Hammer Mill Days

Calling all cars. One Adam Twelve. C-Q, C-Q. What the... - this thing is faulty as hell, Mitch! You call this emergency communications? I call it trash. Well, as you might imagine, we're trying to prepare for the worst here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. Hurricane season is just starting, after all, and this has been the worst year for tornadoes for as long as anyone can remember. So we're getting all of our ducks in a row. (Kind of an ongoing project, as they keep waddling away and we have to keep having to chase them and carry them back.) We found some old tent stakes in the basement just in case anything... needs staking... down. Not sure when that's likely to come up, but if it does, we'll be ready. Then, of course, I've got some old tarps from my barnstorming days. Yeah, they're moldy and motheaten, but we're talking about emergency readiness here, not aesthetics. Get with the program! Mitch Macaphee came up with some walkie talkies that we can c...

Our entire political class is on fire to cut costs. Got a suggestion: shut down these useless wars. Yet another guy from my area has been killed in Afghanistan, fighting a war no one can justify. He's got a wife and two kids, with a third on the way. Just one of the thousands. I see the procession of portraits every week on the PBS News Hour, as do many of my fellow Americans, sitting safe and dry in our living rooms, shaking our heads and muttering as we switch the channel to, I don't know, Jersey Shore or some other shit. I know it's hard to care when you don't have any blood on the front line, but seriously - this war is simply wasting people... good people. I don't get choked up very often listening to NPR, but I heard a story on Memorial Day weekend that did it - about the father of a soldier killed in Iraq, talking about how he'd planted sunflowers near his son's gravestone because the young man liked them so much, and how the father went to Iraq and s...