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I Dont Care What You Say Anymore This is My Life.
They say that trauma initiates memories. I don't know if it's true. What I do remember is my earliest memory is from when I was about two and a half years old. It is of a metal plate over my right eye and a hallway in the Presbyterian Hospital in San Fransisco. It was a long hall at least so itseemed to me. I walked that hall many times with ( Read more... ) -
Andie - Meetings
It was my graduation year from Farrington and I would spend the time immediately after school at my mom's workplace at Roosevelt High School where she ran the Health complex. Outside the Health building was a very large tree that looked out on a field where the cheerleading squad practiced. I would in the time between getting out ot school and ( Read more... ) -
Thirty-five or so Years Ago.
I recall with some amusement that about thirty-eight years ago I received my notice of delinquency to register for the draft. The Selective Service people had caught up with me and sent out notice that though I wasn't required to report to my local board I was required to register.. The missive from the "draft" board's Beretania Street office in ( Read more... ) -
Haven't Been Here Much.
Not entirely true. I read my friends' postings. But, I've been using facebook for my opinions lately. Retirement has had me busy trying to find work in an economy that is at best stagnant and teetering on the verge of a triple dip recession, that is, if we take out all of the statistical manipulations the current administration uses to hide this ( Read more... ) -
An Interesting Meme
fitfool posted a meme she found on one of her friend's LJ. It asks to list 10 characters from literature or cinema/TV that you identify yourself with. So, here's my list.- Charlie Gordon: Flowers for Algernon, I identify very closely with Charlie Gordon who goes from being a man with mental retardation to super genius (jeanass) in a very short time and ( Read more... )
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Retirement
My only comment about retirement is that it sucks! The pay is too low, the benefits lousy and the worst thing of all is that it leaves you adrift with no great purpose or cause. Once upon a time I was a Soldier. Now I'm just a civilian. While I agree wholeheartedly with civilian power over the military, from my perspective anyone who fouled up ( Read more... ) -
They Got It.
Growing up near Gulick Street in Kalihi my neighbors and I knew one fact of life. They got it. We didn't know exactly what "It" was, but we knew it could be measured in dollars. We could see it in the fancy cars, the huge homes in Nu'uanu, Portlock, Hawaii Kai, Lanikai and Waialae-Kahala. We never saw them except to serve them. They didn't ( Read more... ) -
Measuring Up.
There once was a chubby Mexican-American kid, the son of tenant farmers who left him orphaned at age 10. A seventh grade dropout a lot of people referred to him as a "dumb Mexican" or worse. He joined the US Army and was sent to Vietnam where he was grievously wounded by a land mine. Medically discharged, he went about rehabilitating himself and ( Read more... ) -
Dreaming
I think that part of why I'm grieving so much over the loss of my military career is that it was as Andie put it, "my only rival for your affections." She meant it. It was the cause of our ten year estrangement and the cause of our reunion. Like many career Soldiers I told Andie that the Army would be first for twenty years and after that the ( Read more... ) -
Homemade Salsa
It started with two things, I got tired of steamed vegetables and my local grocer had a sale on peppers. So, I made salsa. This makes a bunch of salsa ( Read more... )