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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Blood Red Syrah, A Gruesome California Wine Country Thriller, is my first novel. Published in 2019 by Avventura Press, a small independent publishing house, the book seethes like a rabid desert coyote on the prowl. Complex characters both real and imagined move into your head and refuse to leave. Wally Wilson wields a psychotic corkscrew. […]
At my friend Al “Sonny” Drake’s funeral at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery, about 75 members of the Pagan’s Motorcycle Club rode dark heavy metal beasts through the sacred green land of the dead, passing headstones commemorating warriors past, parking in a long line that reminded me of a fire-breathing dragon. Beneath wooden beams of an […]
