Proverbs Sex Talks with Pre-teens, and Boys in Africa by LawDog

The link to the LawDog's book has NOTHING to do with the first part of this blog, but I put it up front because I don't want to change my habit. I WILL address the book at the end of the blog! If you can't wait that long, click here to read the abbreviated version.

First, though, I want to comment about one of the minor difficulties I believe all writers face from time to time, which is: coming up with the right title. Ideally, the title should give the prospective reader a good clue as to the nature and tone of the material, and hook the RIGHT people to read the work. But, there are space limitations.

I was thinking about this yesterday when I was looking for a particular movie that I had seen sometime back, about a cop and a robber, and a gunfight, and a bank robbery. As it happens, I also remembered that the two leading characters were played by Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, and so I was able to Google my way to 'Heat.'

And I thought: crummy title.

It's crummy because it doesn't tell you pea-turkey about the movie. Of course, it's a striking movie, and I suppose most fans would remember a one-word name. Not me, though. I can remember 'Pulp Fiction' most of the time; with other movies, I'm reduced to saying "John Wayne plays a one-eyed drunk marshall, and the little girl shoots the bad guy down by the creek," and hoping someone can get 'True Grit' out of that. I won't forget "Stagecoach," because they are in a stagecoach, or "The Alamo" because it's about the Alamo.

But, most of my blog post titles can't be reduced to one word, particularly when it's a combo blog post and book review.

Actually, I COULD make the titles of my blog posts longer. It's just that they wouldn't fit into the assigned space provided when I reference them on Facebook.  Hence my cryptically short title today.

I WANTED my title to day to be :

"Gratitude for Truancy During Proverbs Sex Talks with Pre-teens, and Boys in Africa, by The LawDog." 

And I KNEW that was too long to fit any graphic box I was allowed.

Here's the deal: Our morning routine (sort of) is for me to get up at 6 AM, and then at 7 AM, I wake up 7th grade Kenneth and 6th grade Alicia and my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA. I tell them all to meet me downstairs in 10 minutes. And this school year, during those 10 minutes, neighborhood buddy Jacob, also 6th grade, frequently drops in to join us, and when we are all assembled in the kitchen, we read the ancient wisdom contained in the  Proverb corresponding to the day of the month. Depending on how much conversation that generates, we often find time to read a Psalm, and a selection from the New Testament, but we ALWAYS get the daily Proverb.

Sigh.

Today is October 5, so the reading was Proverb 5.

Do you know what Proverb 5 discusses?

SEX. 

Can you guess how much I do NOT want to talk about sex, at 7:30 in the morning,  with an 11 year old girl, her 12 year old brother, and the 11 year old neighborhood buddy Jacob? Hint: it's a LOT.

The first part of the Proverb isn't so bad. We have been around the cycle plenty of times, and everybody knows what an adulteress is, and how bad stuff will happen, yada yada, yada. So, that's the first 14 verses. And I have a funny (and true) story about a crazy person in the hospital who wouldn't eat or take his meds because he wanted water from his own cistern. So I can finesse through verse 18.

Alas, for the brutal honesty of verse 19 awaits.
19 

As a loving hind and a graceful doe 

Let her breasts satisfy you at all times;

Be exhilarated always with her love. 

For why should you, my son, be exhilarated with an adulteress 

And embrace the bosom of a foreigner?

No WAY can that explicit language be avoided, nor SHOULD it be! But, time and place for everything, I say, and today, I was guiltily grateful that Jacob didn't drop in.

Perhaps his parents were also attuned to the reading of the day and just told him to sleep in this morning.

I'll take what I can get.


And now on the the LawDog, and his stories of growing up in Africa.

I just don't see how anyone who grew up in the country can fail to recognize the truth of these stories. His environment may have given him more opportunities to handle explosives, and the wildlife he encountered may have been a bit more lethal, but with practically every adventure he recounts, I'm thinking "you know, Butch and I did something like that."

And Mark Twain did NOT pull the Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn out of thin air.

