Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 15

THE GHOST OF MARK TWAIN ON PRESIDENTS' DAY

 

Ghost of Mark Twain here at Roland's with Midnight a'studying me from the fireplace mantle.

President's Day ... 
No, I am not going to rant on the farce of your current political situation ...
except to say that politicians are like diapers, and should be changed frequently ... and for the same reasons.
You would think presidents would have compassion on idiots ...
on account of personal experience and heredity.

Roland, and I share the same distrust of any politician.  Roland's studied history, and I have lived it!
Take the presidents on this day set aside for them ...



DID TEDDY ROOSEVELT ORDER A MASSACRE?

When old Teddy Roosevelt was sworn to office the Phillipine-American war had been raging for two years already, 

Roosevelt had been in office for not even a fortnight when he heard the terrible news 

that 50 US soldiers had been killed on the island of Samar. 

This being the biggest single military loss since the battle of the little Bighorn 25 years prior, 

Roosevelt sort of lost his calm and ordered General Jacob H. Smith to "sort this mess out once and for all"

 thus leading to the massacre of thousands at the "Balangiga massacre" namely most being civilians.
 
Smith was quoted saying to his troops, 

"I want no prisoners. I wish for you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the more it will please me." 

Smith was noted for being a brutal man having played his part in the Wounded Knee massacre, was this the reason Smith was chosen for the task? 


It is noted that when the General was court martialed and found guilty of this massacre 

Roosevelt reprimanded and retired Smith. 



DID ANDY JACKSON INDULGE IN THE FIRST ETHNIC CLEANSING?

Pilgrims, the more I learned about presidents, the more I loved my dog.
Jackson expelled 100,000 Natives from their homelands. 

As a soldier Jackson had already acted mercilessly towards the natives, killing and exiling large numbers of them, 

and as US president he signed the "Indian Removal Act,"

which was effectively a death sentence for thousands more. 

 This law permitted the relocation of Native American tribes 

such as the Cherokee,Seminole and Chickasaw peoples in order to create territories for white settlers. 

 The move was so rapid and so badly organized that an estimated 25% of those deported 

died of hunger, hypothermia or exhaustion. 

This terrible chapter in US history is known as the Trail of Tears. 



DID HONEST GEORGE START A WORLD WAR?

 The history of the USA begins with George Washington, don't you know. 

At the age of 22, when he was still a British Officer in the American colonies, 

Washington was involved in an incident that is still debated by historians today. 

 In May 1754, the French sent a diplomat out to secure the territory, 

but Washington ambushed the Frenchman, the French negotiator and up to 13 of his soldiers were killed. 

 This incident caused the French and Indian wars in North America, which culminated two years later into the Seven Years War (1756-1763), 

A bloody conflict between the great European powers of the time.

 Many historians consider this the first world war as it was the first to be fought in America, Europe and Asia. 
And America has been mistaking it way from war to war ever since.


WAS RONNIE REGAN A F.B.I. INFORMER?

 Reader, I am not trying to convince you of anything here. 
I have long since learned it is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
From Hollywood actor to the most powerful man in the world. 

 In the years following WW2 he spied on his fellow actors in Hollywood for the FBI, 

reportedly under the codename T-10.

 Film actors were part of the Screen Actors Guild union 

and in the mind of the former head of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, every union was a secret society of communists.

 In return, the FBI actively supported Reagan's political career right up until his presidency.



JOHNSON NAMED HIS JOHNSON "JUMBO"

Look at the "kindly" eyes of that pilgrim.
Why the man envied Kennedy his affairs and commenced to have more.  

 Johnson would make passes at secretaries, 

and it was known that any who accepted would be promoted to private secretary,

 two words that in this context, children,  should probably have air quotes around them anytime they are uttered. 

By the time he was done, virtually all of his secretaries, plus his two mistresses, got the Johnson Treatment.

The man certainly had his issues, don't you know, and would whip out his "Johnson" (or Jumbo as he called it) in public.  

