Rachael Herron

(R.H. Herron)

Blog

We Rise

Rise Against Hate

I try to keep an open mind about a great many things. I never got involved with the great green-peas-in-guacamole debate of 2014, for example. I am agnostic about jeggings. I know that people are different, with different tastes and beliefs, and the warp against the weft is what makes us interesting.

In the past, I’ve been able to stay that way about politics. I had a side, and I believed my side was right, naturally, but I could also understand the other side. On Twitter I enjoyed sharing political cartoons lampooning the politicians I despised as much as any twitterholic. But I understood it when I saw a cartoon of Obama or Biden, an image that made them look strident or ugly or stupid. I shared the same caricatured images of Boehner and Bush. As humans, we categorize things, we make fun of things we disagree with. I believe in democracy. When Gee Dub won (even though he lost the popular vote), I was devastated, but not this way.

Then, we still had a balance of power in POTUS, Senate and House, or least a semblance of it. There were checks and balances.

Tuesday, we lost all that.

I thought of those cartoons that always look the same no matter who’s being lampooned: floppy mouth, raisin eyes, angry arms. I thought to myself, maybe I’m overreacting. In politics, we always think the ones we oppose are monstrous, when in reality, they’re just politicians, as prone to fits of joy or slips of corruption as the rest of us. We think we’re better—but we’re not. We just have different beliefs, based on different teachings or books.

But this time it is different.

***

We had a few people over to watch the returns on Tuesday night. We didn’t invite many. We only bought two bottles of champagne.

Yesterday I took those bottles out of the fridge, unopened, and put them in the wine rack.

I swear to god, those unopened bottles hold my heart.

Champagne triggers my migraines sometimes, and yet I couldn’t wait to taste the bubbles on my lips, to know that a woman I believe in, a woman I respect so mightily, was going to be the leader of our nation.

The wrong team won.

Hillary has faults, yes. She’s a politician; of course she has faults. (Could I run for that office? Could you? Hell, no. And I don’t give a fuck about her emails.)

This isn’t just about the wrong team winning. If a normal career politician, a regular right-wing rednecked good-old boy had won, I would be heartily disappointed. I would have cried.

But I would have been able to hold this in my mind: We all think we’re right. We’re all a little wrong about that. We’ll limp through. We’ll be okay.

Trump and Pence are different.

Everything has changed, and we are entering revolution.

They want to strip the rights of minorities, immigrants, the disabled, the poor, and the LGBTQ. In a country based on systemic racism, a country just beginning a third, vastly-needed civil rights movement, they want to silence the few voices brave enough to shout the oppression. Not only that, but with the House and Senate behind them, they will start wars against other countries and against our environment—wars we can’t win. Period.

How did this happen?

Here’s how: The undecideds weren’t undecided. Those one in four who said they weren’t sure? They were closeted. They knew enough to understand they shouldn’t tell anyone they were voting for Trump. They knew enough to be ashamed. But in the ballot booth, alone, quietly, they voted for the white supremacist candidate.

David Duke and the KKK were elated by the win (this alone is eternally damning). Every totalitarian regime rejoiced on Wednesday. Russian leaders literally cheered when Trump won (PRI).

Hatred has been given validity.

Violence is now acceptable.

With more than half the population voting against hate, we still lost.

You have to know this: my wife and I are now scared to leave the house. We live in the Bay Area in a liberal state, and we’re still terrified to hold hands in public. And we’re privileged. We’re white. We’re still scared out of our skulls, and we ain’t got nothin’ on how POC are feeling (and have been feeling).

This week we mourn. We find community. We eat with friends. We spend our money close to home, in small businesses we care about. We pray. We meditate. We cry.

Next week?

We rise.

How? I have no freaking idea. Not yet. We’re still mourning. I’m numb, the way I always get during storms of grief.

But in our house, we know this:

  • Even with half the income we had last year, we’re tightening belts and just set up monthly donations to Planned Parenthood and the ACLU.
  • We will attend every demonstration we can.
  • We don’t have kids—we can be arrested (oh, the dogs would be so pissed off at that).
  • We will listen more than we talk.
  • We will talk with those who need to be heard most.

On Wednesday, I was so upset I walked the dogs with the express intention to meet a neighbor (any neighbor, I didn’t care) and talk about it. In my Oakland neighborhood, we are good at waving. We’re not always so good at talking.

An older black woman I’d never spoken to was sitting on her porch, watching her husband wash the car. I halted the dogs and stopped on the sidewalk.

“How are you?” I asked.

She waved her hand politely. “Oh, fine, fine.”

“No. How are you? Because I’m completely devastated and I was wondering how you felt.”

She looked at me in astonishment. “I’m not surprised. But it’s so terrible I can’t bear it.”

