Author: The Timedok

Back in My Young Man’s Days: Have We Really Learned Anything?

There’s an old Max Bygraves song called “Back in My Young Man’s Days” that most of you have probably never heard of. Unless, of course, you happen to be an aficionado of Turner Classic Movies or music from that era. I am both, proudly, and perhaps a little wistfully. As I go about doing the things that men my age tend to do, my mind wanders. It wanders to the news of the day, to memories of the past, and sometimes, more often than I’d like, to the sting of death. And then I put on a song like “Back in My Young Man’s Days,” and I can’t help but ask myself a hard question:Have we learned nothing?

The Same Old Story, Just Louder Now

If the leaders, the megalomaniacs, the dullards, the people who don’t seem to mind putting your life on the line, had to face the same risks as the soldiers who die by the tens of thousands every time someone rattles a saber, one has to wonder how differently the world might look. Then I open up X or scroll through some other social media platform, and what do I see? You’ve seen it too. People behaving badly. Or as one influencer bluntly puts it, “chimping out.”

It makes me wonder: is there something in the water? Something in the food? Some invisible force driving us back to the basic animal instincts of lions and tigers and bears …Go ahead. Say it. Oh my.

Seriously though, if you’ve ever watched one of those nature documentaries where the narrator calmly describes the lions stalking their prey on the savannah, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

The Camera in Every Pocket

Then it dawns on me. Back in my young man’s days, nobody had a video camera in their pocket. Back in my young man’s days, we barely had a Kodak, and heaven forbid, a Polaroid was a luxury. So I have to ask: What if we had? Would we have seen the same carnage back then that we see today? Would Andy Griffith and “Leave It to Beaver” have been the anomaly, or would they have been the standard?

I suspect the truth is uncomfortable.

The Mob Was Always There

Back in my young man’s days, I saw the mob mentality firsthand. I saw boys trying to prove they were men by picking on the timid, the frail, and the girls. Nobody was immune to the red-headed bully who was feeling his oats, or, as I now suspect, feeling his hormones running amok as curly hairs sprouted in places they had never been before.The cruelty was there. The mob was there. We just didn’t have the receipts.

25,000 Mothers a Week

But some things do feel bigger now. Heavier. More absurd. Do you ever think about simpler times? Do you ever wonder how leaders like Putin and Zelensky can be okay with 25,000 young men being killed each week?

Twenty-five thousand.That means 25,000 young mothers each week who have to live with the reality that their baby is never coming home. That’s not a statistic. That’s an ocean of grief we can’t seem to stop refilling.

Food for Thought

Were your parents like the Beav’s?

Mine weren’t. But they were both there, and looking back, that mattered more than I understood at the time. Maybe we didn’t live in a simpler time. Maybe we just lived in a time with fewer cameras, fewer platforms, and fewer megaphones for our worst instincts. But the questions remain the same ones humanity has always wrestled with: Why do we hurt each other? Why do we send our sons to die? And why, with all our progress, do we keep circling back to the same sorrow?Food for thought.

What do you think? Do you find yourself longing for simpler times, or just quieter ones? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Echoes of Tomorrow

When the world teeters on the brink of nuclear annihilation, a retired Air Force general is given an impossible second chance: to rewrite history.Sent back in time to 1962 by mysterious alien beings, he wakes up trapped in the body of his ten-year-old self, armed with decades of knowledge but stripped of his power and authority. With the Cuban Missile Crisis looming, global tensions rising, and secrets hidden in the shadows of the past, he must navigate a world that sees him as a child while carrying the burden of preventing humanity’s self-destruction.As he re-encounters his family, a young JFK, and the love of his life before they’ve even met, he discovers that saving the future isn’t just about stopping a war. It’s about proving that humanity is worth saving. Along the way, secrets buried deep in Area 51, a chilling conspiracy within the U.S. government, and the cryptic motives of the alien beings reveal that the stakes are higher than he could have ever imagined.Echoes of Tomorrow is a sweeping tale of time travel, love, loss, and redemption. With the weight of the world on his young shoulders, one man must face the ultimate question: can the future truly be changed, or is humanity destined to repeat its greatest mistakes?This gripping journey will captivate fans of thought-provoking science fiction, historical intrigue, and heartfelt stories woven through time and the fragile threads of destiny.

Get your copy here…

Many of you are asking how do I get people to find my book?

How Authors Can Thrive in the Digital Age

Nothing But Time: A Story About What We Lose When We’re Too Busy to Notice

There’s a particular kind of silence that fills a downtown apartment at 3 PM on a Tuesday. It’s not the peaceful quiet of a weekend morning or the contemplative hush of a late evening. It’s the silence of a man who suddenly has nowhere to be, and worse, no one waiting for him to arrive.This is where we meet Jack.

The Weight of an Empty Calendar

For forty-three years, Jack’s identity was stitched into the fabric of a company logo. He knew the precise angle of morning light through his corner office window. He could recite quarterly projections in his sleep. His fingers knew the keyboard shortcuts of Excel the way a pianist knows Chopin.Then came the merger.They called it “restructuring.” They handed him a plaque, a modest severance, and a handshake from someone half his age who couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Just like that, the man who built departments, mentored executives, and sacrificed weekends for deadlines became… what, exactly?In “Nothing But Time,“ I wanted to explore what happens to a man when the thing he traded his life for suddenly decides it doesn’t need him anymore.

