SIGNS OF LIFE

It is December 7, 2021: today my new book SO FAR AND GOOD is offered for sale. I thought it would be a good day to reach out to old friends.

What have I been up to since I quit writing in this blog?

I finished the one book which is out today, and I wrote a draft of another and I have started a third. SO FAR AND GOOD has been listed as an Amazon notable crime book of the month on Amazon, and I plan to do some virtual events to help promote it. On December 14, Willy Vlautin and I will appear together for Third Place Books in Seattle. We plan to talk about our books and a bit about our individual process. As you might remember I love Willy’s writing and he is a tremendously kind and generous soul, so I thought he would be a perfect guy to spend an evening with. We will probably talk about future projects and let you in on what is coming up next. So go to the Third Place Books website and check out our event on the 14th.

The big news in Jan’s and my life is our son Finn and his wife Emily Basham had a son: Arthur Basham Straley who is our first grandson. This is the reason Jan and I are in Monterey, California. This is where Arthur, Emily and Finn live now. So, as there is a foot of snow in Sitka, we are a block from the beach near Lover’s Point working and resting in the mornings then spending most afternoons cuddling the baby boy.

I will probably have some thoughts on all this but right now I will spare you. Everyone I see is pretty much in an exhausted new baby love haze: the “gootchie gootch goo, isn’t life such a miracle” stage of human development… which is hardly very unique… or profound. But it’s nice to feel this way.

The rest of life has gone on at its usual pace. Writing, getting treatment for depression, caring for Jan whose life with a progressive and deadly disease continues a pace. She is still courageous and unbelievably hard working in the face of physical difficulty. I had a breakthrough case of Covid and hid out in my office for two weeks. The first three days I was pretty sick with fever and coughing and a crappy stomach. Then I was mostly very tired. I thought I was all better and I mowed our lawn, which is about an hour and a half of physical activity…I felt okay after it was done at about four in the afternoon. I lay down for a little nap and I woke up twenty one hours later. That kind of tired. I’ve had two vaccination, a booster AND the disease so I think I’m covered but I’m still wearing my mask. Jan and I went to a tree lighting here in Monterey and I was a little stunned by being in a crowd again. But the people here are so friendly and kind to us that I have nothing but good feelings towards everyone.

I have learned to pray in a last ditch effort to battle the narcissism which is the actual disease of our time, (not to sell Covid short) but Narcissism, the precious love of self , the importance of “My Freedom, My Rights, My Opinions” seem to be everywhere I turn. So I took the easy way out by ignoring the internet for a while and turned off my social media and even looked into buying a flip phone.

So why am I back on Social Media now: to talk all about myself and my book? Hypocrisy much?

I guess I owe it to the people at Soho Press who have invested in me to let people know when I have a new book out. What’s the point of writing these things, which I genuinely love doing, if I’m going to keep them a secret: isn’t that it’s own ego game? After all the books have a platform in my experience but are not about me. I hope they are gifts like a Emily Dickinson poem to my friends who I think have similar weird sensibilities. (my friends and me, sharing the weirdness, not me and Emily D. sharing the weirdness)

A great poet named Tom Sexton once said to me, “I bet you are the kind of bastard who thinks God is going to promote your books.” That comment was insightful, for it made me realize that God is not in the book business. I think that God is in the love and forgiveness business. It appears that I have to deal with whoever God is on her/his/its own terms and the book business on its own terms. Which is why I’m writing to you today; to let you know that SO FAR AND GOOD is available. I enjoyed writing it and I think you might enjoy reading it.

And then I will ask for God’s mercy, for my selfish pride.

Weird, I know… but I think it might all work out.

This December in Monterey is also weird for me: flowers are blooming in people’s gardens, I saw a new born seal pup out on the rocks yesterday, the air is perfumed with the scent of Eucalyptus trees and both doors of our little house are open to let a breeze through. Lovely, lovely, lovely.

Blossoms on Ice Plants

and hummingbirds hovering:

a strange December.

Stay well, and I will write more as I get tuned back in to writing blogs.

jhs

Changing It Up

Some sun this morning then pouring rain. it’s two o’clock now and I need all the lights on in my little office to get any work done. Another trip for Jan to do physical therapy. Dog park with friends and Dog was tearing up the field, she slammed into Ted and I offered to take him some of my ice packs to his house but he graciously declined. She is a lunk-head but not mean spirited. I’ve just have to slow her down when she gets too zoomed up around humans. Then Jan and I went by Galen and Ernie’s. They are back from their place in Sunnyside just up the inlet from Pelican. We sat outside, drank fizzy water, in the very light rain, and talked about Covid and politics, Galen’s garden, and our dogs. Their dog Macy has gotten old enough and wise enough not to want to rumble with Dot so I had to restrain Dot from wrestling with Macy which worked fine until Dot decided she would either wrestle with me or sit on my lap and give me smooches which did not work out so well, for no chair is sturdy enough for both me and a wiggly Dot.

I enjoy writing about Dot, but I decided a while ago that I was not going to be the guy who makes my dog the center of attention everywhere. Though I like to socialize her or try for a few minutes but if she calms down that’s great but when she discovers the next thing to do to be a pest then it’s time for a time out. I don’t want to be that dog guy, “Oh she’s just a puppy, she’ll settle down.” and everyone is muttering under their breath, “Yeah… in about two fucking years.”

