Why he took the knee
2020-05-30
Meanwhile, in America, yet another demonstration of why Colin Kaepernick took the knee, a simple act that got him run out of the NFL. He was right. Share This PostDown the rabbit hole….
“It wasn’t a miracle. We just decided to go.”
2020-05-30
That may be my favorite quote from the movie Apollo 13. Jim Lovell says it to his wife as they relax in their backyard, after all of their guests have gone home from their watch party for the Apollo 11 moon landing. Lovell’s amazement at the feat of landing on the moon isn’t just at the fact of the location, but that all it took to get there was a decade-plus (well, with a lot of stuff coming before) of applied human ingenuity. The human presence in space hasn’t quite gone according to the plan my six-year-old brain thought itDown the rabbit hole….
On Memorial Day
2020-05-25
An annual reposting of some things pertaining to Memorial Day. First, a remembrance of a soldier I never knew. Fifteen years ago I wrote the following on Memorial Day, and I wanted to revisit it. It’s about the Vietnam Veteran whose name I remember, despite the fact that I had no relation to him and clearly never knew him, because he was killed four years before I was born. Memorial Day, for all its solemnity, has for me always been something of a distant holiday, because no one close to me has ever fallen in war, and in fact IDown the rabbit hole….
“Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!” Mt. St. Helens, 40 years later
2020-05-19
The anniversary is something of a misnomer. Mt. St. Helens, a mountain in the volcanic Cascade Range in southwestern Washington State, was always thought to be on the verge of significant volcanic activity, and one day when I was in school in March, 1980, my fourth-grade teacher wheeled a teevee cart into the classroom. She plugged it in and started tuning to one of the local stations, which was carrying the event live. An earthquake had jolted Mt. St. Helens, and the mountain was now venting steam from its summit. If it seems odd that this was on local news,Down the rabbit hole….
From the Books: A MAN ON THE MOON (Apollo 13 at 50)
2020-04-11
Fifty years ago today, a Saturn V rocket blasted off from Cape Kennedy Spaceport. The destination of the three-man crew–astronauts Jim Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert–in the command module perched atop the rocket was the Fra Mauro Highlands on the moon. They never got there. A faulty wire in the service module’s oxygen tanks sparked during a routine stirring operation, and the resulting explosion forced the deactivate of the service module’s engines and the reliance on the lunar excursion module as a de facto lifeboat, as NASA shifted from a lunar landing to an earthbound rescue operation. Even thoughDown the rabbit hole….
The Era of the Virus, one month in
2020-04-05
First off: thus far, everyone at Casa Jaquandor is fine. So, as of this writing, we’re roughly one month or so (however you choose to measure such things) into Covid-19’s grip on American life. This is roughly about when, in March, I started to think that maybe this wasn’t going to simply be one of those diseases that comes and goes but doesn’t amount to a whole lot. But looking at the timeline, by the 5th of March, the World Health Organization hadn’t even classified Covid-19 as a pandemic yet. That wouldn’t happen for another six days. On March 12,Down the rabbit hole….
My Annual Year’s End Quiz!!!
2020-01-01
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year? My resolutions never change much: “Read a lot, write a lot, eat healthier, walk more, listen to more music.” As these go, not bad! The toughest one is “eat healthier,” which is a back-end kind of thing: I have no problem finding newer healthier foods to like. It’s staying away from the less-than-healthy ones that tends to trip me up! This is something I need to work on big-time. As for the rest, it was a decent year. I wrote a fair amount (though aDown the rabbit hole….
Thoughts, photos, and videos of the decade just gone by
2020-01-01
Wow, another decade is in the books. We’re on to the Twenties. My feelings on the Teens are rather mixed. Societally, worldwide and nationally, I think 2010-2019 represent at best a series of missed opportunities and at worst some serious regressions. But for me personally? The decade was pretty damned good, for the most part. I got ahead professionally at The Day Job, and my writing career continued to advance, even if it took routes that I didn’t entirely expect when 2010 dawned. But this was the decade I got back to hard-core fiction writing after the emotional upheavals ofDown the rabbit hole….
2010-2019: A decade in words
2020-01-01
Wow, not just a year ending, but a decade! Here is a selection of my favorite posts from the last ten years. How much longer will this go on? Who knows! I’d like to get back into more essay and photo content around here than the YouTube music selections, so here’s hoping. Grouped by year: 2010 Remembering Dr. Warren Schmidt The Behaviors of Mr. George Costanza 2011 “Thy world, O master of the world, thy dawn: Reflections on On Her Majesty’s Secret Service On That Day 2012 On finally seeing Les Miserables on stage An open letter to Castle LastDown the rabbit hole….
Eighteen
2019-09-11
Eighteen years. I wonder what we have learned, if anything; how we’ve grown, if at all; if we’ve changed in the ways we needed to change. I wrote this story not long after the events of 9-11-01. It is not the story I would write today. How could it be? I was on the cusp of turning thirty, and at that point the scope of an attack of that magnitude was nearly impossible to process. The City of Dead Works There is never any rest for me, the Ferryman of the Dead. I pole my barge across the black watersDown the rabbit hole….