Trust but Verify

  “These are the times that try men’s souls,” so said Thomas Paine in The American Crisis,” circa 1776. Now, we jump 244 years to another trying time, 2020, the year of the worldwide pandemic. But rather than “cry wolf,” or do a Chicken Little with “The sky is falling,” I opt to say “Change is not pleasant, but change is positive. Only when we change and grow, we’ll see a world we never know,” from the Wisdom of the Orange Woodpecker . And that is what we shall do – encounter change, grow, and be positive. Something I learned decades ago was to find a new world in books. Read. Then read some more. Whatever your genre of choice, a world awaits you in books. The genre in which I write is founded on my career in the criminal justice field. From the depths of street crime to the white-collar criminals found in the ivory towers, I worked and learned, always moving forward, and never bowing down to what could be perceived as a never-ending series of crooks and crimes. After a care...

The Silver Lining My writing history began with a silver lining in a very large, dark cloud. I was a young child living with my parents and brothers and sister in Kansas City, Missouri. I was a sickly little guy. Even in second grade I was hardly bigger that a #2 lead pencil. I suffered severely with asthma, almost to the point of death. The summers with their heat, humidity, and heavy pollen counts kept me housebound, unable to run outside with my siblings and neighbor kids. Winter was no better. The wet, cold weather was the wedge that kept me confined to the house. There was no escape—summer or winter. Finally, my life was forever changed when two nuns showed up at my front door to offer a solution, and quite possibly save my life. This solution would take me several states away from my family to live in the arid pollen-free state of Arizona in an orphanage.   Bye, Mama I've written a short piece that will give you a snapshot of the heart breaking ...