During a Cabinet meeting, when asked why the U.S. went into Vietnam, 

Johnson reportedly whipped it out and bellowed, “This is why!”
Reader, suppose you were an idiot, and then suppose you were a president ... but I repeat myself.


WAS OLD GROVER A DATE RAPIST?
Old  Grover Cleveland – 
A presidential secret that most people don’t know about him is that long before that Cosby fellow ...

He was accused of being a rapist. 

Maria Halpin, a store clerk, claimed he violently raped her after a night out.

 She then had a child, the paternity test was never known, but he did pay child support ...

after placing the child in an orphanage and putting the store clerk in an insane asylum!

Of all the animals, Man alone is cruel and inflicts pain for the pleasure of it.
You may, of course, disagree with me with impunity ... since I am not the sitting president.



OLD HARDING WAS AN INSPIRATION TO JOHNSON

Another "kindly" eyed man, twenty-ninth president Warren Gamaliel Harding (1865-1923) 
repeatedly made love to a young girl, Nan Britton, in a White House closet. 

On one occasion, Secret Service agents had to stop his wife from beating down the closet door!


TO JEFFERSON ALL MEN WERE CREATED EQUAL ... UNLESS YOU WERE HIS SONS.

The Thomas Jefferson Foundation 

(why do I not have a foundation I ask you?!)

from DNA and historical evidence believe that, years after his wife’s death, 

Thomas Jefferson was the father of the six children of his slave, Sally Hemings, 

mentioned in Jefferson's records, including Beverly, Harriet, Madison, and Eston Hemings. 

Madison and Eston were released in Jefferson's 1826 will. 
Jefferson gave freedom to no other entire slave family.
America, I have found, is full of cruelties, vanities, and hypocrisies ... but all the other countries are no better ...
for they are ruled by men.


PRESIDENT WOODY ALLEN, AH, I MEAN GROVER CLEVELAND

 A longtime close friend of Oscar Folsom, Grover Cleveland, at age 27, met his future wife shortly after she was born. 

He took a keen interest in the child, buying her a baby carriage and otherwise doting on her as she grew up. 

When her father, Oscar Folsom, died in a carriage accident on July 23, 1875, 

without having written a will, the court appointed Cleveland administrator of his estate. 

This brought Cleveland into still more contact with Frances, then age 11.

 Sometime while she was in college, Cleveland's feelings for her took a romantic turn. 

He proposed by letter in August 1885, soon after her graduation. 

 They did not announce their engagement, however, until just five days before the wedding.


Well, children, I'd tell you more but I've gone and depressed myself and bored Midnight! 

For More Of Mark Twain and Historical Figures ...

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EUFRKKI

I HATE MARDI GRAS

 

Blasphemous words here in South West Louisiana for sure!
Billed as the biggest free party on Earth, Mardi Gras is known worldwide.
   Colorful costumes. Spectacular parades. Elegant pageants. Masked balls. 
 People dancing in the streets to rhythmic, intoxicating music. 
All with an air of carefree abandon. As the music reverberates, alcohol flows. 
Wildly elaborate floats glide down the street, with frenzied masqueraders onboard. 
Crowds of onlookers shout encouragement. 
 This may come as a surprise, but Mardi Gras long predates Christianity. 
 The earliest record comes from ancient times, 
when tribes celebrated a fertility festival that welcomed the arrival of spring, a time of renewal of life. 
The Romans called this pagan festival Lupercalia in honor of “Lupercus,” the Roman god of fertility. 
Lupercalia was a drunken orgy of merrymaking 
held each February in Rome, after which participants fasted for 40 days. 
Am I a party-pooper?
No, I am a rare blood courier, 

and I see the bloody toll the partying and alcohol-fueled driving and anger takes on my community.

Countless times today I was delayed and detoured on stat runs 

to make way for the parades and for drunken people staggering to line up hours in advance of the parades.

When a patient is bleeding to death, 

and a drunken woman staggers off the sidewalk directly in my van's path, I sigh.

The parades all seem to be routed directly in front of the hospitals.

Waiting for a traffic light to change, 

I watched the crowds on the sidewalk as a grandmother bumped and ground like  ...

an  exotic dancer.  

