Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

For those of a certain degree of maturity, the talents of Johnny Hart in the comic "B.C." were a great source of humor. There was a running joke about nearly everything, but the one referenced is the set of clam jokes. Any time a clam manifested an unusual trait, some loud mouthed denizen would announce it to the world with great volume and pitiful grammar. First, I think, was "CLAMS GOT LEGS!" Later, after a group of clams were discovered walking off into the distance, it was "CLAMS IS MIGRATORY!" Hence, the title of the review. Well, I'm no Johnny Hart, and daly, I have no clams. However, I do have reviews. And, happily, it appears that I am able to copy them from Amazon to Goodreads. I did a trial run this weekend of eight reviews, and nothing blew up. However, I don't know whether the reviews exist where anyone who looks at the book can find them, or do they just show up on my profile. I also don't know how to add a title to the reviews; ot...

    The condensed Amazon review may be found here , for those who wish to avoid commentary. Said commentary, however, will of necessity be non-specific. There are too many stories which are not mine to tell, but I do want to talk about what I'm calling, for the lack of a better term, the Border of Insanity. My undergraduate degree is psychology, and I have two graduate degrees in counselling, but when it comes to my definition of insanity, I rely on my personal experience of listening to the accumulated wisdom of recovering alcoholics over the past 29 years.  There are really two statements of the definition: 1. Doing the same thing, and expecting a different result. This is the one I hear quoted the most, even outside the meeting rooms. I heard it last from the lips of a wise non-alcoholic, while standing in his driveway yesterday. It's a great statement, with plenty of practical applications. That's probably why it has such broad distribution. However, it's the other...

    The condensed Amazon version of this review  may be found here . I keep a list around here somewhere about things I just don't understand. The first four, of course, are found in Proverbs 30:      19 The way of an eagle in the sky,             The way of a serpent on a rock,             The way of a ship in the middle of the sea,             And the way of a man with a maid. Other items include WHY my fat black Manx cat SugarBelly INSISTS on sitting on my hands when I'm trying to use the keyboard; why I am the only person in the house who can put water in the water jug and re-fill the ice cube trays; and why did I allow myself to be persuaded to buy such an expensive iPhone and  iPad when I don't want to use any of those fabulous functions. Well, there is another thing I don't und...

    If you JUST want to read the Amazon review, with none of the trimmings, click here. So, this morning I hopped out of bed at 4:00 AM, and drove our daughter Liz to the hospital, where she will shortly present us with grandchild number 12; BUT this one is a girl! We only have two other girl grandchildren, the delightful Vanessa Nicole, age 16, and precious Alicia Ann, age 11. In case you don't want to do the math, that means we have 9 grandsons, ranging from Esan at 18 to Isaac at 5 months. I like 'em all. In fact, I like them so much that there are three of them currently living at my house (four when the little girl comes home), and in a few minutes, my daughter who lives in Screven, in south east Georgia, will be dropping by with three year old Josh and the aforementioned 5 month old Isaac, for an all-too-brief visit. I bought donuts. Are they not lovely? Designed to appeal to the palate of grandchildren. And I made sausage and cheese biscuits. Designed to appeal to the p...

Right before I went to bed last night, I happened to be flipping through old blog posts. I found a post about rising above toxic parenting practices , prompted by a post Sarah had written about her trip to Portuga l in 'According to Hoyt,' almost exactly a year ago. Then I posted in the 'Sarah's Diner' Facebook page, and asked others about their practices: If you journal or blog, do you ever go back and see what you wrote a long time ago? And if so, does it make you laugh, or cry, or both? Different points of view emerged. Some did, most didn't. Sarah said she didn't, because there was so much! And I get that, with an ink-soaked writer: You are so busy cranking out new content, there's not much opportunity to review. And yet... ...and yet there have been times in which reading my old writings has been profoundly revealing. I remember reading, a year after they were written, the 1979 New Year's resolutions written when I was a poverty-stricken seminar...

