“Happy to tell you there’s very good news,” David said. “Also some…

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Ranting and raving. That seems to be the state of discourse today. Everybody’s got something to say, most of them are angry, and even if they aren’t all that perturbed, working up a head of steam is good business because sensationalism is what sells. The ideal is a car wreck and we all are bystanders who can’t look away. Blood and gore is so compelling, especially if we don’t see it too clearly in detail but rather just imagine it as we pass by. Kind of a glancing participation is what we can accept.

Passion, right! That’s our story. We’re really worked up about this issue, pissed off in fact and you bet you’re gonna hear about it because we, um, care. Really! If we just had the time, we’d dig deep into the matter and let you have a furious barrage of fact and irrefutable data, but life is so busy and there simply isn’t space to wedge another cause into our day, not in detail anyhow. It’s quicker and easier just to yell. Louder and longer might get it done and you’re not likely to pay all that much attention anyhow.

Rumination as a bumper sticker, something pithy and easy to say, whether or not it makes any sense. The essence is not what you say but rather that you said it. Then you can move on. Things as we all know are complicated and who possibly has the energy to sort through all the aspects of these concepts and considerations. Better to be quick and clean, make a statement about whatever so we know you actually exist and then let you gather your strength for the next equally inane encounter.

Truth be told, we’ve been doing a bit of ranting and raving ourselves these last few TQT newsletters, talking the failures of healthcare and the economy, and the illusion of exceptionalism that still colors every aspect of the USA at age 250. We wonder what this nation’s Founders would think of where we are as a country and what we’ve become as a society. We wonder why it is that we continue to cherish the American conceits of our uniqueness when it’s only our economy the world envies any more.

We have the big bucks, of that there’s no doubt. All the financial measures tell us so. What they don’t say, at least not clearly, is our powerhouse economic system benefits so few at the cost to so many. When we were a manufacturing nation in the post-War years, we had a middle class. Since we evolved a service economy toward the end of the last century, we all became servants of the well to do. The middle class continues to shrink away, homelessness swells, and the One Percent grows ever richer.

Above it all, of course, is that fabled One-tenth of One Percent, that multi-billionaire group of families, few in number, who collectively hold more wealth than all the rest of us combined. Period! It is perhaps the proof of concept that free enterprise elevates the cream to the top. That it never seems to curdle, no matter how close to the sun it comes, is a marvel. That they accumulate this staggering amount of money without circulating much of it and paying taxes on very little of it marks their mastery.

What if it wasn’t so? What if we did things differently? What if we quit believing all the propaganda the media feeds us, the lies the politicians sell us, the canards those wily titans of industry beat into our brainpans from the day we’re born. If we finally realized that none of this stuff we’re doing is making anybody happy and very, very few of us rich. What if we said, here’s what we want and here’s what it will take to have it? And then we bravely put the systems in place that deliver those solutions. We can do it.

There are stirrings in the political system, despite the weight of all the money put there to corrupt it. There are young people coming of age with a clear vision of just how unappealing and empty their prospects are. There is no end to angry folks who might finally find the courage to direct their anger at the powerful people who burgle their lives rather than the others like themselves who are feeling despondent and lost. There are big possibilities to explore if we quit being bought off by the profiteers.

It will take political candidates who are willing to lose, who will speak truth to power over and over again until they break through the fog of avarice and corruption that plagues politics today. It will take a focus on justice and equity, building a just social contract that frees all of us by first supporting the least of us. Alexander v. Humboldt said 200 years ago, “Before being free, we must be just, and without justice there can be no lasting prosperity.” Then perhaps we will dial the anger down and move ahead.

Dinner was exquisite, the three of them still held warmly in the place of delight that these pleasures of the city could so casually and commonly offer. Dinner with friends, tonight Indonesian amo…

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We’ve been discussing in the past two issues of this newsletter our belief that the mighty United States of America is at an inflection point. We’re reached a place where dramatic change is merited. All the fears we instinctively harbor about the unknown, the uncertain, the unproven, about trying something different, pale in the face of the very vivid example we evidence about just how wrong we’ve let our country become. Systemic problems can’t be corrected without embracing new systems.