The Ghosts That Live in Silence

Jack sits in his sleek, expensive apartment—the one he bought because it was close to the office, not because it felt like home—and the memories arrive uninvited.His wife, Diane. The way she used to leave dinner in the oven, then eventually stopped. The way she’d ask him to come to bed, then eventually stopped asking. The night she said, “You’re already gone, Jack. I’m just making it official.”His son’s baseball games he missed for board meetings. His daughter’s wedding, where he gave a toast about “investments and returns” because he didn’t know her well enough to say anything personal. The grandchildren whose names he sometimes has to pause to remember.He built a monument to his career.He built it out of the people who loved him.

The Letter That Changes Everything

And then, one gray morning, an envelope arrives. Heavy paper. A law firm’s embossed seal. An roomate from college left him a farm, acres of rolling green somewhere far from spreadsheets and quarterly reports.What does a man who has spent his life optimizing efficiency do with soil, sky, and silence?That’s the question at the heart of “Nothing But Time.”

Why I Wrote This Book

I didn’t write this novel to entertain you, though I hope it does. I wrote it because I’ve watched too many good men and women trade the irreplaceable for the replaceable.Here’s the truth nobody puts in a corporate handbook:

The company will replace you before your desk is cold. But your daughter will remember the recital you missed for the rest of her life. Your son will remember whether you showed up. Your spouse will remember whether you were present or just physically in the room.We chase the watch. The title. The bonus. The corner office. We tell ourselves we’re doing it for the people we love, while the very act of chasing it takes us further from them.And then one day, the chase ends. The company merges. The title evaporates. The watch stops mattering.And what’s left?For Jack, what’s left is a farm and forty years of regret. What’s left is the possibility—maybe, just maybe—of learning a different way to measure a life.

From a large city to a small town Jack Harper gave everything to his career.

Now he’s retired, redundant, and utterly lost.

Then he inherits a farmhouse from the friend who tried to warn him, the friend who escaped to Vermont and died alone, the friend who left behind one final message: Tend the roses. Stop and smell them. Live.

But something strange is happening at the farmhouse. The old radio plays broadcasts from 1943. The rose garden blooms when Jack kneels in the dirt. And Ed, his dead friend, keeps appearing at the edge of the orchard, smiling, beckoning, waiting for Jack to understand what he spent a lifetime refusing to see. Some second chances come with instructions. Some come with ghosts.

An Invitation

If you’ve ever wondered whether you’re building the right kind of legacy… if you’ve ever looked up from your desk and realized the seasons changed without you… if you’ve ever felt the quiet fear that the people you love are becoming strangers… then Jack’s story is your story too.“Nothing But Time” is available now. It’s a novel about loss, yes, but more importantly, it’s a novel about what we can still choose while we still have breath.Because here’s the thing about time: we all think we have more of it than we do. Until one day, we’re sitting in a quiet apartment, holding a letter, realizing that time is the only thing we ever really had.And the only question that matters is:Who did we spend it with?

Don’t chase the watch. Chase the people. They’re the only thing that ticks back.Get your copy of “Nothing But Time” today—and maybe, tonight, call the person you’ve been meaning to call.

What the Flock?

Why We’re Obsessing Over License Plate Readers While the Real Surveillance Happens in Our Pockets

The Big Idea: Flock Safety cameras have become the villain of countless town hall meetings and Reddit threads. But while we argue about license plate readers on lampposts, we voluntarily carry the most sophisticated surveillance apparatus in human history, and feed it our lives, minute by minute. Flock is the magician’s waving hand. The real trick is happening elsewhere.

The Flock Panic

If you’ve driven through an American suburb recently, you’ve probably passed one: a small black camera on a slim pole, quietly logging your license plate, the make and color of your car, and the exact time you passed. These are Flock Safety cameras. Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) that have spread across thousands of U.S. communities, often installed by police departments or even neighborhood associations.And people are furious, understandably so. The concerns are real:

Persistent tracking of vehicle movements across networked jurisdictions
Data retention for weeks or months, searchable by law enforcement and private industy without warrant.
Minimal oversight and murky data-sharing agreements
Function creep, where a tool sold for “finding stolen cars” becomes a general dragnet

These are legitimate grievances. But here’s the uncomfortable question:

Why are we so fixated on the camera we can see, when the ones we can’t are infinitely more powerful?

The Sleight of Hand

Flock cameras are visible. They’re physical. You can point at one, photograph it, demand a city council remove it. That tangibility makes them a perfect target for outrage, and a perfect distraction.Consider what a Flock camera actually knows about you:

Your car passed a fixed point at a specific time.

Now consider what the smartphone in your pocket knows:

Data Source	What It Reveals
GPS / location services	Every place you go, how long you stay, patterns over years
Accelerometer	How you walk, drive, sleep—even your gait signature
Microphone permissions	Ambient audio, keywords, environment
App telemetry	Who you talk to, what you buy, what you desire at 2 AM
Purchase history	Health conditions, financial stress, life events
Social graph	Your relationships, affiliations, and influences
A Flock camera sees a car. Your phone sees a soul. And unlike the camera on the pole, you paid $1,000 for the privilege of carrying it.

