After the Holiday

Fog down on the deck this morning. Zero zero. The holiday weekend was grand as far as the weather. We even had three friends over for a picnic dinner. Liz, and Susie, and Bruce brought bread, salad and dessert, and I made fancy baked halibut on mashed potatoes. Which was all lovely. We watched the sun set and swatted the bugs away as we told stories. Dot was a pest and I kept putting her in her crate. Dot loves having company these days when mostly no one comes over. She gets very excited when people come by now, especially to eat food. It puts her over the top. She very much enjoys crawling up on your lap, giving smooches and perhaps partaking of whatever you might be eating. This, no matter how well intended she might mean it to be, is still unacceptable. So Dot was a little sulky after the party.

That’s okay because we had other good times over the holiday. Oscar came by and there was a terrific time playing wrestle-mania, we also went to the dog park several times, but no one was there and it is possible that there is a CC TV system set up notifying all other dog users of our approach because no one ever seems to be there when we arrive. Huh? Thats okay Dot and I have a good time anyway running the bases and pretending to be Babe Ruth calling our big shot over the fence and then running around the bases.

I mowed the lawn while it was not raining and I got the grass fairly short. Then Dot has sniffed out the fresh deer scent in the mornings just after we missed the doe and fawn walking right by the office door. Dot has a keen sense of smell for the scent but she doesn’t seem to chase them and will still come right back when I call her which is a good sign. She won’t come back if I call her back when a friend leaves and drives away, however. Dot is bound and determined to herd their cars back to our place which is irritating.

Sitka Blacktail deer by my office.

The rest of this week I will be reading crime fiction. I will be starting in on a new book soon. I will be adding the finishing touches on the newest Cecil Younger book and then I’m cracking ahead on the Cold Storage book. The new Cold Storage book will be set in the sixties. Many of the characters from The Big Both Ways will be in this one. Also a Trappist Monk will be passing through Alaska looking for a place olive in solitude and to write. He is being trailed by federal agents and this raises suspicions in some parts of the village, but it turns out the interest from the feds comes from a mother scourge completely. It’s a pretty wild plot and I think the book is going to be fun. No more prison books… at least for now.

Wet grass, heavy fog,

I can see tracks of two deer

near the apple tree..

jhs

Here is a recording of me reading the opening of Dana Stabenow’s novel Fire and Ice:

In Another Life

A lovely Fall day. I’m just going to say that it didn’t rain. That’s it, reset the clock at zero.

I had an early morning meeting and then Dot and I went to the dog park. We met our friends Ted and Lieka, peed, pooped, picked it up, bagged it and threw it away. We talked about books and sniffed some butts. The red dog with the hot dog tail showed up but his owner didn’t come into the compound. He had a barking fit when he got a sniff of Dot and they both took off. I’m convinced the red dog with the hot dog tail, (RDWTHDT) just needs to come in and they will work it out. But I learned that RDWTHDT is the woman’s daughter’s dog… so this adds a whole other layer of protectiveness to the situation. Which I can understand. Daughter is probably working and Mom, bless her, has agreed to exercise this wound up dog for her, and daughter is probably protective. and Dot looks like a gang banger so…. it may just take some time and some kindly outreach.

BONE AND TWO DOG TOYS

This weekend is a holiday, yet we have not plans to get together with friends. I’m going to pester all my friends on the phone I think. Jan is doing great and seems happy with her walker, she is scooting around all over on it and loves the security if gives her. She is smiling through her split lip, but she has no other injuries from her spill yesterday. No real swelling or bruising. Last night I had crawled into bed and was just about asleep just on that cusp of dream and reality. Just lifting off, from my bed into the cool azure of the night sky where dreams live. When Jan called to me from the bathroom.

“John will you come and cut skin off my lip?”

I couldn’t help myself. The words just lept out of my mouth. “No, I’m not going to cut skin off of your lip!”

“Come on, I just have this flap of skin on the outside of my lip and it bugs me and my hand shakes.”

“I’m asleep. I’m blind in one eye. I’m likely to cut your face off. It will be fine until morning. I really don’t want to.”

Silence in the bathroom. Now I’m thinking that my poor sick wife is lifting a long pair of shears to her damaged lip with trembling hands. Huge sharp shears, like what they use to cut hedges, the action big enough to cut your head off, each scissoring blade honed to a razor sharp gleam. Jerking towards her nose and lips. But do I get up and help her? Nope.

I’m a terrible person. I fall sound asleep and I wake up with a jerk at about three in the morning. Dot is in my bed giving me a Stanley Cup style hip check, trying to push me out of bed. Her kibble breath right in my face. She was sleeping at the end of the bed last I remember. Now I’m worried that If I go into the bathroom I will find Jan’s head rolling around like a dog toy on the heated floor, and a deep pond of warm blood just beneath the sink where her torso has fallen. Yes I know I have a vivid imagination, but still, do I jump straight out of bed. Hell no. If get my prints all over the scene and the shears and blood on my hands then I call 911 what am I going to tell the cops when they arrive… that I just wouldn’t help my wife when she asked me to cut some skin off her lip when she asked me last night and hence she cut her head off? They are NOT going to buy that! Yet I am now in prison, and my cell mate is a thug with a hairy body who will not let me have the whole body, and the buzzer in the jail is ringing… ringing… ringing…

I get up with Dot licking my face and the alarm clock going off. Jan is in bed with her head on the end of her neck and her breathing apparatus for her sleep apnea humming peacefully. Dot is up and ready to greet the day and to go downstairs and pee in the yard. I go over to Jan and bend over her headgear.

“I’m sorry I didn’t cut the meat off your lip last night. Are you okay?” She smiled at me and opened her eyes.

“I’m great.” she said pulled her tube off her nose, then pulled me down and kissed me. “How’s it look?”

“Your lip?”

“Yes?”

“Really, a lot better than I imagined it,” and I kissed her again.

