Of all the crack security guards U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright could have hired to defend him from terrorist attack, the 8^th District congressman from Northeastern Pennsylvania chose Leonard Namiotka.

But how much protection can Democrat Cartwright expect from a retired Scranton cop who accidentally shot himself in the hand in 2009 while off duty and showing off his personal Glock 27 (40 cal.) semi-automatic pistol to the owner of a Scranton supermarket?

Namiotka “readily” called his self-inflicted gunshot wound a “mistake,” according to a puff piece Scranton Times-Tribune interview at the time of Namiotka’s 2023 retirement. The “bullet left a reminder: a thin scar on his palm a few centimeters across,” the story said.

 “I didn’t have my mind on what I was doing,” Namiotka said.

Now Cartwright doesn’t have his mind on what he’s doing.

When I called Cartwright’s Scranton office Wednesday to talk with Namiotka, the Cartwright staffer who answered the phone said Namiotka wasn’t in the office. The staffer asked who was calling and if he could take a message. I identified myself and said I was writing a story about Namiotka and wanted to talk with him about his employment with Cartwright and how he once shot himself.

“One moment,” the man said before putting me on hold to listen to some zippy instrumental music. After a few minutes the music stopped, the line rang again and the same man answered the phone.

“Congressman Cartwright’s office,” he said.

I told him it was still me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m trying to get some information here. Hold on a second.”

I went back to the annoying zippy music.

Within minutes Cartwright’s congressional hotline rang again.

“Congressman Cartwright’s office,” the same man said for the third time.

Me again, I said.

Cartwright’s staffer told me Namiotka wouldn’t be in the office Wednesday and said he’d put me through to the congressman’s voicemail so I could leave a message. The man refused to identify himself before connecting me to the voicemail where I left a message.

I had already repeatedly asked in writing to interview Cartwright about Namiotka, but the congressman refused to talk with me. In a written statement, Cartwright’s Washington D.C. Chief of Staff Hunter Ridgway cited security concerns for refusing to answer detailed questions about Namiotka.

“Security coverage has long been provided to members of Congress and their staffers working at the U.S. Capitol. Following physical attacks on U.S. Representatives at district events and assaults on staffers working in district offices, the U.S. Sergeant at Arms has been leading efforts at enhancing security in all Congressional districts across the country, including ours. 

“Our office has followed these recommendations to ensure the safety of our constituents, our staff members, and yes, the safety of protestors who gather outside our offices. And ensuring that safety means we’ve hired security. And my apologies but divulging further information on our specific security protocols runs counterproductive to these safety efforts.”

“I’m not asking Ridgway to give away state secrets,” I responded in an email to Cartwright’s Communication Director Wendy Wilson. “I’m asking for public information about Leonard Namiotka, an individual congressional staffer, with a reckless gun incident on his resume who the congressman employs as a security guard.

“Ridgway’s refusal to provide basic public information about equal opportunity in hiring, posting jobs, scheduling interviews, hours worked, full or part-time pay, benefits, etc. reflect poorly on the congressman’s public service and transparency. Honest answers are always better than a news story listing relevant questions Rep. Cartwright refuses to face — questions any constituent or member of the press might ask him at an upcoming videoed public event.”

Here are additional questions I emailed Cartwright that he refuses to answer:

Did Cartwright know Namiotka shot himself at a previous job before hiring him to this job? Does Namiotka carry a loaded firearm on duty? Is Namiotka a federal employee? Is he employed full-time? Does he receive federal benefits of any kind? Is his job a union position? Did Rep. Cartwright advertise the security position opening Namiotka filled? Did Cartwright interview other candidates for the job? Does the congressman employ other security guards in other district offices? Has Cartwright received any threats?

On March 8, 2024, International Women’s Day, I joined a small group of local good citizens outside Cartwright’s Scranton office to call attention to Cartwright’s complicity in the killing of Palestinian women in Gaza.

