1968

January 21 - Battle of Khe Sanh – One of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war begins, ending on April 8.

                     A U.S. B-52 Stratofortress crashes in Greenland, discharging 4 nuclear bombs.

January 23 – North Korea seizes the USS Pueblo, claiming the ship violated its territorial waters while spying.

January 30 – The Tet Offensive begins as Viet Cong forces launch a series of surprise attacks across South Vietnam.

January 31 - Viet Cong soldiers attack the Embassy of the United States, Saigon.

February 1 - Execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém – A Viet Cong officer is summarily executed by Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, a South Vietnamese National Police Chief. The event is photographed by Eddie Adams. The photo makes headlines around the world, eventually winning the 1969 Pulitzer Prize, and sways U.S. public opinion against the war.

             The Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad merge to form Penn Central, the largest ever corporate merger up to this date.

February 8 – A civil rights demonstration on a college campus to protest racial segregation in South Carolina is broken up by highway patrolmen; three African American students are killed, the first instance of police killing student protestors at an American campus.

March 10 – Battle of Lima Site 85, the largest single ground combat loss of United States Air Force members (12) during the (at this time) secret war later known as the Laotian Civil War.

March 11 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson mandates that all computers purchased by the federal government support the ASCII character encoding.

March 14 - Nerve gas leaks from the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground near Skull Valley, Utah.

March 16 - My Lai Massacre: American troops kill scores of civilians. The story will first become public in November 1969 and will help undermine public support for the U.S. efforts in Vietnam.

           U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy enters the race for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

March 18 – Gold standard: The United States Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back U.S. currency.

March 19 - Students at Howard University in Washington, D.C., signal a new era of militant student activism on college campuses in the U.S. Students stage rallies, protests and a 5-day sit-in, laying siege to the administration building, shutting down the university in protest over its ROTC program and the Vietnam War, and demanding a more Afrocentric curriculum.

March 31 – In a televised address, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that he will not be a candidate for re-election.

April 4 - Martin Luther King Jr. is shot dead at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee by James Earl Ray. King-assassination riots erupt in major American cities, lasting for several days afterwards.

          Apollo program: Apollo-Saturn mission 502 (Apollo 6) is launched, as the second and last uncrewed test-flight of the Saturn V launch vehicle.

April 6 - A shootout between Black Panthers and police in Oakland, California, results in several arrests and deaths, including 17-year-old Panther Bobby Hutton.

          Richmond, Indiana explosion: A double explosion in downtown Richmond caused by a methane leak kills 41 and injures 150.

April 18 – London Bridge is sold to U.S. entrepreneur Robert P. McCulloch for reconstructiion at Lake Havasu City, Arizona.

April 23 – Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.

April 26 – The nuclear weapon "Boxcar" is tested at the Nevada Test Site in the biggest detonation of Operation Crosstie.

May 3 – Braniff Flight 352 crashes near Dawson, Texas, United States, killing all 85 people on board.

May 17 – The Catonsville Nine enter the Selective Service offices in Catonsville, Maryland, take dozens of selective service draft records, and burn them with napalm as a protest against the Vietnam War.

May 18 - Mattel's Hot Wheels toy cars are introduced in the United States.

May 22 – The U.S. nuclear-powered submarine Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard, 400 miles southwest of the Azores.

June 3 – Radical feminist Valerie Solanas shoots Andy Warhol at his New York City studio, The Factory; he survives after a 5-hour operation.

June 5 – Senator Robert F. Kennedy, a leading 1968 Democratic presidential candidate, is shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. Palestinian-born Sirhan Sirhan is arrested.

June 12 – The horror film Rosemary's Baby premieres in the U.S.

July 17 – Saddam Hussein becomes Vice Chairman of the Revolutionary Council in Iraq after a coup d'état.

July 18 – The semiconductor company Intel is founded in what becomes known as the Silicon Valley of California.

July 20 – The first International Special Olympics Summer Games are held at Soldier Field in Chicago, Ill, with about 1,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities.

July 23 – Black militants led by Fred (Ahmed) Evans engage in a fierce gunfight with police in the Glenville Shootout of Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States.

