And it’s a nice little positive interview! This was an ‘update’ to a story in the local paper about the Prometheus Awards, HERE. Now you have to understand that Raconteur Press is only 4 years old, and this is a HUGE award, especially the special award to Dave Freer!

Well done my friends! I can honestly say I was there at the lunch where it all began! :-)

Rand Paul released some bombshell documents on Monday proving that the authors of the now-infamous “Proximal Origins of COVID-19” were never confident that the virus was not engineered and had not escaped from a lab, and that their suspicions grew over time that it was.

You may have missed this story because...almost nobody covered it, and those who did were all in the conservative media. The paper, used by the media and the COVID mafia to insist that COVID had a natural origin, was a total fraud, as were the authors who maintained in public the line Anthony Fauci wanted them to.

They even coordinated with the Intelligence Community to maintain the fiction.

Full article, HERE from Hot Air.

Granted Paul has had a hard on for Fauci since the first hearing, but he IS digging out the paper trail, memo’s and other ‘bits’ that have been ignored.

In the research world, it is ALWAYS about funding, grants, and who gets what for how long...

And even though the authors ‘knew’ things were off, to put it mildly, they kept their mouths closed in public. Because they knew if they did...

They got the bottom line-

Yet they participated in the cover-up and got huge grants soon after.

Like I said, it’s always about the money... sigh...

Detachment flight schedules sometimes got interesting...

Jeddah more so than most... Stuck off in the far right corner of the airport, you never knew who or what might show up in the middle of the night...

Dets tended, over the years, to be ‘interesting’ regardless of when/where one ended up. They ranged from one crew/one airplane, to 6-7 airplanes from multiple locations with minimal support, basically whatever could be scrounged at that particular location. Air Force C-130s were always a good source of parts for the P-3s, as we had the same engines... Just the 130s had theirs upside down! :-)

h/t Frito

Tropical Storm Bertha is causing impacts along the northern Gulf as coastal communities in parts of Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana brace for strong wind gusts, heavy rain and coastal flooding.

Bertha formed Monday in the northeastern Gulf, becoming the second named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season.

The storm has turned westward, and tropical storm conditions are spreading over portions of the Florida panhandle, according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

Full article, HERE from Fox News.

As you can see below, Bertha’s track has been anything but stable. And it is unusual for one to continue this far west without turning north...

This thing has turned around twice, pointed in multiple directions, and the computer tracks... well, this is one of the ‘better’ sets of predictions...

The only real ‘advantage’ to the westward direction, is that the strongest rain bands are out over the Gulf and will probably stay there unless it takes the HAFS-B or HWRF tracks. There will still be a good amount of rain, and some storm surge, but not as bad as it ‘could’ be. But Texas and Louisiana have already had major rain events in the last week or so, and there is really no where for the water to go.

So if you are anywhere near the path, keep an eye on the weather, and be ready to head to high ground!

PJ Media had the story, HERE.

Charred beams pulled from the earth in Jerusalem’s City of David are forcing archaeologists to rewrite their timeline of the First Temple’s destruction — and offering the most tangible physical evidence yet of the catastrophe the Bible describes in stark, unflinching detail.

Excavators working the Givati Parking Lot dig, a joint project of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Tel Aviv University inside the Jerusalem Walls National Park, uncovered massive wooden beams burned when Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylonian army destroyed the First Temple in 586 BCE. The beams once formed the roof of an inner courtyard in a First Temple-period building. When the structure collapsed in the fire, the beams fell to the floor — and there they stayed for roughly 2,600 years, preserved by an unlikely agent: melted plaster.

Full article, HERE from Isreael365News.

Some folks think the Bible is made up, but things like this tends to make folks wonder...

I am not going to tell you what to think, or not think, or believe, that is up to you.

And I honestly can’t say I disagree, sigh...

Drafting Guys over 60----this is funny & obviously written by a Former Soldier-

New Direction for any war: Send Service Vets over 60!