“You better take that crazy dog out before she chews up the carpet pad or pees on your bed.”

“Did you perform surgery on yourself last night?”

“No… I just pulled it off. It’s fine. Go. take Dot out.”

Our rain gauge. This weeks accumulation.

So we wandered around in the yard at six thirty in the morning, we peed, and jumped over the circus jump. I shoveled some poop, and I planned my morning. I had a meeting over the phone with our son Finn Straley and the writer Kim Rich in Louisiana for our super secrete project that now the three of us are working on. I’m just really acting as the trail boss, giving suggestions for how to keep moving, Kim and I are making Finn do all the heavy creative lifting, Because he is younger and smarter. So after the poop scooping I had to do that. Then I would drink some tea, and take a look at the emails I have to answer, I needed to take a shower and get some cash down town, mail out some more copies of Nels’Biography to friends, I had to get dressed and do two loads of laundry… go to the mail box, buy some gas for the lawn mower, and meet Ted at the dog park.

As I swung the gate open to let Dot back into the house early this morning, I was thinking most importantly, what I could do to be a better person for Jan, and wondered if I had been a very good creature in some past life to have deserved her now.

Morning: long wet grass.

The green apples are small

and very sour.

jhs

Here is a recording of me reading poems of the Nobel Laureate: Wislawa Szymborska

Steps and Falls

More sun than rain. Another victory.

I took Jan in to physical therapy this morning and she fell coming out, and split her lip. Her therapist came out and told me. She is a very nice, and helpful person and she appeared worried and upset about Jan’s fall. They took Jan to the clinic and kept her there for about forty minutes to make sure she was okay. I’m sure they were worried about their liability but the last thing Jan would want to do is talk about her fall for the next year or so to a bunch of lawyers and then to a jury… Jesus. Hell on earth for Jan. She was perky when she came out to find Dot and I waiting for her eating our French Fries and practicing our sitting.

Jan did come home with a loaner walker though and ordered a nice new one. So begins a new era on this Parkinson’s adventure. Jan felt bad for the physical therapist and blamed her shoes which were kind of sticky on the nice tile floor which caused her stumble. When she came out she said, “It’s nothing, I have had way worse falls than that one.” Which is true. The fall that caused her to come to PT in the first place was a doozy, We were trying to photograph Dot as a puppy and I got tangled in Dot’s leash and fell over and I hit Jan’s legs as I went down and Jan went flying off the deck. Dot made it all better though by licking Jan’s face uncontrollably as she lay on the wet lawn with a torn rotator cuff.

I sometimes don’t know why Jan and I quit drinking.

Dot in Circus training

Actually I do know why I quit, I was terrible at it, it didn’t mix well with my medications and I started feeling sick and hung over after my first drink. Oh I still like drinking expensive French Champagne when there is something to celebrate. It has a nice bubbly head-buzz after two glasses and then if I stop there, I can still manage the fantasy of snappy repartee with Myrna Loy at the oyster bar at a wedding. But how many weddings do I go to anymore anyway? Most funerals serve coffee and tea, and that’s more my speed now.

Quitting drinking was not hard, because I wasn’t devoted to alcohol. I was clinically depressed all my life, I recognized my suicidal thoughts when I was about seven years old. Lord knows why? That’s way too young. I recognized very early on, in fact the first time I got drunk in junior high school that alcohol was not fun for me. I usually ended up crying or worse having some kind of loathsome fit and feeling truly horrible. I never ever saw any upside to drinking, unless I was with other people who were fun drinkers, then I could blend in. Unfortunately my parents were really fun drinkers and my siblings and I could sometimes really tie on a fun drunk, but still there was the depression that came afterwards. Don’t get me wrong I’m not whining about any of it. When I say fun…. it really was fun. My father and mother were masters of a witty good time when drinking. I was in college when my father taught me how to pour my first eye-opener cocktail of the morning by using a necktie to lift the glass to my mouth. We both felt like characters out of The Great Gatsby. But of course we weren’t. We were just depressed and trying to out run suicide. My father wanted to write too. I once asked him what would make a person take his own life, and he said, “Not finishing the book you started.” This statement haunts me still.

My father retired as a rebellious vice president of the largest corporation on earth in 1972, but he never finished his book. We fought up until his death but I have to say that quitting drinking and reconciling with him were two of the best things I did for my emotional health.

Today I had to drop some books off at the Pioneers Home for Nancy Ricketts to sign. She wasn’t at the door at the appointed time. I can’t go in and it’s a hassle for her to come out to visit during this time of Covid. I went and walked with another bundle of books for the the Bookstore. I ran into the P. Home gardner right by the tree I suspected was their famous old Elm Tree. Years ago I had promised to ask about getting a cutting from that tree for Dana Stabenow. But somehow, I never caught him at the right time. Today was perfect. We were right next to the tree and we started chatting about it. Truthfully when Dana first asked me about it the former gardner was not interested in cutting anything from the tree because they were having some “issues” with the tree. The way he said it made it sound like the tree had an STD. But today Brian, the new guy said it had all been worked out and we could “talk about getting a cutting” and sending it up to Dana’s writers retreat in Homer. The talk with Brian felt a little like a drug deal, I don’t know why.

Dot outside the clinic waiting for Jan.

Anyway, Nancy appeared with her walker out in the middle of the street and that conversation came to an end and I gave her the other books and Dot gave Nancy some smooches, which makes the 95 year old girl a little nervous but she always laughs out loud when it happens. We got her back to her door and the nurse scolded her for not having her mask on, then Nancy was upset because she hadn’t planned to go outside but had seen Dot walk by the window and just charged down the stairs to catch us. Nancy was depressed about being kept inside the home and I knew she had been feeling low, from having called her and I could tell she had been crying. Her daughter lives in Northern California and Nancy has been worried about the fires down there with good reason because they have been close to her daughter’s house and in fact had been under an evacuation notice last week. Nancy took her books and went back inside and gave the nurse a little guff on the way by.