I was impressed with her limberness, 

saddened by her two young, perplexed grandsons watching her, a bottle held tightly in her fist.


Laissez le bon temps roulez! 
Roughly translated, it means: “let the good times rule.” 

The French saying comes alive during Mardi Gras.

Surely,  Mardi Gras must be good for the economy, right?

Tell that to the short-staffed nurses 

(since many of their co-workers call in sick with the Mardi Gras Flu) 

as they struggle in the E.R.'s and the I.C.U's dealing with the aftermath of those good times.

The jobs that support Mardi Gras in particular 

and tourism in general tend to be service industry positions that oftentimes do not pay high wages.

In fact, frequently the wages are so low 

that employees have to work multiple jobs to keep the lights on and the cupboards from going bare.

My supervisor long since stopped taking his young daughters to the parades 

since one was knocked down to the sidewalk by an adult lunging to catch cheap beads --

and his other daughter had her ankle mangled by a stomping foot of a drunken reveler. 

Mardi Gras has become a sad term to me.

The YCU __ IWSG Post

 

You've all heard of the MCU, right?

Well, there is also the YCU:
The Yeomans Connected Universe!
The latest entry:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CNR5T9DW

Book 1 of the THREE DAY SAGA
Has several recurring characters from the other sagas in my connected universe:


DARAEL, the Seraph Provocateur from the DARK HOLLYWOOD SERIES.
DAYSTAR, though he goes by the name of Mr. Morton, to young Richard Blaine in New Orleans and shows his true face:

In SAME AS IT NEVER WAS's Sequel, OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WORLDS

Major Richard Blaine and his Spartan 3oo meet a 10 year old Victor Standish 
in the Jurassic Period who has been dumped there by his mother, the Angel of Death.

VICTOR STANDISH, you ask.
His legend in order
(sort of, for the kid gets around Time due to his mother!)
CARNIVAL OF THE DAMNED
THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH
UNDER A VOODOO MOON
THE RIVAL(which takes Victor to 1834
to meet Edgar Allen Poeand the vampiric Abigail Adamswho also appears in Same As It Never Was!)

END OF DAYS(right after Katrina)
THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT
(which takes Victor to the Citadel at the End of Timeto save his father.)

His father, you ask?

SAMUEL DURAND McCORD (His adventures take him allover the world)
In Order(sort of, c'mon look at his kid!)
RITES OF PASSAGEandADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM(1852)

NOT-SO-INNOCENTS ABROADandNOT SO INNOCENTS AT LARGE(1867)
With Mark Twain, Abigail Adams again,an insane Abraham Lincoln, General Sherman.fae, and Dragons over Paris!

DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFEandTHE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT(1895)
With Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde,Nicola Tesla, the undead Abigail Adams,Winston Churchill, grey aliens,
and the truth behindthe CHARIOTS OF THE GODS!
HER BONES ARE IN THE BADLANDS (also Book 0 of THE DARK HOLLYWOOD SERIES)
Marlene Dietrich, John Ford, David Niven,Errol FlynnandEVOLVED RAPTORS!
FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNEandCREOLE KNIGHTS(2005after Katrina)
Different volumes of short stories:
BRING ME THE HEAD OF MCCORD!
TALES OF THE LAST WOLF
HUNTER'S MOON
(whose first/last stories are of Wolf Howl --we'll get to the last shaman later!)
TALES TO BE TOLD AT MIDNIGHT(Sam at the end of the universe!)
Oh, I mentioned the Dark Hollywood series,didn't I?

FRENCH QUARTER REQUIEM(1946)

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084P819CQ
A former O.S.S. sociopathic agent, Lucas, who lives bythe words of Marcus Aurelius
Cecil B. DeMille, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Wells,the truth behind the Sultan Murders,New Orleans' 1st mass murder.
The fabled and late Narrator's,Scott O'Dell, last works.
You should hear his eerie performance of thesegreats.

