Stickman makes Jack Spratt* of the children’s fairy tale look absolutely obese.
Stickman finds himself in a variety of everyday situational dilemmas that most of us do as well. It’s his “rail like” dimension that makes his problem even more of an issue than you and I face.
* Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean. Yeah, that Jack Spratt.
[ Part Two of a Trilogy ]
The American president is strategizing to position himself for re-election. He needs a cause with which to identify and emerge as omnipotent. Solving the conflict between the UK / Protestant Northern Ireland and the IRA would position him for the Nobel Peace Prize and guarantee his re-election.
To gain the highest degree of favor, he decides (based on upper echelon advice from the Pentagon) to remove a particularly thorny problem, an IRA leader who has been so successful against Britain’s interests. The President leans on a trusted general to produce the army’s best black ops sniper / assassin – Colonel Daniel Riley.
Riley is dispatched to Dublin to eliminate Michael Burke but chaos builds upon chaos before he can complete his assignment. In the turmoil that ensues he comes face-to-face with Burke and slowly he learns that Burke is not the problem. By teaming with Burke and several others it becomes apparent that it is the British government that is behind the bombings and assassinations. Jeremy Smythe, late of the British SAS, a hulking bulwark of a thug is the “hammer” used by the Director General of Britain’s MI5, Admiral Hornaway to systematically conduct a campaign of terror in Ireland and even against their own citizens in London so as to be able to lay blame at the feet of the IRA.
The conflict culminates on the occasion of the Queen Mother’s 100th birthday. Riley, Burke and Cronin intercept Smythe and his hired assassin, a former Russian Spetnaz killer. The shot intended for the Queen Mother flies errantly and strikes a young, popular princess, killing her.
After the Irishmen are able to take down the British assassins they pledge to find out where the order for this kill actually came from, how high it would reach.
A young German boy and his father are inseparable. They are bound by love and respect. Their two lives are one until the father is called away to serve in the Kaiser’s army in 1914. The father serves with distinction and becomes a highly recognized hero within the Fatherland. Near the end of the war, however, he is grievously wounded when a British tank rolls over one side of his body. When he returns he finds the son’s love has not diminished despite his hideous condition. His wife, however, will have nothing to do with him. Finally, he uses his service revolver to end his physical and psychological trauma. This paves the way for the mother to openly cavort with other men to the outrage of the teenage boy. After killing her as she labored beneath the corpulent Jewish manufacturer who had previously employed the husband the boy is caught and imprisoned at Landsberg – in the cell across from his is Adolf HItler.
Hitler takes the boy under his “wing” and after his release moves him through an intensive exposure to the army where Heinz, the boy, excels; where he has found a true home under the tuteledge of his mentor, Adolf Hitler. The boy becomes Hitler’s key to paving the way for the German Anchlus to retake Europe and becomes known as “Hitler’s Key, or Der Schlussel as he reaches the top ranks of the army.
The final assignment given Heinz by his mentor is to assassinate FDR so as to throw the U.S. chain of command into a tailspin and allow time to regroup on the western front. Heinz is intentionally captured and sent to a POW camp in the U.S. where he encounters xx, an Amish farmboy from central Indiana. XX has foresaken his religious beliefs to help his country and serves as a Military Police Escort Guard at Camp Atterbury in Indiana.
Heinz befriends the POW camp guard and when they are out on assignment to pick tomatoes for the canning factories Heinz escapes. After a tedious trip to Warm Springs, Georgia, he makes good on his assignment and assassinates FDR. XX has been close on his heels after escaping the temporary POW camp at Windfall, Indiana, and manages to encounter Brigadfuhrer Heinz Rheinhard as he escaping through the woods after his kill-shot.
Only one Secret Service Agent and FDR’s doctor saw what happened to the President whose casket was never opened. Did Heinz Rhinehard (or some real German agent) succeed in assassinating the President? What would we do today? We would “close ranks” and lie to the public and indicate that the President died simply of a cerebral hemmorhage, aka natural causes. To tell the truth would make us look too vulnerable.
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“Brenda – A Whimsical Look at a Fallen Star” is a story about values, emotions, hope, despair, frustration, ambition. . . a story of good versus evil. It’s about “us and them.” It’s about love and it’s about contempt.
A young girl who has grown up in Terre Haute, Indiana, in the quintessential dysfunctional family in which she is offered to her father’s poker buddies to pay off his perpetual gambling debts. Her mother can’t help her because she’s busy “bedding” every thing in pants. . . in her daughter’s presence.
Brenda escapes to Hollywood where she’s caught up in the homeless / drug scene. Eventually she and her voluptuous body are “discovered” – not at Schwab’s Drug Store but trying to hustle some drugs in front of the Pussycat Theater on the Boulevard.
Brenda is seduced into the porn industry where her looks and talents propel her to the top where she remains for several years. Eventually, however, a new body comes along and Brenda becomes a veritable “has been.” She plummets into physical and psychological oblivion.
Enter Dr. Malcolm Hughes, head of the Psychology Department at LA’s premier private university. He’s gotten a federal grant to conduct research and interviews for the purpose of returning those in the porn industry to mainstream society.
Hughes’s fractured personality, sexual obsessions and narcissistic petulance clash with Brenda’s fragile emotional state. Brenda’s “good friend” intervenes – Brenda re-emerges as a legitimate superstar through the tutelage of her friend.
What happens to Dr. Hughes? What of the relationship between Brenda and her “girl friend?” And, lastly, how do all the values, societal norms, and lifestyle balance in the end?