Because of a brisk wind, one of the protesters leaned a paper sign against a wooden sandwich board standing on the sidewalk that advertised a bar code connecting cell phone scanners to Cartwright’s official website. A uniformed man wearing a brown shirt with “SECURITY” on the back and a circular patch printed with the words “Congressman Cartwright” on his shoulder rushed from inside the office and told the woman to remove the sign from what he called “government property.”

The woman apologized and quickly complied with his order.

The man’s name tag identified him as “Namiotka,” whom I recognized as a city police lieutenant who served as interim chief when a former chief retired in 2020 and Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti named Namiotka to lead the police department. Cognetti demoted Namiotka back to lieutenant in 2022 when she appointed current Chief Tom Carroll.

When I asked Namiotka, 56, if he still worked as a Scranton police officer, he said he retired and now worked for Cartwright and the Lackawanna County Sheriff’s Department.

“Retirement is good,” Namiotka said.

Shortly after this exchange two marked city police vehicles showed up and parked at both ends of the block where they remained for about an hour. Chief Carroll said he was “unaware of any complaints being made for the March 8 gathering.”

The following day Namiotka accompanied Cartwright when the congressman marched in the Scranton St. Patrick’s Day parade — this time wearing a windbreaker with no official patch or identification designating him as an official congressional security guard.

During the parade several pro-Palestinian protestors chanted “SHAME, SHAME, SHAME” at Cartwright during a few awkward minutes he paused from marching and stood in the middle of the street. A noticeably jittery Namiotka faced the small group in a wide stance, brandishing his umbrella with both hands the way riot police often do with batons in tense situations.

When the parade moved on Namiotka sidled up to rookie Lackawanna County Commissioner Matt McGloin — who had changed position from closer to the front of the parade to Cartwright’s side  — laughed and patted the former NFL quarterback on the back.

Cartwright refuses to say if Namiotka received a paycheck for marching in the Scranton St. Patrick’s Day parade. Will Cartwright pay Namiotka or other security guards to accompany him on future campaign or work-related trips and events?

Will Namiotka sit outside Cartwright’s house to protect the congressman like a rescued guard dog from increasing numbers of peaceful, good citizens who see him as a warmonger defense contractor puppet? Protesters dedicated to promoting peace showed up the morning after the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Lackawanna County annual dinner to drape a Palestinian flag across the gate to Cartwright’s massive Moosic mansion and remind him he’s helping Israel unleash another day of genocide in Gaza.

By his smug unwillingness to tell transparent truth, scaredy-cat Congressman Matt Cartwright cavalierly disrespects public service. As for Namiotka, he’s just doing his job — whatever that is.

Although the Times-Tribune article about Namiotka’s retirement reports an internal investigation “cleared” Namiotka, the story goes deeper than the fawning coverage the local daily newspaper provided.

In response to questions about whether city officials disciplined Namiotka for his gun negligence, Scranton Police Chief Tom Carroll said in a written response, “Given a situation such as this, an officer would likely receive remedial training and if warranted by an internal investigation, they may be subject to disciplinary action.  I am not privy to the results of this specific internal investigation from 2009.”

Carroll did not explain how he, the Scranton police chief, is not privy to a Scranton Police Department internal investigation into a former Scranton police chief.

In response to my state Right-to-Know Law request, Scranton “Agency Open Records Officer” Kelsey Widdick provided the 2009 incident report city police filed in the aftermath of Namiotka’s potentially fatal and embarrassing misfire.

Marked “CONFIDENTIAL INVESTIGATION” into “NEGLIGENT WEAPON HANDLING” and “EXCEPTIONALLY CLEARED” all on the same day as the incident, the police report documents Namiotka’s recklessness at 4:15 p.m. on Sunday, February, 8, 2009.

Namiotka admitted shooting himself in the hand – becoming perpetrator and victim at the same time — as first responders helped stop the bleeding.

