Ahhhhh……

Morning Java

Ah, warm wonder of
rich steaming coffee brings spring
morning air to life.

Our bodies are truly wonders. A taste, a smell or something in our senses triggers a synapse and a memory pops up. I’m a fan of coffee so the taste and smell of morning coffee is “normal” and I seldom have a brain spark when I have a sip. This morning was different. A haiku and a memory popped up.

Many years ago I listened to a theatrical performance about coffee from a friend…Jason. Jason did this beatnik routine, topped with a beret and he didn’t allow us to applaud, only snap our fingers. The speed at which he recited his prose poem was incredible. The ever increasing tempo and drama of his recitation was about the magic of coffee. bean to cup to mouth. The entire audience was captivated moving ever closer to the edge of their seats. Each word celebrated the drama of being alive with this thing that we didn’t really know until the very end. Coffee.

The sweet smell of the bean and the brew this morning took me back to that performance and to my friend Jason and his bride. To the day we first met, the weekend when he got married, and to the last time I saw the two of them in Laguna Beach.

The power of coffee.

Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay

Fells Point, Baltimore, MD

Sometimes I dress my feelings into cliches, like, “time flies.” A friend and I were talking this morning about something in 1980, I said, “Whoa! That was forty-three years ago!” And she said the 80s seem like just yesterday. That got the Way Back Machine whirring again. But coincidentally, “On the Bay” was playing.

I graduated from High School in 1967, the same year Otis Redding released “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.” A melancholy song with a great sound and beat but a lonely message, probably because of the War in Vietnam. Most males looked at going to war as inevitable unless you were wealthy and could buy 4-F status. The war had become a nightly news item and anyone with a TV could be transported to a combat scene every night…reality television at its goriest (so far)! We watched kids my age get stuffed into body bags and then brought home in flag draped caskets.

The flip side was that the hippie generation was also starting. Free love, LSD, marijuana, communes, long hair, opinions from the young, don’t trust anyone over 30, and more. Sadly, I did not get to be a hippie. I got to party with them. But didn’t want to risk my USAF scholarship by doing drugs. But after Kent State, I did demonstrate with them at football games and other places on campus. But that was later.

Before I graduated, my parents sent out engraved announcements. Engraved. I was embarrassed. But I guess that was a thing. They probably had a graduation party for me. I don’t remember. Truthfully, I wanted to just leave and go to university. I’m guessing that’s not too different from most kids…get away from the parents so you can really enjoy life.

The summer of 1967 is a blur…I’m sure I did something, probably played with the Bird Dogs. I may have had a day job, Armours? Coca-cola? I don’t remember. I didn’t have a car so I drove my parents 1957 Chrysler New Yorker, a turquoise and black land barge with large buttons on the dashboard to the left of the steering column.

When I left home that fall, I was fulfilled. I discovered life without guidance. But, alas, with no car. Consequently, that first semester of school was spent mostly in the dorm, playing Buck Euchre. I discovered beer. I stayed up late at night. I mistakenly took an early morning math class that met five days a week. I discovered Grade Point Average. And not a good one. My first semester was 1.5 but fortunately, I had gotten credit for some courses which brought me up to a 2.0. Just enough to escape institutional wrath. I also discovered Greyhound Bus Lines. My girlfriend still lived in Huron and it was an hour trip back home. But it wasn’t any worse than riding in Kup’s 1960 blue Ford Galaxy when I was on the road with the Bird Dogs.

I was never meant to be a hippie (or hippy). I don’t think I have the true communal spirit in me. I do believe in the humanity of caring for one another but I do like my “alone” time and space. If I were a writer, I would have enjoyed writing like Kerouac or Hunck, Ginsberg, etc. The Beat Generation. But, I’m neither hippie nor Beatnik, I’m just sittin’ on the dock of the bay watchin’ time roll away.