Here's the deal: you take two small boys, parents who have an expanded view of childhood safety, and place them in a frontier environment, and you WILL get stories like these:

15 foot pythons in the bedroom, hiding from a four ounce mongoose.
Traders accepting a deal because Madame is going to get her machete.
Lizards setting fire  to the world.
Bowling ball cannon and corrupt officials.
Lizards who drink alcohol.
American cops who encounter expectations of small children raised in Third World economies.

You will ALSO get the reflections of those small children, now of a certain age, and gifted by the variety of their experiences, when they encounter the blatherskite who waxes profoundly about things of which they are profoundly ignorant.

As icing on the cake, there are little snippets of brilliance, intended to follow the signature line in an online post. (I proudly proclaim that I am a member of a/the forum that first brought LawDog to prominence; alas, I joined much later than he, and missed a lot of the good stuff.) I think of these as re-telling of the fairy tales, if they had been written by an advocate of 2nd Amendment rights. Actually, I posted the rest of these on my Facebook page last week, leaving this for the review:

“Plan A is to ask the ogre to change into a mouse. I eat the evidence, no muss, no fuss, no body” said Puss-in-Boots as he screwed the silencer onto his HK Mk 23. “Plan B gets messy.”
Lawdog, D.. The LawDog Files: African Adventures (Kindle Locations 1157-1158). Castalia House. Kindle Edition. 

Plenty of cautionary tales, here: don't hook your nose with a fishing lure; don't expect your cat to run for help. always know where your Kevlar gloves are (and wear them).

This is NOT meant to be a criticism, but as an observation. In the previous book, Lawdog Files, his experience with humanity in their worst hours brought forth some sweetly painful stories. Here, he is just funny. He makes the pain funny. He has followed the sage advice of his grandfather in THIS volume, and told the stories in ways designed to amuse.

And boy, do they amuse!

Preferably, theses stories should be portioned out, a bit at the time, in order to give us something to look forward to. However, they are quite delightful when taken in a single serving, although digestion may suffer.

Nocturnal Rebellion, by Amanda S Green

For those of you who come here in order to read my latest philosophical or theological struggles,  I warn in advance: this is a book review about a police detective who is also a reserve Marine officer who can shape-shift into a jaguar. Don't anticipate passion and depth, beyond that found in story dealing with the line-of-duty loss of fellow police officers.

This book was released on August 15, 2017, and with great anticipation, I obtained my copy through the Kindle Unlimited program on August 17. I hear you mutter, 'but this is OCTOBER 2! What happened?'

Well what happened was a trip to the hospital for a small bowel obstruction, which resolved well. That was followed by multiple trips to the dentist, for major dental surgery, and a few major family health issues, and, well, just LOTS of things. My output of reviews and blog posts suffered. It's aggravating.

As for the book: There are two different groupings of shape-shifters. One group inherits, and can pass on, the ability to transform; the other has to get bitten, first. The first group, the Pures, tend to be more powerful and they are in a role somewhat resembling that of aristocracy. The second group, the lycans, tend to be less controlled and are generally more likely to prey upon humans.

There is a question debated among Pures: when shall we reveal ourselves to the world at large, if ever?  And there is also a faction that wants to reveal themselves so that they may finally exert control over the mundanes, or exterminate them.

While appearing to work within the system of government of the Pures, the Conclave, there is a rogue element that seeks covert control, and it really seems to amount for a desire for personal power more than a desire to influence policy. At least, their actions seem to be of the 'burn it all down' nature.

Now, it's one thing to write about secret operatives exposing plans to bring down civilization by introducing an Ebola variant into spray containers at trade shows across the USA. As it happens, I've read and enjoyed those stories as well; at least, I've enjoyed the stories where the good guys win and the bad guys lose.

It's another thing entirely to present the tragedy in such a way that we can feel and empathize with the loss experienced by the hero. And that's what sets apart this book; Mac, and others, had a deep relationship of trust and loyalty to the group of officers who were killed in an ambush, and yet, they MUST shut up, suit up, and show up if there is to be any justice done.

It's really very well executed.

It does not bring the dead back to life. That loss must somehow be endured, which is precisely the treatment that makes the fantastic tale of shape-shifters something that we can relate to. Without kryptonite, we cannot care for Superman, because he is untouchable. It's the weakness of the heroes, not their strengths, that makes them real and allows us to care for them.