According to the incident report, “The bullet appeared to have gone through his left palm. Lt. Namiotka stated that at approx. 1615hrs he was showing John Brunetti( Owner of Brunetti’s ) his off duty Glock 27 (40 cal.) Namiotka and Brunetti were in a cooler in the back of the store at the time. Lt. Namiotka further stated that he unloaded the weapon and showed Mr. Brunetti how it worked. Lt. Namiotka then loaded the weapon and released the magazine to show him another feature. When Lt. Namiotka attempted to eject the chambered round, the weapon discharged and the round went through his left palm. Lt. Namiotka called 911 and had them send an ambulance and a supervisor. Mr. Brunetti was not injured and the spent round was located on the floor of the cooler.”

When hospital officials released Namiotka, his co-workers even returned his gun to him..

Why did Scranton police fail to charge their colleague and supervisor with the illegal discharge of a firearm or recklessly endangering another person, a crime upon conviction in Pennsylvania that can result in a fine of $5,000 and one to two years in prison?

Why did Scranton police consider this potentially deadly shooting a “confidential investigation?” Why did Scranton police clear their criminal case within hours, declaring “inactive” the disposition of this shameful gun violence danger?

Officer discretion? Back the blue damage control? One-of-our-own syndrome?

When it comes to public safety Namiotka’s itchy trigger finger is bad enough.

But he only shot himself in the hand once.

Through public cowardice, corporate collaboration and elite deceit, small caliber Congressman Matt Cartwright shoots himself in the foot every day.

No better gender equality battle cry exists than “Women’s rights are human rights.”

Hillary Rodham Clinton, whose paternal family roots run deep in Scranton and who should be president, spoke those mighty words. Now Hillary’s hubby Bill is headed to Scranton as featured speaker at Saturday’s annual all-male Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Lackawanna County dinner.

Unless the fat cats who run this paternalistic organization have officially changed their set-in-Stone-Age rules — and I have no reason to believe they have — no women need apply for a seat in the packed Scranton Cultural Center audience of white men who call the business, political and other societal shots in Northeastern Pennsylvania.

Just in case the Friendly Sons did end their century-plus oppression, I left detailed questions in a telephone message for Friendly Sons’ president Daniel P. Haggerty, Esq., owner and president of PMJ Mergers in Clarks Summit. As has been the case in past years when I submitted questions to a smug Friendly Sons’ president, Haggerty failed to return my call. Looks like the local clan still believes a woman’s place is where they tell her it is.

Former President Bill Clinton’s appearance will further validate their cruel prejudice.

To achieve any real progress in Scranton, women must enjoy the same opportunity to buy a ticket and attend the dinner as men who network, hobnob and make cultural connections among privileged powerbroker colleagues who make life harder for women to succeed here in hard coal country and around the world.

Unlike women political candidates blackballed from the dinner who seek votes and campaign contributions, frequent dinner guests U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright will be free to work the room as established public servants up for re-election. They will also tout their role as good soldiers in the American war machine, defense contractor fixers complicit in the continuing slaughter of Gazan women who die in the firestorm of publicly-funded and donated American-produced Israeli bombs. Many of those shells are made at the General Dynamics ammunition plant right here in Scranton.

Palestinian women deserve human rights, too. But neither Clinton, Casey, Cartwright nor President Joe Biden is calling for a permanent ceasefire and an end to Israeli occupation that has killed more than 31,000 Palestinians since October 7 — 70 percent of whom were women and girls. These men’s support for genocide helped exterminate those women’s and girls’ future.

As one of the architects of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday peace agreement (Hillary, too, shares in that historic accomplishment) Bill Clinton understands as well as anyone the importance of fighting for civil and human rights.

Yet, he, the Friendly Sons and their confidently-Caucasian Democratic Party allies work diligently to deceive women voters of all races into believing they’re all staunch equal rights defenders. Biden has addressed the annual dinner three times in the past and is counting on his bigoted brothers to help re-elect him in November. Democrats dismiss the value of women voters, rejecting the idea they might not cast a ballot for Biden if they can’t buy a ticket to the hooley just because they’re women. Women who vote and women who don’t vote will decide Biden’s political fate.

With Biden publicly disrespecting women and sanctioning their exclusion in his hallowed birthplace, Democratic mourners can blame him for digging his own political grave. Biden’s fawning women supporters help him dig the hole. Women who give their tacit approval to this time-dishonored tradition of ostracism are doing Biden far more harm than good. Glass ceiling breakers among them aren’t doing themselves any favors either.

