This has been weighing on me too, Dusty. The time is fast approaching when we will see dead people on our streets, not on some foreign street with signs we can’t read, not on some big US city in a neighborhood we’d never visit, not in that part of the local town where the druggies hang out so we know to stay away after dark, but on our streets and roads. Like, walk down to the mailbox and there’s a dead body. And our reactions won’t be “Holy sh*t!” or even “Is that Bill?” but more “Motherf***er! Again?!”

And then there’s the oath you & I took, that whole “support and defend” thing that didn’t have an expiration date attached. Not sure how I’m supposed to uphold that. Especially when I have a later oath to someone in particular who’s kinda special to me. And I have to think that I’m a lot more use to her than I’d be as an over-60 diabetic former Navy computer geek with brain damage joining the local resistance militia. (Although my old BDUs from when I was in the ROK in 1988 still fit. I checked. And I got out as USN, so in theory my commission could be reinstated, with a little “paperwork to follow.”) Yes, I know, strange directions my thoughts go these days.

But I’m still hoping Deb & I can make it to Alaska to visit, even while things are falling apart. Silly, I know. Promises to keep, and all that.