A Brief History of Watching

Surveillance isn’t new. What’s new is its invisibility and predictive power.

The Panopticon (1791): Jeremy Bentham designed a prison where a single guard could watch any inmate at any time, but inmates could never tell when. The genius wasn’t constant observation; it was the possibility of it.
The Stasi (East Germany): At its peak, one informant for roughly every 6.5 citizens. Labor-intensive, human-driven, and yet still incomplete.
CCTV Britain (1990s–2000s): Cameras everywhere, but requiring humans to review footage…analog eyes on analog tape.
Today: No guards needed. No informants. No tape to review. Algorithms watch everything, and more importantly, they predict.

The evolution isn’t just more surveillance. It’s a shift from observation to anticipation.

Foucault Saw This Coming

The French philosopher Michel Foucault, in Discipline and Punish (1975), used Bentham’s Panopticon as a metaphor for modern power. His key insight:

When you believe you might be watched at any moment, you begin to watch yourself. You self-censor. You conform. Surveillance becomes internalized until the watcher is no longer needed.

This is the profound difference between Flock and your phone. A Flock camera exerts external control…it catches you after the fact. But algorithmic surveillance achieves the Panopticon’s true goal: it shapes behavior before it happens.You hesitate before searching a controversial term. You think twice before texting a joke. You curate your digital self, knowing it’s all logged.

The prison has moved inside your head—and you built the cell yourself.

The Double-Edged Sword

Here’s the maddening part: the same technology that surveils us is genuinely useful.

Your maps app predicts traffic because it’s tracking millions of people, including you.
Your health app catches an irregular heartbeat because it monitors your body 24/7.
Your assistant answers instantly because it’s learned your habits.

Convenience is the currency we use to purchase our own surveillance.This is what Shoshana Zuboff calls surveillance capitalism: a system where human experience is the raw material, and the product is prediction. Not just predicting what you’ll buy…but nudging what you’ll do, think, and feel. Elections, moods, movements, and markets can be shaped by whoever holds the data.Social engineering at scale no longer requires a Stasi officer. It requires an A/B test.

Winston and Julia, 2026

Recall 1984. Winston Smith and Julia flee to a quiet field in the countryside to escape the telescreens, to find one unwatched moment of intimacy and freedom.Now transplant them to today.They leave their phones behind (good…that defeats the location tracking, the microphones, the app telemetry). They drive to the countryside. But:

Their license plates are logged by Flock cameras on the way out of town.
Satellites image the open field from orbit.
Their absence from the network is itself a data point, an anomaly worth flagging.
The purchase of gas, the toll on the highway, the cell tower ping from a phone one of them forgot to fully power down.

The countryside offered Winston a blind spot because Oceania’s surveillance was physical and fixed…telescreens on walls. Today’s surveillance is ambient and predictive. There is no field far enough.But here’s the twist Orwell didn’t fully anticipate: Winston wouldn’t need to be forced. He’d carry the telescreen willingly, in his pocket, and check it 96 times a day. Julia would tag their location in a photo. The Party wouldn’t have to install anything. We volunteer.

So, What the Flock?

Flock cameras deserve scrutiny. Fight them, regulate them, demand transparency. But recognize the disproportion:

Fighting Flock cameras while ignoring your data footprint is like installing a deadbolt on a house with no walls.

The cameras on the poles are the surveillance we’re allowed to see, the acceptable target, the visible outrage, the distraction that lets the real machinery hum along quietly. The genuine architecture of prediction and control isn’t bolted to a lamppost. It’s in the cloud, in the algorithm, in the terms of service you scrolled past.The most effective surveillance state isn’t one that watches you against your will.It’s one you happily fund, feed, and carry everywhere, while pointing angrily at the camera on the corner.

If there is enough interest, I will divulge other ways and places you are “observed.” Or you can just ask Alexa.

On a completely different note, I have released a new book that asks the question, “Are You a Witch?” The link will take you to my author page, where you can browse a multitude of books on a variety of subjects. There is something for almost everyone.Thanks for stopping by, and feel free to comment below.

So the next time you see a Flock camera and feel that flash of indignation, ask yourself: what’s in my pocket, and what does it already know?That’s what the flock we should really be talking about.

BTW does FLOCK mean (For the Love Of Cats?) Probabaly not… More like flock of birds, or cars…or people..

Best

Are You A Witch?

What the Bones Whisper: Meet the Bog Witch Who’s About to Change Everything 🖤🌿

Are you a witch? You might want to sit down before you answer that…There’s a girl in the bayou who talks to crows.Her name is Sarah Beaumont, and for fifteen years, the small town of Jefferson Davis has kept its distance from her. They whisper Swamp Witch behind cupped hands. They edge away in the locker room. They call her obsession with the black water “a coping mechanism.” But here’s what they don’t know: the bayou has been listening to her this whole time.And one afternoon, it finally answers back.