Death…

Alexandria, VA

Did you ever think when the hearse goes by that you might be the next to die?
The worms crawl in and the worms crawl out…

Kent State
Oklahoma City
Charlottesville

A kid’s song. A reminder, even for the very young, that death’s specter is ever present. And especially ever present at my age, but it’s just one of those things, I try not to pay attention.

For some reason, the way back machine circled back and found death memories today…for me, some deaths were puzzling, shocking, and a mystery, some were like a hard punch in the gut, others like a slap in the face. All had the pain of loss and empty space.

I remember the people I cared about. My memory ticked off the list and remembered each of them, but sadly not all their names. Too many. Way too many. Death changes those left behind.

My life changed after the Kent State Shootings, when young people were targeted and killed, people I didn’t know but they were students, exactly like me, expressing their deep commitment to a cause. And then someone else, again, just like me, a young military person…opened fire on those students, fellow Americans. A light went on in my head, this isn’t that different from Selma, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas. Americans shooting Americans because of fear and a failure to talk with one another.

We have a long history of crap like that and strong-arm politics in places like Florida is going to encourage even more fratricide. The Florida State governor’s personal, protection police force were deployed to Texas to detain Venezuelan asylum seekers and kidnap them to Martha’s Vineyard. That’s how the brown shirts started in Germany in the 1920s.

Fifty-eight thousand people from my generation are memorialized on the Vietnam Wall. Thousands more died from post-Vietnam illnesses. Hundreds died or were silenced in the Civil RIghts movement. I wonder what we would be like had they lived. I think we survivors have made our political process a circus-like sideshow…money buys votes, money buys judges even at the highest level, and we’re all armed.

The loss of those tens of thousands of young lives and their potential in the 1960s…more tragic than I ever imagined. Where would we be now had they lived?

Vietnam Memorial Wall

The Power of Alone

Fishing Dock, Leesylvania Park

Alone. A place. A time. An emotion. A goal. A horror. A plea. What a word! Was it Greta Garbo who said, “I want to be alone.”? More than a mere adjective or adverb, alone is a sliding definition, it changes, it morphs as we adjust to life around us.

I think when Garbo pled to be left alone she was begging to be relieved of the emotional stress and weight of the relationships around her. Perhaps her line was so effective because of her own deep unhappiness. She felt isolated and alone in America; she was not acting, she was immersed, no submerged, in “alone.” She later became a recluse and reached the goal she’d cried out for in the movie.

Alone isn’t always a bad thing. Some of us find creative energy in solitude; without distractions new thoughts and ideas emerge from the murky depths and find themselves on paper or screen. Alone can be healthy, a break from stress and pressure and the constant, intense pace of life. Alone isn’t an objective state…it can’t be measured by the number of people around you or the number of things you do.

Loneliness, that’s the noun cousin of the adjective alone. Same family, but very different. Loneliness implies a feeling of solitude and sadness. I certainly empathize with loneliness, I remember days in Iceland when no matter where I went, no one was there. I can still smell the loneliness of the beach winds in Florida. The loneliness standing next to gravesites. I think Garbo suffered from loneliness more than she suffered from being alone.

I smile as I think of alone rising up out of loneliness, an oxymoronic thought, but alone can be a powerful tool for creativity and confidence and strength. Many of the images that I find and post are of “alone,” like the one above taken at Leesylvania Park on the Potomac River. They are not about loneliness, they are about the joy and power and creativity of alone.

I Like Ike

Eisenhower Memorial, Washington, DC

The Way Back Machine took a trip back to the 1950s and came up with some memories and some questions. I’ve already posted a couple of episodes of my behavior during elementary school years and I’ve more of them but that’s not today’s journey. Today’s journey is about things that were going on in the 50s and what that meant to me way out in the Great Plains. I had to use a little AI to fill in some of the blanks.

