Friday, June 13, 2025

In order to dispel some of my anger and sadness, a little ranting.

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. Occasionally, I will also publish some of my shorter fiction in this newsletter to read for free.

Daily Diary, Day 1745:

I am so angry, so afraid, so sad, and so tired of feeling this way, that I decided to indulge in a bit of a rant. This seems to be one of the only ways to deal with the constant dissonance between how I feel about what is going on in the world around me versus how I feel about my own safe, sane life, frequently joyful life.

I generally do not like to impose my personal feelings about the current state of affairs in America (the last time I wrote on this was in April, in this post.) But today I realized that if I do want to achieve some peace, I need to get some of my anger out. I figure that you can always skip this post if you want, because I promise I will be back with the newest story of my Daddy Long Legs saga tomorrow.

What set off this most recent round of feelings was yesterday’s assault on Alex Padilla, one of California’s two Senators—and therefore my senator--for trying to ask a question of the head of the Department of Homeland Security. For details I would recommend reading Heather Cox Richardson’s post on this. Honestly, her daily posts are really must reads for anyone who is interested in clear, concise analysis of current events that puts those events in historical context.

But this event with Padilla was in itself not that extraordinary, it is more that it was sort of tipping point for me, coming on top weeks of seeing daily photos and stories of ordinary people being arrested by masked uniformed men with guns and dragged off in front of their children to who knows where.

The most recent attempt to create a crisis by targeting immigrants and creating fear has infuriated me further since it is such a blatant move by administration to distract from the growing dissatisfaction shown in the polls as people begin to personally suffer from the economic chaos the administration has created, the way the livelihood and lives of millions American are being disrupted and threatened by cuts to programs that affect every aspect of American life. I am equally frustrated by the general ineffectiveness of the courts in making any difference, given that the current administration refuses to obey the law, and sickened by how the mainstream media continues to either blame the victims or focus on flashy stories that won’t get them in trouble with the bullies in government. And don’t get me started on the politicians who have abandoned their oath of office to protect the constitution, or look out for their constituents, as their only interest appears to be cutting the taxes on the very rich and removing any sensible protections the American people had against the depredations of corporations.

And all this is added to my continued sorrow over the devastation and starvation in Gaza, the continued wars in Ukraine and Sudan, and the fear I feel from the ratcheting up of nuclear threat in both the middle east with the firing back and forth between Iran and Israel.

From experience, I know when I feel as much sustained and profound anger, it is usually based on fear. And I am afraid for the nation as a whole, including my friends and family, as I witness the destruction of those institutions that in the past---no matter how inadequately—had been used to redress wrongs and check the depredations of the powerful. I don’t know that any of us understood how fragile those institutions were and are. And this has undermined my optimism.

Thinking about this, I can that there is a kind of the irony the fact that I am currently trying to find write a happy ending for the novella I am working on. Mr. Wong to the Rescue, is at its heart a story about the terrible treatment of the Chinese in 19^th century San Francisco, right after the passage of the Exclusion Act that said of all the immigrants flowing into the nation…(Irish, Germans, Italians, Eastern Europeans), those particular immigrants from China were somehow dangerous and incapable of becoming Americans.

The parallels with today are unmistakable. The Chinese had been encouraged to come to the US when the railroads and factories needed their labor, they looked to the United States as a place of promise…but then they became the scapegoats when the economy collapsed and poverty increased…even though the real cause for those problems were the actions of the powerful Robber Barons and the corrupt politicians of that era—that Gilded Age that our current present venerates and wants to duplicate. Not surprising that I am struggling with this story, angry to think we have learned so little, or forgotten so much.

But finishing this story is something I can do to contribute to a better understanding of lessons we need to relearn, and my hope is that will help me deal with my own anger and sorrow.

But for today, I am also looking for a bit of optimism in the upcoming No Kings protests that are happening tomorrow. Here is a link to a site that has a map of those protests that lets you find details on ones nearby…and if you expand the map there are even some details on protests around the world.

A friend is going to take a sunflower to the protest she is attending, so I thought I would end this post with some sunflowers I saw on one of my walks this week. They certainly gave me a bit of joy, and hope they do the same for you.

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