More Random Notes From Wrinkled Scraps...

…all one need do to personally assess the war in Iraq is to go to LiveLeak.com & watch it in action, from both sides – everyone has a cell phone camera – notwithstanding the Pentagonian version, here’s what’s really going on, ask any Iraqi vet, Insurgent or Marine…

…where only a few years ago the hallways of VA hospitals were filled with aging World War II, Korean War and Vietnam-era vets yesterday when I was in the VA in White River the corridors were crawling with armless, crippled, shell shocked soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan, none appeared to be older than 25, most younger…and the 1000 yard stare is back…

…man, years ago, like 43 of them, I pawned the gold watch my parents gave me for graduation somewhere in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco so, not to put too fine a point on it, so I could have some money to drink and buy drugs with on my way to the celebrated North Beach; husbandry has never been a specialty of mine, so off I trundled on the trolley cars and up major inclines which define the trip up Powell Street and in a few minutes there I was, the City Lights Bookstore, the Jazz Workshop, Lisa Kindred, some kid named Janis Joplin and a band called Big Brother and the Holding Company were playing at The Coffee Gallery, I tell you how so seminal a moment in my life can possibly have been 43 years ago sends me into overdrive, hold on Dude, I gotta get an opener…and the guilt of having pawned that watch grows exponentially, my Father went to his grave not knowing and my Mother, may she live to be a 110, thinks it was stolen and won’t see this unless you call her up and blow the whistle on me…