In 2021 the ruling lads invited Scranton’s first woman mayor, Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, to be the first woman to address the dinner — but only via the internet in a virtual celebration hastily arranged in the aftermath of COVID. Cognetti again offered remarks at the 2022 dinner where she failed to ask for parity for her sisters in the city she’s paid to serve — and I don’t mean ham, cabbage and potatoes.

A donnybrook erupted last year when Cognetti and a county woman judge complained they got high-hatted, cavalierly brushed off the 2023 guest list. In return, the boys whined that Cognetti turned them down after publicly accusing them of rejecting her, receiving a grudging and insincere last-minute invite and then embarrassing the high-and-mighty green gang in the press. The woman judge didn’t show up at the stag party either.

Last week I emailed Mayor Cognetti about the upcoming shenanigan:

“Have you been invited to the cocktail party and/or dinner?”

“If you have been or are invited, do you plan to attend the cocktail party and/or dinner?”

“Will women across the board be afforded an equal opportunity to buy tickets and attend the traditionally all-male dinner the same way men are given the chance to buy tickets and attend the event?”

“Will you attend the cocktail party and/or dinner if the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Lackawanna County hierarchy excludes other women as guests at the cocktail party and/or dinner?”

“If you speak at the dinner will you address the matter of gender segregation the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Lackawanna County has perpetuated for well over a century?”

The Mayor’s response?

“I have been invited to this year’s dinner and will be giving welcome remarks as the Mayor of Scranton traditionally has done,” she wrote in an email that danced a jig around a cogent explanation.

Knowing Harvard Business School graduate Cognetti can do better than that, I sent another email.

“Will other women be allowed to attend the dinner? If not, should women across the board be given the same opportunity as you to attend the dinner?”

The Mayor’s answer?

“I am invited as and attend the dinner as the Mayor of Scranton, representing the city and my position,” she said in another fuzzy email.

In Scranton it’s every woman for herself.

Cognetti understands how crucial this drunken macho black tie bash is to garnering support for Biden’s re-election campaign. Nobody is more on board than Cognetti who accepted Biden’s April invitation to travel with him to Ireland (joined by mercenary partisan female fundraiser and Democratic National Committee Treasurer Virginia Doherty McGregor and her husband who live in Biden’s old lace curtain Scranton neighborhood).

If America’s women voters believe Democratic Party chieftains respect and fight for women’s rights, they haven’t paid attention to the shameless continuing segregation in Scranton where women remain second-class citizens.

Man up, fellas.

Time to do big boy things.

Speaking of children, the Friendly Sons are the same guys who will welcome to the head table Saturday a Michigan Roman Catholic bishop and Scranton native who will faithfully bless the men in this sad and sordid city where the current bishop should have been defrocked decades ago for covering up child sex crimes by pervert priests in his diocese.

Sure and begorrah, ’tis a great day for testosterone.

My father Shamus taught me to always fight one more round.

Nobody can beat you if you fight one more round.

Back on January 20, 2020, I published a column on my website that introduced a new online news site called THE SCRANTON NEWS. I wrote the news. Feminist political scientist, activist and former college professor Stephanie Bressler (to whom I’m married) edited the news.

Together we took on the world. Together we reported and commented on what we witnessed. Together we provided 21st Century American outlaw journalism to our readers.

Then Covid struck.

Life changed utterly.

We went underground.

Today we’re still healthy, good citizens in our 70s, still wearing N95 masks among strangers indoors and looking forward to getting our latest booster shot. We haven’t been sick, don’t want to get sick and don’t want to make anybody else sick.

We’re fighting one more round.

We’re also resurrecting THE SCRANTON NEWS with a new name and supercharged mission.  

The Scranton City News is born.

Our logo is the black shamrock. Discovered by stouthearted Druids thousands of years ago, the plant sprouted from rugged cracks in harsh cliffs on the raw western edge of Ireland. Rising to life in tough terrain, this dark three-leaf clover bent to no one.