When “Weird” Isn’t a Diagnosis … It’s a Bloodline

Picture this: cypress knees rising from the shallows like ancient sentinels. Metal that stops corroding under your fingertips. A dying spider plant that springs back to life just because you felt sorry for it. For Sarah, the swamp has always been the one place where she belongs , where animals don’t flee from her, where the mud remembers the shape of her footprints, where a girl who eats lunch alone in the library can finally breathe. Then a voice rises from the black water like something that’s been holding its breath for fifteen years:

“Finally. Your mother used to stand in that exact spot.”

Her mother — who didn’t leave. Who the town says the bayou took. 😳

Grandmère Knows Something. And It’s Terrifying.

When Sarah runs home trembling, her grandmother doesn’t laugh. She doesn’t say “it’s just stories.”She goes pale as bone and whispers one word that changes everything:Magick. Turns out, the Beaumont women have been hearing the bayou at sixteen for seven generations — going all the way back to a woman named Mathilde who “walked out of the Louisiana bayou with nothing but the clothes on her back and a head full of knowing.” They’re traiteurs. Conjure women. Root workers.Bog witches. 🕯️But Sarah’s mother? She ran from the calling. And now something is coming for Sarah … early. 🐦‍⬛

Three Knocks. Black Salt. And a Word Planted in Her Chest.

That very night, the lights die. Footsteps cross the porch. Something hums her mother’s lullaby in the dark … and leaves behind footprints of oily black mud that refuse to dry. Then a crow the size of a nightmare opens its beak and says a single word straight into her bones:

“Soon.”

By morning, the protective salt at the threshold has turned black. A single feather waits on her windowsill. And a mysterious boy named Eli Corbeau , who stands on the water, not in it, appears at the edge of the swamp. Corbeau. Sarah’s rusty French unfolds the word like dark wings.Crow. 🖤

So… Are You a Witch?

If you love stories where:

🌙 A girl discovers she can untangle death itself with her bare hands
🌿 Southern gothic bayous hum with generations of secret power
🐦‍⬛ Mysterious boys who might not be entirely human show up on the water
🔮 The line between “gifted” and “hunted” is razor-thin

…then the swamp has been waiting for you too.Something is beginning. And once you hear it, there’s no going back to not hearing it. 💀

Are You a Witch? … A Bog Witch Novel. Coming from Purple Pen Publishing.

Yes, I just released my latest project. If you know someone who appreciates these types of stories, do them and me a favor and tell them about it.

Some questions, once the swamp asks them, can never be unheard. So before you turn the page, ask yourself one more time. Blessed be or dear reader?

I just published it today, so the link takes you to all of my books. It will show up as soon as Amazon does their thing.

Tell us in the comments: If the bayou whispered your name, would you answer… or would you run? 👇

Investing in Our Youth: A Call for Change

I have been giving a lot of thought to the recent criminal trials in this country. Consider the Charlie Kirk trial, in which the defendant sits laughing in court with his lawyers, or the case of the child who killed another child at a track meet. Then I see the news, where we are trying to fix the world’s problems, and I note that we have brought in twenty million people from third-world countries who were unvetted. Something needs to be done, but what?

Walk through any high-crime neighborhood and you’ll find the same story repeated. A boy grows up with no father, a stressed or absent mother, a school that’s given up on him, and a street corner that hasn’t. The gang doesn’t recruit him with force. It recruits him with belonging, protection, status, and money — the very things every human being needs and that we failed to give him. Researchers point to the same root causes again and again: poverty, social isolation, discrimination, limited educational opportunity, and low parental monitoring.

These aren’t mysteries. They are the predictable results of communities we chose not to invest in.Here is the hard truth about how we’ve responded: we spend a fortune on the back end — after the damage is done. Locking up a young person can cost well over a hundred thousand dollars a year, often producing worse outcomes than community programs at a fraction of the price. We are paying premium rates for failure. As one blunt observer put it, there is no purely legal solution to gang violence — the only way to end it is to disincentivize the gang money and offer something better.

So let’s offer something better. And let’s pay for it by looking honestly at where our dollars already go.

The argument writes itself. We send billions overseas to prop up other nations’ security and development. Meanwhile, our own veterans sleep in doorways, our own addicts wait six months for a treatment bed, and our own kids are left with idle summers that gangs are happy to fill. As Americans debating this very question.

Op-Ed: Bring the Money Home — Rebuild Our Kids, Redeem Our Lost

We keep exporting stability to the world while our own communities burn. It’s time to invest in our people first.

Every year, America sends tens of billions of dollars overseas — to shore up foreign governments, fund distant development projects, and manage crises on other continents. Meanwhile, a fourteen-year-old three miles from my house is being recruited into a gang because it’s the only place offering him belonging, protection, and a paycheck. We have our priorities exactly backward.This isn’t a call to abandon the world. It’s a call to finally do right by our own — the wayward kids drifting toward crime, and the adults our system already lost decades ago. The money exists. It’s just pointed in the wrong direction.

