Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

Had a dear friend and kindred spirit named Bob Bresler, aka Breeze. Incredibly talented musician, brilliant dude, former Marine with service in Viet Nam, seminary student. What attracted me to him was our shared love of science fiction, and his zany sense of humor. His standard response to any unexpected question was "No thanks, I just had a banana." "Are you going to Ethics class at 11:00?" "No thanks, I just had a banana." "Do you know what time it is?" "No thanks, I just had a banana." "Can I borrow your blue shirt with the penguin on the collar?" "No thanks, I just had a banana." "Wanna cut class and go get a beer?" "No thanks, I just..wait, what? YEAH, let's GO!" He would also initiate conversations with total strangers by saying, "So, how WAS China?" It's not a bad conversational gambit. He told me that in all his years of using it, he actually had run across one person who...

My gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, works as a legal parapro in the heart of downtown Atlanta. She has a 20+ mile drive to work every day, and in order to beat the worst of the morning commute, she has to leave the house at 6 AM every weekday. If she leaves at a REASONABLE time, say 7AM, then the 45 minute drive turns into 90 minutes or more. So: early to rise. And the other half of the instruction is : early to bed. We were discussing this last night, as we went lights out at 8:30. Parenthetical note: we are ONLY able to do that because our kids are older, capable, and cooperative. Alicia Ann, who is 10 almost 11, is in the fifth grade, her last year of elementary school; she has to get on the bus at 7 AM, so she has a bedtime of 8:30 PM, and gets up at 6:30 AM, or 6-ish if she wants to so something lovely to her hair. Kenneth, age 12, is a 6th grade middle schooler, and they start the school day late...

There's no POINT to this post; it's just something that happened. I know what I look like.  I'm a large, hairy white man. I've got a beard and a ponytail, and dark eyes. Except for the fact that I have no tattoos, I look like I'm a classic bad-news biker. But that's not who I am. In fact, except for maybe six months in 1971-2, I've NEVER looked like what I am. This was brought home to me today in a sad way. I was in the parking lot of Publix, and I passed a young mother and her son; the mother was wearing a hijab, which I guess makes her a Muslim. I was wearing overalls and a black biker t-shirt, which I guess makes me a redneck biker. I recognized the look of fear and suspicion the mother gave me; I've seen it before. Redneck bikers are supposed to hassle Muslims, right? We made eye contact, and she quickly looked away. As I said, I've seen the look before. But I wasn't thinking about hassling her. I was wishing I could tell her that 100 years a...

This is my drop-dead gorgeous, brilliant, adventurous, and deeply spiritual daughter Tobiyah.  In this picture, she is pointing to the very first bull's-eye she made at the range, firing a Browning Buckmark Camper .22 LR target pistol. She loved the experience, although at first, she flinched every time someone in the adjacent lanes fired. She is the second of my inherited daughters to have earned her college degree, a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Kennesaw State University. She was not content with classroom experience; somewhere around here I have a picture of my living room packed with more than 20 foreign exchange students she brought over to the house so they could get exposed to more of the American experience. Last weekend, she gave me my first surprise; I thought she was going to join the Women's March in Atlanta. Instead, she and her three sisters and at least one sister-by-affiliation took off for Washington. They spent the night before in West Virginia, ...

The physical pain I experience is related to inflammation. The BEST, by FAR, treatment for inflammation is medication designed specifically for that, the Non-Steroid Anti-Inflammatory Drugs, aka NSAIDs.  A few years ago, when I got tired of the side effects of morphine, I was able to manage quite well with a daily dose of meloxicam. I went for nine months with that, and only took about 1/2 tablet of hydrocodone every week. Then, the bad side effects of NSAIDs manifested, and my guts exploded. I was getting blood in my stool, and awful gastric distress, so I needed to re-visit the Pain Clinic. Unfortunately, when you are destroyed by one NSAID, you will be destroyed by them all, so I can't take an aspirin or an ibuprofen, or anything in that category. I do have a good solution. There is a long-release patch called 'Butrans,' which dispenses (in my case) 20 micrograms of buprenorphine into my system every hour; I change the patch every week. It treats the bulk of the pain, an...

