THE TENTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I went to work on my stuff, just outside the exposed rock area where the choppers had come in. The area wasn’t that large, having hardly the footprint of an average small home back in the real world.
THE NINTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
I waited, my body spread face down and flat on the jungle floor. It would have been a time of rest and relaxation if an attack by unknown numbers of wily, capable and well-armed opponents weren’t also waiting somewhere out in the night.
THE NINTH NIGHT, 30 Days Has September
I lay prone on the jungle mat of fallen leaves, fronds and smaller branches. I couldn’t tell how deep the mass under me was, although back at the hole we’d blown earlier, the jungle floor mat seemed like it was almost a foot thick. It was better than the mud. We had...
THE CHILDREN
Getting ready? Getting ready for national leadership that does not believe in the advances of science in computers, the Internet, email, or most anything else? Well, Donald Trump rails against all of those things. Get ready for worrying about nuclear war again. Donald...
JUST A HARD-WORKING JOE
Getting ready? Getting ready for what you now might see coming but maybe not? The ethics thing was a just a beginning. Ryan is in as Speaker, both houses are republican and Trump is about to become president. So you wanted all those people to lose their medical...
GOOD TRUMP MOVE
When Donald Trump does something that appears to be good, well, I write about it. I do not think he’s a bad or evil man. I simply think he’s about as daffy as a cartoon character. What did he do? He went up against his own republicans in making idiots out...
THE NINTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
When the company came to a slowing halt, I was more than ready to rest. The straps of my pack burned where they pressed down over the narrower suspender straps that held up my web belt. We’d made it back close to where the company had veered north and gone to the aid...
THE NINTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
The West Pointer Captain Mertz’s plan to stay waiting for resupply, and take credit for the kills and any wounded NVA left behind, made logical sense. I knew that neither I, nor any of the Marines in the company, gave a tinker’s damn about who got credited for anything.
GLACIAL PERIOD
Are we looking forward to a Glacial period? America has focused all the attention of this part of the universe on itself and one man in particular. Not a man of the New Testament or Old. Not a man of philosophy or advanced education in any science. Not a man...
AVIATION WEEK and SPACE TECHNOLOGY
Aviation Week and Space Technology is a weekly magazine that every thinking and feeling American should subscribe to.
Why? Oh, because it is a magazine about air travel and space?
HOME IN THE MEADOW, Debbie Reynolds
And so Debbie Reynolds dies too. Her daughter dies and then the mom. For someone old like me, that mom sang Home in the Meadow. for the movie How the West Was Won. That transformation of the old English Greensleeves entranced me as a youngster and it’s lyrics...
THE NINTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
The rest of the night passed in mud, a penetrating mist returning to add some sort of cutting liquid thinner to the blood being sucked in by the feeding mosquitos. There was no more firing or explosions that I was aware of, as I lay in my semi-comatose state replacing real sleep.
PRINCESS LEIA, Carrie Fisher, RIP
Why am I bothered by the loss of Carrie Fisher, Princess Leia? She was the daughter of a giant actress and great crooner plus given just about everything except bliss and happiness. Her book on her life made it to the top of the best seller list. She had it all and...
FAKE NEWS
Why the mass media broadcasts tons of ‘fake news’ and is not held accountable simply because there is no one to hold them accountable. Donald Trump has come closest to being a force to hold them accountable because of the fact that he has tweeted outside...
THE KING
Here’s a direct quote from the two leaders of the current republican party in a communique meant to go out to the entire nation: “Over two millennia ago, a new hope was born into the world, a Savior who would offer the promise of salvation to all mankind. Just...
CHRISTMAS
Appreciation and reflection. That’s Christmas for those who have a body of life experience and some measure of intellect. Thinking about it all. Life itself, the meaning of existence and, in particular, our place in the social order we’ve fashioned for...
WHO ARE YOUR ‘FRIENDS?'”
The biggest question of all for the people who voted for Donald Trump, and the very biggest chunk of evaluative data that you can use to figure out who you should have as friends and who you should not. The biggest question is “how could anyone, man or woman,...
THE EIGHTH NIGHT SECOND PART, 30 Days Has September
Relief flooded through me. It was over. I’d survived another of what my team called ‘fire fights’. There was no way to adjust to the change from combat to whatever this was. It was still dark. My ears still rang. But with my night vision returning, I could vaguely see...
THE FIFTH TREE
Two days to go. 88.67% done with the Christmas shopping and about 67% done with the preparations. I wonder what the percentages are for most other families. This season is both wonderful and trying because it is hard to beatifically celebrate with some sort of dignity...
