Coming up on Christmas, 2025

22. December 2025 · Write a comment · Categories: Domestic

Another journey around the sun, another year, another Christmas looming up rather like the iceberg loomed over the Titanic. Wee Jamie may be old enough this year to really appreciate it all, but with one thing after another, we didn’t so as much as we usually do to prep for Christmas. I was hustling to finish a romance that I began as a challenge, which I wanted to launch (read – kick ruthlessly out into the world and see if it flew) as a Christmas present for the public, or at least, that portion of the public who adores romance novels and consumes them like a box of gourmet chocolates.

Oh, we got the shopping done, gifts for each other and for Jamie, but the tree is minimal – even with gifts piled up around it (mostly to protect from Miso, Moose, Prince the Magnificent who love to play with the ornaments, or sleep on the tree skirt, and Persephone, who usually doesn’t care). We didn’t put out lights outside or put out much in the way of ornaments. The time just seemed to catch up to us, I guess. We did get the Christmas baking done, and distributed platters of cookies and fudge to the fire department, police substation, some local businesses and a sadly diminished number of close neighbors. Our next-door neighbor passed away late in the fall, as did some others that we had been close to, during the time we lived here. Some other neighbors moved … anyway, we only did two batches of fudge this year with whatever we had on hand left over from previous years, some pecan angel bar cookies and lebkuchen from a recipe that I had been intrigued by for a couple of years. (The lebkuchen was splendid, by the way – a soft bar version made with dates and raisins, and almond-flavored frosting. Recipe included below.)

We will have a splendid Christmas supper though – the usual Beef Wellington, and everything bought to fix for it, although puff pastry was a bit of a challenge to find.

We’ve got some big projects coming up in the new year, including getting my own car running again (since it sat for months in the driveway, as I was too jumpy about driving, after the accident with the Versa) getting Jamie started in regular school, and getting Return to Alder Grove in a print version – so I think we are just resting before the big push.

For the splendid lebkuchen; Preheat the oven to 375 degrees, grease and flour two 9 x 9 pans.

Sift together, 2 cups flour, 1/2 tsp. baking soda, 1/2 tsp. baking powder, and 1 tsp. cinnamon

Beat together with a rotary beater till the mixture forms a ribbon; 1 pound dark brown sugar and 4 whole eggs.

Add 1 tsp. each of orange juice, lemon juice, vanilla extract, almond extracts to the egg and brown sugar mixture.

Gradually stir in the dry mixture, a little at a time.

When completely mixed in, add 1/2 cup chopped walnuts, 4 oz. chopped dates and 1 cup raisins.

Bake for about 25 minutes (or a little less; test the cake with a cake tester to see if it’s done).

Melt about 6 Tbs. of unsalted butter and add 2 Tbs. hot milk, ½ to 1 Tbs. almond extract, and enough confectioner’s sugar (about 2 cups) to make a frosting of spreading consistency. Frost and enjoy – we like the marzipan-taste of the larger quantity of almond extract, but can be reduced

A Christmas Present Book For You All!

20. December 2025 · 2 comments · Categories: Book Event

Love in all the wrong places – Caro Robertson was a professional researcher, employee and occasional on-air reporter for a national public radio outlet; the perfect job, the perfect condo, the perfect fiancée. She had the college education, the job, the social position, the perfect life … and then in one fell swoop, everything went sour. Wrong. Disastrously wrong. In the space of a single week, she lost her beloved pet, the perfect fiancée and then her job. What was left for her, but to return to Alder Grove, the little town in Texas where she lived as a child and try to rebuild that life and a new career?

Mark Bascomb – owner of a small fabrication business, small-town handyman, veteran and high-school drop-out; everything in life that Caro Robertson wasn’t. Could they find common ground with each other, a common interest, even love, when they are so different?

Find out when the sparks fly in Alder Grove, in this short romance novel by the author of the Chronicles of Luna City, and the Adelsverein Trilogy.

 

Unlike one of my other novels – My Dear Cousin – the concept and characters for this one did not appear in a dream. It is the result of a dare and a challenge during a Zoom get-together with the other contributors to a tech and history blog that I regularly contribute to. The various writers to that blog are widely scattered and we meet regularly via Zoom to discuss matters of interest to us all. Such sessions are often wide-ranging. Late in the fall of 2025 the conversation wandered onto the dire economic impact of student college loans and how that impacted romance and marriage; how people who had blindly assumed such loans in the expectation of earning a comfortable living with their degree (many of them female) were stuck working in low-paying jobs after graduation and thus had limited prospects for marriage. Whereas young men who had instead opted for a blue-collar, working-class profession which gave them autonomy and a comfortable income … but such young men just weren’t attractive prospects for young college graduate women. The trend in pop culture seemed to hold that college-graduated women would be marrying down in marrying a plumber, HVAC or skilled trades man – even if that man was economically doing ever so much better. So, it was suggested that perhaps some kind of media trend in entertainment might joggle the culture … to make it attractive or even trendy for a college-graduate woman to marry a skilled-trades high-school-maybe guy … a Hallmark movie romance, or a novel … and at that juncture all the guys in the call looked at me, as the novel writer among them, chanting “Do it! Do it!”