Belief systems are a place to start. There is a standard give and take in the art world thus: I don’t know art but I know what a like; to which is rejoined: You don’t know what you like, you like what you know. What then do we do when we reach a point where we don’t even like what we know but merely genuflect to it because we’ve been doing it for so long? Dogma is something repeated so frequently for such a long time as to become subliminal truth deeply inculcated and resistant to thought. It just is.

So the many truths in our American belief systems. A nation founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, where individual freedoms are cherished and every man, even the occasional woman, too, can achieve all they are capable of in Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. Where free enterprise and competition created the greatest economy on earth. Where the land of the free and the home of the brave are a beacon of democracy envied and respected the world over. Were they ever and are they still?

There is a baseball metaphor about people born on third base who think they hit a triple. America is that way. It was created by colonists who fled the landed gentry of Europe and found an isolated place of great riches. It was isolated except for some pesky Indians, who had no resistance to the newly arrived pathogens and despite the formidable opposition they might otherwise have mounted, died off in huge numbers and the rest were summarily defeated. Now the land was ours.

Luck, good fortune, a fortuitous turn of events, so often that is what makes success. The American Revolution created this country from the struggle between European nations vying for control and, in the end, we were what was left. This nation stole a land of vast resources from the people we found here and set about exploiting them, the people and the resources both. We created a successful agrarian society on the backs of slaves and weathered challenges large and small, even a Civil War, to persist.

World War II left the male population of America proud, damaged, and angry. It also made the country rich. This was not the same nation that suffered the Depression and resolved it by going off to war. This was now the most powerful nation on earth. In the mid-Fifties, 2/3rds of all the goods manufactured for sale in the world were made in the United States. Industry created a middle class that was a triumph of capitalism seizing opportunity and sharing the bounty, an apogee of success that was not to last.

Anger appears to be the defining characteristic of America at 250. We no longer try to keep a lid on it. We exploit it. It gets people elected, keeps the incompetent in office, allows our political leaders to be purchased for pocket change by the very few titans of commerce whose interests they serve. Anger now is so pervasive and so skillfully managed it no longer threatens the powerful with the wrath they deserve for robbing us blind. Kleptocracy has become the ultimate status symbol of our time and place.

They do it because they can. What they want is more. Ever more. They have mastered the system with their lawyers and accountants, media megaphones and especially all those lobbyists who buy the elected officials to legislate them every advantage and less tax on their bounty. They became that powerful by destroying the middle class and siphoning ever greater portions of wealth from a service economy that serves fewer and costs the rest of us more. Elasticity has been stretched to a breaking point.

Do any of us in our heart of hearts not believe we can do better? When the largest block of votes cast is not for Republicans or Democrats but for none of the above; that is, when 36% of eligible voters do not vote as in the most recent presidential election, might we question what is eroding our democracy? Might we suggest that restoring hope and aspiration to those who feel abandoned by this American way of life today might be better motivation than a nation driven by fear, anger, and avarice?

In a restaurant nearby, Delila had joined Emily and Clay for dinner.

“I was so expecting to see you in your uniform, garments, whatever they’re called. When you and Clay got out of the car, I had to…

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“What do you make of all this stuff that’s going on all of a sudden?” Mick asked Fausto. “Seems like a lot of activity and yet, for me at least, it’s the same ol’ same ol’.”

“Excuse me for laughing,…

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We talked in our previous edition about believing an inflection point is coming in the affairs of this country. The level of absurdity in our public affairs has reached an end place. The illustration above portrays a series of inflection points in the development of a business, that essential focal point of the free enterprise belief system where the best of us unsaddled by limits on our freedom to operate as we see fit make a steady climb toward success at the top of the hill. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, right?

