Blogging

Some Good Tymes in 2015

~ Donald J. Lund

First, I need to thank each and every human who discovered this blog over the last 12-months.  Whether you got here by invitation or by accident, the overwhelming kind words, support and feedback are key ingredients moving forward.

The dream of words published beyond my meandering anecdotes here is yet to be realized, but I can safely say, I generated more words here on my stories than any previous year of existence.  At the busiest point of my journalism career, I hit up to 15 bylines a week.  It is vastly different from the creative side.  Some days were editing days only, some days were research only, and then of course, my favorite way to warm up my wordsmith skills happened right here at Lundon Tymes.

By the numbers, I wrote 51 blogs in all.  One shy of the one per week goal I set last January.  Some of them generated interest long after they hit the ‘net, and others barely caught a first glance.  The U.S. of A was the primary source for this year’s audience, but some of you are from far away places.  WordPress noted that the United Kingdom had a few curious readers show up here, and the biggest surprise of all to me, was Russia was third in the list of total readers.

My Russian readers trend in when I talk up one my favorite series by George R.R. Martin.  It is nice to know we can connect on a sword and sorcery kind of level.  Russian readership pushed Canada to fourth place, I will try harder to provide entertaining topics for the Canucks in our studio audience.

Germany, India, Brazil and Australia top out the International readers who visited here in 2015.   Which is pretty cool since many writers suggested starting a new blog could be a wasted effort.  That the world is burned out on this form of communication.  I understand the concern, I only have so many moments in the day to read, and my choices need to be strategic to get the best value out of that time.  All things that help the creative process.

The trick is, all of us have limited time to read, write, work or relax, regardless of vocation.  So again, anyone who wandered in here, I’m grateful and hopefully the stop was worth your time.

The most read topic was the author info, which is kind of fun.  It also might mean I should re-write that and make it more interesting for next year.  The second most read piece for the Tymes was the sixth blog I wrote early in the year, If a blog falls in the forest. In essence, I think that one hit a sweet spot for kindred spirits like me who are trying to build an audience from nothing.

Edged out of first place by a couple views, was the semi-controversial Is HBO Winning the Game of Thrones?  The answer is of course is yes they are. However, I still contend drift further away from source material too often just to throw in spicy misogynistic elements.  I don’t know if my Russian readers agreed with me or not at this point, they are a quiet bunch.

A happy surprise ended up as the third most read topic of 2015, as a simple recollection of one of those days I knew I a storyteller in the making.  A little kid telling other little kids how cool a summertime back yard can really be in The First Story.

One my favorites, another youthful memory, A 12-year old Walks into a Bar somehow made the most read blogs of the year as well.

A remembrance of my very cool Dad jumped in the year’s top five, The Letter Jacket – An Ode to Dad was likely helped a lot by family members and the many family friends who also miss the one and only David Lund.

There are a few more topics that made a late push, but I will leave fate to either discover or ignore those.  I’ve recovered enough ground at this point.  It is time to move forward with the changing calendar.

Another moment to change the writing from a dream to reality, another chance to improve and be a better writer, a better person, husband, father, brother, son or friend.

I was a bit of a recluse in 2015.  Outside of family travel and events, the focus was on getting words down on paper or into computer memory.  I probably need to get out more, continue to overhear real conversations, observe and report on the weird or unique elements that reflect our humanity.

And thus we’re off to new adventures, new stories, new blog bits and another lap around the sun.  Thanks for reading and being, and here are to more joyous Tymes ahead.

Have a very safe and happy New Year!

 

An Evening With Kevin Smith

~ Donald J. Lund

We sort of got to hang out with Kevin Smith last night.  Not in the he came over to the house and had a couple beers with the family kind of way.  My wife, youngest son and me walked around the frigid Colorado December air and found Mr. Smith at the Boulder Theater.  Twenty rows back, in an uncomfortable chair and in the noisy bar area, was about as close as we could get in the 850-chair venue.

He passed along some humorous anecdotes, dropped some big time Hollywood names, a substantial pile of f-bombs and some bits I was not expecting.  Dude was throwing down serious wisdom.  Yes, the guy who happily generates genital jokes, rolls around in nerdy comic book references, and rocks the hockey jersey wardrobe worked in some sagely candor to all who would listen in that small theater.

Boiling it all away, it could have been dismissed as a ‘follow your dreams kids’ mantra passed down from high upon a stage to the wannabes below.  But there was more to it than that.  It was a big hearted man, with great empathy for all creative souls to do far more than follow dreams.  He insisted we go and  make those things happen.  Will, perseverance, whimsy, whatever it takes — but go for it without sweating the critics who surround us all in this life.

Some readers who know me may jump in at this point and remind me I can’t write about Kevin Smith objectively. It’s true.  I’m a fan. More than a fan, ever since I watched the movie Clerks in complete awe, I see him more as a brother who I haven’t got to hug yet.

In awe of Clerks?

Yes.

Because he truly made something from nothing.  And he did it by begging, borrowing, selling off personal items, applying for way too many credit cards, all to make a film he knew only he could make.

That was the perspective I learned last night.  The motivation I’d not heard before, despite years of lingering about as a fan of most of his work, and now as a fan of his endless perseverance.

He didn’t make Clerks for me.  Initially, I thought he did.  If you haven’t seen it, in essence it is a long day with two wacky dudes inside convenience stores talking about Star Wars and lame customers, and two crazy dudes outside the store, dealing and dancing. Throw in a little romance, some lasagna and dead guy in the bathroom and you have a fascinating day in the life in Jersey that stays with you.

Easy, right?  Go deep into debt, roll the dice on a little film and live a life of magic and wonder.  I think too many Kevin Smith fans look at it that way and maybe this tour in particular has him trying to explain, it ain’t that easy, but it is worth the hard work and effort.  The stuff people forget is Mr. Smith has had to constantly reload, regroup, and try again.  Create more, do more, sell more, work harder, and as he put it, ‘fail a bunch of times’ before finding more success.