I am over 60 and the Armed Forces thinks I’m too old to track down terrorists. You can’t be older than 42 to join the military. They’ve got the whole thing ass-backwards.. Instead of sending 18-year-olds off to fight, they ought to take us old guys. You shouldn’t be able to join a military unit until you’re at least 35..

For starters: Researchers say 18-year-olds think about sex every 10 seconds. Old guys only think about sex a couple of times a day, leaving us more than 28,000 additional seconds per day to concentrate on the enemy.

Young guys haven’t lived long enough to be cranky, and a cranky soldier is a dangerous soldier. ‘My back hurts! I can’t sleep; I’m tired and hungry. We are impatient and maybe letting us kill some asshole that desperately deserves it will make us feel better and shut us up for a while.

An 18-year-old doesn’t even like to get up before 10 a.m. Old guys always get up early to pee so what the hell. Besides, like I said, ‘I’m tired and can’t sleep and since I’m already up, I may as well be up killing some fanatical SOB....

If captured, we couldn’t spill the beans because we’d forget where we put them. In fact, name, rank, and serial number would be a real stretch.

Boot camp would be easier for old guys. We’re used to getting screamed and yelled at, and we’re used to soft food. We’ve also developed an appreciation for guns. We’ve been using them for years as an excuse to get out of the house, away from the screaming and yelling.

They could lighten up on the obstacle course, however. I’ve been in combat and didn’t see a single 20-foot wall with rope hanging over the side, nor did I ever do any pushups after completing basic training.

Actually, the running part is kind of a waste of energy, too. I’ve never seen anyone outrun a bullet.

An 18-year-old has the whole world ahead of him. He’s still learning to shave, to start up a conversation with a pretty girl. He still hasn’t figured out that a baseball cap has a brim to shade his eyes, not the back of his head.

These are all great reasons to keep our kids at home to learn a little more about life before sending them off into harm’s way.

Let us old guys track down those dirty rotten coward terrorists. The last thing an enemy would want to see is a couple of million pissed off old farts with attitudes and automatic weapons who know that their best years are already behind them.

***How about recruiting women over 50 ....with PMS !!! You think men have attitudes !!! Ohhhhhhhhhhhh my Lord!!! If nothing else, put them on border patrol......we will have it secured the first night!

The Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the United States Postal Service can move ahead — for now — with a rule change with major implications for mail-in ballot reform and state compliance with federal review.

The court granted the motion for stay in the case of the NAACP v. USPS, based on the strength of the appellants’ arguments. In other words, the court agreed that USPS is likely to win its case based on the Constitution and on the timeframe which the Postal Service has to implement a framework for ballots ahead of the midterm elections.

Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the central district of California, posted, “This ruling is a win for election integrity and would have significant implications for states like California that refuse to submit their voter rolls to verify compliance with federal election laws.”

Full article, HERE from PJ Media.

The link from the SCOTUS wire is HERE.

Granted, this won’t do anything for ‘state’ elections, but it definitely will have an impact on Federal elections!

I find it interesting that the NAACP are the ones suing over this too...

Makes one wonder doesn’t it?

President Donald Trump’s speech about how China and other bad actors compromised American elections in 2020 and 2024 might be the biggest speech this side of “a day which will live in infamy.” Unlike the respect accorded to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, however, the news media at NBC, ABC, and CNN decided in advance that President Trump could not be trusted to tell the truth about the Titanic hitting America’s election iceberg. So they refused to give the president the time he requested to tell Americans, in the middle of vacation season, that America’s elections have been screwed up for at least the last two major election cycles.

Full article, HERE from PJ Media.

There is an interesting take HERE from the Washington Examiner, also.

It is no secret that the MSM does not want to cover anything Trump, and while there is no actual ‘rule’ about TV access, especially after the kerfuffle over The View and their political programming (you know it’s true if you only watch ONE episode, just sayin...).

But my question is, how much actual ‘coverage’ was given on their streaming platforms? And how large was the actual viewership?