That’s not the kind of inflection point we’re thinking about: those little wiggles from one side to another of the incline we’re surmounting. If anything, they might suggest the undulations between one political party and the other in trying like Sisyphus to get the damned rock up the hill. Maybe it’s the political system failing most of us while egregiously enriching so few. This photo could be seen as the decline from the top through increasingly wild swings to the bottom as late stage economy comes undone.

We’re talking of course about our devotion to capitalism, that sacred cow to which we’ve yolked our social order in the devoted belief there is no better economic system possible for elevating us from the muck. Whether it was ever true, that fatted calf we continue to offer up in celebration belies the reality that most Americans are worse off in real dollars than they were 50 year ago. What we glimpse of wealth now when the light illuminates its bovine bliss in repose looks suspiciously like, well, like Elon Musk.

At New Northwest we like to turn sacred cows on their heads to see what they look like upside down. It gives us a different perspective. This image is how they should appear as their best and truest selves, having absolutely nothing to do with capitalism but rather with aspiration for peace, tranquility, a state of being that is accessible to all. That does indeed seem worthy of worship, whereas Elon and his ilk not so much. They are the winners because we are the losers and that’s how they measure success.

So upside down we might ask: is that true capitalism, a winner-take-all game where money is siphoned from the economy and hoarded by every means possible to keep it from the rest, where that very wealth is deployed to influence public policy for the benefit of the few at the cost to the many, where the smartest, most privileged, and luckiest among us utilize every advantage at their disposal to tilt the playing field ever further in their favor and distance themselves as far as possible from the rest of us?

Do we really believe we can’t we do better in supporting the social order? Can’t we reasonably question in our 250 years as a nation founded on the ideals of the Enlightenment how far we have wandered from a focus on the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Is there something sacrosanct about an economic system that vests more wealth in the hands of some two dozen families than the rest of the country’s population combined? Isn’t it time to consider change for the better?

Here’s a case in point. Dogma tells us that a nation based on individual rights (if not responsibilities) and unrestrained economic freedom proves the U.S. to be superior. It also suggests nations that employ any aspect of the term “social” as in socialism or social democracy or whatever are a mere step from communism and demonstrably discredited. Yet by any measure of a nation’s quality of life, prosperity, and strength (except military might), many nations belie that canonical leap of faith we cherish.

As the chart above illustrates, Norway as an example exceeds the U.S. in all those measures to a considerable degree. Most notable of the categories are the difference in rates of Poverty and Incarceration, which perhaps are directly related. Another of note is the relative political systems, in theirs of which people themselves rather than capital are the driver. Skeptics will call apples and oranges in comparing nations so different in size and demographics, but perhaps focus is the greatest differential.

We can argue that infusing money into the economic system so that it continues to circulate is pure capitalism and that an equitable tax on wealth creation, rather than on labor, is a preferable mechanism. We can demonstrate that providing basic income to support the lowest rungs of the social order is money that will be spent in meeting needs rather than hoarded. We know that all people are NOT created equal, but we do deserve equal attention under our laws and policies. As a society, we can do better.

“I’m surprised you wanted to do this,” Embry said, “but it’s greatly appreciated. Would have been a very long walk.

“Uphill, too,” Sister Loretto said to him, “at least the first half.”

“True that. A…

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Over a month had passed, maybe six weeks or more since Clay was captured and Dirk returned to the ranch. So much happened so fast during that time it was hard to calculate what exactly was taking p…

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Do you hold your doctor in high esteem? There once was a time when healthcare professionals, and especially those exalted physicians among them, were ranked by us at the very top of the order among professionals. That was back in the days when they actually made the decision about the care you needed to receive, before the insurance industry took over and doctors were stripped of that power. Now they’ve become little more than functionaries for the industry and pill pushers for Big Pharma.