We bend to no one.

That includes politicians, public relations flacks, business hacks and untrustworthy descendants of hard coal country robber barons, people who never cared about people and still don’t — coddled gentry who expect to forever control Scranton progress for their “own kind”  of self-absorbed elite establishment types.

Northeastern Pennsylvania media fails to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Lazy, timid and predictable, shallow news stories and cute columns lack depth no matter how many journalism awards tedious editorial managers claim. Local television network news affiliates spend more time digging into dog and cat survivor stories than investigating tales of struggle from combat veterans suffering PTSD.

Don’t expect aggressive news coverage and commentary from the pseudo-hip “news executives” who run the Scranton Times-Tribune now owned and operated by dull company men and cutthroat carpetbaggers from a Wall Street hedge fund. Don’t expect bureaucratic clerks of fact masquerading as reporters or the laziest feature-writing columnist in America to hold the powerful accountable for betraying the public trust.

The Scranton City News will challenge the masters. As knights of truth we’ll face the fire-breathers. We’ll slay the lies. And we’ll do it for free. No advertisers need apply.

Like radical pamphleteers during the Revolutionary War, we’ll publish when the need arises. As guerrilla irregulars we declare independence from corrupt and incompetent government and media the way Thomas Paine advocated “Common Sense” in 1776.

Both Paine’s missives and The Scranton City News exhibit a radical democratic spirit. In these revolutionary times, as Paine fought monarchy, we’ll fight American business and political royalty that believes peasants have no say in the way we’re marketed or governed, that only bloated plutocrats with money and power are entitled to access.

The Scranton City News will fight their power.

Look for street reporting and political commentary, societal self-defense against liberal or conservative attacks on logic and reason. Although we’re registered to vote, we’re neither Democrats nor Republicans. We bow to no political party. The Scranton City News is disruptive, rude, argumentative, biased and proud of it.

We are the enemy of the people who try to keep us silent, censored and stupid.

I’m specifically talking about sacred political blowhards like my Scranton Hill Section neighbor U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright, U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, Gov. Josh Shapiro, and even “that scrappy kid from Scranton” President Joe Biden — all Democrats who should know better.

Into his fourth year as president, Biden has not yet granted an interview to a Scranton journalist. Although I’ve asked several times over the years in writing to speak with the President, White House staff ignored my requests. I’ve interviewed former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in the past. And Biden once called into my talk radio show during the time he served as a senator.

Maybe the old boy just isn’t up to the job.

Tell “Scranton Joe” to expect our call.

Donald Trump and his species better beware as well. We fought them before and we’ll fight them again. Save me a seat at Trump’s next rally, inauguration or sentencing — whatever comes first.

If anyone questions my credentials, I’m a state and national journalism award winner. I bring personal references from some of this nation’s most respected print and broadcast journalists, including at least one Pulitzer Prize winner, as well as the former British Sky News editor who hired me to provide daily live international commentary at the 2005 Michael Jackson child molestation trial in California.

One continuing battle here in Biden’s birthplace pits the annual Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Lackawanna County all-male dinner against equal opportunity for women. For more than a century, these lugs have banned women from their event unless the females are serving beer, ham, cabbage and potatoes. So brainwashed are countless local women by this bigoted tradition, they condone, justify and enable such shameful behavior from this gaggle of male chauvinist Paddy’s pigs,

After Scranton voters elected Paige Gebhardt Cognetti as the city’s first woman mayor in a special 2019 election and then elected her in a landslide to a full term in 2021, the Friendly Sons buckled and invited her to be the first woman to address the fete at a virtual dinner held online because of the Covid pandemic. In 2022 the lads invited her again. A smiling Cognetti happily addressed the brotherhood, relieved nobody in the press asked if she and a new female county judge were the only connected women guests the men allowed into the room.

He-man misogynists last year decided not to invite Cognetti and the judge. Cognetti went to the press for help, eventually refusing to attend when the lads issued what she considered a grudging and insincere invite. The judge also went elsewhere.