The big announcement for today is that I’m going to cut back on the blogging again. Down to once a week, because it’s time to start in seriously on writing the draft of my next book. I hope to have something done by the end of January/ first of February and then I will leave it alone for a bit. I will be shooting for at least twelve hundred words a day of useable text. When I do this my mind pretty much fills up with the world of the book. I sometimes even dream from that world. This will be Cold Storage, Alaska 1968. The Hippy fishing fleet is coming on scene. the old timers have to adjust or get out of the way. Depression Era frontiers people meet the future Woodstock back to the landers. Oly Beer and marijuana. Longhairs, and old time seditionists. Beefy men chewing snuse wearing frayed logger pants, and women in Mexican blouses without brassieres dancing around beach fires. “Good Times Bad Times, know I’ve had my share.”

Anyway, I’m looking forward to it. But I think I’m going to have to take a deep dive and immerse myself. I’m ready to go and have plenty to work with. Right now the title I’m using is: Blown By The Same Wind.

The first few days I will work on organizing my notes and cleaning up my office. This always feels good before starting a draft. I will have my three by five index cards all collected and boxed up. I will play my plot game where I lay them out and pick them up, until I’m satisfied on the general direction and the arcs. Then I will blast off: twelve hundred words at a time.

Of course the other big thing happening is Finn and Emily are coming to live with us and Jan is having her sixty seventh birthday and that takes energy and time. But the book will be the main thing giving my life structure. I will do the blog once a week and I will keep in touch. I might take more time off around the election to check in just to make sure everyone…. everyone gets out and votes. But basically… the book is the thing.

I hope you all stay well and take good care of each other.

We will be in touch.

John Straley

Sitka, Alaska

jhstraley@gmail.com

Hard rain, deep puddles:

circles inside of circles

and a crow…. watching.

jhs

no recording today.

Dominent Display

Rain today. And it feels good. I can almost hear every blade of grass taking tiny little sips.

There was no great storm, just soft rain falling at about nine o’clock yesterday continuing all day today. Light winds but nothing that would drive a fishing boat in. The leaves on the cherry tree seem a darker green today and a bit more robust, though that could just be my imagination.

Spent a lot of time reading this morning. Crime stories and taking notes for my new book. I am reaching there end of my “stareing out the window” stage of book planning. It’s a long awkward part of research. I can’t really talk about the book with other people because the story is so gelatinous at this stage if I get one weird look after talking about it the whole thing might just fall apart in a spoon. But now, the egg has a shell and I can take it out of the glass. I know what it is, now the hard part…. growing the bones and making a living breathing thing.

Dot had a dog come over today. Kituusit is a male Border Collie. (his name is Yupik for “what’s your name?) his human being is an old friend name Galen Paine, who was my Boss at the Public Defender, forever ago. Galen and I sat out of the rain, watched the dogs frolic and talked about old friends, crimes, dominance and passivity, books and mostly about how complicated dogs are. It was quite enjoyable, and it certainly tired Dot out.

One question I didn’t ask but have been thinking about lately, Are human men hard wired to be dominant in social situations the way some dogs are clearly dominant?

Now you might be thinking… Jesus John… please don’t go into this! We don’t need to contemplate testosterone, and estrogen levels, we don’t have to talk about gender fluidity, nature and nurture and the societal impact on hormone production.

No… I don’t need to parse out the entire argument. But…we know some dogs who clearly have to dominate the field. Some who are clearly passive. We had a lab who would lay down and let the littlest dog of either sex walk up and hump her. She would also cower and run from the little Korgi who ruled the roost in our neighborhood. Dot just wants to play right now. If the dogs wants to dominate her she will do that for a while, then when that gets boring Dot will shove the dominant dog around. The advantage, probably of being a hundred pound puppy and all muscle. There are other dogs of every size, who will not let any other dog, into their yard without their permission, Snarling,biting, banging the intruder around. A pure, true dominant.

Where I have seen this kind of human behavior most clearly was among prisoners. There are a few pure dominant prisoners who survive in jail. They are usually very physical and very, very tough.

This is a disgusting story but it is illuminating for how closely related prison life can be to dog behavior. Years ago, I worked for the lawyer who represented a man who was found guilty of a homicide in a home invasion burglary with his girlfriend. Once he was caught here in Alaska, he confessed to another murder of a former cell mate. He killed his former cell mate with a claw hammer. Our client was very much in love with his girlfriend. He let her pick out the house they were going to rob in Alaska. They broke down the door, stabbed the single owner to death and stole his VHS tape player, leaving a considerable amount of cash in his bedroom drawer. Pre trial our client and his girlfriend in the same prison facility. Once he was out in the exercise yard, and he caught sight of his GF in the windows of the jail. He waved and caught her eye. Our guy stood out in broad daylight wilh all the other inmates, he dropped his pants, maintained eye contact with her, and masturbated to completion, while everyone stood by, not saying a thing, no teasing, no snitching each one of them acting like nothing was happening. This was was quite a jail yard display of dominance .

He got 99 years, and a bunch more stacked on that for everything the judge could think of.

A mask left out in the rain.

Now clearly men like that are pretty rare. Or are they? It seems that our President does not allow anyone to challenge him in his dog park. He sexualizes most females . There are clearly dominant women who will stand up to him, but culture appears to be undecided in how to think of dominant women. Hillary Clinton somehow failed a litmus test. I voted for her and I would again, but she has has many unfavorables now among a large part of our country, and even though it was clear that the most competent candidates this year were women the Democrats nominated a man…. who I will support and vote for by the way.

I guess my question is, and this is not rhetorical, do we consider kindness, and a default toward, generosity and happiness, a weakness? Do we so long for strength of conviction that we have made kindness a fatal flaw? Have we entered the age of Bullies?

We will have to see. I love to see politicians showing real graciousness to people with problems. Acknowledging difficulty and showing empathy. Yet so often, particularly if it’s implied that that empathy comes at a cost for others… that kindness is portrayed as weakness. We so want effectiveness and retribution that do we run the risk of losing kindness?