And Amanda S Green does it AT LEAST as well as anyone in the field.

Get the book; you won't regret it!

If I can just make it to my Papa 's house, I will be safe

Recently, my beloved, darling precious daughter, Bess, shared a story of a horrible time in her life, in order to express how much she appreciated the life she has now.

Several years ago, she was living a rough life in a dangerous environment with an unpredictable person. After a long time struggling, she decided she had to change, and it wasn't going to be possible where she was. So she got in her car, and left.

She was worried. She wasn't sure if she would be followed. If my memory is correct (and it might not be, because the story terrified me), at one point, she didn't even know where she was.

But she knew enough to say to herself: "if I can just get to my Papa's house, I will be safe."

And she did get to her Papa's house, and she was safe. And she made changes, and better choices, and today, she is living with a husband who loves her, and two little sons who love her, and has a fantastic church home where they all love each other. Her life is much better now than it was.

And the good things started because she remembered:

"If I can just get to my Papa's house, I'll be safe."

Dear ones, when I heard that story, I wanted to do several things at once.

I wanted to run straight back in time, and hug that young woman thoroughly.
I wanted to go explain the truth about the kind of man I am to anyone who ever threatened her.
I wanted to thank God that I had such a relationship with my daughter that I represented safety to her.

Of course, I could only do the last of those; and I did it then, and I do it on a regular basis.

Feeling safe at your papa's house: I wish that were written into our foundation documents as an inalienable right, of the same status as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I think it is reprehensible to violate that.

And that's why I was sickened on Sunday, when I heard of the actions of a deranged young man in Antioch, Tennessee, who murdered a woman in the parking lot, then walked into Burnette's Chapel Church of Christ, and shot six old people, including the pastor and his wife.

I was sickened. Then, I was horrified. And then I was frightened, when I saw the picture of the man the police arrested.

I was frightened, because the man is black. And I knew nothing about Burnette's Chapel. And I was afraid that a black man had shot up a white church.

Do you sometimes think that too many in our country have lost their minds? I've pretty much stopped watching any news at all because of that. Just a little over a month ago, I wrote about the Monster in our country, and how it has turned out to be  - us.
Just: people.
People who have allowed lies, and divisiveness, and ignorance and hatred and wilful disobedience to take away peace. And I thought, if that was a white church, there is going to be rioting and murder, and there will be no stopping it.

There IS no prominent voice of reason and reconciliation in our land today. In the words of John Kay in "Renegade",  there is only "on the left and to my right, they keep on shouting, while I'm just stuck here in between." And it seems like we are on the edge; and a black man gunning down random white people in a white church might have caught us on fire.

But, we were saved from that. I said that there was no prominent voice of reason in our land. Well, maybe there isn't; but there are local voices; and it's the sound of the local voices that has saved us, this time.

Can I tell you about one of the guys who saved us, this time?

His name is Joey Spann. He's 66 years old. He's the pastor of Burnette's Chapel Church of Christ. And he took a bullet to the chest and one to the hand in the shooting on Sunday. But that's not how he saved us.

He saved us by making a commitment to serving a church that was committed to being more than the white people's church; more than being the black people's church. More than being the church of the rich and the powerful. He saved us by providing a church that serves all of us, red and yellow, black and white.

And harm came to him because of that. The young man who killed a mother in the parking lot, who shot Joey Spann in the chest and hand, and shot his wife, and shot his elderly parishioners: he had been welcomed at the church, and had been a regular in the past, but had dropped out some time ago. And at some point over the last several months, his own personal demons drove him to commit an act of abomination, to desecrate the safety of the Father's house.

But, because of the outreach and determination on the part of Joey Spann and others, it really WAS a Father's house, where all of His children are welcome. And it was tragic for them; but, because it was a special, anointed, and lovely place, the haters will not seize on it as an excuse to do vile things.  Those who wish to have a symbol to launch race hatred will not find it in Antioch.

Because Joey Spann, and men and women like him, saved us from that.

Now, will you pray with me?