August 5 – The Republican National Convention in Miami Beach, Florida nominates Richard Nixon for U.S. president and Spiro Agnew for vice president.

August 22 – Police clash with anti-Vietnam War protesters in Chicago outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention, which nominates Hubert Humphrey for U.S. president and Edmund Muskie for vice president. The riots and subsequent trials are an essential part of the activism of the Youth International Party. "The whole world is watching!"

October 10 - Detroit Tigers win World Series in seven games.

October 11 - NASA launches Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo mission (Wally Schirra, Donn Eisele, Walter Cunningham). Mission goals include the first live television broadcast from orbit and simulating lunar module rendezvous and docking, using the S-IVB rocket stage as a test target.

October 14 – The United States Department of Defense announces that the United States Army and United States Marines will send about 24,000 troops back to Vietnam for involuntary second tours.

October 16 - In Mexico City, African-American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists in a Black Power salute after winning, respectively, the gold and bronze medals in the Olympic men's 200 metres.

October 18 – U.S. athlete Bob Beamon breaks the long jump world record by 55 cm / 21 ft 3⁄4 ins at the Olympics in Mexico City. His record stands for 23 years, and remains the second longest jump in history.

October 31 – Citing progress in the Paris peace talks, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of "all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam" effective November 1.

November 5 - 1968 United States presidential election: Republican candidate Richard Nixon defeats the Democratic candidate, Vice President Hubert Humphrey.

November 17 - NBC cuts off the final 1:05 of an Oakland Raiders–New York Jets football game to broadcast the pre-scheduled Heidi movie. Fans are unable to see Oakland (which had been trailing 32–29) score 2 late touchdowns to win 43–32; as a result, thousands of outraged football fans flood the NBC switchboards to protest.

November 20 – The Farmington Mine disaster in Farmington, West Virginia, kills seventy-eight men.

November 22 - The Beatles White Album is released.

November 24 – 4 men hijack Pan Am Flight 281 from JFK International Airport, New York to Havana, Cuba.

December 9 – Douglas Engelbart publicly demonstrates his pioneering hypertext system, NLS, in San Francisco, together with the computer mouse, at what becomes retrospectively known as "The Mother of All Demos".

December 24 – The crewed U.S. spacecraft Apollo 8 enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth as a whole, as well as having traveled further away from Earth than any people in history. Anders photographs Earthrise. The crew also give a reading from the Book of Genesis.

Births:

Cuba Gooding

Mary Lou Retton

Gary Coleman

Josh Brolin

Molly Ringwald

Celine Dion

Patricia Arquette

Anthony Michael Hall

Ashley Judd

Tony Hawk

Terry Crews

Gillian Anderson

Will Smith

Hugh Jackman

Tracy Morgan

Deaths:

Nick Adams

Neal Cassady

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Helen Keller

Robert F. Kennedy

Upton Sinclair

Tallulah Bankhead

John Steinbeck

R Crumb

 

 

1966

I was sixteen years old. 

January 10 - The House of Representatives of the US state of Georgia refuses to allow African-American representative Julian Bond to take his seat, because of his anti-war stance.

January 17 - A U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton hydrogen bombs near the town of Palomares, and one into the sea. Carl Brashear, the first African-American United States Navy diver, is involved in an accident during the recovery of the latter, which results in the amputation of his leg.

January 29 - The Blizzard of '66. Thirty-six inches of snow fell in Richmond. everything closed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_blizzard_of_1966

February 3 – The unmanned Soviet Luna 9 spacecraft makes the first controlled rocket-assisted landing on the Moon.

Feruary 7 - Lyndon B. Johnson of the United States and Nguyễn Cao Kỳ of South Vietnam convene with other officials in a summit in Honolulu, Hawaii to discuss the course of the Vietnam War.

March 1 - Soviet space probe Venera 3 crashes on Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to land on another planet's surface.

March 16 – NASA spacecraft Gemini 8 (David Scott, Neil Armstrong) conducts the first docking in space, with an Agena target vehicle.

