Uncle Russ' Invasion of Japan - October 1945

Throughout our childhood in Maine and the South Shore of Boston, my Uncle Russell Gray told a story about almost parachuting out of a US Air Force plane on August 6. The tale ended with the jumpers seeing the mushroom cloud rising over the city. It wasn't true, but all stories are true, if interesting.

In actuality Uncle Russ had enlisted upon graduating from U Maine that spring and had been processed through the Fort Williams in South Portland. He completed his infantry training in Georgia, then was transported across country by train to San Francisco and shipped west to Japan. Today I asked about those particulars and Russ said that the troop transport had docked in Nagasaki late October 1945, more than two months after the second bombing, but immediately he and his fellow soldiers headed north to Honshu, where he spent the next year. At 98 his memory is a crystal radio signal from another century.

Two years ago Jack Haven recorded his VDO in Marblehead at Fort Edgecomb.

Another telling of the same story.

From a true New Englander.

Missile Base Attack - Chickatawbut - 1965

Cold Irish Revenge

I can remember what I was wearing on November 22, 1963. A white shirt, sky blue tie, and dark navy trousers were the boy's uniform at Our Lady of the Foothills south of the Neponset River.

It was a beautiful autumn day.

Then Mother Mary Superior spoke over the intercom and tearfully announced, "President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas."

These words did not change our lives for more than a few weeks as America accepted the lone gunman theory.

But not for all of us.

Irish Cold Revenge tells a different story than the Warren Commission.

It's a true as anything else.

Peter Nolan Smith filmed by Kai Effron

Ditch Plains Past Summer

Explorer Club Trophy Room 9/16/2025

Yesterday I was in the explorer's Club. A member in good standing for the past two years. Visiting the trophy room with three friends I told them stories about how the skins and tusks and artifacts arrived here. Hunting and exploring. I myself possess an elephant's foot from Andy Reese, ballet dancer and film maker for Club 57. He bequeathed the item after his passing from AIDS back in the 1980s. In 1991 coming down the west coast of Sumatra I recall hearing a tiger roar in the distance. It sounded like it was behind me. Chills up and town my spine.

I check ed this message and discovered once more that I had misspelled and as adn. A common occurence as I have been blessed with manulysia, dyslexia of the fingers, which mihgt have to do with that I was born a natural lefthander, however the Sisters of St. Joseph at my parochial school south of Boston regarded that as a sin or lámh chlé in Gaelic. My nana called it Kithou, which might have meant something else. I write with my right hand, but deal cards with my left. I resisted change whenever I could.

le Bains Douches Toujours Seule 1983

A poem from a journal 1983. Ah, Paris.

In 1983 I worked as the physionomiste at the door of Les Bains Douches off the Boulevard Sebastapol in Paris. Extraordinary my being offered the job, but the owners recognized my value to hold the fort a la porte. Many of my New York friends to this day remark that I had been the doorman at Studio 54.

"Only for a month." I had been hired in 1980 by Mark Fleischman, the mythic disco's second owner, who replaced Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, who were serving a prison sentence for civil disobediance. I lasted a month and moved onto the notorious, but historic after-hours club the Jefferson Theater on East 14th Street run by the lord of the night Arthur Weinstein.

Another famed establisment of which I was equally as proud of as the Milk Bar and Balajo in Paris/ I was a good life. As the doorman of the Bains I was the most powerful American in Paris after dark. It was quite a responsibilty and I enjoyed all of it. Viva La France.

Plastic Everywhere - Myrtle Avenue

I've taken to picking up plastic and cans and paper from the streets. Just so I can turn around and not see trash on the sidewalks. People buy snacks and drinks not for their health, but to just consume due to the relentless advertising from the corporate food chain. The most popular trash; potato chips. The modern manna of the people. A complete meal of non-food suppressing hunger. I try not to eat them, but I took succumb to their crunchy allure. The body and mind are so weak. So I pick up the trash. Someone has too.

I know a man who doesn't pay to have his trash taken out. How does he get rid of his trash? He gift wraps it, and puts in into an unlocked car.

Henny Youngman