The first snow in Central Oregon was December 5th. I live in Sisters, near Bend, and we are in the high desert. The dry, cold air makes for nice powdery snow. The snow was beautiful! I was prepared: I bought a new set of snow tires for my four-wheel-drive F150. The truck even with regular… Continue reading Beautiful Disaster
What a day. I woke up once again wondering how the hell Donald Trump could have been elected to the presidency. It still seems unreal to me that enough people in enough places voted for this guy, enough to edge out a flawed, but much more qualified candidate. Unlike some of the liberal persuasion, I don't… Continue reading Cautiously Optimistic
It is important to know that my wife was a dialysis patient, and that she was never really healthy in all the years we were together. When we first got together, I used to count the number of days she was not in the hospital. She lived as long as she did because of her… Continue reading PTSD and Me
I am the son of gambling professional Jerry L. Patterson. For thirty years, my father took money from casinos, wrote books on gaming, had a casino gaming news letter, and held clinics on gaming techniques and systems for Black Jack, Craps, and Roulette. He predates the MIT kids who won all that money playing Black… Continue reading Casino Royale Pain
My son wanted to watch a movie with lots of guns. Oh, where to start? A friend of mine suggested "Saving Private Ryan," especially the beginning, which to my mind is one of the best battle scenes ever made. But I couldn't find the DVD. I did, however, find "The Matrix," with the wonderful line: "Guns.… Continue reading There is no Spoon
We have had mountains of snow this year in Central Oregon, and we are on track to get at least another foot of snow over the next couple of days. We have had snow on the ground since December 6th. But I don't want to write about snow. Writing about the weather is the last refuge… Continue reading The Big Chill
I ran into two things today that I had never heard of before, both of which I am happy I know about now. The first is a song by John Stewart called "Mother Country," which was a song forwarded to me by a friend in response to an earlier post. I had never heard of John Stewart, and… Continue reading Newly Discovered Favorite Things
Authors's note: I wrote this on September 15, 2008. My encounter with the monument was early in 1997. I republish this on January 6th, 2017. I was cleaning out my office and papers over the weekend, and came across a card that I wrote about eleven years ago. I was working in the Boston area,… Continue reading Samuel Whittemore, from 1775
"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." -Ernest Hemingway Or was it Ernest Hemingway? When I realized that Donald J. Trump was going to be the GOP candidate for president, I realized that anything I say would probably not change people's views on the guy. The press and… Continue reading Sit Down at a Typewriter and Bleed
"On Wednesday, Hollywood legend John Carpenter hit back at neo-Nazis and white supremacists online who had been idolizing his 1988 cult classic, They Live, as an allegory for fighting against Jewish supremacy." - Gizmodo, January 3, 2017 One of my favorite movies of all time is "They Live," the fantastic 1988 movie starring Roddy Piper… Continue reading “They Live” Does Not Belong to Racists
Indelible Mark 