Hallelujah! My new book is born. The Farm at the East Cove Hotel is now available as a handsome paperback. Copies may be ordered from your favorite actual bookstores and found at your favorite online bookselling sites. I will append a few viable links at the end of this announcement. In a few weeks various e-book editions will become available, and shortly thereafter the scintillating audio edition starring Yours Truly will debut.
For regular readers of my blog, the first few chapters of The Farm at the East Cove Hotel may ring some bells because earlier iterations of these chapters appeared on my blog a year or so ago as freestanding short stories. However, when the characters from one story began to bump into characters from another story, I realized a novel was being birthed and so took the project offline and allowed the tale to unfold with no thought of showing the opus to anyone until the story was done.
What is the novel about? The first thing that comes to me is kindness. The second is mastery. The third is self-forgiveness leading to adventure. And now I hear emotional improvisation.
Writing the book was my antidote to the terrible goings on in the world and in our country, and I hope that reading the book will provide an antidote for you.
Here are some links to a few of the places where the book may be purchased.
Spring forward. Set all clocks an hour later than what they were previously set at. Henceforth one is two, seven is eight, and so forth.
Einstein said many thought-provoking things about time, and because Einstein said these things I am predisposed to think they are true. He said, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” And “The distinction between past, present and future is only an illusion, however persistent.”
Did he know these things were true or was he just guessing? Or was he just messing with our minds?
Certainly how we divide up the days time-wise is an arbitrary construct. We might have divided a day into twenty hours or eleven hours, and those hours would be longer than the twenty-four hours we currently agree on. And weeks? Why seven days? Many a Monday feels like a Sunday. Right? Who thought of seven? Why not eleven?
I get months. The moon doing her thing. I get years. The ride we take around the sun. But hours, minutes, seconds? Sure they have their uses, but they bug me, as do weeks.
The people who lived in Mendocino for thousands of years (and are apparently still living here according to Einstein) had days and months and years, but not hours, minutes, or seconds. They had Dawn, Morning, Afternoon, Dusk, Evening, Night. And seasons. They definitely had seasons because seasons are not arbitrary constructs.
I wonder if the absence of seconds, minutes, and hours made life less stressful. I like to think so. Einstein might have said Time is the source of stress. Maybe he did. Or maybe he will. In a parallel dimension.
People often say of their impending vacations, “I’m taking some time off.” Do they mean they’re taking a break from measuring the passage of time in arbitrary increments? Or do they mean they’re going somewhere? Will they be free of the constrictions of time for a time? I hope so.
When I left for college fifty-six years ago (or right now according to Einstein) my mother gave me two things: her old Smith-Corona electric typewriter and a Timex wristwatch. The typewriter was a boon, the wristwatch a curse. Given my compulsive nature, I looked at my watch constantly and drove myself crazy. So I stopped wearing it, attached it to my knapsack, and to this day I have a wristwatch attached to my basket. I use a basket as my knapsack/purse nowadays. Everyone should tote a basket if you ask me.
Today is Thursday, which means I’m going grocery shopping at Corners around eleven. Before the pandemic I used to go to town almost every day to shop and get the mail. Then during the pandemic I started doing just one big shopping trip per week. Now I go two times a week, Mondays and Thursdays, and I time my going to coincide with deliveries of fresh foodstuffs. I still wear a mask in Corners and in the post office, though few other people do. I’m in the habit.
I like to take my time when I shop at Corners. Now there’s a lovely concept. Taking my time. Giving myself all the time I need to select the very best mushrooms, the loveliest green beans, and to be available for conversations with people I might meet as we forage together for tasty comestibles to sustain us for another day or four.
Seems like just a few moments ago we got the firewood into the woodshed for the winter, and now we must order more firewood to sit outside and season until October when we will schlep the logs into the woodshed, which is to say we’ve lived to see another March. Hallelujah.
Springtime. Our prune plum tree is sporting her first blossoms of the year. Prune plums hereabouts are an unpredictable fruit, and by that I mean there is no obvious correlation between how many blossoms our tree presents and how many prune plums will emerge and grow to fruition.
Will the gods grant our valiant tree sufficient warmth and the necessary pollinating insects to produce enough plums for jam? And will we manage to harvest the plums before the ravens do? We shall see.
Daffodils are blooming everywhere right now. How lovely and solemn they seem before they open to reveal their bright promise.
Always reassuring to see our lemon trees making new fruit despite and because of everything. “Don’t forget to feed us,” they whisper.
And here come our rose bushes emerging after their winter’s slumber, pinkish red in their infancy and soon to metamorphose into summer green on which roses will bloom.