I did laugh at some of the anecdotes.  I love Ben Affleck stories.  And it bums me out Bruce Willis is a complete ass.  But that information was strictly entertainment bits based on personal experience.  The message I heard was loud and clear.  If you have a creative soul, or big story to tell, don’t dream it, do it.

I was going to get in the question line at the theater last night, despite knowing so few questions get answered.  And the fan in me kind wanted the bonding moment to point out all of the places our lives intersect — if presented in those Venn Diagram circles — both of us love to write, love movies, love comics, love Tarantino, worked retail, owned comic shops, love Batman, lost our dads, he’s a Kevin with a brother named Donald, I’m a Donald with a younger brother named Kevin, roller coaster with weight issues, I’ve done radio and he does podcasts.

I keep thinking if I shake the family tree hard enough, a Smith has to drop out of there.  We have to be related.

At least I know we’re kindred spirits.  And the funny part was I started this writing trek this year, to make something from nothing.  It has been equally joyous and frustrating.  I keep looking at my words and thinking, “Yeah, this ain’t Mice and Men.  Or Plato would never waste his time with genre fiction.  Or damn this stuff sucks.”

Sagely Kevin Smith served some wisdom.  It doesn’t matter if my work isn’t meeting a social standard, or an entertainment norm.  I need to finish these stories for me.  I need to tell stories only I am capable of telling.  Send my perspective out into the world and someone may love it, or not.  But the process is worth it.  Fail a bunch, maybe succeed a little, or not at all.

I always feel better writing, so I’m going with that.  Some of the stories I worry about being rejected will now get sent out.  I have a kind, generous loving support from my wife and a pen, which is far more than a lot of folks have.

Just like that. Back on track. Wisdom from my man teaching me to go for it and how not to send inappropriate text messages.  It also does not hurt to know Johnny Depp.  See, I’m smarter already.

A little kick in the butt from hanging out with Kevin Smith.

Nice.

The First Story

~ Donald J. Lund

Did you ever wonder how some of those first epic tales were born?  Do you ever ask how some of those ancient stories that have retold countless times and still remain inspirational elements of modern sagas came to be?

Classics like Gilgamesh, Beowulf, The Iliad and The Odyssey to name a few of the very first stories that have stayed with us for many centuries.

I often think back to those old tales and how they came to be, and if you don’t, I get it.  Some of the classics are told in a different style, not every scene includes the action of a modern hero’s tale.  However, if you do wonder about such things, we are kindred spirits.

I love stories.

All kinds of stories.  After so many readings of each story, I then find myself trying to be the author, the creator, the storyteller and imagine the mindset of those incredible imaginations.

I think it means I love telling stories as much as reading or hearing them.

I recall my very first epic.

It was told in the oral tradition, like many of my Celtic ancestors, and I relayed the tale my cousins in my grandparents’ backyard during one fateful summer.  I was probably seven years old at the time, and I started my career as on-demand storyteller.

Two of my cousins and my then four-year old brother occupied what looked like a normal backyard on a particularly hot summer day.  But it was far more than a normal yard.  It was a land of adventure.

And that particular day, it was ancient homeland to the happy green grasshoppers. A once happy land that had become a war zone.

I didn’t know it was a war zone myself until one of my cousins asked me about a number of wonderfully gross grasshopper exoskeletons that were stuck to branches of some evergreen bushes that spanned the entire back fence.

The inquisitor this day was my cousin Lisa.  She, who is just barely over two months older than me, but boy, did she have a way of reminding me who was the oldest kid.  I don’t know how it is for kids these days, but in my era, age was like military rank. Whoever was the oldest generally got to be in charge. Other powers included the ability to break a tie in key little kid votes, how pieces of pizza were  to be dispersed and general boss of younger humans in the absence of adults.  It was simple math, the oldest among us was also deemed the wisest.

Darn those two months.

Anyway, her question to me was, “How did those ghostly looking grasshopper remains get stuck onto those branches?

“Grasshopper Wars,” I cooly replied.

“Grasshopper Wars?” she questioned.

Of course, those were not exoskeletons to your less than humble storyteller.  Those were all that was left of dead grasshopper soldiers in a gruesome ongoing conflict.

“Oh, yes.  It has been especially brutal this summer.  Do you see all of the happier, smaller green grasshoppers around? “There used to be twice as many of them last week.”

“Wow. What happened?”

“The big, brown mean grasshoppers nearly wiped them out. And without our help, the green grasshoppers may not survive the day,” I explained.

At this point, my cousin Cristy looked for some kind of verification from my brother Jeff.  And, my brother had pretty much heard most of my stories in his four years of existence. Some of them liked, some not so much.

He looked at me in a way that let me know, he wasn’t buying into it.  But it was summer, my story seemed like it was off to a good start — and I watched him decide by the change in his facial expression, that he was ready for more.  So, he nodded his head in the affirmative.

My first Hollywood pitch had just been approved.

And the set – or I mean the backyard cooperated in a way far better than I thought possible.  There were indeed many more grasshoppers the week before.  The summer had witnessed a plague of the insects after a very wet spring.  My grandparents had sprayed the yard and there were a number of fallen grasshoppers in and around the yard.

From the war of course.

We were able to investigate different parts of the battleground to discover more ghostly looking exoskeletons, grasshopper bodies and some big, brown mean grasshoppers, caught in the act of invasion.  We jumped into the combat zone ourselves and captured brown grasshoppers and threw them into the neighbor’s yard, which happened to be the ancient tribal lands of those brown grasshoppers.

With a few brave humans on their side, we managed to liberate much of the captured green grasshopper territory.  The victories added up, but not without a cost.

