Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

I haven't been paying attention to the church year. That's a slight departure for me, because I spent a great part of my adult life as a member of two denominations which closely follow the liturgical seasons; first as a Lutheran, then for a longer period as a Methodist. Today, though, I appear to have dropped even below the level of my Baptist upbringing, which at least recognized Christmas and Easter. If I thought you were interested, or if I  were interested, I could give you a historical and personal perspective on the significance of closely following the church seasons. I'd give you a particularly wonderful paragraph on my observance of Lenten fasts. This year, though, I think the ONLY Easter observance in my house came when my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, bought a bag of peanut butter and chocolate eggs, for the adults to eat after the kids went to bed. No Easter bonnets, no East...

BLACK TIDE RISING John Ringo; Gary Poole (2016-06-07).  Baen. Kindle Edition. John Ringo is one of the most insanely prolific writers out there. While I was looking for my coffee cup this morning, he wrote seven or eight books, and they are all going to be best sellers. The only problem with that, is that he was eating all the meat! There wasn't anything left, because John was writing it. So, he got nice on us, and opened up the world. The result is Black Tide Rising. Here's the background: an unknown evil genius used SCIENCE to combine two diseases into one. You can get infected either by air-borne transmission, or by direct contact, and in most cases, the next thing you feel are flu symptoms. Those are followed by the sensation of something crawling all over you, so you rip off your clothes, and then the second stage of the disease kicks in: rabies. You loose your ability to reason, and bite anyone you can reach.There is no cure. However, by taking material from the spine of ...

There are MANY things, actually, that VD & GRRM have in common, not the least of which is the fact that they both publish blogs that get more attention than I do.  Most of the science fiction world would be inclined to categorize them based on their differences, rather than their commonalities, though. The controversy surrounding the Hugo Award process has certainly brought their differences into the forefront of conversations, rather than their similarities. However, a late night conversation with a friend caused me to do some reflection on the matter, and I have the following conclusion: in my opinion, both Vox Day and George R R Martin deserve my personal thanks, which this insignificant blog post is designed to express. If any reader happens to have the ear of either of these gentlemen, please forward my thanks to them. In the case of Vox Day, that may not be necessary, for I have already thanked him for his consideration. Regardless of your opinion of him, I think that w...

Sigh.  Sister Marina Fontaine asked me how I could come up with an Amazon rating for an anthology which contained a story of contested merit.  Therefore, having read the book, I now have to review it, and I'm not yet over the issues which took me off-line for a week, But before I write the Amazon review, I'm gonna blog on the background issues. First, and most boring to you, dear reader, is the reason I've been off-line for a week. I have the great good fortune to be the recipient of a fabulous DNA package which incorporates genes for exceedingly manly height, outstandingly handsome facial features, and a scintillating intellect which rivals that of a Sicilian with a speech impediment. It also brings a late-blooming feature of HLA-B27, which sometimes manifests as ankylosing spondylitis, a progressive degenerative disease, mostly appearing as joint pain, and accompanied in blood tests by extremely high levels of inflammation. It hurts. Always, it hurts, sometimes a little, ...

From  Thursday, June 6, 2013 In Numbers, there's the story of Balaam, a sorceror-type, and his donkey. I won't go into the rest of it, but Balaam sets out on a journey the LORD doesn't want him to, and an angel stands in front of him with a sword to kill him. Balaam doesn't see thee angel, but the donkey does, and twice turns aside, then lies down in the road. Balaam beats the donkey fiercely, and then God opens the donkey's mouth. "Why are you beating me ? Haven't I always been a good donkey? Have I ever acted like this before?"  And then Balaam sees the angel, and the angel explains everything to him, and he goes about his business. Have I ever acted like this before? Pretty important question. How HAVE you acted before? Because that's pretty much going to determine the response you get today, for good or for bad. Thirty-some years ago: I wonder what my father said that day that I missed hearing him speak. I didn't hear him speak because it ...

