’s theater scene if you were a playwright. Alaska’s Geography is huge, deep and profound.

The first people. Native Alaskans still have their languages, They have good memories of their traditions and in many cases they still practice substance traditions in ways that have been lost in the lower latitudes. They know how to gather good food. They continue to tell stories, about weather, and animals, their elders still have an ancient way of thinking and understanding the world, that once they are gone will be very hard to replace. These people are the ancient vaults of practical wisdom, and we can only hope they pass this way of thinking on to their children and grand children.

Alaskan intellectuals and writers are not well known perhaps but they are tough and resilient and they make a difference, in a similar type of practicality. I had names to give my father in the eighties: John Haines, Peggy Shoemaker, Nora and Richard Dauenhouer, Richard Nelson, Ron Spats, I would have more to give him today: Ernestine Hayes Dan O’Neil. Susie Silook, Joan Kane, Kes Woodward, Don Reardon, Emily Wall, Seth Kantner, Heather Lende, Nancy Lord, Nick Galanin, Terrence and Dermot Cole, and many more. No… they don’t all get along. No they don’t represent one voice. They represent diverse and various points of view. That’s what makes them strong I think.

I once thought that if I had a party and invited all my friends. I mean all my friends, I would need to have heavily armed security because there would likely to be quite an argument break out particularly if alcohol was served and there were no ways out.

Is Alaska small and provincial? Of course, but no smaller nor more provincial that the community that chooses most major literary awards in America, which usually can be found in Martha’s Vineyard at some time during any summer. At least that’s my impression..

Alaska doesn’t have the restaurants or the scenes. There are two literary gatherings one in Homer and one in Skagway in late spring or early summer. The University in Fairbanks hosts some writers during the year but those are almost exclusively for their students and they happen during the winter when the temperature is far below Zero. Not a lot of cheese and wine out on the deck that time of year, and not a lot of schmoozing with agents or the women in black from New York publishing when it’s forty below. The Alaska Literary Scene I honestly believe is about the talent first. What do you have on paper? But I could be wrong. I’m not exactly successful nor am I exactly savvy or hip to the publishing world.

Todays Cherry Tree

I just firmly believe that Alaska is at the heart of what’s happening in the world today. Not New York. The fate of the First People will determine the fate of us all. The fate of the most northern climate will determine the fate of all of north America. The resilience and toughness of northern people will be the quality needed to save the planet. I honestly believe that. We don’t need the savvy of a Wall Street trader, we need the toughness and heart of a Inupiat hunter, who sees and interprets whats around them and reports back to the community.

I will not live long enough to write them but the next great stories will be northern songs, I’m sure of it.

Warm morning

yellow flowers turning,

“Hello You.”

jhs

Here is a recording I made from Jim Welch’s The Heart Song of Charging Elk: