A ghostly spirit came to me in a swirling vision last night and ordered, “No more ‘excess’ writing for a while.”

“In the next nine months you will write only a handful of journal entries, essays and columns,” said Gavin Arthur, the leader of the tribe who oversees the legacy of the mysterious California Central Coastal commune called Dunites. In the 1930s, 40s and 50s this original band of merry pranksters built shacks from driftwood and lived in the majestic Oceano sand dunes as sacred outlaws, unrepentant rebels, eccentric artists and metaphysical countercultural visionaries who helped set the stage for the 1960s San Francisco hippie experience.

For Dunites, every summer shined as a summer of love.

“No more short stories, either,” said the ghost of Gavin Arthur, grandson of America’s 21^st President Chester Arthur. “I know you also revel in writing short stories because your brain sometimes short-circuits.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Like one of those Tesla autopilot cars crashing into a wall when the human steps away from the wreckage, raises both hands into the air and yells, “TaDa!”

I knew the Dunite diviner understood what was at stake.

“You’re writing too much for Facebook,” he said “You need to focus, Corbett.”

I understood what he was talking about.

“Yeah, but some enlightened people want to hear what I have to say. It’s better than posting pictures of dogs, cats and grandchildren, right?”

“None of which you have,” said Gavin Arthur.

“Or want,” I said.

“But you do have a novel to finish,” he said.

Gavin Arthur and the Dunite prophets get it.

“You got a big story to tell, son,” he said. “You can’t be spreading yourself around too thin like a wine-soaked Dunite scraping out the last of his canned tuna fish supper.”

A Dunite Last Supper?

Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

As of now I’m a full-time novelist.

Weed Wine Magic, the sequel to my first novel Blood Red Syrah, is on a roll. I’m looking at an original paperback release date sometime in August, eight months from now. Our cadre is almost assembled. Lee Sebastiani, my publisher at Avventura Press, is ready to rock. Stephanie Bressler, my editor and manager to whom I am married, is primed. Two ace front and back book cover photographer/model/spiritual collaborators (who will remain nameless for now and I hope will run away with us to join the circus) are standing in the wings. Mexican death saint Santa Muerte is all in.

We’re planning an August East Coast launch at Case Quattro Winery in Peckville where kindred spirits do business in soul grapes – actually a good name for a psychedelic band. Our West Coast launch will blast off at the old Oceano train station where I’ve already been invited to read within sight of Gavin Arthur’s rustic Dunite shack — Stephanie and I spent some time alone in his shack in November, communing with his essence and the Dunite presence that still reigns like pagan gods that walk among us.

Fret not, those of you who look forward to my words. I’ll still step from the shadows every now and then and throw a rock through somebody’s window — figuratively, of course, with a column here and a reflection there.

But it’s full speed ahead on Weed Wine Magic.

The trip will be worth the wait.

Many years ago in a different life in a different world I sat at the kitchen table drinking Rolling Rock beer and wondering if I could ever get a full-time daily newspaper job writing the personal journalism that eventually shaped my identity and served as my calling card and meal ticket.

At the time I was working in a state prison with violent drug addicts — or maybe I just lost my job working in a prison with violent drug addicts — and was collecting unemployment and writing for the Harrisburg Independent Press, a free alternative weekly.

A tall, skinny gawky buddy of mine named Flanagan took photographs for the weekly rag and talked to the editor who thought I was a good writer. A few years later that same editor changed his mind about my talent when he worked as the press secretary for Gov. Dick Thornburgh and I kept slamming his boss.

Flanagan was a Vietnam veteran who told one of the best war stories I ever heard. Assigned to burn human waste at the Army base where he was stationed, he spent many a long night standing over flaming pits of crap. One night when he finished his shift he and his co-workers sat around the fire smoking joints. Deep into their euphoria, more soldiers joined them. Flanagan eventually realized he didn’t know any of the new guys and figured they were South Vietnamese paratroopers just back from a mission.

When Flanagan introduced himself the guy sitting next to him took a deep toke and poked himself in the chest with his index finger.

“Me VC,” he said.

Flanagan laughed.

“Me VC,” the guy repeated.