On the way to the store I saw an old man from the Home who I will just call N.F. He is somewhere in his mid-eighties. The sun had broken out and N.F. was enjoying the sun. I have given N. several masks to wear and he wears them in my presence then I’m sure he throws them away. N. often says to me when I stop to chat, “Heyya. I’m about to go smoke a bowl, wanna join me? I always decline. As far as I know N.F. smokes pot every day. Friends give it to him as he sits in his wheel chair out on the street. I told him I gave up smoking pot too. He told me, “Yeah? I gave it up too once, for ten days.”

“Oh, yes, N? When was that?”

“Back in 1961. I was working for the Air Force.”

“Ten days?” I asked.

“Yep.”

Now, N.F. is what’s commonly called a scofflaw around the P. Home, and it really fries Nancy Ricketts hind end. Nancy is a genuinely good person. She is kind and honest and she does good for the community at every turn. She sees part of that duty as following the rules. N.F. I think is a good person to his friends, his suppliers, and his family. probably. But he really just doesn’t give a fuck about the rules, and this is what burns Nancy. N. has found every way out of the Home that is possible. He never wears his mask. All the “goody two shoes” (as Nancy calls them) reports him for sneaking out, but he doesn’t give a shit, partly because when he comes back he is nice and high: Happy, joking: Not worried about a thing. Nancy sneaks out too, of course because she “can’t stand being cooped up” but the GTS’s report on her as well and because she doesn’t get high she feels hurt when she gets called on deck for sneaking out. What bothers her is not that N.F. sins is that he doesn’t care.

I suggested she join forces with N.F. and get high herself, and she has considered it but put it that she “would be darned if she was going to let NF dictate what she was going to do for her fun.” Nancy is stubborn about her fun. She likes Gregorian music and coffee with two creams. She also likes well written books with uplifting endings. I have to say, I love Nancy and I get a charge out of N. I see them as two poles of how to approach the end of life. I’m not going to choose sides yet.

Just a few leaves left

on this spindly elm tree.

I’m an elephant.

jhs

Here is a recording from a section of Linda Hogan’s “The Woman Who Watches The World.”

The Outside Place

I’m going to say that there is not as much rain today as there was yesterday and count that as a win. The wind is at about twenty kph at our place here which means it’s much higher out in Sitka Sound. Our house sits right next to Old Sitka Rocks which are about two miles from the beginning of Olga Straits where boats can begin going up the inside passage with only a peak out into Salisbury Sound for some rough water, then back into Surgis Narrows and the relative calm of the inside waters. Our house sits really on the edge of the open water.

This morning I woke up with a headache. Not sure why, I drank some water and checked all my medications and made a couple of adjustments, but my head hurt as it often does after a low spell, which I’m pulling myself out of . But sometimes the best thing to do is just sit outside with Jan and Dot, undercover. Jan will have her computer on her lap and she will be taking care of business. She never stops, she is on the phone all day and night and she works on drafts of things all the time. I sit and watch her, today she is sending her foamier students off to do a necropsy on a dead Sea Lion in a joint effort with the Tribe and NOAA, which takes many phone calls as I have learned over the years. I drank some hot co co with some Mexican instant coffee. in it. I gave up seriously drinking coffee some twenty five years ago. Now I have just gone back to this concoction of half a teaspoon of coffee with some chocolate to perk up in the morning. when I’m down. Both Jan and I wear sweaters and we chat a bit and watch the water, for whatever might show up. This morning there was a doe and a fawn out on the lawn which is quite unusual for us. Dot wanted to go out and sniff their tracks but happily she didn’t chase them. When we called her back she came running straight back in. Jan and I talked about if at this point she was still frightened by their strange scent, and we talked about what to do to make sure she didn’t chase deer. Then of course we thought of Nels and how good he was at training his dogs not to chase deer, and I never asked him the particulars of exactly how he did it. I sat for a while and the rain patted down on the overhanging roof of our porch with covers our outside living place. We often see humpback whales, or Sealions from here, sometimes Harbor Porpoises or Sea Otters. Always the various birds that like our berry patch: the nut hatches or the song birds, and the birds who like diving on the tideflats: the Kingfishers, or the Greater Yellow Legs, Oyster Catches, and the Herons, most commonly the crows, Ravens and Eagles. Jan almost always has her binoculars on hand and a resource to look up the species, but my eyesight is not so great and I’m slovenly about the specific names of birds. I’d much rather just enjoy their visit rather than fumbling through a book. But I’m always grateful that Jan knows the names. Its part of the dynamic of our love. She knows things I don’t and I appreciate that.

Nels always knew so much and I took advantage of that all the time. I would call him rather than look things up and he was happy to chat and give me world class lectures on the birds I was seeing, while I teased him for being such a nerd, which was of course unfair. We had our unofficial birder voice we used when I made these calls. I think I stole it from an old Hanna Barberra cartoon character. We spoke in a slow squeaky voice that greatly accentuated the “B” sounds. So I would say in the voice, over the phone, “Boy, oh Boy, Buddy do I have a Beautiful Bird Behind the Barn.,” Then we would be off for twenty minutes or so talking like this about birds..

I was lucky, I really, really was. .

Anyway… our outside place has indoor outdoor carpeting, and comfortable chairs. I hung a painting my sister, Mary Worthington painted, on the porch. I hung it there because it looks great out there and we are running out of wall space inside. We also have a crate for Dot for when she gets the Zoomies. She likes being in her crate, particularly when we are out on the porch with her. When she is not in her crate Jan will often shoot her tennis ball gun out into the yard and Dot will run it around and mostly bring it back. Though Dot is not ball crazy. Dot rather enjoys dancing and wrestling with a large soggy crabbing buoy that has heavy lines attached to it. If I chuck it out into the yard, Dot will fling it and catch it and whip it around as she prances around the yard, again eventually bringing it back to me. In this she is unlike our old ball crazy retrievers we always used to have. She is also a LOT stronger.

