Saving the World: Saving the Stories

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Niece, nephew, and sister.

We have work to do to save what we most value in our world.  Well, we try. Keep trying. Keep reaching for each other. Managing our griefs. Across America people are activated. We will not stop. And we invite those who are wondering/wavering to join in. For decades of my life Minneapolis was my home. I know these streets, this weather, and the kind of people Minnesotans are. My family that still lives there is on the streets. Again. After George Floyd. After Melissa Hortman. After Annunciation Catholic School. Now, Renee Nicole Good.

On January 11, Simon Rosenberg, in Hopium Chronicles wrote:  “The world is deeply unsettled now. We don’t know how all this is going to turn out. We could lose, or we could win. But we will not win unless we understand the nature of the conflict we now find ourselves in and organize ourselves to win it. 

“To do this our Democratic leaders and all of us must far more consciously see themselves not just as legislators or party leaders or grassroots activists but as actors in a global battle for freedom and democracy. We must come to see ourselves as heirs to the American Revolution and the Post WWII Four Freedoms global system that made freedom – not dominion – the founding organizing principle of our country and the world, and recognize that it is our obligation, our responsibility, to lead this global fight – as we have for 250 years. We must be warriors for the middle class and working people, AND proud American patriots fighting for freedom and democracy here and everywhere – for our Founders declared that our inalienable rights included not just the “pursuit of happiness” but “life” and “liberty” too. And we must summon the power of those great American patriots who came before – Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Dr. King – and other global freedom fighters – Churchill, Gandhi, Mandela – to inspire us in the years to come.”

Norman Rockwell illustration of the Four Freedoms

While writing The Beekeeper’s Question, I kept asking: “What have they/then got to teach us/now?” A lot, it appears.  I continue leading conversations about the values, theology, and moral code implicit in the story and in the country at that time. In his State of the Union Address on January 6, 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt, laid out his vision of global human rights and the need for America to step onto the world stage and take up moral and military leadership in a world falling into fascism. (Remember that WWII started in Europe in September 1939, and by 1941, Hitler occupied the continent, leaving Britain to flight on its own while Churchill pleaded with the US to get involved.) When the US did enter the war eleven months later, it did so to carry out Roosevelt’s vision. And when the Cooper family listened to the radio, and dealt with the challenges of their community, they were informed and inspired by the Fireside Chats broadcast by their president. They were given the courage to do what must be done to wage the battle for freedom and democracy.

And here we are, dangerously abandoning the structures that have held some kind of global order together all the lifetimes of those of us alive on the planet. We find ourselves in a multi-faced “war” of myriad conflicts and bloody battlegrounds and “we don’t know how all this is going to turn out.”

At a library author panel last November, a women in the audience announced, “I want you to know I carry The Beekeeper’s Question in my car. Whenever I am in the ferry line or a waiting room, I read a few pages. I need them with me. They give me courage.” What a marvelous moment—to know the story is fulfilling my intention for it in the world.

The history of WWII has pretty much been written, but the stories continue to rise. In recent conversation with Alyssa Keene, the novel’s marvelous audio narrator, she used the word “blueprint;” that the actions, bravery, willingness to risk of people who lived during WWII provide a model for our own actions, bravery, and willingness to risk now. Alyssa has completed writing the first draft of her grandfather’s experiences being rescued by the French resistance and secretly passed to safety, so another blueprint is coming.  And things that were lost or disregarded keep coming to light.

Last summer, a tiny ad appeared on the local e-list: “1940s postage stamps, anybody want them?”

I do.

A little collection I could paste into signed copies of The Beekeeper’s Question, alongside letters I had made up between the characters of the separated newlyweds. Maire was writing from Montana where she’s gone to live with her father-in-law. Her soldier man, Franklin, was billeted in Northern Ireland and then fighting in the North Africa campaign. Letters—crossing the Atlantic in a mismatched timeline, crumpled into mailbags, riding the bowels of ship conveys (40% sinking rate in the early years of the war,) communication missing or repeated or uncertain of reception. This was how it was—the best that ordinary people could do. Sure, I’ll take those stamps.

I arrived to find this woman clearing out her garage, getting ready to move. I tell her why I want the stamps, offer her a copy of the book. We chat about that long-gone era of our parents’ generation. “There’s this box,” she says,  “War letters between my parents. My father’s Army memorabilia, photos, ration books, military instructions for an occupying Army. I don’t know what to with it all.” My eyes got large. “You want it?”

I do.

The box is sitting in my backyard office. I haven’t read the letters or tried to organize them by date (all those helpful stamps with postmarked dates were cut off and dumped into a little plastic bag, so the chronology of the envelopes is gone). I have sorted out some interesting booklets (see photo) and asked if Molly Guptill Manning, who wrote the acclaimed, When Books Went to War, and who curates the exhibit “The Best Read Army in the World,” if she wants them. I’ll find an archive that wants the letters.

I reached out to my friend and sister/writer, Gretchen Staebler, for advice. She has a published memoir about her years dedicated to caring for her mother (who died at age 100) and living in the house of her childhood—including everything her parents had ever saved. Including their World War II correspondence, and her father’s family’s war correspondence—a boxed cache of over 1500 letters. Eventually, she edited the letters into a privately published volume. She let me read some to help set the tone of letters between Maire and Franklin. We remain in a long dialogue about what impact the letters had in the moments of their exchange, in the lineage of a family, and where these might be deposited for a future we cannot imagine to find and explore.

Gretchen appeared with me on the January 17, readers zoom to talk about letter writing in the 1940s, the work of cataloguing and archiving, and how the realness of these exchanges reaches through time. 