Oops, there were some NBC and ABC stations that did carry the speech...

Sinclair used its own feed of the speech from the White House and preempted NBC and ABC programming to air tjhe remarks via its The National News Desk.

Fox also carried the speech, as did CBS, though for the latter CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil preceded the address by telling viewers, “Honestly, much of what the president has said on this topic is false.”

Info, HERE from Deadline.com

So, Fox, C-Span, CBS, and a few NBC and ABC stations did carry it. ‘Back in the day’, yes, I’m that old, when we only had three channels, any presidential speech from either party was on all three channels, and most radio stations too!

Sigh... Granted this was long before we saw the partisanship we are seeing today. I really don’t know what is going to happen in November, but I think it’s going to be interesting, and not necessarily in a good way...

Russia has a money problem, and while it isn’t unusual — the Kremlin wants to spend more than it takes in — increasing wartime pressures have the country’s richest moving their riches out of the country.

Three hundred billion dollars worth of riches just in the first half of 2026, according to a report today from Bloomberg News.

“Several billionaires moved some additional assets out of Russia recently, amid concerns about the banking sector, according to some of the people and documents including corporate filings and property purchase records” that were seen and reviewed by Bloomberg.

Paywalled linked, so I’m not putting the link in, sorry.

Full article, HERE from PJ Media.

Interestingly, when the sanctions hit, a lot of the oligarchs ‘moved’ their money/companies/etc. back to Russia to ‘protect’ them.

Now, they are again moving offshore, as Russia is broke and Putin is going after any money he can find.

Another issue is the Ukrainians using drones to hit deep strikes into Russia, including the oil refineries and oil storage, creating a fuel crisis nationwide, and more importantly, to their mobilized forces in the Ukraine war.

This will only worsen as the year rolls on and it gets colder, when the farmers can’t get fuel to harvest their crops, or take the crops to processing facilities.

And the oligarchs are once again in the ‘sights’ of the US folks who are looking at arrests/confiscation of assets. The last round, they got $4B worth of yachts, HERE, in various countries, and that doesn’t include the homes, land, jewelry, and other items also confiscated...

This time, they’ll be looking in Turkey and the Maldives, as international pressure is being applied to both to turn over those Russian oligarch’s yachts that escaped the first round.

OBTW, now Russia can’t even sell the oil, because they can’t process it, and it’s not ‘good’ quality crude...

My Uncle Riley drew these in 1989, based on his memories of growing up on the ‘home place’ in Louisiana in the 1910s and 20sa...

I remember the old home place, it was what was known as a ‘dog run’ house, with a big central hall that ran front to back. That was the ‘cooling’ in the summer, open the doors and windows, and let the breezes blow through. And feather beds. It was a four bedroom house, with a kitchen and bathroom added on the back. Sadly it burned down back in the 1970s. Of the original three houses, sadly today only one is left.

The cotton gin was turned into a sawmill by Uncle Alvin who took over the home place, and he used it to make a living for a number of years as a finished carpenter (he built beautiful cabinetry out of Cypress). The Edward Curtis store was still standing in the early 1970s, but no longer used.

Seeing these brought back a lot of memories... Playing with the cousins at the reunions, butchering hogs and cattle, making sausages, eating all kinds of GOOD food, catching fish in the river, and the women making quilts. And home made ice cream... Oh yeah!!!

Living on the dry line is always an adventure, sometimes more than others...

South Texas is getting whacked, along with New Mexico and Arizona with monsoon rains over there. The hurricane in the Pacific is close to hitting the Mexican landmass, curving toward Mexico City, and will be bringing more moisture to south Texas in the next couple of days.

If it makes it into the Gulf, areas in south Texas could get between 6 and 10 inches of rain in less than 24 hours!

Up here, we get to watch the cute puffy little cumulus build into cumulonimbus as they move off to the East. So no rain for us...

Sigh...

