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Update on Lone Dog Road

An official release date –November 21 — has now been set for Lone Dog Road, my new novel described as “a picaresque tale of compassion and redemption played out against the haunting backdrop of the American high plains during the drought-stricken summer of 1950.”

It took a courageous young company, Polished Stone Publishing, to get this to you. The major publishers were afraid of exactly what I consider the strength of the book — my choice to have people of different races and backgrounds speak in the first person about the journey of two young Lakota boys in search of pipestone to replace the čhaŋnúŋpa — or sacred pipe — of their aged great grandfather.

The first person is a dangerous device because you are speaking from within someone, not about someone. No external narrator, no distant perspective. But I believe that one of literature’s most sacred tasks is to use the imagination to enter into the minds and hearts of people unlike ourselves to let us see the world from other points of view. And so I chose to take the chance.

I love Lone Dog Road and the people in it. It is a relative to Neither Wolf nor Dog, but more expansive in its voices. I can’t wait to get it in your hands. I hope you will enjoy it.

More updates will be coming.

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“The marching band refused to yield” — A rare political rant

I’ve pretty much sworn off political posts. Nothing good comes of them and there are professional observers and commentators that can and do say everything I would say, and with more insight.

But there is one thing I have to get off my chest.

What is wrong with these people in their 70’s and 80’s and beyond who do not have the grace to gently step back to their appropriate elder status and hand the reigns of power over to the generations that are going to have to live and raise children in this world long after we gerontosauruses are gone?

Trump, Ginsburg, Pelosi, Biden, Grassley, McConnell and the rest. Do they not see that their desperate clinging to power is both unseemly and destructive? For the love of God, have some respect for the children and grandchildren and future generations who are going to have to live on this earth, if, indeed, the earth even remains livable.

The appropriate status of the elder is to counsel and advise, not to control. Be a mentor, show the best and brightest of the next generation how to wield the levers of power. Explain your missteps. Point out what you did well, what you would do differently, and what you think the appropriate course of action is going forward. Then step back and support. Will they make mistakes? Of course. Who hasn’t made mistakes? But this is their world, not yours.

These are tough times. Tough times and dangerous. The world needs you. But it does not need you to run things. It needs you to offer guidance. If you do not understand this, your actions, no matter how well-intentioned, are ultimately acts of selfishness. There is someone out there who can do what you are doing equally as well and in a manner more appropriate to the times. Your task is to find them, help them, nurture them, bring them forward. Otherwise your age is an impediment and not a gift. And that is a sorry legacy to leave when you are ultimately dragged off the stage, which, I assure you, you most certainly will be.

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