Big companies eager to make a buck have always been willing to flood the Internet with garbage in pursuit of that goal.
Fifteen years ago, this came in the form of content mills like eHow. A handful of online publishers paid writers to churn out superficial, unhelpful content about a wide variety of topics. Content farms dominated the search results for many subjects. For a few years, it was impossible to avoid them, and they hopelessly clogged up Google’s search results. There was a financial incentive behind all this: content farm publishers wanted to earn money from ad revenue.
Then, in 2011, Google issued a new update that ranked the content farms lower. Nowadays, it is rare to find one of these sites among your Google search results. That’s a good thing, of course!
Today, however, the Internet has a new source of mass-produced garbage: generative AI.
Generative AI’s initial inputs were acquired through a barely legal, marginally piratical scraping of the Internet, carried out on a massive scale.
Generative AI still relies on scraping. (Note: it isn’t really “artificial intelligence”.) But now there’s a problem: generative AI—like the content farms of fifteen years ago—is producing so much online garbage, that it now threatens the collapse of its own business model:
“As Futurism and countless other outlets have reported over the last few years, the AI industry has continuously barreled toward the moment at which all available authentic training data — that is, information that was produced by humans and not AI — will be exhausted. Some pundits, including Elon Musk, believe we’re already there.”
It’s the tyranny of that old computer acronym: garbage in, garbage out (GIGO).
But this is not 2011. In 2011, reputable tech giants like Google were generally opposed to the content farms. The tech firms are not so clear-headed where generative AI is concerned. Google, Meta, and Microsoft all seem to genuinely believe that consumers go online to consume a sea of AI-generated gobbledygook. They have bet the farm on this technology, and there is a real price for them now, if they acknowledge their mistake and attempt to backpedal.
One does not need to be a Luddite to notice that AI is gradually degrading search results for Google and other search engines. The AI collapse seems inevitable. I only hope that the tech companies, who have foolishly over-invested in shoddy, overhyped AI, don’t collapse with it.
Iran is an ancient civilization, far older than the United States or any European country. The ancient kingdom of Persia (what Iran used to be called) predates the Roman Empire.
For most of its history, Iran was not even a Muslim nation. Iran has fundamentally changed in the past. It can fundamentally change in the future. There is no reason to believe that the Islamic Republic, an oppressive regime by any standard, will—or should be—a permanent predicament for the 92 million people of Iran.
In the 1990s, one of my work colleagues was a forty-something American man named Mike. Mike was quite a character. He had served in Vietnam, and had no shortage of stories to tell about that conflict. Mike was not a combat veteran, though. Based on his stories, Mike seemed to spend much of his time in the military on leave, cavorting in the fleshpots of Bangkok and Manilla.
Mike had also lived in Iran during the late 1970s, just prior to the Islamic revolution of 1979. During that time, Mike was employed as a representative of the Bell Helicopter Company.
Mike loved Iran. Iran in the late 1970s was nothing like the country that it was soon to become, following the imposition of the Khomeini death cult.
Tehran was a bustling city back then. There were discos. (Hey, it was the late 1970s!) Women walked around in miniskirts and other western attire of that era. Tehran was sometimes compared to Paris.
Mike married an Iranian woman while he was there. They later divorced. But from what I knew of Mike, that was probably more Mike’s fault than hers. Nevertheless, he had nothing but good things to say about Iran before the ayatollahs.
Iran in the 1970s was also moving toward authentic modernity and real prosperity. In 1978, Iran was the most prosperous country in Asia outside of Japan. The country had oil, of course, but there was also a move toward economic diversification: light manufacturing and services.
Iran in those days was run by a monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. Iran had always been a monarchy, just as Persia had always been a monarchy. In ancient Persia, the ruler was known as Shāhanshāh, or King of Kings. (This is the term from which the modern “shah” is derived.)
The reader will therefore not be surprised to learn that Iran under the shahs was not an Athenian democracy.The Pahlavi dynasty, which lasted from 1925 to 1979, was imperfect in many ways, and fell short in many ways, when measured by the most exacting western standards.
But Iran under the Pahlavi dynasty was a far better place than the Islamic Republic of Iran, under Khomeini and the mullahs. And it was indisputably better for women and non-Muslims.
Iran under the Pahlavi dynasty was also a more responsible member of the global community. Pre-revolutionary Iran had good relations with its Sunni Muslim neighbors, the United States, and Israel. (No, that is not a typo.)
