solo in time of the virus

Berkeley Pier on Autopilot

Weekend walk was solitary. That in the age of the virus is a good thing. Work on the front courtyard continues. We’ll have guests over sometime at the end of next year. Herd immunity it turns out with a vaccine that is only 70% effective might mean the end of this long period of social isolation may continue for the conceivable and inconceivable future.

Courtyard one board at a time

I’ve two or three actionable items on my agenda. Submitting my current novel for consideration to be published, plotting and planning a romantic comedy, and penning a few more good climate emergency jokes. Of course our climate emergency is serious business but so that we can think our way through to solving this crisis it is wise to help the climate scientists find ways to help the public understand not just the scientific peril we face but to help lift our sagging spirits as we all pitch in and try and save ourselves from ourselves. Just explaining that much turns into an intractable and unbearably long sentence. More work to do, but as we are all finding out we’ve got nothing but time for as far as an eye can see.

Imagining Napa County

Mason is a firefighter. Ruth is an old girlfriend. This is just one of several pairs of relationships locked together in a fight to save what remains of an overrun Napa County…

Mason’s mind was too full.

Ruth was infuriated or not, the irrationality of her anger was hard on the lieutenant’s civic sensibilities. The resolute Canadian surveyed the eyes in the crowd, judgement didn’t matter, Claudia’s contemptible expression on her face was dismissed and irrelevant. The insubordinate woman grabbed Mason, clinched him in her arms and disobeyed department rules and regulations and kissed the man she shared her bed with. After having her way, Ruth leaned back glaring eye to eye until certain Mason fully appreciated the status of her womanhood. Mason stood stunned and that stunning was enough. Ruth hustled off with her flock of mutineers.

Mason dead reckoning with Sheriff Sullivan addressed his superior as an equal. “Anyone hurts her, anyone, I don’t care who they are, they’ll have to answer to me, the father.”