Flanagan laughed harder.

Now Flanagan did it.

“Me VC,” Flanagan said.

The soldier sitting beside him laughed so hard he could barely light another joint.

Flanagan wasn’t sure when it dawned on him that the five or six seasoned Viet Cong guerrillas who joined him at the fire pit had apparently breeched security and infiltrated the base. Flanagan said everybody got real stoned that night and eventually drifted their separate ways. What he experienced shaped his own personal peace talks that made him realize the absurdity of war.

Real war, of course, is hell.

Real war kills.

Flanagan lived to tell the story. He came to oppose war even though he mostly kept his politics to himself. For as long as I knew him, easy-going Flanagan just got high on life.

The dirty Russians are bombing Kyiv with missiles and destroying a children’s playground.

Terrible, you say.

Of course, it is.

The dirty Israelis are bombing Gaza and destroying a children’s playground.

KILLING THE CHILDREN, TOO.

Self-defense, you say.

You stand with Israel.

Tell me what I’m missing.

I can safely say “dirty Russians” because most Americans see the Russkies as aggressive butchers. If I say “dirty Israelis,” though, I’m anti-semitic, right?

Go ahead, tell me I’m anti-Semitic. Disagree with Zionism and you’re anti-Semitic. Criticize Israel and you’re anti-Semitic. The U.S. Congress says so.

That’s why my congressman Matt Cartwright works so very hard during the holiday season to make sure Israel gets all the Scranton made weapons they can get.  I didn’t say buy. I said get. Israel gets them for free. Same goes for weapons to Ukraine. We pay for them. What warmonger wouldn’t like a fully-loaded artillery shell for Christmas even if you don’t celebrate Christmas?

I know, I know. I’m making you uncomfortable.

You need a safe space.

Tell it to the kids in Gaza.

But your words are hurting people, Corbett, worse than missiles. You’re killing our self-righteous and oppressive nature as we ethnically cleanse all those dirty Palestinians calling for a sovereign state and homeland.

What’s the matter with you, Corbett?

Stop.

Stop.

Make him stop, Joe Biden. You’re from Scranton. Talk to him. Invite him to the White House New Year’s Eve party. Do something. Can’t Hunter talk to him? Jilly from Philly? Virginia McGregor?

OK, I’ll stop.

You stop bombing and I’ll stop criticizing Israel for bombing and killing children.

Who says I’m not a diplomat?

Yesterday I wrote in this journal that “writers write,” profound words I live by.

By which I live?

Profound?

Not really.

The sentiment is simple if you write. Either you do it or you don’t. Too many aspiring writers bullshit themselves and the world, talking a good game and posturing. Too many wannabe writers don’t write yet call themselves writers. They claim to have writer’s block when they just don’t have anything original to say.

Since corporate hacks at WILK News radio fired me when I was 65 in 2017 for winning all the arguments with Trump supporters and other ill-informed callers – the basic successful national news talk radio format in America, by the way – I quickly got down to writing full-time. Fortunately I didn’t have to ever again work for a boss and had more than enough money to meet my needs and enjoy myself.

I dug in as a full-time novelist.

Blood Red Syrah bled out like an open wound. Published by literary guru Lee Sebastiani and Avventura Press, the book hit readers in the brain stem with a difficult narrative – a story loaded with California wine country racism, sexism, animal cruelty, unabashed violence and psychedelic tribalism – complete with Mexican spirituality rich as fresh mole. Dark humor brought the mix together, bubbling to the surface like a cannibal’s stew boiling over an open fire.

The novel is a genre-bending adventure that tears away at comfortable sensitivity and puts readers behind the wheel of a stolen convertible tearing down the wrong lane of the 101 freeway. My characters push you around if you let them. Be brave. Take the wheel with courage. Learn from their personality disorders, apply the stark lessons to your own life and thrive on the chaos.

Nobody wants what happened to Paige Pennington to happen to them, though.

Nobody wants to be her.

We opened in Scranton with a downtown wine party at my first cousin’s kid Timmy’s law office (my lawyer for all you potential litigants) then did a barn-storming West Coast book tour. We had a good time. Like Hunter Thompson said, we bought the ticket. We took the ride.

