I’ve written about my time in the US Army, and about spending time behind bars getting out of the Army, in my story called It’s Not About Me. In that story, I discussed a bit of my view on the Vietnam war, the view echoed by many who have studied it since—that it was the wrong…

The South Pacific is a marvelous place for characters, it attracts them and magnifies them the same way it magnifies all the tales and rumors. After a while I developed Willis’s Rule of Rumors, which is that you need to divide all the numbers in a story about some other island by the square root…

In November I’d ordered a camper shell for my truck, and it finally came in. I drove to town to drop the truck off for 2-1/2 hours until it was installed. So as is my custom, I went out to wander the streets and see what the inhabitants were up to. As is also my…

Today, I needed to clear the final recall notice on my faithful Ram pickup. So of course, as is my habit, after dropping the truck off at the dealers I went to talk to the homeless folks. I’ve written about this curious habit of mine in previous posts entitled “Fixing The Brakes“, “Fixing The EGR“,…

Once again, I had to take my Ram pickup truck to the dealer. This time, it was just to make sure it was OK before the warranty ran out. And once again, I bought a pack of smokes and went out to talk to the homeless.  The first people I ran into were Mack and…

After I wrote my most recent piece about wandering around in the world of the homeless, called “Fixing The EGR“, some folks accused me of being compassionate. Funny, but I don’t see it that way at all, for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that we grew up without much money. My “new”…

My faithful Ram 1500 had a recall notice for the Exhaust Gas Recirculating system. They said it would take about four hours, so I figured I’d wander the streets of Santa Rosa. In a previous post called “Fixing The Brakes” I spoke about how I think it’s wrong to ignore the homeless. I don’t mean…

In this New Year, to counterbalance these most fractious times I thought I’d tell a tale of humanity and caring. I’ve had the privilege of living in a wide variety of countries and societies. And having not always been entirely sane myself, one way that I judge societies is by how they handle their crazy folks.…

I was watching the TV series “Call The Midwife” tonight with my gorgeous ex-fiancée. It takes place back in 1964. Two of the characters were old gay men, very much in love in a society where it was still “the love that can’t be named”, the love that at the time was still very illegal…