The cost of that care continues to rise and what we get for it continues to decline (HERE). So too the status of healthcare professionals. Like the mare, that old gray doctor ain’t what it used to be. One wonders why young people continue to enter the profession. Of course, the pay ain’t bad - ever met a poor doctor? - and a substantial increase in women at medical schools is a balancing factor. But if you ask docs these days whether they’d recommend medicine as a career, mostly the answer is “no!”

The Hippocratic Oath may be a vestige of better days and in fact it is likely impossible to adhere to for even the most dedicated and honorable physician. How does one Do No Harm when your ability to act is superseded by higher authority, whose guidance is cost rather than benefit? This would seem less onerous perhaps were we in the United States not the only developed country in the world where good health and medical care are seen not as a right but rather a matter of what you can afford.

That particularly U.S. sense of superiority too often supposes that our healthcare is the best that, well, the best that money can buy. Dead wrong, so to speak, and in fact, not even close. Ironically, not only is our medical care inferior, we also spend far more per capita for it. Worse still, that gap between our healthcare and the actually great care that comparable nations enjoy is increasing rather dramatically and has for the last forty years. One wonders how long industry can continue to tell us otherwise?

Life expectancy, infant mortality, general well-being and good health, all of them are better in developed nations with Universal Healthcare. That concept, which in several different variations has proven to be not only doable, and not only less expensive, but considerably so on both counts, is in the United States traditionally and resoundingly labeled socialized medicine. And we’ve been told repeatedly for many generations now that any version of socialist or socialized in any context is bad. Like BAD bad!

Huge amounts of money can be counted on to oppose legislative initiatives that might dare to make obvious improvements to our shameful medical system. The Pay To Play healthcare insurance industry and its lobbyists know whose ox will be gored if health care reform is achieved. The question we should ask shouldn’t be what calamity might befall industry but rather what benefit might accrue to patients. By that measure there is no reason other than duplicity to forego Universal Healthcare.

Those public servants in Congress and state legislatures are savvy enough to know where their bread is buttered. Their public posture, grandiose and sanctimonious proclamations, and deeply held convictions pale in the light of political reality. Their first and foremost consideration is keeping their jobs, and money, lots of money, is what fuels campaigns. The healthcare industry spends freely on lobbying and its interests rather than yours are what our elected officials support. Quid pro quo is.

If those same legislators really were defending public well-being, if they actually cared about oversight of the public coffers, they might need no more evidence of the need for change than the stark reality the charts on this page illuminate. We in America are paying more and getting less healthcare. And considering that the U.S gross domestic product is quite large, the chart above would look even worse if we measured it as expenditure per person. There is no way to spin the results as any other than bad.

Healthcare in the United States is a vivid example of systems we protect absolutely, absent any good reason other than the industry trope we’ve long been fed and the acquiescence of our elected officials who are supported by those special interests. At the Center for the New Northwest, we support systemic change that delivers needed solutions. We believe an inflection point is coming and fundamental change will reshape many of our failing systems. May healthcare be a resounding manifestation.

The guy approached directly but somewhat cautiously. “Thank you,” he said, turned sideways and began to walk away. Then he stopped, turned back toward Embry where he was seated in the booth at the …

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She was barely settled back in her apartment, the baby asleep, au pair out for the evening, when her cell phone rang. The private one. A number she didn’t recognize. She didn’t answer, let it go to…

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Ain’t springtime grand? For all the clickbait news and weather coming our way that promises one sort or another of gloom and doom, a leisurely stroll outside, maybe along Bear Creek nestled there in that bank of trees to the right, tells a different story. Our little town churns through all the typical ups and downs of daily existence, the glories, the worries, victories and defeats, and especially all the strife of small town living as one faction and another tries to have its way; yet, something as simple as a walk in the park tells us all in all life is pretty fine. Even peaceful at times. Imagine!

