Retired Navy after 23 years. I retired at the age of 40 years old. I've been out longer than I was in. All of the ships I served on have been made into razor blades. I had fun and I lived my life the best I could. Most of my shipmates are gone and I try to stay in touch with the remainder. It continues. Substance abuse counselor, builder of wooden boats, furniture maker, prison non-violence workshop facilitator, life observer, activist, reader, writer, geriatric subject of interest, generous tipper. I stay involved.
The digital clock tells all who are present that it is 11:11. From what I know through comments hither and yon is, that 11:11 sticks in the minds of many. It is symbolic, I suspect. It is for me. Of course, on a digital clock the symmetry of the display catches one’s eye and captures a … More George Stratton
AN AGGRAVATION A slow day at The Castle. I stayed up way too late last night. I was on-line reading references, poetry, and I watched two or three Netflix T.V. shows. I made it to bed around 1:30 A.M. I was exhausted from being up so late. Not a good habit to get into. My … More A Real Live Example of Proper Emergency Procedure.
Best pal Nina sent me links to Flamenco music and Gypsy singers. I have been transported to Barcelona and to the foothills of the Pyrenees for the past forty five minutes. Eso es! Ole! Clapping my hands and stomping my heels into the boards of my stage. I try to keep my posture correct; arrogant, … More I Envy the Language of People From the Mediterranean
Frank McCarthy is a character from my past. I ran an alcoholism recovery home in East Boston a lifetime ago. Frank was one of my favorite residents. He was not a success and he was not a failure. Figure that one out. This story is about him and Phil Lougee. Phil was the house manager. … More A Repeat Worth Repeating
FLYING OBJECTS I never got it right. The strings always got tangled or I couldn’t throw the thing high enough. I finally deduced that my skinny little arm could not launch the parachute with steel bolt weight with enough authority to give it the right amount of distance to capture air and deploy the rag … More Flying Objects
ONE OF MY OLD HANGOUTS SITTING UNDER A BOAT WITH JOHN MARITATO John Maritato grew up in New York City. He learned to caulk boats in shipyards there from his father. John passed away in 2011 at the age of 89 years old. Caulking is a skill that many boatbuilders don’t normally have. Caulkers would … More A Good Place to Work: Under a Wooden Boat.
A WOLF BARKS The muzzle partly opens undecided, That dark mouth wishing to utter A pronouncement beyond self, Three times it starts to voice A thought – three times just a Puff of throat and blinking eye, Not sure, not sure what is needed at present – Unsure, confused but alert to some faint meaning, … More A Wolf Barks
HIDING PLACES Doesn’t Matter Why Why doesn’t matter when ‘who’, ‘what’, ‘when’, and ‘where’ are in play. My first favorite hiding place was in plain sight. I’d wake up in the morning and have the house to myself. It would be a few hours before anyone else stirred. Then the peace of the morning was … More Hiding…because.
I’m involved with a new treatment for macular degeneration. It involves jabbing a needle into my eyeball and injecting a solution into the retina that will colapse the delamination of the tissue causing the blurring of the focal point of that eye. I can’t tell you how unnerving this procedure is for me. The first … More Eyeball on a Stick and a Few Other Dark Thoughts. Oh yeah; A Poem About Truth.
What does one do with something like this? Hold it out proudly and just say, “Here I was. Take a look.” This is a taxi ride from Dunoon to Ardnadam Pier. A regular ride after a night of carousing. This is the Holy Loch where the Polaris Submarines would tie up for repairs after each … More Ardnadam Pier
Playing Fair and Being Kind 