Jamie Ford's Blog: Bittersweet Blog

Coming June 2022. Now available for pre-order, wherever you do your pre-ordering.

My last in-person event was the night before covid was declared a national emergency. I was in Ketchum, Idaho, at Ernest Hemingway's former residence. For those who aren't followers of Hemingway history, this was the place where he took his own life. I stayed there, alone, as the world was shutting down. A truly surreal experience.

But, now I'm dusting off my suitcase and booking a flight for this place called normal.

Seeing eye dog

Reserve parachute

Discount Botox

Mail-order bride (or groom)

Mattress "slightly used"

7-11 Sushi

Monkey's Paw

Vasectomy

Things you should get for $1.99

eBook of Love and Other Consolation Prizes, which is Amazon's Daily Deal. 

Here's a very short story that was recently published in the Spokesman-Review. 

Crazy, right? Yet, here's an example that you're benefiting from right now.

Until the 70s, ambulance services were generally run by local police and fire departments. There was no law requiring medical training beyond basic first-aid and in many cases the assignment of ambulance duty was used as a form of punishment. 

As you can imagine, throwing people with medical emergencies into the back of a paddy wagon produced less than spectacular health outcomes. 

Now imagine how much worse it became when disgruntled white police officers were demoted to ambulance duty in black neighborhoods.

The response was so problematic (or non-existent) that in 1967, leaders in one of Pittsburgh’s black communities, the Hill District, created Freedom House Ambulance Services and approached Peter Safar, a doctor at the University of Pittsburgh, who a few years earlier had lost his 12-year-old daughter to an acute asthma crisis. 

With a shared purpose of improving emergency medical response, Safar trained 25 black men from that neglected community––many of whom did not have a high school diploma––as emergency medical technicians, skilled in this new thing called CPR. 

With two donated police vehicles, Freedom House Ambulance Services began to save lives at such a rate, that they became the gold standard for emergency response training in the US and the model for EMTs we now take for granted. 

Freedom House paramedics were so dynamic in their ability to respond to the critically ill that the police often called them for high acuity cases in white neighborhoods.

Despite the success of FHAS, police and fire departments resisted retraining, so the city reallocated funds to create a separate EMT service. (A new mayor cut funding to Freedom House in 1975 and seized their assets, but that's another story). 

When people think defunding the police will lead to anarchy, they’re not understanding that change rarely happens from within, and that resources reallocated to community-based services can not only improve neglected neighborhoods, but create innovations that help us all.

A bill bearing the likeness of Andrew Jackson.

Andrew Jackson was an unrepentant slave owner who had the US Postmaster General censor mailings from abolitionists. His wealth was borne of slave labor and he regularly offered bounties on runaway slaves, plus a $10 bonus for every 100 lashes given, up to 300. As a general, he suspended habeas corpus and executed prisoners for minor infractions. As a President, his economic policies led directly to the Panic of 1837 (in which 343 banks failed). As an ethnic cleanser, he broke treaties, stopped annuity payments owed to Native tribes, and was the power behind the Trail of Tears. As a partisan egoist, he appointed unqualified, inexperienced judges, and suppressed dissent from critics, even imprisoning a senator for criticizing him in a newspaper. 

Jackson was to be replaced on the $20 bill this year by Harriet Tubman.

Harriet Tubman was born into slavery. She was whipped and beaten as a child, had her skull broken as a teen, and as an adult she escaped to the north. Not content with her own freedom she went back thirteen times on missions to liberate enslaved people and guide fugitives to safety. When the Civil War began, she worked for the Union Army and was the first woman to lead an armed expedition that liberated more than 700 slaves. Despite her heroics she never received a military salary and was denied a soldier’s pension for decades. She continued her work, later advocating for women’s suffrage, while living in poverty.

Of these two notable Americans, who is most worthy of representing the better nature of our country? 

Which person’s character would you hope to instill in your children?

If you’re religious, which person embodies the ideals of your faith?

I ask this because George Floyd died over a piece of paper.

That piece of paper is a symbol.

Our current President’s character was on full display––he showed us who he sees as the American ideal––when he stopped Harriet Tubman from appearing on the twenty-dollar-bill and moved Andrew Jackson’s presidential portrait to his Oval Office.

His actions were signals, inaudible demonstrations, to those with similar views, validating their bigotry, hatred, and tolerance––if not outright celebration––of cruelty and inequality. 

It’s my hope that those peacefully demonstrating in the streets will be heard, that they'll be safe, and that by exercising their right to protest they will compel those in power to find cures for the malignant, systemic cancers that have plagued our country for generations. 

I also hope they'll lift Harriet out of our history books and to her rightful place as a symbol, reminding Americans of what real greatness is, every time they visit an ATM.