Story in the Week Between Time

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NEWS for BEEKEEPER’S QUESTION READERS: Next Zoom call, January 17, 9:00 Pacific, etc. ZOOM LINK–CLICK HERE. Focusing on words from home: the importance of letters, pocket books, and the military press.  Now also available, CLICK HERE FOR November’s interview with Alyssa Keene, narrator of the audio edition.

 

The celebratory days are waning: Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanzaa. Here in the North, it’s raining or snowing and the still imperceptible “return of the light” inches forward one more minute of sunrise at a time. The furnace is doing yoga breathing, recirculating warmth in my quiet house. We’re eating leftovers and cookies. I didn’t get cards out… Anticipation, which fueled the first three weeks of December, floats in the corners like stale incense.This liminal space is tiring. I  want life to tidy up.

Sometimes I cannot sleep unless I get up and write in my journal.

Sometimes I cannot write because the days are so packed with experiences, I cannot process one thing before another piles on top of it.

Sometimes I cannot process my personal life because I am overwhelmed by our collective lives and the trauma that accumulates in actual and vicarious ways.

Sometimes I sit by a small lamp in the otherwise darkened house and cry a river of emotional debris.

Ann and Vivi

Then I make a cup of calming tea, give thanks for the roof over my head, for the return of electricity after a two-day outage, for the steady recovery of my beloved from surgery, for the strength of community and friends, for my own stamina. I take a breath, here/now in the pause between one year and the next. I know the consumer world is crazy with post-holiday sales, the media full of retrospectives and predictions, but I want slowing down, touching in, space for my own contemplation. In this space between, I claim time to spin the wooly jumble of too-muchness into a narrative thread I can stitch into the new year. I take a breath. I write.

Not beautiful pages of inspiration or poetics—just shifting the accumulated overload to the page and book. And then I can take these narrative threads and begin to knit my way forward into January. Every year I notice how my mind weaves experience into story. My story. The way I say what is happening—to me, in me, around me: to us, in us, around us. History is what scholars and victors say happened: story is what it is like to live on the ground.

My collage for 2026

These are strenuous times to be living on the ground. Our primary task is to not be ground up, not be crushed, but to persistently proclaim our own perspective, to take our place in the story and believe in our individual and collective voice. Our stories, whether left shimmering in the electronic blogosphere, or stashed on paper in letters and journals, become a treasure for our own life review, for grandchildren, for archives, for the mystery of the long clock that ticks beyond our lives.

When I look into the well of the world and am faced with so many things I cannot fix, or address, or even touch from the boundaries of my life—I return to the storyline to reclaim empowerment, for myself and for others.

January 2nd, the local Write Café returns. Friday mornings at the senior center, twenty+ of us gather with our journals. We say hello, settle in, read the circle agreements, light an LED candle in our centerpiece. Jeanne or I read a poem. People choose any phrase that starts them off. We write in silence for thirty minutes. Then a round of gentle checking out before we exit into our lives until next Friday morning. There is a core group always welcoming new people. Versions of this are now happening on other mornings in other coffeehouses, hosted by members of the original group. The format is simple, replicable, and community- building.

January 24th, I am hosting a fundraiser for a local love of mine, Healing Circles Langley. People are invited to join in “Shaking Your Family Tree for Stories.” I’ve done a version of this several times on-line and am excited to bring a roomful of folks together to explore how we harvest stories from our lineages. Not only is storycatching a rich personal experience, but it also leads to stronger community. Communities are shaped by the stories of inhabitants: the story of the collective is held together by the stories individuals bring to it. So, the greater number of individuals who are engaged in honoring, writing, telling their own stories, the stronger we are as citizens of our community spaces. We stand strong in the truths of who we are, where we come from, what we have arrived at this place and time to contribute, and we see this same strength in the diverse stories of those around us.

January 28th I am taking these narrative threads to another level, teaching a five-week course, “Storycatching for the Times We Are Living,” for the Natural Transitions Institute. It is a deeply gratifying series and the stories shared at the end of the autumn cohort were touching and gorgeous. I am delighted to be repeating the offering.

  • Class 1:Storycatching for the Times we Live in.
  • Class 2:Narrative Arc in a Time of Chaos.
  • Class 3: Story as Sacred Activism
  • Class 4:Living a Mythic Story in the Midst of it All.
  • Class 5:Celebration, witness, and commitment to our words. (In a large cohort, this class will be repeated in week 6 so that every voice may be heard.)

Writing, teaching, bearing witness to one another is what I know how to do. It feels good to step into the new year able to continue sharing this life-long passion.

Thank you for coming along… for the ways you hold onto and spin your own narrative threads, and for the gifts you offer to the world from your own skills and passions.

My quote for the year is attributed to crusty old, trusty old George Bernard Shaw: “This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead off a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

See you in the burning brightly!

Hanging onto the thread

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The sky is streaked with lingering light.

Mid-October 2025: Before going into the storyline that I’ve been noodling on the past few weeks, I want to acknowledge the huge hingepoint we are in: Portland and Chicago under siege by the US president, Gaza in tenuous ceasefire and hostage release, Ukraine shouldering into another season of war. None of this goes away. All of this breaks our hearts one way and another. Pause. Breathe. Keep an open heart.

Moonset, early morning facing west.

In Chapter One of my book, Storycatcher, I write, “Life hangs on a narrative thread. … The thread is slender, but strong: we trust it to hold us and allow us to swing over the edge of the known into the future we dream in words.” Never have I felt this more than true than now. I am swinging over the unknown while the threads coming at me are a tangled mess of broken narratives, soundbites, AI concoctions, manipulated information, reels and threads and phone-held videos—some of them helpful, amidst all that is not. Some of them the warps of lies. The lies are the hardest to deal with—the assumption that I will simply turn over my own thought process, moral code, and reality to whatever they say is true.