The first rhododendron flowers on our two acres emerged a few days ago – harbingers of many more to come. The folks who owned this land before us planted several rhododendrons to give us gaudy shows every year, while on the fringes of the forest bloom the wild pink rhododendrons.
I recently engaged a drummer named Gabriel Yanez to play on two tunes on my upcoming album Hip Salon. He exceeded my fondest dreams of how my piano tunes might sound embellished with tasty percussion. What a fabulous percussive vocabulary he has, and how deftly he speaks with his drums. Hallelujah.
Speaking of salons, Marcia recently gave me a haircut and I feel days younger.
So what do we do in the face of this onslaught of cruelty? How shall we resist the Damaged One and his damaged appointees as they rush to do as much harm as they can to those least able to defend themselves? How do we respond as they de-fund food and health programs for the elderly and the poor? What can we do as they de-fund protection of the environment and encourage waste and pollution? How do we respond to people who only know how to take and hoard and hurt other people?
We can be kind and generous. We can share what we have. We can walk lightly and lovingly on the earth. We can join with others to counter cruelty with kindness.
And as we resort to kindness, we must remember that these many acts of cruelty by our current government are sanctioned by a large percentage of our population, people who believe that being cruel to others is preferable to being kind. Many of those practitioners and supporters of cruelty claim to be followers of Jesus Christ, a champion of the poor and the disenfranchised. So why do these so-called Christians support such vehemently un-Christian leaders?
When I was in my twenties I worked at a pre-school as a teacher’s aide, and when I was in my fifties I volunteered in a day care center. Having spent thousands of hours caring for dozens of wee tykes, I assure you that though some children seem to be inherently kind and some inherently cruel, that is very rarely the case. Kindness and cruelty are learned behaviors; and children learn through observation and imitation, and persist in behaviors from which they gain something.
Recent neurological discoveries reveal that children begin to mimic their parents’ behaviors and attitudes mere moments after birth, and by the age of three, children profoundly embody the characters of their caretakers and surrounding ethos.
So let us endeavor to make our culture one of kindness in which young people thrive. Let us turn on our love lights and shine them wherever we go.
In my dream this morning, I am living in the little house I lived in forty-five years ago. The living room is dominated by a big table on which is a large empty terrarium, and on top of the terrarium is a big piece of plywood covered with junk.
I realize that my sorrow (in the dream) has to do with my house being cluttered to the point of dysfunction, so I decide to carry the plywood covered with junk out the front door and dump everything in the garbage.
As I make my way to the front door, trying not to spill the junk balanced precariously atop the plywood, someone knocks on the door.
I open the door and here is an old nemesis of mine, a big abusive man I haven’t seen in twenty years. He is now elderly and sad. I invite him to come in.
When I get back from discarding the plywood and the junk, I find my old nemesis has brought along a teenage girl and an elderly woman, the three of them sitting in my living room.
“I’ll make some tea,” I say, but before I can there comes another knock on the door.
I open the door and here is a big young man glaring at me. Behind him are three young women.
“Are you going to let them destroy Bear Valley?” asks the young man, poking me in the chest. “You better contribute to the defense fund.”
I close the door and say to my old nemesis, “That guy just poked me.”
I look out the window and see a woman and two children come into my yard and sit on a bench, and I wake up.
*
Nowadays I’m tempted to interpret my dreams in light of what the Damaged One and his damaged minions are doing to our government and society; and they certainly do remind me of the many bullies I’ve known in my life.
When I was in elementary school there were two big bullies in my grade, and I remember how shocked and outraged I was when I discovered that our system, our school, couldn’t or wouldn’t stop them from beating up smaller kids.
I was in Second Grade the first time I saw the two bullies hurting a smaller boy. I ran to the school office to get help, and the secretary made me wait to see the principal. While I was waiting, the bell rang for the start of school and I had to run to my class where I was chastised for being late. When I explained I was trying to get someone to stop the bullies from hurting the little boy, several of my classmates corroborated my story and my teacher apologized for chastising me.
But the bullies continued to routinely beat up smaller kids for five more years, and the faculty and administration were unable or unwilling to do what needed to be done to stop the violence.
And now the bullies are in charge of our government, and they’re joining forces with other bullies to beat up the poor and weak and defenseless here and abroad, and there is no one to appeal to for help because we, the people, chose these damaged ones and many more like them to rule our society.
As Damaged Soul and Psychopathic Architect of Ruin continue to attack the foundations of American democracy with alarming success, and resistance seems frighteningly slow to develop among those who should be leading the resistance, we bring you this alternative news feed.