Father God, I pray for the brothers and sisters at Burnette's Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, Tennessee. Please, Father, grant them the grace to experience perfect love that casts away fear. Let the righteous acts of those who have served that church in the past be a memorial to those who worship there, and to draw others to worship. Let us hold precious in our hearts the memory of Melanie Crow, who was struck down; and her children, and her friends and family. Let us remember the suffering of those wounded. Let us give thanks for those who resisted, even to the point of shedding blood.
And will you place in the hearts of all of us, particularly the family of Burnette's Chapel, the prayer my daughter taught me:

If I can just make it to my Papa's house, I'll be safe.

Amen

Peace be on your household

More Than You Can Bear?

Although most of my time on the computer is spent reading books and writing reviews,  I do other things occaisionally.

For example, this summer, I found this show on Netflix, called "Last Chance U." My firstborn son recommended it to me a couple of months ago.

Seems there's this little junior college in Scooba, Mississippi that scoops up football players who have gotten in difficulties, great or small,  at big colleges, and stuffs them into a hard-nosed redemptive program. They are tough; they've got an academic counselor who stays on top of their grades and attendance, and she works with the coaches. Evidently, they've had some real success in getting some of these young men to turn around. And, in the process, they've won several national championships.

At the end of one of the segments, they show a scene from a local church. A woman does an interpretive dance to Kirk Franklin's "More Than I Can Bear." It's a beautiful scene, and it's a beautiful song; if you don't know it, look it up; here's a link to a performance . That's not the actual performance filmed for the Netflix program, but you can see how beautiful it is.

The lyrics say:

I've gone through the fire, and been through the flood;
I've been broken into pieces, seen lightning flash from above.
But through it all, I remember that He loved me, and He cares
And He'll never put more on me
Than I can bear  

The dance, and the song, are incredibly beautiful, and have often comforted me when I was in despair.

I just don't know if the message is true.

On the other hand, I do know that THIS is true:

No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it. (I Cor 10:13, NASV)

I understand this, and I am confident that it is true. When temptation comes my way, there will always be a be a way out of it. I am so grateful for this truth, and I have relied on it in plenty of dark times.

My disconnect comes when I try to apply the deliverance promise given in the above verse, which is about temptation, to the experience of pain and grief.

I haven't any idea how many days my heart has been hurt so badly that all I could do is withdraw to my man cave and sit in my chair, but it's a big number. Eventually, when I was strong enough, I would listen to the music of the wounded healers, music like 'More Than I Can Bear' and 'My Life Is In Your Hands' and 'On The Other Side of Through.' 

And almost every time, before that session of grieving was over, I could join in with the singing, and make the songs MY prayer as well.  Sometimes, that was the only comfort available to me; and it seems to me that the songs made my heart able to receive a bit of healing, and that, combined with my determination to keep my promises, has kept me alive. 

I am so grateful to the writers and performers who have ministered to me in the very worst times of my life. The continue to do so; in fact, at this very moment, I am listening as I write these words.

I don't want to give the wrong impression, here; the pinnacle of my experience is not to sit grieving in my chair. I'm a father/stepfather to 10, and a grandfather to 12, and I am actively involved with my wife in the most important job we will undertake together: that of parents. That is a life-giving, and life-building activity. I can get up in the morning, and go to bed at night, secure in the knowledge that my life means something, that I AM making a contribution that matters.

But, even so,  in the midst of things, along comes something that just kicks the breath right out of me. In fact, since I first started to write this post, a month has gone by, and I've been kicked three times. It's been an incredibly stressful time; I usually don't have so much coming my way. In fact, I'm guessing that I've gone through entire years without having as many challenges. Just a guess, though. I probably have forgotten things.

To return to my question, as I sit here with a keyboard on my lap, close to tears, and listening to the sweet music: is it true? Is the comfort they offer something I can count on? To answer that, I have to define the issue better. What is it, actually, that I think these songs are offering?

What I would LIKE them to guarantee me is this: nothing bad is going to happen to me; failing that, that nothing is going to happen to me that's going to overwhelm me. I'd like to be able to hold on to that like some sort of magical shield, or insurance policy. And I know that in the past, I've had that particular doctrine/approach presented to me.