At the time of this writing, the surviving head of the Pahlavi dynasty is Reza Pahlavi, born in 1960. Reza Pahlavi was the Crown Prince of Iran when the revolution broke out. In 1980, in a ceremony held in Cairo, Egypt, the twenty-year-old Reza was sworn in as Iran’s monarch, following the line of succession from his recently deceased father.
Reza Pahlavi is now in his sixties, and he remains Iran’s monarch in exile. As events in Iran unfold and constantly change, there has been talk of Reza returning to Iran, perhaps as a constitutional monarch, and perhaps as the figurehead of a new, authentically democratic government in Iran.
That will, of course, be a decision for the people of Iran. But it would not be without historical precedent. It has happened before, in a country much more familiar to most Americans: England.
In the 1640s, the English fought a civil war. This ended with the overthrow and execution of King Charles I. The English Civil War also resulted in the formation of Oliver Cromwell’s Commonwealth of England. The Commonwealth was run by puritans. Under the Commonwealth, plays, public celebrations, and dancing were all forbidden. So was the traditional observance of Christmas, which the puritans saw as idolatrous.
The Commonwealth, thankfully, did not last long. It collapsed after only eleven years.
Following the misery of the Commonwealth of England, the British people were ready to go back to the future. They invited Charles II, the son of the deposed (and executed) Charles I to return to England, and the British throne, in 1660. This event, known as the Stuart Restoration, began a period of cultural and economic renewal in England.
It is therefore not too farfetched to believe that, after nearly five decades of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the people of Iran might opt for a Pahlavi restoration. They are certainly ready for a change.
Throughout the world, people who make Internet inquiries about Kuwa6226 meet violent deaths.
In online forums and chatrooms, people are warned not to mention the mysterious entity.
But who, or what, is Kuwa6226? A supernatural force? A cult? A global conspiracy?
Most people say that it’s better not to ask…and Kuwa6226’s reign of terror goes unchallenged.
***
Then two unlikely sleuths, from opposite sides of the world, unite.
Minoru Watase is a corporate IT employee in Japan. Julie Lawrence is a college student in the American Pacific Northwest.
Julie and Minoru have each lost a friend to Kuwa6226. Together, they are determined to discover Kuwa6226’s true identity and eliminate the menace.
Their search will take them from the streets of Tokyo to an American college town in Washington State. When they finally come face-to-face with Kuwa6226, Julie and Minoru will be unprepared for the revelation…and the ruthlessness of their adversary!
Kuwa 6226 is a horror-mystery with endless twists and turns!
How I wrote a horror novel called Revolutionary Ghosts
Or…
Can an ordinary teenager defeat the Headless Horseman, and a host of other vengeful spirits from America’s revolutionary past?
The big idea
I love history, and I love supernatural horror tales.“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” was therefore always one of my favorite short stories. This classic tale by Washington Irving describes how a Hessian artillery officer terrorized the young American republic several decades after his death.
The Hessian was decapitated by a Continental Army cannonball at the Battle of White Plains, New York, on October 28, 1776. According to some historical accounts, a Hessian artillery officer really did meet such an end at the Battle of White Plains. I’ve read several books about warfare in the 1700s and through the Age of Napoleon. Armies in those days obviously did not have access to machine guns, flamethrowers, and the like. But those 18th-century cannons could inflict some horrific forms of death, decapitation among them.
I was first exposed to the “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” via the 1949 Disney film of the same name. The Disney adaptation was already close to 30 years old, but still popular, when I saw it as a kid sometime during the 1970s.
Headless Horsemen from around the world
While doing a bit of research for Revolutionary Ghosts, I discovered that the Headless Horseman is a folklore motif that reappears in various cultures throughout the world.
In Irish folklore, the dullahan or dulachán (“dark man”) is a headless, demonic fairy that rides a horse through the countryside at night. The dullahan carries his head under his arm. When the dullahan stops riding, someone dies.
Scottish folklore includes a tale about a headless horseman named Ewen. Ewen wasbeheaded when he lost a clan battle at Glen Cainnir on the Isle of Mull. His death prevented him from becoming a chieftain. He roams the hills at night, seeking to reclaim his right to rule.
Finally, in English folklore, there is the 14th century epic poem, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. After Gawain kills the green knight in living form (by beheading him) the knight lifts his head, rides off, and challenges Gawain to a rematch the following year.