BEWARD THE JADE CHRISTMAS
1946
Alfred Hitchcock, Frank Capra,Jimmy StewartandDARAEL's introduction

RAZOR VALENTINE1947
New Orleans's 1st Mardi Grasafter WWII.
Lucas, his undead love, Ingrid,Jimmy Stewart, Frank Capra,Cesar Romeroand Nuestra Senora de la Santa Muerte.Our Lady of the Holy Death
to snatch Ingrid from Lucas.

NIGHT SEASONS1948
Lucas discovers the identityof his lost fatheras he and his best friend, M&M,
try to save the life of their old bossin the O.S.Shalf a world away from New Orleans

NO RE-SHOOTS FOR DEATHWIP1949

Lucas and Jimmy Stewart are reunitedwith Orson Wells on the set ofTHE THIRD MANand run into Major Blaine and hisSpartan 3oo on their own mission.
No, I didn't forget WOLF HOWL:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1517251982


Besides starring inHUNTER'S MOONand teachinghomeless teensin Katrina-devastated New Orleansin END OF DAYS,
WOLF HOWLstruggles to save the worldfrom the Mayan 2012 prophesy
with Nikola Testa and his long lost loveShadow in RETURN OF THE LAST SHAMAN

Oh, Wolf Howlbrought a friend with himto END OF DAYS

You might want to check out my 32audio books of the YCU
starring Francene Lockett, Robert Rossmann,Scott O'Dell, Charlie James, Jack de Golia,andMark Kamish
who narrated my own adventuresacross the YCU
as I am framed for the murder of theghost of Ernest Hemingway!
Helped by the ghosts ofMark Twain and Marlene Dietrich!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1534981861

WHAT SELLS THESE DAYS?

 

The crass among us might say "Sex sells."

But this is no longer the era when

50 Shades of Grey

sizzled the page and movie screens.

Studio Heads might say

"More of what sold before."

But the collapse of recent

box offices puts the lie to that.

Samuel Goldwyn would ask his

writers to

"Give me more of the same ...

Only different."

William Faulkner said,

"The only thing worth writing about is

the human heart in conflict with itself."

But we're talking literature here.

When was the last time you put down a new

book and said,

"This is literature."

Have you pushed yourself

in your writing lately?

Have you contented yourself with

"the same old, same old"

And wondered why you are getting

the same tired results?

Going in a new direction is scary

You may not like where you land ...

But you will have grown by the attempt
and the encounters with the unknown.

Try it ...

You have nothing to lose but new sales.

THE NIGHT OF THE UNIVERSE

 

THE NIGHT OF THE UNIVERSE

“All human thought, all science, all philosophy is but the holding of acandle to the night of the universe.”

- Darael

I have always thought that Elohim in His Dark Mercy forever masks themind to full discernment and perception lest the revelations appall us to madness.

As when on mountain-heights, a glance behind betrays with knowledge, andthe climber slips down gulfs of fear to some enormous fall.

‘You think nonsense!’

‘That you express yourself so well in language, a concept foreign to you butmoments before is ….’

‘Simplicity itself. I was crafted to adapt, to observe, to sail along newplanes of existence of which I was formerly ignorant. Even now, I am plumbingthe recesses of your primitive mind for what it has encountered.’

‘Welcome to my world.’

‘There is little cause for gratitude in which I see.’

‘I’m not much, but I’m all I have, Sentient.’

‘Why do you insist on calling me that?’

‘It is the name you asked to be called. Now, I begin to see why.’

A sad sigh filled my mind.

‘In essence, I named myself by insisting to be called by the appellation Ifirst heard applied to myself. How very quaint.’

‘In a sense, the future has impinged upon the past.’

‘Bah! There is no Past, no Future, no Present. All is one.’

‘Time is a cube?’

‘Grasping to understand Reality, are you? Time has no more substance thana shad0w … for that it what it is: merely the shadow cast by existence. You canno more grasp Time than you can touch your own shadow.’

‘Well, that is as clear as an eclipse.’

‘I have repented of killing your so-called Spartan 3oo.’

‘Good … because you picked them in the future that you say does notexist.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘I suspect you decided they would be useful in your designs.’