Sitting in the Outside Place during this seventy two days of rain, is peaceful. Sometimes my brain just needs the world to flow into my head: the wind with the briny beach smell, and even the cantankerous crows, shouting, “Hey, Hey, Hey… Food. Food, Food.” as the bicker and fight over bread crumbs or some bug larva or another. Even this can calm me down, and of course the empty sea: grey/green and always moody this time of year reminds me that what I know runs out all the way to the horizon and connects to the grey sky and is so much more vast than the imagination inside my head that I sometimes get mired in. Even when it’s pouring rain, finding an outside place where you can spend a little time, where you can eat, or visit with someone, or listen to music, or just sit and relax, is a blessing to your sanity. It’s a connection to the world where you actually are at that precise moment. It’s pretty interesting to consider actually. It might even be worth considering sleeping out in a tent in your back yard, just to listen to the rain and the wind while you enjoy the comfort of knowing that your dry clothes and hot shower are just a few steps away.

Kingfisher hovers

above the clam bed outside:

drops her catch…. then dives.

jhs

Here is a reading from the Poetry of Yehuda Amichai.

Stories We Might Hear

Day 71 of rain. I’m not sure I’m going to keep count. It might just be too desperate. But yes rain, wind and low clouds. A young man we know ran his boat aground out on Vitskari Rocks over the weekend, it was reported that he had five hundred gallons of fuel on board. The Coast Guard plucked him off the rocks next to his boat. two day laters after trying to salvage the boat his fishing boat burned. It’s a sad affair all around, but it is a good thing there were no fatalities. The gossip that accompanies an event like this in a little fishing town hangs in the air like smoke and can sour the mood as much as the rain. Today I saw a fisherman blowing a gasket at the post office because there was some mix up in getting a package delivered. It didn’t get violent… not at all… but it was easy to imagine that violence was just around the corner from the yelling and the complaints. Gossip, in a stormy season, when people are drinking, when people may be short of money…. gossip can be a poison. This is when we should have faith in our fact finding institutions.

Each time something bad happens and when an innocent person is touched by gossip as I’m sure that this young skipper will be touched, everyone swears they will learn from this and hold their tongues the next time. Never will I repeat something I don’t know for a fact, never will I give the suggestion that anyone did anything wrong. But of course we do. Even just bringing it up as I have casts suspicion of wrong doing. When, let me be clear, I know nothing of the events that caused that boat to go aground and burn other than what I’ve already said. I know nothing and I honestly suspect nothing, other than a good boat was lost and a young man lost his livelihood, and a very rich fishing ground had some gas and oil spread over it.

But still we talk and gossip. Just as we like to watch and read true crime stories. Gossip operates as the most immediate type of folklore that is still open to us. Stories. Stories we tell and ask to be told…. and this is what gossip is… a form of social storytelling…. stories perform unique services for a town, and for a culture of that town. Stories help teach lessons. Stories define our values. Stories help map our territory, our range or habitat. Stories define who is “us” and who is “them.” and lastly stories grant wishes.

From gossip to the Scriptures, from Moby Dick, and Gone With The Wind, to The Maltese Falcon or Blade Runner. Stories Define us. If we have any insight into ourselves at all, as human beings, as people who go to war, or make peace, if we know anything about ourselves it’s because of the stories we have read and been taught.

But there is more than that. We must have two types of intelligence regarding our appreciation of these stories. For just hearing a story does not make it important. We need to assess the accuracy and the wisdom of the stories we are given. Accuracy is judged by intelligence that looks for consistency for logic tells us that a thing cannot be both true and untrue at the same time. To find truth we look for the lack of contradiction. Similarly with wisdom we look for intuitive feelings that process right and wrong in complex matters, and again we must try to follow consistency, historical accuracy, and avoid the narcissistic bending of the mind to make something true just because we want it to be true.

I don’t mean to make this complicated. It’s just that we will all listen to gossip. Gossip is the rough, rough draft of history, it will change and it reflects the attitudes of the people passing it along. As a private investigator I always listened to gossip. It told me what our jury would probably come to court with. But also gossip gives you a basic map of a communities, values and prejudices.

Also we must pay attention to gossip because most of our political rhetoric now is based on a kind of gossipy kind of information gathering, similar to talking over the back fence. “Oh you know Mr. Soandso, well I heard he sleeps around and his wife is a slut.” No evidence, none needed, the real reason for the statement is to make sure that both you and the person you are speaking to are A) opposed to Mr. Soandso’s values, and B) both feel on the same side of this question. “We are so virtuous, not like HIM.” That’s the most important purpose of gossip, to define the “us” and “them” group.

When looking for the “Truth” I had to test it against the best evidence, measured by the best sources, with the best equipment in the best circumstances to get a good clear answer. Unless you could get a good clear answer the solution had to remain in the “unknown” column. I was well known for not knowing answers when people asked me about crimes I was investigating. We often can’t, or don’t do this with gossip, for often gossip is only about the folklore of the conversation, that is a conversation about our values or our desires.

If we are looking for wisdom from gossip or stories we are given we must be on the look out for the intentions, given by the people passing judgements along. Are they hateful, or condescending, or are the people telling the stories loving or kind…. or were they analytical or scientific trying to come to an objective truth…. or more likely acting analytical to mask their prejudice? Regardless, we often have to feel these intentions in others, and then again we hunt for consistencies.

The narcissism I discussed is called solipsism in philosophy. This is a statement often presented by someone who just asserts the truth of a lie, without bringing evidence or feeling that there is any need for evidence. A solipsistic thought or argument exists as true only in the mind of one person. “My will makes it so.” Does this sound familiar to anyone? It can be roused by anyone on any end of the political spectrum but it is the favorite of authoritarianism. See the writings of Mien Komph, or the Elders Of Zion, The assertion, given in the context of multiple of other lies makes a case for falsehoods as truths.

