This is called a missing man formation. It is flown to honor a fallen comrade. Very touching to see.

  Since I have spent a large portion of my life around aircraft, I sometimes forget that not everyone understands jargon that I might have used. This is an afterburner. Spectacular at night.

Wings

There are many accomplished writers that contribute to Sunday Scribblings. I am not a writer by anyone's standards. I ramble, as my handle indicates. To me, writing is just throwing a bunch of stuff against the wall and hoping something sticks. I am not very deep or profound, as you will soon realize. But I have always enjoyed writing and this gives me a venue and a deadline, both of which I need. These are the first thoughts that came to me when I saw the prompt "Wings".


People that served in the military often spend the rest of their lives reliving and reminiscing about their time in uniform. They love to tell war stories, some factual, some exaggerated, but based on a true story, and some totally fabricated. I have met individuals who speak of their service in 'Nam, when chronologically they would have been about ten years old when the war ended in 1975. My experience has been that the real Viet Nam vets prefer not to discuss their in-country involvement at all. Too much pain to relive. I have a different reason for not discussing my military service very often. I do not discuss my experiences with nonmilitary folks, as they really can't relate and I don't wish to bore them. I do not hang out at the VFW or American Legion, though I am grateful for the 46 service organizations available to veterans. As a result, my post-military life has not put me in contact with many vets. When I see a Disabled Vet license plate or bumper sticker, I generally give quiet respect in the form of positive thoughts directed at them. If we make eye contact, I will give a little salute or nod. I can often see in their eyes that they understand and appreciate that simple gesture.

I retired from a 20 year Air Force career nearly 15 years ago. I joined in 1972 and was in Southeast Asia at the end of Viet Nam and retired in 1992, shortly after Desert Storm. My Air Force job did not require me to serve a combat role. For that I am grateful. Though I was trained in several weapons and explosives, I only fired at targets. I was excellent shooting things that stood still and could not return fire. My closest brush with actual combat were some bar brawls in the Philippines. I do not miss the military. I seldom actually think about it. I do not miss putting on a uniform each morning. I do not miss relocating at least every three years, though I am grateful for the opportunity to see much of the world that these travels afforded me. If you have read this far, you are obviously thinking, "what the hell does this have to do with wings?" I am getting to that. Bear with me.

Having spent most of my career on fighter installations. For those that are aeronotically challenged, those are the small, really fast planes. They make a distict sound, much different than an airliner or transport plane. For those of you that have been to a NASCAR race, the feeling of awesome power that those 43 cars create equates to that of a single fighter jet on a low-level pass. George Lucas tried to capture that power in the early Star Wars films with the roar of the Tie-Fighters and X-Wings. Never mind that there is no sound in space, it made the film exciting. When I am at a sporting event that features a flyover, my heart soars as those jets buzz the stadium. I love the flag, but nothing equals the patriotic pride I experience when I see a fighter pilot lighting the afterburners. So what do I miss about the Air Force? Wings.

I would enjoy communicating with anyone. Rick

My Editor and a Cambodian Saturday in the Park

This is my new editor, Alison Janssen at Bleak House Books. She is way cool, and way smart, and apparently hell on skates too. You can watch an interview with her here.

Working with an editor can be a tricky business. I ought to know, I was one for a long time - magazines, not books. We writers love what we write and don't usually cotton to someone messing with it.

I've been lucky. Win Blevins, my editor at Forge Books for The Living Room of the Dead truly helped make that a better book. I learned from him and the book benefitted.

At first, I was a little nervous about working with Alison. She's obviously smart and all that, but I'm old enough to be her father. (I can't believe I just wrote that. I must really be getting old.) Just before we started working together on the book I jokingly asked if I should be concerned. She "reassured" me - jokingly (I think) saying that I didn't have anything to worry about, she didn't think she'd want me to do much with the book, but she did feel it could benefit by my adding a cookie-selling girl scout to one of the scenes in Cambodia; which was, of course, ridiculous.