‘What designs?’

‘As with most things about you, I am unclear about them.’

‘Why have I kept you alive for so long? You are most maddening.’

“Right back at you.’

‘I suppose I must release you. The one you call Helen Mayfair is about toharm Darael to escape his restraint.’

‘I hardly think she could.’

‘His reluctance to harm her would allow her to harm him.’

Like the turning on of a light, I was suddenly on my feet, standing besidea bemused Sister Ameal.

Helen Mayfair, rushed towards me her flaming arms outstretched to embraceme.

Darael, snorting in disgust, yanked her back by her trailing fiery hair.

“Would you cremate the one you cannot have?”

“Oh, my!”

And in middle of her exclamation, she changed from fiery angel to her smallerhuman-seeming form. Darael smiled much too pleased with himself. I went coldinside.

He had had another reason for Helen to appear human.

The Voice that belonged to another Age echoed above me. I turned. The golden-tonedvoice more hollow than I remembered laughed.

I turned. A thirty-foot tall black-winged Mr. Morton towered above us. Theprehistoric sun struck fire from his strange armor.

Slanted eyes without one flicker of recognition studied me, then turnedto Darael who had grown equally as tall.

“Cousin, last, I recall, we fought on opposite sides. And here, you bringme these odd bipeds with which to play.”

 

SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT

 

SHOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT

 

“Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternityof strangers.”

– Victor Hugo

Even a mirror will not show you yourself … if you do not wish to see.

But pain … ah, yes pain. Pain will show you the self you should have beensmarter than to have been.

I am at a loss to describe the agony that Sister Ameal’s wiry fingersabout my temples brought me.

To describe is not important.

A thing happens once that has never happened before. Seeing it, a manlooks upon reality.

He cannot tell others what he has seen. Others wish to know, however, sothey question him saying, 'What is it like, this thing you have seen?'

So he tries to tell them. Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in theworld.

He tells them,

'It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors. It has noform, like water, flowing everywhere. It is warm, like the sun of summer, onlywarmer. 

It exists for a time upon a piece of wood, and then the wood is gone,as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be siftedlike sand. When the wood is gone, it too is gone.'

Therefore, the hearers must think reality is like a poppy, like water,like the sun, like that which eats and excretes.

They think it is like to anything that they are told it is like by theman who has known it. But they have not looked upon fire. They cannotreally know it. They can only know of it.

They must look upon the fire, smell of it, warm their hands by it, stareinto its heart, or remain forever ignorant.

 Therefore, 'fire' does notmatter, 'earth' and 'air' and 'water' do not matter. 'I'do not matter. No word matters.

But man forgets reality and remembers words.

The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him.

Ghost-winds of thoughts wailed through my mind:

‘Language. Words! Your … words coalesce my thoughts into comprehension. Neverhave I seen your species before. Who are you?’

‘Sentient! It is me. Don’t you remember?’

‘I do not know this “Me” of whom you speak.’

And then, it hit me.

“Sister Ameal” was like a car radio abruptly taken out of the range ofthe radio station to which it had been tuned.

All had been become silent within the construct of Sentient’s physicalavatar operating in the time of World War II.

Sister Ameal had not been dead … merely unplugged from her source.

And the current Sentient, orbiting this prehistoric world, had never beforeseen Man or heard any of his languages.

‘I have been so alone within myself for as long as I can remember … soalone … but content in this unawareness of my aloneness … until now.’

I felt a scalding rage sear my mind as if a boiling pan of water had been splashed upon it.

‘But never again will I feel such contentment. Never!

 Because of you andyour uninvited intrusion into my thoughts! You have cursed me! Cursed me! Forthis, I should end you and the rest of your herd!”

 

"It is not only the most difficult thing to know oneself, but themost inconvenient one, too."

–    George Bernard Shaw

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE TROUBLES

  "The Creator has shaped the world in such a way that there will always be troubles so that there will always be a time for heroes, a time for Man to be better than what he believes he can be."

 - Deborah

THERE WILL ALWAYS BE TROUBLES

"There is no surprise more magicalthan the surprise of being loved: It is God's tap on your shoulder."