Every autumn for 30+ years this backyard maple has turned golden yellow… this year it is turning crimson red.

It’s a mystery.

In this whiplash environment, in the debris field of narrative, the battle of the story wars rages. And I am doing my best to hold on to the storyline that is my life, one thin thread-of-selfhood stitching my way through these times.

Greenbank Farm– early morning dog walks.

I am repeatedly challenged to ask myself, “What is my storyline in all this chaos? How do I articulate and live out what is most important to me? How do I hold myself to purpose on a daily, even hourly, basis? When I wander, where do I go to find my thread again? Journal writing? Dog walk? Weeding the garden? Tea with a friend?

Many days, this constant need for self-redirection is strenuous practice. My capacity to put “mental arms” around huge quantities of information and story and to synthesize incoming data into coherence has been a lifelong gift and challenge. As I age, and as the quantity of incoming stimulation explodes around me, the double-edged nature of being a synthesizer becomes ever more apparent. This is my skill: and it requires focus in the midst of all the peripheral data and story.

It is exactly a year since The Beekeeper’s Question came out, and I realize how deeply that writing project and  background research held me to a core sense of purpose. Waking in the mornings, I would project myself into the hours of the day and look for writing time, research time, hours to fit my life with the Cooper family, the Shines the Light clan, and the wartime lives of folks in Pigeon River, Montana, into my life with my beloved partner and family, dear friends, and the lives of folks on Whidbey Island, Washington. My author question remained: What have they, then, got to teach us, now, about how to live through times of social uncertainty and war without assured outcome?

My parents & grandparents, aka: Franklin, Maire, Doc, Leo

People ask me: “What’s the sequel? How do Maire and Franklin, Jesse and Willow move through the postwar years? Why don’t you write the lives of Flora and Drum? Or Boyd’s journey through the war… Are you doing a screenplay?” Of course, I still have big dreams for this book and the potential that it could be a dynamic mini-series. And the reality is that a book is like a baby—it needs daily feeding, tending, reminding other people it’s still here. The Beekeeper’s Question is now a toddler, and I am holding its hand and walking with it into a wider world.

She who tends and translates the hummm of the hive.

 

This autumn I am also teaching on-line, offering lectures, co-hosting our local writing café. These activities counterbalance the many ways I feel incompetent dealing with on-line promotion, bookstore introductions, booking podcasts, or seeking reviews. It would be easy to give up–but I am the servant to the story. I spent ten years dedicated to this book. These incredible people live only the page and in the audio. They kept me going through DT’s first presidency, the pandemic, and most the years of my seventies. They are counting on my stamina to keep them alive. But now that I’m in the piecemeal tasks of book maintenance, I often feel lost as a writer.  I want my core back— I want a sense of holding onto the thread.

 I do not know if I will be able or willing to take on another huge project. In six months, I will turn eighty years old. I am basically strong, healthy, dealing with small health challenges, nothing life threatening. I can recite huge quantities of story and background research on World War II, beekeeping, Celtic Shamanism, labor issues in the 1940s, etc. etc. and then forget for a few seconds why I walked into the kitchen. Overall, okay. More than okay. Thriving in a serious hearted way.

Friends on the road. Friends in chemo and radiation. Friends in the hospital. Late Dahlias and prayer candle… going 24/7.

Meanwhile, three things I know to be true about myself. One, writing is a lifeline. Writing is spiritual practice, activism, tribal—and I will continue this never-ending story as long as I have fingers and mind.

Two, Nature is my holy place.  I need daily contact with earth/air/fire/water. Geranium in a flowerpot, a tree pushing up the sidewalk, beach stones rolling under the wave action remind me of the planetary interdependence to which I belong. Everywhere I have traveled, Nature is the biggest marvel and my touchstone. I am so grateful to live where I do—a modest house nested at the edge of wild.

Leucistic doe eating apples in the roadbed.

Three, my life is seated in community. I put my time and attention into loving engagement. I show up to community needs—from tending aging neighbors, to demonstrating, to facilitating places of repose.  I am getting ready for whatever shall be asked of me in all these crises. Loving the folks in front of me, steadying myself and staying strong.

Watch for surprises–like a rooster escaped from the chicken yard crowing his freedom.

So, holding onto the thread means touching the ground I stand on, for some time every day. It means staying in the swirl of reciprocity with people around me and in connection through channels like these. And it means that every day between now and my birthday I am going to write something—short or long, I don’t know, but to keep putting who I am to the page, to discover what passion and projects remain mine to do.

“Life hangs by a narrative thread.

This thread is a braid of stories that inform us about who we are,

and where we come from, and where we might go…”

If we can make the path by writing: write.

The heart of the world is always expressing itself… even the fir needles beg the wind to shape a heart in my meandering path.

READER ZOOM CONVERSATIONS RETURN ON NOVEMBER 22. 9:00 AM PACIFIC/NOON EASTERN…  This session will be a dialogue between Christina and Alyssa Keene, the actress who narrated the audio version of the book.  On Audible and 30+ other distribution networks–including Libro. You can buy it through any local bookstore that has an audiobook account.

Read/listen.

Join in for a delightful conversation.

Watermelon, Smoke, and Rainbows

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Rich farmland– landscape that feeds the country.

I’ve been traveling in eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin: a friend’s daughter’s wedding, family visits on both sides, book club presentations, bookstore stops. It is high summer. We put five hundred miles on my sister’s loaned car, most of it back country highways, verdant green farmlands, crops growing, landscapes familiar from my youth spent here over 60-70 years ago.

And also, hints that this is not the America of my childhood. I have been collecting random thoughts to serve as this midsummer blog.

