You could have knocked me over with a feather when I read this: “In Qatar’s capital, Doha, U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad met with Taliban political leaders who demanded an end to intensifying U.S. airstrikes aimed at slowing the fast-moving push by Taliban forces to gain territory, occupy provincial capitals and hold key roadways.”

Khalilzad is one of those preposterous people who use their foreign birth, he was born in Tabul, as a way to wheedle themselves into the good graces of our leaders who lean upon them for direction assuming they are from that country so that gives them a step up over others born in America.

Mike Pompeo appointed Khalilzad as  the United State’s special envoy to Afghanistan for the purpose of finding a peaceful solution to that country’s troubles. That he did. The US would all but surrender. On February 29, 2020, he was sitting next to a Taliban leader agreeing we would withdraw our troops by May 2021 provided the Taliban would negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Afghan government.

I imagine if Shakespeare were writing today. He certainly would not have Hamlet saying the words “to be or not to be.” There are better words today that he could use to express the same thoughts. An example  would be “to mask or not to mask” or “to vaccinate or not to vaccinate.”

As most know those are choices that for some will determine if they live or die. Worse, they are choices that do not just affect the person making the choice but others around him or her. Where Hamlet’s decision relative to living was going to only affect him.

Those who refuse to mask or vaccinate are much more prevalent in the Republican Red states than in the Blue states. It is in states that voted for Trump and have politicians abetting the idea there is something wrong – not American – in refusing to protect themselves and others.From best I can tell they shout out that by not doing so they are exercising their American freedom.

I read that we have succeeded in breaking another record. July was the hottest month in recorded history. It now is that each month breaks a record of some sorts. An article I read points out how the increase in heat and the melting of ice has adversely affected  places on all parts of the world. Yet we still have many who refuse to accept global warming and that it is caused by human behavior although some Republican Congress folk seeing its effects on their voters have started to believe it.

There’s the boiling over in Afghanistan that was as predictable as the sun rising.  Blame will be tossed back and forth between political parties when it rests fully on the shoulders of both.

Several things boggles my mind. The idea you could bargain with the Taliban is commensurate with thinking you can do so with a poisonous snake. More absurd is making a deal, watching the other party continually break it, and believing you still are bound by it.

Trump’s mistake was bargaining with the Taliban and setting a May 1 withdrawal date. Biden’s mistake was seeing the ongoing breaches of Trump’s deal, feeling despite that he was bound by it except to  move the date to September 1.

I’m in the process of compiling an index for my book “The Boston Gang Wars – 1956 to 1976”  It really is taking much longer than I thought so as far as other things I have been quiet.

But I was recently sent a copy of correspondence between a lawyer and the Cleveland Browns that I believe you would enjoy reading when you have a spare minute.

Hope you are well.

Are they out to accelerate the destruction of what is left of the Catholic Church. An article in 2019 noted: “Gallup has previously reported that church attendance has dropped ore among Catholics than among Protestants. Consistent with this, the decline in church membership has been greater among Catholics. Twenty years ago, 76% of Catholics belonged to a church; now, 63% do.”

Actually, it is surprising that figure is not greater given the seemingly endless scandal among the priests and the ham-handed response of the bishops. Despite the horrid news of bishops knowing priests who sexually offended young boys rather than being drummed out of the priesthood were transferred to other places and their sins covered up, most Catholics remained faithful to the Church. Sadly, the scandal of priests abusing youngsters and bishops covering up their offenses spread from Boston throughout the United States and the world.

• Busy day.  Not much writing done. Did get to go for a walk. Enjoyed the sunset.

Yesterday I spent a good portion of the day putting into practice one of the skills I learned when I was in the Marine Corps. I do not recall if I picked it up during the twelve weeks I spent at Quantico,  Virginia, in the Platoon Leader Class (PLC) prior to getting commissioned; or at Basic School after I was commissioned where I spent 6 months again in Quantico learning the necessary skills to become an effective Marine officer.

Basic School was not as difficult as PLC back in those days. The Marines used the 12 weeks of PLC during the hot Virginia summers to weed out those it did not think  would become decent officers. We were called candidates and given enough rope to hang ourselves. In the latter six weeks I believe we started with over forty candidates in my platoon and a little over twenty completed the course.

The lieutenant in charge of training us for those weeks was named Joe Waters. He was mean. unsmiling and demanding. At the end we had a little farewell party. At the time a popular song was Waterloo by by John D. and Marijohn Wilkin. We wrote our own words to the tune and asked: “when will you meet your Waters Joe” indicating it was something to dread.

Other things have called on my attention lately setting me back a bit in my endeavors. One thing was when Rocky a guy I knew from a long time ago got in touch with me the other day. We ended up chatting for a good couple of hours.

He asked me if I heard of Kindle Vella. I told him I believe that I had – it was going to publish novellas or other short forms of fiction in a serial manner. It was like we were going backwards to the days of  Old England when authors like Charles Dickens would publish a segment of their books in newspapers in serial fashion once a week. He said he had published on it. His book is called “Changing Faces.”

I was surprised not knowing he had any interest in writing. I was also surprised that his name was Rock Hill. We called him Rocky but I never knew his real first name just like other kids I only knew by the nicknames. Also, that he was related to the Hills who lived nearby. The children in that family were all high academic achievers. One Charles Hill went to one of the Ivy schools. Rocky said they were first cousins.