“HURRY up and wait,” seems to be the new colloquialism of the 2022’s. There’s so much that needs to be done, but seemingly little desire to personally take part. Call it the post-sueism era, where one can find more legal reasons for not doing anything than doing something, no matter how small. Or, call it simple nihilism, where anything good that can be done can also be undone or reoriented to the dark side. Or, being simply overwhelmed and not knowing where to start. Then again, ther...

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I’VE always felt reasonably safe and secure pretty much everywhere I’ve travelled within the USA (avoiding big cities). At least until recently. I’m not feeling so safe and secure these days with the increasingly lax gun laws, especially those that allow carrying a concealed weapon. Having grown up in Alaska when it was still a young, wild territory, I wasn’t unaccustomed to seeing people in town “carryin’,” even having witnessed a shootout once. Strangely, knowing that people w...

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SOME say that revenge is sweet, but I fear that whether sweet or not, it simply continues the cycle of violence into which today’s world seems trapped. It takes faith, trust, empathy, courage and strength to not respond to violence with violence. And re-cover-y, an odd word suggesting that the ultimate goal of recovery is to re-cover an act of violence. Sweep it under the rug, so to speak. But it’s not like that at all.

If every perpetrator of violence had to pay for the victim’s recov...

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WITH all the recurring reports of excessive police violence in the news, I find myself wondering what can possibly be done about it. Awareness of its existence and effects of violence on both the victim and the public are, of course, a first step, given that not all victims are purely innocent, and all police officers aren’t willing perpetrators of violence. But awareness isn’t enough, especially in the field, in the heat of a life-threatening situation quite possibly requiring lethal for...

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Well, not really. It's just that I've been away in Japan for several weeks, and among other things, completing my research for my new taiga-drama-style historically based novel, "The Sword of Kamehameha." It's been several years in research, as 1260's A. D. feudal Japan was a tumultous time about which much is said but little recorded as history. Started in Tokyo (ancient Edo), passed by Kyoto (the center of the ancient imperial court), stopped in Osaka (the center of trade of ancient Japan, ...
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