A few thoughts on politics, the weather, religion and literary license

Politics: Bombing Iran? So, what’s new? We’ve been interfering in Middle Eastern politics since forever. The argument that Donnie will keep us out of wars is now moot.

Maybe 100 times more folks showed up for “No Kings Day” than for Donnie’s birthday parade ala Red Square. The military seemed out of step, which matches Donnie’s presidency so far. I’m pleased to see infighting going on in his “team.” It gives me hope that we might survive him and his henchmen and henchwomen. I’m a bit worried about I.C.E., who act like they’re the American Schutzstaffel, but if the Dodgers can stand up to them, the rest of the U.S. can. I’m a Giants, fan, but I gotta cheer for the Bums on that one.

On to the weather. The PNW is doing great. Much of the rest of the country is baking. It’s a real, old-fashioned June. We got some badly needed rain, and I’m grateful, as are my neighbor’s oat fields. Four degrees cooler, and there might have been white stuff on top.

I’ll skip religion today, except for a quote from the late, great chief Parrothead: “There’s a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning.” Find Fruitcakes on Youtube for the rest of Jimmy’s thoughts.

Now for the literary arts: I’ve home from my biggest road trip ever a month today. I’m sorting pictures (of which I took too many), and working on an illustrated travelogue-ish book I will finish and publish one of these days. Meantime, I’ve finished and published a book I’ve been threatening to finish and publish for three decades. I started writing it in the ‘90s.  

Back in my troubled youth, which ran well into my 30s, I ran away from home to Nevada, thinking maybe a reprise of my earlier four years in Hell . . . I mean Vegas . . . would expunge some of my earlier sins.

A thought for all sinners: In archery, a “sin” is a miss, not a moral failure. It’s a mistake in execution. I am guilty of more than my share of these, though some were made for good cause. This does not make them not mine, nor did it keep their effects from spreading into the lives of others. Much of that has gotten sorted out, though not perfectly; the lesson being that there’s nothing perfect in the Universe except, perhaps, its continuing state of imperfection. I still make mistakes. So do we all.

On that second incursion into the proximity of Hell, I found refuge with other refugees in a mountain hideout featuring a restaurant employing a number of odd-balls, loonies, social misconstructs, reprobates, addict in recovery and addict not. I fit right in.

I didn’t lie to get my job at the Lodge. I just said I would rather wait tables than tend bar, which was true. But it also implied that I’d waited tables, which I hadn’t. I learned.*

What followed was one of the most interesting (read “crazy”) times of my life, which I survived, evidently. That’s what the book I started in the ’90s is about. It’s sort of like life on Planet Earth in 2025. Some of it’s funny. Some of it’s not. Some of it’s true. Some of it’s not.

Fiction writers — which I often am— sometimes attribute many related incidents to one character in a book, a good way to flesh out a story. It’s like getting a job as a waiter; presenting a truth on top of a fiction to the advantage of the plot. Some of the incidents in the book happened to me. Some didn’t, but they happened to someone I knew.

Sandy Compton’s newest book is Alex’s Restaurant, available now on amazon.com, at bluecreekpress.com, and soon in nearby book stores. *After his “training” at Mt. Charleston Lodge, Sandy waited tables for 30 years.