{"id":7430,"date":"2021-11-04T07:17:15","date_gmt":"2021-11-04T14:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=7430"},"modified":"2021-11-04T07:17:18","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T14:17:18","slug":"random-thoughts-while-watching-perry-mason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/random-thoughts-while-watching-perry-mason\/","title":{"rendered":"Random Thoughts While Watching Perry Mason"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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It might be a good thing for every American to begin their morning by watching Perry Mason<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I finished reading George Stewart’s 1941 novel, Storm<\/em>. It is a mysterious masterpiece of American fiction where a massive storm generated by the Pacific Ocean is the setting, plot, protagonist and antagonist. There are also an electrocuted owl and drowned wild boar as characters. I urge anyone with an interest in American literature to read it and marvel. It is utterly original, visionary and hypnotic. I found the book at random in a library and had never heard of it before. I can’t get this book out of my mind and feel its influence forming within me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I raked leaves yesterday for the first time in a decade or so. My back hurts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I bought a copy of Peter Matthiessen’s The Snow Leopard<\/em> for 99 cents in a thrift store. I’ve read it four or five times and it has helped me immeasurably in life to make sublime transitions through cataclysmic personal setbacks. I bought the book for a friend with the intent of helping her make a transition through a turbulent personal crisis, but she disappeared on me. I’ll keep the book and hope she reappears.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I finished writing my latest Oregon Coast Christmas tale. It’s about a homeless veteran in Coos Bay who takes a job on a Christmas tree lot owned by a veteran of the Vietnam War. It’s got Steve Prefontaine and Silver and Golden Falls in it. I’ll be posting it here next month. I sometimes don’t know why I continue to write these tales after my collection was published last year. I think I write them so I can live in a micro world where Christmas works out for people. Rarely has Christmas worked out merrily in my adult life. But there are a few worth remembering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I read in the paper that Oregon’s only documented lynching of a Black person occurred in 1902 in Coos Bay. His name was Alonzo Tucker and he was accused of raping a white woman. Three hundred people watched in broad daylight. In all my vast reading of Oregon history, I’d never heard of him. You can always keep learning about a subject. I don’t want to ever forget that as I age.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More accounts keep surfacing of unmasked mobs shouting and threatening at public meetings, in person and online, and meetings being shut down. It’s happening all over America, every day of the week. Is democratic government withering in America? Is it finally on the brink?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It might be a good thing for every American to begin their morning by watching Perry Mason. I finished reading George Stewart’s 1941 novel, Storm. It is a mysterious masterpiece of American fiction where a massive storm generated by the Pacific Ocean is the setting, plot, protagonist and antagonist. There are also an electrocuted owl […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7431,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7430"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7433,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7430\/revisions\/7433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}