We mourned the loss of some of the fallen greens. Those poor grasshoppers that did not die of any kind of pesticide, but we killed in the line of duty.  We gave them a proper burial and the day went quickly as I described the history of this epic struggle at various corners of the yard.

The day grew hot, and all the warriors became weary.  Someone foraged for lemonade inside the barracks. We soldiered on.

A lone cricket was found, and we could not determine which side it was on.  The wisest among us decided we should chase it off.  Just in case.  If the cricket weighed in with the brown grasshoppers, it could be a factor.

Spiders were easy.  They were the nemesis of both humankind and grasshopper kind, and as such, spiders were dispatched on sight.

We were young, but we were no fools.

My brother added several gruesome details all on his own and the story took off on a life of its own.  Somewhere near dinner time, a nod and wink to my brother was intercepted by the wisest among us.

“Hey, I saw that. Is this story really real?” Lisa demanded.

“Yes,” I offered meekly, my brother nodded in the affirmative on cue.

Cousin Cristy’s faith was shaken and she appealed to a higher authority for her confirmation, well beyond her sister, breaking the chain of command.  That’s when our grandmother shut it all down, “Grasshopper wars? Don’t be ridiculous!”

Genius is born on the back of being ridiculously daring.  Or so I hoped.  My tale was investigated further by the elders. What was the storyteller trying to accomplish?

Entertainment, of course.

“I was just explaining how a grasshopper exoskeleton got on a branch,” I said with defiant pride.

A really fun guess was the actual explanation.  And it was a very possible answer for a seven-year old.  We busted out the World Book Encyclopedias that evening to learn more of exoskeletons.  Sadly, no notes regarding the ill feelings of green versus brown grasshoppers were listed.

Looking back, I now feel like the great anonymous bard before me who saw the remains of a dinosaur and dreamed of dragons.  And then dreamed of the hero Beowulf brave enough to slay such a monster.

Some epics get all the love, others earn scrutiny, but our Grasshopper Wars remains an original from the summer of 1972.  Heroes we were, and so many green grasshoppers were truly saved, although they showed no real appreciation.

Skeptics be damned, it felt real and true at the time of the telling.

Truth it was for five glorious hours, and I was a Beowulf of sorts. A mini-Gilgamesh for a day.  And oh, like Odysseus, how bittersweet the homecoming.

And now it’s all just a story.

The first of many to come.

Live From New York!

~ Donald J. Lund

Okay, you got me.

It is not exactly live, an inherent disadvantage to the written word.  And this is not a full Saturday Night Live skit or tribute.

But it is lively.

As in I’ll be sharing my amazing and lively first ever journey to the Big Apple.  Or as I see the great city of New York as the Confluence of Humanity.  So many humans from so many unique walks of life all walking around the same place at the same time.

And I’m no rookie here on the planet. I’ve been around the proverbial block a few times. Six years in the Corps, five decades of vacations, moving to different states  and a love of languages, I have seen and heard a few things, but nothing like New York City.

For my wife and I, the city was merely a compilation of a lifetime of movies and television.  The setting for a giant slice of Americana.  Law and Order, Sex and City, The Odd Couple, to mention a few and the movies, so many movies I could be Serpico on patrol or even King Kong around the Empire State Building.  So for us, we were walking on stage.  It does get a little weird when you recall fictional body count scenes walking around Central Park on an otherwise gorgeous Sunday morning.

I knew Times Square gets crazy crowded for New Year’s Eve, because we saw it on TV.  However, I didn’t know the crazy crowd was year round.  The sidewalks and cross streets are not big enough to hold all the humanity and the crush of it in a few spots would be surreal if I wasn’t stuck with everyone else hoping the walk signal pops on to free us all from the moment.

The United Nations is just a building, the real deal United Nations are all the people from all over the planet in one American city.  The concept of the great melting pot is tricky, it doesn’t always work, but when it does, it happens in this city.  An imperfect place to be sure, but the perfect place to find out who you are.

One can’t help out every person in need there, but a few can be helped and it is great to see the moment I don’t have a dollar to give the very troubled man on the subway, a nice lady across from us does.  No one has to be nice, there are no rules about kindness, so it is always a good thing to witness.  As the argument in an episode of Friends it is tough to have a completely selfless act.  However, feeling good helping others works for me anyway, even if it doesn’t hit the selfless mark.

With kindness there is also the rude or jaded factor, but that happens any place you pack a pile of humans into tight spaces.  I love the diversity.  I love trying to figure out which language or accent I’m hearing.  I love the attitude.  One full day walking around the city, it kind of rubs off on you.  And not the John Travolta bee-bopping Saturday Night Fever style attitude either.  I’m talking Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, “I’m walkin’ here!” attitude.

The chest puffs up, shoulders out, owning your space a little bit, and more of a stride as cars try to turn into the area where people are crossing the street.  It just starts to happen, when in Rome, ya’ know?

We caught a musical, and a fun place to start was The Book of Mormon.  A fantastic play that was flawlessly performed and all the hype I had heard was absolutely correct.  I could see it again tomorrow.

Of course, we just missed out on a chance to see David Letterman.  The Ed Sullivan theatre is a block and half from where we stayed, but Dave retired a few weeks back.  The first day we were there, all the Letterman signs were still up on the building, but the next day they were gone.  So, for a couple of kids raised on television, and with New York as key backdrop, it was a slightly melancholy moment.

And the season was over for Saturday Night Live, so no chance to heard those famous words that title today’s blog. It wasn’t live, but it sure was lively around there. We did walk by “30 Rock” and Radio City Music Hall and Carnegie Hall and a few dozen other buildings we had heard of or watched on two dimensional screens.

We did a couple tourist type things, but couldn’t hit a fraction of the available activities in the three plus days we had to explore.  Instead of trying to cram all the sights in, I was at peace with it, since I know I’m coming back.  I don’t know how or when, but I do know this:  The city that never sleeps is bigger in real life than any kind of back drop for Broadway or Hollywood.

Restaurants, Irish pubs and knock-off handbag carts for as far as the eye can see in Manhattan. A glimpse was had, and it was not enough. Besides, we bought enough hip-hop sample CD’s off the street, we could instantly get into the music production biz.

I want another bite at the Big Apple and hopefully soon.

Our Story So Far

~ Donald J. Lund

Five months into this snappy, sometimes sappy little corner of the world wide web offers a brief moment to reflect on where we’re at and where we’re going.

I know.

“What’s with this we stuff?” Tonto asked the Lone Ranger after a bad day.

Whoever has wandered into this blog after it kicked off in late January with me is a part of the ‘we’ on this reading, writing journey.  This method to communicate with Universe, share some anecdotes, a laugh or two and some darts thrown at the philosophical dart board of life has been a great way to start many of my writing days.

Or writing daze on other occasions.

Thus far, it turns out there may be more websites, writing groups, workshops, magazines and conventions in the world than there are active writers.  And there are a LOT of folks in this writing boat with me. Again, all the better to me to have more folks out there, and the resources available are amazing.  And all that talk about craft can be surprisingly distracting. I think that is why so much modern writer humor revolves around the giant, shiny Internet destroying focus.

I get all of those jokes now. Although they were funnier when I wasn’t writing everyday.

Ultimately, I have found some great advice, great ideas and a bunch of places to go when I need help through tough spots as an emerging writer.  See that?  New lingo.  I discovered a boat load of material directed at folks just like me, on the verge of getting stories out into the world.

I emerge, therefore I am.

Lots of wisdom out there laying around for the emerging writers. This blog is not a requirement for an emerging writer, yet, a lot of people suggest it is a nice way for people who do eventually read more of your stuff to find a place to read more of your stuff.

The tale of the tape looks like this.  Three projects being worked on at the same time.  The Princess book, the sci-fi short story being edited and reworked and the strangely fun crime book that writes itself faster than my earlier works.

Which one will land first?  First one done.  I have decided to not be picky, and that my finest work may be one of these projects or something I have not yet imagined. The bottom line is I have recovered from the fear that whatever I publish, self-publish or put on a bubble gum card doesn’t have to be perfect.

It worked for my newspaper and radio career.  Some of my best works were not planned and some of the articles I wrote were technically the strongest pieces I had accomplished, some the last minute deadline ideas resonated more with my intended audience.

There will be some not great stories and some less than stellar moments in this passionate pursuit to write well.  It is the way the rest of life goes, I should have realized the same applies to my favorite thing to do as well.

Write it, throw it out there and if it gets accepted or thrown back, write some more.

However, I likely pull all of this off without having to surf over to trending writer articles on how to find a better verb or top ten best places for emerging writers to look at on the Internet.  Cartoons about writing are still open season, I love those.

More Lundon Tymes as well, it is still a nice way to kick off the writing day. Stay tuned, more adventures on the way.

The Matrix of Reality

~ Donald J. Lund

There are real scientists studying the question of whether or not our world is real or we’re living in a giant computer simulation as in the film, The Matrix.  And there is more than one study out there to examine the fabric of our reality to discern a potential truth of our existence.

It seems a bit weird, but Plato was asking similar questions in ancient Greece.  I’ve always thought The Matrix was a tribute to Plato’s allegory of the cave in his classic The Republic.  Plato’s allegory doesn’t imagine computers trying to trick us, instead he considers we have insufficient information to form a proper view of reality.  In effect, we trick ourselves until we know better.

Two quick examples include an original perception of the earth being flat by some observers held true until empirical evidence proved the earth was round.  Another scientific misperception for a time was that the earth was the absolute center of the solar system, and the universe revolved around it.

We now have additional information to improve our collective perception of what is real versus what some folks original considered the truth.

Getting back to the original concept, let me help those studying the possibility of us living in a computer simulation.  It’s not The Matrix.

I would love to be able to wake up, climb out of my bubble and go to war against the machines or whomever is trying to control us.  It would be far more fascinating than trying to generate stories and fictions of my own.  Who wouldn’t want to be Neo playing Superman within the confines of a faux reality?  Flying around and being bulletproof is an adventure I’m willing to take.

Instead, our human existence of pain, suffering, disease and depression in between beautiful sunsets, trees, flowers, family and love is all the programming we are going to get.  It would be nice to get a do over and choose a red pill or blue pill and live a greater truth or a return to a more comfortable faux dream state.

To take it a step further, there is another school of thought going around that our world is indeed real, but that we allow governments and corporations to put us to sleep anyway.  A concept, fairly new to me, has been thrown at my face a few times now on the Internet called infantilization.

Basically, as defined the world at large as keeping us adults in a “dependent, infantile stage of development” in order to control us.  We’re collectively being dumbed down, tuned into silly movies, books and trapped in the it is all-going-to-be-okay like in Disneyland existence.

If you spend just a single day on social media, one can see the basis for such an argument.  Our rich, complex English language is being reduced to a series of monosyllabic letters and numbers and we are all going to LOL our life way.

U no 4 real.

I consider ‘infantilization’ is just as much of an oversimplification as the concept of living in a matrix.  It is another dodge or a shadow we cannot yet define in the corner of Plato’s cave.

Yes, education needs to be rebuilt and perhaps reimagined.  Yes, because we have more people on the planet than ever before, we have more poor people than ever before.  And more bad things happening and it seems as if there is little we can do to alter the course of humanity.