One of the last remaining Dutch Elm trees which shaded middle America for most the 20th century.

On the day of the wedding the AQI (Air Quality Index) in Duluth, along the shore of Lake Superior where we lounged all afternoon in an extended garden party, was 189—dangerous to breathe. Smoke from Canadian wildfires yellowed the air. All athletic endeavors cancelled—no jogging, biking, doing anything to increase breathing and heart rate. Inconvenient for us: disastrous for the regions actually on fire.

view from our VRBO into the bay.

Meanwhile, flash flooding put millions of Americans at risk, and the search and rescue and disaster stories pile up out of Texas, New Mexico, New Jersey. People are swept away. Bodies may never be found. Families will have to find a way to move on. Trauma grows with every event: loss overwhelms my mind.

Ah, but here at the wedding, a couple is making vows to continue their love path, families gather whose values are long-held traditions. Teenagers splash into Superior’s icy waters, screaming in chill and delight.

Hot air: Cold water.

The path we were on as a society was not sustainable: the path we are on as a society is not a remedy. We are people holding together while things fall apart. We are parents raising little ones, young adults planning educations and careers. We are elders and grandparents worrying together, seeking wisdom among our peers. It is July, high summer. A grandpa carries a tray of watermelon slices to the edge of the grass. “Spitting range.” The children look confused: modern watermelon does not have seeds. Things are not the same. We continue to hold together. Things continue to fall apart.

Staring into the sunset, Ann shares a passage from the book she’s reading, Turning to Stone, Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks (Flatiron Books) by Marcia Bjornerud. Lake Superior is featured in the chapter on basalt.  “Earth makes no distinction between creation and destruction.” One sentence. The words settle my heart: I am allowed to rest in not-knowing, in being present within a loving community, in sunsets when the sun is a smoky peach, in the sand between my toes and the bedrock of an active and evolving Earth beneath. And you, too. Rest. Regather. Restore.

Becoming “Doc”

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It’s a marvelous sign when readers of The Beekeeper’s Question so identify with characters they want to become like them. For several months now I have had the honor of conversing with book club members, both in person and on zoom—mostly women in their 60’s/70’s—inspired by the character “Doc,” as a role model of practical older woman wisdom.

For those who haven’t yet read the book, Doc is Jereldene Jesperson, a seventy-something, unmarried country physician serving the rural community of Pigeon River, Montana. She is the friend of widower, Leo Cooper, the local parson, beekeeper, and father of sons, one in the war, one in the valley. The Cooper family, in which Doc is an honorary auntie, is central to the story and to the community’s ability to make their way through the early years of World War II.

Franklin, Maire, Doc, Leo

Leo’s bee yards

Author, creativity coach and blogger, Sally Fox recorded an excellent podcast of me when the book came out last fall. (Click here to listen.) Recently she posted a blog about wisdom keepers and their important roles in the very real drama of our times. She writes:

One such wisdom keeper, Jereldene Jesperson, known to everyone as “Doc,”  stood out to me after reading The Beekeeper’s Question, a powerful novel by acclaimed Northwest writer Christina Baldwin. Set in an isolated Montana town in 1942, it tells the story of a family and community dealing with divides.

Doc is the family doctor—the only one the town could get. Though she arrived as an outsider, she tends to the bodies and souls of the valley with an open heart, caring even for those who once distrusted her. Over time, she becomes the wise woman people turn to in times of crisis.

I felt moved by her wisdom, comforted by her presence, and left the book feeling like we needed more Docs—seasoned by life, and able to offer their practical wisdom when the world seems to be running off the rails. You can find them everywhere if you know what to look for:

  • They are often older, though some are wise beyond their years.
  • They have known heartbreak but haven’t grown cynical. They still believe in goodness.
  • They observe deeply, understanding that no one is perfect. Their compassion bridges divides.
  • They don’t pretend to be above anyone. They burn their toast, drop dishes, and occasionally forget to put oil in the car. They get lonely and angry and sometimes need to talk themselves down from a high horse.
  • They love to laugh.
  • They are not easily rattled but will speak truth to power in a clear, no-nonsense way.
  • They have experienced life and death and understand the brevity of our time here.
  • They mentor and support others, grieving losses, celebrating victories.
  • They believe in America’s core values yet acknowledge how rights have not always been applied equally.
  • They know when to offer a hug, mug of tea, or spoonful of honey.
  • They love without concern for racial, cultural, or gender differences.
  • They bring perspective, a steady light in the storm, a reassuring shoulder. And a voice that says, “We’ll figure it out like we’ve always done.”
  • They have faced loss and aren’t afraid to love again.

The list reminded me how amazing it was to bring Doc to life; to put good words in her mouth and good actions in her community role. Readers ask me who she is modeled after, and the truest answer is  “the best of you/me/us.”

And Leo… well, he is based on the best aspects of the men in my family–men I would call “the stewards” of  masculinity, who can both tend and defend. He is seasoned, seeking, and rises again and again to cope with the challenges his family, congregation, and bees face in uncertainty.

This is true wisdom: femininity combined with fierceness: masculinity combined with tenderness. Leo and Doc are a team that brings physical and spiritual comfort into the room, serves tea with honey to the suffering. They show up, face into difficult conversations, counsel the younger generation, love the babies and children, hold onto their values. Right now, I see their faces everywhere in the protests rising across America. We are becoming Doc. Becoming Leo

My oldest cousin–age 95, marching in protest. Doc indeed!