I went to Lincoln Elementary through the fourth grade and then we moved to a new neighborhood and I started in a brand new school, Madison. Quite a difference between the two schools. Lincoln was an old brick building but each room had huge windows, I mean huge!! And there were several of those windows in each classroom. It was great, you could daydream by looking outside, see what people were doing when you had to stay inside at recess, etc., etc. Not so great in the winter because they were not double paned and there were no storm windows (as I remember) but the steam radiators clanked away and kept us warm.

Madison was a new school. Brand new. With one window per classroom. One. And it wasn’t very big. The small windows were designed to protect us from nuclear blasts and radiation. In that vein, every so often we’d have a nuclear attack drill. We’d get under our desks and put our hands over our heads. The huge siren in the park across the street would wail and wail. The siren, the nuke drills, satellites, rockets, the talk of nuclear bombs falling on our town…all of that was a little terrifying but we all just took it in, part of America in the 1950s. But that left me wondering…what were the other parts of America.

A quick look at the stuff Ike, President Eisenhower, did during his 8 years in office is one way to determine why we hid under our desks during the school year and just hoped for the best when we were not in class. Ike was a Republican, his first two years in office, congress was Republican. The last 6 years, congress was Democrat. They still got this stuff done.

Nuclear weapons became a thing for the Soviet Union and soon other countries. Ike began a New Look policy that acknowledged and promised the use of nukes in a conflict. We didn’t do it in Hungary, but we threatened it in Korea. Eventually this policy morphed into Mutually Assured Destruction. Except for us kids under our desks in Huron. I remember the stockpiles of rations and water in buildings with the Civil Defense signs. I kept track…how far was it to the nearest CD station.

Ike signed the first Civil Rights Act in 1957, the first since 1875 which was gutted when Hayes moved the troops out of the south and Jim Crow went into effect. The 1957 Act desegregated schools but it took federal troops to start enforcement. During the Jim Crow years, most black voters had been disenfranchised, only 20% of blacks were registered. In 1960, another Civil Rights Act established federal inspection of state and local processes to ensure access to voting.

Ike noticed during World War II that tanks and supply trucks moved easily on Germany’s autobahn system. He initiated the Interstate System, large “super” highways that would connect everyone in America. Interstates didn’t come to South Dakota until the 1970s, the new four lane SD Highway 14 out by The Plains was a wonder to the young me.

Alaska and Hawaii became states. Believe it or not, this was a big deal to me and I think many kids my age. These places, far, far away and beyond our ken, were now states. How had this happened? I think that inspired curiosity about the United States in many of us and showed us how the country grows.

Sputnik. I remember the adults talking about this “thing” that was flying around the world in outer space which had been launched by those evil Communists. Surely, the Sputnik Satellite was a threat to our national security. And so began the Space Race. Ike started NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Now the space program is a subsidiary of Tesla, I think.

As a kid, I was very aware of the nuclear threat. I looked at Sputnik as an extension of that threat. I’d heard of Interstates, when they started the four lane north of town, my grandpa said, “You should see those interstates in Minneapolis, now that’s a highway.” Or something like that. Civil Rights. No clue. I saw it on the news but it was like watching a different country.

“I Like Ike” was a sign often seen in the 50s and even in subsequent years. Of course, these were the beginning days of desegregation, increasing income (35%), increasing education level, low inflation, congressional cooperation…

The image above was taken at night at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Oh, The Places You’ll Go

Growing up I never expected to live anywhere but where I was, Huron, SD. I wanted to be a writer and work for the Plainsman, no moves required. I did not want to work at the packing plant or really any place else. Of course, the best laid plans, they say. Not that I could even begin to say that my life was planned, it certainly hasn’t been. Probably because of the ADHD.

Growing up in Huron, I lived in three “houses.” One was actually a basement, the house on top of the basement hadn’t been completed. There were two apartments in that basement. It was crowded. I headed off to college and lived in a dorm for a year and then three years in apartments. Crazy fun. Crazy. Somehow I graduated but there was this draft thing and so I joined the Air Force but didn’t have an assignment when I graduated. I had to wait. I went back to Huron and got married.