But at least it’s a little cooler this week, only in the 90s!

So proud of these guys!!!

As always, click on the cover for the Amazon link!

J Kenton Pierce Tales of the Long Night, book one- A Kiss for Damocles

The blurb-

The enemy is dead. Their guns still aim.

The Mutual Prosperity invaded Hesperides Colony centuries ago--dropped asteroids on the oceans, triggered a volcanic winter, killed millions. The invaders eventually died fighting. Their orbital artillery AI, Damocles, did not. It has spent three hundred years killing anything that looks like a threat: radio signals, powered vehicles, anything that might let humanity rebuild fast enough to strike back.

Seventeen-year-old Shaifennen “Shai” Roehe grew up in a mineshaft, scrounging salvage from the ruins of a dead civilization. Then she finds a crashed military shuttle from the Long Night buried in a highland ravine. It’s the biggest salvage find in living memory--and it comes with secrets. Traitors from the original war. A murdered alien marine who died fighting for humanity’s future. And enough battlesteel and fabrication equipment to turn her struggling homestead into something that scares the right people.

From there, Shai has to navigate a volatile trade mission to the nearest town, untangle a conspiracy that runs generations deep, survive assassination attempts, and figure out why every faction on Hesperides--the Riders, the Archive, the alien Imps, the new Trade Association that smells a lot like the old tyranny with better hair--seems to already know about a project she has only just stumbled into.

Shai’s universe is one filled with fallen empires, implacable war machines, lost civilizations, hostile xenos, the occasional ancient unspeakable horror, and she’s going to bring the ruckus to every corner of it.

And Dave Freer with a boy’s standalone novel- Storm Dragon

The blurb-

Winner of the First Special Prometheus Award for Young Adult Fiction 2026

Skut Harkkson hates Highpoint Station. He hates the concrete dome, the expensive food, the mean kids who know his father’s farm is three hundred miles away and that he can’t go home. He misses Faraway — real land, real tides, real work — and every day locked inside the settlement’s walls makes him feel like something important is dying.

Then he finds the storm-dragon.

The creature is tiny, half-dead, and furious — and somehow it talks directly into his head. Not words, exactly. Feelings. Hungry. Cold. Trust. Skut names it Snarky, hides it in his shirt, and starts sneaking outside the settlement’s walls to feed it. Which is how he ends up fishing the forbidden lower jetties with Podge Greene — the new kid who survived a planetary invasion at age ten and isn’t afraid of much. The two of them, with Snarky riding Skut’s shoulder and diving for fish, start to build something that looks almost like a life worth living.

But Vann’s World has three moons, tides that kill without warning, and predators that make Earth’s wildlife look like house pets. And none of that matters when the real threat arrives: a Ghat slaver ship, landing under false papers, loaded with soldiers who have done this to entire planets before.

Now Skut, Podge, and Snarky are outside the walls in the dark, with a handful of adults, two flechette pistols, a forklift, and a storm-dragon who generates five hundred volts and is willing to use them. The settlement is locked down. The hostages are running out of time. The VIP ship is landing in the morning — straight into a trap.

What follows is a boys’ adventure in the oldest, best sense: two kids who actually know things figure out how to win against people who should be unbeatable. Vann’s World is alive and deadly and extraordinary, and Skut and Podge understand it in ways the invaders never will.

Storm-Dragon is a standalone novel — fast-moving, funny in the right places, and built on the principle that boys who read voraciously deserve stories that don’t condescend to them.

I can highly recommend both of them!

And kudos to Raconteur Press for taking up the mantle of publishing not only first time authors, but also for publishing books for boys!

They are all friends of mine, and I can tell you they are honest, upfront about EVERYTHING including how many books sell, and are willing to open their books to their authors! You don’t see that with most of the publishers today....

OBTW, they are NOT a vanity press, you, the author, only have to write the short story or book and submit it. If accepted, they do the rest of the work and you DO NOT pay anything to them!