Then I wrote another novel. Set in Wilkes-Barre, PA hard coal country, Paddy’s Day in Trump Town guts white male timidity that passes for macho power. I blame Irish guys for Trump’s success and election as president. I blame Irish guys for taking us back to the Stone Age. I still blame Irish guys for forgetting the clear-headed perseverance real Irish guys and women are made of.

Then Covid hit.

Stephanie and I hunkered down.

I wrote Scranton Lives Matter and Swan Dive, two free internet novels published on my website.

That’s the web page Doug Griffiths and his Posture Interactive crew created for me. Doug’s my high-tech witch doctor shaking his bag of magic seeds I plant, nurture and grow online. Doug did a website for Blood Red Syrah, too.

But the column bug kept biting. You don’t fight your way into the newspaper business, fight to stay there and stand firm on principle when dull bosses try to change the way you think. You don’t give up the crusade that easily. Not if you’ve got something to say, you don’t. I always have something to say that’s worth hearing.

That’s why I once walked out of a Norman Mailer lecture at Wilkes University when I didn’t like the answer to my question coming from a literary god who stabbed his wife.

Screw Norman Mailer.

So I wrote more columns and essays and short stories, too. For a year I also wrote a monthly column called “Greetings From Scranton” (sometimes two a month) for a lazy publication called Gonzo Today. Now I’m writing for a unique publication called CovertAction Magazine that takes on the CIA, capitalism and an unjust world. I also recently started an online journal with entries like this one whenever I feel like writing one. I’m playing with a collection of short stories, as well. I have about 100, including Hot Dog Soup, the title tale. And, drum roll here, I’m 145 pages into the sequel to Blood Red Syrah.

Weed Wine Magic will smoke your head and enlighten your consciousness.

Weed Wine Magic will get you high.

Weed Wine Magic will take you tripping through the California Central Coast loaded on cannabis-infused wine that offers drinkers and readers the meaning of existence. Lovable serial killer and Blood Red Syrah hero Wally Wilson makes a cameo appearance. Syrah plays a more major role as the former demonic voice in Wally’s head that comes to live rent free in your head once you start reading.

You didn’t know you have a voice in your head? Listen closely when you try to fall asleep tonight. You’ll sense a voice. It might be Syrah. If so, you’re in for an experience.

Are you experienced?

Have you ever been experienced?

Well, I have

You’re mad at me?

I should be mad at you.

But I don’t get angry anymore. I don’t get mad at people. I might even be beyond disappointment.

All that spent energy is a waste of my time.

I accept the world’s harsh reality while trying to change what little I can on my tiny speck of the planet, maintain my personal integrity and balance my peace of mind. I read, write and think each day, spending hours talking with Stephanie about why normally decent people I know willingly ignore the genocide – yes, I said genocide – taking place in Gaza as we speak.

Don’t get mad at me. I’m merely sharing the word many experts on genocide agree meets the accepted definition – genocide carried out by Israel and their American backers in the aftermath of the October 7 Hamas atrocity.

This might mean you.

The Doctors Without Borders executive director recently said the sole American vote to sink a United Nations Security Council humanitarian ceasefire resolution was a vote for inhumanity and that the United States is complicit in the carnage.

I’m with him.

Democratic President Joe Biden recently bypassed the normal congressional review in order to send more tank ammunition to Israel.

I’m not with him.

And a recent detailed New York Times investigation provided documented evidence that proved how the Israeli government – with the approval of three American presidents – has for decades supported and even encouraged Hamas by channeling hundreds of millions of dollar in suitcases full of cash to Hamas through the government Quatar.

“During a 2018 cabinet meeting, Mr. Netanyahu’s aides presented a new plan: Every month, the Qatari government would make millions of dollars in cash payments directly to people in Gaza as part of a cease-fire agreement with Hamas,” the New York Times report said.

Didn’t know that, did you? Go ahead, reject the report. Of course, you know more than the Times. You don’t trust the Times. You don’t read the Times. And you call yourself a liberal? A Democrat? A Republican? Independent?