March 26 – Demonstrations are held across the United States against the Vietnam War.

March 31 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 10, which becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.

April 18 - The 38th Academy Awards ceremony is held in Santa Monica, California: The Sound of Music wins Best Picture.

April 21 - An artificial heart is installed in the chest of Marcel DeRudder in a Houston, Texas, hospital.

April 24 – Uniform daylight saving time is first observed in most parts of North America

May 15 - Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators again picket the White House, then rally at the Washington Monument.

May 16 - The Chinese Communist Party issues the 'May 16 Notice', marking the beginning of the Cultural Revolution.

In New York City, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. makes his first public speech on the Vietnam War.

May 28 - Fidel Castro declares martial law in Cuba because of a possible U.S. attack.

June 2 - Surveyor program: Surveyor 1 lands in Oceanus Procellarum on the Moon, becoming the first U.S. spacecraft to soft-land on another world.

June 5 – Gemini 9A: Gene Cernan completes the second U.S. spacewalk (2 hours, 7 minutes).

June 6 – Civil rights activist James Meredith is shot by a sniper while traversing Mississippi in the March Against Fear.

June 12 – Chicago's Division Street riots begin in response to police shooting of a young Puerto Rican man.

June 13 – Miranda v. Arizona: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that the police must inform suspects of their rights before questioning them.

June 29 - Vietnam War: U.S. planes begin bombing Hanoi and Haiphong.

June 30 - The National Organization for Women (NOW) is founded in Washington, D.C.

July 13 – In Chicago, United States, Richard Speck breaks into a nurses' dormitory and murders eight of the nine student nurses who live there.

July 18 - Gemini 10 (John Young, Michael Collins) is launched from the United States. After docking with an Agena target vehicle, the astronauts set a world altitude record of 474 miles (763 km).

July 24 - A USAF F-4C Phantom #63-7599 is shot down by a North Vietnamese SAM-2 45 miles (72 km) northeast of Hanoi, the first loss of a U.S. aircraft to a Vietnamese surface-to-air missile in the Vietnam War.

July 28 – The U.S. announces that a Lockheed U-2 reconnaissance plane has disappeared over Cuba.

Julky 29 - Bob Dylan is injured in a motorcycle accident near his home in Woodstock, New York. He is not seen in public for over a year.

August 1 - Sniper Charles Whitman kills 15 people and wounds 31 from roof of the University of Texas at Austin Main Building tower in the United States, after earlier killing his wife and mother.

August 5 – The Caesars Palace hotel and casino opens in Las Vegas, United States.

August 6- Braniff International Airways Flight 250 crashes in Falls City, Nebraska, United States, killing all 42 of those on board.

August 10 – Lunar Orbiter 1, the first U.S. spacecraft to orbit the Moon, is launched.

            The Beatles hold a press conference in Chicago, during which John Lennon apologizes for his "more popular than Jesus" remark, saying, "I didn't mean it as a lousy anti-religious thing."

August 29 – The Beatles end their U.S. tour with a concert at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. It is their last performance as a live touring band.

October 1 – West Coast Airlines Flight 956 crashes with 18 fatal injuries and no survivors 5.5 miles (8.9 km) south of Wemme, Oregon, the first loss of a DC-9.

October 6 - LSD is made illegal in the United States and controlled so strictly that not only are possession and recreational use criminalized, but all legal scientific research programs on the drug in the country are shut down as well.

            The Love Pageant Rally takes place in the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park (a narrow section that projects into San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district).

October 15 – Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton found the Black Panther Party in the United States.

October 27 - Walt Disney records his final filmed appearance prior to his death, detailing his plans for EPCOT, a utopian planned city to be built in Florida.

November 8 – Screen actor Ronald Reagan is elected Governor of California.

November 15 – Gemini 12 (James A. Lovell, Buzz Aldrin) splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean, 600 km (370 mi) east of the Bahamas.

November 27 – The Washington Redskins defeat the New York Giants 72–41 in the highest scoring game in National Football League history.

November 28 – Truman Capote's Black and White Ball ("The Party of the Century") is held in New York City.

