While there are many disturbing memories of Vietnam, there is one surprisingly excellent memory - Christmas morning. The confusion, laughter, and joy that I created for eleven very homesick young men remains to this day my most memorable Christmas. In December, 1967, I was stationed at DaNang Air Base, South Vietnam. I was 22. Since I had been in the Air Force for over three years, I was...

Added 23 Dec 2012 | Category Memoirs | Votes 5 | Avg Score 5 | Views 1,095 | 6 Comments

Ghost I can still feel the ghosts gathered around me like ancestors in reverse, where the children die and old warhorses get older in their place. (Elizabeth Bear, Worldwired ) I do not know why I do this to myself. At the end of the Vietnam War an estimate of over 3.5 million human beings on all sides were dead. Of those, 1.4 million were combatants. Of the remaining 2.1 million...

Added 02 Aug 2012 | Category Musings | Votes 6 | Avg Score 4.67 | Views 967 | 5 Comments

Okay, this is a grouchy old bear venting. I felt that you should be forewarned. Running away is always an option. Sadly, it takes a lot of courage and through planning. Running away is a basic level choice for all things living. The trouble with humans is that we take self-inflicted responsibilities way too seriously. This maybegin the running away psychosis. Over the last 25 or so years,...

Added 19 Jul 2012 | Category Musings | Votes 6 | Avg Score 4 | Views 786 | 3 Comments

If I wish, I could write a story about myself as a pilot in the Vietnam War, or as a physicist working at Fermi Lab in Illinois. I know enough about both that the average reader could believe that I was writing an autobiography. It would require a background check to discover that I really was an airborne navigation technician and that I have a real love for high energy physics. Reality,...

Added 27 Jun 2012 | Category Musings | Votes 5 | Avg Score 4.4 | Views 743 | 3 Comments

Hell, we were friends. We had always been friends. My back door looked across the alley to her backdoor. My family moved in when I was four. I would stand with my hands clutched to the chain link fence and watch her. Shortly after we moved in, my mother and her mother became friends. They decided that we should play together. My mother tells me that at first I was a little shy, afraid of...

Added 25 Jun 2012 | Category Romance | Votes 3 | Avg Score 5 | Views 953 | 3 Comments