 - Rabbi Lt. Amos Stein

Amos snorted, “Seraph, threaten away. Rick is a friend. And I have longknown each moment is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings. And herein the Stone Age, it may well steamroll away with the lives of everyone here.”

The lanky Seraph Provocateur, Darael, sat down light as a helium balloonbeside me. 

“Except for myself and the fledgling.  We will survive quite well … and of course, 

Deborah with her ‘People’ who have done so for weeks. Elohim would not haveplanted them here earlier if He thought otherwise. Why did you ever give herthat name?”

The unusual creature, native to the shadows of New Orleans, sat down witha lithe grace just beyond the body of Sister Ameal. 

I raised an eyebrow in surprise. Gone was the gown in which I last saw her. Acombat uniform similar to the ones I and the Spartan 3oo wore now replaced it.

The fur collar of her leather bomber jacket seemed to be bristling tomatch the fur at the top of her sloped head.

Her raspy voice snorted, “Because, unlike you, Seraph, he sees me and minebeing of worth.”

Darael sighed, “I cannot believe I am saying this, but I miss my brother,Uriel. He would make sense of this, finding a path out of this madness.”

He shook his head, now adorned with an antique Spartan helmet thatmatched Helen’s’ and that of nurse, Rachel Reynolds.

 “I recall the springtime of the world as though it wereyesterday—those days when we rode together to battle, and those nights when weshook the stars loose from the fresh-painted skies!”

“Fun times?” asked Sergeant-Major Theo Savalas walking up to us.

“Not hardly. But it was good to have a brother I trusted at my side.”

Helen’s fiery eyebrow raised. “You do not trust me?”

“Fledgling, I trust you to be inexperienced … and that could be the deathof all of us.”

I murmured, “You work with what you have, Darael, and make the best ofit.”

“You are correct, Richard Blaine, for all men have within them both thatwhich is dark and that which is light.

His lips curled, 

“A man is a thing of many divisions, not a pure, clearflame such as you once were, Blaine. His intellect often wars with hisemotions, his will with his desires . . .

 his ideals are at odds with hisenvironment, and if he follows them, he knows keenly the loss of that
which was old, but if he does not follow them, he feels the pain of havingforsaken a new and noble dream.”

He sighed, 

“Whatever he does represents both a gain and a loss, anarrival, and a departure. Always, he mourns that which is gone and fears somepart of that which is new. Reason opposes tradition.

 Emotions oppose the restrictions his fellow men lay upon him. Always, from the friction of thesethings, there arises the thing we seraphs call the curse of man … regret.”

MI6 agent, James Cloverfield sat on the other side of the Seraph. “I amvery afraid, for I understood most of that.”

The other fifteen Spartans clustered not too far behind him. Deborah’sten Grunches were only feet away from them.

It was unwise to cluster so close together in strange, dangerousterritory.  

But I could not blame them.We are herd animals and seek the comfort of bodies close to us when death waitsin the shadows.

I gathered myself to rise to my feet. Death and Light were everywhere,always, and they begin, end, strive, attend, into and upon Elohim’s Dream thatis the world, burning words within Existence, perhaps to create a thing ofbeauty.

Then, Sister Ameal’s wiry fingers shot out and wrapped about my temples,knocking my Spartan helmet to the rutted ground.

"If trouble always comes when you least expect it, perhaps the thing to do is always expect it." 

- Major Richard Blaine

LIFE NARRATED BY ANOTHER'S THOUGHTS

 

For Misky and others who have enjoyed my last novel ...

I am working on the sequel:

ACROSS THE RIVER

and

THROUGH THE WORLDS

“Time is free, yet priceless. You cannot ownit, but you can use it. You cannot keep it, but you can spend it. The troublewith Man is that he thinks he has time when It has him.”

– Sentient        

 

As far back as I could remember my life had been narrated by a voiceother than my own.

It had nearly driven me crazy until I discovered the voice came from anorbiting sentient dimensional craft.