THE PAPER TREE
The news came in waves that day and did not stop as night fell. Their parents were gone. The police had come and the drugs been found and the cuffs put on. Christine knew her parents would not be coming back for some time. They hadn’t been bad parents except when they...
THE EIGHTH NIGHT, 30 Days has September
The move was a long hard one. In training I’d literally run twenty miles with a forty-pound pack on my back carrying an M-14 and wearing a full helmet and liner. I had none of those things going down the ridge, in hopes of coming in behind whatever units were set up to ambush
FISH BALL
Are we in the center of a Fish Ball? Ho-hum. We wait. Maybe it is just that America got bored. So everyone is waiting until the inauguration so that interest and entertainment can begin. Remember, we are not the far from the public rushing to big parks and meeting...
TO ARMS
To arms. Now is the time. Not to fight but to get ready to fight. And you can’t fight with a protest sign, banner or a loud voice. America is a wonderful wonderland of legal weaponry. The right wing has assured that small arms would be available to almost...
Arch Patton, Down in the Valley, Chapter 1
How in hell he came to be lying in cloying dismal mud at the base of an extinct Hawaiian volcano eluded Arch Patton. He just lay there, trying to catch his breath…..
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Arch Patton, Down in the Valley, Chapter 2
Arch Patton DOWN IN THE VALLEY Chapter 2 By J. Strauss
Arch Patton, Down in the Valley, Chapter 3
Arch completely understood Virginia’s need to toss him from the room and get on her cell phone. The active career he’d only recently retired from demanded he understand and leave immediately after the short dinner and even shorter get together in her room……
THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE, December 19, 2016
Sounds of Silence Dateline: United States December 19, 2016 This night the electoral college of the United States of America redefines sanity, freedom and success in a country gone lame, as it begins to stagger into the new millennium, hurt but still there…....
ELMER FUDD
The other side. My neighbor, a really great guy who is in the investment business, was walking his dog near my house yesterday afternoon between snow falls.
Curdled Cream in my Coffee
The other side. I was at the coffee shop yesterday when a retired doctor came in. He’s a really nice older man and we almost never talk. However, I am known for the Geneva Shore Report newspaper, so he thought it time to tell me about Donald Trump. He feels that...
THE EIGHTH DAY THIRD PART, 30 Days Has September
I stared up at the unlikely and ungainly monster of a loud propeller-driven airship. The Skyraider didn’t look like it could stay in the air, but there it was, orbiting dependably..
Arch Patton, Down in the Valley, Chapter 4
Arch Patton Down in the Valley Chapter 4 by James Strauss Arch fought the chair, sounds of pain emanating from deep down in his chest. His left arm finally came loose but a three-foot section of wood remained attached to his hand by the hard driven nails....
Arch Patton, Down in the Valley, Chapter 5
Arch Patton DOWN IN THE VALLEY Chapter 5 By J. Strauss “What do you want?” the formerly dangerous man on the bed said, his voice imploring, extending his arms out before him with both palms turned upward in...
Arch Patton, Down In the Valley, Chapter 6
Arch Patton DOWN IN THE VALLEY Chapter 6 By J. Strauss “Where we goin’ boss?” Matisse yelled from the drivers seat, as Arch got into the old battered convertible. Matisse accelerated away so fast the huge single door on the passenger side slammed with the sound of...
THE HOT DOG
Duplicity, it overwhelms us through and by the media, as the mass media continues to coddle the coming to America of those surviving great-grand children who escaped from Germany after the World War II to land in Antarctica or Argentina or somewhere. What duplicity?...
FOOTSTEPS IN THE MUD
Tanzania. Three and a half million years ago. Archaeologists have found hominid footprints not much different from those humans today might have left, as they walked across a soft mud stretch of ground. Those footsteps in mud became stone, and then were buried under...
Arch Patton, Down in the Valley, Chapter 7
The Hertz counter was empty when Arch went in to get a car more fitting than Matisse’s Pontiac convertible. There were plenty of cars and Arch didn’t bother to try to negotiate rates. A hundred dollars a day for a Cadillac……
THE EIGHTH DAY SECOND PART, 30 days Has September
I finished my letter home, the light of dawn sufficient to allow me to see the paper almost as well as the lousy black ink from my cheap government ballpoint.
Arch Patton, Down in the Valley, Chapter 8
The rash guards weren’t so bad, Arch decided, wishing he had a vanity mirror to check himself out in. Like a wetsuit, but better because the thin elastic long sleeve top and bottoms held everything in without giving him a feeling of being compressed……..
