“In time, maybe the land will decide.”

Scott T. Starbuck is an award-winning poet, career fisherman, climate activist and longtime resident of the Pacific Northwest. His most recent book, “Bridge at the End of the World (New and Selected Poems)” is a culmination of his major published poetic output. 

There’s no fool like an old fool.

Allow me to serve as a prototype of that adage. I’m old, three years past the Good Book’s allotted age of three score and ten, and now I have once more donned my jester’s motley and bells by making resolutions for the New Year.

When you’re a child, this time of year is full of magic and wonder. As you get older, the holidays can become more nostalgic than enchanting, with more sentiment than thrill. Finding that old spark isn’t impossible, but it’ll take more effort to revive it and perseverance to maintain it.

It’s spring of 1941 and Britain stands alone against Hitler’s Germany. The British aircraft dropping their bombs on German military and manufacturing bases, and cities, were having an effect on that nation’s morale and production, but every downed British aircraft meant fewer experienced airmen.

“What are you reading after the election?” a friend asked me last week. She asked me because she had picked a book specifically for the occasion. She was reading “Democracy in America.”

“De Tocqueville?”

“Yes,” she said. “When I had to read it for school it was boring. It’s not boring now.” 

If you ever wondered what it would be like to live as a monk or a nun, this book delves deeply into the subject. In this extremely well-written and heartfelt memoir, “Cloistered: My Years as a Nun” (St. Martin’s Press, 2024), Catherine Coldstream begins by taking us back to her life as a young woman who has many talents, is smart, well-read, is multilingual, energetic, adventuristic and living a dreamed of life in Paris after having grown up in the UK.

According to surveys and government data cited in the online article “The Changing Face of America’s Veteran Population,” 40 years ago about 18% of Americans were veterans. Today that number stands at 6%. 

Given the harrowing natural disasters in the South, I thought a good book to review this month would be one that might serve as a source of solace and peace to those who are currently struggling with these catastrophes.

Approximately 20,000 murders occurred in the United States in 2023. These killings ranged in scope from gang battles to domestic violence. 

As I peruse the shelves in the Jackson County Library’s “new releases” section, it is evident to me that there are more new titles written by women than by men. And while this may be true in literary circles in much the same way it is in politics these days, many of the storylines in these books being written by women have to do with a feminine renaissance that is going on world-wide.