In the United States, we are living through the most sustained stretch of violence since 1968, when the North Vietnamese launched the Tet Offensive and blacks rioted in American cities because they wanted their fair share of the American Dream. I was young and I didn’t understand. Stop, children, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down. Now I’m older and I still don’t understand. Why is my country at war with my country? How long will it take to repair all this damage, from Minneapolis to the rest of the world? Longer than my lifetime, and just to warn you, everyone in my family lives to a hundred.

Life is certainly upsetting, and as a small example of my mindset these days, I offer my recent trip to the emergency room. I drove myself, but before jumping in the car I pulled Dark Side of the Moon off the shelf, popped it into the CD slot, and as I backed out of the garage I turned the volume to 11. If I was going to die, I wanted to make sure that Floyd would be the last thing I heard.

(Spoiler alert: I’m fine.)

As Donald Trump continues to transform the United States into a garbage pail (lyrics courtesy of Beck), here in my little corner I find it difficult to write a blog about writing. Who cares what I think? But I keep reminding myself that even in Wold War II, the greatest catastrophe to hit humanity, people wrote books. They sang songs, they recorded music, they acted in plays, they directed movies. They bought tickets to baseball games. There were chess tournaments in Germany and Russia despite the ongoing slaughter of millions by air, land, and sea. I’m still writing. I hope you are, too.

It’s a challenge to end on a positive note. The true positive note will come when we rid ourselves of this soul-suckin’ jerk (again, Beck). But I’ll try.

In December, while waiting for the first draft of my novel to cool on the windowsill so I could carve it up for the second draft, I launched my Word Purge. As I examined all the flotsam and jetsam I had created and abandoned, I found a 900-word fragment about a retired baseball player and his dead mother, wife, and dog. As I read, I realized that this man was recording a podcast and that his house was full of history but not life and the story took off. I found his father. I found his agent. I found his post-baseball career. I found his quest. I now have 7,500 words and a glimmer of where it’s all going.

Where the United States is going is another question. When I listen to Beck, sometimes I think he’s a god and sometimes I think he’s a goober, and sometimes I think both in the same song. His album Mellow Gold captures the times we’re coping with today. Not bad for a record he waxed 30 years ago, when the only music formats were vinyl, cassettes, and CDs, when we didn’t have mobile phones, and when Republicans thought Bill Clinton was a threat to democracy because he cheated on his wife just like they did.

Alex Pretti, murdered by agents of the U.S. Border Patrol, Minneapolis, 24 January 2026. Rest in power.