I don’t know. I just know, I have been thinking about it a lot as I watch dogs play and listen to the political rhetoric. I think of my old clients. I think of myself, my father and his need to control, often with good intentions, but often very authoritarian. Often taking on too much for himself. Hoarding the individual responsibility. This is what I think of, sharing the pain. Sharing the love, Shareing the wealth. Or is this just my weakness talking?

Dot talking to her new friend.

Drops dripped from the eve

where I found a dead songbird

under the window.

jus

Here is a recording of me reading from How The Light Gets In by Louise Penny.

Happy All The Time?

There are rumors of a storm coming in, but my optimism is holding strong. This autumn sun still dazzles. I love this period of weather. The first person who helped me in professional writing was an editor, and one of the founders of Soho Press. His name was Juris Jurjevic (say Your YEA Vick) He was the man who had picked me off of the slush pile and decided to publish my first book. He had been an editor at Dial Press and he had worked with James Baldwin among others. He could be tough. He was married to a fine novelist and well known food writer named Laurie Colwin. Laurie died way too young. Back in the nineties and Juris just past on a couple of years ago. Juris had served in Vietnam and he had a very dark sensibility in literature. He wanted to put together a crime list of a literary type of crime fiction from far flung places. He liked stories you could learn something from but he also liked them gritty. Or so it seemed to me. His wife was one of the few writers I knew of who was interested in what I thought was “intelligent happiness”. She wrote a book called “Happy All The Time” which was a complex story of relationships and families. There were complexities and sorrow, but at the center was the comfort of love and devotion. In her culinary writing she venerated the warm biscuit. When I think of her now I think of laughter and warm butter melting on fresh bread. This is from her books. I only met her once.

I’m thinking about this now, because there is so much dire news. Actual news and speculations of worse things to come. So much brain power going to the purpose of predicting horrible things. Which I both appreciate and I sometimes am guilty of, appreciate because I like to feel prepared by thinking ahead, guilty because I lose sight of the goodness of others.

We don’t think of them often but there have been serious intellectuals who have made it their life’s work to understand happiness and generosity, but too ofter they are called out for being “Pollyannas”. John Maynard Keynes argued, the the extent that I understand his macro economic systems, that private markets had to be managed by the government during times of crisis, otherwise the systems would be essentially looted by the strongest elements in the market. This idea was thought of as a protection for the week. Some argue the great depression proved him wrong. That Roosevelt’s New Deal didn’t end the depression but only the War did. Others say the war spending was the “New Deal on Steroids” pumping federal dollars directly into people’s pockets on every level straight from the government. Whatever, Keynes thought about the well being for the most, and not profit for the few. This runs afoul of the singular devotion to the individual, espoused by Ayn Rand and other conservative thinkers. The freedom of the individual actor’s access to profit takes care of all society’s problems. No government meddling needed. Just take the highway signs down on the interstate let the fucking drivers figure it out.

What am I talking about? I don’t really know anything about macroeconomics. Obviously. I only promised you that we would look at the light today. Today where I am there is no smoke in the air, the sun is out and the earth is still lifting from the last glacial rebound so that no matter how much the ocean is likely to rise the land does not disappear. Right now, right here, life is good and I need to acknowledge that. the fact of mortality is still a reality still stares me in the face, the news remains grim but if I turn off the news my world will not immediately collapse. I still do not feel the need to order small arms ammunition by the pallet full. I honestly do not hate anyone within range. Disagree with and am even alarmed by…. sure, but I live on an island with mostly non threatening human beings… for the most part. I can both give and receive love and express myself freely. Our son is safe and a healthy human with values I admire. I love him and he loves me. He has married a person I am proud to be related to, and while I have psychological problems, I am able to face them and seek treatment. I inherited sixty thousand dollars from my parents which was not a fortune but that and what I have been able to earn on my own and the good luck of buying a good piece of property when I was young and holding on to it has made it possible to live in a beautiful spot. Most of my friends are happy and healthy, those that haven’t died of natural causes.

My country is facing a tremendous challenge and I can imagine calamities on the horizon I can also imagine solutions and more reasonably I can imagine struggling on to make our country better and in fact a more perfect union. In the traveling I’ve done, I have not seen many more diverse and accepting places. France was diverse but it has a great deal of trouble too with immigration and religious tolerance, and while the Scandinavian Countries talk a good game, I don’t see them taking in all the refugees landing in Turkey and Greece. It’s easy to be ashamed of the U.S. it is true. Lots of problems and ugly crimes. But also so much beauty, starting with the landscape, and the music, the cinema, I would rather live in the country of Jazz with the people who created the Blues, then in France where they simply revere it. It will be easier to make this country the place where our authentic artists are to be revered than it is to disown our own country and make a new one. At least that’s what I think.

All I’m saying today is that I’m happy. I know you may not be, and I’m sorry for that. I know I will be down tomorrow. I know you will be able to wag your finger in my face and remind me of my sins… of our sins.

But today, on this fall afternoon, it is a lovely world and everyone should be able to walk out into it and say, “All this and more of it, is ours to share.”

Everything left out

is just a little damp now

but still…. it’s perfect.

jhs

Here is a recording of me reading Look Alive Twenty-five by Janet Evanovich:

The Line

What will we do once we are used to this weather? Of course it will change. This morning if I stood in the shadows I could see motes of fireweed fluff floating in the sun like fairy dust. The light was so clear on turning leaves it was like that moment after a first drink on a really happy occasion. The world sparkles.

Working on new writing projects. New poems and the new book. Ideas swimming. One poem is about Laika the Space Dog. The new novel set in the late sixties when Thomas Merton was thinking about settling in Alaska before his ill-fated trip to Thailand, where he either died in a strange accident or was killed by the CIA.