This year’s 118^th dinner returns to downtown Scranton Saturday for the first time in 40 years. Will the Friendly Sons invite Cognetti? If so, will she attend even if the bully boys ban other women? Will Cognetti, who won her historic bid to office thanks to women, try to have her cabbage and eat it, too?

Read all about it Thursday — only in The Scranton City News.

Already bloated business swells and other ill-intentioned corporate capitalists bellied up to the trough this morning for yet another downtown Scranton Chamber of Commerce breakfast, this time embracing dull company man and U.S. Sen. Bobby Casey as featured speaker.

Raising Palestinian flags and protest placards, about a dozen of Casey’s constituents lined the sidewalk in front of the building to call attention to the continuing slaughter of tens of thousands of Gazans as millions of men, women and children face starvation in the savage aftermath of the continuing bombing and collective punishment of innocent civilians.

When Casey arrived in a gas-guzzling publicly-funded SUV his driver bypassed the front entrance to pull into a space in the back. Casey moved so fast when he got out of the vehicle that decent, moral people Casey is well-paid to serve, who awaited his arrival in the early morning cold, didn’t have a chance to ask him a single question.

Moving quickly to the rear entrance I was only able to spot the back of Casey’s head as he scurried into the building. Before he disappeared behind the locked door I was only able to shout one question: Will you talk with constituents?

Casey never even turned around.

If Casey wants our vote in his tough re-election bid, he better talk with us. If Casey wants to continue the privilege of representing those of us assembled in Democratic President Joe Biden’s birthplace, he better respect us more than he does. If Casey wants to sleep at night with a clear conscience knowing his morality rises to the expected standard of a decent human being, he better support a ceasefire in Gaza and stop his complicity in arming Israel.

The more I think about what happened this morning, the more irked I get.

Casey is one big reason I recently checked out of the Democratic Party after trying for years to fight for progressive change from within and re-registered as a non-affiliated voter. After serving as a faithful Democrat and voting for Biden in 2020, I now might not vote at all. At 72 I’m one of those voters Democrats take for granted. Those days are gone, “Joey” and “Bobby” – as we like to infantilize grown men’s first names here in Scranton. If I do vote, I’m looking at third party candidate Cornel West or some other antagonist to the system in whose judgement I can at least place faith.

As I watched one particularly well-dressed guest walk to the front door to the breakfast this morning I shouted, “Enjoy your breakfast while kids are starving in Gaza.”

No joke, as Biden likes to say.

“The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the occupied Gaza Strip, which is a war crime,” Human Rights Watch reports. “Israeli forces are deliberately blocking the delivery of water, food, and fuel, while willfully impeding humanitarian assistance, apparently razing agricultural areas, and depriving the civilian population of objects indispensable to their survival.”

The self-absorbed swell on his way into the breakfast had to hear me yell unless his head was in the clouds where most distracted Democrats daydream when it comes to accepting the harsh reality of genocide in Gaza. Judging from the well-fed appearance of the hungry crowd that showed up for the Chamber breakfast, maybe I should take a cue from this gluttonous gang and plan a breakfast of my own.

“Breakfast at Bobby’s” at Casey’s Webster Avenue house just a few blocks from my home in the Hill Section of Scranton might be a nice way to introduce our ire to Casey’s neighbors. We can sit on the curb eating our Wheaties with our fingers like barbarians at the gate. Or we can just walk up and down in front of Casey’s home inviting the shameless, shrinking senator to join us for a bite.

Like it or not, voracious bad governmental gorger Casey must one day eat his humble pie.

Grandpa fell off the commode Saturday night, busting open his head on the edge of the already cracked white porcelain sink. Hubby Frank drove home drunk from the afternoon show at Butts and Bolts gentlemen’s club on his Harley Fat Boy, fighting off multiple images of oncoming headlights in several lanes of traffic. The kids punched each other in their thick numb skulls for five minutes straight like mixed martial arts maniacs in a cage match. Deep sobs from 3-year-old Beth wracked her skinny body fragile as uncooked angel hair pasta. Wet sniffles Waylon wiped away with the back of his hand sent the 4-year-old porker into an asthma fit of coughs and snotty spit.