However, the ultimate reality appears to be that is we can do make a difference each day with a series of choices.  We can choose to be kind.  We can choose to help someone in need.  We can learn and improve our knowledge base.  And for kicks, we can choose to fully spell words out in a Tweet.

I jest a bit, but yet, we can be the better example if we choose it.  Bad things are still going to happen.  Depression and sadness will always be around the next corner, but we can decide how we react to each and every moment.

The easy answer is none of this is real. Or the other easy answer is that I’m being fooled into thinking everything is just great, so I should buy new shoes or forget to vote in an election.

I know what our world is.  I can spend every dollar I find on the poor, and I can’t fix poverty.  I can give all my food away and I’ll not be able to solve the horrific starvation problems near and far.  But I can donate to a food bank or buy a meal for a homeless veteran.  I can’t fix it all, but I can be a better me and help whenever possible.  It is a start.

The problem is reality isn’t very nice.  It is why it’s easy to consider this reality as a simulation or that I’m an infantilized, mind-controlled muppet doing the bidding of evil empires.  Those sound bad, yet, the real answers are far more frightening.

No wonder Stephen King does so well by telling us scary stories to distract us from the real horror of the daily toll we see in our real world.  And this is why I loved The Matrix, it looks like a lot more fun than here.

Thus, it is okay to read a book for escapism, or a silly television show so that we can unplug – not from The Matrix – but this harsh, cold, giant rock floating in space.  Fun is good.  Unreality is nice.  Taking a break from the truth of it all, as we currently understand it, is perfectly fine.

At this point, I could use a nice glass of wine and a Gilligan’s Island marathon.

Spider Bite

~ Donald J. Lund

If I had my focus on where it should be as a writer, I would have always had a notebook or recording device with me at all times.  There are many opportunities missed, but some of the best random human encounters stay with you.

In my journey as the world’s oldest college senior, the downtown campus in Denver is very fertile ground for finding the next fascinating story inspiration.  Whether it is listening to other conversations as you sit in the food court, or while ‘reading’ in the library or just walking around.

An a sprawling urban environment that includes several educational institutions literally allows for all walks of life to join you among or in between the buildings.  This population would include the very less fortunate members of society who are either homeless or in extreme dire circumstances of some kind.

And when you mix in a population of people with lunch money, some interesting interactions occur as people request money to better help their situation.  Over the years, I’ve encountered several dozen people directly or indirectly asking for money.

Of course, not all of them are really in need.  The local news offered several stories about a substantial number of professional panhandlers in the metro area.  Some of them making $30,000-$60,000 dollars a year and return to nice homes or drive in nice cars.  Clearly, they are the exception and not the rule.  And for me, they are fairly easy to pick out.  One, they work the same areas all year long.  Two, they have jeans, a lifetime supply of cigarettes and nice cell phones to go along with folding chairs and umbrellas for break times.

The real stories reside among those truly in need.  I recall one woman who walked right up to my vehicle as I waited through several traffic light changes.  She simply asked for anything I could spare, I only had a five dollar bill on me, so I handed it over. She cried.  She was the most thankful person for five dollars I ever met.  And she turned, crossed the street and ran into a McDonald’s.  It really does feel nice to help someone who really needed it.  I wish I had more money on me.

My very favorite encounter was the storyteller.

An elderly man, at least into his 70’s approached me as a set on a corner bench.  I was in between classes, the weather was beautiful and I wasn’t even pretending to read the book in my lap.

He stood in front of me and held his hand up.  It was covered in a lump of gauze wrap and looked more like his hand was prepped for a boxing glove than to treat an injury.  The gauze was dirty and had probably been on that hand for a while, it was fraying on the edges.

In his other hand, he held a piece of paper and an empty medical prescription bottle.  He then smiled a broken toothed smile and began his presentation in earnest.

“Spider bite.”

“Ouch,” I replied. “I’m not a big fan of spiders. What kind of spider was it.?”

“I don’t know the kind, but it was black,” he explained. “I was asleep under a tree and it just bit me. So, I went to the doctor and he gave me some medicine.”

The prescription bottle was offered as evidence, and then carefully tucked into his pocket.  “I have another prescription.”

And a well worn piece of paper was gently unfolded and held up into the air.  All I could tell is that there was some handwriting on the the other side of it, and truth be told it didn’t look like it was on any kind of official stationery.

“Doc said if I don’t get medicine, this spider bite could take a turn for the worse.”

Well, I sure didn’t want that. “How much does your prescription cost?”

“Twenty-six dollars,” he quickly answered.

“How much do you have so far?”

He looked toward his pockets, then he looked up in the air to do some mental calculations and said, “Five dollars.”

I grabbed my wallet, pulled out the only money I had and gave him eleven bucks.

“Hopefully, it gets you closer to your goal.”

He thanked me, and smiled. He secured his new funds, and then his smile disappeared. He mumbled have a great day and began to walk toward the train station as fast as he could.

I suddenly understood his change of demeanor as a campus police officer now stood before me.

“Are you a student here?”

“Yes, sir,” I showed him my identification, and looked to my side as the old man was trying to make the last 120-yards without breaking into a run.  I tried to buy him some time as the officer explained that panhandling wasn’t allowed on campus, and that I shouldn’t make the problem worse by caving in and giving money.

“But he had a spider bite.”

“What?” the officer asked.

I retold the spider saga and explained the elderly gentlemen appeared sincere to me. He had a prescription.

The officer didn’t quite buy it. He walked away mid-conversation, quickened his pace and moved into a quick jog in pursuit of the old guy.  I watched the weirdest chase scene never in a movie slowly unfold in front of me.  I lost sight of the elderly fellow as he mixed in with the crowd boarding the train and the officer appeared to give up among the large crowd of passengers moving on and off the platform.

It is important to have a story.  That epic was absolutely worth 11 bucks.  I would hate to see that thing take a turn for the worse.

