AD's Journal 2024

  My best friend Pauly would be having a field day with the current reports about outer space had he survived beyond 2020. He didn’t die of COVID, but a quick-striking heart attack, most likely caused by years of cannabis use. He was always up on the latest bit of space gossip, which explained his fascination with X-Files, chem trails, Area 51 and such. Over the last few weeks, we’ve been getting reports of a comet that is not acting like a comet and some believe may be an alien space craft, and a skull like structure on the surface of Mars. Scientists are telling us that an asteroid is going to hit the moon, perhaps as early as the early 2030s, which will cause havoc on earth and could destroy most of our satellites. This may explain why we (whomever we is – this government or that – have been trying to relocate other asteroids using high explosives. If all this sounds a bit far fetched, a Chicken Little kind of fairy tale, I fully understand. We have moved beyond re...

 We got just a bit of snow today, a flurry that dusted the roof of the shed in our back yard, and left bits of white on the still-green remnants of grass. Snow is a four letter word, and yet, I’m still nostalgic about it, as we stagger into the Christmas season and I still have fond memories of a time when the holidays meant something, people still in my life that made it special. This is also Veterans Day with all the associated events I’m still scrambling to cover, with the head of the local VFW still asking me for a picture of me when I was in service, which I am reluctant to give him since I spent so little time there. I’m still shocked at the promotion I got when I left, and the medal they awarded me because my service came during a time of war. I’m not like my ancestors – Robert and William – who fought in wars at the start of the last century, one in the Army, one in the Navy, both meeting up oddly enough on a battle field in Mexico at one point, an unexpected reunion ...

   The cold came with a bang this week after we got remnants of a massive hurricane over Jamaca. Not frigid, not yet, but with enough of a bite that I’m forced to put on layers of clothing. This is always a nostalgic time of year, after Halloween and headed into the holiday season, when I start reminiscing about family and friends, all mostly gone. Worse is the fear that the world is changing drastically, and that we are seeing the next generation take charge after so many decades of having the baby boomers in control of it all, not by our outstanding philosophy so much as by the sheer weight of numbers. Now as we fade, a less populous generation takes charge, filled with all of the misguided notions we somehow managed to abandon. We have no way to know if these kids who are so infatuated with socialism will survive to learn from their mistakes the way we have or will they do inreparable harm to the world as we know it, turning it all in shitshow from which something...