As COVID-19 began hitting urban centers in March and governors began issuing lockdown orders, sheriffs began quelling rumors of checkpoints and mass arrests. “This is not Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia where you are asked for your papers!” wrote Sheriff Scott Nichols of Franklin County, Maine.
Honoring the Fallen, by Dan Zappa
On a beautiful November day John Maloney delivered a sweet, brilliant eulogy for his friend Frenchy, voicing the admiration we all felt. Marines shed uncontrollable tears, duty bound to serve in Iraq and resolved to stay tight and honor this sacrifice. My unit prepared for Iraq and an instructor noted one unit that performed better than mine. It was John’s.
The Highly Exalted
Remember back in January, before we sent SWAT Teams into restaurants after diners and before we jailed hairdressers or governors outlawed vegetable seeds? If those things don’t disturb every fiber in your body…well, they just should that’s all.
Talkin’ Syncretic Frontier Blues
Governments don’t live together, people live together. With governments you don’t always get a fair word or a fair fight. Well I’ve come here to give you either one, or get either one from you. — Josey Wales to Chief Ten Bears, The Outlaw Josey Wales * Raising hell with the hippies and the cowboys They don’t […]
Anatomy of a Circle
I’ve been riding every day — weather permitting — this spring which has been great for my mental health and even better for my youngest horse, Remington. He’s a long four year-old this spring and coming out of our mild winter is showing signs of maturity and “getting it” that are beyond his age and super encouraging for the future.
Radio Free Figure 8
One benefit of this Covid Spring is that we all get the chance to reexamine our priorities, which can become wildly skewed in lengthy periods of prosperity. We’ve been prosperous for a very long time, most of us entirely unscathed by our various wars and rumors of wars, and on the macro level we may have forgotten that our extraordinary wealth is historically unusual, requires vigilance and constant maintenance, and is also an addiction.
An Eruption Of Demonism Into History
“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.” — Joseph Conrad * “The systems of explanation, historical and psychological, that we employ to explain ordinary human behavior, however extreme, cannot explain Hitler, who represents, (theologian Emil) Fackenheim believes, a ‘radical evil,’ an ‘eruption of demonism into history…’” — Ron […]
The Man Who Came to Breakfast
In February, 1944, Lt. Ed Charles was a Navigator in the 336th Squadron, 95th Bomb Group out of Horham, England. One night he was sleeping in the barracks when the door flew open and the C.Q. (Charge of Quarters) went probing through the darkness with a flashlight. “Is there an empty bunk in there? We have a new arrival and he needs a place to sleep.” Ed told the CQ the bunk next to his was vacant. He sat up. He offered to help the new guy unpack his gear and get squared away.
Tickling the Wire
I let the dogs out late the other night and looked up in the sky to see a train of satellites — forty, fifty, sixty of them — racing through the stars. It is a testament to effective quarantine — and a purpose-built informational firewall — that I didn’t know what I was seeing, and so had one of those increasingly rare moments in life where everything was startlingly new, and fresh, and even exciting.
The Daily Briefing
In response to wildly irresponsible remarks made by the artist David Hockney, who told the NY Post that smokers are immune to the coronavirus, the Figure 8 Ranch assembled our emergency response team for a counter-briefing. Here is an unclassified transcript of the briefing for widest dissemination…
Blood For Oil, Zero Defect & Living With The COVID
“NO BLOOD FOR OIL, man!” That’s what the guitar player said as we listened to the news on the radio, trundling down the 405 Freeway in a panel truck. It was 1990, the U.S. was fixing to boot Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait and I was serving as a roadie for a 1950s-themed rock-n-roll band heading southbound from Los […]
A 72 Hour Hold
I am now 72 hours into a self-imposed news blackout and the results have been marvelous. The decision to quarantine my mind, and spare it the slings and arrows of fear-based journalism and morale-sucking stupidity, was actually compelled by a mistake.