And props don’t hurt either, even if you don’t know what kind of spider it was.

Don’t Touch That Dial!

~ Donald J. Lund ~ 1 Comment

Video didn’t kill this radio star, but if we have time we’ll cover that on the other side after we hit the top of the hour.

My employment resume represents a fascinating series of uniquely different jobs, but the most fun I’ve ever had with my clothes on, was working in radio.

I’ve always loved radio.  When one grows up without a lot of money in a world with only 3-4 television stations, radio gets to be your friend.  As a sports fan, who loved news and music, the battery operated AM radio was a constant companion in my youth.  From music and wacky disc jockeys by day to Denver Bears’ baseball by night, I got a lot of mileage out of my little hand held radios.

When we first moved to Wyoming, my Marine Corps and defense contracting career to that point wasn’t a big sell in the little town.  Since I had coached little league football and basketball, I used those skills to grab a part time job at the recreation center.  It was a fun place to get to know folks in my new community.

One day I found myself shopping for new tunes at a music shop and noticed the place was had the local radio stations piped in through the speakers in the store. I was the only customer in the place and I started to complain out loud to the only other soul in the place, the local merchant running the store. “Hey, how come they don’t have any sports on this station?  It needs some sports.”

“Well they do need someone up there to help them with sports, my Dad used to run the place, and I know the current general manager there.  Do you want a job?”

I nearly fell over.  What are the odds that the only person I ever needed to meet to work in radio was the dude behind the counter at the CD/Record shop?  That local merchant is my friend to this day, and yes, the reference is specific, inside humor that only he, and maybe three other humans will laugh at.

Of course I hadn’t worked in radio before, they insisted all I needed to know for the moment was sports.  Easy enough. I talked to the station manager, he said because I knew more about sports than him, I got the job.

Love or hate Howard Stern, the biographical movie Private Parts about his life had a couple funny moments for me.  In particular, his first radio gig when his voice is way up high, and he is all excited to spin a Ramones’ record — that was me.

My first hour of radio was hideous.  I made a recording of it and then destroyed it.  I destroyed it a lot.  On the tape I cringed as I heard a high pitched, quiet, whiney voiced dork talk about sports with way too much dead air in between painstakingly boring analysis.  But KEVA Sports Saturday was born, and I got paid to talk about what I wanted on the air.  The pay was not great, but it did add up and help my micro family.

I got better at it. I did play-by-play for football, basketball and legion baseball. I hosted coaches shows.  I did voice actor bits for the commercials, I spent hours on sound effects and intro music, being creative is always fun.

The station had a great news guy when I got there, but he left for a shot at working in the Las Vegas radio market, so I ended up being the news guy too.  My wife reminded me of my slogan I ran all the time in competition with the local newspaper, “When you hear it, it’s news, when you read it, it’s history.”

Radio does have that real time advantage over print, so I bragged about that a lot.  Because at the end of the day, we needed those advertising dollars to get paid and put on the cool local programs.  I recall my ambitious plan to make the station a local powerhouse, which included Wyoming Cowboys sports, Utah Jazz basketball, Denver Broncos football and the inaugural baseball season of the Colorado Rockies.  Some official looking guy flew in from Boston, representing station ownership and he said I could only do all of that if I could finance it.

Thus, I had to learn how to sell air.  And I did.  I compiled an advertising campaign, wrote up my own contracts specific to sports programming, printed flyers and hit the streets.  Selling is one of the most difficult jobs on the planet to me, and selling air time is even harder.  However, a couple months later, I had thirty sponsors in all, paying for various parts of the sports package.  And since I thanked them a bunch on the radio, and they listened, most would sign up again.

I got media passes to cover pro and college sports.  Well, I had to assemble a picture identification myself, we didn’t have a big staff.  Many of those sports adventures rate blogs all their own.  Stay tuned.

Eventually I did everything from those sales, to the commercials and my sports show hosted players from every major and minor sport in the region.  I had the Steve Martin from the movie The Jerk moment when my name showed up in print in the Denver Broncos Media Guide, “I’m somebody, I’m somebody, I’m finally somebody!”

I was a disc jockey, ad man, sales, news, sports, live radio remotes from sports bars and furniture stores, play-by-play, copy writer, cable TV television specials,  I got to do it all in small market radio in Evanston, Wyoming.  Rock and Roll Midnight shows on Fridays, morning shows, selling tractor parts on the radio station classified ad programs, hanging out with Denver Broncos.  I do mean I got to do it all.  I did serious stuff as well, interviewing governors and U.S. Senators too.

Of course, the newspaper got sick of me trash talking them, so they hired me. The weird media reversal as it is usually newspaper guys who morph into broadcasting and not the other way around.  But I could always write.

I started with a sports column and then was hired full time to be the sports editor of The Uinta County Herald.  Writing up sports events I broadcast on the radio meant I got paid twice for the same work.  That was nice.  It was also a lot of hours to cover both jobs, nearly 80-hours a week at the peak of the two jobs.

We hired a great nanny to watch the boys, but I missed those toddlers. Ultimately, the newspaper wanted me exclusive and that hurt a bit.  I got to sneak onto a few radio broadcasts my last year in Wyoming, just not enough.  Print journalism was paying better at the time, and my micro family needed the funds.

The old radio days are more glorious with each passing moment.  The adrenaline  that accompanies the big red light bulb turning on to indicate you are live and on the air is a great rush, every time.  And just when you think you are all alone in that phone booth of plexiglass and plywood, you decide to give away a couple tickets to something and the phone lights up like a dead fir tree on Christmas morning.

“Fifteen minutes after the hour, we’ve got a cold twenty-eight degrees to go with our blue skies this morning — more great music, news and sports coming at you, right after this break on Variety 1240, K-E-V-A!”