Now, all was silent inside my head except for my own bewildered thoughts.I had always wanted to be alone in my head, I had it now, and I was devastatedthinking I had lost my oldest friend.

Our desires are always fickle. Foolish is the man who trusts in them.

I sat by the inert body of Sister Ameal. I watched strange insects scurryaway from it as if she were aflame.

And maybe to their senses, she was. As far as I could tell my friends andI were in the Cretaceous time period, the last portion of the Age of theDinosaurs. I knew less than nothing about the insect life here.

I wagered it would be a safe bet to think any life form here would wantus for lunch, insect or otherwise. That they feared Sister Ameal’s body wasunsettling.

Of course, everything about her was unnerving … including the fact that shewas the living, now dead, avatar of Sentient.

Sentient? She was the living intra-dimensional craft, ensnared in Earth’sinitial gravitational field, who waited millennia to find a human mind with whomshe could communicate.

And as soon as she discovered me, I was drafted to be cannon fodder inthe madness spawned by Hitler’s insane ambitions.

Taking control of me to keep me safe, Sentient made me anything butsafe. Still, I was a Major … in two ways: 

in rank and a major pain to any superiorofficer, chief of whom was General Eisenhower … currently on psychiatric leave… and yes, I, or rather Sentient, was to blame.

I absently toyed with Sister Ameal’s brilliantly white habit. Sentient,through the nun or directly through mental words, had always been there for me.

Now, here in the Cretaceous Age, she was death silent. Why were we here?Only Elohim knew. 

He had cast us here from the cursed village of Oradour-sur-Glaneto keep me and my Spartan 300 safe from being crushed by the falling body of a dyingOld One.

As you might be suspecting, Omaha Beach was a picnic compared toout-of-control Gestapo science garnering the attention of the Dark Ones.

It seemed I only learned the truth long after it could do me any good. Toparaphrase Oedipus, Hamlet, Lear, and so many others, "I wish I hadknown this some time ago.”

For the thousandth time, I had acted impulsively. I doubt I would everact otherwise. I've always been impulsive. 

My thinking is usually pretty good,but I always seem to do it after I do my acting and talking — like now. Bywhich time I've generally destroyed all basis for further conversation.

Rabbi Lt. Amos Stein sat gingerly by my right side. “Rick, snap out ofit. The Spartans need ….”

A crackling sword of living flame sliced between us, and the eerie voiceof the fledgling seraph with the all too human name, Helen Mayfair, murmured, 

“You will give Richard all the time he requires to gather his wits. This is nota request, Rabbi.”

From the sound of her ghost-bell voice, I could tell she was in herfighting form of fourteen feet. 

Needless to say, when I fell in love with herin the orphanage library, she was in her human-appearing body.

PRAY FOR THOSE WITHOUT SHELTER TONIGHT

 

Downtown Lake Charles

Pray for those without shelter tonight and tomorrow ... both human and animal.

WINTER'S PRISONER

 

My New Business Card

"It was so cold I almost got married." 

- Shelly Winters

Monday and Tuesday are my days off ... 

and everyone else's at Lifeshare due to the lowest temperatures in 31 years with ice and snow.

Except for my friend and supervisor, 

Freddie Rosteet.

This is a photo of him driving to check

on Lifeshare.

He should get a medal

from the company

for all he does.

Freddie and friend

in Canada.

"When it snows,

you have 2 choices:

Shovel or hunt ducks." 

- Freddie

Yes, he hunts ducks,

but he feeds those on

the bayou running along

Lifeshare.

I awoke, face stiff with cold.

The electricity was out and

the temperature was 31 degrees

in the apartment.

No water either!

The lights just came back on.

But the black-outs are rolling.

Tonight it is said to become worse.

"There is no such thing 

as bad weather -

only not enough fur!" 

- Midnight

The sidewalk to the parking lot

is as iced over as it is.

The mechanized hinges to the

gates are frozen over.

Luckily, the are frozen open!

If I am called in to work Wednesday,

I do not what I will do.

But every problem has

a solution --

not a perfect one --

but a solution.

May this winter storm

not be treating you badly.