Fired up, thanks.

You may have heard that we have a fire going on here in Santa Cruz. Fires are, unfortunately, not unusual in California—generally in October, when the dry season is dragging on.  But fires are now an annual, close, pressing presence, all over the state. For a quarter of the year, every year, our lives have…

Read More

Russell’s Nurse Friend

One of the people I follow on Facebook is a long-time admirer of the Mary Russell stories who came into the fold when she was younger than Russell is in Beekeeper.  She did some of the illustrations we’ve used in various projects, like this one of Baskerville Hall: (She was one of the few artists…

Read More

Name a Character!

Sheltering in place is hard. Doing so when you can barely afford that shelter in the first place can be impossible. Second Harvest is stepping up with drive-by food giveaways serving hundreds of families at a time—families whose breadwinners pick our fruit, clean our rooms, pack our home deliveries, care for our sick. This fund-raiser…

Read More

Eleventh Hour, Eleventh Day

[For information on the US giveaway of Justice Hall, scroll down to the bottom of this post.] 100 years ago today, one minute before the 11/11/11:00 Armistice officially began, American Henry Gunther set off on a one-man charge of a German machine gun guarding a road block in France, and became the Great War’s final…

Read More

Heaven is dry stockings

Commemorating the end of the Great War, 100 years ago this weekend. From Justice Hall The War journal of Lt. Gabriel Hughenfort 28 January Never have I imagined cold such as this. Even the frost-rimed dugout the officers share seems an oasis of warmth. Heaven is dry stockings, even if they are caked with dirt.…

Read More

Dulce et Decorum

100 years ago, the Great War was in its dying week.  Wilfred Owen was killed on the 4thof November. All the commanders-in-chief agreed the war was over–but on the ground, the struggle went on, and on. I wrote a novel, Justice Hall, about a young officer, and included sections of his war-time journal: Justice Hall,…

Read More

MADness and Melania

As I’ve mentioned before, Island of the Mad, though originally intended as an escape from the events of 2017, has become all too relevant to daily life. Take the recent fashion choice of our First Lady as she set out to comfort a group of underage political prisoners: As various writers have pointed out (here and…

Read More

What’s this stuff falling from the sky?

It is raining in California. Raining, pouring, pelting, pissing down in a way it hasn’t for years. Hillsides slump, culverts fountain, trees collapse. Feet mildew and children climb the walls. The cell phone has taken to blaring out really quite redundant flood warnings, to suggest to the oblivious or catatonic that the creeks may be rising. The last time…

Read More

Recovery

I spent yesterday in recovery, as much of the country did. Watching the television Tuesday night felt like watching the plane go into the towers on 9/11: shock and disbelief and a terrible knowledge that somewhere, there were people watching that same horror and celebrating. And before you rise up in indignation, no, I am…

Read More

An age of daily miracles

Around this time of year, I start getting up when it’s still dark.  The window with my desktop looks east, so I’ve been greeted by the bright voices of Venus and Mars.But this morning as I walked out of my back bedroom, I noticed a spot of light on the floor.  I found it came…

Read More