Let Them Eat Cake, God Knows The Unions Can Afford It.

The New York Times, under an article written by David M. Herszenhorn, reported today that the

'Deal to Rescue American Automakers is Moving Ahead'.


'.....Nancy Pelosi hoped', or threatened as you may see things, 'that Mr. Bush's appointee- or car czar, as the position has come to be known- would not need to be replaced by President elect Obama, raising the prospect that the outgoing and incoming administrations would cooperate in selecting someone.' It also raises the prospect that either Mr. Bush will toe the line or the Democrats would prevail, one way or the other since Ms. Pelosi has summarily dismissed the two prospective names proffered by the Bush administration for the post.

Irrespective of what will churn on in debate and accusations, I, for one am opposed to a rescue. I am singularly opposed to any bailout however structured that would provide taxpayer money to the big 3 or big 2, depending on how you read this. (Ford hasn't quite come off the wheels....yet.)

'...Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, in comments on the Senate floor on Monday nodded to' ..(my).. 'concerns'... when he said."As we consider new legislation this week, we must first ensure that we do no harm to taxpayers later in our efforts to help out any one particular industry now. Troubled automakers cannot expect taxpayer help without a serious commitment to change their ways-permanently."

Mitch, thank you,...that sounds like a responsible attitude. It also sounds to me as though you are describing the types of remedies and protections that would be imposed on the automakers by a Chapter 11 filing and I'm down with it Senator,...really. All of us out here in reality land call that 'bankruptcy' and Mitch, some of us are on intimate terms with those remedies. Been there, done that,...hell, I've even got a 'Tee' shirt stuffed away somewhere I think.

See those last four words up there in italics? Change their ways permanently,...renegotiate their contracts maybe. I like it.

If you tow the mark, it works and survival is possible because bankruptcy is a protection. We might even get fuel efficient cars, but automakers don't think it will work. They think we won't buy cars from a 'bankrupt' company. Why not? We fly on 'bankrupt' airlines. How bad can a 'bankrupt' car be?

After all, the United States is nothing if not a nation of whiskey drummers and bible salesmen. We are up to the task. Our children grow up reveling in the fruits of marketing programs, slimy PR campaigns and hucksterism of every single sort and for everything they touch or see or want or emulate. A 'bankrupt' automaker is just a bump in the road. You won't even feel it if you're driving a Buick. See how easily that rolled right out? And I'm a carpenter. Want to see what DDB+W could do with it?

Marketing, what a tool, you just can't beat it.

But as badly as the big 3 eschew bankruptcy as 'bad for business' due to their jaundiced perceptions of the marketplace, it is not all bad news. Bankruptcy would mean that the big 3 would have to answer to the courts. Yeah,...judges and stuff, real courts.

A bailout would mean that the big 3 would answer to Congress and you would have to be a complete idiot not to see that attraction that holds for the likes of Pelosi, Reid, Frank, et al. on the wrong side of the aisle.

(OK,...sorry, that sounded a little too,...uh, conservative (small 'c' ) and Joan is over there making noises with the paper shredder again. I admit,...I've promised the wife to 'watch it' ....and then there was that thing about bleeding in my profile....) Let's just say,...the other side of the aisle and let it go.

OK.

With the Democrats traditionally and almost perennially beholden to the unions, including the incoming administration it becomes clear why they are pushing this bailout agenda. The biggest losers from a structured Chapter 11 will undoubtedly be the cozening unions.

Now in examination of that statement realize that if Toyota or Nissan or even BMW notices their fat profits circling the drain due to a slowdown in sales, they lay workers off. It make good business sense to do that. Nobody likes it but it happens. It's life. Not so the case with the big 3. The UAW won't permit it and any attempt at fiscal responsibility from the automakers is met with the usual threats. Why?

Simple, when you bow your head and respectfully become a member of the UAW they promise to continue your benefits for life. That's right. Life. You put in your twenty five, they do the rest. (Kind of like the old Kodak slogan,...only different.)

So what, you say. It's always been that way. Why sure it has. Always, at least back to the inception of the unions. Know anybody else who gets benefits for life?.......Think hard.......