Beloved, and all the rest who read: These past two weeks have been difficult for me. I got very little reading done, and essentially no writing.  I had two MAJOR projects going; both of them were in the class of  "Major Life Events." Both of them were EXTREMELY time-sensitive, with hard and fast drop-dead dates. Both of them required me to be dependent on other people, NONE of whom had nearly as much invested in the projects as I do. Both involved a significant degree of travel, for me as well as for other people. (I don't like travel.) And, as you well know, there are some things that just can't be put on hold, no matter HOW many important projects are pending. People and pets still have to be fed. Babies have to be changed. Some minimal amount of laundry still has to be done. Toddlers require active supervision, or they will break themselves. Even WITH active supervision, SOMETHING is going to get broken. But, as of today, projects are completed and were a resoundin...

    The link to my Amazon review will be found HERE ,   and I made this editorial change at 1:13 AM Wednesday. I got my copy from Baen, but you can get it from Amazon if you click the picture link . Okay, we need to talk about the cover. It's by Dominic Harman, and I've seen his work before, BUT: It's never sold me a book before. As a matter of fact, I can't think of a time as an adult when artwork has ever sold me a book. Maybe when I was a kid, browsing the paperbacks on sale at Dorsey's Pharmacy in Macon, but even then, I'd mostly buy because it was by Ian Fleming. Yes, I was reading James Bond in the sixth grade. What's the problem? But, the zombie cowboy with a pair of ...(stop right there.) A pair of WHAT? Six guns? Revolvers? Cowboy pistols? No, those are sho 'nuff Colt Single Action Army. I hate it when authors make gun mistakes, and I LOVE it when they get it right. And I REALLY love it when the artists get it right. Listen: I just pulled one ...

For the past couple of years, we've done some minor experimenting with back-yard gardening. And, when I say 'we,' I mean my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA. My involvement has been limited to buying the wire cones at Home Depot. The first two years, she just used these big honken planters on the back porch. I think she had two plants, and they kept us in an appropriate amount of home-grown tomatoes, and it was nice. Then she got a bit ambitious, and dug out a garden area by the fence, with borders and tags. Didn't work. I know she had some other stuff in there beside the tomatoes, but I don't think anything bore fruit. Here are two mistakes she didn't make, both of which I have seen happen. Mistake 1: Failing to understand the process. A dear friend of mine wanted tomatoes one year. So...he planted tomato seeds. Fortunately, this act was reported by his wife to a person who Know...

        My A mazon review of the FIRST book may be read here . and My Amazon review of the SECOND book may be read here. I have a VIOLENT reaction to that class of medications known as NSAIDS (non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs). Just the briefest touch turns my innards into thunderstorms. It wasn't always this way. I was able to discontinue narcotics for my chronic pain for almost a year, with the use of a particularly powerful NSAID called meloxicam. It brought my pain level down to the point that I averaged a half tablet of hydrocodone a week; before that, I was taking 165 mg of morphine daily. It wasn't until my gut started bleeding that I gave up on the meloxicam; unfortunately, my sensitivity to ONE NSAID extended to ALL NSAIDS, so now I can't even take aspirin. And that extends to topical applications as well. I have some tenderness in my bicep tendon caused by a brief attempt at lifting weights - 10 pounds only! - and my doc suggested I try this cream. Well, I ...

This is going to be a shorter post than usual. First, somehow, I forgot today is Friday. No excuse. Just forgot. And along with that, I forgot it was therefore RED Friday. I always want to remember that, because it matters. Right now, there are thousands of sons and daughters, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers who cannot be with the rest of their families on this summer day, because they are doing their part in the Armed Forces to keep us safe in our homes. They are Deployed. So: RED: Remember Everyone Deployed. Wear RED on Friday. Until they ALL come home. And now, a CLOSER LOOK at "Gilded Cage," the creepiest story in the 'Fistful of Credits' anthology I reviewed this morning. There are others that deserve a closer look; in fact, I'd have to confess that they ALL deserve a closer. Particularly ...no, not gonna go there. I was going to mention 'Legends' by Christopher Woods, but if I did, then I'd also mention...STOP THE MADNESS! See, this is wh...