Alison then gave me her notes. And they were good, very good. Following her notes and some of her suggestions have made Grave Imports an even better book than the one I'd originally written. I learned some important things about my writing from her. That's the way it's supposed to work. (Maybe I'm not old enough to be her father after all.)

And I showed her. I tossed in a cookie-selling girl scout, sort of. And I did it in a way that helped satisfy one of her editorial notes. She liked it. I liked it. You'll have to read the book to find our girl scout for yourself.

Having worked with her, I can now hardly wait to see Mel Ignant, her roller derby alter ego, in action.

As for Cambodians, they feature significantly in my new book Grave Imports (this is my blog, I have to get in plugs whenever I can) that's coming out in September. A lot of them, more than anywhere else other than in Cambodia itself, live in Long Beach, California - about 35 miles from my house. And a whole lot of them were in El Dorado Park last Saturday to celebrate Cambodian New Year.

It was a reminder of a couple of things. One, how much I miss Asia, some countries - Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Macau and Cambodia in particular - more than others.

And it was also a reminder of how great it is to live in a big city in the U.S. where there are large groups of people from all over the world. In the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area we have the largest immigrant populations in the world from China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines (I think), Mexico, most Central American countries, Iran and Armenia. We have increasingly large immigrant populations from Western and Eastern Europe, Africa, South America, the Middle East and other countries in Asia as well.

Despite all the problems, in spite of all the political arrogance and stupidity that this country inflicts on people all over the world, this is still, particularly in Los Angeles, a truly great and exciting place to live. And a whole lot of people around the world know that, or at least suspect it. Which is why they keep coming here and adding to the good things about living here. Here's some more pictures from what is not really an unusual (at least in L.A.) Saturday in the park:
There were kids with cool hair.


For some reason, there were a lot of women with streaked hair.



There were men playing traditional games.




And women on the receiving end of those games.







There were kids beating each other up with American flag clubs. (I'll leave any political implications up to your imagination.)

There was a temporary temple.

And live bands.

And beauty queens, of course.

And families cooking satay on portable grills.




And some nasty geese. I'll bet they'd be pretty tasty.








And strutting herons. You wouldn't think it, but L.A. is lousy with herons.

Rooted

I was born in Kellogg, Idaho to parents who had migrated to the northwest from the deep south for the opportunity presented by this booming and growing region. My dad, being uneducated, though hardworking, found job opportunities severely limited in southern Georgia in the late 1940's. The labor intensive jobs that he qualified for paid "nigger" wages. I do not use that word in disrespect. I use it to illustrate that blacks and poor white folks in the deep south were paid the same scant wages. My dad worked in the mines of the "Silver Valley" for 35 years and though never wealthy, he eked out a decent life for my mom and me. I lived in a very sterile environment. We were pretty much all white, though our ancestors immigrated from many regions of Europe. There were Scandinavians, Poles, Italians, Germans, and Irish. Except for a few people in town, we were all pretty much in the same economic class. There was little poverty and even less wealth. Unemployment, for those that chose to work, was nonexistent. I was lucky enough to escape Kellogg before all that came to a sudden end. Most of the mines closed due to economic and environmental reasons. The lumber industry, another of the primary employers of that region, also all but disappeared for similar reasons. The heartier of my classmates stayed and toughed it out, but the majority of us had to leave the area to advance our lives Many remained in the Pacific Northwest, moving to more prosperous places like Coeur d'Alene, Spokane Washington, or the Oregon coast.

I have traveled the world and as I approach retirement, I have relocated to the coast of South Carolina, very near my parents roots. I notice that things are not much different here than my dad found it in the late 1940's. The difference now is that in the working class, blacks and poor whites have been joined by another rapidly growing group, illegal Mexicans. Wages are still very low. There is a lot of poverty here. The Myrtle Beach area is very affluent, with the influx of northern wealth, but very much like much of America, everyone does not share that wealth.