.....That's right, Congress does. Salary and benefits, for life, no matter how long you serve. See how it works? If the big 3 go bankrupt all of their contracts have to be renegotiated...the UAW too. How long do you think those union benefits would last? That's what I think too.

With those fat pork benefits for people who haven't done a lick of work in tears down the shitter automobile costs will come down and that will be good for all of us, even the big 3.

When we're all feeling better, we might even take a look at the other pork recipients. Senator for life, Congressman for life, President for life,___________________ fill in the blank with whatever you like (Duvalier is taken though).

Maybe if those people had to live out their days on social security or actually pay for health insurance we might really get some 'Change we can believe in'.

But then I'm forgetting something.

How could I be so stupid? President elect Obama has promised to put an end to pork. I'm sure he meant just that,...aren't you?

Pass the cake please.

Shameless Self Advertisement

'Messing about in Small Boats at the Bottom of the Known World' is an idea I am pursuing that combines the concept of an unlikely knight errant and modern times. In support of that statement, suppose for a minute that you were not a British subject, that you were a short time from achieving one of your life's goals and that you were requested to abandon that goal in order to rescue some one you didn't like very much. Suppose also that the person making the request was none other that the Queen of England. What to do?

Well what can you do?

Mike Burgess, a dedicated but less than top ranked ocean racer pretty much does what you might expect. It is the getting there that we are concerned with in this story.

As an aside, let me say that I could use a collaborator. Someone who will help me with 'Britishisms', ( If that is not a word, it should be. ) someone female and versed in operating a sailboat under adverse conditions, and someone with a sense of humour. ( My own choice would be Ellen MacArthur but unfortunately I do not know her.)

Authonomy or not to be...Is that really the question?

Well,.....maybe...

As a new author albeit one who has been writing for years (specifically on fiction since 2004) and is, as yet still unrepresented and unpublished, let me say this. Authonomy, while perhaps having moved the slush pile online has at least allowed authors such as myself an opportunity to expose new work to an audience beyond the ten second attention of a potential contributor to our own respective and daily increasing slush piles of rejection letters.

As an author, I am acutely aware that the discipline required to complete a manuscript requires more than the determination simply to sit down and write. It also requires encouragement and criticism, hopefully constructive but we take what we can get, chew several times and then swallow. If either that encouragement or criticism is available from others similarly engaged then no matter what personalities enter the equation both, as offered, are appreciated.

Yes, you are variably correct in your statement that much of what is on Authonomy is crap. Who would expect differently from any comparable venue but notwithstanding the implied objection, welcome to life. Much of that is crap too yet we persevere, (there again, at least partially due to encouragement and criticism).

I, for one, and as a contributing Authonomy author, congratulate Harper Collins for taking a pro-active stance amidst the morass of publishers vetting processes and as you have severally noted the site is relatively new. Perhaps with encouragement and criticism it will mature. For now, if any new author should learn that networking and popularity are requisite parts of any contemplated career in writing then that author may do well. After all, the United States is nothing if not a nation of whiskey drummers and bible salesmen. Our children grow up reveling in the fruits of marketing programs, slimy PR campaigns and hucksterism of every single sort and for everything they touch or see or want or emulate. If they are very lucky children, and I include myself in this category, they will learn a lesson from the hoopla and come to appreciate that everything worthwhile that they will ever achieve in life will ultimately depend on their ability to SELL, and first they must learn to sell themselves. Everything else literally follows from there.

In the interim, with day jobs beckoning we keep plugging away.

Yet, if I, as an author am limited to writing queries and waiting in a vacuum until Jesus comes back for a reply, then I will take the vagaries of Authonomy any day.

My best regards to you all.

English,....101...or somewhere thereabouts....

My wife sent me this.

Coming from the Internet, as was stated, its provenance is unknown but as an article it tickled a remembrance, a feeling or whatever you like as a characterization.

You see,...I am an English teacher of sorts. I say 'of sorts' because I am not a product of the educational system, no lofty arreviste nor parvenue of wisdom, no professional...only an amateur.