My first wife and I lived in a tiny place above the Greyhound Bus Depot. To get to the apartment you’d walk up a rickety stairway with a single bulb lighting the way, like a scary movie. I worked part time as a watchman at the packing plant. I look back now and think…what, no health insurance, no benefits. Youth. I got my assignment to Webb AFB, Big Spring, TX. But, how do you find a place to live when you are clueless and young? Somehow, we found a furnished trailer next to the base at the end of the runway. Lot 7, OK Trailer Court. A little noisy. We lived there a year and then moved onto base into a three bedroom duplex. Quite a move up.

After Webb I lived by myself in Mexico Beach, Florida for several months while I went to T-33 and weapons controller training. Beach life was okay. I got divorced. From there I launched to Iceland for a year. Coming back from Iceland I lived in a motel for a month at Hurlburt Field, Florida, while I went to AGOS, Air Ground Operations School. From there I went to Indialantic, Florida, for a month or two where I learned to fly the OV-10. And, I got married again.

Off to Austin, Texas! I did love Austin and Bergstrom, AFB. My wife and I built a house way out west, in the country with scorpions, rattle snakes and country music. I flew the OV-10; a squadron mate tried to teach me to fly the O-2 but I wasn’t very good at it. From Texas I moved to Holloman AFB in Alamogordo, NM, for “fighter lead in training.” I was there on my birthday when Mt St Helens exploded. We had ash on our airplanes just a few days after the eruption. After a few weeks I moved to Utah.

I lived in East Layton, UT, just a mile or so away from Hill AFB where I flew the F-16 for almost four years. Lots of fun to fly, it was a new airplane. A gadget lovers dream. But so much for fun, off to Maxwell AFB in Montgomery, Alabama, for a year of Air Command and Staff College. My least favorite year in the USAF and probably my life. I really disliked the school and many of the people I met in Montgomery were very prejudiced. Classmates from Africa had a hard time getting served in many of the restaurants downtown. I actually lived on Gunter AFB which was a small base on the east side of Montgomery.

My next assignment was to the Pentagon and I moved to Lakeridge, Virginia, about 20 miles south of the Pentagon. I lived in two houses in Lakeridge, one a big colonial wannabe, the other a cottage like place. And I got divorced.

I moved to a tiny little house in Arlington, Virginia, about a half mile from the Pentagon. I got married again! That was 33 years ago and we’re still going strong. We moved to Alexandria for ten years and then to Springfield, VA, another Northern Virginia community. We raised our three kids in Alexandria and Springfield and enjoyed the communities and the school. But the pace is hectic. The county we lived in has almost 1.2 million people…that’s more than all of South Dakota.

So, we moved. To our last place. A small house in a small community, Manakin Sabot, just a few miles northwest of Richmond, VA. It’s an adjustment which we are enjoying.

I’m a product of twenty-plus different houses/apartments in 13-plus town/communities, seven states, and two countries. The places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, the things I’ve done and seen…all pretty cool. I’m thankful.

The image above is of President Tyler’s home on the Sherwood Forest Plantation. I went there last year. Tyler’s family still owns the place.

Rockville, Iceland

Entering the 932nd Aircraft Control & Warning Squadron Facility, Rockville, Iceland

Shortly after arriving in Iceland, I was told my assignment had been changed and I was going to Rockville. I was not prepared. The main base at Keflavik had been Nordic sparse but it was not too different than a base you might find in the U.S. Rockville, on the other hand, was right out of a movie. In fact, when I was coming through the gate next to the sign in the image above, I almost laughed out loud. I was reminded of the M.A.S.H. set…gravel and dirt roads, no tents but metal quonset huts, rocks painted white to mark the boundaries of the few streets on base since the streets looked just like the “lawns.” This was to be my home for a year.