I notice how a large proportion of  the protesters are white-skinned and grey-haired. Some people are lamenting, “Where are the youngers?” They’re busy–trying to survive financially, reassure their children (and each other), hold onto meaning in a world where meaning is shattered daily. Our job–the elders–is to get out there and raise our voices. Our generation is responsible for a lot of this mess: so it’s our responsibility to call it back. And it’s time to use our white privilege to stand in front of those being targeted: immigrants, minorities, LGBTQ+ people, and to make alliances, to reach out, open dialogue, stand fierce, stay tender. As Doc and Leo reassure each other, “We’ll figure it out.” That’s our job now. See you there–in our communities, making good trouble.

Trauma and Transformation

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Life is full of challenges. We grow by baby steps, facing risks, being supported by older/bigger/wiser folks around us. We learn to handle stress, expand our capacities, discover our resilience. And all this prepares us when challenge becomes trauma. Trauma is injury or emotional distress caused by events that overwhelm our ability to cope. Abuse, assault, battle, betrayal, drastic injury or illness: we do not wish traumatic events upon ourselves or each other, but they happen. We are triggered into trauma when events beyond our control veer out of control.

We are also fascinated by trauma—especially when it’s not our own. We seek out stories that allow us to travel vicariously through the drastic edges of human experience, cheering for people to learn, to thrive, and to show us the way. We understand that trauma is a hinge-point: it will make us or break us. The ‘hero’ comes through trauma incorporating wisdom; “I have suffered and here is what I learned.” The ‘villain’ uses trauma as a wrecking ball; “I was wronged by life, and you shall suffer for it more.”

Writers embed trauma in stories because trauma is embedded in life. In the formative years of writing my historical novel, The Beekeeper’s Question, an editor told me, “Do not protect your characters. They must make bad decisions, costly mistakes, hurt each other and choose what course their lives will take. When in doubt, make it worse.”

“Make it worse” became a mantra writing scenes for the story. World War II is happening: trauma is everywhere. I had to write about this within the perspective of that time. The US Army in the North Africa campaign (where the young soldier, Franklin, is sent) applied what was called “forward treatment,” shipping overwhelmed soldiers to a field hospital putting them into an induced sleep cure for a week, and then, supposedly rested, sending them back to the front. Though trauma has always accompanied soldiers home from war, society didn’t address it as a collective issue, just sent survivors to their families and communities and hoped they’d carry on.

After the Vietnam war, the 700,0000 American servicemen and personnel who required psychological help, taught us that unaddressed trauma escalates in delayed response. The persistence of what was named “post-Vietnam syndrome” led to defining Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and opened up the study of trauma. My friend Michael Orange, a Vietnam veteran, helped me “make it worse” for the character of Franklin Cooper, the beekeeper’s son confronted with war, battle, and physical trauma.

Trauma is also present in the experiences of the women in the story: sexual assault, miscarriages, beatings, deaths of loved ones. Maire, Franklin’s wife, suffers from nightmares and anxiety. Willow, her sister-in-law, carries both the spiritual wisdom and intergenerational trauma of her Blackfeet people. In fact, women are twice as prone to PTSD as men but their trauma, often arising out of domestic life, is persistently discounted as an aspect of being “the weaker sex,” and enduring “women’s conditions.”

For those who have read The Beekeeper’s Question, I will be hosting a dialogue with Michael author of, Embracing the Ghosts, PTSD and the Vietnam Quagmire, and his wife Cynthia author of, Shock Waves, A Practical Guide to Living with a Loved One’s PTSD on the role of trauma and PTSD in the book. The ZOOM is MARCH 22, 9:00/Pacific—do the math for your time zone as needed. Click here to register. This takes you to my email–ask and I send you the zoom link.

The 1940’s has many echoes of then to now, and those echoes only grow stronger. I found a tee-shirt on Etsy printed with the slogan: “If you’ve ever wondered what you would have done in 1930s Germany, you’re doing it right now.”

Trauma is a catalyst. It shifts our lives—ready or not. The person we become depends on the choices we make in response to trauma. The same is true for communities and countries as we collectively respond to war, oppression, natural disaster, regime change. We become how we respond. The year 2025 is exposing trauma from the personal to the global—and we cannot avoid it. We are in a hinge-point of reckoning.

Image from social media.

As an American born just after World War II, I have been steeped in the mythos that mine is the “greatest country on earth,” that we are forever the righteous victors. I have been steeped in arrogance that American character, our delusions of the self-made (white) man, should be a model for all of societies. We are Americans: we can do anything we want, and the world will be better for it.  Evidence to the contrary disregarded. Welcome to our reckoning.

We are living through a huge shift in how we be human on the planet. We are collectively deciding whether we descend or ascend in our basic nature. Reckoning at this scale is terrifying. No matter how much we read, scroll through news sources and analysis, we cannot get true perspective. We are small and the issues are huge. We are embedded in the moment like tiny pieces in the world’s biggest jigsaw puzzle. Yet anyone who does jigsaw puzzles knows even the tiniest missing piece impacts the whole. We are needed—everyone of us—to stay present and play our part, to fit ourselves into the pieces around us, to make a pattern and a story within the perimeters of our lives.

Americana Art Enterprises: The world’s largest commercially available puzzle called What a Wonderful World is an 8′ (2.4m) tall by 29′ (8.8m) long 60,000 piece world map.

It took me ten years to channel the enormity of World War II through the microcosm of Pigeon River, Montana and the lives of the Cooper family. And now I am challenged, in my aging years, to live through this crisis in the microcosm of Whidbey Island, Washington and my own life and community. As I stagger out of winter’s shock, in the greening of early March, I am determined to use every added minute of light and each unfurling bud to rise, to meet trauma with transformation. I take the tiny piece of my life and snap it into connection, find the adjoining pieces, and act with trust that the whole picture will emerge—whether or not I live to see it.

