Getting ready for Easter on the farm

Stand up for civil rights and human rights

Hello friends,

The news this week is bad, so if you don’t want to read about concentration camps just skip down to the Writing news section.

Yesterday, democracy advocate Jess Craven (“Chop wood, Carry water”) said that the US has crossed a tipping point and that we are in the “most dangerous time in American history” which is hard to believe, but it also feels good to see someone who is not underreacting.

This week the MUMP administration has been openly admitting they are planning to send Americans (“Home-growns”) to lawless foreign concentration camps (death camps) in El Salvador without trial or due process of the law, with no legal recourse or way to bring them back.

Fascist regimes have historically disappeared political dissidents or anyone who opposes them or stands in their way.

Timothy Snyder (“Thinking about…”) wrote this week that the most disturbing part was that the republicans in the room laughed when agent orange told El Salvadorian dictator Bukele to build five more (concentration camps) to house Americans.

The republicans/ MUMP administration will continue kidnapping innocent people and sending them to concentration camps (foreign death camps) without due process. They will probably also send Americans to these places. Once you get rid of due process, there is no way to know whether the people they send are Americans or not.

The cruelty is the point. This is a sadistic administration. They have been laughing about sending an innocent man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to a torture camp, and laughing about refusing to bring him back despite a 9-0 unanimous order from the Supreme Court to bring him back (“facilitate his release”).

The prison in El Salvador is a death camp. Piles of dead bodies have been documented there.

This is all ooky spooky Nazi stuff, but we have to stay vigilant and not look the other way. If they can disappear Kilmar, they can disappear you or your child, or your grandchild. If you have kids, your future son or daughter-in-law could be an immigrant like Kilmar. We are all closer to being affected by this than we think.

Teach yourself about fascism so that you know what we are up against. Ignorance might be bliss but it isn’t a defensive strategy.

In Russia this week, someone falsely accused their neighbor of making a post on social media against the regime and got their neighbor sent to jail for years without evidence, but it was actually over a land dispute about their back yard. This is what fascism does. It allows mean neighbors to get you arrested and sent to prison for ten years if they merely accuse you of having “anti-patriotic” ideas and beliefs.

Under fascism, they don’t need evidence to arrest you and send you to jail, an accusation is enough.

The most useful daily newsletter summarizing current events in the US continues to be “Letters from an American” by historian Heather Cox Richardson. If you haven’t subscribed, I recommend you do.

Hopefully the MUMPS won’t declare martial law this weekend on April 20th, Hitler’s birthday (Easter this year). People think they will use the Hands Off day of peaceful mass protests on April 19th to stage a violent event with disguised provocateurs (right wing paramilitary groups like the proud boys) and use that staged event as an excuse to declare martial law.

That would be bad for a lot of reasons.

Writing news

This week three of my writing groups have meetings, which is unusual and extra-special, because I usually only have one a week. Yay, writing groups are the best!

I’ve been workshopping the first chapter of Outback romantic family drama book two, which improved it a lot.

I learned this week that I need more dialogue tags in conversations so readers know who is talking.

Reading someone else’s story that was unbearably depressing from start to finish reminded me of writing advice I heard in high school that stuck with me:

“If you write a funny story, it better be sad, and If you write a sad story, it better be funny.”

I thought this was common knowledge! I love this advice.

Today I’m starting to print copies of Queensland book two to give to my amazing beta readers! This is one of my favorite steps in the writing process: finding out if a story resonates with others or not and then editing it again.

I’m up to three agents reading the full manuscript of book one, and twenty rejections, and more query letters out in the abyss, like fish hooks, passively fishing. It’s a numbers game if you don’t have an inside connection in the publishing industry.

This week the author Alix e Harrow, who is great, posted about the 2005 DONALD HALL essay, “The Third Thing”. In it he talks about his experience being married for a long time. He describes being in love as gazing together at a third thing. The third thing in a marriage is often kids, but it can be a pet, or a farm, or a shared business venture. Something you both look at together, and study, and talk about, periodically, for years.

A sweet idea.

“Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment. Each member of a couple is separate; the two come together in double attention. Lovemaking is not a third thing but two-in-one. John Keats can be a third thing, or the Boston Symphony Orchestra, or Dutch interiors, or Monopoly. For many couples, children are a third thing. Jane and I had no children of our own; we had our cats and dog to fuss and exclaim over—and later my five grandchildren from an earlier marriage. We had our summer afternoons at the pond, which for ten years made a third thing.” (link)

Two people coming together in double attention.

I don’t write romance novels, but I do write love stories. All the stories I write are about intimate relationships, and have happy (bittersweet?) endings.

I love putting songs in books, but copyright is an issue, so I’m always looking for interesting songs in the public domain like "Leatherwing Bat” (the Bird Courting Song):

Howdy-dow and a diddle-um-day
Howdy-dow and diddle-um-day
Howdy-dow and a diddle-um-day
Hay hay hay, lee lie-dee-o

“Aye” said the little leatherwing bat
“I’ll tell you the reason that
The reason that I fly by night
It’s ‘cause I lost my heart’s delight”

“Aye” said the little birds circling round

Making their circles above the ground

The circles grow smaller each year

Bye and bye we’ll disappear.

Democracy book club

In April, our antifascist book club is reading They Thought They Were Free: The Germans 1933-45, by Milton Mayer. This was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1956. Barnes & Noble calls it “The classic, chilling account of how fascism took over Germany—and of the constant danger of complacency”

Feel free to read along!

I will discuss it here on Wed April 30th. Paid subscribers can post reflections in the comment section if they want.

Farm news

Planting flower seeds in trays, fixing the greenhouse, etc. same as last week. Getting ready to host Easter outside on the grass and have an egg hunt.

My youngest’s birthday party on the farm was postponed because it snowed on Saturday! This time we got an inch and the snow stuck around for a few hours. Early April is a dangerous time to have an outdoor birthday party.

Lots of daffodils and crocuses blooming and grass growing, no tulips yet!

One of the big gardens is tarped and ready to go. The other still needs work.

The pale pink hyacinths that we grew in the kitchen were pretty, and now they’re done.

The sheep are happy to have green grass to graze on again. They are very large and fluffy right now, with their thick winter coats.

A ewe, Artemis, one of our original two sheep, came up to the gate and baa-ed yesterday until one of us went out and detangled the briar bush that she was dragging around behind her. One downside of having long fluffy wool is that they get sticks and briar bushes stuck in it, and can’t pull them off because they don’t have thumbs.