December 5 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Bond v. Floyd that the Georgia House of Representatives must seat Julian Bond, having violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

December 18 – How the Grinch Stole Christmas, narrated by Boris Karloff, is shown for the first time on CBS in the United States. It becomes a Christmas tradition.

December 26 – The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, founder of Organization US (a black nationalist group) and chair of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach, from 1989 to 2002.

Births:

Rainn Wilson

Cindy Crawford

Tia Leoni

Janet Jackson

John Cusack

Mike Tyson

Halle Berry

Selma Hayek

Adam Sandler

Luke Perry

David Schwimmer

Kiefer Sutherland

Deaths:

Buster Keaton

Ed Wynn

Lenny Bruce

Walt Disney

Lying King

 

The Apprentice Fraud

After experiencing a series of financial setbacks in the early 1990s, New York real-estate developer Donald Trump changed his business strategy from borrowing to build and purchase assets, to licensing his name to others. Producer Mark Burnett approached Trump about a new television show. Although Trump was skeptical, stating that reality television "was for the bottom-feeders of society", Burnett proposed that Trump appear as himself, a successful businessman with a luxurious lifestyle.

After his non-disclosure agreement expired in 2024, Bill Pruitt, one of the four producers of the first two seasons of The Apprentice, revealed that Trump's appearances were heavily edited in post-production. On location, Pruitt noted, "he could barely put a sentence together about how a task would work" and often struggled to remember contestants' names. Post-production editing enhanced his dialogue, feeding him lines to make him appear "articulate and concise." Additionally, Trump's actual offices were too cramped and the furniture too shabby for a show meant to "demonstrate impeccable business instincts and unparalleled wealth." As a result, the production team rented vacant Trump Tower retail space from Trump and constructed the illusion of a luxurious reception area and boardroom.

Finished

 

The new war

  

   "The very 'rules of war' have changed. The role of non-military means of achieving political and strategic goals has grown, and, in many cases, they have exceeded the power of force of weapons in their effectiveness.  All this is supplemented by military means of a concealed character, including carrying out actions of informational conflict and the actions of special operations forces.  Collective intelligence, dynamics of the crowd in participatory systems such as social media, have immense power to support a collective action – such as foment a political change"

    ~ General Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the general staff of the Russian Federation, in the "Military-Industrial Kurier“ February 27, 2013.

These are the same tactics Donald Trump is using today. 

Lying King

 

grifter (noun)

A con man. Someone who pulls confidence games.

A person who swindles you by means of deception or fraud.

Alcohol

 

People with alcohol-related brain damage (ARBD) or alcohol-related dementia (ARD) may repeat themselves due to memory problems. Alcohol can damage the brain, especially if consumed heavily over many years. 

Explanation

Blackouts

Alcohol can cause blackouts, which are periods of time when someone can't remember what happened. 

Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome (WKS)

This syndrome is a type of ARD that can cause memory loss, delirium, and hallucinations. People with WKS may repeat questions or comments during a conversation. 

Alcohol-related brain impairment (ARBI)

This condition can cause difficulty learning new information, focusing, and retrieving information from memory. 

Alcohol-related brain damage (ARBD)

This condition can cause memory and thinking problems, including confabulation, which is when someone makes errors when recalling information. 

Other effects of alcohol

Alcohol can also cause chemical imbalances in the brain, which can make it hard to stop drinking. Other effects of alcohol include: 

anxiety, sleep disturbances, pain, feelings of illness, irritability, and emotional pain.

THE MAELSTROM

In 1803 the townspeople in Richmond, Virginia, were roused from their beds by a fire alarm and were able to view a very rich display between 1 and 3 o'clock. The meteors "seemed to fall from every point in the heavens, in such a manner as to resemble a shower of sky rockets."