Of course, it was also presented with conditions: they told me that if I just had enough faith, then no weapon formed against me would prosper, meaning a bad thing couldn't happen. Therefore, when I encountered adversity, I just needed to pray more, harder, longer, louder, differently. And then the bad thing wouldn't happen.

If the bad thing happens anyway, well, it's because I didn't believe enough, didn't pray enough. It's not that the PRINCIPLE is wrong; it's the fault of the supplicant.

And that just doesn't work for me, despite my desire to have bullet-proof armor. It doesn't match with my experience; and it doesn't match with what I know about God.

Not only does this concept leave a trail of broken people in its' wake, it's also explicitly proscribed by Jesus. IMMEDIATELY before the simple words of what we refer to as the Lord's Prayer, He says:

“And when you are praying, do not use meaningless repetition as the Gentiles do, for they suppose that they will be heard for their many words. " (Matthew 6:7, NASB)

Despite the fact that I WANT it to be true, it's naive to think I can pray virtuously enough, or do anything else, to eliminate bad things from my life. True, I can (and have) cut down on the bad stuff that comes my way, by changing my problem behavior. I don't get drunk any more, I don't drive recklessly, I don't smoke. I'm losing weight, and I go for walks.  But even if my behavior was perfect, entropy is going to triumph eventually. I'm 64 years old, and at some point, my organ systems are going to break down.

Beyond that, I love many people, and they don't always make perfect choices. Even if they did, accidents still happen. Illness and injury are out there. And, in the worst case,  there are some bad people in the world who hurt others. And when someone I love hurts, it hurts me.

So, I see that I have to give up this fantasy idea that there is something I can do that will keep all pain away from me. That's not what the words of the song I quoted say, anyway. They say:

He'll never put more on me
Than I can bear  

What does that mean? Is it true?

I don't see with the eyes of God, so I can't look into the hearts of men. But it seems to me that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, devoted his life to make a more equitable world. And I doubt there were many men who had more heartfelt prayers offered up for him than Dr. King. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that it's not a stretch to call him a good man, one of the best our country has produced. None of that prevented a bullet from ending his life.

Wasn't a .30-06 bullet more than he could bear? If that could happen to him, couldn't I also be overwhelmed?

This is the part where it gets weird.

Up until now, all of the mechanics of this suffering and comfort thing have been right out in the open. There has been something I could see, hear, taste, touch, or smell that was the mechanism by which I was comforted. I discovered that if I just held on, it would get better. I discovered that I could use my own experience with grief to comfort others in their time of grief. 

During probably the worst time of my life, I signed off on my emails, "I am yet holding on," because that was all I had. And through that experience, I came to believe that if I could just keep holding on, it was going to be okay. And that's a Truth, with a capital T. It was a core belief of my life.

Still is. 

But, sometime in the past couple of months, I realized that there MIGHT just be things that I COULDN'T bear up under. Things that oppressed me so strongly, that my body just gave up. Was that...true? Could there be things that could do that to me?

I asked for help.

I went to my pastor, and spelled things out for him. 

(And since I have no secrets from her, I copied my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA on the email. She freaked out. I had to reassure her that I was NOT losing it; I was just looking for some answers. She relented. A bit.)

He gave me a couple of scriptures that he found to be most meaningful when he had to walk with pain that just wouldn't go away. The one that spoke to me the most was this:

I Peter 4:12-13 Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. ¹³ But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

And that was very encouraging; it reminded me that when disaster strikes, it's NOT something strange; it happens to all of us. As lonely as it feels, we are NOT alone in our pain. Furthermore, it's almost as if this is an investment in our future.

That's the weird part. For Christians, death is not the end; it's not what happens here that's important. It put me in mind of another verse I have had to call on before:

we were burdened excessively, beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life; 9 [e]indeed, we had the sentence of death within ourselves so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead; (II Cor 1: 8b-9, NASB) 

 I found it comforting. It's a bit of a paradox, to find comfort in the idea that I might be given more than I can bear. However, it allows me to know that as long as I keep doing the Next Right Thing, I'm going to win, even if it takes my death to win.

Which should NOT be a surprise, bu the way. We are all going to die. It's definitely NOT an unexpected outcome. The timing may be inconvenient, but it's not a loss.

