This will be published in 50 Give or Take in October 2025.
He could not get "Seasons in the Sun" out of his head, nor replace it with other music. Was it a message from his subconscious or his god? His family buried him on a seasonally sunny day, and at his wake, they enjoyed wine and song until all were gone.
After reading The Bully Pulpit by Doris Kearns Goodwin (see the review in the left column), I decided to go light on some recently published John Grisham books, first Camino Ghosts, followed by The Boys from Biloxi. I have read Grisham before and am comfortable with his storytelling, recognizing he will include courtroom drama and lessons in lawyering. The only one I read that did not have this ingredient was A Painted House, which became my favorite of the Grisham books I have read. Both recently read books had those elements but were different stories with different legal issues.
Camino Ghosts had a speculative fiction component that I do not remember from previous Grisham stories, but then I have not read them all. Lord knows the man is a prolific writer. Anyway, I enjoy reading and writing speculative fiction so I was at home with the concept that a voodoo priestess put a curse on an island that was home to runaway slaves that killed any white people who set foot on its sand.
A story that evokes an emotion in me at the end always gets kudos for craftsmanship, and that is what happened in the final pages of The Boys from Biloxi. Two errors, unfortunately, marred the novel. First, a character who blew his brains out on a dock on a lake appears alive and incarcerated in the next chapter. Second, people attending a meeting miles away from Biloxi can hear the hammer and saws of repair work down the hall in an office in Biloxi.
I was so confused by this that I checked out a book review online to confirm that the reviewer saw what I did. She did. She also indicated that Grisham did not follow the rule so heavily pounded into beginning writers about “Show, don’t tell.” I have always had issues with that expression. To me, television, video, and movies show. Storytellers tell. I was glad to see that someone as successful in the field of novel writing as John Grisham tells his story.
I can't remember ever having a vice-presidential candidate that I can relate to more than Tim Walz. First, he is from Minnesota, where I came of age, attending high school at Shattuck School, followed by Gustavus Adolphus College, and finally, The University of Minnesota, Duluth. As an outsider from the Panama Canal Zone, I learned about these people and their friendly ways. There is such a thing as "Minnesota Friendly." I pondered why and concluded that they were descendants of a frontier people mainly from Scandinavia and lived in a place with winters that could get dangerous. Experiencing some of this weather for myself gave me a deep appreciation of why Minnesotans are how they are. They knew from pioneering days that if they did not look out for each other, their godforsaken winters would kill them all.
So many times, in my tropics-reared adolescent stupidity, I would put myself in danger of those extreme temperatures and be rescued by a Minnesotan who, rather than let me die from my stupidity, got me to someplace warm. What surprised me was there was no chastising, just calm, friendly advice about not going out when it is thirty below to hitchhike on an empty country road without proper winter attire.
Minnesotans don't dislike their freezing temperatures; they embrace them, and this makes them a hardy bunch. When Cindy and I moved to Duluth to start our lives together, she went to work at an abstract company and soon learned that complaining about the cold brought on swift rebukes. "This is Minnesota. What did you expect? If you don't like our winters, you should move." Eventually, we took that advice and moved to warmer Virginia.
So, I can relate to Mr. Walz being a Minnesotan, but that is not all. He was a social studies teacher, and so was I. Now, that draws me even closer to this fellow. You see, social studies teachers know there are two sides to an issue and practice presenting both sides without giving away too much of their beliefs. The job is not to indoctrinate. The job is to make young people think. And that kind of work not only enriches the minds of the youth, but it also enriches the soul of the teacher.
And then there is the China thing. He went to China and taught school. So, did I. He taught in Guangdong, and I taught in Hangzhou. It fits so nicely with the social studies motif. Here you have a country that went communist in 1949 and has been an adversary of the United States for decades. Now, with a more modern mixed economy, it has opened its doors to Americans, and while still a competitor to our country, they no longer consider us "foreign devils." A country like that would attract someone with a sense of history and social science. I learned a lot in China, as I am sure Mr. Walz did. Reports indicate he can speak some Mandarin. He is no doubt ahead of me on that one.
Kamala Harris was not my choice for candidate, but then my choices are rarely in the final rounds. She is the best choice in this contest by a long shot, and I think she added to her chances by putting Tim Walz on her ticket. At least she firmed up my vote.
Before the 2024 Presidential primaries began, while the media was calling Donald Trump the frontrunner of the race that had not started, several of us sat around a dining room table and discussed who we would like to see run on the Democrat ticket. We all agreed that Joe Biden was too old. Gavin Newsom's name came up, someone pointed out that he was not well-liked in his home state of California. People mentioned Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar, and a few heads bobbed in agreement. Then Kamala Harris' name came up, and everyone at the table shook their heads and the discussion centered around her tendency to talk without making much sense. Word salads was the term. The conversation then moved to Pete Buttigieg and others who made the unsuccessful bid for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 campaign.
When it became clear that Biden saw himself as the Democrat candidate for 2024, the Democrats rallied around him, and he faced no serious challenge, except for a lack of enthusiasm for his reelection. Now he has dropped out of the race, and Democrats are rallying around the one person everyone at the table believed would be the worst contender. With no other challenger to Trump except fringe candidates, we are, with trepidation, lining up with the rest, and Harris is our candidate.
In a way Nikki Haley helped to make this happen. She provided the only challenge within the Republican Party to Trump, and like Harris, she is a woman of South Asian ancestry. Their politics are not alike, but they are women who challenged the misogynist, albeit Haley's was tepid. Still if one voted for Haley to attempt to fend off Trump, voting for Harris is a no-brainer. At least the change in the Democrat candidate has breathed new life into an election that was dying from dreadfulness.
