There Go I; Why I am Proud to be Called a Liberal
Last week I posted a diary that was neither eloquent nor overtly political. I did not blame any particular person or group or party for my current situation. I merely spoke honestly (if inelegantly)...
View ArticleMy years with Back Track Mac -Part I
In the fall of 1947 I decided I had had enough of the Army. I can’t count the number of times I had the same thought over the years, but now I was going to do something about it. I have forgotten...
View ArticleMy years with Back Track Mac Part II
Most of us were promoted a stripe just before we were ordered to Korea, so I was now a Staff Sgt. They loaded the enlisted personnel of the unit, about 80 of us, into trucks and took us to the train...
View ArticleMy years with Back Track Mac - Part III
In 48 I reenlisted at the exact right time due to dumb luck. The Republicans controlled both houses of Congress then but it takes a long time for political ideology to filter down the system and...
View ArticleMy years with Back Track Mac, Part -IV
A buddy of mine who was with the 7th Div. pointed out I made a mistake in Part III about General Ed Almond’s rank. He used about 50 derogative adjectives before he got to the surname. I came to the...
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How Can I Possibly Show You This? || A Passionate Photo Narrative Inspired by...
I'm rarely at a loss for words. However, as I sit before the screen, attempting to distill the intensity of my experience at #OccupyDC, a single thought keeps repeating: I'm going to fail.See, as I...
View ArticleMy years with Back Track Mac - Part V
The other Staff, lets call him Sgt. Jay, was from Tennessee. He had a lot more time in service than I, but my date of rank was one day earlier than his so like Gen. Haig when Reagan was shot, I was...
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The Bank Employee Yelled, "Get a Job!" | My 8-year-old Daughter Replied,...
Yesterday, our family went down to Occupy Pittsburgh to donate some wool socks, knit hats and loaves of freshly-baked pumpkin bread. It was an outing my eldest daughter (a second grader) was quite...
View ArticleWATCH THIS! - Oakland Cop Outed as Infiltrator Supports #OWS, Says OPD...
Fred Shavies, an undercover police officer outed while embedding himself within Occupy Oakland, has stepped forward in a brave and brutally frank interview with Justin Warren.The video, which came to...
View ArticleThe Glass Churn
The year was 1936 when we bought the Jersey Cow. I don’t think I was ever told where the money came from to buy Bessie or how much she cost. I always suspect my maternal grandparents supplied some or...
View ArticleWhat I would say to West and I am Julia Sugarbaker IRL
There are reasons I do not run for public office. I do not have the patience, nor the tact to take on ignorant,stupid people. I have a little bit, of shall we say, opionated, outspoken, attitude...
View ArticleI quit a job in 1975 over Classwarfare
I know it is so much out in the open now but all of this in your face classwar reminded me of long ago and far away in Atlanta, Ga I quit a job over the injustice of what I was trying to be forced to...
View ArticleThe Daily Bucket - lost critters
The Daily Bucket is a place where we post and exchange our observations about what is happening in the natural world in our neighborhood. Bugs, buds, birds - each note is a record that we can refer to...
View ArticleThe Child and the Outlander
Looking back over the past decades of my life, let’s see there have been 8 of those now and change; I am amazed at how much knowledge I possessed about my environment at the age of 9. No one sat me...
View ArticleTo The Straight Allies of Equality
It is a foregone conclusion these days that full marriage equality will happen. Especially since a sitting President has now come out in favor of it.What I know is that we would never have come this...
View ArticleWe're all in this together
I grew up in rural AZ, where at the time it seemed like Caucasians were outnumbered by Hispanics. As a young adult one of my closest friends was Hispanic. She had 9 children, and her mother didn't...
View ArticleRiding the City Bus in Honolulu
I don’t drive anymore. At my wife’s insistence I sold my car just before my 79th birthday. She said I had lost a step and should not be driving but I never truly believed that. Still, and this...
View ArticleIt wasen't that long ago folks
My brother was born in the spring of 1936. Initially he did not do well and the reason, it was finally decided, Mother’s milk was just not enough to sustain him. My grandmother attributed the “weak...
View ArticleAt 14, it was no “Gift from God”, Trust Me
I was born overseas to American missionaries. My father lost his faith by the time I was two and my parents returned to the US for grad school.My father, his brother, and their father raped and...
View ArticleSpinning Straw into Gold
My mother said, “Mr. McFadden hung himself yesterday.” She was talking to one of my Aunts. I have forgotten which one now, I use to have a bunch of those, but anyway, I overheard the remark. The...