The Failure We’re Paying Premium Prices For

Here’s the uncomfortable math. We spend roughly $80 billion a year incarcerating people, and a single juvenile detention bed can run $100,000 to $200,000 annually — often producing worse outcomes than community programs costing a fraction as much. We are paying luxury prices for failure.And it is failure. Research consistently shows the roots of gang membership are predictable: poverty, social isolation, discrimination, drug use, limited educational opportunities, and low parental monitoring.

And this figure does not include those with LEARING CENTERS scamming those who see a problem and toss tax dollars at it with zero audits or accountability.

We know the warning signs. We watch kids fall through the cracks in slow motion. Then we act shocked and reach for handcuffs.Even ordinary Americans see the connection. As one online commenter bluntly put it, we could fund real solutions “if we didn’t send all of our money to Ukraine and Israel and Palestine” — money that could instead go toward “better funding of education and funding of mental health programs” and “tackling the root cause(s) of why people join gangs in the first place.”

Why Gangs Win — and How We Beat Them

Gangs don’t recruit through force. They recruit by offering what we’ve stopped providing: family, status, protection, and money. The evidence is clear that there is no purely legal solution to gang violence — you can’t arrest your way out of it. As even blunt online debates concede, “the only way to end gang violence is to disincentivize gang money.”

That means offering something better. It works when we try. Structured activities and sports “keep children out of trouble and also give them something to work for,” though they require “extra resources and teachers willing to coach/mentor teams.”

It means encouraging kids to create positive goals — helping them build “realistic and attainable personal, educational, and career goals outside of gang involvement.”

And it starts at home: experts across law enforcement, schools, and community groups agree that educating and equipping parents with real skills “is necessary and critical if the growth of gangs is to be curbed.”

The framework already exists. Federal research distinguishes between prevention programs that “target youth at risk of gang involvement” and intervention programs that “provide sanctions and services” to pull kids already involved back out. We know what to build. We just refuse to fund it at scale.

The Group Everyone Forgets: The Lost Adults

Here’s what most policy debates skip entirely. The at-risk kid of today is almost always the child of the lost adult of yesterday — the one who never got the mentor, the trade, or the second chance twenty years ago, and who now cycles through prison, addiction, and unemployment. You cannot save the child while ignoring the broken adult raising him. Fix both, or fix neither.So a domestic-first agenda must do two things at once:

For the lost adults: fair-chance hiring, trade certification in fields that can’t be outsourced — welding, HVAC, trucking, electrical — and addiction and mental-health treatment available now, not after a six-month waitlist.
For the kids: full after-school and summer programming in every high-poverty zip code, family support, and credible-messenger mentors.

And here is the beautiful symmetry: the redeemed adult becomes the mentor for the next kid. The man who did his time, got clean, and rebuilt his life is the single most credible voice a drifting teenager will ever hear. He isn’t a lecture — he’s living proof. Foreign aid builds roads in other countries. This builds people in ours, and each rebuilt person rebuilds the next.

Answering the Critics — and Winning

Defenders of foreign spending will say aid is a small slice of the budget that buys strategic stability. Fine. Then find the money in the other 99 percent — the point stands that prevention at home is starved relative to its proven return. This was never about isolationism. It’s about a simple principle: put our own house in order first, and lead the world by example rather than by check.Public safety and human redemption aren’t opposing goals. Policymakers should prioritize public safety by curbing gang activity and restoring order to communities — for the sake of families “still living in fear” — precisely by investing in the opportunity that makes gangs obsolete.

The Bottom Line

We have the resources. We have the research. We have millions of Americans — kids and adults alike — waiting for someone to bet on them instead of writing them off. Bring the money home. Rebuild the kids. Redeem the lost. And watch the redeemed turn around and save the next generation.That’s not charity. That’s the smartest investment this country could possibly make.

Comment below if you have thoughts on this.

Main Street Didn’t Die of Natural Causes

When I wanted to use a mom-and-pop shop, I was chastised because they were more expensive than a big box store. The truth is that big box stores, and now companies like Amazon, are putting these folks out of business. When small towns turn into empty buildings and “antique shops,” you have yourself to blame.

The Real Cost of “Saving” Money at Big Box Stores

We’ve all been tempted by the lower price tags at big box retailers. But here’s something worth considering: what are you actually getting for your money?When you walk into a locally owned hardware store, nursery, bike shop, or specialty retailer, you’re not just buying a product. You’re buying decades of accumulated knowledge. That owner has likely used, tested, repaired, and lived with the products on their shelves. They chose each item deliberately because they believe in it.

Expertise You Can’t Put a Price Tag On

Local merchants stake their reputation on every recommendation. They live in your community. They’ll see you at the grocery store. They have every incentive to steer you right.They can troubleshoot problems because they understand how their products actually work in real-world conditions.They’ll talk you out of buying something if it’s not the right fit, something a commission-driven or undertrained big box employee will never do.

The Big Box Reality

Large retailers cycle through employees at staggering turnover rates. Many staff members received a few hours of computer-based training before being placed in departments they know nothing about. They’re reading the same box you’re reading. You’re essentially paying less to help yourself.

The Hidden Costs of Going Cheap

That “savings” evaporates quickly when you

buy the wrong product because no one guided you properly,
have to make return trips because of bad advice,
purchase unnecessary extras you didn’t actually need, or
end up replacing a cheap item sooner than expected.