It does bring to mind the question of why sensationalism, that barrage of hysteria and threat that media presents us, is such a powerful force in attracting our attention. The car wreck syndrome, one supposes, where no matter how horrible as it may be to witness one simply has to look. No doubt it’s been that way since Roman chariots were colliding on the Appian Way. It’s just human nature. It gives us a rush, whether or not we want to admit it, and that rush, most any rush, is addictive.

Outrage, provocation, whatever gets the blood boiling, has been a successful tactic of populists throughout time. Technology now, social media, podcasts, television news, talk radio, marries with its proponents perfectly. In an era when too few of us take the time to think our way through things, and far too few apply any sort of critical thinking to what we see and hear, we are especially ripe fields for plunder by those well-honed manipulators feeding our addiction. Time for a walk. Leave your phone at home. Yes!

We were introduced recently to an amazing young filmmaker named Davide Fiore. He’s an Italian national working currently in Los Angeles, where he edits film for the big streaming houses in between making documentaries of his own. Most recently, he brought us A Little Fellow, the award-winning story of A.P. Giannini (HERE), who grew his Bank of Italy in San Francisco into Bank of America, the largest in the country. He did it by extending credit to all the little fellows no one else would finance.

Like his subject, Davide is well on his way to making a name for himself. A native of Torino, he began making film in the Italian music industry, where he found the idea for his first documentary, Just Us, the story of two deejays in his home country, which he produced in 2014. You might suppose that got our attention.

Davide has very generously shared his knowledge and experience with us as we try to learn what the possibilities are for making a short documentary about freeform radio. It seems like a logical next step in our efforts to reach the largest possible audience with our history of a remarkable time in radio broadcasting (HERE). Short docs are the hot thing at the nation’s film festivals and the cost of making one is kinda within reach, it seems, so the possibilities are being considered and the beat goes on, Stay tuned!

Not often we get to say: I told you so. But last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders echoed a proposal made in this newsletter several weeks ago (HERE), and with the identical rationale: “This month … the progressive senator from Vermont, proposed that the federal government levy a one-time 50 percent tax on A.I. companies that would be paid in stock. His rationale was that the technology was built on Americans’ collective intelligence — songs, computer code, scientific research, videos and more — so everyone should share in the wealth it creates (HERE).”

There’s perhaps never been a clearer case of big business exploiting the public than the sudden emergence of Large Language Systems, which colloquially we call A.I. Whatever the benefits it brings, and they are many, and whatever the downside, the substantial disruption that technology systematically inserts into our lives, there’s an inarguable fact about artificial intelligence: it’s mining and marketing the collective knowledge of humanity - intellectual property that deserves a royalty for its use.

Fearfully, perhaps, no less a serial disrupter than the current president of our country seems to be tinkering with the idea (HERE). For what purpose one can only guess. In our case, though, it was with the intention of creating and funding the sort of public safety net that so often is dismissed as unrealistic and unaffordable by the captains of capitalism: Basic Income and Universal Health Care for starters. Royalties of half the multi-trillion dollar valuation of these companies would fund them very nicely.

When Dirk Primus awoke in the cabin a few days ago, rising with first light that morning after a night drugged unconscious on the floor, he was alone, the intruders gone and Clay Embry with them. T…

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Braun was slumped in a chair behind his desk, rubbing his face, kneading his hands, chuckling to himself, laughing nervously. Bess Gannon knocked, entered without waiting for a response, looked at …

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Once in a blue moon isn’t really all that rare, not in our human timescale let alone in the astronomical whirl. But it’s still cool. Things that are to any degree out of the ordinary have value simply for the change of routine. It’s like they nudge you and say, “look at that, pay attention!” Why? Something different is happening. Those variations can wake you up. Shine a light of recognition on them. Cast the glow of the moment in new colors. Outline them in deeper shades of definition. You see things in new ways.

That has appeal to me as it does to many people. But not all. Maybe not a majority. Maybe not even close. I was thinking about it in terms of freeform radio, a subject that’s occupied a lot of our time of late, thinking about its implications. What was unique about it. Why it appealed so dramatically to a fiercely loyal audience. And why a larger audience preferred a restricted playlist and good ol’ predictability. For them freeform radio was like riding a stallion when they wanted a docile saddle horse.