The first thing that needs to be done in either case is build a world, in just a few words. Raymond Chandler did it this way in “Farewell My Lovely:”

CHAPTER ONE It was one of the Mixed Blocks over on Central Avenue, the blocks that are not yet all Negro. I had just come out of a three-chair barber shop where an agency thought a relief barber named Dimitrios Aledis might be working. It was a small matter. His wife said she was willing to spend a little money to have him come home.

The world is believable probably because it has a line drawn through it.

Lets just think about this a minute. It’s not just black and white, but surely that adds tension right away. There is a line between the lost and the found. The relief barber and his wife who wants him home enough to spend some money on finding him. Money and race are at issue here, there is tension that we can feel and are a part of in the first fifty words or so. Lines have been drawn.

Beginnings are always difficult. we want to show the readers where they have landed and what’s at stake, before their minds have a chance to wander. I felt that this morning. The world seemed rich with possibility, the sun was out and while of course I enjoy that, shadows cut across everything as well. Fall has such a sensation of the summer ending but also the beginning of things, World Series coming. Holidays, like Halloween and Thanksgiving this is what I feel from old memories. Football games. Football practice, For me this weather has a desperate hint of romance too. That feeling of taking a shower after football practice or a game: Bruised up, sore, but exhilarated, that feeling I knew when I was young of being in my body and how strong I was and how good a shower could feel. Then combing my wet hair plastered to my skull and walking out of the gym, all steamy and towel snappy into the cold of fall evening. Apples spiked in the yellowing grass, horse shit, car exhaust, cold hoping to see a pretty girl waiting for me…All of these old memories go into the choice of words when building a world, for building a world is building an emotional structure of memory that you hope some readers can feel too. Now, as an aside to my sister… when Hemingway put together a similar house of words using the same football, and fall time, walking out the gym, imagery, there had been no title nine guaranteeing girls access to athletics but now most women know this sensation of post shower feeling of leaving the gym after a tough workout: field hockey, basketball, swimming. I’m not certain but I’m imagining girls after field hockey, or basketball, have tapped into a little of their inner warrior soul Ernest H. was getting at.

And what was he getting at? Fall had lines you were aware of crossing. The sun reveals things with it’s light but it also creates shadows. These shadows are cold and they sting of big change, they are bracing and not as languid as summer shadows. Fall, like this is hunting season, and Halloween. Harvest, and Butchering. Light and Dark come into focus. Both winners and losers. The quick and the dead. It’s a natural season for crime writers, and hence appropriate for our readings this week.

You will have noticed we have staked out the dark end of the “Fallen Angel” stories with McILelvaney and Bruen. My dear sister, who is very well read, asked me if she thinks the long winters effects their moods, and of course I do. But then Dana Stabenow’s characters do not indulge in as much philosophical introspection as those two and she lives further north. (thought I notice she travels a bit more in the southwest than she used to) so writers write what they want and from the perspective they want. But I honestly feel that Place Shapes Life. I do. It is something like a philosophical principal for me. In everything I write I start with the place, the geography and the weather, knowing that all things from the economy to the costumes to the characters will come directly from that. I even believe that about New York City where I spent six years going to school. Manhattan is a rock between two rivers jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean. it was a natural and perfect port where sturdy buildings could be built. Everything that has ever happened there starts with that.

At least in my mind.

So too this blog. Every day starts with a comment on the weather because my mind is held in the hands of the atmosphere and those palms are formed by the mountains, sun, and the ocean.

Tomorrow we will not be looking so much in the shadows, but more into the light.

I wear a sweater

to step outside and pick you

a dandelion.

jus

Here is a recording of me reading from Ken Bruen’s The Devil:

Play It Where It Lays

Full on weather pandemonium. The inappropriate wearing of shorts by Alaskans, sandals, ocean swimming, beer drinking on boat decks, beaches and mountain slopes. Tank tops worn by people who should seriously reconsider, for both health reasons and photographic evidence gathered by mean little brothers to be used at a later date. . The social order in the Rainforest is gradually breaking down because of seven days of consecutive sunshine.

Last night we drove up the Harbor Mountain road and took a picnic, our friend Susie went with us and we had our masks and a picnic dinner with us. The picnic area was packed with people who had the same idea. Sunset up high was wonderful. I kept Dot on her long training leash. Otherwise she would have wondered around licking the chocolate off the faces of small children, causing some anxiety to their parents I’m sure. Jan took her walker up to the top but found that the decking on the walk way was about five inches to narrow. She let loose with a stream of curses knowing that I had been one of the maintenance men who had rebuilt the walk way some thirty years ago, and they hadn’t changed the foot print, goddamnit.

We ate potato salad and wandered about taking photos. and visited with people on top. Several people appeared to be camping up on top judging by the fires, dogs and kids with crusty faces running around when we left in the near dark. It was a lovely scene.

Red golf ball plays where it lies on our lawn…. for days.

Our lawn remains strewn with toys, because it makes me happy to see balls and toys strewn about in the sunshine. I will pick them up before the rain but for now they look nice out there.

Our son Finn to this day hasn’t forgiven me that I didn’t want to buy a swing-set. I put up rope swings in the trees near our deck. A sturdy rope with a fishing body knotted on the end. Today Dot likes to bat it around and likes to bash it against the tree when she is on a frolic. When Finn asked why we couldn’t put a big swing set in the middle of our rather ample lawn. I told him that swing-sets were mournful and depressing.

“Huh?” he looked at me with his screwed up toddlers face.