But what do I know really? Nothing. I just know to listen with a kind heart to any story that comes my way, and judge it for its loving nature and it’s consistency and its accuracy, and then to keep on looking and keep on listening. Also it is good to have a high tolerance for not knowing anything with much certainty.

Autumn sun setting.

A cat slinks through our garden:

dog opens one eye.

Here is a recording of the opening to A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway.

A Change In The Weather Perspective

Today I received a call from the FM radio station in Ketchikan and the news reporter asked me, as a poet, if I had any comment on the fact that today was the seventieth day of rain in a row.

“Excuse me?”

He repeated the question, and I was a little shocked. First, because no one has ever asked me for my reaction about anything “as a poet.” and second, I didn’t know it had actually rained fro seventy days in a row. So, I asked him to clarify. “Yep, I checked with the weather service. both Ketchikan and Sitka, have had seventy days of “significant, measurable precipitation” for seventy straight days. it’s a new record.”

“Wow,” I said.

I did quibble a bit and observed that it “hadn’t rained non-stop for seventy days”,… which is a kind of pathetic defense someone with a sort Stockholm syndrome would make

“No. Just significant, measurable precipitation. Would you like to comment?”

All I could think of was that I had mowed the lawn this weekend while it was raining because the grass was way too long, and the result was not good. I told him, I noticed today that when you mow the long grass in the rain after two weeks of rain, it results in a really bad looking job. The lawn looks like the time my sister and my wife both got drunk and offered to cut my hair. My head looked… kind of patchy, and overlong in places, as if they had tried to naw it off. …. Wait…. it’s really been seventy days of rain? “

This new fact began to explain some things. Such as why my music pals were so grumpy this Sunday. The tempos were slow and everything seemed to drag. Of course we were blowing on our hands to keep warm and wearing our slickers.

Jan also explained something to me, which seems a little more clear. I had been telling her about how I thought the people at the dog park were a little stand-offish about having Dot around. And to prove my point I drove her up there. The lady with the french bull dogs was there and as soon as we pulled up and I let Dot out everyone scattered and left. Of course I said my proper hellos to everyone “Bon Jour! Bon Jour!” to the little snobby dogs. as they scattered.

Wisteria

“Hold on John,” Jan said, “Do you use that outrageous French accent with all the dogs?”

“No!, just with the French dogs. With the Scotties I use and outrageous Scottish accent…”

“And with the Australian Shepard?” She stared at me.

“G’day Mate!”

“What accent do you use for the Beagle?” Her tone was more sour.

“Good question, and thank you for asking,” I continued “I settled on an upper crust British accent because they are used for Fox Hunting don’t you know?”

“Kind of like your Churchill ‘We will fight them on the beaches’ speach?”

“Exactly,” it works well for a Beagle…. and no, there are no Bull Dogs up at the dog park yet. I’ll cross that proverbial bridge when I get there.” I said in my best Chruchill.

“John… I don’t think Dot is not the problem for why people are clearing out of the dog park when you guys come here.”

This is when it dawned on me that the persistent rain must be getting everyone down but me. Thank God for ketamine! It’s better than a sun lamp, and hand warmers. Maybe I will tell the Dog Parkers about my experience with ketamine next time we all get together for any length of time! Maybe we could have an international picnic and bring snacks for the nationalities of our dogs. Dot of course is French so I will bring cigarettes for everyone. It should go well.

Singing old songs while

mowing the lawn in the rain:

I want to kiss you.

jhs

Here is a reading from Ruth Matson’s book Happy Alaskans, We.

I'll Have To Do Something About That

Pouring rain. I’ll just leave it at that.

What happened yesterday? No blog… up at six twenty and the power was out. Called the power company to see what was up. “Oh yeah. We’re working on the transformers down town, should be back on in less than two hours. Power comes back on at about three thirty pm. No problem. I made the most of my day. I had lunch with my buddy Norm, then took Dot on a training mission. Which is both good and frustrating. The second I put the little rope on her she becomes “Dottie the Obedient.” She does everything I ask. Sit, Come Stay. Jump. Lay down. Heal. No problem…. Instantly. The rope is about twenty feet long. I take it off and she goes nuts. Well, she still follows me around and she licks me on the cheek without warning. Last night she had a major case of the zoomies and I put her in her crate, he goes in willingly. But Jan doesn’t like her to be in her crate. But she hates to have her have the Zoomies inside. This leads to tension between husband and wife. Dot just watches us argue with her big dopey tongue hanging out. Then I had to go get ready for my own Zoom thing so I left Dot with Jan. All I did to get ready was to finish reading Heather’s book, comb my hair and worry for about a half an our. Figure out how to get on the zoom channel and we did it. Which was fun. I didn’t see the “chat” function until it was over. I couldn’t tell how many people tuned in or what they were thinking but I always assume people want me to shut up and let Heather talk more. It worked out well I think, because I like Heather and her writing. She was doing me a favor by inviting me on what was supposed to be her tour event, so it was easy to turn the spotlight on her.

Dot when she is “on deck” for going in her crate likes too hang out on top of the hot tub.

I had been reading Of Bears and Ballots by Heather most of the day and in fact had been thinking a lot about her. Heather writes obituaries in Haines for their local paper. Yesterday I went to the graveside service for Patricia Bickar. Pattie was the mother of a friend of mine name Brian Bickar. Brian is a wild one. His father was Porky Bickar who was the father of the great April Fools joke of putting a large pile of tires on top of Mt. Edgecumbe and setting them on fire, so that it looked like the old volcano might be erupting on April 1. It was quite a famous joke. He was quite a famous jokester. He died quite a long time ago. Brian worked for his dad. Many years ago. Jan worked as a glazier in the glass shop next door to Porky’s shop and she got to know Brian. I always suspected that Brian had a crush on her. Which I didn’t blame him for, he was always a gentleman. He brought her cookies and treats he had baked himself, she liked Brians, style: kind, considerate, giving fattening gifts sending the right message. Brian worked for his dad, working on heavy equipment and chainsaws. Brian was always filthy, which Jan thought was kind of funny, because when Jan and I first met and I was working with stock, I was always filthy and it was the biggest blockade from getting together with her. It took me weeks of scrubbing to get my first kiss. This is something I didn’t tell Brian.