BURNING BRIDGES
There are a lot of people mad at me, and some filled with disdain, because I write on here from the heart about what I believe, and it is not what they believe, and others who are simply afraid that I will complicate my life with needless enemies and those seeking my...
Arch Patton, Down in the Valley, Chapter 9
Arch Patton DOWN IN THE VALLEY Chapter 9 By James Strauss The Humvee proved to be empty, an enlisted Marine wearing no rank exiting the vehicle as Matisse and Arch got in. The heavy armored door slammed shut and the driver took off. There was nobody else in the...
B-17 Bomber
Go watch the movie about Jesse Owens running in the 1936 Olympics. It’s called “Race.” You will sit stunned. It was made long before the Trump thing happened. It’s downright eerie. The strange part is how they got the German Nazi part so down...
THE EIGHTH DAY, 30 Days Has September
Dawn would not come. Again. A slight change in the dead blackness of lower jungle life was the only clue that dawn was in the offing. I looked at my combat watch only to realize that I could barely read it anymore.
THE BROWNING 410
What happened in this last election was a bit of manipulation and a whole lot of anger. And it’s all about the Browning 410 shotgun that my friend in Washington keeps in his back closet. My friend is a great artist who doesn’t know he’s a great...
1993, Arch Patton, Chapter 1
Arch was on the beach across from Hanalei, kicking sand, and listening to a small battery powered radio belt out House of the Rising Sun, when his life came apart at the seams. Fired from the CIA for cause, again. Unable to pay for the room…….
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Is the News declaring Merry Christmas? According to the same news that brought us all the fake news before this last election, preceded by huge loads of fake news about the wars we’ve been involved with lately, the message now is that Donald Trump will just be...
Arch Patton, It Was 1993, Chapter 2
It wasn’t to be him or Arch Patton. It was only going to be him. Arch wasn’t a knuckle dragger and he’d never been one. You don’t fight a force of nature and when such a force materialized outside his room on the lanai the thing appeared…
Arch Patton, Down in the Valley, Chapter 10
“Stairway to Heaven?” Arch said, looking intently into Matisse’s eyes. “I don’t like the way you said that. What heaven or what hell are you talking about and what does it have to do with the word Haiku, General DeWare mentioned…..
THE BIG WAVE
I am trying to face into the storm, to sit on my metaphorical surfboard and stare out over the tops of smaller waves waiting for the big wave, hoping that the coming storm is not the storm of the century and the big wave is not a tsunami. I fight my basal desire to...
OH HOLY NIGHT
Holy Nights in the City of Denver, Colorado, The police there have been confiscating blankets from the homeless under a new law that allows them to take away everything homeless persons possess and destroy it. The new law is to prevent illegal camping inside the city...
ON HUMAN KINDNESS
To identify what’s wrong with conservatism and Republicanism – and now with so much of America as we are about to enter the Trump era – you don’t need high-blown theories or deep sociological analysis or surveys. The answer is as simple as it...
Arch Patton, It Was 1993, Chapter 3
Arch searched the house. The dog paid close attention, but never moved from his sitting position in the small great room, as if his view of the sandy beach and pounding surf beyond was not to be surrendered. There was nobody in the house.
Arch Patton, Down in the Valley, Chapter 11
Arch and Matisse hiked the quarter mile back past Sunset Beach until they came to Ted’s Bakery. Ted Nakamura ran the place and he knew Matisse from way back, or so Matisse claimed………..
Arch Patton, Down in the Valley Chapter 12
Peeling the duct tape from Virginia’s face was like peeling skin from the surface of a Kiwi fruit. Virginia said nothing. Her eyes spoke for her and there was as much warmth in them as there is warmth emanating from the bottom of blue glacier ice……
THE PORSCHE
I helped a guy in Hawaii once. I was helping him run his little bitty but very upscale auto repair shop. He worked on cars I loved, like Ferrari and Porsche. I worked for free and I didn’t even have a car. This guy was a seemingly great expressive and...
Arch Patton, It Was 1993, Chapter 4
Arch slept deeply for the first time since the classified file had appeared out of nowhere to give him his life back but also to offer him death once again, in a life controlled by unaccountable serendipity. He awoke next to the woman who lay just like he’d left her many hours before, with Harpo the Dingo lying across her feet…..
LOST HERE IN AMERICA
Why did we, as a country, choose to ‘toy with the system in here in America? What did we do when we made that decision? What will be the result of sweeping changes that are now going to reverberate back and forth across the country and then the world?
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