So I did – it sounded like a fun and interesting challenge, writing in a genre that I hadn’t worked in, on a tight deadline, and with the essential plot already mapped out for me: just the characters, conversation, descriptions and specific incidents to be created: easy-peasy. So here it is – a link for pre-order! A Christmas present for you all. The eBook will be available on Christmas Eve, and a print version shortly thereafter.

Black Friday and All

29. November 2025 · Write a comment · Categories: Domestic

We’ve never really gotten into the whole Christmas shopping thing – the whole rush-out-to-the-store and spend-gobs-of-money the day after Thanksgiving zeitgeist. First, because there’s never really been that kind of money in any of our families, and secondly because doing it all in a rush during December always seemed a bit pointless. I spent so much time overseas, when it came to Christmas presents for the family back in the states, it meant getting everything mailed by October, so presents had to be decided upon, shopped for, wrapped, packed and mailed late in the fall. That mental timetable has never died, so my Christmas present habits generally fell into a routine of picking up suitable gifts during the year, whenever I spotted them and stashing them away against the mailing deadline.

My daughter thinks that the whole Black Friday doorbusters thing, which had shoppers lining up at ungodly hours at various retailers and mobbing the place when the doors opened at whenever – has pretty much died. The few years that retail outlets even made a thing of opening with much ballyhooed bargains on Thanksgiving night was even less popular – and fortunately that has died the death as well. As commenters kept pointing out – it not only ruined family Thanksgiving gatherings for shoppers, but those of the poor employees as well. And as also kept being pointed out – the so-called bargains weren’t really bargains. They were marked up … so they could be marked down with great fanfare.

This year we did pop out to three different retail outlets, though – but not strictly speaking, for Christmas shopping. The first stop was the Ikea outlet, which opened a couple of years ago, just a hop-skip-jump away; and that was because it was cold outside, and we’d get our exercise walking through the maze. We wanted to see if there was anything new in the sample room arrangements, which are always sweet to look at (they change them out, regularly so there is always something new) and if Ikea had anything special in the way of Christmas things. But the parking lot was practically empty, there were some shoppers in the store itself, but not as many as we seen on other visits. Ikea items used to be more of a bargain – not so much, now. The packets of meatballs are more expensive, and the frozen salmon fillets are pricier than they used to be.

We did have to get milk at the grocery store – but we were passing the Goodwill store on the way there, and my daughter wanted to stop in, saying that this particular Goodwill outlet often has surprisingly high-quality goods. I’m OK with that – as I’m trying to replace many of the movies I had on VHS with DVD versions, and buying them used at Goodwill, yard sales and through the ‘used’ option on Amazon is the most economical way to go. (It’s a mystery to me, though – how some movies on DVD are available for a dollar or two, and others – of the same popularity, year of release, and everything else – are practically unobtainable.) I found half a dozen movies on my list and a TV series which I thought about before putting it back – and then adding it to my stack. Someone donated a lot of TV series collections, apparently. One of them was Little House on the Prairie – several seasons worth. I liked the books better than the TV series, so gave those sets a miss. But the one that I took had splendid opening and a rocking soundtrack, so what the heck.

The cashier who checked me out was about eighteen, I think, He asked, “All movies?”

I said, “One TV series – this one.”

“Looks cool … what’s it about?”

“WWII aviation in the South Pacific – the adventures of a Marine squadron known as the Black Sheep.”

“Never heard of it.”

“No, likely you wouldn’t have – but your Mom or your grandmother probably did.”

And that was our post-Thanksgiving in-person Christmas shopping; everything else was done online.

We went to see the Christmas tree lighting in old downtown Bulverde, where the highlight of the evening was Jamie falling out of his Radio Flyer red wagon, landing on his head and opening up the cut on the back of his head that he got the week before on the playground at preschool. He also managed to ninja out of the first bouncy house without either of us seeing him do it. Good thing he was dressed in his Christmas elf costume, and someone else spotted him at the next bouncy house in the circuit just as we realized he wasn’t in the first one. The kid moves fast as greased lighting.

So – on to Christmas. I plan to have the romance “Return to Alder Grove” available on Kindle by Christmas Eve, as a present for you all!