Again, congratulations to J Kenton and Dave! Fantastic books, and well deserved praise!!!

I had this idea that I was going to rope a deer, put it in a stall, feed it up on corn for a couple of weeks, then kill it and eat it. The first step in this adventure was getting a deer. I figured that, since they congregated at
my cattle feeder and do not seem to have much fear of me when we are there (a bold one will sometimes come right up and sniff at the bags of feed while I am in the back of the truck not 4 feet away), it should not be difficult to rope one, get up to it and toss a bag over its head (to calm it down) then hog tie it and transport it home.

I filled the cattle feeder then hid down at the end with my rope. The cattle, having seen the roping thing before, stayed well back. They were not having any of it. After about 20 minutes, my deer showed up --3 of them.

I picked out a likely looking one, stepped out from the end of the feeder, and threw my rope. The deer just stood there and stared at me.

I wrapped the rope around my waist and twisted the end so I would have a good hold. The deer still just stood and stared at me, but you could tell it was mildly concerned about the whole rope situation.

I took a step towards it... it took a step away. I put a little tension on the rope and received an education.

The first thing that I learned is that, while a deer may just stand there looking at you funny while you rope it, they are spurred to action when you start pulling on that rope. That deer EXPLODED.

The second thing I learned is that pound for pound, a deer is a LOT stronger than a cow or a colt. A cow or a colt in that weight range I could fight down with a rope with some dignity. A deer, no chance.

That thing ran and bucked and twisted and pulled. There was no controlling it and certainly no getting close to it. As it jerked me off my feet and started dragging me across the ground, it occurred to me that having a deer
on a rope was not nearly as good an idea as I originally imagined.

The only upside is that they do not have as much stamina as many animals.

A brief 10 minutes later, it was tired and not nearly as quick to jerk me off my feet and drag me when I managed to get up. It took me a few minutes to realize this, since I was mostly blinded by the blood flowing out of the big gash in my head.

At that point, I had lost my taste for corn-fed venison. I just wanted to get that devil creature off the end of that rope. I figured if I just let it go with the rope hanging around its neck, it would likely die slow and
painfully somewhere. At the time, there was no love at all between me and that deer. At that moment, I hated the thing, and I would venture a guess that the feeling was mutual.

Despite the gash in my head and the several large knots where I had cleverly arrested the deer’s momentum by bracing my head against various large rocks as it dragged me across the ground, I could still think clearly enough to recognize that there was a small chance that I shared some tiny amount of responsibility for the situation we were in, so I didn’t want the deer to have it suffer a slow death, so I managed to get it lined back up in between my truck and the feeder - a little trap I had set before hand... kind of like a squeeze chute. I got it to back in there and started moving up so I could get my rope back.

Did you know that deer bite? They do! I never in a million years would have thought that a deer would bite somebody, so I was very surprised when I reached up there to grab that rope and the deer grabbed hold of
my wrist.

Now, when a deer bites you, it is not like being bit by a horse where they just bite you and then let go. A deer bites you and shakes its head -- almost like a pit bull. They bite HARD and it hurts.

The proper thing to do when a deer bites you is probably to freeze and draw back slowly. I tried screaming and shaking instead. My method was ineffective. It seems like the deer was biting and shaking for several
minutes, but it was likely only several seconds. I, being smarter than a deer (though you may be questioning that claim by now) tricked it.

While I kept it busy tearing the bejesus out of my right arm, I reached up with my left hand and pulled that rope loose.

That was when I got my final lesson in deer behavior for the day. Deer will strike at you with their front feet. They rear right up on their back feet and strike right about head and shoulder level, and their hooves are surprisingly sharp.

I learned a long time ago that, when an animal -- like a horse -- ; strikes at you with their hooves and you can’t get away easily, the best thing to do is try to make a loud noise and make an aggressive move towards the
animal. This will usually cause them to back down a bit so you can escape.

This was not a horse. This was a deer, so obviously, such trickery would not work. In the course of a millisecond, I devised a different strategy.

