​Dear friends in Santa Fe, Santa Barbara, and oceans beyond,
Like many of you, we celebrate this holiday without family members’ ringing voices and inimitable smiles.  It was lonely but still okay.   Here are our musings after a turbulent year that challenged almost everyone's assumptions about daily life:     
This is the first year in 51 years together that we haven’t traveled somewhere new in the world, leaving a vacuum filled with long walks and swimming, movies, books, and other small pleasures that have become an oasis of comfort.  Some grateful highlights that have preserved sanity:   
Favorite streaming drama:  The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix)
Favorite documentary:  The Octopus Teacher
Favorite nature book:  Trees of the World (Tomas Micek)
Favorite food: Anything cooked on a Kamado Joe grill
Favorite non-profits:   Food Depot & Foodbank, Dollars4Schools, Fair Fight, and all environmental and wildlife non-profits. 
Favorite fantasy:  When Covid finally subsides, there is less reliance on virtual reality, and we reclaim some humanistic values from previous decades.
Favorite political wish:  The end of polarization and, finally, a coordinated global effort to clean up the environment.
Favorite digression:  ping pong.
Favorite  novelty:  feeding feral cats, possums, skunks and raccoons that live in our nearby ravine.
Favorite lesson from the pandemic:  No one is more important  than anyone else.
 

Most of all, 2020 has allowed us time to reflect on memories of you, and to recognize how important each of you are in our lives. This year has been hard for so many in the world—especially those without financial savings or resources.  And, like many of you, we reflect on losing some of our close friends.  As long as memory survives, good friendships never die.

Tidings of Gratitude and Hope

Pat and Michael

​​Attenborough’s  life has been a lens on the fragile beauty of nature and the struggle to maintain  biodiversity. As our population has grown from two billion to over seven billion, the  planet’s wilderness acreage has shrunk from about 70% in the  late 1950s, when Attenborough began exploring terra incognito, to 30% today. Over three trillion trees were logged or just destroyed.  Along with fewer trees, the oceans can no longer absorb the tons of carbon dioxide we emit.  

Old news does not mean irrelevant news.  Old news means it’s more relevant than ever.  If Earth were humanity's collective spouse, we would all be in prison for negligence and gross abuse.  Escaping a death sentence means  changing our behavior, our values, and our management of resources. We’ve already started. We should all feel proud.  Now for the disappointing news—we have so, so far to go.

 In fighting COVID-19, in learning how difficult a lifestyle change can be, most of us have come to believe in the efficacy  of sacrifice.  My wife tells me that repurposing the planet will require 7 billion heroes doing whatever they can.  If we each choose to do just one thing consistently, like picking up trash on the roadside, eating way more plant-based foods, finding the money to back environmental initiatives, consuming food grown on a fraction of the land farms use today (re: study the Netherlands), and cutting  our use of  plastics and fossils fuels, we will start a tsunami of hope.  Remember the nuclear disaster of  Chernobyl in the 1980s, and then see aerial shots of the city today. Humans are still forbidden to come near, but animals, trees and plants flourish mightily like a window on the future.

​His first love, adult and young adult fiction, tackles diverse subjects from the world of horse racing to politics, focusing on characters as much as a page-turning plot.  His novel, Abingdon's, was a bestseller and a Literary Guild Alternate Selection. His young adult novel, Pursuit, was awarded the California Young Reader Medal.  He has also co-written two screenplays for Amazon Prime.


Receiving his Bachelor of Arts in English from Stanford University, he focused on creative writing and studied under Wallace Stegner. He received a Master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University.  He later served in the United States Army before marrying Patricia Goodkind, an educator and entrepreneur, and starting a family. Working under his wife, Patricia, ten years ago they created a non-profit foundation, Dollar4Schools, which continues  helping support  Santa Fe public schools and its  teachers.  


An avid trekker and traveler to developing countries, French loves diving and snorkeling, and for the last decade began studying  endangered marine and land mammals.   He believes climate change is currently the world’s greatest long-term problem.