As the earth continues to rotate at a thousand miles per hour and fly around the sun at the astounding speed of sixty-seven thousand miles per hour, Leonard Peltier was pardoned, finally, for a crime he didn’t commit, and for which he spent fifty years in prison. Hurray for Leonard and his family and friends!
*
In more localized news, Mendocino received nearly seven inches of rain last week, and now we are in the midst of cold clear days as prelude to the next storm. A good wet winter so far in the watershed.
In local music news, weekends of late I’ve been driving our little red Prius from Mendocino to Albion to spend delightful hours in the recording studio with Peter Temple adding vocals to the piano tracks we recorded here at our house for an upcoming album entitled Hip Salon, a collection of tunes we hope to bring out a few months hence.
The title song, Hip Salon, came about in a fun way. Our friend Abigail was visiting and said of her friend, “She has a chair in a hip salon.”
I thought this was a great lyric and soon thereafter wrote a song that begins, “She has a chair in a hip salon. She sets you down and goes on and on, ‘bout this and that, that and this, and if she really likes you, if she really likes you, if she really likes you, she’ll give you a kiss.”
While working on the songs at Peter’s studio, one or both of Peter’s cats hang out with us and groove to my tunes, which prompts me to boast, “The kitics love my music.”
On another creative front, the novel I’ve been working on for a year, The Farm at the East Cove Hotel, is soon to be released as a handsome paperback. Then a few weeks later the e-book versions will appear, and not long after that the audio book will debut with yours truly narrating and playing all the characters. What fun!
In culinary news, I have stumbled upon a quesadilla-like concoction that is so good I must share the ingredients with you or feel guilty of a sin of omission. A corn tortilla fried in olive oil, cheese melted therein (or sliced turkey), avocado, sautéed mushrooms, and slices of dill pickles, the entirety doused in hot sauce. The combination of these flavors, with an excellent dill pickle leading the way, is indescribably delicious.
In domestic news, Marcia is about to join me in being seventy-five. Her birthday is easy to remember because it falls on Valentine’s Day and the media is full of reminders about this special day.
In closely related news, Valentine’s Day reminds me of one of the greatest things that ever happened to me as a kid. In Second Grade at Las Lomitas Elementary School, a couple weeks before Valentine’s Day, a little room appeared in the classroom with signage indicating the room was a post office. The purpose of this inner-classroom post office was to process the valentines we were to make and send to our classmates. We each had a post office box (cubbyhole), and when valentines were dropped into the mailbox adjacent to the post office, post office employees (we took turns being postal clerks) would collect the mail and distribute the properly addressed envelopes to the post office box grid mounted on the outside of the little room. No wonder I’ve always loved getting mail. Mail equals love!
And those are just some of the stories we’re following.
So. Here at the outset of 2025 the new regime is settling in and we now know the direction our leader and his cohorts wish to take our society.
We know that kindness, generosity, intelligence, justice, sympathy, honesty, and a sense of humor will have no place in the governing equation. Cruelty, greed, dishonesty, and overwhelming narcissism seem to underpin most of what is afoot.
*
The ascendancy of this collection of people suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder reminds me of Christopher Lasch’s remarkable book The Culture of Narcissism. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is characterized by exaggerated self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy (to name three of the primary symptoms).
Published in 1979, The Culture of Narcissism is Lasch’s chronicling of how and why narcissists became much more prevalent in the 1960s and 70s (and have since become the dominant personality type in our society.) He would continue this history with The Minimal Self published in 1984.
I read both books at the time they were published and they clarified for me what was happening culturally, socially, and politically in those days. These books also predicted with chilling accuracy much of what has subsequently transpired in our culture and society since the late 1970s.
*
The Culture of Narcissism details how our society evolved from one of extended families and neighborhoods and cohesive communities into what we have today, and explains how our collective desire to contribute to the greater good of our society was supplanted by the supremacy of narcissists – people who cannot care about other people because, being the children of narcissists and raised on mass delusional messaging (TV), they lack the capacity to love anyone, including themselves, despite outward appearances to the contrary.
By the way, The Culture of Narcissism was a massive bestseller, highly controversial, and caused dozens of books and thousands of essays to be written in response to Lasch’s theories and opinions expressed in his book. And The Culture of Narcissism gained even more notoriety when President Jimmy Carter invited Lasch to come to Camp David to advise Jimmy on his famous “crisis of confidence” speech of July 15, 1979.
