Categories
Uncategorized

Alternative News Feed

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.

fin

Ahora Entras Tu song

Categories
Uncategorized

The Age of Narcissism

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.

fin

The Youngbloods singing Get Together

Categories
Uncategorized

Executive Orders 2025

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.

Then I woke up.

fin

Wakeup Thinking About You from Todd’s CD Dream of You

Categories
Uncategorized

Communiques to the Photographer

January 8, 2025

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!”

fin

Ahora Entras Tu from Todd’s CD Ahora Entras Tu.

Categories
Uncategorized

Gently With Love

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.

fin

Sometimes It Seems from Todd’s CD Lounge Act In Heaven

Categories
Uncategorized

Things To Consider in 2025

Going to the Good People

A few weeks before my grandfather Casey died, I visited him in the Alzheimer’s facility where he was housed. I hadn’t seen him in several months. My parents told me Casey wouldn’t recognize me, and that he only spoke gibberish now, if he spoke at all.

I found him sitting in a chair on a little patio outside his room. He lit up when he saw me and said, “Hey you.”

I said, “I’m Todd, your grandson.”

He said, “Is that so? How do you like that?”

I got another chair and sat beside him and after a bit of silent communion he said, “You know this is a very exclusive university. Very difficult to get in here.” Then he gave me a sly look. “But eventually everyone does.”

I told him a little bit about my life, and he told a long story that didn’t make any obvious sense to me, and then we sat in silence for a time.

When it was time for me to go, I took his hand and said, “I’m going now, Casey. I love you.”

He nodded thoughtfully and said, “Now listen. If you find yourself with the bad people, get away from them and go to the good people.”

Going Just A Little Way

When I was in college in Santa Cruz in the late 1960s, before mass murderers abounded and when there were almost no homeless people in America, if you can imagine such a world, I would hitchhike up the coast highway from Santa Cruz to San Gregorio, and then hitch over the coast range through La Honda and up to Skyline Boulevard and down into Woodside and home.

And I discovered that if I held a sign saying San Gregorio, I got rides much quicker than if I had no such sign.

When I dropped out of college and became a vagabond for a few years, I always presented to oncoming drivers a sign with the name of a town or city further along, and many of the drivers who did not stop for me would raise their hand and make the sign for “just a little way” – their index finger raised an inch or so above and parallel to their thumb.

And because much of the time I wasn’t going anywhere in particular, just looking for a place to make camp and get some work and food, it occurred to me that rather than have a sign with the name of a big town or city fifty or a hundred miles down the road, if I chose smaller towns only ten or twenty miles further along, my odds of getting a ride might improve; and this proved to be true.

“Who do you know in (name of town),” the drivers would invariably ask when they stopped for me.

And I’d say, “Well I don’t know anyone there, but I’ve heard it’s a lovely place with friendly people, and I’m on a relaxed schedule these days so I thought I’d go take a look at (name of town).”

Sometimes I’d be informed that (name of town) was a snake pit or dead as a door nail or no place for a hippy, but more often than not the driver would tell me the best place to get a bite to eat in (name of town), or invite me to camp in his or her backyard, or even give me work or put me in touch with someone who needed a laborer.

One fellow in Maine picked me up, and after a mile or so accused me of duping him with my sign. I explained this was how I was exploring the world and if he felt duped he could let me off at the next viable place to hitchhike from. He immediately relented, we chatted some more, and he ended up buying me lunch and hiring me to clear brush on his property for a few days. I could have stayed with him for weeks more, he had endless work for me, but he suffered from logorrhoea and I fled to preserve my sanity.

One afternoon in Vermont, an elderly couple driving an old pickup stopped for me, and the man – he was riding shotgun – rolled down his window and said, “We are the only people who live in that town. Why do you want to go there?”

“To see the covered bridge,” I said, having a road map indicating such things.

He gave me a long look and said, “That bridge was torn down five years ago.”

“I need a newer map,” I said. I then explained my hitchhiking strategy and they listened as if I were revealing the meaning of life, after which the woman said, “If you don’t mind riding in back we’ll give you supper and you can camp in our meadow.”

Which I did.

*

Really Really You from Todd’s album Through the Fire

I’ve always liked lizards, feel lucky when I see one

I like pelicans, too. In fact, I’d like to be one.

