FOUR HORSEMEN and ME

Excerpt: COMMON LIVES, novel in progress. ©John Legry

WALDO’S  REVELATION:

 “I cannot say for certain what began my transformation,” Waldo wrote to his best old friend Monroe.  “I only know that it occurred sometime in mid-June, probably on a Wednesday, or possibly, a Tuesday, but it was June.  In the process, I suddenly saw everything in a new perspective, just as if awakening from a very deep sleep.  I saw reality with fresh eyes.  Rip Van Winkle is real, you see?  And, what did I discover? Just this:

“I was born in America, in the City of San Francisco just before mid-century.  In that storied city, I was imbued with both the Spirit of Liberty and the Phoenix – that magic bird which resurrects itself again and again from the ashes of its own destruction.  I grew up believing in Superman, Manifest Destiny, Truth, Justice and the American Way.  I was the refugee child of refugee parents, themselves the children of refugees.  We looked for a better way on alien shores as aliens among aliens.  We took our place in the legion of strangers pushing and jostling for the top – hoping to look back on poverty and want, and to feel smugly removed from the incessant rhythmic fear, which had started all that long march.

A TERRIFIC RIDE!

5 OUT OF 5 STARS: A Terrific Ride! By Bruce Haines, January 27, 2012

Ruined City Hall

This review is from: The COPPER-HANDLES AFFAIR: The Great San Francisco Earthquake, Fire and Bank Heist by John Patrick Legry (Paperback) Amazon.com.

John Legry starts his book with nothing less than the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and uses it as a springboard for a robbery and chase that leads us North through California, into Oregon, Washington, and beyond. Along the way the thief, John Law Copper, is followed by the clever and resourceful Frederick Handles, Policeman, who tears himself away from his home and city in crisis and a loving wife, to travel through the wilds of the West Coast, in pursuit of a considerable amount of cash taken from a bank partially destroyed and laid open by the earthquake and then coincidentally found by the wily Mr. Copper.

Beyond the chase and Mr. Copper’s narrow escapes, we are treated to an astonishingly well-researched description of real West Coast towns found along the route as Mr. Copper flees his pursuer through places we know from the dust of memory and old photographs. The writer puts us in these myriad locales, vivid and detailed in the reader’s eye to the degree we feel we’re not only being treated to a first-rate bank robbery/chase story, we are also privy to a sociological and anthropological narrative that brings the early part of the century stunningly to life.

COPSICLES ON PARADE

Occupy Gimbel's

FYI – CLICK THE IMAGE to get the meme link. The Pepper-spray Cop meme began in prototype at my alma mater, University of California at Davis – be sure to watch the video clip at the end of this link to the end. PEPPER SPRAY AT DAVIS, CA

Crocodile Tears Aren’t Just for Crocodiles

The nation-wide para-military police response to Occupy Wall Street is a HUGE unjustified waste of police force and precious overtime funds. Don’t buy any official’s feigned nobility – they are mismanaging the situation, using absolute overkill on the protestors, and crying crocodile tears over ordinary crime (even including rape) victims that their mismanagement and mis-allocation of resources created: “We can’t go catch murderers because we’re busy beating up regular citizens, exercising their right to free speech and assembly.”  Do they think they are re-fighting World War II?

Ever read Tsun Tsu? This Chinese genius wrote a book called The Art of War around 420 BCE – it is about the strategy of indirection – achieving one’s objectives with minimum effort and the least HARM  to both sides. It treats war – conflict – first as a human lapse of understanding, and something calling for other than a total frenzied Braveheart head-on collision. Total War is ignorant arrogance and results in gory battles such as Verdun and long drawn out fiascoes such as Vietnam and Afghanistan. Every major military victory fought by anyone ever has been achieved using Tsun Tsu’s methods – Leonidas at Thermopylae; Sherman’s March, cinching Union victory in the American Civil War; Patton’s end run to relieve the heroes at Bastogne in the Battle of the Bulge; and Schwarzkopf’s blitzkrieg tactics in Desert Storm. American military and para-military types study the book, but mostly fail to apply it.  I highly recommend it to everyone in any OWS encampment because they will win with it.

2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,800 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.