Happy Canada Day to any Canadian readers I might have.

I‘m plowing through Antony Beevor‘s The Fall of Berlin 1945. Can one suffer from shell shock, simply by reading about The War (The Great Patriotic War) ?

Sleep? Maybe later.

I’m reading Antony Beevor’s The Fall Of Berlin 1945. The full horror of the war on the Eastern Front is brought to light. 27 million Russians died in World War Two. I just noticed that 85 years ago today 22 June, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded The Soviet Union.

This book is a small glimpse into the unspeakable horror that was W W Two. If your father or grandfather never talked much about The War, this book will give you an idea why.

I’m sitting on the porch, drinking an iced coffee with heavy cream, somewhere between a dessert and a beverage.

The UPS guy came with a box of Caswell- Massey Soaps , affordable luxury for an old man

Where is that wife of mine? Oh yes, at lunch with The Girls. Never mind they are pushing eighty. There are times when we are all ageless

Touch yourself. Your Self. You know what I mean. The image in your mind of a lover, long dead, or abandoned or severed.and a memory of time, when you possessed them.

Maybe you had your lover anally and you thought it was your show, since you did the penetrating, But maybe not, since you were indulged.

Maybe , if you’re a male, you’ve done your best thinking with your prick. But that hardon has led you to unknown territory, to your own private Victoria Falls. And you have your own story to tell at the Explorers Club that is a Bull Session.

You haven’t made love in twenty years, because you stopped listening, or you’ve tightened the standards for the entrance exam.

Just get the lube and get to work.

There’s a Sinatra song “In The Wee, Small Hours Of The Morning”, that Barry Levinson used in one of his movies about Baltimore Tin Men.

I wish my insomnia were so rich and romantic that Sinatra tunes were featured in my sleepless episodes, but no, or, at least , not yet.

I am waiting for AMTRAK’s Silver Meteor (#98) to pass through Ashland on the Virtual Railfan You Tube site. While waiting , I’ll fantasize I’m on my way to New York , and The Big Apple will be permanently romantic and not teetering on fiscal disaster. The Astors and The Vanderbilts will perpetually hold control and Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby will be as real as Grant’s Tomb and Central Park.

The consolation tonight is the richness of cinema. Whether a Flash Gordon serial from the Thirties or a work by a master like Fellini or Spielberg, the movies have been The Great Escapes of modern times.

Monsters like Hitler or Stalin have allowed geniuses like Riefenstahl or Eisenstein to give at least a glimmer of excitement or legitimacy to their machinations .

We can imagine ourselves Someplace Else, out West with Duke Wayne or at Tara with Scarlett O’Hara, or in Never Land with Peter Pan. The movies can do that.

And The Good Guys can win. And Hope can stay on life support a while longer.

A friend and I were talking about Nina Simone. She was a great singer who could bring a person to tears. And nobody knows about her or talks about her any more. Look her up . Listen to her songs. You’ll see what I mean,

A new television series is scheduled for the Fall season

It’s a sitcom about a periodontist who opens his practice on a Greek island.

Giulietta Masina was the wife of Federico Fellini. She was also a brilliant actress in her own right.

Please watch Nights Of Cabiria and you’ll see what I mean.if you’re not convinced, see La Strada.

Never mind virgins on Wedding nights. We can outlaw the designated hitter and restore some purity to our long-suffering Republic.

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I just watched thirty seconds of Albert Finney in a film I cannot keep awake watching. He was absolutely brilliant, no great soliloquies, just an actor becoming the character.

I stay awake. Are the nightmares of my parents hereditary? Dysfunctional alcoholic families. The full horror of combat. The PTSD is absorbed and passed on.

They didn’t even know that they were carriers