Turkey Day Approaches

23. November 2025 · Comments Off on Turkey Day Approaches · Categories: Domestic, Random Book and Media Musings

I swear, I don’t know where the time goes. Here we are, closing in on Thanksgiving, and the Christmas decorations are already out everywhere – and next weekend it will be the Christmas Tree lighting in Bulverde. Since my daughter has decided that Bulverde is the place that she eventually wants to be in (mostly for the school district) we do take an interest in civic festivities going on there. Hope it is cold enough for the snow-making machinery this year. We plan to dress Wee Jamie in his elf costume again.

Anyway, Jamie’s preschool is out for the entire week. The staff held a pie social for kids in each class and their parents on Friday afternoon; we all went out to the landscaped playground and had pie, before taking the kids home for a week of shopping, feasting and general frivolity.

Saturday – we went around to a selection of our usual grocery stores for what we desperately hope will be the last time we need to run out to the grocery store before Thanksgiving. Every year we say this, and every year we wind up running out for something at the last minute …

Anyway, the turkey is already set. HEB had a coupon last week: buy one of their spiral sliced hams and get a frozen turkey of under 12 pounds for free! Yeah, can’t beat that deal with a stick. $24 for the ham – which got parted out, vacuum-sealed for the freezer for future meals and the bone consigned to a batch of ham and bean soup – and the turkey is thawing now in the refrigerator. We’ll mix up the brine tomorrow, and brine it for another three days.

Cosco first thing Saturday wasn’t too horrific – we escaped with a gargantuan tin of Walker’s Shortbread (the real stuff, imported from Scotland.) I think eventually the tin will contain either sewing stuff, or maybe odds and ends of hardware, screws and plate hangers in the garage. Nice cookie tins have an afterlife of centuries. There is an ornate tea tin knocking around our family which is going on a second hundred years, as it managed to survive the 2003 fire … and if it is still at my sisters’ house, the Eaton Canyon fire earlier this year.

My daughter also bought a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce at HEB which had a translated label which amused us no end. Apparently, it translates as “Salsa Inglesa”

As for Thanksgiving supper itself – all the customary dishes that we do like – the oven-roasted brussels sprouts with onion and kielbasa sausage, baked sweet potato streusel, mashed potatoes, stuffing and gravy, with pumpkin pie for dessert – this time made with the little pumpkin that Jamie painted at nursery school for their Halloween bash. The parents were asked to contribute small pumpkins – so, when it was brought home, I washed it off, cut it in half, cleaned out the seeds and baked it until it was soft and mushy. Then vacuum-sealed and frozen.

The only bafflement, grocery-wise this week was the total inability to find frozen artichoke hearts anywhere at all. It’s kind of an esoteric item, but HEB usually has them, and Trader Joe’s almost always … but still, nowhere to be found anywhere lately. I wonder if there was a bad harvest year for the artichoke crop that usually gets frozen for sale.

So that’s how it stands this weekend – a rainy one, as it turns out. I am working away on the Return to Flannel Romance, which I plan to release as a reader’s Christmas present – on Christmas Eve, I think. My daughter says she will laugh and laugh and laugh, if it turns out to be the most popular of all my books…

Severe Lacka-Movie – Or Tales from the AFRTS Crypt

14. November 2025 · Comments Off on Severe Lacka-Movie – Or Tales from the AFRTS Crypt · Categories: Memoir

I wrote a couple of months ago about the odd and (usually rightfully) obscure movies that we got in the AFRTS shipments of programming back in the day that I was a lowly airman, working the night shift in the TV control room at FEN-Misawa. Indeed, we received many an odd selection of movies in the weekly package of TV programming.

In the first year or so of my service, the weekly TV program package came on half-hour long film reels, and then on Umatic ¾ videotape cassettes, which were a lot less messy to deal with – but still had their own challenges, mostly because the cassettes were held together with about thirty teeny metal screws, which had the dismaying tendency to come loose in transit – and then drop into the innards of the playback machine, necessitating much swearing by our engineering staff and possibly damage to the delicate machinery itself. As our experience developed with that format, a small Phillips-head screwdriver was routinely chained to the rack where the daily programs were pulled from their metal traveling cases and lined up the night before by the on-duty operator. Yes, part of that duty was to tighten ALL the screws holding each and every tape case together, the rollers, and the little metal flange that was supposed to protect the tape itself. In some cases, we went to the extent of opening and carefully rethreading the tape through the various rollers and take-up reels. Yes, we probably weren’t supposed to be doing this, but … whatever. The program had to air, especially if it were a very popular one. We all got very good at administering first aid to ailing Umatic cassette tapes.

Anyway – the movies. Many of the movies in the package were … grade C. The bottom of a double feature in a dollar theater in the bad part of town. Or so old and/or low rent that they were aired late at night back at home, interspersed with commercials for shady used car lots. It was a bafflement for years – why did AFRTS generally seemed to get the absolute dregs when it came to movies? We kind of got it that the military post-Vietnam was about as popular as a case of herpes with the Hollywood set, and perhaps that was the reason. We shrugged and moved on.

