Sidetracked Charley

Where have all the flowers gone? Once again the world was shaken by an unspeakable act of violence and yet everyone wants to speak about it. The news media platforms are full of it with all the gory details. Social media is full of pundits with all the answers. Including, but not limited to their favorite cause, be it ISIL or guns or inadequate policing or the wrong religion or praying to the wrong god. And everyone has their favorite solution to the problem. In the US it is take away the guns. France took away the veil. The military want to take lives. The police all our freedoms. None of these have been the answer. Many of these solutions have been the root cause of more violence. And yet we ignore that. It was all about we didn't take it far enough. Guns ought to be harder to get, we need to drop more bombs, spy upon the populations with more, strip more people naked, ban the black hoodie, forbid the religious veils and habits, close all the borders, police all the neighb...

Duck and Cover of My Youth I am the generation of the atomic bomb so when people talk of the innocence of children and the efforts to keep them safe I really cannot relate. I was in the first grade when Dad, his crew and his bomber were reported missing in action over Korea. Mother cried herself to sleep every night and I had to be brave for her and my little brother. At recess I would go out behind the school and do my crying there. I thought my teacher looked like the Wicked Witch of the West (the Wizard of Oz I saw as a horror film), and I feared being locked in the supply closet (early onset claustrophobia). So Duck and Cover was merely another torture especially since my father, who dropped bombs for a living, told me to add "Kiss your ass goodbye" to the drill. After Dad was returned to the living (just mostly a military administrative paperwork issue) we moved to Roswell, NM land of aliens and SAC. Dad was constantly being called out in the middle of the night t...