Rockville Barracks

I don’t remember how many people were there, about a hundred I think. The white domes were the radar antennae, one for azimuth, one for altitude. The buildings were mostly barracks. There was a chow hall that was outstanding, an all ranks club, and a building just for the officers called the RORO (Reserve Officers Recreation Organization). There was one barracks for officers, the rest for enlisted. There was an admin building for the boss and his staff, an operations building between the two domes, a gymnasium and various warehouses for storing crap. All the sidewalks had roped stakes along the sides for use in blizzards.

The barracks were cold in the winter. Very cold. The wind would blow through them because they weren’t sealed where the wall met the concrete base of the building. As the snow fell and melted at the base of the wall, it iced over and became the barrier required to keep us warm. Actually, that’s kind of funny, iced over to stay warm.

Operations in Rockville

No such thing as a computer in Rockville. The board you see is clear plexi with the center on Rockville, an outline of the island and mileage bands. When we had any traffic, a tech would plot the target FROM BEHIND the plexiglass with grease pencil. They had to know how to write backwards. We had three tiers of “scopes,” surveillance, weapons, and command (Weapons Assignment Officer-WAO). In those days, the Soviet TU-95 bombers would take off from Murmansk and head for either Cuba or a base in Africa. They had to fly through the Greenland-Iceland-UK gap. We would get notified by the Norwegians we had “Bears” (TU-95s) on the way. The USAF didn’t have E-3A AWACS then, they had a modified EC-121, or ADOLA. The EC-121 was an old, old airplane but was the first to have airborne surveillance radar. But it was SLOW. ADOLA would fly up northeast of Iceland and wait for the Soviets to show up. When they did, they’d notify us and we’d scramble the F-4Cs that were on alert at Keflavik.

WAO scope and command desk, Ops in Rockville

The Ops center was operational 24x7 every day of the year. There were three crews and we worked three shifts. I don’t remember the exact hours but it seemed fair for people on “remote” tour. I think they were 12 hour shifts on some sort of 4-3-3 rotation. Too long ago. We had enough time to drink and be merry, that’s for sure. For a while, I went to the gym most nights with my buddy Rocky. I discovered dating again and met women from Iceland and the U.S. Many evenings, the officers would go to the RORO and watch a movie. Movie releases came to us on 16mm film and we had a projector that would play the sound as well as project. None of them were current releases but they were fun to watch. I can remember when someone new came and asked if we’d ever seen “Star Wars.” We were clueless.

Softball Field, Rockville, Iceland

The image above is from just outside the left field fence of the softball field. I don’t recall that anyone played when I was there. The field was not very level…lots of holes and rocks. The grass was not thick and the pain of falling would have been significant if you were running. The gym is in the background.

The main sport of Rockville was drinking. The all ranks club drinks were fifty cents, maybe a quarter. They used to have a sign behind the bar that said, “YCHJCYAQFTJ.” People would ask the bartender (another GI) what it meant and he replied, “Your curiosity has just cost you a quarter for the jukebox.” And we’d pay.

The sport of drinking can lead to all sorts of stupid activities. I remember one night my buddy Rocky was telling folks about his time as a paratrooper. He convinced them that for heights of less than twenty feet or so, you really didn’t need a parachute…it was all about how you landed! The PLF, parachute landing fall. After liquid encouragement, he took several of them to one of the barracks where they practiced PLFs from the bed to the floor. And then from a table to the floor. Then he got a ladder and they were headed to the roof of the barracks. I said, “Whooaaa, big fella!” And he went home to bed.

Life there was crazy and I admit that perhaps a little out of control at times. They didn’t have a barber on base…the commander arranged for a bus to the main base each Saturday so people could get haircuts. I refused. I had a car. But I have always hated haircuts. The commander just shook his head. Towards the end of my tour, the fighter squadron commander told me that if I didn’t get my haircut, I couldn’t fly anymore. I told him, “Cool, I won’t fly.”