Page 101, The Beekeeper’s Question: it is August 1942.

Rocking on porch chairs waiting for night breeze, Leo whispered into the dusk, “This war is a three-headed dragon, each black mouth round with teeth, consuming young men.”

“That’s surely the strain of it,” Doc peered skyward, “We don’t know what will become of them. Or us. Or our country.” Caged between the Big and Little Dippers, Draco the Dragon writhed in the night sky. … Doc stared at the cosmic expanse of the Milky Way.  “You’re the local preacher and I’m an old country doctor, what can we do?”

            “Help people live through the sacrifices required of us now.”

Even if you’re a rusty, one-legged scarecrow, you have a job guarding tulips. Let’s go…

Maximum Sentence in Westwolf Killing

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I have written several blog posts about the hit-and-run-killing of Mika Westwolf by a white woman with apparent ties to white supremacy. For background on this story see the posts, Because It’s All Still Happening, and Request for Allyship.

It took 23 months for this case to come to the court, but finally, the family and the defendant had their day for sentencing Feb. 7, 2024. The article below is from the Missoulian, written by  Sam  Wilson/Nora Mabie, photos by Ben Allan Smith © Missoulian. 

I also commend this article from charkoosta.com which goes into more depthl of the family’s testimony, and the judge’s response. A complicated case. The raising of the defendant’s children at issue, and the ongoing trauma to the family and wider community–both Native and white.

Family members listen in court. © Ben Allan Smith, Missoulian.

Missoulian POLSON — A Butte woman was sentenced Friday to 10 years in the Montana State Women’s Prison for the vehicular homicide of Mika Westwolf, a young Native American woman who she killed in a hit-and-run crash while walking along the highway near Arlee last year.

After roughly four hours of testimony in the Lake County Courthouse, District Judge Molly Owen sentenced Sunny K. White, 29, to the maximum sentence allowed under a plea deal reached with state prosecutors in November. In exchange for guilty pleas to vehicular homicide while under the influence and for leaving the scene of the crash, prosecutors dropped three other felony charges.

Carissa Heavy Runner testifying in court. © Ben Allan Smith, Missoulian.

“I wouldn’t just let my daughter be forgotten,” Westwolf’s mother, Carissa Heavy Runner, told a crowd after the hearing. “We did what we came here to do today. … The only way we can be healed is to be seen and to be heard. To speak our truth, hear our truth. No one can tell it better than us.”

George Heavy Runner, Westwolf’s grandfather, called the ruling “a victory.”

“This is what we asked for,” he said of the decision. “To show that her life did matter.”

White cannot be paroled for all 10 years of her prison sentence, followed by a 20-year suspended sentence during which she will remain on parole. If she violates her release conditions during that time, she can be sent back to prison.

As Westwolf’s family testified throughout the hearing, Owen repeatedly asked if they supported the plea agreement, noting that if she went beyond those terms with her sentence, White’s lawyers could take the case to trial instead.

“I do believe that if I rejected the plea agreement, this would delay the case even further and I do believe that Mika’s family deserves some finality here,” Owen told the packed courtroom, adding that she “might have concerns with the length of the sentence.”

Grandfather testifying. © Ben Allan Smith, Missoulian.

Friday’s hearing ends what has been a nearly two-year journey for Westwolf’s family and friends, many of whom spoke critically of the plea deal and what they saw as a half-hearted initial investigation. White spent just seven days in jail on an initial charge of child endangerment, and homicide charges were not brought until seven months later.

A tearful White was remanded to the custody of the Lake County sheriff for transportation to the Montana State Women’s Prison at the conclusion of the hearing Friday afternoon.

“I know there are no words that I can speak to ease that pain and I wish there were,” White said at the end of the hearing, emotionally addressing Westwolf’s friends and family. “I will be living with the guilt of my actions in this terrible accident that took her life and I pray that someday you can find forgiveness for me.”

The sentencing hearing included statements from a dozen of Westwolf’s friends and family, followed by statements from a handful of White’s family and supporters.

“A precious limb has fallen from our family tree in the loss of our dear Mika,” Westwolf’s grandfather said. “It can never be put back to grow with us, and we’ll never be able to witness what was to be of the potential, had she lived.”

Several people mentioned White’s alleged white nationalist ties, citing the names of her children, Aryan and Nation.

“You hurt our hearts and our spirit,” said Thomas Combs, Westwolf’s cousin. “This might be painful for you, but you have no idea — your children are still alive.”

White’s sister, Hannah White, also took the stand to offer support for her sister and disputed the white supremacy narrative.

“There is a lot of false information out there with her and her children’s names,” Hannah White said, suggesting those were instead the views held by her children’s father. “She’s not racist; she’s not white supremacist.”

She also described her sister as “loving” and “compassionate,” telling the court that “being a mother is the job that she was meant to do, and I truly hope that she continues to get to do that.”

Kim Paul, Westwolf’s adopted grandmother, addressed White directly.

“Do you think yourself superior?” she asked. “Did you intentionally do this? We will never know. … Her family is owed justice and Mika is owed her dignity.”

Paul described Westwolf, who was Blackfeet, Navajo, Cree and Klamath, as a caring and smart woman who was dedicated to her community.

Photo of Mika, held in her mother’s hands.© Ben Allan Smith, Missoulian.

“Mika was going to be a wildlife biologist, or a botanist, or a veterinarian or a landscape architect, or something outside, and some valuable service-oriented career that would help us positively impact this world,” she said. “How do you measure that?”

Kevin Howard, Westwolf’s stepfather, condemned the criminal justice system.

“I don’t know of any white folks that have to go on marches and create a spectacle in order to receive justice,” he said, adding family members worked to investigate Westwolf’s death as they grieved.