    Boo-yah! The February edition of the American Rifleman came today, and I CAN READ IT! The last day of my 21 day firearms-reading fast was yesterday. I don't feel the need to go on a binge, though. The purpose of the fast was to give me some spare resources that I could use to draw closer to God. And, I think that worked. At least so far. This blog, and book reviews, are my way of reaching out, and helping people. And, since I stopped spending those hours mentally fondling the best self-defense ammo, or examining the workings of the latest (or oldest) firearm technology, I've been devoting my time to writing. Now, I started to say that I don't know whether or not the process has made me more spiritual. But as it happens, I just had a conversation with Mylon, one of my oldest friends, and I realized that the most spiritual things have their manifestation in the physical world. We talked about the Tommy Nobis Center ,  established by one of the most dominant linebackers in...

    A long time ago, there was a song called "Alice's Restaurant." It was written and performed by Arlo Guthrie, and it related the story of the Alice's Restaurant Massacree, which took place in Stockbridge Massachusetts, with a closing which took place in a big building on Whitehall Street where Arlo went for his draft physical. "You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant.  You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant. Just walk right in, it's around the back, just a half a mile from the railroad track, You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant." If you don't know the story, take 18 -23 minutes of your time, and go listen to the ORIGINAL 1965 version of it here ,  or if you DO know the story,  you can listen to the 1996 updated version here . or you can take 40 minutes of yer time and listen to both. It's a good way to spend your time. I'll wait here....... Okay, yer back. Wasn't that great? Now, ...

For those who are both aware of my history and the 1945 Ray Milland movie 'The Lost Weekend,' let me calm your fears: no, I did not go off on a drunk. I didn't even have a drink. However, in the day in which I wrote 'Glad To Be Crippled,' my body decided to make me EXCEPTIONALLY glad. Exuberant, even. In other words, my lower back and my upper back conspired together, and said, "Let's see if we can't kill this silly person!" Well, they didn't make it. They DID make me check to see if my Butrans patch was still attached (it was), and they DID make me take the break-through medicine I've been prescribed. That's okay; that's what it's there for. Except, I'm allergic to it. So, I itched like crazy. A couple of months ago, I itched so badly in my sleep that I scratched a wound in my arm where my patch lived. Had to take antibiotics to prevent a staph infection. But the docs at the Pain clinic were aware that this could be a probl...

Although everyone knows me as 'Pat' (or Papa Pat), my real first name is James. It comes from the Hebrew name Jacob. That's important to me. I was not much at sports when I was a youth. At some point in the Army, though, that had changed. Basic Training at Ft. Jackson SC was so freaken awful in almost every way (I loved the weapons training, though), and it turned my flabby hippie muscles into rocks, and bulked me up from 150 to 165, which was stringy looking on my 6'2" frame. And I developed some coordination I hadn't before. I became a force to be reckoned with on the volleyball  court. It felt good. After the Army, a small church league of basketball and softball was a great outlet for me; I learned how to choke up on the bat, and I could always punch one through the hole between first and second for a base hit. Later, I picked up racquetball, and I was hooked. Then came kids, and jobs, and graduate school, and by age 40, and my days as a player were over. I...

    If you want a good review of the book with a synopsis of each story, read the review by Mike Reeves-McMillan. This is more of a personal meditation/reflection. I read a LOT of books, and review quite a few of them. Some time in the past few years, it was pointed out to me that a lot of the books I was reading for fun (such as 'The Chaplain's War,' Monster Hunter International' and others) were members of the LDS (Mormon) Church. I filed that under as 'Interesting Trivia' and thought no more about it. Then, in a tiny, small, insignificant part of the world, a miniature firestorm broke out, attacking rather successful author John C. Wright as a misogynist and homophobe because he had written of his adherence to the doctrines of his faith as a member of the Roman Catholic Church., And following that opening barrage came attacks on the Mormon writers because of their belief system. I want this next point to be perfectly clear: the authors were not attacked bec...