My year long tour wasn’t actually a year long. I was selected to be in the William Tell Competition in Florida and was gone for a month. I went with my buddy Rock to Kitzbuhel, Austria for two weeks to learn how to ski. I went to the U.S. for two weeks for a date. I went to Minneapolis at the end of the date to see my dad who was in the University hospital. And since I could leave anytime in July, I found a flight that left 10 minutes after midnight on 1 July and got on that flight back to the U.S.

The irony. I enjoyed my time in Iceland. I asked the USAF if I could stay another year. They giggled and made me a Forward Air Controller in Austin, TX. Hah.

The James (Jim) Rivers

Canal next to the James River in Richmond, VA

I see some irony in the rivers of my life, I began near the James River in Huron, SD, and, now in the latter years of my life, am living next to the James River in Richmond, VA. Unsurprisingly, there’s quite a difference between the two rivers. Huron’s James River is 710 miles long and is the 18th longest in the United States. Eighteenth!! The mighty James River in Virginia is only 340 miles long, about half the distance of the midwest’s James, but, Virginia’s James River is deeply steeped in history, beginning in the days of Jamestown, Pocahontas, Civil War, etc. Huron’s James (we called it the Jim) doesn’t have quite so much history but it is still quite a river.

I think we Huronites may have taken The Jim for granted. When I was young, we’d fish in the river. Usually not at the Third Street Dam but upriver, close to what was the Spink County Dam. I wonder if that’s still there? We caught quite a few fish in the river, especially carp. My dad called carp “garbage fish” and when we’d catch them, we’d throw them somewhere on the bank where the birds could eat them. Dad considered carp bad fish because they competed with walleye, catfish, etc., for space and other resources.

The Jim smelled bad when I was young. My friends and I would go down to the river at 13th St, there was only a field between Lawnridge Ave and the river. We’d go there just to look at the rushing water and skip stones, and tell stories. We didn’t consider swimming or even wading in the water. The water was mud brown, almost black, with oily stains and suds from something. Most of the time the wind blew from west to east so you couldn’t smell it unless you were right there. I imagine that the city and Armours pumped raw sewage or only partly processed sewage into the river. Sometime in the late 60s they built the big ponds east of Armours and the river miraculously seemed to get cleaner.

When I got older, I’d hike along the river bank to the cemetery, then onto the road next to the cemetery and then onto Stony Run. A cool place to sit and ponder the oddities of being a teenager. In later years, Stony Run was where we “parked” and had different kinds of adventures. Back to Huron’s James.

When I was old enough to drive, I talked my dad into letting me borrow the car and his boat. He had a 10’ aluminum fishing boat with a three horsepower Evinrude outboard. I put the boat onto the cartop rack, the engine in the trunk, and stopped at the gas station to fill the one gallon gas tank (oil mixture, of course). I somehow talked my girlfriend into going with me. She must have liked me a lot.

I’m sure I had visions of Huckleberry Finn in my head as we launched from Memorial Park into the rather swiftly running river. The challenge was to get the engine started before the boat was sucked into the dam just a quarter of a mile downstream. The little Evinrude roared to life and off we went. But things did not go as well as Mark Twain might have written them.

It was summer. The boat was shiny aluminum. Neither of us had hats. I’m not sure we had sunglasses. I don’t remember if we even had water. If I had to guess, I’d guess probably not. But that little Evinrude chugged along splendidly. Good mileage, however, was not an attribute of the little workhorse. The river widened and seemed to be more shallow. We reached a point where the water was so shallow that trees and debris were piled high in much of the riverbed blocking the way upstream. I thought I could see a place between branches where we could get through and continue upriver.