“Ever drive by a farm house way, way out in the country and see the old swing sets in the yard? The wind just pushing the empty swing back and forth, back and forth…the chain making that creepy screechy sound?” I’d ask him.

“Nope,” the little angel said, Of course he hadn’t.

“Did you ever wonder what happened to the kids who were supposed to be swinging on those swings?”

“Dad! No.” he said.

“No, you don’t. Those kids all went off to war and they died in combat.”

“Dad… its just a swing set!!”

“Then their grieving parents sat in that house for the rest of their lives listening to the ‘creeeeek…..creeeeeeek…. creeeeeek of those swings on those rusty chains until their parents went crazy, and started tickling everybody unlucky enough to be left in the house….. to death.”

“You won’t let us get a swing set because you will go crazy?” He said adjusting his pee soaked shorts.

“Yep.” I said.

“Can we get a puppy?”

“Do you promise to love it every second of every day?”

“Yes,” and he nodded his angelic head.

“Okay we will get a puppy.” I said and I started tickling him.

it wasn’t easy being my son. I will admit it. But Finn Straley somehow turned out great.

Dot pouting, because I gave her a bath last night.

Kids in the crosswalk.

School busses on the corners,

and clouds are like flags.

jhs

Here is a recording of me reading Laidlaw by William McIIlvany

The True Hero

Another fine day. If it keeps up like this the weather might give a person a reason to live.

Jan to physical therapy and Dot and me to the Dog Park. Just a few corrections that I have been asked to post: Oscar weighs about 29 pounds not the mere 14 that I had written. I’m sorry O. and stand corrected. The other correction is that Ted’s dog is a “Chocolate Doodle” named Laika. Again, my apologies.

Today we made friends, with Pat and Charlie. Pat was born and raised in Sitka and she moved from Sitka around 1977 and returned sometime later. Charlie is a two year old of very mixed heritage mostly Chihuahua along with some kind of terrier with a wiry coat. Charlie looks old because of his white muzzle and his reluctance to play at first but once induced Charlie is a blast and a half. Charlie and Pat live together without any other humans or dogs, and it was good to make their acquaintance.

Bocce in the time of covid.

The weather remained good all weekend. I mowed the lawn short on Saturday and friends came by for a distanced dinner and lawn games that evening. We ate out on the deck and played a golf game and Bocce. We ate enchiladas, and a greed salad, and drank fizzy water. We ate ice cream for desert. Which was delightful. I was wondering why humans don’t play more as dogs do? We are competitive and I suppose we do try and show our dominance both male and female that way even as we throw the clay balls. Jan is a classic trash talker. So too our friends. But what would our lives be like if we started off my licking the other players faces and nipping at their lips, then running away? Wrestling…rolling around… peeing on the edge of the field? Of course there would have to be some social manners or prohibitions applied to butt sniffing or mounting the more dominant player… but why really? It would certainly make for different kinds of parties, and different kinds of after party conversations while the hosts were doing the dishes. “I wonder what’s going on with Mark these day’s? He was acting a little more “friendly” towards you during the game, don’t you think?”

“Oh Sweetie, you know how he is…. when someone is in heat.”

When good weather comes in a string of days, no need to put the toys away.

I read up a little on the first Russian Space Dog on the web this weekend. Its such a sad story but also kind of an epic. Basically if I understand it correctly: on November 3, 1957 the Russians fired Sputnik 2 into space with the first big animal to go into space. They gathered up a stray dog and stuffed him into a rocket and shot him into space. They said the dogs name was Laika. The word “Laika” means “Barker” but it is also the name for a type of dog that pulls sleds in the Russian far North. It seems to me that there are several breeds of these Liaka’s. Which seems kind of lazy all around for naming the first living creature into space.

As you would expect when the Americans got the news that Russians had accomplished the feat of putting life into space (lets remember that the Russians had routinely kicked American ASS in the early stages of the space race) the American’s issued a statement saying that they had sent “fruit flies into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, or sub-space in 1947” as if that was going to pee all over the Russians space boots? Which you have to admit is pretty pathetic for a Superpower. Fruit flies, almost in space? Come on just suck it up. Laika fucking RULES… admit it.

But the Soviets didn’t make the most of their hero dog. I mean, just start with the name. I imagine they just sent some guy out at the last minute, “You… Yuri… find me a dog! Quickski! He comes back with some mutt and they start stuffing him in the rocket. “Comrade, what should we call him? He will be famous when he comes back!”

Awkward Silence and someone covers the dogs ears.

“Ahh listen he doesn’t need a name. He’s not coming back. If he doesn’t blow up on lift off he’s going to burn up in space. We’re not telling anybody that we are a nation of dog killers. Jesus H. Christ. We’re just seeing if we can do this and the odds are really, I mean really low… no body ever needs to know about the dog.”

Communists… man, I tell ya.

“Boss, we got to call him something even just for our records.”

“Jesus. Fine. Call him “Barker".”

“Come on, Boss. That’s not even a name. That’s like a description.”

“Like the description of your new home in Siberia.”

“Okay seal it up boys. Let’s make some history!”

Hercules with Spiderwebs

And they did. Telemetry showed that the stray dog’s heart was beating through lift off and during at least several orbits. The Russians went nuts and they had to brag about it to the world. Then they realized that they had to admit that they hadn’t designed any kind of re-entry system. They said that Laika was fine and died “Painlessly after a week in orbit with no discomfort after his capsule overheated”… which I think is a load of crap. After the cold war some communications leaked indicating that Laika probably died “two or three hours” after achieving orbit from stress related to temperature and lack of oxygen. But specific cause of death not known for sure." Official cause of death is still listed after four days from heat build up in the cabin. Still… it was a Raw Deal for Laika the greatest public relations coup the USSR ever had. I mean if you were going to lie anyway, I would have told the world that Laika died parachuting down onto Washington DC to assasinate President Eisenhower, with a knife in her mouth and Laika inadvertently swallowed it upon landing. Or something heroic sounding like that.