Bonita didn’t know what to do.

So she made hot dog soup.

“Hot dog soup,” she screamed when the pot boiled over and greasy water hissed in the burner flame.

The kids dried their eyes. Metal legs on Grandpa’s walker slammed against the wall as he dripped blood on the carpet and made his way down the steps. Frank opened another beer at the kitchen table as the gassy pop of the Pabst beer can blasted off in Bonita’s head like an exploding bottle rocket. The sound scared her enough lately to cut back on her own drinking though her pill consumption increased whenever she backed off the bourbon. On weekends Frank drank can after can until he finished the case. This being Saturday Bonita figured he had at least a dozen left in the refrigerator before he drove blinded by beer to the distributor for more before they closed.

Cleaning motorcycle grease from under his fingernails with his Buck knife, Frank drooled when she asked if he was hungry for hot dog soup. The hair on the back of her neck stood up straight like soldiers facing a firing squad when he pulled his chair up closer to the table, scraping against greasy linoleum gritty with stones from his black engineer boots grating like a stock car pulling up to the gravel starting line at a dirt track. Fresh boiled frankfurters (an alias her husband once used – Frank Furter – when he applied for a Visa card) always smelled good.

Hot dog soup soothed the savage outlaw biker.

Bonita was cooking high on meth when she first concocted the dish, pouring six cans of generic tomato soup with equal amounts of tap water into the 12-quart stock pot her mother left her when she died from COVID, dicing three packs of government-issued food stamp hot dogs, chopping four raw Bermuda onions and adding four dented cans of baked beans.

 “You can add whatever else you like to personalize the dish,” Bonita told her sister Brandi when she shared the recipe.

Grandpa dumped half a jar of sweet pickle relish in his soup. Bonita poured Tabasco sauce in hers. Waylon mashed up a fistful of barbecue potato chips and Beth sprinkled M&M peanuts into her favorite pink Tupperware bowl. That first night, with Frank working the door at the strip club, just the four of them sat around the small table laughing and slurping soup almost like a normal family.

Everybody loved hot dog soup.

They weren’t a normal family, though.

When Bonita heard Frank’s Harley pull in when he came home late, she raced to put his meal on the table so he could sit right down like the man of the house. Before he smoked a joint and went to bed she heard him with a spoon scratching deep into the pot, quietly seething and hating him more than ever when the bottom feeding bastard got digging around the pot. But what could she do?  This was the same animal that more than once used his soup spoon to dig into the crack of his ass to scratch an itch before going back to shoveling grub down his gullet.

The next day when she made another batch Grandpa ate his in his room and yelled down for Frank to bring him up another bowl. Hot dog soup eventually became regular Sunday dinner because some of Frank’s brothers in his one-percenter Crushers Motorcycle Club almost always stopped by to eat, especially when their old ladies kicked them out of the house or when they just got paroled and craved a home-cooked meal.  Frank once even suggested a tag team hot dog soup wrestling contest before realizing how such a fandango would not be cost effective for already slim club finances.

Bonita made her specialty every time chaos hit the house, which happened often, sometimes calling the culinary concoction a tradition like pork and sauerkraut on New Year’s Day. The same morning state drug agents broke through the second floor bedroom window from the roof she went nuts opening cans, chopping tube steaks and cooking up a steaming pot at 4:00 in the morning.

Beth and Waylon, who Frank nicknamed Wiener, were stuffing their smeared faces before they went to school. Frank ate right out of the pot when he made bail and came home at noon without mentioning how he had agreed to cooperate with the government. In turn, Bonita kept to herself the knowledge about how a married cop who worked part-time bouncing at the Butts and Bolts and was dating Brandi heard the rumor from his steroid dealer and told Brandi who called Bonita to say her husband was a dirty rotten snitch.

The next time Grandpa fell off the commode he spent three days in the hospital with a concussion. Security guards buckled thick cracked brown leather restraints around his wrists and ankles when he grabbed a nurse by the waist and hung on with both hands demanding hot dog soup and a kiss.