 "Long ago, a massive perturbation of orbits in the Oort Cloud, perhaps triggered by a passing star or a tiny black hole, sent millions of comets hurtling towards the sun.  As they crossed the paths of the planets, some struck with the force of unimaginable explosions, gouging out craters hundreds of miles across and irrevocably altering the delicate balance of planetary orbits.  Those that reached the sun were torn apart by its gravity, their icy bodies fractured into countless fragments that were flung back into the Oort Cloud in vast, elliptical trajectories.  These icy shrapnel, a ghostly armada of cosmic debris, now returns.  Over millennia, they will bombard the inner planets once more, a relentless storm of impacts that will reshape the face of Earth.  New mountain ranges will rise from the shattered crust, while devastating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions will tear the land apart.  The very air will be thick with dust and ash, blotting out the sun.  This cosmic maelstrom will last for centuries, a period of unparalleled geological upheaval that will test the very limits of life's resilience."

 

The backside of the Moon. 

It may be that the theoretical "ninth planet" is a tiny black hole. Invisible to astronomers but Stellar-mass black holes are typically in the range of 10 to 100 solar masses. If in orbit about our own Sun and within the Oort Cloud its orbit could be thousands of years.

Brunswick Stew

4-6 quarts chicken broth
2 pounds boneless, cooked chicken, roughly chopped
2 quarts canned, diced tomatoes
1 cup chopped onion
3 cups fresh or frozen white potatoes, peeled and diced
1 quart frozen or canned butter beans, drained
1 quart frozen or canned whole kernel corn, drained

5 tablespoons sugar
kosher salt to taste
coarse black pepper to taste
crushed red pepper to taste

Place all ingredients in a large stockpot, starting with 4 quarts of chicken broth. Bring to a boil, and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook, uncovered, 1½-2 hours, until it becomes thick.

Add the remaining chicken broth, if desired, 1 quart at a time. Return to a simmer for an additional half hour before serving.

This stew also can be frozen.

Farm Bureau of Virginia

Dodge RAM

 

Life During Wartime

 Life During Wartime                                           story             Neil Crabtree

My neighbor Skylar is a Florida cracker from way back, descendant of a long line of rednecks on both sides of the family. From what he’s told me, the line between both sides of the family may have been crossed several times during the previous century. But he’s sharp enough, and funny as hell if, like me, you are an Anglo Saxon in constant need of sunscreen. Our houses are on lots side by side, our driveways run parallel, and if one of us forgets to put out the cans on garbage day, the other usually will just go ahead and put the cans from both houses out to the curb. We grill together, though not as much as before the recent election. His TRUMP flag still flies and he’s less obnoxious now that his side won. Jokes about the opposing sides have stopped being funny. We’d rather talk about football than the state of the union. 

There had been a grounds crew that took care of all the houses in our cul-de-sac, but since the end of January we had not seen them. They would come every Wednesday morning and spray grass and dust all over our cars. My landlord told me most of the workers had been rounded up by ICE to be deported. Skylar acted surprised.

“I never thought they was illegal,” he told me, as he helped me unload boxes of books from my car trunk. “Hell, that one boy helped me move the boat trailer into the back yard without asking for anything. I gave him five bucks and a cold cola and you’d think I was Santa Claus. Manuel told me the others were brothers and cousins. Primos, he called them. Like good dope, but cousins.”

“Trump said he was going to deport the illegals,” I pointed out. 

“The daddy was illegal,” Skylar said in frustration. “Manuel was born at Jackson like the rest of his kin,” Skylar said. “Now what are we supposed to do? The Haitians are in more trouble than the Greasers. They’re rounding ‘em up by the truckload. Who’s going to cut our lawns?”

“There’s always people looking for work,” I said.

“You know what white men charge to do yard work? Prices will double.”

“Some kids will come around.”

“Forget it. We’re running out of darkies.”

Darkies was the term Skylar applied to any non-white person. Latinos, Arabs, Hawaiians, if there was one drop of black blood, the people may not look black, but they were definitely darkies. Darkies encompassed the spectrum of objectionable people from black to swarthy. You didn’t have to be African to be different.  Indian qualified. Either kind. The formal term in the old days was Colored People, those not allowed to use White bathrooms or water fountains. Nowadays we say People of Color on TV, darkies in Skylar’s house.