But then. Sanity briefly struck. I had thought that when I ran out of gas, I’d be able to row downriver and be in great shape. But the river was wider and moving more slowly, and it was hot, and I was tired, and we were both thirsty. I took the opportunity to admit the adventure was over and that we should turn around. My girlfriend readily agreed. We still had gas and we were headed downstream so our speed was great. We landed, put the boat on the car and drove to the Plains for a soda. Two hot, tired, sweaty teenagers. Lesson learned.

Did I tell you I am considering a kayak for my new James?

James River at Third Street Dam in Huron, SD, 2017

The Red Shirt Guy

Ave Maria Grotto, AL

Characters that die early in a movie or TV episode are typically known as Red Shirt Guys. This term apparently comes from the first TV “Star Trek” series. All the characters who went with Kirk and Spock to the surface (of a planet they were supposed to avoid) were at risk. And, the actors knew that if they wore a red shirt, their character was on its last episode. That’s had me thinking for a bit and I thought it appropriate, in light of the new John Wick movie, to go down the rabbit hole chasing the Red Shirt Guy. Red Shirt Guys don’t have a long life expectancy in the movie or series. This won’t be a long read.

I have always enjoyed action movies, shoot ‘em ups, good vs bad, etc. Some are documentary-like, some are realistic war movies, and some are just over the top. Take “Kill Bill” for instance. I love the choreography, the music, the weapons play, the woman power, and the comeuppance. But holy crap…can you count the number of bad guys killed in the two movies? And John Wick!! Next time you’re mean to a dog, hope it’s not his. He’s on his fourth movie and, holy crap again, can you count the bodies that are laying around the city? I think the first movie of this genre (yes, it is a genre IMHO) was “The Wild Bunch,” a western made 40 years ago that didn’t try to minimize the violence and mayhem. So now…

Imagine that you are one of the crew on the other side, i.e., your boss killed John Wick’s dog. Are you married? Have kids? What does your family think as you suit up in the morning with your 9mm semi-autos and your M82? What are your health benefits like? Are there other spouses who can get together and form a grief support group with you?

And “Kill Bill,” they all live in a compound training hour after hour, day after day. I’m guessing they had no family except their parents. Was the group they were in a cult? Were they required to follow O-Ren Ishii no matter what or where? I’m also guessing there were no death benefits.

What if you’re the good guy taking your fiancee for a fun day at the beach and then to propose. She’s the Red Shirt Girl and is killed by terrorists in the first few minutes of the movie. “American Assassin”

I know, I know. All this sounds ridiculous. The movies whisk us into a fantasy world of action, excitement, danger, choreography and amazing audio. What the movie leaves out, however, is the Red Shirt Guys (and Gals) who die in an extravagant gala of death (think “Dead Pool”) come from somewhere. And wherever that somewhere is, will be less one family member that night.

I don’t wear red shirts. I never dressed my kids in red shirts. It’s really not so crazy.

Living In The U.S.A.

Laguna Beach, CA

I’ve lived in the plains of South Dakota, the mountains of Utah, the beaches of Florida, the heat of Alabama, the huge spaces of Texas, and many more. Not because I’m a nomad but rather because those are the places the Air Force thought I should go. I enjoyed moving, well mostly, and I enjoyed every place I lived. Well mostly. I found that each place had something special, on both ends of the good-bad spectrum and that’s just the way life is.

I deleted the rest of the post I’d written; I just finished reading a story about a town in Michigan and I could write no more. We are so divided in America it’s heartbreaking. We don’t talk. We don’t compromise. We weaponize everything from churches to schools. We allow anyone that’s different to be bullied, attacked, and even killed. We ban books. We deny science. We squander resources. I used to think it was just a few, but now I read that more and more extremists are being elected into office. So although their politics and morals might be extremist they aren’t just a few crazies, they are an increasing majority in the country. Or seem to be. They don’t want to be governed but only to be the ones that govern. How will that end? I wonder if the country will crumble into the hands of local warlords. The rest of the world will probably shake their heads and say, “How could they not see that coming?”

Garden of the Gods, CO