What we do know for sure is that Sputnik 2 stayed in space for 162 days and it’s reported that it was seen burning into the atmosphere over New York City and its charred remains came to earth somewhere in the Amazon Jungle. God bless her sweet proletarian heart.

The Space Race was a big deal for our country. Our current President wants to claim space, I guess all of it, for the United States. Space Force is just an Idea now. But I don’t know. My mother used to say that if Americans were asked to send their Pets into battle rather than their sons. That would be the end of war. I tend to agree. But in hind sight, the space race was mostly a blessed distraction from nuclear holocaust. It was a game to keep the violent children busy. The remnants are just the toys strewn out on the lawn.

In that spirit if we are to actually have a space force I would want to have the official patch on all uniforms have a picture of Laika on it with twin golf clubs crossed behind her…. and when the space cops get all dressed up and just as they are shot up into the heavens, they should be heard, barking and howling at the top of their lungs, in respect to the great stray Pioneer of Exploration.

Dark skies, salted stars

I am howling at the moon,

because I love you.

jhs

Here is a recording of me reading the first chapter of Walter Mosley’s Black Betty:

Just Bearable

Another fine fall day. Easy chores around the house, then walking Dot around. Blue sky and the fireweed have fully gone to seed. Someone dumped a deer carcass off the road behind our house so we are keeping Dot close. We let her go at all and she comes back with deer bones to chew on which is not good because she gets a taste for venison which could get her in big trouble around town if she gets into peoples meet supply or if she takes a notion to start taking deer on her own which would also be bad for both the deer and Dot running across roads as well as picking up bugs in her stomach.Or chewing up sharp bones and perforating a gut.

Met my friend Norm for lunch at the Chinese joint downtown. Masks on. Jan had an outdoor meeting planned with her people at the University. She is gradually transferring her work to her former students now with advanced degrees. I was going to ask Norm for a ride home but the little sneak rode his bike to our lunch date and he refused to ride me on his handlebars the six miles out the road to our house. Big Baby. So I walked over to the University to grab Jan before she drove home.

It was a lovely walk but for some reason my back was killing me by the time I got there and I was grumpy. Jan did not have her phone with her during her meeting, and when I showed up as her meeting was closing down she just stared at me as if I was a ghost not saying anything. (I should mention too that Parkinson’s flattens a person’s facial expression, so Jan has a particularly cold star these days which is not her fault at all, but it can still strike me the wrong way at times. Like when I have been calling her and texting her to not leave me down town and my back is killing me and I show up and she looks at me like “What in the hell are you doing here? Can’t you see I’m working?” I just asked her for the keys and said I would wait in the car before I drove home. . Which I admit was an odd thing to say out of the blue and WAS kind of snotty.

Jan and her team finished their meeting. I helped her load up her stuff. Last night she had wired together a solar powered bilge pump for her boat and had brought it to show everyone, so we loaded that, the walker and Dot into the Honda Element and when she got in the car, she said, “Why are you so grumpy? “ I explained about Norm and his bike and about feeling old because a short one mile, if that, hike over the bridge had made my back hurt, and when I showed up she hadn’t said hello to me. Jan just looked at me with the same dead flat expression then opened up her Chinese Lunch that she had gotten to go. “I did too say “Hello.”

Why oh why did I say it? “No you didn’t.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Okay…” I said. Then I scratched Dot’s ears. Dot was about to make an attack on Jan’s Chinese food and that would be my revenge.

“And what do you thing YOU ARE doing Missy?” Jan pointed a pair of chop sticks at our French Dog. “Back OFF!” Dot and I were both chastened.

I think the real reason I was grumpy was Norm had been talking about how everyone seemed to be grumpy and not getting along with their spouses these days. “Everyone is bickering. Have you noticed that. All my friends say the same thing,” and I told him, “You know, I think Jan and I are getting along better than EVER.” then not ten minutes later I walk right into a tiny little spat just proving that I am never right about anything.

Then I started speaking in my outrageous French accent which I sometimes use for Dot’s interior monologue, to tease Jan how Dot had no intention of eating the Chinese food for heaven’s sake, and eventually Jan started popping pieces of chicken in yummy sauce into Dots mouth and we were all having a fine time again.

Dot being kept away from Deer bones.

Which brings me to the reason I’m writing this blog. In case you are wondering. I’m trying to write something short everyday, that comes from my actual experience every day, which transforms every day experience into something somewhat funny… not necessarily rip roaring funny— but just funny enough or smart enough or wise enough that makes life bearable. Something you are not getting from other places.

So, you see I’m not setting the bar too high for myself. Something that makes life bearable. Realizing that life is shit…during this time in history with the covid and the uncertainty of the election, and all the craziness of the political rhetoric. I mean… we have a guy who is running for our City and Borrough Assembly who made a Tik Tok video where he says that he will supply guns to shoot all our politicians and go to war. Really? The thing that this really makes me think… is why the hell does he want to run for office? He is going to be so disappointed. He’s not going to be able to shoot anyone. I just don’t see him really doing that. He just wants to shock people by saying it. The truth is he is going to have to read thousands of pages of incredibly boring documents and he is going to be asked if he wants to add his vote to spending money to do this thing, or that other thing. Now of course he will feel good the first few times he votes things down. But after a while the people who elected him are going to ask him, “Yo… Buddy… what else you got besides not doing anything?” He will insult people until they stop coming or he gets sanctions. It sounds boring and frustrating and why would you want to spend what’s left of an unhappy life doing that. Why not just take your guns out to the range and blow the shit out of some more bottles? Maybe draw the faces of people you don’t like on milk jugs full of water and shoot those early every morning? I can think of a million things more satisfying for an angry person to do than run for office. Get a lawn tractor and protest outside every Assembly meeting that has windows in the back you could drive past with a huge sign that says, “Save The Salmon, Eat My Shorts!” or something. Or bring a hippo to every Assembly meeting and have all the proper paperwork saying its a service animal and covert it with a huge “Don’t Tread On Me” banner, wait until it needs to urinate then back it towards the Assembly table and…. this is the genius part… Hippopotamuses urinate by lifting their butts as high as they can and spinning their little tails around as fast as they can then spraying a combination of urine and fecal matter using their tails as a kind of high powered fan. What better thing for a rageaholic?