He and  Patricia divide their time between Santa Barbara, California, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. 
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I have a modest proposal in our age of ever-deepening polarization.   My proposal is based on the idea of breaking bread with strangers, like the Pilgrims did with the Wampanoag tribe at Plymouth Colony. In the spirt of the First Thanksgiving, dwell on this for a minute. When Covid finally goes away, two coalitions (maybe  three hundred folks each), are formed, each composed of volunteers who think of  themselves as open-minded.  One coalition is made up  entirely of Progressives, while the second is entirely Conservatives. The two sides agree on a three monthlong period to get to know each other as human beings, not stereotypes—and in a very specific way.  Basic   organizational skills are required, as are cooking skills.  The Progressives invite small groups of Conservatives into their homes for dinner and the Conservatives invite Progressives into their homes for a hot meal. One glass of wine only. Politics cannot be discussed, if at all, until dessert in served.


 Over the years,i have seen more conflicts and disputes dissipate or even go away over delicious food and the accompanying hospitality.  Simple, yes.  Corny, not really.  Difficult to pull off?  Only if no one is serious about healing political wounds that are bleeding our democracy dry.    

​How has America gotten into such trouble in every way conceivable?  We ignore our astounding national debt, urban violence, race relations, women’s reproductive rights, free speech, gun rights, income inequality…the polarization is endless.  What I’m trying to fathom is our general reluctance or inability to handle these complex problem. I have a clue:  American exceptionalism. I find it one of the  most dangerously misleading phrases in our culture   Yes, our country does some things extremely well, better than the rest of the world, and Americans can be incredibly kind and generous.  But our exceptionalism has become a broad brush  for championing the good while ignoring the bad, a shield to hide behind when our country is  criticized for its narcissism, indifference and ignorance.  We rationalize that critical problems like climate change can’t be easily solved so why make the effort? "The technology will show up when it’s needed. My life is busy enough,” a friend of mine says.   


 We wallow in our exceptionalism, but we don’t back it up by tackling the tough stuff that requires sacrifice and stamina. Many of us don’t like “hard.” We definite “living in the moment” as something wonderful and In many ways the goal is admirable.  Yet when I think about slogans with honest roots,  I prefer “living for the future.”  In the meantime, we are the world’s biggest back slappers. We love to congratulate ourselves, give out participant trophies, and exult in our pursuit of happiness.   Like a lost tribe of dreamers, the path marked “most difficult” has little interest for us.  I propose we observe a moratorium on the phrase “American exceptionalism.”  If we’re going to embark on a positive future for all, how about “American wisdom.” 

The earlier book, The Beginners Guide to Winning an Election, about a no-holds-barred high school political campaign, began to strike me as having more plot and characterization potential than I could have foreseen three years ago. The ability of a cunning virus to devastate cities and their economies is matched by its power to create terror, depression, and anxiety about the unknown. Meanwhile, America’s age-old struggles over racial justice, income equality, women’s rights, and affordable education, to name a few, rage on. The will to find legislative compromises has given way to stalemates, distrust, and deviousness.  In addition, politics has taken on the aura and importance of religion.

My new novel, Cliffhanger, probes deeper into two, starkly different candidates in an Indiana high school election.  The year is 2030. The idealism and candor of novice politician Brit is no match for her experienced, charismatic opponent, Matthew, or his shoot-from-the-hip campaign manager, Nathan.  
 
There are good reasons never to bet against Matthew in any election, though few in the thousand-strong student body are aware of his and Nathan’s secrets for winning.
 
A revered and eccentric history teacher at the school has another take on the election. Without saying it out loud,  for fear of ridicule, Mr. Wilson believes  one of the two candidates  could be  pivotal in helping save civilization in the 21st Century.  A 16th-century mystic and prophet, Nostradamus, predicted that  in the year 2048 an elected government would deliberately create enough paranoia and anxiety  to chip away at everyone’s sanity.  
 
Years after  their high school graduation, Matthew and Brit separately come  to the same conclusion.  As they watch their school and home town collapse in unexpected ways, they form a team for protection.  A romance blossoms,  only to  erode from their clashing wills, but it revives when the two have to face a common enemy:  An annoying kid from high school has become a leader of a new political order with chilling intentions. 

​In the sequel, Apostles In Black (to be published fall 2021), lessons first learned in high school politics become a map to Mathew’s and Brit’s survival.
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