Posted on Dreamwalks

“Things are never what they seem,
find the lost inside the dream.”

Janet Carey (In the Time of the Dragon Moon) has now posted on her Dreamwalks blog an interview I did preparatory to the Fourth Annual “Full Bodied Writjng” Summer Retreat. https://janetleecarey.com/dream-walks/unpacking-the-mind-of-peter-v-kahle/ I am presenting a workshop there, the last weekend in June. Full disclosure, I have known Janet for twenty five years, starting in the 1990’s when we had board positions with the Pacific Northwest Writers Association , through shared critique groups, etc. I have otherwise hobnobbed and associated with her. I know her to be a writer thoughtful and brave, who works in many levels in her fiction. I appreciate the precision of her language. Her blog is well worth a read, a very thoughtful examination of writing and art with professionals talking about their process and intent.

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Words From A Bear

SIFF is showing this thoughtful documentary about the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, poet and artist, focused on how his Kiowa roots inform his work. An oral storyteller who has successfully brought his heritage into the print and art mediums, as well as a very warm, very human person, Momaday is what every grandfather would love to be to his descendants.

N. Scott Momaday: Words From A Bear will be shown on PBS in November

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Where Will Your Bookstore Buy Books?

That has suddenly become the question of the hour for independent bookstores with the announcement May 1 that Baker and Taylor will cease bookstore sales to concentrate on their school and library business. Many bookstores, especially in the West, have depended on B&T for rapid replenishment of stock, a key piece of bookstore strategy.
The change is expected to be rapid, with many parts of the operation ceasing as of June 1.Baker and Taylor is one of two national wholesale distributors supplying the independents .

https://www.bookweb.org/news/baker-taylor-drop-wholesale-book-distribution-retailers-572191

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Patients Tasered at Sonoma Developmental Center

 

Respect for the dignity and rights of people with disabilities is a battle that is never won “Once and for All.” It is only eternal vigilance that keeps the monsters at bay. Digby at Hullabaloo links to a story at California Watch about a staff member accused of using a Taser as a cattle prod on patients with disabilities at the Sonoma Developmental Center. In 1953 my parents worked at what was then called the Sonoma State Home for the Feebleminded. My sister and I had our day care with the wife of the head of security there, on the grounds. (The name has changed to Sonoma State Hospital and now to Sonoma Developmental Center, but it is still the same Institution.) Even then the place had a troubled past: the human eugenics experiments there in the 1930’s, a breakout of juvenile psychopaths that left a farmer dead and his wife hospitalized, chronic overcrowding/understaffing, the routine harvesting of deceased patient’s brains for study. Memories of that time have stayed with me for 60 years; I finally had to write a novel (Passage of the Kissing People) about them to gain closure. Staff then fought to change the State Home to a State Hospital to force increased medical treatment and an emphasis on moving patients back into the community. The forces of resistance rested in part on the fact that high-functioning patients were the captive work force to maintain the pig farm/dairy herd/chicken ranch/orchards/truck gardens/cannery/shoe factory and all the other pieces that made the Home its own city. Raising enough food to feed themselves and sell over $200,000 worth of food kept the costs down. To move those people back out into real life would raise costs, and so would additional staff and medications. Such concerns echo today as budget cuts have brought the Center to staff cut-backs and budget stress now. It is in conditions like these that patient safety is placed in the balance. Now with the value of the land so high, any excuse to shut down the facility would provoke intense pressure to sell. The fact that this problem arises every generation is not the reason to close down the facility. Its a reminder that we can’t take our eyes off the ball. Those who would shutter the Center have no plan to serve the patients they would turn out on the streets.

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