Three thousand, six hundred fifty days, more or less,depending on leap years – since the end of the 20th century. Oh, I know, calendar-wise, only a year or two off. But we don’t count strictly by the calendar. Afterwards, we count by events. Myself, I have the feeling that the 19th… Read full post »

I'm taking one. Maybe I'll be back. Maybe not. Here's a cute picture of a cat to look at, while I'm away.

It seems that the conflation of the Tea Party with terrorism is a meme that is everywhere this week among our political leadership and certain media commentators -- some of whom at least I would hope -- ought to know better. Herewith, a guide for the perplexed.

&… Read full post »

All right - my publisher and I have decided to bring out a hard-bound copy of the Adelsverein Trilogy, all three volumes in one handy and perhaps rather cheaper yet more durable format. There are two versions of the dust-jacket being suggested: which do you think is more attractive on the… Read full post »

The expression “combat shopping” is a wry inside joke in the military family, because there are certain assignments that were and are well known to be — because of the variety, quality and exoticism of the merchandise, and the comparatively well-paid nature of American military serv… Read full post »

            Mr. Burnett’s messenger to Carl in Bexar, sent by one of Captain Coleman’s volunteers, through the good offices of the local alcade returned to Austin the day before Alois Becker was/… Read full post »

Where do you go to market your books, if you are an indy or small-press author ... maybe outside the big box...

The trouble is – there are also a lot of other books there, too. Your competition is lined up in the bookshelves. Your one little book, or your three… Read full post »

(This is Part three of a ramble through my photo album - pictures that I took with a cheap little Kodak during my first military assignment overseas. This was thirty years ago, and just about everything about the Air Force, and Misawa AB has changed since then...Part One is here, Part/… Read full post »

(This is Part Two of a ramble through my photo album - pictures that I took with a cheap little Kodak during my first military assignment overseas. This was thirty years ago, and just about everything about the Air Force, and Misawa AB has changed since then...Part One is here.)

 … Read full post »

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them,… Read full post »

Sgt. Mom as a baby airman, Christmas Day, 1976. This was the very first day that my basic training flight were permitted to wear our newly-issued, freshly altered Class-A uniforms. Another member of the flight took this polaroid snapshot, which I sent to my parents in my next letter. 20… Read full post »

  (Youtube link to this dog'n'pony show at Fort Drum is here - since it seems impossible to embed videos directly on OS any more.)

 Similiar trenchant comments are on this milblog discussion thread from last week,  with regard to Obama’… Read full post »

A bit of linkage for all three of my readers on a Friday, gathered from the bounteously flowering fields of the internet:

 First - a Pakistani writer looks back at the Anglo-Indians. Not quite what you would have expected, but a good read about a community long-gone from modern Pakistan.… Read full post »

Like my earlier project, what would become one, two and three of the Adelsverein Trilogy, Daughter of Texas started out as a single volume, intended as a sort of prelude to the Trilogy. That was supposed to be about the German settlers who came to Texas in a large number in/… Read full post »

Yes, it would appear that the lesbians are actually straight men, the women are women, and the tween-agers are FBI agents, and a certain NY congressman with a slightly risible last name and a penchant for tweeting suggestive pictures of his body or p… Read full post »

(Our place in Athens - Penny's apartment building just barely visible to the right)

“You’ll simply have to read his books, if you want to understand about Greece,” my next-door neighbor told me, very shortly after… Read full post »

Personal art is ... well, personal. I have thirteen Yoshida prints scattered around the walls of my house - which came to me when I was stationed in Japan, and every month the traveling vendors came to Misawa AB, and set up in the O'Club. One of them was an enterprize named… Read full post »

Right off the top, about the first thing we learned – and learned it the hard way – about making your own cheese is that ultra-pasteurized milk is no good for cheese-making, even if it is the high-end and expansive organic milk. The ‘ultra-pasteurized’ notation was in s… Read full post »

Only once in my life have I ever had first-hand acquaintance with the necessity of a body-guard. Not for myself, mind you – but for a fellow military broadcaster during my year at Yongsan AIG, Republic of Seoul, South Korea. Being – in a relatively minor way – something of a… Read full post »