In the fullness of time, I finished the tour in Japan, whiled away a pleasant year in the Public Affairs office at (now closed) Mather AFB. After that, I did a tour at Sondrestrom AB, Greenland, of which it was often said, “Not the end of the world – but you can see it from there!” Sondrestrom was thirty miles north of the Arctic Circle and saved from complete and total isolation by also being the main international airport for all of Greenland.

During WWII the US Army Air Corps, after careful consideration, sited a transit airfield on that exact spot, because of usually favorable local weather conditions, as opposed to the generally unwelcoming weather conditions practically everywhere else on that continent. For an isolated military base, Sondrestrom AB hosted a constant trickle of international travelers on the Danish side of the base where the international airport terminal and hotel complex was situated –  separated from the American military side by nothing more than a narrow road around the top end of the landing strip.

(The runway had been built half on hard ground and half on fill blasted out from the hills and dumped into the end of a 40-mile-long fjord. It bent downhill in the middle. Only very experienced pilots of large aircraft were permitted to land and take off from Sondrestrom, situated as it was at the end of a 40-long, straight-as-a-die fjord with tall mountains lining either side.)

Anyway, there had long been an Air Force broadcasting squadron detachment at Sondrestrom. For exactly how long, I didn’t know; the very oldest discs in the library of AFRTS-Radio releases in the record library there (specifically in limited issue to AFRTS-Radio outlets only, beginning with #1 sometime in the early 40’s) were on enormous 16-inch records, and numbered in the 600s.

There was also – because this was an Air Force establishment, a range of recreational venues, all catering to the Air Force personnel, the Danish and American contract employees, Danish staff of the Royal Greenlandic Trading Co., and the airport. This included NCO and officer clubs, a small indoor swimming pool (said to be the only such in Greenland) and the BX movie theater, which usually showed first-run movies about six months after said movies opened Stateside. The co-location of the BX theater, and the international airport and hotel in such a remote site had a strange and incidental bearing on the lack of good movies in the AFRTS weekly packages, for a reason that I didn’t hear about until a decade later.

I did a year-long tour in Greenland and departed for a follow-on to Greece – my choice as a reward for a year in a place that couldn’t possibly be any more remote unless it was the Antarctic. Eventually I finished out my overseas assignments in Korea, at AIG-Yongsan, in the heart of downtown Seoul. In a conversation with an older NCO, who had knocked around military broadcasting for some years longer than I had and had a wider repertoire of stories about that specialty and some of the very odd characters in it. When I mentioned that I had done a tour in Greenland, he told me how our broadcast detachment there was the direct cause of movies in AFRTS-TV weekly packages being routinely so third- or fourth-rate for decades.

I honestly do not know if the story he told me was true or not. I am certain that it was technologically and in practice possible. Being in such isolated location, with only the semi-weekly transport aircraft from the States, and international flights taking a northerly route as a lifeline to the larger world – military personnel stationed there get very, very bored. It’s always dangerous when intelligent people in an isolated situation get bored. Because they do creative things to alleviate that boredom, especially when there is no one around to advise against the most … er, creative diversions.

What is supposed to have happened is that whoever was in charge of the BX movie theater got together with someone at the broadcast station.

(It may have been the same person, actually. It was a small base, and a lot of personnel doubled up on extra jobs. The year I was at Sondrestrom, the NCOIC of the Security Police unit was also the senior enlisted advisor, and manager of the BX theater.)

That person, or persons enabled the almost-new movie releases intended to be shown at the base theater to be taken to the station – and broadcast. This spectacularly violated a pair of iron-clad rules, the first being that only TV and radio programs provided by the AFRTS programming center can be aired by stations worldwide. The other larger rule violated – and the one with major outside-the-military implications – was that the movies to be shown in the base theater had not been released for broadcast in any form. That those movies were being illegally broadcast at a dinky military TV station with a total reach of maybe five miles in any direction, thirty miles north of the Arctic Circle made no difference. It violated the rights of the various movie copyright holders – yet it might have passed unnoticed.

But it didn’t. Apparently, according to my acquaintance, a fairly prominent studio executive happened to be passing through the international airport. Stuck in the airport hotel for a night or two, he turned on the TV in his room … and saw one of his studio’s new releases being broadcast. Illegally. When that executive got back to the States, the word went out from him, and just about every other movie production house that AFRTS was henceforward on the bad books; from then on, only used-up movie dregs were released to the AFRTS TV programming center.

I really don’t know if this occurred as my informant told me, as it was a story passed along like a game of telephone. But I – and anyone who ever tuned into AFRTS during the last quarter of last century can truthfully testify that, yeah – the movies broadcast on military TV stations were a very odd and generally low-rent collection.

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