During a class at the University of Vermont last year, I was lamenting the loss of the exposure that freeform radio provided new artists when a student disagreed. “There’s more opportunity for young artists than ever,” she said. “Anybody now can cut an album and release it on the web.” “How do they find the audience, though.” I asked. “Simple," she said, “If you like that, you might like this.” Curation by algorithm is her preference. The narrowing of experience rather than broadening. Blue moon beware.

Speaking of radio and all things music, we had a great conversation with Joel Selvin last week (HERE). Beginning in 1972 and continuing for the next 37 years, Joel wrote a weekly column in the San Francisco Chronicle, covering that vibrant Bay Area scene with a keen eye and ear. He worked concerts from the glory days of Chet Helms and Bill Graham to lately Britney Spears in the oughts. “By the third time I saw her, I knew it was time (to retire).” To say he has vast perspective to share is putting it mildly.

He also found time to publish 22 books and produce a great documentary, Born In Chicago, about the urban blues legends Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, and the musical heritage they shared with the next generation of blues greats like Paul Butterfield, Michael Bloomfield, Charlie Musselwhite, Corky Seigel, Elvin Bishop, Nick Gravenites, and so many others. They were people of a different color but just as attuned to the music. They earned respect, proving blue men can sing the whites.

Most impressive of all he had to say, though, was his passionate pitch for his latest book Drums and Demons about infamous Jim Gordon, the all star drummer, “and this guy’s personal journey through the greatest music of his generation and into a life in prison because of schizophrenia … When he played drums, it wiped out the voices. So for Jim, the only safe place was on that drum stool.” In a psychotic episode in 1983, he murdered his mother and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2023.

The Woodstock Music and Art Festival happened so long ago, it’s rather amazing that people still are curious about it. They continue to discuss what it meant all these years later. Put on a lecture or an event with Woodstock in the title and people show up. They want to hear about it, talk about it, relive that remarkable moment in time. There was a period of intense attention in the immediate aftermath, then a slow dissipation of interest for a time, and an increase of skepticism about it for a while. And then …

All these years later, there is an upsurge in fascination because so much has changed so profoundly in the interim, and because the aspirations of that generation resonate with young people today. Authenticity, rebellion, the social contract, anti-materialism, a hunger for justice, equality, peace. Those hopes and dreams don’t die. They can be beaten into submission, boxed in by pressures to survive in an economy designed for compliance, but they can be revived by similar circumstances. And so they are.

I get to serve as cultural commentator on a panel hosted by Dale Harmon, chair of the curriculum committee for the University of Pittsburgh chapter of OLLI. He’s created an extraordinary look at that event of mid-August 1969 that brought together a half-million people for three days of music, mayhem, love, and peace. My co-panelists are people who were there and a young teacher who looks at it from a modern viewpoint. Dale has offered it to OLLI chapters across the country and our Zoom tour is lining up.

1.

The vote, when it finally came, after all the hue and cry, the debates, the fights, the battles, the taking it to the wall by every interest group imaginable, was quick and clear. Congress by a sup…

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When I decided to begin posting on MailChimp several years ago, it was simply because I realized the Internet was a place to park my lifetime of writing. If someone wanted to read it, whether they sought it out or just stumbled on it by chance, there it would be. At the very least it would be far more accessible than where it currently was - buried in drawers of my filing cabinet. Only a burglar could find it there and would he, she, or they care? Probably not. Unlikely they’d have time for reading.

Soon enough after I began, the entire suite of digital dilemmas came calling. The first was to be “blogging,” a clumsy term that rested none too comfortably on the writing shingle I hung out over the digital door. A weblog became we blog became blogging in the language of the ethers and here I was, so engaged, when what I thought I was doing was writing. But that’s so yesterday. Get a life, right? 21st century style. Blog!