The point being…. Pattie was an honored high school math and science teacher. Porky was a classic logger and a redneck. Also a hard drinker. Porky would testify against every environmental initiative and was vocal in the bars in his anti Greenie opinions. They had three children. I don’t know the daughter at all, other than what Brian tells me, Brian has been taking care of Pattie who died last week of complications from Alzheimer’s. Brian lost what was left of his dads business in a bad divorce and probably some bad judgement of his own. But besides taking care of his mom, he took care of his own son when needed, and took care of friends, by bringing them food, or making lunch for their kids when health or legal problems interfered. Brian had legal problems of his own at times, but he is smart and kind and I always liked his sense of humor. Brians brother teaches biology at Smith College back east. He has a phD. and when he spoke at Pattie’s service yesterday he did a terrific job, because he has a good eye for the telling detail and a funny anecdote that fills in a person’s life. This is the same talent that Heather Lende has when she works on obituaries. You don’t have to describe everything about someone, just recognizing the telling details that their friends remember is often just perfect. Those telling details are like little haiku’s of people’s lives.

Hearts at the flower dump at Sitka Memorial Park

He told how Pattie like to travel all over the world, but he found it irritating because he would be anxious to get from point to point when he traveled, but Pattie would talk to everyone in the seat next to her, whether it would be on a plane a bus or a underground train, and at the end of the ride she would end up exchanging information with the person, promising to get together again in the future.

She was generous. She baked for there church but she was also competitive. If there was a bake sale she wouldn’t just bake a pies but would bake fifty pies. Once she baked fifty-two pies because she had heard that another woman was planning to bake Patties fifty customary pies so Patricia just added two.

She was the first woman to join Rotary in Sitka and she ran the Duck race for many years. She went on the trip to Pennsylvania in the sixties and wanted to go to Rotary but the local branch didn’t allow women at the time.. Pattie negotiated an invitation to lunch because she was a Sitka member in good standing, and years later when she went back they were accepting women to which she was quite proud.

Now, I have a confession to make. I didn’t know Pattie that well. I knew her from around town. I saw her when Brian took care of her and I’m sure I ate her pies, and had said hello to her at the library, but the truth was I was kind of scared of her because I wasn’t a big fan of Porky’s. I liked his style all right but he had said some pretty mean things during the Timber War days. We were just on different sides of a lot of controversies. I sensed too, knowing Brian that he wasn’t an easy father either, but today I wished I had known Patricia a little better. She was clearly very smart and forward thinking. She valued education. She must have had a deep well of kindness and understanding to pass on to her family. I’m sure she had flaws as well, maybe like mine: prejudice against people who you don’t have the courage to get to know better.

I’ll have to do something about that when this pandemic gets over.

Leaves nodding in rain

trees whipping their limbs around:

a wild summer dance.

jhs

Here is a recording of me reading the short story Asphodel by Eudora Welty, I did it in two parts.

The Distance Between Us

Thursday August 27 at 6pm Alaska time

• Old Harbor Books in Sitka in Conversation with author John Straley. 
  Register here.

Fog but more sun today, so far not much rain. I better mow the lawn soon or I might lose some of the neighbors grandchildren in our lawn over the winter. I might have already. I don’t recognize the above toy at all. I’ll start a sweep for a small hand sticking up above the surface of green.

Dot likes children you think she would find them but she just plays with the toys.

Today I had a frustrating visit to the post office. Not for any reason to do with the USPS. I love our post office and the people who work there. USPS is the best way to send and receive things in rural America that you can carry in your arms. Private companies are so much more expensive and I have found them to be so much less reliable. I once had a manuscript sent by private carrier make it to New York City two weeks late and it was clear that the package, my manuscript, had broken open and laid out on some tarmac in the rain. There were even tire prints on the soaked and scraped together disordered pages. So, never again. I love and trust my post office. Today I was just not prepared. I tried to pay my bills while on site, I didn’t have enough envelopes. Didn’t bring stamps, didn’t have the right address to send the new Richard Nelson Biography to Yi-Fu Tuan, and all the while Jan and Nancy Ricketts were waiting for me out on the deck of a nice restaurant waiting to order lunch. The more I try and rush the more disorganized I got. Also I have to say that Dot does not help. I tried to write checks in the car in the parking lot but Dot has decided if there are only two of us in the car she IS GOING TO RIDE IN THE FRONT SEAT! I have tried to negotiate this with her but it is impossible while driving and nearly impossible while writing checks on a steering wheel. I think Dot at nine months has almost broken the hundred pound mark. She has a very sneaky way of being a pest. She sits next to you, leans in and gives you a little lick on the cheek. Very sweet and puppy like. Darling. Then she gets a little more aggressive with the licks until I start to laugh and then tell her to stop, THEN she lunges at what ever it was that was her target in the first place: like your pen, or the checkbook you are writing on, Then she proceeds to dance around in a kind of victory dance while eating the said object. The worst was recently when she snuggled, smooched, then lunged, fast as a snake and grabbed the full warm soda can I was holding, bit into it and instantly became a happy dog fountain in the back of the car out of my grasp.

I threatened to pull over and put her up for sale on Craig’s List that very second. But the photo I took of her dripping fizzy water in the back of the Honda for the ad was too adorable. Really. How could I sell her?