I like hummingbirds, and I like chickadees, too

I like walking on the beach

And I really really like you

I like hanging out with little kids,

they hunger for the truth

I like spending time with teenagers,

they take me back to my youth

Yeah, they take me back to when I was seventeen

My life stretched out before me, no end to be seen

I love women, I do. I like men

I’m pretty much a Taoist, with a little touch of zen

I like your sister, she’s cool, and I like your brother, too

And I really really really really

really really really like you

I’ve always liked lizards, feel lucky when I see one

I like pelicans, too. In fact, I’d like to be one.

I like koala bears, and I like kangaroos

I like walking in the woods

And I really really like you

I love women, I do. I like men

I’m pretty much a Taoist, with a splash of cayenne

I like your sister, she’s jazz, and I like your brother, too

And I really really like you

I really really like you

fin

Categories
Uncategorized

Seasons Greetings 2024

This morning I drove into town to mail a few things at the post office. Today is December 17 so I expected there would be a line of people sending Christmas/Hanukkah gifts and/or picking up packages sent to them from afar.

Sure enough, there were five people ahead of me in line, and soon there were seven or eight people behind me, no one familiar to me, something of a surprise given how small our town, but there you are.

While I waited I entertained myself by watching the people ahead of me in line and by occasionally glancing back at the people behind me. And ere long I divided those in line into three categories: people at peace with waiting, people not at peace with waiting, and people vacillating between being at peace and not being at peace. I included myself in the vacillating category.

The woman in front of me was president of those not at peace, her jittery dervish-like dance of despair something out of a slapstick comedy. And the man in front of the president was vice-president of those not at peace. He would tilt his head back, look up at the ceiling, emit a little groan, and roll his eyes; and he did this so many times I worried he might hurt himself.

By contrast, the woman in front of the vice-president was, I believe, either a saint or really well medicated, so beatific was her smile, while the woman in front of her was so deep into whatever she was seeing on the screen of her phone she might have been a statue so little did she move.

The woman directly behind me seemed to be on the verge of sleep, a sweet smile playing on her lips, and behind her was a large man holding a large package, his face expressionless, his category not guessable.

When I completed my business at the counter and came out of the little service room, each of the ten people waiting in line – eight women and two men – looked at me as I went by, and one of the women gave me a searching look I understood to mean, “How did things go for you in there?”

And I almost answered out loud, “It was the usual love fest.”

But I worried such jollity would annoy those not at peace and so kept the divine truth to myself.

fin

Listen to Todd’s delightful Christmas/Hanukkah short story The Dreidel in Rudolph’s Manger or stream/download to share with your friends and family.

Categories
Uncategorized

What’s Coming?

I’m sure you’re wondering what will happen when Trump assumes the Presidency in January. His cabinet nominees are a scary lot, their collective incompetence and venality breathtaking to behold, and the things Trump says he’s going to do are scary, too. By scary I mean almost sure to wreak economic, social, and emotional havoc on large sectors of the country and the world.

Yet we the people elected him and elected a Congress poised to pass his havoc-wreaking bills and laws. Which suggests to me that there is something going on here that is not about Trump and his kind per se, but about our society and our collective predilections.

I avoid imbibing much news because most news is untrue or simply recounting senseless violence, but I imbibe enough to know that ninety (90) million Americans who could have voted in the last election did not vote. That is more people than all the people who voted for Donald Trump. More than one in three Americans who could have voted chose not to.

I happen to know three people who chose not to vote. I not only know them, I like them. And when they told me before the election they were not going to vote, I asked them why. Their three answers were: I find the whole thing too upsetting, they are all liars, the whole thing is rigged.

I did vote, though I did so knowing that the issues I care most about were of little concern to either party or presidential candidate: ending the genocide of the Palestinians by the Israelis financed by the United States, installing a Single Payer healthcare system, ending our dependency on fossil fuels, saving the postal service, and drastically reducing military spending – none of which either candidate cared about.

Since Jimmy Carter was President, the only meaningful reason I have ever come up with for voting for the candidate of the Democratic Party was that they tended to appoint intelligent humane people to the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary. Otherwise, in my opinion, there was little substantive difference between the two parties and the incompetent venal people they presented as options.