Several of Westwolf’s family members also spoke of forgiveness for White, including her biological father Michael John Westwolf II.

“I forgive you with all my heart and pray for the Creator to do the same and show you that love is stronger than hate,” Westwolf II said, as White became emotional while seated next to her defense attorneys.

White also pleaded guilty to one felony count of for leaving the scene. Under the plea deal, prosecutors dismissed three other felonies: two counts of child endangerment and one count of criminal possession of dangerous drugs.

Members of Westwolf’s family and friends at times asked for the maximum sentence under law, and objected to the terms of the plea agreement.

Westwolf’s death in March 2023 drew national attention. Her family led a statewide campaign, with awareness walks, rallies and other events, calling for justice and awareness in her case as well as other cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

After the judge’s decision, Heavy Runner told a crowd outside the courthouse she would continue to advocate for justice in the cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people.

“We want to empower other families to not give up,” she said. “We can’t do it alone. We have to do this together. This is what Indigenous families are up against.”

Acknowledging the repeated allegations of White having a racist ideology, Owens noted during her sentencing that prosecutors had not charged the case as a hate crime.

At the hearing’s conclusion, Assistant Attorney General Thorin Geist said that Montana’s hate crime statutes require prosecutors to prove intent, and the state lacked sufficient evidence to do so.

“We have to prove that her motivation was the race of the individual, and I think it is a legal impossibility in a negligence case,” Geist said.

White’s two young children were reportedly in the car when their mother struck and killed Westwolf, according to the crash report and charging documents. White left the scene after hitting Westwolf in the early morning hours of March 31, 2023.

Evidence collected from the crash site indicated Westwolf was walking in the northbound lane of traffic when she was struck. She was hit head-on by the car’s passenger side, the case affidavit states. Westwolf died on scene from multiple blunt-force injuries.

Cell phone data put White’s location at the crash scene at exactly 3 a.m., according to the affidavit. A highway trooper discovered her body on the road at 4:15 a.m.

Authorities tracked down White, according to the crash report, and found her Cadillac Escalade in Polson roughly an hour later using a description of damage the vehicle sustained from the collision.

White told officers she was driving from Butte to Kalispell when the crash occurred, according to charging documents. She said she didn’t stop because she thought she had hit a deer, prosecutors alleged.

But according to the affidavit, investigators spoke with a witness who saw an SUV with a headlight out stopped along the side of the road that morning near the crash scene.

“He stated that the vehicle was on the side of the road facing north and noticed a headlight was out as he passed the vehicle while also traveling in a northbound direction,” the affidavit states. “Then the vehicle caught up to him and passed him traveling north going 90 miles per hour.”

Owens referenced that piece of evidence when she sentenced White.

“Even with this information, you continue to state that you thought you hit a deer,” she told White. “You killed someone, while under the influence, and you continue to deny your responsibility for that.”

Supporters and family hug outside courtroom. © Ben Allan Smith, Missoulian.

And so that part of the journey of justice is done. But as often happens, a passion for larger justice has been awakened in Mika’s mother, who vows to continue advocating for missing Indigenous people. You can follow her on MikaMatters.com and Facebook.

And now I ask myself: What is awakened in ME? What do I vow to continue advocating for? What am I willing to march for? Stand for? Risk for? More on that never-ending conversation soon. Right now a pause, a breath, an acknowledgment of the grief of this family and the roads they invite us to walk with them.

A year of all things

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Book Announce: The next Zoom call for readers who have finished reading The Beekeeper’s Question is January 11, 2025. One hour: 9:00 AM Pacific (10/mtn/11/central/12/east—US zones). Click here to get zoom link. Casual discussion on plot and background/backstories, how then and now are connected— whatever interests the group that shows up.

The following is a poem by Donna Ashworth, with commentary by me. 

HAPPY NEW YEAR

When I say ‘happy new year’,

I’m not for a moment,

expecting this to occur,

for that is not possible,

a year must be all things.

This is the line that calms my heart: a year must be all things. Ann and I spent last week putting together a scrapbook of photos and handwritten commentary on the year past. It is a decades long commitment, a kind of life review, composing pages of collaged photos that help us reflect and remember. We lost a handful of friends this year, endured the rise and fall of our political hopes, and practiced the line below: letting happiness come and go.

Happiness must come and go,

like the tides and the winds,

just as sadness,

and all the emotions in between.

When I say ‘happy new year’,

Maybe it helps that we live on the western edge of the continent where tides and winds are a real phenomenon. We are not in control of the sway of moon over water, or the increased velocity of winter storms.

I’m really wishing you,

a baseline of peace,

of gratitude.

This is the practice: to hold onto a baseline of peace and gratitude. In these dark winter weeks, I am often up two hours before dawn. We’ve had a little tree in the corner of the living room to bring the starlight in. It will go down on Twelfth Night, commemorating the release of the holidays (holy days). The lights and decorations put away for a year, the naked little Doug fir will be tied to the garden fence to shelter little birds that come to the feeder. It will still be January, chilly rain, probably a touch of snow, and a time when I must be my own light.

Because if you can sit with these things,

for the most part,

happiness will thrive,

when it does arrive,

and sadness will know its place in the mix.

For us to know a thing, we must know its opposite. Happiness without sorrow would be an unremarkable state of being and sorrow without happiness, the same. (Here I hear my grandmother saying, “Even in heaven the angels don’t sing all the time.”)  It is fluctuation that makes happiness remarkable and sorrow endurable. I will try to nourish that awareness in the coming months. Emotions are weather: let them pass through.

If you can nourish these things,

daily,

you will also grow hope,

for it flourishes in such soil.