Deporting children born in the United States of illegal aliens had just become common, but the guilt it caused to civil-minded folks felt uncomfortable, like a deal that had been welched on. Every day it seemed there came another offensive action from the Trump administration. Proud Boys openly threatened the judges and congress people who had sent them to prison. Climate Change could not be mentioned even when the weather made it obvious something major had gone wrong. The Gulf of Mexico was now the Gulf of America, for no other reason than the President thought it sounded nice.

“Going to have to change a lot of geography books,” Skylar told me when he heard about it. 

“Why not? They’re already re-writing the history books,” I said.

“That’s just more of that MSNBC misinformation.”

“When did you ever watch MSNBC?” I asked.

“I don’t have to. The President has his own news agency.”

That part was true. Misinformation could be had twenty-four hours a day, sent from on-high, from the Chosen One. The news he gave out often conflicted with the news given out by networks we’d watched our whole lives. The Trumpers did not care. The media had always been biased against their point-of-view. Now it all balanced out. 

“I’m going to buy a lawn mower,” I told Skylar. 

“Hell, I may have one in my storage unit. I’ll check. We can both use it.”

“Works for me.”

“I feel sorry for Manuel,” he said. “Imagine. He’s being deported to a country he’s never seen.”

“Him. And a million other kids.”

“I hate to think about him landing in some shithole country like Nicaragua or something. It’s going to be hard to earn a living. We should give them all a hundred bucks on the way out.” Skylar looked around. “The Golden Age of America,” he said.

“Thanks for helping with these books,” I said. “They’re damn heavy.”

“Where did you get all them?’

“The high school has to get rid of them. They’ll give them to you free if you’ll haul them away.”

“What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re WOKE. Too WOKE for teenagers to read.”

“Jesus. My sister would be happy to get her daughters to read anything,” he said. “They spend all day on their little phones. Come to visit and I hardly get a peep out of either one. We used to play softball together, not five years ago. We’d talk about things. I don’t know what’s going on these days.”

I could see something going on behind his eyes, a shadow not caused by any visible cloud.

“Skylar, you and your family are welcome to as many books as you’d like. Whatever is leftover I’ll take to Eunice to sell at the Dollar-A-Book sale.” Eunice operated the last used bookstore in Miami and sold herbal tea remedies and kombucha her husband made fresh each week. People brought her their used books and she gave them a store-credit against any purchases they made. Once a month she ran a Dollar-A-Book sale and gave the money she raised to the Redlands Animal Shelter. Skylar bought books about fishing, about grilling and about the Civil War. He knew a lot about the Confederacy and the different battles. He was a TarHeel from Carolina, and I’d been born and raised in Virginia, mostly around Petersburg, home of the Centre Hill Mansion, and the Crater, where Union troops led by Pennsylvania miners dug a tunnel under the Confederate camp and filled it with dynamite. The Yankees blew up the dynamite and rushed the huge crater they’d created, only to find the Rebs had learned of their plot and were able to attack from the high ground at the edge and massacre the Union men. Skylar had actually visited there and had a collection of Minie balls and shrapnel purchased at the roadside stands. We each had a tradition of Lost Causes that spanned generations, as ingrained as our politeness and taste for salty Smithfield ham. Elvis singing Dixie could move either of us to tears.

“Things will get better,” Skylar said. “Cold beer helps me think. I got a half a cooler full of tallboys. Want a beer? Here, let me help.”

As I got the hand truck under the boxes of books, we could see an unmarked car with blue lights flashing behind the grill, parked at the end of the street, motor running, but no one getting in or out. Just two dark shapes, talking on cellphones, sitting and waiting for orders.

“Now we have something to fear besides Fear Itself,” I said.

“I’m afraid you’ll get us both in trouble with your leftist bullshit.”

I thought for a second. “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

“More hand truck and less jerking me around, we’ll get to that beer cooler yet.”

He pushed the stack of boxes back toward me but was unsure I could handle the load. 

“I’m feeling more Mexican already,” he said. “Here. Let me get that. You’ll dump the whole thing bigger than hell.”

