Papa Pat Tiny Devotionals

    Good day to you, friends and family out there in Internet Land! I'm gonna give you links to a couple of Hank Williams, Senior, songs to listen to, in order to give you some background for certain parts of this post, and one Stephen Stills song, which I heard coming straight out of CS&N. I think David Crosby and Graham Nash are actually singing on this version, but I'm pretty sure it's off the "Stephen Stills" album. Please note: every one of these songs was chosen because they present such a distorted view of human romantic/sexual intimacy that they would be LETHAL if they were selected as a life theme! I'm working HARD to keep my Amazon book reviews short and relevant today (and hopefully in the future), and using the blog to make my philosophical points. I had started the Amazon review, and discovered I had wandered into Meaningful Dialogue Mode, and shifted gears. I whacked all of the good stuff out of the review, but it's included here. This ha

Taken under duress, after I had to threaten to kiss them on the lips if they didn't smile. And this was the best I could get Thirty years ago, I took my first-born son, Jordan, to Coal Mountain Elementary School for his first day of kindergarten in Mrs. Debby Mehl's classroom. Yesterday, he took HIS first-born son, Heath, to meet his kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Bentley, at Cherokee Charter Academy. In a few minutes, I'm gonna be taking Kenneth and Alicia Ann for Open House at Mill Creek Middle School, where he will be in the 8th grade and she will be in the 7th grade. So, after thirty years and two generations of taking kids to school, what is the most important preparation I made, in order to handle the physical and emotional stresses of the day? I drilled another hole in my belt, so my pants wouldn't fall down. Seems that despite dropping down recently from a 44 inch to a 42 inch waist (from a peak of a 50 inch waist in 2012), my mass distribution continues to shift. A

    ALSO MENTIONED IN THIS POST:     Here's the link to my Amazon review of Holly Chism's "Bite Sized: Liquid Diet Chronicles Book 1," and,  since I mention it as a factor in writing what I'm writing right now,  here's the link to my review of Sarah Hoyt's "So Little and So Light." I wish I could say that the occasion for writing THIS blog post was solely due to my virtuous decision to allow my Amazon reviews to be the absolute epitome of succinct word-smithing; that I had resolved to return to a much, much earlier program of limiting those reviews to ONLY select phrases which would inform the public of the core characteristics of the book, and to reserve my COMMENTARY on the book to this blog. That WAS a good plan, by the way, and I did my best to follow it for quite some time. Alas, the same circumstances that kept me away from book reviews, also kept me away from blogging, and in this renaissance of writing I'm currently experiencing, I a

         ALSO REFERENCED IN THIS POST>>:     Greetings, friends and welcome to this utterly recycled blog post! PRELIMINARY COMMENTS Circumstances have kept me away from reading, reviewing, and blogging for an astounding amount of time. Not involved in those circumstances was  the DELIGHTFUL few days I spent with my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, at Neptune Beach in Jacksonville, FL.  Looks like I may be back in the swing of things, though, as I have finally cleaned out almost all of the reviews I owed (one exception! Celia Hayes' "Adelverien Trilogy"), and I'm churning through a new list. After starting on that new list, I saw that Sarah A. Hoyt had this new collection of short stories, and I rescheduled everything to read & review it before anyone else could. READING it fast was pretty easy; There were TWO stories that made me stop and process, but the rest of them went

In addition to reading and reviewing; being husband, father, and grandfather to a proliferating number of individuals (I wonder if we qualify as an invasive species?); and riding and providing an old-age rest home for motorcycles; I also enjoy owning and operating a number of firearms. Let me explain that a bit: I'm not a gun nut, if such a thing really exists outside Hollywood. I AM a firm supporter of the Bill of Rights, although I really don't give much attention to the Third Amendment. The Second Amendment, however, gives me CONSTITUTIONAL and LEGAL justification to do what I want to do anyway, which is to own and operate firearms. In my case, I tend not to think of it in terms of the Second Amendment when I purchase a firearm, as much as I think how grateful I am to be married to my gift-from-God, happily-ever-after trophy wife Vanessa, the elegant, foxy, praying black grandmother of Woodstock, GA, who overcame a lifetime of distaste for guns because of her love for me. H

It occurs to me, that at the age of 65, I may not have enough time left to distribute all the wisdom I have collected so far, much less that wisdom I'm going to be accumulating in the future. So, since this blog is my storehouse of wisdom, I'm making this post here to answer questions, and make comments. I will continue to post on other things, book reviews, moments of significance, and so forth. This post, however,  will be an ongoing work; people ask questions in the comments, and I answer them, and the post grows. As long as there is something you want to know, you can ask. If I DON'T know, I'll tell you. I might even be wrong in my answers, but I doubt that will happen often. I was born with a first-class brain, and I stuffed it full of all kinds of things, and came up with some interesting conclusions. So, to give you a taste of the sort of wisdom I plan to put out for you, free of charge, I address a BIG ONE up front. That way, you will see there is no bait and sw