Sorry… I got off track. All I’m saying is we live in pretty miserable times and the only purpose of this blog is to maybe make life bearable. Not to high a bar… that’s all I’m saying. Like going out to lunch with a friend, and eating Chinese Food with a French Dog and a person who still loves you even when you act like a brat sometimes.

Last night before dark,

we heard the geese flying south,

and I held your hand.

jhs

Here is a recording of me reading three chapters of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely:

Happy All The Time

Some fog, some high clouds, then the sun burns through into a beautiful autumn day. Temperature in the mid fifties, and not a fire burning within two thousand miles. A slight breeze coming in from the west off the Pacific. Lovely, and lucky. Today I took Jan in to her therapy session and then invited dogs and their humans to the dog park, which turned out perfectly because the weather was so good. Ted and his Goldendoodle Nika showed up as well as Christine and Dot’s best bud, Oscar turned out as well, so too a new comer named Mookie, the most beautiful small lab I have ever seen. I wasn’t introduced to her human but he seemed very nice as well.

Jan came back from therapy with her walker and decided to frolic with everyone. We had a lovely time. She and I were both very happy. I was happy to see Jan so happy talking with everyone, human and canine and walking so well with her walker.

Dot of course is a nine month old Beauceron . Her buddy Oscar is a Corgi, Husky, Rottweiler? mix from the Bethel area up north. Oscar is about a year and a half, weighs about 14 pounds is about 12 inches at the shoulder and Dot is about 25 inches and weighs about one hundred pounds. But they play hard together. With never a fight or problem. Sometimes Dot runs over Oscar. But both have the same temperament, trading off dominating and submitting. When Oscar gets tired of being run over or rolled over. Dot lays down and just offers up her throat and belly allowing Oscar to jump all over her biting and nipping then Dot wrestles on her stomach to make a game of it. Then they run around and chase each other. Catching each other and allowing each other to be caught. If Oscar gets hurt by Dots size she just stops playing and Dot licks Oscars face or pouts until Oscar is ready. If Dot is really wound up. Oscar finds a small place to craw under where Dot can’t get to him until he is ready to play again then usually Dot will submit to him first thing, by way of apology.

Oscar and Dot taking a break.

How to maintain a relationship when the rules are submission and dominance and the basic skills/tools: weight and size are so differently distributed.

Of course humans too have the same issues. I won’t go into details with all the people at the dog park, just to say that I know that Jan was self conscious about showing up for the first time with a walker, but she was great, mostly because she can move so much faster with it, because she has more confidence that she won’t fall, having something to hold on to. That confidence simply overwhelmed the stigma of having the thing in the first place, because, I think, moving so slow was stigma enough.

But aside from disability just regular old nerotic self consciousness. is always part of the human condition. What if we human’s had to work it out like dogs. “Oh that guy is so fit and handsome, I bet he procreates a lot more than I do…. better go pee on his mate.” It might lead to more fights, but if we just had the fights and then “just let them work it out” as they say at the dog park, maybe we would and we would have fewer pent up hostilities and maybe fewer really aggressive problems.

As long as dominant males weren’t allowed to carry guns at the play fields.

Watching dogs who get along then watching two people get along it’s fun to make comparisons in body language. Eye contact, among dogs is often seen as intimidation. What about with humans? Are we saying step back from me? Are we saying, I want to communicate something intimate? I think they can often be the same thing. I know that after I have punished Dot she will not look me in the eye. She makes a point of looking the other way. She clearly feels that direct eye contact is too intimate for someone who hurt her or someone she is mad at, or so it seems to me.

All of this is complicated business. The proof is in the pudding and good dog trainers seem to be able to communicate well with their dogs. Some people cannot communicate with their human mates when it should be easy… or at least much easier than with their dogs. I think some of that is easy to understand. Some people just really, really want to communicate with their dogs and not with their mates. Even if they don’t want to admit it, and having met more irredeemable human beings than irredeemable dogs I can understand why.

The perfect best friend.

Me? I want to communicate with both. There is more at risk when communicating with your mate. For men you might expose yourself as a misogynist fat-head or a jerk. For women its just easier to love dogs. They are cleaner for one thing and with a dog no matter what you have done, if you can find love in your heart, any love, for any thing and just sit down next to the dog for a few minutes, you are way more likely to be fully forgiven within twenty four hours. Admit it, that’s kind of the nice thing about dogs.

But… and this took me a long time to learn. If you are a man, and you find a woman who really loves dogs and you can get her to love you as much as she loves a dog, don’t, don’t, don’t think you have devalued yourself. If she loves you that much that means, in her eyes you are heart breakingly loyal and steadfast. This is the stuff of legend my man. You are also tender, with an almost telepathic sense of understanding. Also legendary. . You are guarentieed more sex than James Bond, brother. Do not under estimate the quality of dog love. Knowing when to be submissive, and knowing when to be dominant, you can make mistakes like barfing on the rug, but if you keep that loving quality in your eyes and keep barking at the assholes who come around, you will have it made. Trust me on this.