I’m writing this under quarantine and odds are you’re reading this under similar circumstances. While this is challenging and discomforting for a plethora of reasons, one good thing is happening during lock-down: PEOPLE ARE READING MORE.

I know this because of the sudden uptick of lovely emails I’ve been getting from readers. They often say something like, “Since I have all this time I’m finally getting around to reading…” And I’m delighted.

Seeing that this has been bringing more people to my website, I thought it might be helpful to share where you can find me on a more frequent and personal basis. To help you find the right place for you, I thought I’d rank my social media by the amount of political noise you will find, on a scale of 1-10.

Instagram: @jamiefordofficial / Political score: 0

Facebook: @jamiefordauthor / Political score: 2 

Facebook, my personal page / Political score: 5

Twitter: @jamieford / Political score: 7

There you have it. Feel free to follow, friend, or just lurk about.

Talk to you soon.

The Anniversary Edition of is on sale today. With an extra story, ONLY KEIKO.

When I was a sophomore in high school, Deathbird Stories by Harlan Ellison was banned from our campus library. So naturally I went to the public library, checked it out, and read it cover-to-cover. That book, in all its dark, twisted, brilliant complexity, made me want to be a writer. In part because it’s a fantastic collection of genre-destroying short stories. But also, because it was the first time I realized that books could cause people to absolutely lose their shit.

From that point on I began a decades-long quest to read everything that Harlan had ever written.

But along the way, what I savored most were his collections of personal essays, most of which had originally appeared in The Freep (LA Free Press) in the 70s. These pieces—ranging from politics, to the death of his parents, the girl who broke his heart again and again and again, to gonzo-journalism restaurant reviews—were funny, incendiary, and revealed a certain vulnerability. 

For me, these books were cathartic. I found myself hiding in bookstores until closing time, reading those essays when my world was on fire.

For a famously short man, Harlan was a larger than life figure who marched with Martin Luther King to Selma, Alabama, who hung out with the Rolling Stones, who was on Nixon's "subversives" list. He defended writers and manned the picket line when they went on strike. Ever the showman, he wrote more than 100 short stories in bookstore windows. The point was to write live—to let the audience see the work, word for word, line by line. The pages would be posted in the bookstore window as he created and audiences would patiently follow along.

So, when I was asked to write in front of a live audience for a fundraiser for the Seattle 7 Writers, called The Novel Live, I wrote Harlan and asked if I could borrow one of his tobacco pipes. Just a little something to take onstage as an homage—a little nod to the man himself. 

I didn’t know what to expect, but I wasn’t quite expecting a phone call. 

"Jamie, this is Harlan..." 

We talked for 90 minutes. By that I mean, he talked, and I listened, rapt and spellbound. Oh, and he sent me a pipe and a bunch of other goodies.

Harlan also shared that he stole the idea of writing in front of a live audience from Georges Simenon, who, as a young writer, was purported to have written for 24 hours while sitting in a glass cage in Paris. (Harlan later met with France's Minister of Culture who broke the news that such an event had never occurred, but somehow the legend lived on).

Speaking of legends, when I had a modicum of success from my own books, I contacted Harlan again. This time I asked to buy his first typewriter, a 1938 Remington Noiseless Portable—forged in the fires of Mount Doom (it’s now my preciousssss). His mom bought it from a second-hand store in Painesville, Ohio, back when Harlan was just a lonely, angry, bullied, Jewish kid with an overactive imagination. 

I was invited to Ellison Wonderland for the first time—a place in LA that Harlan calls The Lost Aztec Temple on Mars. I spent a magical day there, learning from one of the Grand Masters of Science Fiction (a term Harlan always loathed) and ate leftover tuna & noodle casserole, courtesy of his lovely wife, Susan.

On another visit he showed me his reading aerie and his favorite chair. He said, "Sit down and shut up." Then he read to me from one of his favorite books, The Seven Who Fled by Frederic Prokosh. If you’re wondering if being read to by one of your literary idols is a magical feeling—it is.

But sadly, one of the last times I spoke with Harlan was when he called while I was at one of my daughter's volleyball games. I stepped outside for a moment and learned that the New York Times had called him. They wanted to send a writer to his home for a multi-day interview. Harlan had never received much love from the Times, so he was over the moon. Until he realized that after being ignored by the nation's foremost literary venue for much of his career, they wanted to send someone out to write what was essentially a canned obituary, a piece to have on-hand, something to run...today. 

He told them to shove it. That was so Harlan. And, now he's gone at 84.

I tell ya—I can't bear to look at the New York Times to see what they've cobbled together in Harlan's honor. But whatever it is, I assure you, it's not enough.

Good news for book clubs everywhere, the trade paperback edition of LOVE AND OTHER CONSOLATION PRIZES will be available June 19, 2018. Though it's available now for pre-order wherever you buy books. This particular story seems to be making a lot of people happy (much to my authorly delight). Hope you enjoy it.