I volunteer as a tutor under the aegis of the Literacy Council of Upper Pinellas. That is as in Pinellas County Florida, and for any of you that do not know it is a part of ProLiteracy America.

We teach basic literacy and English as a second language to anyone who has the tenacity to stay with the program. That applies to most of the students who enter our sphere of influence and throughout the years (more than 20 now) I have met many memorable students. Many even like the woman who authored the text below.

Nowadays, the main need is for ESL but years ago in the Allegheny Mountains, the emphasis was on basic literacy and as a then young man, that was always a mystery to me. I had trouble believing that students could complete school right here in the United States and graduate without ever having acquired the ability to read. Sad but true.

As a young tutor and barely out of college myself, I was daily and perpetually amazed at the level of skills I found displayed. Some could read an rite but not cipher. Others could cipher some and read but not rite. 'Book larnin' was something reserved for days when chores were not pressing or families did not need food. Some others, from every age spectrum had skills that were even quite rudimentary.

What follows below is representative of that finding and yet, watch just how well this woman actually does communicate. You will understand all of her thoughts without editing and you will be able to look into her being, and her existence with something as simple as a read through.

Try it.


Years ago, a Tennessee grandmother gave a new bride the following recipe for washing
clothes. It appears below just as it was written, and despite the spelling, has a bit
of philosophy. This is an exact copy as written and found in an old scrap book:

sic.
1. Bilt fire in backyard to heat kettle of rain water.
2. Set tubs so smoke wont blow in eyes if wind is pert or airish.
3. Shave one hole cake of lie soap in bilin water.
4. Sort things, make 3 piles.
1 pile white,
1 pile colored,
1 pile work britches and rags.
5. To make starch, stir flour in cool water to smooth,then thin down with bilin water.
6. Take white things, rub dirty spots on board,scrub hard, and then bile. Rub colored don't bile,
just! rinch and starch.
7. Take things out of kettle with broomstick handle,then rinch, and starch.
8. Hang old rags on fence! .
9. Spread tea towels on grass.
10. Pore rinch water in flower bed.
11. Scrub porch with hot soapy water.
12. Turn tubs upside down.
13. Go put on clean dress, smooth hair with hair combs. Brew cup of tea, drink it and rock a
spell and count your blessings.

God Bless America

~ Author Unknown ~

That was it. Simple and to the point and if you follow these directions you will gain mastery of your laundry.

I know these people, their ways and their hopes. They are, some of them, a part of my ancestry. They were and are none, as a people, any different from you or me today. Strange accents maybe but who amongst us has not experienced that, be it 'down east' or 'down south'.

So if,...we might on some day believe that we are somehow superior beings, that we are in some way better for our elevated literacy, then that is the time to stop and take stock. That is the time to back up and read that last sign on the road signs of life, be it 'Burma Shave' or another prophet.

We are our brother's keeper,...all of us, and that is the simon pure. Let us least ways allow that English as a language is morphing daily. Let us allow that it has been doing that since well before Alfred the Great and let us grant some latitude on the strictness of our ken. (Old English, I know but Alfred would have been with me.)

You try to to be with me as well, and always remember;

Literacy, it ain't just for dummies!

Ahhhhh,....Winter..........

You know, about this time every year I stop and think about all my friends up north. All that sliding and sledding and shussing and schiing as you go about mundane daily tasks. It is quite a sight.

Florida though,...well Florida has its own way of winter and its own sights. Things are different here. We like that,...all of us do. From redneck to state house we all know what is important and we all know just where to find the best sights of all.

Why, they are right down by the pool of course. Right there where they always were. We call them,...

Pool Sights

Pretty Maids, ‘elle in ero’,
Bathing’s effervescent glow,
Morning chatter gently plays,
While the sun discreetly pays,
Homage to the ones who seek,
Glances from us all, who peek.

Time goes by, in fact it flies,
Drenching skin as each applies,
Special lotion for each face,
Spreading oil at every place,
Days of sun and southern skies,
Help to all erase the lies,
Of time spent under roof and tree,
Babes on Tan’s rotisserie.