It’s an Investment in Your Community

Every dollar spent locally circulates back through your neighborhood, funding schools, roads, and local services. When a mom-and-pop shop closes, that expertise leaves with it and doesn’t come back.

The few extra dollars you spend at a local shop aren’t a markup. They’re tuition. You’re paying for someone’s lifetime of knowledge, honest guidance, and genuine accountability. That’s a bargain at any price.

put your thoughts and comments below. “Am I right?”

If you could go back in time and leave yourself a message, what would it be?

We have all had that dream or thought, especially when we think of all the stupid things we did as kids. Some of us wonder how we survived it.

While my book Echoes of Tomorrow deals with this prospect in a science-fictional way, we all know that time, at least at present, does not allow do-overs.

The difference between knowledge and wisdom boils down to one question:

Just because we can, should we?

We just lived through a pandemic that still has lasting effects on many. COVID was most probably an early attempt at biological warfare situated in China (and other countries) to give the United States plausible deniability.

That is most probably why there were so many Biden-era Democratic pardons, including Anthony Fauci’s. To make a virus even more dangerous through gain-of-function research is about as irresponsible as creating other weapons of mass destruction, i.e., nuclear weapons.

We will never know if the dropping of the first atomic bombs was the only way to put an end to World War II.

Through treasonous acts, several spies shared (or sold) nuclear information to the Russians, making technological adolescence a real and immediate thing.

Today we are creating AI and robots that if given weapons would make The Terminator look like Winnie the Effing Pooo!

While Echoes of Tomorrow addresses this as a theme, there is another novel I am currently editing in which mankind goes to Mars after making Earth uninhabitable. Unlike Echoes in Time, where aliens facilitate time travel, Quiet Dust is set in a future where humans have already been on Mars for over forty years. Subscribe to this blog for more info on when it drops.

There are theories suggesting that evidence of humanity will be erased over time. The reasons humanity may never make it off the planet in any meaningful way are as follows.

The Great Filter from the Fermi Paradox is the correct framing of the problem. Sagan’s technological adolescence is likely a real and significant component of that filter, perhaps the dominant one for civilizations that reach our stage. But it probably is not the only filter. The total improbability of a civilization reaching interstellar maturity is likely the product of multiple bottlenecks, with self-destruction during technological adolescence being the final and perhaps most severe.

The darkest implication is this: even if a civilization survives its adolescence, it may face recurring filters. Each new transformative technology (nuclear, AI, nanotech, or whatever comes next) reopens the vulnerability window. Adolescence may not be a single phase but a repeating pattern, each iteration more dangerous than the last. If that is true, then the two frameworks converge completely. The Great Filter is technological adolescence, experienced not once but perpetually, with the cumulative probability of survival approaching zero over sufficient time.

So, before I leave you for today, I have an idea that needs wings. It needs to get to Elon Musk, who has the means to make it happen.

This device would visit the earth once in a lifetime to remind those here not to be an idiot!

We sent two satellites, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, off into interstellar space on one-way trips to nowhere. What if, like Halley’s Comet, we created a device with a similar elongated orbit that passes by Earth every hundred years, making itself known? In that way, after we either blow the planet to bits through our hubris or our flat-out stupidity, we could send future inhabitants a message, much like we might send to our younger selves:

“Don’t do this, idiot!”

Why the future? Have you watched the news? Do you see how irresponsible the media has become and how violence seems to perpetuate into more violence?

Money for clicks and viewership for advertisements are more important than the boring truth.

Dehumanizing your political opponent will trigger the emotionally unbalanced to act, and politicians know this. Politicians are desperate and will do anything to keep power, including importing twenty million new voters. Power is money and those two are addictive, much like Felony Glitter…

I hold little hope for humanity, and I have to wonder if Elon’s vision of Mars has him thinking the same thing.

Please like, comment, and follow, as well as read Echoes of Tomorrow.

Authors like me need all the assistance we can get in order to provide more thought-provoking, entertaining novels for you, when you are not watching hypnotoad programming, designed to make you disbelieve your lying eyes.

my version of hypnotoad feeding the masses lies.

Follow the Money

The 1970s Gas Crisis: Causes and Consequences

April 18, 1977

“The Oil Supply will be gone by 1981…Those are just the facts.” Carter

This address came four years after the Arab oil embargo of 1973, when energy prices had soared and the impacts were still reverberating through the American economy. Carter’s speech became known as part of his broader energy policy initiative, reflecting the genuine anxiety about resource depletion that characterized the late 1970s. It is worth noting that while Carter’s warnings about oil running out by the early 1980s did not materialize as predicted, his speech captured the very real energy concerns of that era and the need for conservation and policy changes. The gas lines of the 1970s were caused by a combination of geopolitical tensions and domestic policy decisions that created both real shortages and panic-driven demand.

The OPEC Oil Embargo

The primary trigger was OPEC’s aggressive action in response to Middle East conflicts. In October 1973, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries raised the price of crude oil by 70 percent, and Arab oil-producing nations implemented an embargo against the United States. This embargo was a direct response to American support during the Yom Kippur War and severely disrupted oil supplies to the nation.