I screamed like a woman and tried to turn and run.

The reason I had always been told NOT to try to turn and run from a horse that paws at you is that there is a good chance that it will hit you in the back of the head. Deer may not be so different from horses after all,
besides being twice as strong and 3 times as evil, because the second I turned to run, it hit me right in the back of the head and knocked me down.

Now, when a deer paws at you and knocks you down, it does not immediately leave. I suspect it does not recognize that the danger has passed. What they do instead is paw your back and jump up and down on you while you are laying there crying like a little girl and covering your head.

I finally managed to crawl under the truck and the deer went away.

An international manhunt is in its fifth day after the murder of an American woman in Ireland, but Irish police have yet to name a suspect or provide any description of the man they are seeking. And that decision is drawing sharp criticism from many, including a former FBI agent and an Irish politician.

Jamey Carney, 43, a New York native who moved to Ireland in 2021, was found dead after suffering head injuries and suffocating in her home in the picturesque town of Killarney, County Kerry, late Monday, according to The Irish Times. The idyllic southwestern town is popular among American tourists.

Before Carney’s body was discovered Tuesday, the man Irish police describe as a “person of interest” had already traveled about 200 miles from Killarney to Dublin Airport and boarded a flight to Turkey, according to Irish police, suggesting authorities knew his identity but chose not to disclose it publicly.

Full article, HERE from Fox News.

‘Apparently’, according to some reports, the reason might be due to a 2015 immigration law protecting the identities of asylum seekers. But anyone with common sense ‘should’ think that a possibility of being a murderer would override that... Or am I wrong?

Of course we all know when the MSM here refuses to identify the perp, it’s an ethnicity issue, but we’ve come to expect that, and just fill in the blank... It’s always those damned Norwegians, right???

In other news, apparently Flock cameras are showing up a few more places than just on ‘official’ vehicles (since when is a trash truck and official vehicle, or should I even ask?) I did do some checking and we have a pair of them mounted to cover a local intersection out in the middle of the countryside... kinda interesting that, since they do not appear to be tied to any network...

Anyhoo...

But we only do license plates... pinky swear!

A flyer offering “free athletic shoes from VA” may look official at first glance. It uses VA-style branding, talks about health and wellness and even lists the MyVA phone number. That is what makes it so dangerous.

VA says the message falsely claims Veterans can receive free athletic shoes from VA. The agency says the promotion did not come from VA and has no connection to any official VA program.

The scam appears to be spreading through a flyer and online posts. It tells Veterans they may be eligible for free athletic shoes “at no cost to you.” It also shows popular shoe brands, steps to “redeem” shoes and a process that appears to involve a VA provider.

Full article, HERE from Fox News, also saw a flyer on this at the VSO office today...

The flyer lists the MyVA number, which is real, but the rest is a social engineering or ‘phishing’ scam looking for personal details.

Apparently, the flyer has some really nice shoes, none of which most of us could afford, even if we wanted to... sigh

And if you live in Illinois, bohica...

A federal appeals court upheld a controversial Illinois gun control law that largely bans assault weapons.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit decision issued on Thursday slapped down a district court decision that declared the ban unconstitutional.

“Among other things, the Act criminalizes the manufacture, sale, delivery, purchase, and possession of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. A grandfather clause permits preexisting lawful owners of the regulated items to continue possessing them,” the Thursday decision noted.

Bold and italics mine- How do you prove you already had the magazines? The rifle is easy, if you have the paperwork, but how many of us kept the receipts for all of our magazines? Much less an itemized one with descriptions???

Full article, HERE from Fox News.

This is another one that is going to go to SCOTUS in a big hurry!

One judge dissented, but the finding... sigh... They went back to the early 1800s, the Bowie knife, and other BS to justify upholding the ban...

This is just flat getting ridiculous! How many more losses... Never mind, I know, they will NEVER stop trying...