Cold drink anyone?

Deja View...

"I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said."
Wm. F. Buckley jr.

And now for another direct quote: (This might be the one Mr. Buckley was referring to.)

"Sitting here in these chairs that I’m going to be proposing but in working with these governors who again on the front lines are forced to and it’s our privileged obligation to find solutions to the challenges facing our own states every day being held accountable, not being just one of many just casting votes or voting present every once in a while, we don’t get away with that. We have to balance budgets and we’re dealing with multibillion dollar budgets and tens of thousands of employees in our organizations." sic.
Governor Sarah Palin

Now let us all bow our heads in prayer.......

...Yes friends, I suppose we all thought that with the imminent dethroning of GW the third just around the corner, these kinds of things would also be history, that we would collectively be reduced to either the bland introspective colloquies of the masses of reporters or the clipped incisive precision of William F. Buckley's many adherents.

But,...not so. We were wrong! Another contender for daily massacre of the English language is upon us. Another spectre has reared its head, albeit this one much prettier than George's and I am not talking about 'that one'.

This one, safely hidden away and preserved by the cold for all these years, serenely uninformed on the basics of human experience appears ready to elevate the idiotic beyond the ken of the imbecile, the foolish into the stratosphere of the wise, and the moronic to the level of high art.
( Something George never managed, and I use that term loosely.)

This one who can charm the most vicious adversary with a smile and slay an objection with a conspiratorial wink is poised, positioned, perfumed and polished. She is coiffed, coutured and almost blissfully unprepared for even the most casual of offhand comments and the good news is,....that laughter is still the best medicine.

Leno and Letterman, O'Brien and Maher, none shall lack for material in the next four years. Tina Fey shall be elevated to Jester for Life, with three oak leaf clusters, and Garretson Beekman Trudeau will have a field day.

Let us now conclude with another direct quote that seems apropos to the career in question:

"The more complicated and powerful the job, the more rudimentary the preparation for it."
Wm. F. Buckley jr.

Thus far the gospel from brother William.

People Watching

Every once in a while, I have a Desmond Morris like tendency to notice people more closely than might otherwise be imagined. I do that generally for its irritation value and also because I find that people watching can be nearly as much fun as 'Catwatching'. If another reason should enter the process it would have to be because on the whole people are less likely to adhere to type. Individuality in humans is rampant.

Herewith I present a man I have known and watched for some time, 'Harley' Bill Tanner.

'Harley' Bill's Visitor

‘Harley’ Bill Tanner had been smellin’ that ol’ devil water almost as long as anyone, including Bill himself, could remember. Over the years, it was a trait of his personality that had gotten old Bill into many a scrape, and cost him enough days in jail to allow him the unenviable distinction of being nearly unemployable.

Bill sometimes thought that if he had been one of those people who was lucky enough to grow up in a communist country, why he would have eventually become an occupational reservist. In such a time honored position, he would have continued to draw pay whether he worked or not, but that wasn’t quite the way things had worked out. Nosiree.

Today, right here in the lap of capitalist luxury, if Bill Tanner didn’t work, he didn’t eat and, from his own uniquely jaundiced perspective, if he didn’t work, then he also wouldn’t have anything to spend on alcohol. So, every morning, hung over or not, Bill would drive his van down to the day labor pool, and there await his chances for beer money.

Yep, any way you look at things, the proliferation of wino rental agencies were Bill’s economic salvation for a misspent life. Over the years, Bill had worked for several places answering this unique description, getting to know the soft-touch clerks, busily weeding out the ones who gave out bus tickets from those that operated their own transportation, and finding those that would look the other way on those days when he was a little under the weather so to speak. Generally Bill was content enough where he worked right now, but happy?.......... Shit …….Who’s kidding who? All these places smelled the same and paid the same and minimum wage was minimum wage, wherever you went. You just had to look out for yourself along the way and take the perks as they came, no matter how small they were.

