Listening to Joanie Mitchell's oldies... Big doings this week in the Swirl.  We are the home of the Air Force Academy and their graduation was yesterday.  I was in the front yard rinsing off the Goat and Air Force One flew overhead on final approach to Pete Field.  Big, white, and distinctive blue stripe and emblem all clearly visible with the naked eye.  It is an awsome reminder that no matter who is the passenger, this is the nation's aircraft and it stands for t...

  Just a little quickie spurred by recent events in the household.  First of all, because of the current economic situation, my number- three son and family moved in with us last year.  Our house is a  two-story house with the bottom floor half buried so when you walk in the front door you are on a landing with a short flight up to the top floor and a short flight down to the bottom floor.  The windows on the bottom floor are at ground level.  Whoever originally ...

  Yesterday was the Cinco de Mayo celebration around the country, another largely misunderstood day that provides an excuse to get loaded and eat guacamole on chips.  It was a  beautiful day here in the Swirl...sun up and bright early, just a hint of an early morning chill with the promise of heat coming.    It was the Kentucky Derby day, too.  Fancy hats, expensive horses and Mint Juleps...with an unexpected winner.  An exciting race if you are a fan,...

  I have always had a knack with firearms.  I was not so hot with a rifle when I started out in basic training, but by the time I graduated I was hooked on a lifetime love.  I went through training with the M-14,  carried one in Vietnam, and didn't make the transition to M-16s until 1970, when I was in Germany.  I am really attached to the M-14, in fact I own one now and it doesn't take much of an excuse to get me out shooting it.    I became e...

  This morning MamaCharlie was telling me about a story she heard on TV about a kid who had chicken-pox on Halloween and wasn't able to go out trick-or-treating, a heart-breaking reality for a fifth-grader.  But that evening his classmates showed up in their costumes with a banner that said "Happy Halloween!" to try and cheer him up.  A sweet gesture for a friend?  Or just rubbing it in?  Sorry, that's just me twisted perspective kicking in.  A sweet stor...

  I was at an intersection of two major roads right on the edge of Saigon when I saw the Air Force truck's predicament.  The Saigon traffic was unrelenting, and obedience to traffic law was non-existent...obedience to good driving sense was non-existent.  At intersections,  cross traffic would creep out into the lanes, blocking one after another until they got across.  On big roads with multiple lanes, it got really messy.  This Air Force tractor-trailer wa...

  Not a Springsteen fan, but a guy can't cut 200 records, or however many he has made, without hitting a note with you at least once or twice.  "Glory Days" is one I do like, but not because I used to have such glory in the day...in fact, it is just the opposite.  I had no glory to speak of in high school.  I was fair at basketball, a little better than fair at baseball, too skinny for football, and because of heavy smoking by age fourteen, track was a no-go.  Not...

  FOG   Carl Sandberg wrote:   "THE fog comes   on little cat feet.       It sits looking   over harbor and city   on silent haunches            and then moves on."   London is famous for its foggy nights..."Pea Soup", they call it.  The fact is that a lot of Europe has some very thick fog.  In Germany, especially where rivers come togeth...

  I had the opportunity to work with a lot of lieutenants during my military career.  Some of them were good, some not so good.  Most of them were trained in college ROTC programs, a lesser number were West Point grads, and the lowest number of them were enlisted to begin with and then went to OCS to get their commissions.   I won't go into how they earned their reputation for doing dumb stuff, I will say briefly that, in many cases,  it is earned.  ...

  Hunter-Liggett is a military reservation about 60-70 miles south of Fort Ord, CA.  Anyone who spent any time in the 7th Infantry Division in the seventies, eighties, or nineties is very familiar with the place;  it is the primary training area for the division and its support units.  I have spent a lot of time there over the years;  I was very familiar with the terrain and foliage, the ranges and impact areas, and the routes in and out of it.   It was com...

Three, One, Two                                  Two, Three, One I got up yesterday and when I chopped an onion for my omelet, the onion cried.  I left the house and encountered a huge black cat that crossed the street and ran the other way to keep me from crossing his path.  While I  patiently endured the s...

  The late Kate Wolfe, a traditional folk voice of the seventies, had a song that I dearly love about Pacheco, a pass I have been up and down a hundred or more times.  On the same album she sang a song about a Red-Tailed Hawk where she mentions the "Golden, rolling hills of California".  When I think about California nowdays, I don't see beaches or palm trees...I see those rolling hills of central California in the morning sun;  they are covered with wheat- colored gra...

Several years ago I had a discussion with the City Traffic Engineer about certain intersections and why the traffic at those intersectios was so screwed up, especially at rush hour.  In a nutshell, the intersections had dedicated right turn lanes next to a left turn/straight ahead lane.  Think about it;  that is bass ackwards.  I tried a dozen different ways to explain to him that if he switched to dedicated left turn and straight ahead/right turn lanes the traffic would...

  Sour moods have dominated the last month or so.  People I care about in our cyber-world are dropping off the grid for one reason or another.  I know that some have had really painful experiences on the net;  some have caused pain, others have received it.  I feel like the little kid hiding in the closet listening to the adults screaming at each other...or more like one of the most famous receivers of real world pain said, "Can't we all just get along?"  ...

  Fort Hood, Texas in 1971 was a dump...literally.  Soldiers returning from Vietnam who had more than six months left on their enlistment were sent somewhere to finish their time.  If they had less than six months left they were just given a "drop" (early discharge) and sent home.  Many posts in the States were full of soldiers who fit into the first category.  And many of them were bitter because sometimes it was only a matter of a few days that decided if they went ...