Do I care what you think about neglecting facts that shape our future? It depends. Your ignorance is context-driven, as the former president of the University of Pennsylvania might say. Christmas is coming so you might have missed the news with office parties and all that. I care more about what I think, what drives me to a better understanding of crucial moral issues of the day.

I care more about sharing what I think, as well.

That’s what writers do.

I said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t respect mainstream American opinion but respect people’s right to express themselves. The masses are asses, especially more and more registered Democrats. I take for granted that Republicans shape the rump of the jackass. Democrats now form the head as more and more Democrats too willingly march lockstep into the mouth of the abyss that one day might close and consume democracy and free expression forever.

Freedom depends on knowledge and wisdom – especially when the odds are against you. You’ve got to be willing to stand up in the face of adversity to oppose injustice and find empathy in your heart.

Then you’ve got to act.

Say something.

Do something.

Free Palestine.

Still mad at me?

Good.

All the comforts of home greet me when I open my eyes.

The other day from under the warmth of the thick blue comforter I saw thin snow fall past the open white bedroom window shutters. I heard geese honking their way south like a symphony playing melodious notes from Hyden’s Trumpet Concerto.

Official winter will soon arrive.

Our comfy, cozy monastic retreat is already underway.

Gray skies and drizzle welcomed me today. Stepping to the big bay window I see the Catholic church parking lot loaded with cars. Inside the dull, non-descript building people participated in ritual. Some prayed, I imagine, for peace. Not many, I imagine, but some.

Christmas is coming.

Jews prayed in other parts of town. Their big holiday is already on us. Hanukkah is the most widely used spelling, while Chanukah is more traditional, Google tells me. Oil and light and all the potato pancakes you can eat. The Irish and Italian Catholics at coal region church festivals love potato pancakes the Jews call “lat-kas.” You pronounce the word “lat-ka,” the same way you say the name of the goofy character the late comedian Andy Kauffman played on the old TV sitcom Taxi.

No matter how you say the name of the synagogue and church picnic staple, they’re carbohydrates deep fried in fat and volunteers’ hair that falls on the grill, clogs your arteries and can kill you young no matter how much beer or Mogan David you drink.

Jack’s bar sits up the street on the other corner. I always wanted to live in a house with a corner bar a block away. Now I have one for the past 17 years and don’t go there. I drink my red California pinot noir wine at home and like it. I don’t go out much anymore and like it. I have to admit, though, I do love seeing Jack’s red neon beer sign lit before I go to bed.

I used to enjoy seeing the bright Blessed Virgin statue lit, too, when the priest used to turn her on a few years ago. Did I really just write that? I did, unconsciously, of course. Father Sica rest in peace.

Green pine incense awaits the flame from a match in the meditation room. Stephanie has already lit a stick in the kitchen. Radiators hiss downstairs where Stephanie already made the coffee with fresh Scranton tap water clean enough to drink from the spigot – which I do.

When I put in my hearing aids I heard rumblings from the BBC on the TV downstairs. I turned 72 in June and have been using hearing aids for the past year or so. They make a difference – like hearing a guitar chord on an Eric Clapton solo you never heard until you played the record after smoking a joint. I named them “Harry” and “Larry” and do my best to maintain a working relationship with my two new buddies. I hate the term “hearing aid” so I call them “listening devices” like I’m a secret agent man for the CIA and am tuning into some surreptitious conversation between powerful evil politicians.

I don’t have to go far to find those bastards, either.

U.S. Sen. Bob Casey lives a few blocks from me in my Hill Section neighborhood. I’ve been arguing with myself lately about whether to mention his complicity in Israeli war crimes the next time I see him getting into his Cadillac SUV on my afternoon walk.

Last week, Casey donned his tuxedo to attend the Pennsylvania Society dinner at the New York City Hilton to host a VIP invitation-only fundraiser and hobnob with lobbyists and Democratic Party bosses. Few tried-and-true professional mid-town prostitutes attended because richer, gaudier political courtesans bought up all the tickets in advance.

Then, I understand Casey hit the White House Christmas party. I can’t personally confirm his presence at the taxpayer-funded buffet trough because he continues to refuses to meet with me as a journalist or constituent. Casey’s now getting ready to waltz his way to the Congressional Ball hosted by Scranton native and President Joe Biden.

