Last week, I self-published a book on Amazon. Thorough readers of the Vine Maple Farm blog will find it familiar because its content was all published as posts here. I bundled together a selection of posts and called them Vine Maple Farm: A Whatcom County Idyl, then sorted and grouped the posts for coherence, and edited them to knock off a few rough corners and solecisms. You can purchase it here.
I admit that I am not pleased with life in 2025: too many pointless attempts to sway each other’s politics, too many crass ads invading our lives, over-valuing wealth and power and forgetting kindness and justice.
I’d like to go back to a better time, not the bitter mono-cultural nationalism and tribalism favored by MAGA, but the time and life where I grew up on a rural road in the far northwest corner of the country, an area that likes to call itself The Fourth Corner, the last corner of the country to enter the culture of the rest of the United States.
Alaska and Hawaii have a right to disagree, but The Fourth Corner is often behind on the news.
The product of my yearnings is a Whatcom Idyl. Don’t be fooled: all idyls are the product of fantasy and selective memory and my idyl is no different, but I hope that a few people might pick it up during the coming Advent and Christmas season and enjoy a moment drifting off into a world much different than today.