We talked for twenty minutes. I tried to listen more than I spoke. Miss Mary E. and I are friends now. She asked what my car and house looked like because now “I can come knock if I need you.”

My parents raised me on picket lines. I knew every verse to We Shall Overcome before I knew the names of the Disney princesses. I truly believe that my New Zealander mother, who never had the slightest interest in becoming a US citizen, would have finally become a citizen after 35 years of residence in order to vote against Trump.

I won’t let her down.

I will do my part.

I will write.

I will march.

I will listen.

I will lift up.

What will you do?

all my love,
Rachael

  • I know I’ll get plenty of hate mail and unsubscribes from this letter. That’s okay. If we disagree on this, you won’t enjoy my books.
  • Speaking of that, if you do agree with me, please consider sharing this letter to make up for those hate arrows that were just lobbed, on fire, in my direction.
  • Lena Dunham’s letter on this is much better than my own. Go have a read, and subscribe.
  • Solidarity? Wear a safety pin. It seems silly until you wear it in small-town Mississippi.

Why I Love Fall

I love fall because of the ache.

You know what I mean?

That deep, sweet upswell of nostalgia that comes with the dropping leaves is such an emotional push-pull of happiness tinged with sadness.

You know how there are the four flavors (sweet, salty, sour, bitter), and then there’s that extra one? It’s called umami. It’s that dark, rich, undertone of taste. You know it when you have it. Bacon, soy sauce, truffle mushrooms.

I’m declaring fall the umami season. It’s layered and complex. Spring and summer are happy! Bright! Literally, they are sunny (and god help the people with reverse S.A.D. which I sometimes wonder if I have. I’m not a fan of summer). Winter is bleak, and we need time for that, too.

But fall is both. It’s happy and sad. It looks ahead (new school year! getting older!) and it looks back at the same time. This year is winding to its close. For so many, this year has been so much worse than any of the years before. This fall will ache harder, more deeply.

It’s umami. It’s rich and deep. It’s compost turned into black earth. It’s fires, lit indoors for warmth instead of wildfires running the hills.

If light has a scent to me, it’s this: the smell of sycamore leaves dropping onto dusty ground in yellow sunshine. I have a million favorite scents, but this one might be in the top five, right up there with beach bonfire smoke, mothballs, wet wool, and cedar. (Oooh! All of those are umami, I think.)

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Mills, this morning

This is my first fall as a full-time writer.

I have wanted this my whole life.

Every day I write at Mills College, lately at the library. I sit on the second floor and I open the window at my favorite carrel, and I set my apple carefully next to my coffee mug and my water bottle. (Basically, I’m Frances with her salt shaker.)

Today, as I walked on campus, I caught that scent, the dry sycamore leaves in sunshine one.

My heart nearly lifted right out of my chest.

This is what I’ve wanted.

I’ve got it.

I’m enough of a Buddhist to know I won’t keep it. Everything changes. Right now, this is my life. I am happy. Someday this won’t be my life. That makes me wistful, nostalgic for the very moment I’m standing in.

Fall is rich, and deep. Excitement and sadness. The light falls earlier, and we prepare to cocoon ourselves in our houses for winter.

But right now we’re outside, scuffing through the leaves, realizing that the sound of a leaf’s crunch remains the same, no matter how young or old we are—that sharp, satisfying KRICSHHH. We break something with our foot that hurts no one. We contribute to the leaf returning to dust.

The ache feels good, like a sore, used muscle.

It feels right, rich, and deep.

Happy first day of fall to you, my friends.

i-love-fall-because-of-the-ache

InstantPot Chicken Enchiladas

I read a bunch of enchilada recipes and then went off the road, and I want to make sure if I ever want to veer back this way, I can, because these are SO GOOD, yo.

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In InstantPot (if you have one, otherwise just cook the chicken whatever way you want, it’s all good): Chop one onion, throw it in. Add in 6-7 boneless skinless chicken thighs. Drape 3 chipotle peppers artistically on top. Throw in some cumin (1tbsp?) and some salt. Close. Press Poultry button (15 min, medium). YES, I know there’s no liquid, no, the InstantPot won’t explode. The chicken makes plenty of liquid.

When cooked, preheat oven to 350. Remove chicken and peppers, shred both. Pour off liquid in pot, reserving the onions floating around. Add chicken/peppers to pot with onions, add can of corn.

Shred a 12oz block of pepper jack cheese. Add about a quarter of it to the hot chicken, along with a couple of great big dollops of sour cream. Mix. Taste and die a little with the wonder of it all.

Dredge corn tortillas (ours were still hot when I bought them earlier today) through green enchilada sauce. Fill with chicken mix. Roll and place in glass baking pan. When you’ve got as many as you can fit in your pan, pour the rest of the enchilada sauce over the top, and top the whole thing with the rest of the shredded cheese.