Generally on any given day the tough guys, the real movers and shakers of the temporary labor scene, would force ol' Bill down to the end of the bench whenever he arrived. They would see to it that they were the ones who got the plum jobs of the day.

If you don't know, I’m sure you can figure the type of work we’re talking about here. These were the good jobs. The sweet jobs where a man could run a broom, inside, all day long, and the Super never come upstairs to check on nothin'. Yeah, these were the really coveted jobs. The regulars on the bench knew where all of these jobs were located in a three county radius, and the bullies knew how to guarantee that they got every single one of them as first up.

Bill, as a pushover drunk and most of the newbies who just didn’t know any better, would be relegated to the left over tickets; the crappy jobs and the ones that nobody else wanted.
Most days, there was always something available in the big pile of pink and yellow tickets that was so menial, so absolutely repulsive, that nobody else on the bench wanted to do it. Not even the newbies could be suckered into some things. Bill knew, deep down inside without even halfway having to think about it, that such a nugget of a job was there, waiting just for him, each and every day.

In a way, accepting that kind of work made Bill valuable in the American workforce. After all, the shit jobs needed to be done just the same as the plums did and nobody cared if it was a drunk or a recovered that got it done. After all, the world was full of anonymous alcoholics anywhere you looked, and so Bill took kind of a careful pride in his status as a well known drunk instead.

And so………. everyday on the bench as he waited to be called, he would sit patiently and imagine the words coming from the Super on the job site where he would be sent.

“Here, you!,……Get yore sorry lookin’ ass down in that hole quick time and shovel all that shit back up here topside.”

Without a word, Bill would smile inwardly, obediently take his shovel and crawl right down inside whatever God abandoned hole it was and start shoveling away. He would always give the work a real good snappy start. Let them all see his spirit as it were and after a few minutes the Super would walk away to something vastly more interesting than Bill shoveling whatever shit it happened to be, and then Bill would tone things down a mite and take stock. Down there in the hole, any hole, it was always hot, almost insufferably hot, but it was also a place where nobody would fuck with you all day. So, in that, Bill made out as well as the others with a plum job.

Down in the hole, Bill could smoke and cuss and fart as much as he liked, and if he was skillful enough, why he could even manage to pull a taste now and then from a small bottle he kept hidden inside his pants, and that was OK. Yessiree, that was surely OK with ‘Harley’ Bill Tanner.

Sure, he would get tired; hell, he arrived in the morning tired, but he didn’t care. Bill would sleep on the wino van, both coming and going to whatever shit job there was, day in and day out; they all paid the same.

In spite of his affliction and after all these years to the contrary, Bill still thought of himself as a roofer, and certainly enough grime and coal tar and assorted other filth adhered to his hands at any given time to give anyone the impression that he could be just that. The impression would be wrong though. These days not even the disreputable roofing outfits wanted anything to do with a drunk on the roof. Tightening of the OSHA rules and the horror stories about some pretty stiff fines had seen to that.

No sir, what had actually happened to Bill was the same thing that would happen to anyone who adhered to the same lifestyle he did. You see, after all the years outdoors in the sun, and after all the alcohol he had imbibed, Bill’s skin had drawn the dirt of ages right inside of itself and stubbornly refused to let any part of it go. No matter how hard he might scrub every night after work, and before heading out to Whitey’s, the dirt was there to stay. The dirt was a part of him that he could not shake. Harley Bill’s own dirt; the one possession he could carry wherever he went and that no one could ever take from him. It was there right now, clutched in the tight little folds and creases of his puffy face and hands, gathered into the depression left by his hatband, and deeply embedded beneath all of his fingernails, as Bill returned from the head and assumed his regular place at the bar.

He signaled the barkeep and ordered himself another draft.

Inside Whitey’s Tavern, over on the four lane that ran into and then back out of Hardenton on its way to Tampa, ‘Harley’ Bill Tanner slouched way over that fresh beer of his and again belched loudly. He’d already imbibed well over the legal limit to drive, but didn’t really much give a shit, since his license had been revoked near onto one year ago this very month.