Or…was it a way to drive the price of oil up?

America’s Oil Dependency

The crisis was exacerbated by America’s growing reliance on foreign oil, particularly from the Middle East. The United States had become increasingly dependent on imported petroleum, making the nation vulnerable to supply disruptions orchestrated by OPEC nations.

Why, one might ask, were we so dependent on their oil? Democratic administrations throughout history have been guilty of making domestic exploration and drilling for oil difficult and expensive, hobbling companies from using our resources and reducing leverage over the Middle East. Now that might speak to dark money being used to win elections but…that is speculation on my part.

The real question is, who are these politicians working for? To me, and anyone with a brain…the highest bidder.

Domestic Policy Mistakes

Ironically, government price controls made the shortage worse. The United States attempted to curb high gas prices and inflation through price ceilings in the 1970s. However, these controls backfired; they led to reduced supply from producers and increased demand from consumers, creating artificial scarcity and the infamous long lines at gas stations.

Why… Because the profit margins from oil companies were declining and they dont really care about the effects on you and I. IMO

The Result

The combination of the Arab oil embargo, OPEC’s price increases, America’s foreign oil dependency, and misguided price control policies created a perfect storm that left Americans facing gas rationing, mile-long lines, and widespread frustration.

Oil supplies did not run out by 1981 or in the years that followed.

Here is what actually happened:In fact, the price of Brent crude during his speech was around $8.50 a barrel, compared to today’s $76.01.

If you read between the lines, those gas lines and the energy shortage most probably had a lot more to do with oil companies’ greed for more profit and a lot less to do with instability in the Middle East.

History is rife with false flags and what I call “Chicken Little politics.” Oh look, the sky is falling; we need to take away your muscle cars and trucks and put you in battery-operated tin cans with little computers monitoring your every move.

What is going on?

Energy Market Responses

The warnings, while alarming, actually spurred several practical developments:

Increased domestic oil exploration and production: Companies invested heavily in new drilling.
Conservation efforts: Americans did reduce consumption through more efficient vehicles and home heating practices.
Alternative energy research: Solar, wind, and other renewable programs received more attention and funding.

Long-term Effects

Oil prices eventually stabilized and declined in the 1980s as new supplies came online.
The “peak oil” crisis narrative faded as new extraction technologies emerged.
Consumer behavior shifted toward fuel efficiency, which had lasting impacts on the auto industry.

The Broader Impact

Carter’s warnings, while not accurate in their timeline, did create psychological effects: some beneficial (energy consciousness, efficiency standards) and some problematic (public anxiety, distrust in government predictions).

The historical lesson is that doomsday predictions about resource depletion, while sometimes motivating positive changes, often fail to account for human innovation, market adaptation, and technological advancement.

Do you remember how the public mood shifted once 1981 passed and oil was still available?

Again, it is the sky is falling.

We learned nothing.

For the last several years, Gore has been making bank flying around the world in his private jet, selling the same Chicken Little philosophy about climate change.

The result is that most of us who remember these things do not trust the government, and we vote.

What we do know is that the earth is not replenishing fossil fuel as fast as we are using it.

Is it morally right to “nudge” people with Doomsday fabricated science?

If we assume that oil, gas, and so on is finite (and they use petrochemicals in a lot of things, not just your gas tank), what other choices do we have, and should we not have started around 1981?

We did, kind of.

Gas mileage increased from a few miles to the gallon to forty or more in some cases.

I traded my Good Times Van, with all the luxury of a mobile living room, when gas spiked to $1.32 a gallon for a Ford Escort station wagon that got 22 miles per gallon versus the 13 in the van. I still miss the van.

The world was being nudged into giving up comfort and “real cars” for plastic, transverse-mounted engines (cheaper), and fuel-injected, computer-controlled, emission-controlled cars that required more expensive gas to save the planet and conserve energy. That change also made almost impossible for the owner to work on thier own car thus becoming a slave to outragious repair bills for a $12 part.

As the demand for gas declined, the prices went up to compensate the oil companies.

Who got screwed?

We were nudged into giving up our land yachts for cars that, if you got into an accident, the likelihood of a fatality was much higher.

The insurance industry, catching the brunt of this, sent their folks from Avenue K over to Congress to rewrite the laws to make seat belt use, airbags, and other safety devices mandatory. More of our freedoms removed for the bottom line of the insurance industry. Fewer fatalities, lower insurance payouts, and we are all footing the bill for the profit of insurance companies and oil companies.

Cars went from a few thousand dollars to an incredible amount. A standard F-150 in 1981 was less than $6,000. Today, prices range from $47,000 to $65,000.

The point of this blog post is this: you can bet that whatever the media is telling you regarding cause and effect almost certainly has nothing to do with reality and more to do with big business manipulating the puppets in Washington to do their bidding.

If your emotions are tweaked, you are most likely being manipualted.

It only takes knowing history and turning off the mainstream media to understand why the world is so messed up.

In a future blog post, we will evaluate the need for energy that is renewable but not necessarily destructive to our way of life or to the property values of those who have left the city to live in the country. Rural areas, it seems, are under assault from “heat islands” created by solar farms and data centers. Will these heat islands have any effects on the way we live? Film at eleven.