Her training is at a strange point. When I got to the restaurant today, I figured she needed to pee, so I let her out and she jumped over me before I could get the leash on and she was off to visit all the homeless guys and the young people smoking pot in the down town park. She would not recognize her name, she would not come. But everyone in the park loved her. They asked me her name and what kind of dog she was, she hung around and gave them all smooches but she would not come near me or the leash. Then she took off and started to cross the main street by the City Offices. Then I stopped chasing her and said. “Okay I’m going to meet Jan and Nancy for Lunch. I hope you find a nice new family,” then I turned around and started walking to the restaurant the opposite direction. Of course she started to follow me. By the time I came even with our car, she had hopped in and was sitting in the back like a little angel. Nancy, who is 95, said, “Well of course, she is disobedient but she’s not stupid. She needed a ride home.” Which is true.

Nancy is trying to talk Jan into getting a walker. I think mostly because Nancy is tired of leaving Jan in the dust on their walks. Of course Jan is resistant. I have suggested the walker enough, her’s and mine relationship is a bit like Dot’s and mine. If I stop trying and turn around she may come along.

Her’s and Dot’s relationship is also funny. Jan can’t move, well at all. She also falls easily and Dot is like an untethered wrecking ball on the deck of a heaving battle ship, most of the time. But Jan yells at her in long complicated sentences. I may be reading downstairs, and I’ll hear, “Dot, you cannot chew on my shoe when I’m walking towards the stairs. It’s dangerous. Dot! Goddamn it bring that shoe back! I’m not kidding. I’m going to sit on this top stair until you bring my shoes back. Oh thank you sweetie, I love you too. Dot GODDAMN YOU BRING MY GLASSES BACK!” And so on. She might resolve the game herself. I will offer to referee and she will ask me to sort things out. I will go up and Dot recognizes when we are both upset she acts like the little angel again as if it were all Jan’s fault in the first place. She really is a devil.

Why do we love her? I’m not sure.

I was talking to Yi Fu last night, he is remarkably fun to talk to on the phone. We started talking about Beethoven and ended up talking about Simone Weil… one of my favorite theological thinkers. I was surprised to learn that Yi Fu is a Christian very influenced by Weil. Weil died before the end of the second world war. She gave away most of her food ration to needy people, She said she preferred to eat only the rations that the jews in the death camps were allowed to eat. She had been born in eastern Europe of Jewish heritage. She became Catholic but did not fully convert or I believe take the sacrament because she believed essentially that “God revealed himself by his absence.” She didn’t want to be inside. Which is interesting and an existential way of being a Christian. Yi-Fu last night said to me, “I believe that as God pulled away the the Universe was revealed. Allowing us to love the Universe and God in his absence.” If I understand this correctly God has to pull back, God has to be unknowable in order for us to experience the Universe. It could not be otherwise, because God would overpower all creation. God pulls back and leaves us the Universe, with all it’s mechanical flaws and problems to love in his place. The cross, and the story of his son, represents this essential relationship.

Maybe that’s why Jan and I love Dot so much.

Here is a poem I wrote long ago.

AFTER SIMONE WEIL

Like a confused lover

I waited for you 

on the wrong corner,

looking at my watch, each moment 

confirming our missed appointment.

The unsubstantial business of the world, 

the empty busses and garbage trucks, 

whirled like mists 

around my immoveable heart. 

I imagined you waiting for me 

somewhere

holding steadfast in your faith. 

Not calling the police, 

not wanting me 

to appear foolish.

"How you must love me," I thought,

"to make us both wait so long." 

 jhs

Here is a little section from the ending of my book “What is Time to a Pig?”

Sticking To Our Guns

Hard rain today. Jan suggested that today be “Pajama Day” which I thought was a grand Idea, but seeing as how I have gotten so much sleep in the last twenty four hours I thought the least I could do was get up and around. Which I did. I haven’t seen the little island out front yet today because we are still living in the fog. But I’m feeling good with my head on straight and a good hot cup of English Breakfast Tea in front of my fake electric fire.

Dot is mad at me because I have been assigned the task of taking her stitches out. Jan was convinced we didn’t need to do anesthetic again and she could coax the stitches out when Dot was sleepy and relaxed. Unfortunately Dot is never that relaxed. She is very independently minded, and is almost as sensitive to being bossed around as Jan is about the use of narcotics on pets. So after hours of cooing and sneaking up on the stitches to no avail, Jan went up to her office shed this morning leaving me a head lamp and scissors telling me to “get the stitches out. After a rather unpleasant fifteen minutes of using the leash, and a great big pillow wedging ourselves into there far end of the couch I got half the stitches out on her face. Rather than trying to reposition her to break sable to reach the last ones I let her go and she bolted to the door, where she insisted on going to visit Jan. Dot refused to look at me the rest of the afternoon. Jan had to kick her out of her office because Dot was “taking care of the recycling bin” by dancing and eating all of the contents while Jan was on a live Zoom meeting. I was on a call with Heather Lende discussing our upcoming Zoom thing when Jan sent me a text saying “Come Get DOT! I’m in a meeting and she is throwing herself at the outside door.”

Jan’s writing shack.

When I got to Jan’s shack Dot was among the missing. I called and called. She usually waits in the car. We leave the door open now because it is her favorite place to hang out. I called but no Dot. So I went inside and made myself some lunch. Fruit salad and a casadia. Cooking almost anything almost always brings her in. And sure enough by the time I got back outside there she was, soaking wet and ready to share my tortilla and melted cheese. I made her another one to have with some kibble and she looked at me with sincere appreciation.

Heather called to see how I was doing. There was some rumor that I had cancer because of my facebook post that I had had an “infusion”. No” I reassured her,” I’m just nutty.” She knew that already. I asked her how she was doing and she admitted that she was a bit down from watching the Republican Convention and because the Haines police apparently had shot several bears in her neighborhood. Lots of shooting but little or no reliable information rereleased by the police. Which sounds like something to clog the gossip pipe for a good long while. Sounds like Heather will not be looking at the police chief for a while. Maybe he should make her a tortillas and cheese. It works for me.