What the fuck, it was Friday, and Friday was Beer Day on any calendar Bill had ever seen; for that matter, any day was Beer Day when he damn well felt like it. He belched loudly again as his sometimes pal grabbed a stool next to him and Bill looked up without entirely focusing into the smiling face of Roach Anders.

“How’s it goin’ bud? Hey barkeep, bring me one of those,……you Billy?…………Thank ya darlin’, Hoooeee, real fine ass you shakin’ there honey….How ‘bout it Billy?... ”

That was Roach for you all right, you were never sure if his comments were directed at you or someone else, or more than one person at a time and in the condition 'Harley' Bill found himself at present, it really didn’t much matter. “Oh,………I’m OK ……I guess; you want a beer?"

“Why you’re real slow at catchin on tonight Billy, I just ordered me one…and maybe I even lined me up a date for later…..Are you shitfaced again, ol’ buddy?”

Belligerently Bill replied, “No,…… I am not! I am three quarters shitfaced though, and if I’ve a mind might stay until I get all the way.” He struggled with himself briefly, as his mind made a labored attempt to accept the annoying interruption, and ultimately failed.

“Fuck!”

This was a baseball night, and even though the Tampa Bay Rays, on the widescreen down at the end of the bar, looked to be dropping another pre-season heartbreaker to the Cards by eight runs in the third inning, the last thing Bill needed was driveling conversation from an unwanted talkative guest.

“What’d you come here for anyway?”

“Well now I am hurt. Why, that’s no way to greet a friend Billy, and after I’ve come all this way to find you ‘specially, and tell you the news…………..Maybe I should,…………. Maybe I should just go.”

A seemingly dejected Roach Anders gathered his keys, patted his pockets, drawing his disappointment out for dramatic effect and turned he on his stool as if to leave.

Even three quarters shitfaced and self absorbed, ‘Harley’ Bill Tanner sighed a good long sigh and then he succumbed to his other lifelong devotion, which just happened to be curiosity. He put his beer down on the counter, looked over and this time, with a silent internal sigh behind half closed eyes said, “What news is that, Roach?”

Roach Anders smiled to himself and warmed visibly at the prospect of imparting an unknown tid-bit. He turned once again towards Bill and began. “The News, Billy my boy, is all. The News.”Roach let that hang for a moment and sipped away on his Beer before continuing, ………….“Why old Millie Barnes just sold the river place to them tourists from A’lan’a. They’s s’posed to be homesteaders… Why I’d be willing to just bet,….

“Shit!..... I don’t know Billy, but we should see if they’re goin’ to dig for all that gold. Anybody with half a brain would have to wonder about it some. Why I’ll just bet…”

“Awwwhhhh!.................I ain’t that drunk Roach………… and, I ain’t your ‘boy’ neither.”
Bill shook his head with disgust and barely retained his place on the stool from the movement.

“ There ain’t no damn gold, an’ you knows it. Shit!……. Ev’body….. knows there ain’t no gold. Just another fool scheme is all this is.”

“Never can tell Billy.” Roach pointed one finger (no, not that one) and stabbed repeatedly with it towards Bill, punctuating each word as he continued. “You just never can tell………. I’m pretty sure no story ever gets started like that one without some truth to it; ……likely, there may be some gold there… Just ‘cause nobody ever found it don’t mean it ain’t there, and I sure wouldn’t mind findin’ it……….Nobody else would mind findin’ it either. “Me,…………….. well I’m goin’ to stay tuned, as they say.”

'Harley' Bill stared at his sometime friend Roach Anders, and wished as hard as he could wish for the man to just go away. How many times had he had to endure this kind of crap talk about more damn fool things than could be imagined. Bill knew from past experience that when Roach got hisself wound up real tight about sum’thin’, there was no way to stop the hemorrhage of words that were sometimes connected to real thoughts and just as often, connected to pure glossy varnished bullshit.