Texas has been in a battle for economic supremacy for decades. Under Gov. Greg Abbott’s leadership, the Lone Star State economy has grown from $1.59 trillion in January 2015 to $2.9 trillion in December 2025. Texas ranks second only to California’s $4.3 trillion GDP in these united states. Globally, Texas surpasses Russia, Italy, and Brazil when it comes to economic activity. According to the International Monetary Fund of 2025, the Texas economy outpaced eight of the top ten countries.

Politicians attribute Texas’s success to a competitive and predictable tax environment, as well as pro-growth policies and an entrepreneurial spirit inherent to the state. Toyota is moving Tacoma production to San Antonio. Samsung Electronics America dropped New Jersey for DFW. Tesla boot-scooted out of Delaware and into central Texas. Fifty-seven of the Fortune 500 companies are now based in the Lone Star State, but that’s not enough: Texas is coming for Wall Street itself.

Friday, July 10, 2026, marks the first day of public trading in the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE). Banking on Texas brand identity and the want of a less burdensome path to public markets, the TXSE hopes to rival Nasdaq and the NYSE.

Full article, HERE from PJ Media. h/t Stretch

If you want more info on the TXSE, go HERE.

And since I’m a ‘man of a certain age’, I did my yearly trek up to OKC VA to get my dermatology checkup yesterday. Overall, went fairly well, four and a half hours BIS time to get up there and back, so I gave myself a little ‘gift’ when I stopped for gas...

It’s made by the Robertson Family, HERE, but you can also order direct from them and get the same quality jerky.

If you’re not familiar with it, it’s ‘old school’ jerky, tough, lean, and excellent! If you have any problems with your teeth, this is NOT the jerky for you!!!

I’m back to working on the next Rimworld, and hope...hope to be finished by the end of the summer.

And the Libertarian Futurist Society announced the 2026 Prometheus Award winner-

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 9, 2026

LFS announces 46th Prometheus awards winners:

• J. Kenton Pierce wins Best Novel for A Kiss for Damocles

Congratulations to our friend J. Kenton Pierce and Raconteur Press (publisher)!!!

Thanks for stopping by, and stay cool out there. It was stupid hot yesterday, and today isn’t going to be much better!

A Miami news station director admonished staff in a memo to stop posting “foolish nonsense” to their social media accounts, which came back to light as an anchor’s bikini-clad posts sparked discussion of whether they violated the policy.

WPLG Vice President of News Bill Pohovey blasted his staff in an internal memo over influencer-like content that distracted from their journalistic mission, according to a report by FTVLive.

“I have emailed about this numerous times in the past, but we seem to be going in the wrong direction again,” Pohovey reportedly wrote.

Full article, HERE from Fox News.

Public persona... Snort... So they aren’t allowed to have a life? Or any fun? Or share that with anyone???

Comments and recommendations appreciated as always!

Two weeks later, Fargo and Nicole came into the Copper Mug late Fiveday evening to see a full house, and some changes. A waist high second bar now extended halfway across the end of the restaurant, with people sitting at it. Nicole smiled. “Oh, sushi bar!”

“What?”

She pointed as Kuzu walked around the original bar carrying a stack of platters. “Kuzu must have gotten some of the ingredients he was looking for. And I’m guessing he’s making sushi in front of the customers.”

Fargo dug back through his memories. “Oh, I haven’t seen that in…I guess seventy years. I wonder if we can even get any?”

Nicole snorted. “I’m pretty sure we can, since I own the place.” Walking behind the bar, she spoke to Hank, “Busy tonight. Is Kuzu putting on a show?”

Hank shook his head. “Not really, he’s pretty low key about it. But a lot of folks are curious, and have been since the new bar went in. This is only the second night he’s done anything.”

“What about the regular menu?” A young lady walked by with a platter full of plates headed for a table at the back of the Copper Mug.

“Oh, it’s getting hit pretty hard. I’ve been busy, and we ended up hiring Holly’s friend to come in and waitress for a couple of hours a night.”