Cool autumn weather

tiny apples in the grass.

My hands up your shirt.

jhs

Here is a recording of me reading the opening of Dennis Lehane’s Mystic River:

The Bear

Silver fog and sunshine. The grass stayed wet most of the day and the wind was calm. Dot and I went for a walk down at the Halibut Point Recreation area while the tide was low. There was quite a bit of uncovered sand which lended the the sparkling silver feel of the foggy day. When we got to the beach I slipped her off her leash and Dot ran after sandpipers but she never stood a chance of catching one. The long legged little birds start off low but then they turn as one out toward deeper water then rise, and circle back and Dot breaks off, Dot is learning to be more obedient will off her leash. When I call her now she comes if only to dry her self off against my dry pants. If there are kids around she doesn’t like to listen to me but will follow the children and want to give smooches and wiggles. Today she was unusually obedient which seemed strange.

I found a small stick and when I threw it in the water it sank straight away. Then she was distracted by Pink Salmon jumping around the point so she swam farther, thinking I suppose that the splashes were the magic stick being thrown again. But when I called her she swam right in and shook right next to me of course, then added to my moisture content by leaning hard against me. We went on a walk to find a larger more buoyant stick and when she grabbed one she swam for about a half and hour. She swam out and brought the stick into shallow water. Dot is a herding dog, bringing the stick right to me is not a priority, just getting the stick headed in the right direction seems to be enough.

Looking for a buoyant stick.

When walking up into the woods getting ready to go back to the truck and go home. I called her back, and she ran back quickly and just about jumped into my arms. What was this? She smelled even more of rotten fish and at first I was sure she had rolled in a dead Pink Salmon, but then I smelled something more musky like the combination of dead fish and rancid bacon grease. I stomach tightened and all I can say is if I possessed hackles they would have been standing up.

I put her on her long training rope and we went up into the woods on the nice trail to the parking lot and I saw the print in the mud of a small brown bear. This was the bacon smell, the smell, most likely of the sow that had been accompanying the little bear. I stopped just long enough to take a photo of the track, and went to the road. Dot was preternaturally compliant. She jumped up into the car and sat down upon first request. We didn’t see or hear any movement in the woods. Truthfully we had missed the sow and cub by a good bit I suspect, but still it was time to go.

Small Brown Bear Print, in sloppy mud.

This week I’m reading crime lit. Of course Crime Literature can be anything from Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood, to Miss Marple. Some say Murder Mysteries started with Edgar Allen Poe. But I think really it started earlier with any of the swash buckling adventure stories that included Pirates, swashbucklers, soldiers of fortune, who cross the moral line for their own benefit and are made to suffer for it. Older than that are the ancient stories told about Bears. Mythologists say that the Bear in myth, or even more broadly, The Beast represents the humans animal nature, the ID, creature that desires sex, and food, that lies below the surface of language. The Bear, is an omnivore like us. When skinned out the bear looks very much like a human beast. The hunting beast who desires and sometimes stalks, kills and consumes human flesh. The dark sibling we have to reconcile within within ourselves. This is the essence of Crime Fiction. Fear can make us compliant. Like it did today for Dot. About five years before I wrote my first novel a Tlinget woman told me a story about a girl in Yakutat who met a bear while picking berries. She fell in love with the bear and married him. She said she had two children with the bear. “Oh I don’t know how it worked, the kids were kind of half bear half human being.” The uncles back in the village didn’t like the children father hanging around too close to the village. The uncles told the girl to tell her new husband to go back up to his winter home. The girl did and the bear said he would go back to his bear wife up in the mountains. She then told the half bear children to kill their father when he came back from hunting that day, and then she told them how to prepare his hide to show respect on the white sand beach. And they did.

This story is many things. A crime story certainly, but it is also a circumpolar story told all around the world. It is the same basic plot as Beauty And the Beast. The Beast dies, or said another way is redeemed by his human relatives and their ability to love and control their anger, their animal impulses. They learn ceremony, tradition, and they choose humanness over their animal nature. The Bear is the principle character in the story of human development.

Paul Shepard was a philosopher who wrote about the importance of Bear in his books, The Sacred Paw. His books had a big influence on me, but he had very little experience with actual bears. He was an intellectual, who studied bears his whole life. In his book The Tender Game and The Sacred Carnivore he had an epigraph from Weston LeBarr, “The First Religion was to kill God and eat him.” This came from ancient Bear lore Shepard claimed. Shepard had an ancient stone figure of a madonna and child in which both figures were bears. Bears disappeared and “rose again” in spring. For Shepard, Bear was the key to unlock the mystery of humanness.

I don’t know for certain. All I know is that I have killed three bears in self defense in my life. Three separate occasions at three different times of my life. Each event was a profound event that made me question my own mortality and my own relationship with my environment. Am I a trespasser, a sinner, or have I offended the Bear fundamentally? My relationship with bears, made me want to become a criminal investigator and finally made me want to write about crime, made me write about the conflict with our dark animal siblings.

Today when Dot ran back to me and almost jumped into my arms after her entire puppyhood of indifference towards me, brought that little bit of Bear mystery home again. Dot clearly believed that obedience was the way to handle her fear, loyalty to her human relations was what she chose rather than what was left of her wild nature. Bears are just about the only thing on earth that can make me believe in the unexplainable. Bears are telling me something always… even through my pets.

Salmon stream in fog

smell of a brown bear close by.

How long will I live?

jus

Here is a recording of me reading the first chapter of Mike Doogan’s, Lost Angel.