Among the many unpopular opinions I hold to is this one: much of the frustration and anger we feel during this election cycle is a form of depression. Our political opinions don’t really mean much nor are they very convincing to anyone who doesn’t agree with us already. We aren’t convincing anyone of anything no matter how hard we try. Partly because political rhetoric is turned on its head. We aren’t drawn to positive ideas to change position. We are drawn to negative feelings about who we hate. Pro Trump folks, pretty much just hate liberals. Like Dot they don’t want to look at them because they have suffered a painful insult to their dignity. Likewise, Anti Trump people quite frankly just hate Trump, because he insults their sense of intelligence and their whole sense of the way things should be. No good argument will change a race that’s based on negative feelings. We just don’t want to look at our enemies, because their existence simply makes us depressed. We sense that and the other side reads our kindness as condescending acts of superiority. We don’t reach each other.

I don’t know….. I’m thinking back to my challenge last week. I’m still giving presents, I’m trying to show genuine love to people that I may have forgotten. I don’t know if it could work in convincing a voter to switch side. I honestly don’t know. I think what turns Dot around to look at me, is not just the gesture of the toasted cheese tortilla, but the fact that I consistently show her kindness when I can. Heather does this with the people who oppose her, she is a genuinely kind and patient person. But it aint easy. Not every day, particularly when somedays they are out there shooting “problem” bears, when the problem, might not be, just might not be with the bears.

But all we can do is stick to our original and most useful guns.

More summer rainfall,

throw a ball in the wet grass,

and no one wants it.

jhs

Here is a recording of me reading from Just Breathe Normally by Peggy Shumaker. One of Alaska’s former Writer Laureates and a important leader in the Arts and Letters in our state. A great poet, professor and memoirist.

Medical Leave

Ketamine infusion day: Fog down on the deck today, rain, which seems appropriate somehow. Up at six and off to the hospital for an early Covid virus test which I passed with flying colors apparently. I waited around for an hour and they let me in without problem.

Then after what seemed to be a lot of questions and fussing the exceptionally kind staff at SEARHC settle me in to a bed, hooked me up to an IV, blood pressure cuff, EKG machine and then pump me full of Ketamine, which is my once every two month treatment for depression. I am supposed to go every six weeks but I try to stretch it out seeing if I can go longer each time, but two months is about my limit, until the effects of depression become debilitating again: Lethargy, Intrusive thoughts of suicide, anxiety, lack of motivation, mostly. During the infusion I dose in and out of what feels like a mild LSD trip. Or did at first, now it feels like more of an intense semi-waking dream of having my brain scrubbed. All I remember from the dream this time was I tried to sit up and I said out loud, “Radio Rhakeem, help me.” If I remember correctly Radio Rhakeem was a character in Spike Lee’s film “Do The Right Thing” who carried around a huge boom box playing NWA. I don’t know why but this morning I was asking for his help. Strange. It seemed very important and very profound this morning, and made perfect sense. The visual hallucinations were rather frightening today, whenever I opened my eyes the hospital room looked like the inside of a freezer. So I closed my eyes. Each time I opened my eyes the ceiling tiles looked to be covered with more frost, and then thicker and thicker with ice. The walls began to close in with ice. The heart monitor beeping kept changing pitch which was also odd. Then I had muscle cramps in my legs and feet. I hadn’t taken my potassium supplements today. The anesthesiologist kept coming out and asking me if I wanted to continue and I told him quite definitely that I did. I think I asked for another blanket because everyone was saying it was cold in that room. Was it really? Maybe that’s where the ice came from. I got the blanket and I was nice and cozy. t took me about two hours at the hospital, from sign in to infusion, until I was awake enough to have Jan drive me home. I’m not supposed to drive all day. They didn’t say anything about blogging.

I’m probably making it sound much more adventurous than it really was. But once it was over I called Jan and she and Dot were down in the parking lot. I woke up properly so I could walk and went to the car and there were my lovelies and Jan had bought Dot french fries which she didn’t want today, and me a cup of ice tea and a single one dollar cheeseburger, which is my favorite. Which I ate cold, and I was quite happy.

So, the amazing thing is, when I say I have “Intrusive thoughts of scuicide” it means I can’t stop having them. It’s like camping in a really buggy area without a mosquito net or repellent. The thoughts are implacable But after the infusion, the thoughts are just gone. “Poof” I can’t even make myself have them. Oh I could, but they have no hold on me, and they seem foreign and foolish. Like making myself think of an elephant when there really is no need to. I also have more energy. I’m writing this blog entry without having to whip myself with guilt. I have a full range of what I think of as appropriate emotions, I’m happy about happy things and sad about sad things, but I’m just not bullied by any of these emotions. I feel in charge and well…. normal.

This will last about a month. Then there will be cracks around the edges, and after about two months the depression will be back and Its time for another infusion. It’s not the best of all possible worlds but it’s pretty great compared to what it used to be. I’m so grateful to my doctor for suggesting this therapy and supporting me having it done here in Sitka, and grateful to the people at SEARHC for being so understanding in administering it. It’s weird for them too, we’ve all been on a learning curve.

I thought I write about it today so you could understand it. If you suffer from difficult to treat depression then you should ask about Ketamine infusion therapy. I was headed for electro convulsive therapy and I have heard very good things about it’s effectiveness but I ran the risk of eye damage which I couldn’t afford. But whatever the choices. Do your best to get the help, reach out and keep reaching out. But get help. Mental health is a genuine health issue, you wouldn’t feel weird about asking for help if your appendix was inflamed. Don’t wait around if your brain is inflamed. There are good people out there that will help you not to suffer.

Islands lost in fog

A duck paddles past the rocks.

Then I disappear.

jhs

Sorry. No photos or recording today. I had to take a walk with Dot.