And hope is the key,

to this enigmatic state

of ‘happiness’ we seek.

So, hope. Some folks count on it: some distain it. I think of hope as a verb. To have hope means I am taking action. Hope requires I do something to positively impact my tiny part of the world. I send money to World Central Kitchenbecause they are feeding people in places I cannot reach. I make dinner for neighbors in need because I can walk across the street. Both gestures give me hope.

When I say ‘happy new year’,

I’m really wishing you more happy days,

than sad days,

more joy than misery,

more laughter than tears . . .

and the wisdom to accept,

that they all belong.

When I say “Happy New Year,” I am thinking of the new, the now, the opportunity to change habits, to step out of the holy days grounded by the tiny lights that we have shined in the dark Northern Hemisphere weeks. I am thinking of empowerment, of continuing to define, situation by situation, where I can act to shift, to acknowledge, to celebrate, to hold one another dear.

Here’s to you, dear community: may we keep our hearts open, may we notice how happiness sneaks into even the hardest days, may we be fierce and tender to the right degrees. More soon—after Epiphany.

Echoes Then to Now-Part 2

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Morning. The trees receive the touch of sun and birds that have huddled in their branches after Monday’s windstorm, and Tuesday’s humanstorm, shake their feathers and head to the feeder. I watch over the rim of my laptop, out my living room window. Take a ragged breath. Nature is wordless, but people are chattering—wildly trying to make story, to find a way to fit what just happened into the narrative we thought we were living. The turn we thought we were in toward a better country, just before the bus went off the rails and over the mountain side. Mourning.

The thing is, we cannot make immediate sense/story after a detonation this huge. We try, because disorientation is uncomfortable. Terrifying. It’s hard not to wake up this morning with the haunting sense that America 2024 just became Germany 1933. But because we know the historical scope of fascism, even in this dire situation, we can make different choices and pull ourselves out of this wreck.

I made an offer, when my book came out, that early readers of The Beekeeper’s Question are invited to gather on zoom this coming Saturday November 9. This offer stands. 9:00 AM Pacific, 10:00 Mountain, 11:00 Central, 12:00 East. Since the invite is to readers who have completed the story, there will be plot reveal discussion. This session will be repeated January 18, 2025.

The video of the Langley book launch, is on the book page. It includes a slideshow of Montana and the 1940s, was attended by 150 people.

We will talk and listen to whatever people want to say about the book, and that time and this time.

Gather if you are moved to be in this circle. I send you love and honey to soothe your heart.

Echoes from THEN to NOW #1

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I promised to write some of the interesting things I discovered while working on my historical novel, The Beekeeper’s Question. In any project like this, what gets woven into the narrative is only a fraction of what the writer discovers. Discovery was (and remains) an amazing aspect of writing in general, and particularly writing a story like this.

The Beekeeper’s Question takes place in a particular moment of time, five years before I was born. As the characters evolved, they demanded I discover things about the era I didn’t know I was looking for. I had to explore what World War II meant to rural America, and then to explore what life was like in western Montana, among farmers, townsfolk, and Blackfeet.

There is a scene where the two old friends, Leo and Doc, are sitting on the farmhouse porch questioning how fascism could have so thoroughly overtaken Germany. It is summer 1942 and the US has entered the War. Europe is occupied by The Third Reich. Only Great Britain remains free, providing an essential launching point for Allied forces.

From the book, page 101:
…The floorboards creaked under their rocking chairs.
“It’s terrifying, all those swastikas, and people who were like us a few years ago, burning books, throwing rocks, hating Jews.” Doc rested her hand on Leo’s arm. “How could this happen?”
“One charismatic demagogue.” Leo stopped rocking. “Moral codes like The Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, whisper in the human heart. Hitler has hypnotized the German people with promises of greatness in exchange for their souls. Now it takes the horrors of war to break the Nazi spell. Well, specifically, for the Germans to lose and for us to win without losing our souls.”

Here is the difference between 1942 and 2024: If America loses its soul to fascism in this election, there is no other country going to save us from this fever dream. We are, right now, being asked if enough of us will wake, will vote, will pull back from the razor’s edge and question “what in the world are we thinking?”

Langley stairs to the sea. Photo by Kristie MacLean

In her last several Substack columns, Heather Cox Richardson, has made the threats and parallels abundantly clear. Rachel Maddow’s podcast Ultra, and her book of the same title lay out the fascistic threat of the 1930’s/early 1940s in hugely researched detail. No one in this country is voting blindly. The candidates and political parties have made their personalities, intentions, policies, and worldviews extremely clear. We are accountable. We have seen this horrific phenomenon before. We have been raised in the heroics and mythology and costs of World War II. We are an historically informed populace. We know what fascism looks and sounds like and how it tricks the minds of the gullible.

And now, we vote.
Could we have a week of quiet please?
Could the pundits close their laptops, stop streaming/screaming, opinionating, filling airspace with any tidbit of trivia before the next commercial?
Could the pollsters please stop polling?
Let me poll—at the voting booth, at the drop box, among my neighbors who are exercising their rights—including their right to disagree with me.
Give us a breath.
Let us gather ourselves for this moment.
We are determining the nature of the country we live in.

As Senator Raphael Warnock says, “Voting is a form of civil prayer. We are voting for the world we want.”

Vote, America.
Take a breath.

At the end of the book, a young man says to an older rancher who has been fighting with folks in the valley, “There’s a lot going bad in the world right now, neighborliness is the one thing that must not change.”

Whatever happens on November 5th, we will face many opportunities to reweave our communities, families, and friendship groups. No matter what, it is up to the ordinary people to keep goodness going in the world, to maintain the bonds of neighborliness. That must not change.