So, I guess my conclusion is: It may kill me, but I can bear it.

SOMETHING YOU MUST KNOW:
If you ask me to pray for you, I will sincerely pray that you be comforted. I will sincerely pray that you receive strength. I will sincerely pray for wisdom, and guidance.

On the other hand, if you ask Vanessa to pray for you, she will pray for you to be healed.
She accepts all the stuff I just wrote, and she leaves that to me, because that's my job.
Her job? To implore, and seek, and believe.

She is a praying black grandmother.

Peace be on your household.

Minutegirls, by George Phillies

You can read my Amazon review here, and also at the end of this blog.
However, I'd truly like you to consider giving this one some splash, since it's an excellent book from a much under-appreciated author, You can do that by writing a review on Amazon, and by voting 'helpful' on my Amazon review.

I obtained a review copy of the book from the author.

Kudos to the excellent cover art by Cedar Sanderson on this edition; it's a much better representation of the story than earlier versions.

I just checked: I've been writing Amazon book reviews for over three years, total of 472 reviews (not all of those are book reviews, though). Even so, there is one aspect to the process that still seems to be beyond me: I always fail to look at the book description to see how many pages I've committed to.

It's a hold-over from the decades I spent reading dead-tree books. Those, I learned to judge by heft at a very early age. From my very first days, when a thick book seemed forever over my head, to the point sometime in the 7th grade when I grabbed the thickest books in the library first, sometimes without looking at titles, the physical size of the book was communicated by the way it looked, and by the heft in my hand.

It doesn't work that easily with e-books. Certainly, the file size is (for ME) content-free, since I don't even look at it. Even the number of pages doesn't quite give me the same information.

I'm going to have to figure out a way to adapt to this. I'll get on that, just as soon as I can develop a feel for how far 110 kilometers is, or how 32 degrees Centigrade feels, without translating those into miles and Fahrenheit.

Well, this is for sure: this is a BIG book, at 440 pages. For guys like me, who like to read a LOT, that's a good thing. There have been times when I've pulled a book off the shelves by James Michener, Herman Wouk, or Tom Clancy, and given a pleased, relaxed sigh, even before I turned the first page. It DOES have a disadvantage for me, personally, though: I not only read, but review these things. And I confess to feeling a little bit guilty when ANYTHING puts me off my pace of reading and reviewing a book every other day.

It's still a pleasure, though, and for those who are waiting for me to get off my duff and review YOUR book, all I can tell you is: I'm doing the best I can.

Here's the set-up: in the not-too-distant future, at least one world war gets touched off, and before it's resolved,the United States is an occupied country, with a (somewhat) unified Europe being the primary occupier. Their troops behave very badly, and don't appear to show any remorse for that.
Most of the causes of the war and the following armistice aren't discussed; primarily, this part of the history serves to provide a rationale for the quite functional paranoia that drives diplomatic interactions. In addition, significant technology with war applications was developed by multiple parties to the conflict, and I get the impression that it was the difficulty of continuing the occupation that ended it, not any real change of a problematic policy, on anyone's part.
In particular, defense screens have been developed, and these not only stop kinetic and beam energy, they also serve as as an effective barrier to observation by spies, on either side, of military and commercial developments.
The European Union is dominated by the French as the executive arm, with the Germans serving as an administrative element. Other countries are allowed to contribute unskilled or semi-skilled labor, but certainly are in no position to make or influence policy. The French and Germans appear to regard their forfeit of rulership of all they survey as an aberration, and all of their actions seem to have a return to domination as the primary goal. However, their ideology has massively crippled their ability to wage war or to administer peace, and they cannot even perceive the problem. They have rigidly controlled the economy, and innovation is discouraged. Furthermore, in the interest of producing a worker-friendly society, the work-week is restricted to 32 hours per week, even under emergency conditions. On the other hand, they clearly have had some technological advances over the Americans, and have made contact with non-human races in their space program. Could those two be related, I wonder?
The Americans, meanwhile, have radically transformed their society as a reaction against the atrocities committed during the Occupation. One of the more striking transformations has been in the physical characteristics of women, most likely a direct result on the number of casual rapes committed against the population under the Occupation, when the citizens were treated as chattel. Through undisclosed means, bone density and musculature differences have been eradicated, and the long-standing advantage men had in upper body strength has been eliminated as a factor. Prominent female Resistance leaders during the Occupation established a new set of norms for women warriors, the Minutegirls. The constitute deadly combat troops, and contain nested secret societies, all designed to prevent any future attempt to subjugate the US from being successful.
There are some marvelous other adaptations, as well. For one, anyone in the National Command Structure MUST, by law, be accompanied by a bodyguard, whose job it is to execute their principal if it appears they will violate any of a set of rules stipulated as a part of the new form of government adopted by the US. No secret meetings; no standing army; nothing restricting the right of an individual to keep and bear arms. And the original idea of fleeing from the power of despots remains a fundamental part of American  policy.
Excellent battle action; complex characters; very well thought out societies, with appropriate humor slashes at all the right places: all these combine to make this a good book for a nice, long read.