I never met you, Dr. King. I met one of your sons in college, and been in a small seminar with your wife and your PhD advisor from Boston, but I was only 14 years old when you were assassinated. That year, 1968, was the worst year our country has experienced in my lifetime. The Tet Offensive in Viet Nam; your assassination as well as that of Bobby Kennedy; the riots and burning cities; cops brawling with protesters in the streets of Chicago at the Democratic National Convention, as the crowds chant, "The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching." I'm glad you didn't have to see it. In 1963, you said "Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men." In 2017, we have military drones that respond to remote operators to attack, and human drones that respond to Facebook posts and Twitter feeds to spew hatred and fear. You also said in 1963 that you "dreamed of the day when your four little children ...

A long time ago, some (hopefully) wise person told me about 'teachable moments.' Those are the times when some issue arises with your kid that really resembles a teeth-grinder. Instead of grinding, though, whoever this wise person was (and I really don't have a clue) says parents should embrace those times as a teachable moment. I grew to rather hate teachable moments. Why? Because they were so great, I might have over-used them. Ask my oldest son. I'd find myself embracing a teachable moment with him (when he was an earl;y adolescent), and as I launched out on the teaching, he'd say "You're going to tell me about the time you got pushed out of the tree-house again, aren't you?" I hated that. Smart-alec kid. I probably came by the trait, at least in part, by observing my step-dad. Later, he described himself as the kind of guy who tells you how to build a watch, when what you asked was what time it was. But I had another teachable moment this morni...

    This is appearing as a blog post, and not a book review,  for two reasons: 1. I am reforming my blogging patterns, based on advice from experts. If I have something to say, I will blog it. 2. Ummm...I haven't actually READ it yet. I HAVE however, read the most excellent and illuminating introduction by that powerhouse editor/writer, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and it answers a question that has been bothering me for at least the past 10 years or so. And so, after getting the TRUE DIRT (!!!) on the subject, I decided I had to get this out of my system NOW, rather than trust my attention deficit disorder to bubble it to the surface at a later date. This is an issue for me, because I read books in AT LEAST two different locations, sometimes three, and rarely four. Right now, this is my upstairs bathroom book. I'm reading something else downstairs in the man cave, which is where I write my reviews. I don't know how long it will take me to FINISH WOMEN IN SP A A A C E !!! but I ...

I love reading about firearms and ammunition and related topics. I have even made at least one blog post about the HiPoint 4595 carbine as an alternative to the shotgun as a home defense weapon. And yesterday, as the warm-up to my blog, I reviewed an excellent documentary by former footballer, current actor Vinnie Jones, and mildly lambasted him for an egregious firearms error. And in doing so, I skated dangerously close to the edge of a promise I had made. Background: My family and I are members of Liberty Church in Marietta, an independent evangelical church with a strong emphasis on racial reconciliation. It's the first TRULY multi-cultural civilian church I've been a member of in my life (I'm 63), although as far as I know I have never been to a church that had segregation as a formal position. Interjection: I said 'civilian church.' When I was in the Army, (1972-1975) both the military chapel services and the off-base mission churches I attended were fully inte...

I hope a million people read this post and that it changes America. Vinnie Jones is a British gentleman, who I believe is now living in America (Los Angeles, to be exact). He was a professional British footballer for 15 years, who has been very successful as an actor in many action & adventure films. Look him up; it's likely you will recognize him. I'm watching a documentary on Netflix he made in 2008 called "Vinnie Jones' Toughest Cops" . It's an excellent series for those who want to see what it's like fighting the worst situations in America, and it really doesn't pull any punches (but it does bleep obscenity). He visits prison inmates, and goes on ride-alongs with the SWAT teams. He even acts a spotter for fleeing felons, which conceivably places him at risk to life and limb (as well as his camera crew). Good show, watch it if you can. However. Vinnie knows very little about firearms. Some have said that this is customary for a British subject,...