Your thoughts? Comment below.

When Signals Travel One Way: Exploring HF Propagation on 7.185 MHz

Last night, after three years of not using the ham radio, I was listening to a net on 7.185 MHz.

To be clear, I enjoy rag chewing. I want to get to know people, hear their stories, and just maybe include bits and pieces of them in some future book. (I am an author.)

While I was working in the shop, the net ended, and the group decided to chase DX, or distant stations typically located in a different country.

After a CQ call and things being slow, I picked up the mic and tossed my call into the ether.

KD2DMR eventually welcomed me; they were a friendly group of folks.

To my surprise, a station in South Africa responded to me.

Jeremy in Illinois heard him, but I did not.

The first point of this post is simple: if you’re a ham, you might want to listen to 7.185 at night. They are a friendly bunch.

The second part of the post, and clearly the question I was asking myself, is this: why could I not hear this fellow in Nimbini when he heard me?

Of course I knew what the answer was but…Why not share?

Think “asymmetrical propagation.”

On HF bands like 40 meters (7.185 MHz), asymmetrical propagation is actually quite common.

Here are the likely culprits:

1. Ionospheric Conditions and Skip Zones:The ionosphere’s state changes constantly. His signal may have taken a different propagation path to reach me than my signal took to reach him. At certain times, one direction might have a clear skip path while the other does not. This is especially true for long-distance contacts, where the signal bounces off the ionosphere at different angles.

2. Polarization Mismatch:My 260-foot horizontal wire antenna radiates horizontal polarization. When HF signals bounce off the ionosphere, the polarization can shift unpredictably. His receiving antenna may have been oriented to better capture the polarization of my transmitted signal, while my antenna was not optimally positioned to receive his return signal’s polarization state after it bounced back.

3. Antenna Directivity and Takeoff Angle:My long wire antenna has directional characteristics that vary with frequency and height. At 30 feet on 40 meters, my antenna likely has a relatively high takeoff angle, which is good for medium-distance skip but may not be optimal for receiving signals coming back from South Africa at a different angle than my transmission went out.

While the long wire is a perfectly fine antenna for general-purpose communication, including DX, antennas (which to me in 1973 were simply magic) are the stuff of amateur radio’s dreams and fascinations, and they are one of the simpler things to experiment with.

If I had a Vertical antenna that I was listening on, there is a high probability I would have heard him. Many DX chasers have two antennas, one for transmitting and another for receiving for this reason. Even a simple inverted V for 40 might have made the difference.

There is even something called a beverage antenna, for receive only…If you want to maximize receive capability specifically, a Beverage antenna is legendary for HF reception. It is a long, low wire (typically 1 to 4 wavelengths long, running 6 to 10 feet high) that is highly directional and excellent at rejecting noise while capturing weak signals. Many serious DXers use Beverage antennas for receiving while transmitting on a separate antenna. *

If you are interested in such things, I would encourage you to find your local ham radio group and get your feet wet. If you are a ham, I will make a point to be listening on 7.185 and chat with them more, if they ever simply rag chew.

Best, and 73 to the hams out there.

About the Cover Picture:

As he re-encounters his family, a young JFK, and the love of his life before they’ve even met, he discovers that saving the future isn’t just about stopping a war—it’s about proving that humanity is worth saving. Along the way, secrets buried deep in Area 51, a chilling conspiracy within the U.S. government, and the cryptic motives of the alien beings reveal the stakes are higher than he could have ever imagined.

Echoes of Tomorrow is a sweeping tale of time travel, love, loss, and redemption. With the weight of the world on his young shoulders, one man must face the ultimate question: can the future truly be changed, or is humanity destined to repeat its greatest mistakes?

This gripping journey will captivate fans of thought-provoking sci-fi, historical intrigue, and heart- through time and the fragile threads of destiny.

Get Your Copy Here

*Why It Is Called a Beverage Antenna

The Beverage antenna is named after its inventor, Harold H. Beverage, an American radio engineer who developed and patented the design on June 7, 1921.

The name is entirely unrelated to drinks; it is simply an eponym honoring the man who created it.

A Bit of History: Harold Beverage (later known by his amateur radio call sign W2BML) was working at RCA when he invented the antenna as part of his efforts to improve the reception of transatlantic radio signals.

The design quickly gained popularity for its excellent performance in long-distance communication.

One of the most impressive early implementations was built by AT&T in Houlton, Maine, for the first transatlantic telephone service.

This massive array consisted of four phased Beverage antennas, stretching three miles long and two miles wide.

Why It Remains Popular

More than a century after its invention, the Beverage antenna is still widely used by amateur radio operators, shortwave listeners, and professional monitoring stations. Its ability to deliver an extremely low noise floor and a clean directional pattern makes it unmatched for receiving weak signals on the low bands, typically 160 meters through 40 meters.

The design is elegantly simple: a long wire (often several wavelengths in length) suspended low to the ground and terminated with resistors at one or both ends. This configuration allows it to function as a traveling wave antenna, capturing signals along its length while rejecting interference from unwanted directions.