The second bump was when the MailChimp platform was purchased by Intuit. Immediately the rates were raised, among other egregious changes of terms and conditions, a quintessential evolutionary aspect of dealing with any web purveyor. They start up, they’re kind of cool, the ease of use is attractive and I take the plunge.

I’m not alone. Lots of people join me. Suddenly the platform reaches scale and the big boys buy them out, lock, stock, and the barrel over which they have us. The site of my humble stash of writings is owned by someone else and it’s a different deal. The cost of putting a post in play by email to my distribution list has doubled. Overnight. With not a scintilla of improvement in service. I start looking for an exit.

Ah, Substack, the place where writers gather. A sort of literary social media site is how it’s billed. Posting is a breeze, very intuitive, drag and drop, schedule a date to send it winging and it’s as good as done. I post a free newsletter called Three Quick Things on the lunar calendar at each the New and Full moon, and a variety of fiction, memoir, poetry, and miscellany for paid subscribers each Saturday night.

So far, so good. I’ve posted over 200 pieces of my work, some newly created and some historic, and my original intention is being met. By leaps and bounds with occasional stumbles I’m getting all that work in a place where it’s available. There it is: a lengthy list of all kinds of stuff and best yet, when I review it I like what I read!

Except! Except there is always another dilemma. Everything is posted in reverse chronological order. My serial novel Cascadia is 40 chapters in Part One alone. If you happen on it somewhere along the way and want to begin at the beginning? Well, you have to dig waaaay back in the Substack archive of my work to locate Chapter One. Then you have to repeat the process for each successive chapter. It’s a very clumsy way to present something that should be read like a book - from beginning to end.

That’s true of everything except the TQT newsletter, which functions well in a most recent issue first format. The rest of the work is a holy mess. The simple solution is to reformat the site, right? Well, it would seem so. But we’re all adults here, so let me let you in on a little secret; nothing digital is simple. It’s revenge of the nerds and we are meant to suffer for how inanely clever they can be. It turns out intuitive has its limits.

I can’t reformat Substack because its architecture is reverse chronological. Period. It really isn’t conducive to posting novels and memoir and anything that in book form would read from beginning to end. It’s great for what have you got to say lately, but as a site to park my writing in a format that is attractive, logical, and sequential, it sucks! There are ways around that problem but they are half-assed bandages on a systemic problem. That’s the latest dilemma and likely there’ll be more.

Perseverance is my only option. I want to find a way to realize my original goal and I’m working on it. I believe within the next few weeks, or more likely months, that this Substack account for paid subscribers will be a portal to another place on the web where my work will be accessible in the order I would like. On my own website.

It will be a place where you can choose fiction or memoir or poetry and it will appear as complete works as they were written. Cascadia Parts One, Two, and Three from Chapter One to The End; Ludlow from Chapter One to Twenty; Where We Were in its three successive parts; Montana Story Parts One and Two, and so forth.

It makes sense for so many reasons, among them as was pointed out to me that at Substack, Mail Chimp, or wherever else sites of those sorts, I’m a renter, a tenant, subject to the whim of the owner. On my own website, I’m the boss for better of worse but at least I know where the buck stops and the story starts.

That’s the plan. I will be so pleased and proud to accomplish it and hopefully it will make your support of my work a lot more enjoyable. It will also be very ennobling to work my way through all these digital dilemmas and create a place where things are presented as they logically should be - the titans of tech be damned. We know this stuff profits them big time. It’s cool to sometimes make it work for us the way we want, as well. That’s the Solarpunk concept and I’m all in.

Meanwhile, we commence Cascadia: Part Two next week. Week by week it will stack up In reverse chronological order for a time, but stay tuned. We will right the writings or go down swinging.

to be continued …

Kenu, whose name was Kenneth Newland - if that was his actual name and like most other details of his life, nothing was known for certain - sadly is no longer with …

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