Peacemaker, by Kevin Ikenberry

Warning: This is exclusively a book review! None of the touchy-feely stuff here!

The slightly shorter Amazon review may be found here.

Today, I'm adding the supplementary blog content at the end of the Amazon review, which follows:

Jessica Francis simply will not accept that she is overmatched. Although her choices haven't been perfect, it's the actions of others that keep dumping adversity on her, and she seems to have been born without the ability to quit.

She's a former mercenary. While she was good at what she did, her incompetent, manipulative husband managed to wreck the company, killing off friends and comrades-in-arms while doing so.

She gets a chance to become the first Human Peacemaker, thus becoming part of the thin team that provides what little galactic security there is. Since Humans are a newcomer to the Galactic Union, they encounter all of the standard prejudice of the old-timers, some of whom have the desire and ability to eliminate the species. Her first mission, in fact, as a Probationary Candidate, is to stop exactly such a project.

She succeeds. And because of her actions, the Earth is not depopulated.

Sorry, that's not good enough.

So, they give her another project, and maybe this time, if she succeeds, she'll get to join the team.

Maybe.

All she has to do is solve the puzzle of three races fighting over turf, when there should BE no problem. It is pathetically obvious that there is at least ONE behind-the-scenes manipulator, because the original set-up should have produced a good environment for the three races, separate from each other, at a nice profit to the merchant-engineers behind the deal. The mission has FAILURE stamped all over it, in glowing letters. But hey, if you don't play the game, you can't win, right?

Somebody in the hierarchy likes her, though, because he arranges for her to have some support. Admittedly, it's in the form of an under-strength mixed unit of armor and CASPERS, composed of raw rookies and redliners, but at least she has a bit of a reaction force.

Except she's not supposed to use it.

And she has one especially hostile individual assigned as her Mediator.

Secrets. Everybody has secrets. And what you don't know probably WILL kill you deader than Fergus' goose.

Expect plenty of action, and the elements of a detective story. It's a great read!

Okay, here is the supplementary material to the Amazon review, and it's a bit dark. As the title of my Amazon review, I used the Lazarus Long quote about the game being rigged, but how you can't win unless you play. There are, however, other options.

You can not play the game. 
You can cheat. 
And you can pull out your trusty Browning Hi Power and blow 15 tiny holes into the serpent trying to suck you into a losing set-up.

Then reload, and make more holes. 

Now, the only reason I can see that Jessica doesn't use that third option is that she really DOESN'T have a 'Quit' function incorporated. This is not a feature; this is a bug. 

For whatever reason, she thinks she can win the game, but all the evidence suggests that isn't the case. It's going to take some significant deus ex machina for her to have a chance, and that's not something you can count on. It makes sense to sacrifice yourself, IF you are standing between your loved home and the war's desolation, but she clearly states in the beginning of the story that the Earth is no more her home than her CASPER unit. Maybe she's just running on automatic, and that's NOT a long-term survival strategy. True, in a stressful situation, you let your training take over, but that's not the way to plan out a campaign.

NONE of these aliens are our friends. None of them respect us; we are, at best, cannon fodder. At worst, we are alien fodder, literally. 