Continuing to re-post older work, until I can figure out how I'm going to be able to do new work. No book review here. In my last post, I talked about carrying baggage in war. If ya didn't read it, you should, but to sum up: it's a bad idea.  Now, there IS a way to take loot that's not gonna slow the troops down, and that way requires that the troops trust the leaders. Instead of each individual trooper grabbing whatever was valuable, if everybody agrees that the really valuable items (in the case of Jericho, that would be gold and silver  and bronze and iron ) will all be collected for the common good, then nobody gets distracted when it's clobberin' time, and everybody knows that the good stuff is cared for until it's distribution time. And that's the arrangement we find at Jericho. All it requires is trust. And it didn't work, because there was this one guy who didn't trust the leadership. His name was Achan, which translates as "I'm ...

You know how much weight an infantryman packs? A lot. There are three basic conditions for load classifications: Fighting load, for when imminent combat is expected; the Approach March load, used when they have to get somewhere and take some food along; and the Emergency Approach March load, when they have to carry everything because re-supply may be a problem. Fighting load weight: 62 pounds. Approach March  load weight: 95 pounds. Emergency Approach March load weight: 128 pounds. (For more details, read my source, The Modern Warrior's Combat Load, http://thedonovan.com/archives/modernwarriorload/ModernWarriorsCombatLoadReport.pdf) Now, back in the old days (like pre 1900 for modern armies), the troops frequently supported themselves off the land, both in terms of what they ate and in terms of their pay. Rudyard Kipling wrote about it in "Loot": 'That's the thing that makes the boys get up and shoot.' Now, by the time he wrote it, it wasn't policy of the ...

Over at the Mad Genius Club today, the boyishly handsome Peter Grant throws a small kitten into a group of sedate pigeons with his column, Should we consider crowdfunding or the “subscription model” for our books? Although I realized I had something to say about this topic, it wasn't until I had completed the first stage that I realized I needed to make the second stage my latest Ramble.  So, click on the above link to read what Peter had to say, as well as the numerous intelligent observations which follow (mine included), and then come back and finish reading this. TWO STAGE POST STAGE TWO: CROWD FUNDING As a general rule, I've been pleased with the results of the few crowd funding projects I've been involved with.  I have contributed to the program which makes available digital copies of little known and somewhat elderly works of science fiction; I have helped reestablish nearly extinct fruit trees; service members have access to reading devices loaded with great books; ...

At some point last mumble, I decided to see how my reviews matched up with the Kindle Unlimited books published by contributors to the Mad Genius Club and the assorted hangers-on.  The answer is: Not very well. The main reason for the discrepancy between what they have written and what I have reviewed (I think) is that Sarah recently made a lot of her work available through KU. Second reason: there were also a number of works I had read long ago through Baen, and those didn't get automatically routed into an Amazon review.  Third reason: sometimes I mumble do other mumble things. I have a LOT of work to do before I am caught up again.  I am working on it, I PROMISE you I'm working on it, but THIS weekend I am taking my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after, trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grand-mother of Woodstock, Georgia, off to the mountains for a well-deserved get-away.  And that's all I have to say about that. I have written an Amazon review f...

This is my first writing since a sore throat took me out of action last week. Since I use speech recognition to write,having a sore throat is rather the equivalent of having arthritis in your hands for a person who uses the keyboard.  (I know this is true, because I have arthritis in my hands as well.) However, I could still read, even if I couldn't write the reviews, and so I did. So now, I have 10 items awaiting review. Four of them are short stories, which I will combine into one review; but that still leaves me with seven reviews to write.  And I was going to do it today, honest!  But I had to clean out my inbox first.  And as I was doing that, I saw that "According To Hoyt" had an interesting title, so I read it.  And the reviews got put on hold again. Men – and Women — of Iron.   That's the title of the ATH post for today.  If you haven't read it yet, click on the link and go read it now; I'll wait. Now that you've done that (unless you cheated),...