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“Ruthie – A Life Out of Focus” is a story about human tragedy and the effort to rise above its clutches. A mindless accident, a snowy night collision, leaves Ruthie with impaired cognitive powers from the tender age of two days. Her mother was essentially butchered in the collision and her father, feeling the loss of his wife, turned to drinking in a big way. Little Ruthie fell through the proverbial cracks. Were it not for some neighbor ladies, Ruthie would have died. Ruthie became a ward of the court and was taken under the wing of a foster family.
As she grew, their strictness and absence of love wore on Ruthie. In school she was lost, ostracized, teased and humiliated until she cried relentlessly.
Ruthie is overweight, poorly dressed, her makeup poorly applied. . . frumpy at best.
Ruthie’s behavior is also outlandish. Her language skills were developed by listening to her obscenely drunk father shouting profanities at his $5 “whores.” When challenged she resorts in kind to abusive language that is startling by any standard. Junior high was cut short to get rid of her; her high school experience was cut short – holding no promise for success. All structured ties. . . severed.
When Ruthie encounters “the Dude,” a whole new set of experiences envelop her outlook on life. . . but then the Dude is drafted and sent to Vietnam. However, the Dude has imparted a new way of life to Ruthie’s life. She manages to bound from one demeaning sexual experience to another as her life is now laced by white powder. Following a stint in a rehab facility, she begins dancing at a “gentlemen’s” club on the south side of town. It is her! She loves it! She’s developed a technique to undulate her bulbous four hundred pounds around the stage. . . and ignore the cat calls of the college students who bang their “long necks” on the tables in rhythm to the blaring music. She dances herself into a drug-induced emotional and physical collapse.
The downward spiral finally ends and Ruthie finds some semblance of salvation. . . but too late.
In an effort to bring as much authentic detail to this series as possible, we have visited a great many of the sites as possible – some are still in operation, some are skeletons of their former wartime operation and some are simply gone. Our own photography tries to amplify upon the textual descriptions as possible. Additionally, we have visited every local library where we did site visits, as well as historical societies and talked with as many individuals who served at or lived near the facility as we could track down. We augmented our own research with additional details from the internet and maps and aerial photos from Google Earth when necessary.
The Center for Military of History, Fort McNair, was kind enough to provide us with two series of documentation from the Office of the Adjutant General: Directory of the Army of the United States and the Station List of the Army of the United States. With these references we have been able to incorporate appendices listing all the units stationed at the installation for the reporting period (not all reporting periods were available).
The data on installations are organized by Service Command (one per book), by state within, and then by branch of the Army: Ground Forces, Air Forces, Service Forces, and POW Camps.
(Click PayPal to buy any of these)Sample Data (Station List of the Army of the United States)
An incredible irony exists in the United States – one to which our government has turned a “blind eye.” Simply stated. . . at the same time that a large portion of our country suffers from consummate flooding, other portions of the country (often adjacent to each other), a periling drought consumes the landscape.
The scientific community and select members of our national government have initiated a dialogue with regard to the impacts of global warming and its consequences upon our nation. However, an even larger component of the government vociferously denies the very existence of global warming. Our current condition with regard to water is directly impacted by global weather patterns.
Over the years, our only approach to flooding seems to have been that we accept it and its consequences as irreversible, likewise with regard to drought. In generations past, our leaders have seen the wisdom of building enormous capital projects to control flooding – and it does. . . as far as the control of such facilities reaches. However, flooding occurs throughout the eastern half of the U.S. and drought prevails throughout the western half of the U.S. – to generalize.
This research delves into the possibility of simultaneously addressing each of these conditions by controlling flood waters and redirecting them to address the drought conditions. A national grid of water pipelines – not dissimilar to the Alaska Oil Pipeline (but smaller vessels) and laid out not unlike the National Defense and Interstate Highway System, could be used to store water within the system until needed, routed to lakes, reservoirs and other rivers to syphon off the potential for flooding or it can be routed westerly to create new farms lands out of land heretofore “unplantable” due to the lack of water or feed existing state growing regions such as the central valley of California and more.
The critical point to understand in reading this research is to realize that its purpose is to get elected officials, the technical community, and concerned citizens to talk. . . to realize that there is a conceivable means by which to deal with this devastating elements of nature. . . rather than just sit on our collective hands and wait for the next wave of problems to arise.
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With the assistance of the U.S. Army through the U.S. Army Center for Military History at Fort McNair, extensive field investigation, library and internet research, the author(s) have compiled the first in a series of a ten volume set of encyclopedic notations that span a 10-year investigation. The series contains research notes, details from interviews, local library and historical societies’ findings, historic and our own current photography from the “field” and more showing the current and WWII-period details regarding Army Ground Forces, Army Air Forces, Army Service Forces, and POW Camps in the Fifth Service Command (Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio & West Virginia).
The documentation incorporates from the Station List of the Army of the United States and the Directory of the Army of the United States, an historical accounting of each unit to have served at each of the installations by reporting period (generally monthly, but early-war data is less thorough) as developed by the Office of the Adjutant General. Also provided are detailed accountings of German and Italian prisoners of war by Base Camp, Branch Camp, and Work Camps as recorded by the Office of the Provost Marshal General.
The next volume produced will be the Sixth Service Command which relates to the states of Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. This will be followed by the First (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT), the Second (DE, NJ, NY), Third (MD, PA, VA). the Fourth (AL, FL, GA, MS, NC, SC, TN), the Seventh (CO, IA, KS, MN, MO, ND, SD, WY), the Eighth (AR, LA, NM, OK, TX), and the Ninth (AZ, CA, ID, MT, NV, OR, UT, WA). These are all part of what the Army referred to as installations in CONUS – Continental U.S. A last volume will include the non-CONUS installations from Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, the Caribbean, the Philippines, and the North Atlantic.