If Bill had been thinking clearly, or been something less of a mouse, he would have told Roach to fuck off, and gone back to whatever it was he wanted to do but that would never happen. Bill’s timid character just wouldn’t allow something like that to even get a start, because no matter how thinly you sliced things, old’ Harley’ Bill Tanner was a coward through and through and deep down inside even he would admit that there had never been a time when he thought all that clearly, about much of anything. Apart from the annoyance, Bill should have run. He should have run far and fast, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. In addition to his cowardice, 'Harley' Bill Tanner was a card-carrying loser; he rode the loser’s trail, and he would stay on that trail right to the very end. A commercial was playing on the TV that Bill didn’t like very much, and so he was distracted once again by the noise of Roach’s insistent ramblings.

“………..suppose……….boy is buildin’ himself a homestead talk is, and may need to dig some. I should mebbe go by for an interduction as they say. You can tag along if you like Billy , but me,……………I’m definitely goin to stay tuned. Yessir, I shorely am goin’ to stay tuned.”
Then, almost as an answer to the unspoken prayer that Bill was repeating over and over in his head, Roach Anders retreated inside his own convoluted thoughts. He sat there staring into the mirror at the Bar Back like a mesmerized zombie, as if an answer was about to appear. Apparently, one did because a few moments later he finished his Beer and abruptly left the bar.

‘Harley’ Bill Tanner, deeply absorbed in a losing baseball game on the widescreen at the end of the bar, and who was now at least seven-eighths drunk, didn’t notice anything at all.

'Moon Racer'

A self avowed middle aged asshole, Bart Driscoll was perfectly content in his low level State Department job putting in time until retirement and dreaming of Fly Fishing America's wilderness areas when he is thrust back into a semi-fictional Central American Country called Cuyamas. It is the same place where Driscoll was stationed twenty five years ago and departed on less than friendly terms.

Sent on this new mission to observe the hanging of an American National, Driscoll, who would like nothing better than to get back home and leave on his annual and richly deserved vacation, begins to notice irregularities.

When he is called in to visit with a man he formerly knew as an adversary during the Nicaraguan conflict, and then discovers the recent hanged man still alive, things go downhill fast and Bart Driscoll is on the run once again.

With some last minute help from an old Friend and an unlikely source, Driscoll is able to prevail against misfortune.


'Moon Racer' is my third adventure novel set against reminiscences from the Cocaine wars during the eighties and the 'drugs for arms' Contra scandal. It resurrects two characters from 'A Bend in The Trail', both villains in that story but still genuine people with stories and lives beyond the indifference of a casual label. It is a look at the baggage we each carry and the daily battles we all wage for some things as simple as survival and happiness.

If you are an Author's Agent with some time on your hands, ( Hey! In the Catskills you'd be looking at a stiff cover charge and a two drink minimum for this kind of stuff.), write me. I assure you any inquiry will be suitably received and answered.

Obama 08

I know. I did say no politics but I just couldn't resist. I am voting for Senator Obama.


Well, it's official. At 11:59 last night, right here in the eastern sector of our wounded Republic the last nail was firmly driven into any aspiration that the Republican candidate could bail any of his party's collective asses out of the morass of nonsensical misrepresentations and lies that have characterized the last several weeks of this campaign. Party platform, Party base and Party occupying the top slot of this current regime, it is now completely transparent that their endgame lacks any form of middle. For those of us who occupy that unique placement in society and failed to hear John McCain mention 'middle class' at all last night, the new word to occupy thinking for the next twenty days will be have to be LANDSLIDE.

With forced smiles, fidgety looking gestures and a recitation of stock litany aimed squarely at the rabid republican right, John McCain blinked continuously as he failed one last time to address substantive proposals for either reasonable or definitive solutions to any problem facing the average voter. I for one am disappointed. As a lifelong generally conservative (small 'c') Republican leaning constituent I really wanted to hear the John McCain who campaigned nine years ago and this tired, worn out co-opted version of 2008, failed all of us. Unresponsive and dripping lipstick by the bucket load, any hopes for the Republican economic pig appear to be officially dead.

One good note, I do see where Hank Williams jr. has written music for the McCain campaign. I just never knew it was him who wrote the Dies Irae. Way to go Hank !