Something Wicked

I woke up happy this morning, secure on a sunny summer morning as a citizen of the world’s sole superpower, next to my sweet wife. We were thinking about a little shakedown trip on the bikes. Pretty Wife’s little BMW has new shoes, and my ankle and knee are still unsteady, but the prospect of … [more]

Portland rocks!

So that was refreshing to hear… Pretty Publisher informs me that Litsam has successfully placed Nothing In Reserve at Powell’s Books. Powell’s is a particular fetish I share with millions of Portlanders, former Portlanders, imPorted landers and people who only wish they were hip enough to sashay through the Pearl District, but find it too … [more]

In Memoriam

Fair warning: politics ahead. Outrage imminent. Abort! Abort! …or pick up your coffee and join me in a little thought experiment (for those looking for a calmer introspection on Memorial Day, there is this item in the P-I, written before I read this morning’s news). The only guarantee in this little thought experiment is that … [more]

Books! Brownies! Motorcycles!

So let’s see… ticking off a few of my favorite things: reading, writing, riding and BSing with soldiers. It’s a quadrafecta! Yeah, I made that word up — sadly, that’s another favorite vice. So here’s what we’re up to: South Sound BMW, one of the juiciest motorcycle dealerships in the PNW, holds its annual Vendor … [more]

Not a Federal Holiday

We weren’t watching the news when they dropped him. We were out getting our hands dirty. We had a pipe to fix in the backyard. Should have taken care of it years ago, but there are all those pesky tactical considerations. Like geopolitics, remodeling is a complicated form of continual crisis management. Agenda items rise … [more]

Humbly submitted…

So there’s this book, and we’ve been tinkering with it, trying to get it all just so. Is it perfect? Of course not. Not by a long, arcing shot. There are typographical errors in the text. There are flaws in the formatting. The only thing that keeps either me or Pretty Publisher from spiking the … [more]

Carol (out of season)

  “Spirit!  Do not leave me!” —Ebenezer Scrooge (Chas. Dickens), “A Christmas Carol”   What happened on Christmas Eve was odd enough that its strangeness persists still in reminding me of the unpredictable salvageability of human nature, and the omnipresence of . . . something. Whatever spirit it was, it moved them. It moved us. … [more]

Bangstick

I like my rifle. It’s a fine piece of gear. When I was a private long ago, the army issued me a tattered old M16A1, late Vietnam era issue, stamped with the maker’s mark of General Motors Hydramatic Division. It was so loose and wabbly in its action that it wouldn’t cycle more than three … [more]