So: when is it time to hoist the black flag, and start slitting throats? Hmmm...I think I might see the Jolly Roger on the horizon!

Peace be on your household.

When Public School Teachers are Stupid Frappen Idiots

The ONLY legitimate reason for civilization is to take care of our kids. 

The side benefits of advanced technology are pleasant. I'm very glad I don't have to spend my entire day trying to hit a squirrel in the head with a rock, or digging up roots so I can have something to eat. 

But my personal comfort is, at best, secondary to the primary mission of taking care of kids, which also means preparing them for the day when they will take up the mission, and allow me to croak without feeling guilty. And that means education.

Admittedly, I am not an impartial observer. Not only am I a parent and grandparent, the bulk of my career was as an educator, first in public and private college administration, then providing direct services to public middle school students. It's one of our family traditions; in addition to being a representative of  the third generation of four generations of US Army veterans, I am also a representative of the third generation of four generations of educators. It matters. My family has invested blood and sweat in military service on three foreign continents, and followed that up with years in classrooms across the state of Georgia. That's how we roll; it's a mission, see?

So, it aggravates me when I find that other people; those who share the mission; those who have  also devoted their lives to educating kids; have to spend their time apologizing for, and fixing problems caused by, a momentously idiotic high school math teacher.

This stuff is all over the internet now; I'm not breaking any confidences.  So far, by Sunday afternoon, 764,488 people have viewed the August 31st classroom incident, which took place inside a school building I can see when I look out of my bedroom window.  Thanks to a camera-phone-quality video, we can see and hear the teacher making two students leave a classroom for wearing a shirt saying "Make America Great Again." And she compounds her error by saying that just as you can't wear a swastika to school, you can't wear that shirt. Because neo-Nazis. 

Now, I routinely ignore this kind of kerfluffle; I can't, THIS TIME, because just after noon today, I got an email from the school district (sent to all Cherokee County parents) which detailed the response of the school and the district, and warning us:

As people across the country are being encouraged by some social media sites to contact the school, we anticipate a potentially high call volume over the next week. If possible, please avoid calling the front office during this time, and instead email the person you are trying to reach; emails are published on the school website 

 Okay, THIS is one of those times that I regret my blog isn't read by 100 million people every day, because what I have to say is important:

DON'T CALL THE SCHOOL.

They have this covered. If you need to express your outrage, please feel free to do so on your own public forum, or make a comment on one of the Youtube posts of the video.

But leave the school alone. They have this covered.

As it happens, I know the school superintendent, Brian Hightower, and the school principal, Darryl Herring, from my days as a school counselor. Ain't neither of them a wuss; I would happily stand as a guarantee that they will deal with this stuff appropriately.

Now, what I'm gonna say next is both personal and painful for me, so, cut me some slack, okay? And believe me, because I paid a price to say this.

The reason that I KNOW that they will deal with this stuff appropriately is because I have worked for both of them; they both have chewed my butt when they felt it was appropriate, and it was under Darryl Herring's leadership that I accepted the fact that I was no longer able to do my job, and took medical retirement, when the option was to be fired for cause.

It wasn't because I was sleeping with cheerleaders, or anything like that; it was because the pain meds I was on back then had taken away my ability to make good decisions, mostly by taking away my ability to sleep. I never was able to go an entire week without missing at least one night's sleep, and missed as many as three in a row. I was making a bad mistake in trying to keep showing up and doing the job.  Herring made the right decision to push me into retirement, and he made it for the right reason: to keep me from making mistakes with the kids.

No, I don't LIKE the guy. That has nothing to do with the fact that he made the right decision; it has everything to do with the fact that he never had a chance to get to know me when I was functional; and so to him, all I represented was a liability. He was tough, and he made the right call.

He's going to make the right call on this thing, too. Hopefully, there is a redemptive path out of this thing for the momentously idiotic math teacher, but that's not going to be the PRIMARY concern for the administration. I KNOW these people; they have ALWAYS been all about the kids, and they are going to CONTINUE to be all about the kids.

So, to all who have wisdom: leave them alone. Let them do their jobs. Express your concerns elsewhere. That's the best path to taking care of our kids, and that's the only reason we are here.

Peace be on your household.