View ArticleMilitary Privatization
I retired from service in the spring of 1967 with the rank of E-8. I get a very nice retirement check every month that enables my wife and me to live a reasonably comfortable life style here in...
View ArticleMy eight year old knows that to start a fire you start small and build up
I can hear the January Michiganwind literally howl as it whips over the chimney topSssssccchhhhhweeeeeeerrrrrrrrllllllllllllll....it says.We heat with wood. And to start an appropriate fire for the...
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How I got my Boss Detained by the FBI
Tierra o Muerte, bytegirl24, flickr It was a sunny weekend morning about fifteen years ago. Here in Rio Arriba County, northern New Mexico, occasional bombs were still going off in remote mountain...
View ArticleThe decline of service
As a child, back in the 30’s, I lived in the country. Most rural America back then lived in about the same conditions that most of humanity had for a couple of thousand years. There were some...
View ArticleThinking Out Loud
Have you ever gone to one of those "today in history" websites, or newspaper items, to check out what happened on the day you were born?I haven't.Because ever since my 8th birthday, history entered my...
View ArticleMy Friend Jimmy (with apologies to Mary O'Hara)
Actually, I’m not really sure of Jimmy’s gender but since his personal characteristics were bold and masculine, we called him Jimmy. One of the very many positive things about our relationship was he...
View ArticleThe Radio
The little Pennsylvania town where our shack was located had, and this is a rough guess, a population of 40 families. There was a grocery store with no electricity or refrigeration and a gas station...
View ArticleIIRC 02
This was my mother-in-law's favorite story. She was 65 by the time I met her, and older still when I first heard the story. I hope I can do it justice.My mother-in-law's name was Charlotte, an...
View ArticleWhy I Said "No" to CBS Sunday Morning: A Story of Sensationalism & the...
Originally published in Tikkun Daily |Last week, my phone vibrated loudly, dancing upon the dining room table and startling me while writing. On the line was a producer for CBS Sunday Morning, who had...
View ArticleThe Telegraph (UK) Profiles My Book
With the upcoming release of my book –What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?– I've been balancing marketing opportunities with the need to protect my wife's...
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Adult Siblings
your inner child today is nothing like the kid you were...--my little sis, after several glasses of wine and three days of family hellFor years, I've been plagued by a contradiction in my life I can't...
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Four Yellow Roses
Not Victorian, but flower symbolism just the same We had to fight to get them in there, but when we finally said good-bye to my sister, there were four yellow roses there. A bit of silliness, perhaps,...
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New Mexico Struggles with ObamaCare
Truchas, NM I am director of a rural Health and Human Services in northern New Mexico; as such, I am at the front (and, geographically speaking, frontier) lines of ACA implementation. I am tasked with...
View ArticleInsurance
I am not an insurance expert and realize my views on the subject may be naïve. I do however have a good many years of experience so these are my observations for what they’re worth, and like the Fox...
View ArticleOf Airplanes and Funny Papers
Back during the Thirties, everyone, urban and rural, read the newspaper comic strips. It was one of the glues that helped hold our society together. If you mentioned Boob McNutt or Joe Palooka...
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Mothers Day Laugh...The names have been changed to protect the embarassed !
Well first and foremost, allow me to swear to you every word is true. You just can't make this stuff up. I think of it every Mother's day and laugh till tears roll. I hope you can understand a...
View ArticleIn praise of SOS
It is written, (in a prior diary) that in the late winter of 1947, I had grown so discontented with my lot in the U.S. Army that, I QUIT! I was stationed at Fort Knox Kentucky, 3rd Armor Division at...
View ArticleWhen in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout!
The first real pandemic to hit the United States occurred a few years before I was born. That being said, it was still fresh enough in people’s minds that it was talked about all during my teen...
View ArticleHey, it’s Payday!
Surely there are some people here at Kos who remember when the U.S. Army payed everyone in cash. All the branches did but I am most familiar with the Army. The paymaster was usually a Captain who...
View ArticleThere is something wrong with the system
I use to watch a Japanese TV show every week called “Kage no Gundon” which translates to Shadow’s Warriors in English. I watched weather I wanted to or not because my sub servant Japanese wife...
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The Weirdness of Planning for Extreme Old Age
My husband and I aren’t getting any younger. In fact, looking at us, you’d say we’re downright old. It’s taken me two years to accept that at 72, I’m no longer “middle-aged”: now I qualify as...
View ArticleHow I Got Off My Big Bohunkus and Began Exercising Again
Several weeks ago I stepped on the scale and saw, to my bone-dissolving horror, that I’ve put on 18 pounds since The Wedding three years ago. (The wedding was that of our elder son, then aged 43,...
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