Tales of an Irish Rogue

~ Donald J. Lund

In all, my six years in the United States Marine Corps were served during a comparatively quiet time in history.  We certainly packed up and went where we were told and when, but for a couple exceptions, Marines stayed out of trouble in the mid 1980’s.

Well, not all of us stayed out of trouble.

One of my favorite former Marines was only in the Corps during my first two years of service, yet he left a lifetime of impressions during that span.  And as the modern world of blogs go, I’ll alter his name a bit in case he wants to write his own stories. Or in case the statute of limitations has not been reached on some of these adventures.

We will go with the name Mac.  And with that kind of nickname, it narrows the choices to either Scottish or Irish American heritage. The title today gives it away. Besides I’ve always considered myself bit of an Irish rogue as well.  I recognize the stereotype.  He was quite literally a fighter with the full on Irish temperament.

I had been in the Marine Corps about nine months when I first met Mac.   Three months of boot camp plus six months of training for my military occupational specialty or MoS.  And my job of course, was everyone’s favorite oxymoron – military intelligence.

I loved the job.  It included a top secret security clearance and some of the most important work I’ve ever done.  Although, right after graduating from intel school, the first assignment appeared fairly mundane, until I met Mac.

He wasn’t the tallest or strongest person I met in among Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children (my favorite of the many uses for the standard USMC initials), but Mac was the toughest.  Apparently he played hockey in his spare time, and I believed it.

A couple days out of intel school, I got my new orders and jumped on a plane to Cherry Point, North Carolina.  It was August, 1984, with emphasis on the month.  Summers in the southeast can be a bit hot and humid.  I stepped off the last plane of the journey at midnight, and the humidity was downright oppressive and hostile when accompanied with a 9o-degree temperature.

It was a two week war games effort involving several thousand Marines.  We took to the field and the conditions for sleeping outside in the south should not have been a surprise, but it was unpleasant at best.  Sweating every hour, the nights were just as hot as the days, the mosquitos were doing their level best to eat us alive.  The field showers should have been a relief, the freezing cold water was kind of nice, but the drains didn’t work. It became an exercise of will to see how long one could deal with standing in a foot or so of mucky, muddy water to rinse off. We worked twelve hours on, twelve hours off, and I’m not sure I slept at all the first week there.

Our unit sent four enlisted men and two officers to support this operation.  We would look at images pulled off of cameras from old F-4 fighters, refitted to observe the developing situation on the ground during the op.  We worked intel for one side of the war games, and another intel unit worked with the other side.  Again, pretty mundane as it was very easy to spot and identify equipment and troop movements and write up reports for our side of the war game.

So, for our particular shifts, I worked with Jeff, a friendly enough guy, but he had been in a while and he was even less excited to be there.  The other team that was stuck working together for 12 hours a day were Nelson and Mac.  Our officers, of course, were not living in the field with us, they had rooms at the nearby base.  We didn’t see them that much, except for the occasional briefing to show them what we found.

Ten days into the operation, those same officers saw that us enlisted guys were less useful to them without any sleep.  They found us a barracks room at the Marine Corps Air Station in Cherry point.  The first night in the tiny room with four ancient bunk beds felt like a four star resort.

Based on our previous shift work, it was also the very first time all four of us were in the same room at the same time.  Nelson had been promoted to sergeant just before our journey to North Carolina, which made him the senior enlisted person among us.

Apparently, he had been reminding Mac all week long about his status as the top dog.  There was quite a bit of tension in the room, as the other three had been in the unit nearly four years together, and one person bragging about rank did not sit well with Jeff and Mac.

They all decided to blow off some steam and head over to the Non-Commisioned Officer Club or NCO club.  I was the FNG (f’n new guy) and was not yet an NCO.  I was exhausted anyway and sleep was my favorite option.  And fall asleep I did about 15 minutes after they left around 2000 hours, or 8 pm.  A series of loud voices and noises woke me at 2400 hours.  I am sure of the time, because I needed that information for the official inquiry the next day.

Jeff and Mac were drunk.  At that point they were happy, exhausted drunks.  Jeff was in the lower bunk, Mac’s spot was on the wall near the door.  A light shined into the window from the parking lot.  I had been too tired to care, yet it bothered Mac and Jeff.  Mac asked Jeff to close the window blinds so no light could enter the room.

Jeff obliged, but as I noted, he was drunk.  There was one obstacle in his path to the window blinds.  It was Nelson’s bed.  Jeff jumped on top to reach the cord, but he shifted his weight to the far side of the bunk and the whole thing tipped over with a crash.  The pillow and bedding went in opposite directions.   I suddenly recalled the great pride Nelson had taken in making up his bunk as well as he did in boot camp.  A weird bit of bragging, but that is what the guy loved to do.

Drunk Jeff did his damnedest to repair the mess.  But it was an epic fail, as nothing was tucked in, and it basically looked like a pile of laundry gone wrong.

The three of us went to sleep, for about one half hour, and then our senior NCO returned home.  And he was unhappy.  He began yelling at all of us, certain that we had purposefully destroyed his perfectly made bunk.  Part of his assumption was correct, none of us liked him.  But as Mac pointed out, no one did it on purpose, it was an accident.  He was calm and collected, and he suggested Nelson remake his bunk and get some sleep.

Nelson was drunk too.  He would not let it go.  The accusations got worse, and then they got personal.  He once again bragged about being the highest ranked person in the room.  He also advanced the claim that he was a better Marine than Jeff and Mac and his promotion was evidence.

Mac flipped back the covers, stepped out of his bunk, stepped within an inch of Nelson’s face and with a quiet force and a low voice he said, “I don’t care what your rank is, if you don’t shut-up and let me sleep in five seconds, I’m going to knock your ass out.”