Same goes for my congressman, the darling of Northeastern Pennsylvania defense contractors, U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright who lives in a mansion outside the city and supports among Israel and killing Palestinian civilians with a zeal that makes him look like a cross between Moses and Rambo. Cartwright won’t talk with me, either, even though I helped get him elected when he first ran for Congress.

A people’s protest at his downtown Scranton office followed up by a march the couple of blocks to Casey’s office is a good idea. Stephanie and I picketed Cartwright’s office by ourselves last year. We’re ready to do that again if necessary. My high-tech listening devices are tuned up and ready to resist injustice, predator capitalism and democide – state-sponsored murder.

See how easily ugly reality pulls us back into the harsh world of electoral politics? Anyone with a conscience is already paying attention and listening closely to the pounding sound of unjust war.

Traumatized kids in Gaza are starving, by the way. Unless people get fed and receive medical care, humanitarian aid experts agree an additional 100,000  men, women and children of all ages might die.

Spoon that on your potato pancakes and eat it.

Forty-three years ago tonight, having just put four quarters in the jukebox, I’m standing alone at the end of the G-Man bar listening to the Beatles.

I drove the 23 miles from Harrisburg to Carlisle, Pennsylvania because I knew the guy tending bar and had nowhere else in particular to go. Lost and wandering, I’m unemployed, drinking too much and volatile.

Looking up I see the Monday night football game on the TV at the other end of the bar. Howard Cosell is breaking a news scoop.

John Lennon, 40, just got shot in New York City, Cosell says late in the fourth quarter during a tie game between the New England Patriots and the Miami Dolphins.

I silently finish my beer and leave. The Beatles are still singing on the jukebox. No, I don’t remember the name of the song. I drive back to Harrisburg and go to another bar to drink.  

More years have passed since Lennon’s death than the total number of years he lived. All these decades later I still give daily thanks for the cosmic gift of my life.

As Lennon’s wife Yoko Ono looked on, the fabled music hero died with five bullets in his body, gunned down by Mark David Chapman, 25, a seriously mentally ill young man whose internal demons pulled the trigger of a loaded gun Chapman too easily obtained and carried.

Guns remain too easy for maniacs to access and carry.

I met Stephanie two months after Lennon died. I was 29 years old. During our almost 43 years together we traveled several times to the Strawberry Fields section of Central Park that’s dedicated to Lennon’s memory. The memorial is located on West 72^nd Street across the street from the Dakota apartment building where John and Yoko lived and outside of which Chapman killed the dreamer.

Whether we make the yearly pilgrimage or not, Stephanie and I still pay tribute to Lennon’s legacy of giving peace a chance. That’s why we live as we live, think as we think and protest as we protest.

John Lennon would want Gaza to live.

John Lennon would want a free Palestine.

Imagine.

My biggest lesson after decades of learning and practicing aikido is how to adapt to a changing environment.

Attackers can come out of nowhere.

So can friends.

I met peace and harmony master Kazukai Tanahashi almost 30 years ago during a brushwork weekend he taught at Zen Mountain Monastery near Mt. Tremper, New York. Our paths crossed a decade later at a Tassahara retreat in a mountain valley in a remote part of the Ventana Wilderness, inland from the Big Sur coast. In the early 2000s my wife, Stephanie, and I attended his 70^th birthday party in Oakland, California. Now 90, “Kaz” lives in Berkeley where he paints, studies and prepares for whatever comes his way.

Attackers can come out of nowhere.

So can friends.

Depending on how you view existence, life and death can be either or both.

Kaz is known world-wide for his peace activism. He works for a world without armies and plants trees in Brazil’s Amazon rain forest to help save the planet. Kaz also paints what the Japanese call “enso,” sacred circles of togetherness — one-breath-one-stroke creations that have no beginning and no end.

https://www.brushmind.net/

I imagine myself sitting one day at 90, wearing my aikido hakama  (Aikido founder O’Sensei many years ago personally promoted Kaz to black belt in Iwama, Japan) and painting ensos in the attic. As a 3^rd degree aikido black belt and a 4^th degree aikijujutsu black belt, for now I train alone. In the future I will do my aikido moves alone on the canvas, painting mindless expression of bountiful universal energy as I go.

