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(December 12. 2022 By J Kirk Richards In his latest book in the Republic of Cinnabar Navy series, Dave Drake knocks a pair of home runs, and we aren’t even to the story yet. In his Author’s Comments, he reprises poet and novelist Robert Graves’ “To Lucasta on Going to War – For the fourth […]

“David Drake’s ‘Shadows’ — Commentary, Outrages, Prose and Poetry

(December 4, 2022)

murder squawks loud, long

a feast if worms and such-like*

brings down the dark horde

*(With the final loads of “chewed” woody debris from the tropical storm getting trucked off, the resulting bare earth must have interested our local crow population with an easy picnic at French Avenue and 18th Street, a good 20 acres or more of vegetal matter converted into much after a couple of months to “season” the menu. Still no word on when the community garden will enjoy “front door” access, now when cricket, softball, football and other team sports will get a chance to enjoy the park-lite (as opposed to park-like) field across from Sanford Middle School, the old and remodeled Sanford Junior High and onetime Sanford/Seminole High. The sandspurs in the 1960s made the practice fields a true joy.)

(December 4, 2022)

first” late Fall chill

prompts rash of “heater” fires:

gauzy drapes, small pets…

*(Okay, actually the second late-Fall chill, but since the early morning temps never crashed 47 degrees Fahrenheit, who’s counting. Even my Parris Island-issued long johns languished unworn – again – but under just one layer of RVN camouflaged poncho liner, I was toasty enough, though the steady stream of fire sirens starting up just past 3 or 4 a.m. was enough for me: now that electric “space” heaters mostly have replaced the old kerosene-fueled such-like, we still get thos3e cold-morning fire calls. I pray most of the calls were false alarms. But a small cat or puppy can drag a lacy cute filagree into the maws of an space heater, and…whoosh! If you are cold, add a sweat shirt or sweater. Thus endeth the sermon, there will be no collection.)

(December 3, 2022)

pungent alley stink

stirred forth from mega-trash truck

north breeze eddys*

replaces quiet rot-riot

library opens in ten!

*(Nope, not talkin’ ’bout two guys with the same name: eddy refers to in this instance a brief bit of wind or current. In particular, a cold front previously past trails some chill breezes over the St. Johns River’s Lake Monroe frontage in Sanford .Florida Saturday morning. Lake Monroe is but one of a string of shallow depressions filled by the northward flowing, slow-moving river. It’s Seminole/Creek name Welaka, which according to local lore means “chain of lakes. Some say the St. Johns, and its 90-degree turn inland (to the left) from its first near 100-mile journey to The Atlantic, is partly responsible for the state not being one of so many other Northern Hemisphere deserts: check a decent map or better yet a globe nd see, from Mexico westward until it reaches Africa the latitude shared by Florida is mostly hot rocks and hotter sand. The river again turns northward after Sanford and finally finds the ocean just past Jacksonville, some 360 miles from its swampy, marshy beginnings West of Palm Beach near Blue Cypress Lake and environs. The river now is threatened by armored catfish – called by some Devilfish – which over the past half-century have replace native species such as our own blue and channel catfish, largemouth bass, sunshine bass, speckled perch (black crappie to you yankees up north in DeLand and elsewhere, sunfish called Bream here, Shellcrackers, Bluegill and else. Every few years or so with the right tides and such sea-going fish such as Redfish come as far south at Lake Monroe, which probably is how we got our stinrays (some enterprising fisherfolk stamp out “discs to be sold as cheaper versions of that New England mollusk both bay and divers scallops. Our mussels are for catching fish not poaching in white wine with shallots. We also have freshwater shrimp in our lakes around the river and best of all, the “sweetest” version of the Atlantic’s lesser-known but tastier shellfish, the Blue Crab. I have caught St. Johns Blue Crab in the river, at the junction of the St. Johns and Wekiva rivers, Lake Jessup and further North past Lake George. There used to be a crab processing facility at the mouth of Salt Springs run. Its operation in the later 60s and early 70s caused teh decline of live Blue Crab for sale Thursday through Saturday at Cook’s Corner (in those days we had Blue Laws that closed access to beer, wine and booze in almost every venue in Sanford. On ;ate Saturdays and more on Mondays’ Cooks master – oops, mistress – chef Bessie Patterson put forth her famous and deservedly so! – crab cakes: lump and claw meat which survived the Thursday-through-Saturday sale (about 60-to-90 cents a dozen I seem to recall as a kid when mom and dad would bring a big grocery sack home, the sides and bottom of the double-stuffed bag ripped to shreds by angry claws, for their three monsters’ enjoys with both butter and cocktail sauce and warm wet towels, served over a mass of newspapers. Both the cat and the dog were polite and waited their turns, except when one or all three of us lost a succulent morsel by accident. Funny, that was about the only time mom allowed Tiger in the house. A bent-tailed mustard brown and yellow cur whose amorous forays were famous – and easily appreciated – by concentric circles of yellow bent-tail progeny – throughout the town.)

(Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.)

By Jeffrey A. Tucker

The Pandemic planners created paper prosperity to cover up the grim reality they had brought about. But Paper Prosperity is false prosperity. It could not and did not last. Between January 2021 and September 2022, prices increased 13.5 percent accross the board, costing the average American family $728 in September alone. Even if inflation were to stop today, the inflation already ion the gag will cost the average American family $8,739 (Editor’s note: as stated in the Epoch Times’ daily columnist’s Oct. 22, 2022 talk given at Hillsdale College’s Michigan campus, sponsored by the private school’s student group Praxis. The Christian college takes no government money and does not accept government “vouchers” or “scholarships” – J Richards).

Economics is about people making choices and institutions enabling them to thrive. Public Heqlth is about the same thing. Driving a wedge between the two, as hapened in 2020, ranks among the most catastrophic public policy decisions of our lifetimes. Hellth and economics both require the nonnegotiable called freedom. May we never again experiment with the near abollition of freedom in the cause of mitigating disease.

We could write books listing all the economic calamities directly caused by this disastrous pandemic response. Yet even today, too few few people grasp the relationship between our currrent economic hardship – extending even to growing international tensions and the breakdown of trade and travel – and the brutality of the pandemic response.

Anthony Fauci (ed. note: longtime and highest paid government bureaucrat – CDC-&P* since forever it seems) said at the outset: “I don’t think about things like the economy and the secondary impacts.” Melinda Gates admitted in a December 4, 2020 interview with The New York Times: “What did surprise us is we hadn’t really thought through the economic impacts.”

(ed. note: the above is just a small sampling of Jeffrey Tucker’s much longer piece. From 2017 to 2021, he served as editorial director of The American Institute for Economic Research. His own Brownstone Institute of which he is founder and president, highlights a career of publications in such venues as The Wall Street Journal, National Review, The Freeman, and Chronicles. He is the author of 20 books, including “Liberty or Lockdown.

Imprimis, with more than 6,200,000 readers monthly, is a free publication of Hillsdale College. The school’s motto is “Pursuing Truth * Defending Liberty since 1844” If you want to read the entire talk, go steal George Markos’ copy of Imprimis. He probably will tell you to look up Hillsdale College (or Imprimis) on the web and subscribe. Yeah, they tag on a bit of last-page donating – and sometimes offer neat cruise or vacation offerings featuring national and international lecturers while riverboating The Rhine, cruising the Eastern and Western ends of the Mediterranean, South America’s coasts (both oceans) and the Caribbean. Once again: like the college’s on-line courses – all students must take and pass the schools Constitution 101 course and a similar course is offered on-line and free along with a steadily growing syllabus of free on-line courses – each with a voluntary exam and certificate of successful completion. And all for the amazing cost of: NOTHING.

*(CDC&P: Center(s) for Disease Control & Prevention. Most people do not take the time to include the “And Prevention” part of the center’s charter. including those who should know better.)

(November 25, 2022)

sudden noise as I reach

for emergency pee-pot

there’s my windup-light!