    My Amazon review of the book can be found here. I have reading problems. That most definitely DOESN'T mean I have a problem trying to read, usually. Sure, in the minute or so after I wake up in the morning, my eyes don't focus very well. So, when the first thing I do is reach for my tablet, I often can't focus on the text well enough to read what it says. Mostly, however, I regard that as a feature, and not a bug. I use that interval to get out of bed. And one I am out of bed, I can do other things. Take a shower, etc. Go downstairs. Greet the cat. Whatever. So, as I said, that's not what I refer to when I say I have reading problems. The other day I mentioned getting into trouble in the second grade because I was so captivated by the book I was reading, that I didn't have a clue that reading time was over. And when the teacher finally broke through my concentration on the story of Old Yeller, it was only the first time of many that my immersion in text resulted...

    Here's the link to my condensed review on Amazon. I never set out to be a rebel. Well, that's not EXACTLY true. As a matter of fact, once I found out that rebellion was possible, my path has bounced between rebellion and conformity in the same way that a ping-pong ball bounces for Forrest Gump. Today, I take pride in my identity as a redneck biker, Life Member of the NRA, Southern Man of Scottish Heritage (Campbell Clan, if anybody is interested), born on a dirt road in Macon, GA. Sounds pretty white and the slightest bit intimidating, don't it? But I'm married to my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA. And we have CHOSEN to raise our beautiful mulatto grandchildren with the understanding that to a significant segment of the population, the amount of black blood in their veins is going to trump the white amount, and to be proud of who they are. And our social lives center on what is the...

I'm at a bit of a turning point with my writing. As things exist right now, I write two things: product reviews (mostly books), which are published on Amazon, and; blog posts like this one, in which I talk about pretty much what's on  my mind. I started the blog first, following the  suggestions made by friends at church; however, that was fitful, at best. Then, three years ago tomorrow, I wrote my first book review. That lead to joining the Kindle Unlimited program, and to date, I've written 434 Amazon reviews, almost all of them book reviews. It was good; I had fun with it. It also gave me a more productive role in the science fiction/fantasy writing community. It also provided me with a way to stay loyal to my commitment to write. My reviews tend to be lengthy, and I was given the suggestion to condense my reviews, and expand my story-telling about my personal reaction to the book in my blog. I did that for a while; but for whatever reason, I stopped; eventually, I went ...

    I was in a bad mood the other day. I don't remember why; it may have been because many of my friends were having fun at LibertyCon 30, and I wasn't. Or it might have been because my youngest son is having car troubles, due to what I regard as a design flaw in 2004 Honda Civic ignitions. Maybe it was because I was hurting, physically. Not sure; doesn't really matter. Because regardless of the cause, I had the solution: Esther Friesner. Earlier in the week, I discovered that I had overlooked the most recent installment in the 'Chicks in Chainmail' series. I don't know how that happened; I've been a fan since I first discovered the books. If I'm not mistaken,  that would have been in April 2002, when I bought the Baen Bundle so I could get two John Ringo books, and 'Chicks and Chained Males' was included. After the first taste, I was hooked, and I THOUGHT I had bought every title since then. (I DO remember having to explain the concept to my gif...

    It took a LOT of reading before I discovered I was a military Science Fiction fan. Old Yeller and Sherlock Holmes captivated me, and the series of Tom Swift books had me reading with a flashlight under the covers until I fell asleep (or passed out from anoxia). My relatives knew that getting me books for Christmas was a safe bet; the glamor of board games or lawn darts was a close approximation to the excitement I felt from getting a hair brush or a pair of green and orange tube socks. But books? Yeah, books got my attention. And then, sometime between November of 1972 and March of 1973, I found a battered copy of 'Starship Troopers' in the dayroom of Company Charlie Two of the Medical Corpsman Training Battalion at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, and I was hooked. A few years after that, I discovered Hammer's Slammers, and the adventures of John Christian Falkenberg, and I was committed forever. I doubt my own military experience had anything to do with it, at least not direc...