“Get out of my way!” I’ll yell, waving my brush in the air like a sharp samurai sword. “Here comes the old man!”

Black and purple intrigue me.

Black and green, too.

“Look,” I’ll say to Stephanie. “Look what I did.”

I’ll paint many multi-colored ensos as I await the cosmos to come and get me.

Overtaken by nature’s luster one day last winter, I entered into the snow and created what I call “ensnow,” my own chilled interpretation of no beginning and no end.

Winter always shows up.

Winter always departs.

Winter has no beginning and no end.

I sound like a Zen madman, one of those wild hermits sitting on a rock in his cave drinking homemade mulberry wine and laughing at the shadows on the wall. I like how I sound. I like the sound of lunatic laughter.

This morning when snow fell for the first time this year in a significant amount, I shoveled the sidewalks and the steps. Then I saw our newly constructed empty Zen platform in our Zen garden looking at me.

The wood beamed.

I was happy, too.

So I took the broom I use to sweep leaves and twigs from the platform and held it like a brush. Kaz often uses oversized brushes to generate some of his one-breath-one-stroke paintings. After I painted my ensnow the squirrels applauded. They knew a nut when they saw one.

I then stood back and contemplated my work.

Beauty pulsed at the circle’s core like a beating newborn heart.

Peace forms the ensnow’s center.

Peace has no beginning and no end.

Peace one day will last forever.

Chopping carrots to make “Zuppa Corbette” last night, I realized that unlike hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Gaza I actually had carrots.

That morning, as I do each morning, I watched the BBC on television for the latest news from Gaza. Horrific images flashed in my head, distracting me from making my nice homemade Italian soup. If I wasn’t more careful I might slice a finger.

Even if I cut through the skin all the way to the bone, my personal longtime health care hospital is about ten minutes away in my Hill Section neighborhood. In a pinch I could walk to the emergency room. Doctors would quickly care for me under the best modern conditions.

I’d heal.

I’d live.

Then I thought about doctors, nurses, paramedics and others who live and die in Gaza under constant attack from Israeli bombs, good people who use skill and courage to treat the wounded and the dying.

Each day on TV I watch misery in motion.

Reports from veteran humanitarian workers, Israeli military apologists, scholars, reporters, victims and others fill my head with a sense of doom that reflects devolution of our species. We don’t have to wait for an asteroid to smash into our planet. Human animals have already flattened compassion and mercy for others who share the globe.

And there I am chopping fresh carrots.

Just that morning Stephanie picked up fresh vegetables at the massive supermarket where she shops.

Fresh celery, too.

And onions.

Don’t forget the onions.

Some of us who cook call the combination “The Holy Trinity” as in the sacred Christian doctrine of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost that spins off the central concept of God.

I believe in carrots.

In celery.

In onions.

I believe in the sad people of Gaza where food is consciously denied to the multitudes who lack basic nutrition crucial to survive even if the bombs don’t crush them. But the Israeli government and military, at the bequest of the majority of the Israeli people wield famine as a weapon – an evil strategy designed to kill Hamas, the political party whose armed wing attacked Israel on October 7 and slaughtered civilians.

In return, the Israeli military under orders from the Israeli government has slaughtered Palestinian civilians.

One Hamas atrocity on a single day does not justify a continuing barrage of Israeli government atrocities for 60 days. Around the clock bombing, a ground invasion, restricting humanitarian aid and fuel, cutting water and electricity, toxic sanitation and closing hospitals spells “apocalypse.”

Just by itself, starving men, women and children constitutes a war crime.

“No soup for you,” said the “Soup Nazi” character on the silly Seinfeld TV sitcom.

No carrots.

No celery.

No onions.

No Holy Trinity.

Like the snarling fanatics say while cooking up their savage recipes, “Kill ’em all.”

Let God sort ’em out.

It’s 6:59 a.m. in Scranton.

Sliced crimson sky the color of ketchup on my breakfast eggs greets me this morning. I’m listening to Eric Burdon and War. San Francisco nights give cover to the sky pilot flying high above Monterrey.