*
Forty-six years later, the great challenge for non-narcissists in America is: how do we survive in a society ruled by such emotionally disturbed people? I suggest we revive the foundational activities of The Sixties counter culture: watching less TV (and TV-like devices), having potlucks (with singing and story telling), wearing colorful clothing and fun head-wear, displaying humorous bumper stickers, boycotting hideous corporations, celebrating small pleasures, and speaking truth to power.
I lay down for an afternoon nap on this cold foggy January 20th 2025 and immediately fell asleep and had a vivid dream in which I was about to be inaugurated President of the United States. Even in my dream I found this so unlikely I said to the woman I knew to be my vice-president, “Can this possibly be true? That I’m about to be inaugurated?”
“You are such a joker,” she said with her charming British accent. “Voters love that. Not only are you President, but your first ten executive orders immediately become law without having to be passed by Congress, though since our party now holds massive majorities in both houses, that won’t pose a problem should you choose to go that route.”
“Wow,” I said, incredulously. “And could you remind me which party our party is with the super congressional majority?”
“The Party,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“The Party?” I said, my confusion growing. “That’s the name of our party? The Party?”
At which moment we were hustled away by several burly security guards escorting us to the stage on the steps of the capitol building – a crowd of several million people awaiting my inaugural speech.
“Tell me your name again,” I said to my vice-president.
“Stop,” she said, giving me a warning look.
“Humor me,” I said, nodding hopefully. “I’ve got a little stage fright.”
“Desdemona Mangaroo,” she said quietly.
“Right,” I said, loving her moniker. “One last question, Desdemona. What was my campaign platform? In ten words or less.”
But before she could tell me I found myself standing at the podium gazing out at the multitudes. I had no speech prepared, nothing to read, and yet I was not so much afraid as tickled.
“Fellow earthlings,” I said, and these words caused a roar of approval from the crowd. “I stand before you today with good news. As soon as I finish making this brief speech I will sign ten executive orders that will immediately become laws of our great nation. The first order will be to institute free comprehensive universal healthcare, including dental, for all Americans, along with billions of dollars for birth control and family planning here and abroad. The second order will be the allocation of a trillion dollars to connect all our cities with high-speed rail so we can stop flying in jets and super-heating the earth.
The third order will be to reduce our military to a strong defensive force rather than maintain hundreds of bases around the world. The fourth order will be to provide funding to produce solar, wind, and wave power sufficient to make fossil fuels no longer necessary. The fifth order will be to provide ample funding for music and the arts in all our schools.
The sixth order will be to fully fund and expand the postal system so it will once again be a vibrant foundation for our communities and our democracy. The seventh order will eliminate all corporate funds from the political process and limit contributions individuals can make to a campaign to five thousand dollars, and that will include the candidates themselves. The eighth order will insure all elections henceforth will take place on Saturday and Sunday with uniform paper ballots throughout the land, and everyone who is a citizen gets to vote.
The ninth order will declare the United States will never give a dime in foreign aid to any country committing acts of aggression against another country or people. And the tenth order will grant generous tax breaks to everyone doing their utmost to insure a healthy biosphere.
The photographer was standing on the Mendocino headlands when he saw an angel on Portuguese Beach. The photographer said he had his eyes closed and was sending prayers to his friends in Los Angeles who were enduring the awesome fires and toxic air engulfing large swaths of that megalopolis.
“When I opened my eyes, I saw the angel walking on the beach below,” said the photographer. “I raised my camera, took the picture, and when I lowered my camera, the angel was gone.”
*
January 10, 2025
The photographer saw two ravens rehearsing their act for the Celestial Ballet of Life festival running from now until the end of time in the sky over Mendocino. The ravens were taking turns resting on an ancient fence from which they drew power and inspiration.
When the ravens realized they were being watched, they launched into a spectacular performance of Movement 774 of that perennial raven favorite Making Love to the Wind Spirits. The photographer was thrown into such a tizzy of awe he only managed to snap a half-dozen pictures of the mind-boggling aerial pas de deux, most of which were blurry.
*
January 11, 2025
On the beach at the mouth of Big River at low tide, the River and the Sand Bar and the wind-whipped Breakers called to the photographer in the language of sand and waves and water.
“Hey! This would make a good picture,” they said; and the photographer agreed.
*
Later that same January 11, 2025
At dusk, the photographer emerged from his house with a bucket of compost and gasped at the sight of what humans call a beautiful sunset. The photographer set down the bucket of compost and went to fetch his camera.
And just a few seconds after the photographer took a picture of the enchanting scene, the pink clouds turned gray and a raven flew by crying, “Carpe diem! Carpe diem!”
