
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!
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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.
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