He came and took the hand truck and the stack of full cardboard boxes from me.

“I’ll get the door,” I said.

“Grassy ass, Seen-your,” he said and pushed the pile forward, then stopped. “Look what they’re doing.” He rested the load. 

Down the street, a van had pulled up next to the parked car. Three uniformed men got out and headed up the driveway of the corner house. A dark-skinned man came out of the house with his hands up and was seized immediately. Two spun him around and handcuffed both wrists behind his back, yelling at him the whole time. The men from the car went into the open house door and came out with an elderly lady between them. More unmarked cars with flashing lights arrived, two, three of them, and armed uniformed men entered the premises. They came out again with a young dark-skinned boy in shorts and a Dolphin jersey, and a young woman carrying a baby in her arms. Female officers came from one of the cars and helped get the family into the police van. The original tenant kept yelling at the officers until they marched him to the first car and shoved him into the back seat. Then several officers cleared a way for the vehicles to come down our street and go around the big tree right in front of Skylar’s house to circle out of the cul-de-sac. In the backseat we saw the dark-skinned man and he looked at us both for help we could not give. The car and the van were leaving while cop cars with flashing lights kept arriving, uniformed men and women standing around talking. From inside the house there came a gunshot and a yelp of a wounded animal. Another gunshot then silence. The street cops headed into the house, weapons ready. We could hear radio chatter all the way down the street.

“Jesus,” Skylar said. “They shot the dog.”

I started to head into the street but Skylar grabbed my arm tight and would not let go.

“Don’t do it, man,” he said, pulling me close. “They’re like sharks. They’ve tasted blood.”

“They have no right to do this,” I started to say, then I saw the look in his eyes.

“Let’s get your WOKE books outta the driveway,” he said, and pushed the full hand truck to my front door. I helped him get up the front step. Inside, he wheeled the stack against the wall, then headed straight to the liquor cabinet. He liked my Bob Dylan bourbon and knew we were both ready for a shot.

“I saw that guy in Publix this morning. He’d won a hundred bucks on a scratch-off and was happy as hell,” Skylar said. “I patted him on the back, said I needed some of that luck. He just kept smiling. Seemed like an OK dude. At least he got the hundred bucks.”

Several ICE and law enforcement vehicles came down the circle and sped away. At least one had a camera mounted on the dashboard. There were still cars at the house. I locked the front door, for all the good it would do. Luck seemed a funny thing, but not the kind that makes you laugh. A family taken away, a dog shot dead. I felt the way I did after I got T-boned in my Toyota on Bird Road by a woman who thought she could beat traffic. Blind-sided and spun around and hurt in too many places to count.

“Better days,” Skylar toasted, and we knocked back the first of many rounds.

Rick Griffin

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Griffin

Branches

Government authority is distributed between several branches to prevent power from being concentrated in the hands of a single person. In a presidential system, the leader of the executive is both the head of state and federal government. Executive orders are subject to judicial review and may be overturned if the orders lack support by statute or the Constitution.  The United States Constitution does not have a provision that explicitly permits the use of executive orders. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_order

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_executive_orders_in_the_second_presidency_of_Donald_Trump#2025

Huntingdon Old Bridge

 My 8th great grandfather was born in Huntingdon England in 1636. The Old Bridge there was constructed in 1332 and remains today. Before my grandfather came to America in 1658 he must have used this bridge.  

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Bridge,_Huntingdon

Snoopy

 In May of 1969 Apollo 10, named for Charlie Brown and Snoopy, was a test of the Lunar Module capabilities for landing on the Moon months later. It was the 2nd spacecraft to orbit the Moon. The LM separated from the Command Module and flew by itself piloted by Eugene Cernan but never landed. After testing the LM (Snoopy) was released to a heliocentric orbit of the Sun forever.

Snoopy was lost.

Back then, NASA did not follow Snoopy's trajectory, so it was forgotten about until Nick Howes, a Royal Astronomical Society fellow from the U.K., recently shared that he may have found the module with a team of fellow amateur astronomers in 2019.

Forty-seven

 The streets were empty. 

Good Green