“Wanna walk up to the post office with me?” “No. I hate walking to get mail. It takes like forty minutes, and nothing gets done,” Pretty Wife said. “It makes me crazy.” “OK.” Couldn’t blame the lass. I tore a little cartilage in my right knee about a month ago, playing at Aikido with people … [more]
Eight tickets to Hell in a handbasket
17-May-2013 by 2 Comments
Just to rub a clear spot in the nacre, let me put it out there: I loathe public transportation in all its forms (except the ferry, and even then I go stand out in the wind, alone). Strangers are untrustworthy, but I can relate to them on a few-at-a-time basis. Crowds, on the other hand, … [more]
Corporate Benfeasance
30-April-2013 by 2 Comments
Some years before I met Pretty Wife, she was gifted with a mighty fine spade by her excellent mother, who is a gardening dynamo of distinguished taste. Even several years later, it remains a lovely thing with the kind of gleam to its ever-honed stainless steel blade that exemplifies a friend’s description of my snappy … [more]
Open Email to the Christian Coalition of America
17-April-2013 by 2 Comments
ON 17April13, I received the following communication from the Christian Coalition of America: Dear Friend, Believe it or not, materials in an official US Army Reserve training program listed evangelical Christians as “extremists”. It even lumped us into the same category as the KKK, Hamas and Al Qaeda. Yes, really. After receiving numerous complaints from … [more]
For Edichka, who asked
6-April-2013 by 8 Comments
What is it that I like about guns? Nothing specific. Good gear is good gear. It’s no more about the guns than dancing is about shoes, or dutiful service is about collecting ribbons on your blouse. My dad inherited three rifles and four shotguns from his father. Grandpa was a longtime hunter and fisherman in … [more]
Cheating the Taxman
22-March-2013 by 1 Comment
It was sad when the big cherry fell, but not scary. What was scary was how it fell: straight through Jaminaz’s garage roof, cleaving it like an axe all the way down to about three feet above the floor at the spot where he’d been standing, working on a cylinder head, forty minutes before the … [more]
So according to the VA…
21-March-2013 by Leave a Comment
… a veteran of the U.S. armed forces kills him (or her!) self every 80 minutes, ’round the clock, all day long, every day except Christmas — when the rates go up. A last call every 80 minutes means 18 veterans dead by their own hand, every. single. day. The great State of Wyoming recently … [more]
Math is hard
14-March-2013 by 6 Comments
…but sequestration is easy. Sequestration avoids all that hard stuff about negotiation, compromise, and putting things into adult perspective. You know: the things we pay our leaders to do. Therefore, citizen, do not ask where the meat axe falls. It falls on you. All four military services plus the Coast Guard have cancelled their education … [more]
"Jack Lewis takes the overall literary crown with his new book...there’s a lot more to Lewis’s work than what it feels like to ride motorcycles.” — Ultimate Motorcycling
"Insightful and from the heart ... a driven and much recommended look into the mind and conflict of the next generation of war veterans. " — Midwest Book Review (Reviewer's Choice)