My mother bought me the painted ceramic statuette pictured in this post when I graduated in 1969 from Susquenita High School in Perry County, Central Pennsylvania Appalachian mountain country. She said the figure reminded her of me — studious, thoughtful, and introspective as I pondered the ways of the world.

Dotty was right.

I took everything personally.

Keeping most thoughts inside my head, I acted out, rebelling by drinking beer at keg parties in hidden hills, reading “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck, “The Carpetbaggers” by Harold Robbins, “The Green Berets” by Robin Moore and other works that riled my unconscious mind. At night I dug deep into swirling heartfelt visions as I tossed and turned listening to music on faraway radio stations.

I thought about running away but had no place to go. So I stayed amid the harsh rural landscape and raw emotion that too often ruled a sometimes very bad scene.

I never kept a diary or journal.

I just wrote.

Sitting in 10^th grade biology class in 1967 I scribbled silly words on a yellow legal pad, my first original writing since writing letters to my mother when I was 13, visited the 1964 World’s Fair in New York  and stayed for a week on Long Island with my Aunt Jewel, Uncle Jerry and cousins Francis and Michael.

Dear Mom, I saw bandleader Xavier Cugat and his little Chihuahua dog, Poquito. I saw Japanese people handing out pamphlets and lying on the ground to call attention to the 1945 American bombing of Hiroshima.

The memory of my first exposure to political protest remains burned in my mind.

As a senior in 1969 I wrote columns challenging political authority, mimeographed the inflammatory words and handed out the newly-founded “underground” newspaper in front of the high school. One Sunday a local preacher in Marysville, PA denounced me by name from the pulpit.

I knew I had arrived.

Hell here I come.

Nothing has changed in more than 50 years.

Consider this and future posts under the common title “How High Can You Fly” another underground newspaper, an incendiary diary and revolutionary journal of community development from my golden years. Expect my thoughts to come in a rushed, unedited stream of consciousness, a free-wheeling freedom of speech barrage of radical intellect.

Sharing life in some 55-plus corporate Margaritaville retirement community with golf carts and bourgeoisie Boomer bores can kiss my ass. At 72 I’m playing the last quarter in a championship game and expect to score.

One of my former newspaper editors once said, “You act like you’re better than we are.”

“No,” I said. “I’m just different.”

That was true.

But I was better than she and her servile wannabe columnist managing editor put together.

And she knew it.

I’ll always be thankful for the handful of editors and bosses — Thompson, Connor, Duncan, Schechtman, Contreras, Bolton and Bemis  — who despite our differences understood my unique value and taught me what they could about journalism. Those who didn’t get my outlaw style only got in my way.

I still value the ride — even during dark times when everybody loses.

Like now.

I’m thinking about the continuing two month Israeli war against the people of Gaza, thoughts that have angered some of you. I don’t respect your opinion, but respect your right to hold a viewpoint different from my own. I will always maintain self-respect by nurturing and staying true to my deepest held beliefs that drive me to engage injustice and refuse to accept atrocity in the name of democracy.

Each day I work to better understand current events. I read, think, study, draw from personal experience. I talk at great length with my wife who also spends considerable time and brainpower continuing to learn about the world from the bountiful information we have available to us.

My guess, and I don’t like guessing, is too many of you draw conclusions from too few thorough news sources. We’re on different sides for different reasons. I understand your plight and accept your flight as friend or acquaintance. As a professional social critic and lifelong cultural dissident, my path still finds me rejecting opinion from many associates and presumed allies.

My side of the battle usually pits me against the status quo. I’m thankful I reject the mainstream maelstrom. The older I get the more committed I become to the struggle for human freedom, independence and liberation.

My mother was right.

The ceramic figurine I keep on the shelf above my desk in our snug home office where we work reminds me of myself. That little symbolic student of human behavior reminds me of how much I need to learn while I can.

Of course, I still take everything personally. But, to get lazy, become distracted, self-absorbed and complacent, to content myself with middle-class creature comforts that numb the masses that remain asses is a fate worse than death.

How high can I fly?

I’ve already reached the sky.