More pandemonium struck the night somebody stole Frank’s bike. Bonita screamed when she went to lock the front door before going to bed and saw nothing but a big black oil stain where Frank always parked his beloved soft tail cruiser with flaming skulls hand-painted on the gas tank.

“Frank, Frank, somebody stole your scooter!”

The video Bonita shot on her phone shows Frank running around the street cursing in his underwear and clodhopper motorcycle boots with the dull silver buckles on the sides. When it dawned on him his bike was really gone he started to howl and beat his head against a telephone pole. In the home movie, wearing a moron’s grin, Grandpa sticks his face in front of the camera.

“Time to make the hot dog soup,” he says, sticking out his tongue and wiggling it like the front row flesh freaks Frank regularly punched out in the Butts and Bolts nude strip club.

So Bonita did, leaving the pot to simmer for hours on the stove. This time, though, when she turned off the meal she filled and covered the biggest tureen she owned with tin foil and put the chow in the refrigerator, writing Frank’s name real big in red crayon on a piece of Wiener’s school notebook paper before taping it to the side of the deep dish.

She left half-a-pot of hot dog soup sitting on the stove.

Packing a suitcase for herself, a duffle bag for Grandpa and knapsacks for the kids, she bundled them all into the back seat of the flat black 1977 Buick Regal she bought for $8,000 when she was dancing at the Butts and Bolts. By midnight Bonita, Beth, Waylon and Grandpa were sound asleep at Brandi’s apartment.

 “Dinner, sweetheart,” said the note on the dish in the refrigerator.

When Frank woke up still loaded, he smelled the spicy aroma, spotted the half-full pot on the stove and dug into the cold, thick mix settled in its own juices just like he liked it. He dropped five stale hot dog buns into the broth like depth charges in a sea war, devouring the meal standing up, never opening the refrigerator, thinking Bonita must have added a new ingredient that nicely sweetened his soup.

The rat poison tasted like orange blossom honey.

When Bonita’s trial started her lawyer told the jury Bonita poisoned the soup in the pot on the stove to draw the sewer rat the size of a football that for the past week had chewed his way into the kitchen cupboard posing a danger to her family. Frank was a jerk, the lawyer explained, who never did anything to help around the house and didn’t care if the rat ripped out the children’s throats as they slept.

The lawyer said Bonita warned her husband at least twice not to eat the soup on the stove (a big fat lie), going so far as to make sure he knew his scrumptious dinner was in the refrigerator with his name written on the dish. The lawyer entered into evidence a photo of Bonita’s note on the soup in her handwriting.

Of course she didn’t add poison to the soup in the refrigerator.

Posing in the blue, pinstriped suit he bought at the Men’s Warehouse, Bonita’s lawyer said and never in a million years thought Frank would be so hammered he’d forget and eat the poisoned stove soup when she took the kids and her aging father to her sister’s for a sleepover with popcorn and a Disney video. The lawyer put his hand over his heart like he was pledging allegiance to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Grandpa testified at trial, corroborating the rodent tale.

“Everybody loves hot dog soup,” he swore under oath. “Even rats.”

In closing arguments Bonita’s lawyer said, “She loved her husband so much she taped a note on his favorite soup. You can lead a horse’s ass to water but you can’t make him drink.”

“Objection,” the prosecutor yelled, spinning om the heel of his black Italian loafer to give the finger to the defense lawyer.

“Overruled,” said the judge who Bonita impressed with her tears and swollen, deep cleavage on the witness stand.

The jury was out less than an hour before returning with an acquittal.

When Bonita got home from court she called a celebratory family meeting in the kitchen to announce the insurance company agreed to release the family’s $200,000 accidental death benefit first thing in the morning.

“Life will be better than ever, kids,” Bonita said. “Now, guess what I’m making for dinner?”

Beth and Wiener barked with the wild fervor of hungry Dobermans.

“Hot dog soup,” Grandpa slobbered so loudly his two hearing aids whistled.

That night at the table everybody gobbled down seconds.

Bonita ate Frank’s share.

Then she asked for thirds.

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.