Bake uncovered for 30 min. Serve topped with more sour cream and cilantro, if you have it.

In Which I Write a Lot

A while ago, I had the idea that I’d put together a little book—pulled from blog posts—about moving from the desire to write to being a writer. I hired a person to go through my fourteen years of blog posts (that’s a lot of posts, a great many of them full of angst about wanting to write more and not doing it).

I’m still going to do the book, because I think it’s a fun project, but I realized I hadn’t edited it yet because I’m too busy writing. Same thing with not blogging more.

I used to write about wanting to write.

Now I’m too busy writing.

And that’s so awesome!

There’s a lot of hustle in this self-employed game, I’ll tell you that much. I’m constantly plotting, both literally and figuratively. I’m writing a book that’s due in a month to Random House Australia (the third Songbird book!), and then I’m going to write a book (newish genre!) for my agent to sell, and then I’m going to write another Ballard Brother book, so the next six or seven months of fiction writing are occupied. (That’s the way I think about it. FULLY BOOKED. Like the hotel I used to work at, the shingle is out: No Occupancy. I get ideas and shuffle them into a file in Scrivener. No time for you now, come back later. Book your brain reservation early.)

writingquote1 (1)I’m happy with the side gig I’ve recently made for myself, formatting the interior of print books for self-publishers. It’s bringing in a little cash, and while Lala’s still unemployed, that’s welcome money. Another thing I really like about it is that it’s not creative. At all. I plug manuscripts in. I format them. I collect money for doing it. It’s like doing the budget: I put numbers in and move them around, and it feels good. My word brain rests.

It’s nice to rest the brain. I’m still very bad at relaxing, and it’s perhaps possible I’ve gotten worse at it, now that I feel that all my time at home should be Productive, but I’m working on it. Later today, I promise to spin a little bit. Spinning while watching TV is something that never fails to soothe my spirit and brain.

What will you do today to soothe your brain? (And thanks, as always, for reading. You’re the reason I do this. YOU.)

(Also! I’m trying to be more active on Pinterest. Turns out that it’s a good place for resting the brain, too. Come join me?)

The Songbird’s Call

Darlingest reader,

I used to spend quite a bit of time in Bolinas, a tiny one-horse town just north of San Francisco. I fell in love with Smiley’s Schooner Hotel, and I have to admit that the saloon and cafe and hotel in Darling Bay are directly stolen from that delightful property. (Yep, writers are thieves, magpies collecting shiny real objects to tuck into our story nests. A couple of years ago, the property was for sale, and I still dream of buying it sometimes.)

One New Year’s Eve, we drove into town through a storm so big it closed the roads behind us, washing them out. The power went out all over town, and we ate that night in the cafe, lit by candlelight. The cook had worked overseas and was good at cooking on propane. They cranked up the Victrola near the front door, and our table was so merry that our laughter rung from the wooden beams overhead. That night, we rang the new year in while listening to the Whoreshoes play “Easy Like Saturday Night” in the saloon (which had a generator, so the amps and speakers worked, along with the many strands of twinkling white lights which shone as the only light in town).

We danced and whooped and reveled inside the old beach saloon, and it was perfect.

Another time, when a big group of us were given the large room over the saloon, we chose to sleep on an air mattress on the veranda that hung over the saloon’s front door. We fell asleep tipsy and happy, waking up just as happy but also quite damp in the early ocean fog which soaked our sleeping bags.

And last year, one of my sisters rented a cottage there for Christmas, and the three Herron girls converged on Bolinas with our loved ones. (Okay, yes. There are three sisters in my family, just like in this series. We all have good singing voices, and we harmonize beautifully. However, we’ve never been a famous country girl band, and the characters are not based on us, I swear. I could never do the love we share justice, though I often borrow its flavor to bring into my books.) We all splashed our way through the rain to the cafe where we ate huge quesadillas and drank bottomless cups of coffee.

Darling Bay is my way of honoring Bolinas’s spirit. There really is a town poet laureate. Rangy black dogs run on the sand, barking at sand pipers. Patchouli incense wafts over the town as fragrantly as the other burning weed that’s ever popular in small-town Northern California.

BUY LINKS FOR US/Canada (also available world-wide!

Amazon | Kobo | iBooks | Barnes & Noble | Google Play

BUY LINKS for Australia/New Zealand

Amazon Australia |iBooks AU | Google Australia | Booktopia | QBD | Angus & Robertson

I hope you like it. Please tell me what you think? It always means the world to me.

love,

Rachael

BONUS:

  • Want to see what Darling Bay looks like? I’ve started a Pinterest board – find Bolinas photos there! (I found a picture of me singing there. I’d forgotten that entirely.)
  • Are you a writer or think about trying to write? Subscribe to my podcast How Do You Write on iTunes or Stitcher!