Nelson waited three seconds before starting to speak, it just meant he was going to miss his new deadline.  By the fifth second, Mac kept his promise and he knocked Nelson in the jaw and he fell to the floor. Mac went to sleep.  We all woke up hours later to find that Nelson had filed charges against Mac for the brief scuffle.

Each of us was called into an office by our two officers to provide our observations of what happened the night before.  I was the key witness in the eyes of the officers, as Jeff was good pals with Mac, and Nelson’s version of events was vastly different than theirs.  I was going to be the tie-breaking vote in a very close decision.  I knew two things at that early stage of my Marine Corps career, I really enjoyed Mac’s instant justice the previous night, and good Marines don’t whine or throw their new rank around. I did what any good intel guy would do in that situation.

I lied.

I explained I was awaken from my slumber twice at that point, which was true.  I recalled drunk Jeff accidentally thrashing Nelson’s bunk.  And then I heard arguing, but did not see the punch.  By the time I looked up, it was all over.  They were not buying my perspective.  Captain Young in particular saw something in my body language, probably the same tell that kills me in Texas Hold’em, but he knew I knew more.  I held my ground, and signed my statement.

I must look like one of those folks who tells the truth all the time, because Mac looked at me like I was the next one to get punched.  He asked me what I told the officers.  I sat down next to him and said, I told the truth. He grimaced and started to throw a few choice swear words in my direction, and I said, “The truth is, Nelson is an asshole. He deserved what he got.”

From that moment on, Mac and I were pals.  And strangely enough, I earned a great deal of respect from Captain Young that day as well.  I think everyone knew the truth about Nelson, but they did have to ‘officially’ investigate the incident.

And this was only the first adventure with that Irish Rogue, who kept things pretty darned interesting for peacetime in the Marine Corps.

Peacetime, another one of those oxymorons.

Ghost of a Chance

~ Donald J. Lund

I didn’t always believe in ghosts.

And maybe they don’t exist as described in the traditional forms of human lore, but I know there is certainly something beyond the visible spectrum bumping around among us.

We moved into a little brick house on the older side of town and it was an unassuming place that barely contained our family of six.  Two of my three younger brothers shared a room and my parents had to make due with a partially finished basement bedroom.

It seemed normal enough, but then the nightmares began.

The term night terrors had not made it into mainstream vernacular at that time, although they closely resemble the horrible dreams had so many times at that place.

The dream always started the same, at a door underneath the stairs at the otherwise innocent looking residence.  Of course, there was no visible door down there.  It was just a storage area with a cement floor next the unfinished laundry room.  In the dream, with some effort, I could push open the door.

Through the door it was initially dark, and it led to a meandering, endless cave.  The cave was somehow lit by flickering firelight and the sense of evil, whatever evil may actually be, was foreboding.  Within the dream, my heart rate increased and I always had the feeling I was being followed and it pushed me toward a particular carved out part of the cave.  All I ever knew was something horrible happened to someone there and I would awake in a cold sweat at various parts of the trek to that carved out area.

I was in high school at the time, so I went to library and did some dream research. I wanted to know what it meant.  Dream interpretation as it turns out is a fairly inaccurate science to this day, and it was even more speculative a couple decades ago.  There were no good answers.

I stayed awake a lot of nights.  Sleepless nights were preferred to experiencing the nightmare as often as possible.  I slept better away from home.  Be it on vacation, or a friend’s place or my grandparents — anywhere other than the nice little brick house on the old side of town.

One evening, one of my good pals was hanging out with me and we were listening to records, planning on some game time with other friends.  We were in the basement office, very near those stairs.  My parents were gone for the night, and they had left my little brothers at my grandmother’s house.  My friend and I were the only ones in the house.

Or so we thought.

The record player upstairs had gone quiet a half hour before.  I just didn’t feel like going up to flip the album over.  We were talking and laughing about something when suddenly, there was a loud noise upstairs above us, and then the record player started playing.  And no, it was not one of those turntables that was able to reset the needle itself.

We looked at each other and ran upstairs to investigate.  It took all of eight seconds to hop those stairs.  There was a hanging fern plant in the kitchen and it was swinging wildly back and forth, as if someone was just ahead of us and pushed the planter.

No one was there.

It was a cold fall day, so all of the windows and doors were locked.  The weird part was, as we continued to search the tiny house, none of the windows were open, and the front door was still secure, locked from the inside.

We searched around for the next hour for any clue of who might be trying to scare us, but no one was there, and nothing was found.  Needless to say, we continued the discussion elsewhere.

The nightmares resumed in full force shortly after.  We moved six months later, merely to a bigger place — no one else shared my night terror problem.  The first night at the new house, no bad dreams.  The nightmare never happened again.  I have always assumed something terrible happened to someone at that house, either before or after it was built.  I never did the research, I wasn’t sure I wanted to invite that event back into my life, whatever it was.

The only other spiritual or ghostly happening in life happened when my grandmother passed away.  It was very sudden, and I had had just visited her hours before, six plus hours away in another state.  When I left her she was seemingly fine.  She was a tough as nails Irish grandmother, who was not big on hugs and such.  That particular last day I saw her was on her birthday, which is always one day after my birthday.  I did something I never did before, I kissed her on the forehead.  She started to give me a “what the hell” look, but then she smiled.

Less than 48-hours later, I was 420 miles away, deep asleep and she showed up in my dream and told me “goodbye.”  The phone rang a moment later around five in the morning and my wife awoke and ran to answer it in another room.  When she returned, I told her my grandmother died, and with an understandably surprised look, she asked me how I knew.

I don’t know how I knew.

I have lost loved ones before and after, but it was the only time anything like that ever happened.

I can’t explain any of it, but I love that somehow, my grandmother was able to say her farewell.  Celtic spiritual connection or something even bigger?

I didn’t always believe in ghosts, but something is going on…