My prediction is that Trump’s policies will create economic and social chaos, and it will dawn on many of the people who voted for him and many of the 90 million people who didn’t vote that they made a boo-boo. Trump will then do one of two things. Continue wreaking havoc until the Democrats regain control of both houses of Congress in 2026, or do whatever he has to do to keep that from happening, including suspending the laws of the land. 

I’m hoping, cynically, this is just another chapter in The Sickening Enrichment of the Already Obscenely Wealthy at the Expense of Everyone Else, and not something more nefarious. In either case, I remind myself that we the people created this situation through our past actions and non-actions.

fin

The Way Things Go from Todd’s CD Lounge Act In Heaven.

Categories
Uncategorized

Early December Mendocino 2024

Sunny and cold, the big rains of November behind us. Yesterday an earthquake shook the coast from Oregon down to San Francisco and beaches and harbors were evacuated for a few hours until the tsunami warnings were lifted.

The town is an actual town again right now as opposed to a tourist depot, and though I know the many visitors support local businesses, I prefer life in a town full of people who actually live here and move at a pace more akin to mine – slowly.

Today I did a little shopping at Corners and picked up the mail at the post office, then walked around on the headlands, the weather balmy, Canadian Geese browsing the field on the south side of Main Street, gulls and ravens circling over the bay, and not another human in sight for the duration of my twenty-minute ramble on the edge of the sea.

These last days leading up to the enthronement of Trump and his cronies have the feel of a lull before a storm. And speaking of storms we are very glad for the good rain at the end of November and we’re hoping for more rain ere long, though I must say the old bones like these warm days.

I start the fire in the woodstove in the early afternoon and it keeps the house warm until bedtime. My dreams of late have been even more absurd than usual. Not quite nightmares, but leaning that way.

The pomegranates have been stellar of late, as have the Brussels Sprouts. I only recently figured out how to cook Brussels Sprouts to my liking, and now I prepare them all the time. I cut off the tough ends, cut them in half, douse a pile of these halves with olive oil, toss them with good curry powder until well coated, and then bake them on a cookie sheet face down in the oven at 425° for eight to ten minutes, flip them with a spatula, bake another five minutes. Voila.

Work on the new novel goes well. I will begin narrating the audio book version later this month and hope to publish the book in all modalities in March, barring bothersome societal/economic upheavals.

I pruned the trees in our little apple orchard yesterday, an easy fun job because the trees are all small and I don’t need a ladder to do the snipping. Some of the trees are small because they are dwarf varieties, and some are small because they are growing in ground dense with redwood roots and thus cannot grow large. In any case, they produce enough apples most years for us to make a big batch of our yummy Hummingbird Hollow Apple Yum.

This is my report.

fin

Mystery Pastiche piano/bass duet from Todd’s CD Mystery Inventions

Categories
Uncategorized

Tooting Own Horn Gift Suggestions

Just wanted to remind you that if you are looking for wonderful gifts for your fiction loving friends, for your dog and/or cat loving friends, for your friends who like stories about dogs and cats and their people, for friends who love great short stories, I highly recommend my books Good With Dogs and Cats: the adventures of Healing Weintraub and the delightful sequel Pooches and Kiddies: the further adventures of Healing Weintraub, as well as my story collections Little Movies and Why You Are Here.

Of Good With Dogs and Cats a recent reviewer wrote: “I didn’t want this book to end. Both the story and the narrator were captivating. I experienced such deep, profound and peaceful joy with each chapter.”

And another reviewer wrote: “More wonderful stories from one of my favorite authors. In the Northern California coastal town of Mercy, Healing Weintraub is the go-to guy for anyone experiencing difficulties with their companion animal. Healing understands dogs and cats, hence he knows that most problems are actually people problems. But the short stories of how Healing helps others with their dog and cat issues are actually part of and seamlessly woven into the larger story of Healing’s own life and the lives of those he loves. Often humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, always warmly engaging.”

You can order these and other books of mine from your favorite actual bookstores or from many online sellers.

Here are some helpful links to use and share with your friends. Rave reviews posted online by you are hugely appreciated.

My books at Copperfield’s

My books at Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino

My books at Alibris

My books at Bookshop.org

Good With Dogs and Cats Amazon

Good With Dogs and Cats Barnes & Noble

Pooches and Kiddies Amazon

Pooches and Kiddies Barnes & Noble

Little Movies Amazon

Little Movies Barnes & Noble

Thanks!

Todd