This morning, January 6, 2025, after a stint of writing and a bowl of granola and a bit of piano playing, I set off for town in our little red Prius to shop at Corners of the Mouth, a small yet splendiferous worker-owned grocery store occupying an old two-story former church in downtown Mendocino.
We live a mile from town. When I used to write for a regional publication with a much larger readership than my blog, I referred to Mendocino as “a village” on a few occasions and several readers took umbrage with my use of the noun village. They complained that Mendocino was not a village, but a town. Nor, they said, was Mendocino a hamlet. My use of the word village, they opined, was proof of both my ignorance and my annoying (to them) tendency to needlessly romanticize life.
*
Now this mile we live from town goes downhill on two-lane Little Lake Road all the way to the village and therefore climbs uphill all the way home. I drive this mile at about thirty-miles-per-hour on the downhill, except in the school zone wherein I go twenty-five. By local standards this is quite slow, though the road passes close by many houses and I feel it is courteous and safer to drive at non-freeway speeds here.
Alas, the fellow who got behind me this morning on my way to town felt my notions of safety and courtesy were bollocks, and he let me know this all the way to the village.
I don’t know who the fellow was. I didn’t actually see him because the windshield of his enormous pickup truck was tinted gray verging on black. This monstrous vehicle, easily five times bigger than our little Prius, was black and had a rumbling engine that got (I’m guessing) seven-miles-per-gallon on a good day. The impatient fellow (I assumed the driver was a fellow, though I suppose he/she/they might have been a woman or a trans person) got right on my bumper and revved his/her/their humongous engine at me all the way down the hill, with the occasional loud beep thrown in to startle me, thus rendering the one-minute trip to the coast highway most stressful for little old me.
Normally when I am accosted automotively by such misguided persons, I pull over and let the bullies pass. But this morning the usual pull-over places were occupied.
So. After those sixty arduous seconds of downhill racing, I reached the stoplight at Highway One (the only stoplight in Mendocino) and the light was red. So I stopped, as is the custom, with the huge black demon breathing down my neck, and when the light changed in my favor I started across the intersection only to have the behemoth close to within inches of my rear bumper with horn bellowing, as if the driver expected me to pull off into a ditch or crash into the brambles rather than hold him up for another second.
Finally, he/she/they turned left before we reached the diminutive commercial district of our hamlet, and I breathed a sigh of relief to be done with the unhappy soul.
However, the unhappy soul wasn’t done with me. He/she/they had only turned off Little Lake Road in order to race down narrow side streets in hope of beating me to the one and only main intersection in our berg. But I got there first, turned right, and the giant truck shot through the intersection and nearly plowed into my rear before he/she/they swerved into the bank parking lot and left me alone to go another hundred feet where I parked in my customary spot across the street from Corners.
*
Unnerved by my encounter with the dangerous dolt, I walked to the post office, mailed a letter, got our mail, and returned to the Prius where I left the mail, grabbed my two baskets, and crossed the street to Corners — the village peaceful and calm in the absence of the legions of visitors who descend upon the village most days of the year now.
In Corners, I found the shelves overflowing and the worker-owners their usual friendly delightful beautiful selves. I was about to bring my brimming baskets to the counter when I noticed the man behind me was only buying two items – an avocado and a little container of quinoa salad – and I suggested he go ahead of me.
He acted as if I had just given him the gift of eternal life and happiness, so profuse was his thanks. Moved by his gratitude, I mentioned there were both ripe sale Avocados and not-so-ripe regular-priced avocados and he said, “I know. Thank you.”
Then as he was being rung up, he turned to me and said proudly, “I grew up surrounded by avocado trees.”
“In Santa Barbara?” I guessed.
“No further south,” he said, his pride seeming to grow. “My great grandparents planted the very first Haas avocado trees in southern California. So I know my avocados.”
“Wow,” I said. “How wonderful. In my opinion there is nothing so good as a perfectly ripe Haas avocado.”
He nodded knowingly. “But I’ll tell you. In Harvest (our hamlet’s BIG grocery store) many of the avocados have deep thumb prints in them from idiots testing them for ripeness and ruining them.”
“I would never do that,” I said, horrified by the thought of such behavior. “I heft them gently, but never press on them.”
The man lowered his voice and confided, “My grandfather used to say, ‘You want to touch an avocado as you would a woman’s breast. Gently and with love.’”
“Got that right,” said the checker, grinning at me.
And I thought, Is this the greatest grocery store in the world, or what?
*
Driving home, no one behind me, I cruised along at a delightful fifteen-miles-per-hour and arrived home in a marvelous mood, eager to make a big bowl of guacamole.