Fargo asked, “Holly’s friend?”

Hank nodded. “Audrey. She apparently helps out at the winery too.”

Nicole smiled. “Yes, she’s a hard worker. I remember she was looking for more work, since Holly didn’t have more than a regular shift for her, but she loved working there.”

Hank smiled. “Yep, she’s a worker! Comes in and helps with the salad preps, and I think Kuzu is teaching her how to do the rice thing…”

“Rice thing?” Fargo asked.

“Well, Kuzu found some different rice and he steams it, not boiling it.”

“Sticky rice,” Nicole added.

A div later, Nicole and Fargo finally got to sit at the sushi bar and Kuzu smiled at them. “So sorry it has taken so long, but…” he shrugged, “I have to have a list of people in order to prevent problems.”

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Yes, the team members were actually ‘named’ in 2022, and did get at least some chances to play together. The US soccer team made it to the quarter finals, but Belgium beat them 4-1 last night, ending the fairy tale run.

The US team played their hearts out, to do something special for our 250th year. It didn’t happen, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. They never gave up, and, if nothing else, I think they’ve made most Americans proud of what they did accomplish.

I know my grandson was excited to see them playing on the world stage, as he plays soccer out in California.

Sorta, kinda funny...

One evening a grandson was talking to his grandmother About current events.

The grandson asked his grandmother what she thought About the shootings at schools, the computer age, and just things in general.

The Grandmother replied, “Well, let me think a minute, I was born before: television, penicillin, polio shots, frozen foods, Xerox, contact lenses, Frisbees, and the pill.”

“There were no: credit cards, lasers, or ball-point pens. Man had not yet invented: pantyhose, air conditioners, dishwashers, and clothes dryers. The clothes were hung out to dry in the fresh air, and man hadn’t yet walked on the moon.”

“Your Grandfather and I got married first, and then lived together. Every family had a father and a mother.”

“Until I was 25, I called every man older than me, “Sir.” And after I turned 25, I still called policemen and every man with a title, “Sir.” We were before gay-rights, computer-dating, dual careers, daycare centers, and group therapy. Our lives were governed by the Ten Commandments, good judgment, and common sense. We were taught to know the difference between right and wrong and to stand up and take responsibility for our actions.

Serving your country was a privilege; living in this country was a bigger privilege.

We thought fast food was what people ate during Lent. Having a meaningful relationship meant getting along with your cousins. Draft dodgers were those who closed front doors as the evening breeze started. Time-sharing meant time the family spent together in the evenings and weekends — not purchasing condominiums.

We never heard of FM radios, tape decks, CD’s, electric typewriters, yogurt, or guys wearing earrings. We listened to Big Bands, Jack Benny, and the President’s speeches on our radios. If you saw anything with ‘Made in Japan ‘ on it, it was junk.

The term ‘making out’ referred to how you did on your school exam. Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, and instant coffee were unheard of. We had 5 &10-cent (5 and dime) stores where you could actually buy things for 5 and 10 cents. Ice-cream cones, phone calls, rides on a streetcar, and a Pepsi were all a nickel.

And if you didn’t want to splurge, you could spend your nickel on enough stamps to mail 1 letter and 2 postcards.

You could buy a new Ford Coupe for $600, but who could afford one? Too bad, because gas was 11 cents a gallon.

In my day: “Grass” was mowed, “coke” was a cold drink, “pot” was something your mother cooked in and “rock music” was your grandmother’s lullaby.
“Aids” were helpers in the Principal’s office, “chip” meant a piece of wood,
“hardware” was found in a hardware store and “software” wasn’t even a word.

We were the last generation to actually believe that a lady needed a husband to have a baby. We volunteered to protect our precious country. No wonder people call us “old and confused” and say there is a generation gap. How old do you think I am?”

This woman would be 84 years old. She would have been born in late 1942 during WW2.

Gives you something to think about, doesn’t it?