But Revolutionary Ghosts is focused on the Headless Horseman of American lore: the headless horseman who chased Ichabod Crane through the New York countryside in the mid-1790s.
The Headless Horseman isn’t the only historical spirit to stir up trouble in the novel. John André, the executed British spy, makes an appearance, too. (John André was a real historical figure.)
I also created the character of Marie Trumbull, a Loyalist whom the Continental Army sentenced to death for betraying her country’s secrets to the British. But Marie managed to slit her own throat while still in her cell, thereby cheating the hangman. Marie Trumbull was a dark-haired beauty in life. In death, she appears as a desiccated, reanimated corpse. She carries the blade that she used to take her own life, all those years ago.
Oh, and Revolutionary Ghosts also has an army of spectral Hessian soldiers. I had a lot of fun with them!
The Spirit of ’76
Most of the novel is set in the summer of 1976. An Ohio teenager, Steve Wagner, begins to sense that something strange is going on near his home. There are slime-covered hoofprints in the grass. There are unusual sounds on the road at night. People are disappearing.
Steve gradually comes to an awareness of what is going on….But can he convince anyone else, and stop the Headless Horseman, before it’s too late?
I decided to set the novel in 1976 for a number of reasons. First of all, this was the year of the American Bicentennial. The “Spirit of ’76 was everywhere in 1976. That created an obvious tie-in with the American Revolution.
Nineteen seventy-six was also a year in which Vietnam, Watergate, and the turmoil of the 1960s were all recent memories. The mid-1970s were a time of national anxiety and pessimism (kind of like now). The economy was not good. This was the era of energy crises and stagflation.
Reading the reader reviews of Revolutionary Ghosts, I am flattered to get appreciative remarks from people who were themselves about the same age as the main character in 1976:
“…I am 62 years old now and 1976 being the year I graduated high school, I remember it pretty well. Everything the main character mentions (except the ghostly stuff), I lived through and remember. So that was an added bonus for me.”
“I’m 2 years younger than the main character so I could really relate to almost every thing about him.”
I’m actually a bit younger than the main character. In 1976 I was eight years old. But as regular readers of this blog will know, I’m nostalgic by nature. I haven’t forgotten the 1970s or the 1980s, because I still spend a lot of time in those decades.
If you like the 1970s, you’ll find plenty of nostalgic nuggets in Revolutionary Ghosts, like Bicentennial Quarters, and the McDonald’s Arctic Orange Shakes of 1976.
***
Also, there’s something spooky about the past, just because it is the past. As L.P. Hartley said, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
For me, 1976 is a year I can clearly remember. And yet—it is shrouded in a certain haziness. There wasn’t nearly as much technology. Many aspects of daily life were more “primitive” then.
It isn’t at all difficult to believe that during that long-ago summer, the Headless Horseman might have come back from the dead to terrorize the American heartland…
I took guitar lessons for a while in the early 1980s. But only for about a year.
I did not have a knack for music. I lack the sense of timing that is inherent in all great musicians. Writing comes naturally to me. Practicing the guitar was always a chore. I wanted the result, but I did not enjoy the process.
Forty years later, I can still manage most of the basic chords. But where music is concerned, I am content to remain in the audience.
Nevertheless, music is an art form that I appreciate. But I appreciate it selectively. There is music I love (most of it 1980s rock) and music that I will simply never enjoy. I acknowledge Taylor Swift’s commercial success. Her music is not my cup of tea.
But I’m a 50-something male, and we all hate Taylor Swift. Right? Well, maybe, but that’s an oversimplification. Even in the 1980s, there was popular music I never developed an appreciation for: A Flock of Seagulls, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, most of Michael Jackson’s catalog.
On the other hand, I loved Rush, Foreigner, Triumph, Def Leppard, Bryan Adams, Journey.
I think that’s normal, where music is concerned. We all have preferences. No one, I’ve found, is neutral about music. No one likes all of it.
Which makes the public soundtrack all the more annoying. Whenever one enters a restaurant, retail establishment, or waiting room, one is immediately assaulted with random music, piped in from overhead speakers. They play music at my gym, even though most members wear headphones.
Another problem with music in public places is that it is usually played too loud. I won’t get technical here, and speak of decibels. If when addressing my lunch or dinner companion, I have to raise my voice to be heard over the music, then the music is too loud.
Almost as annoying is the street guitarist, tambourine player, or vocalist. I admire the chutzpah of those who publicize their art this way. But I quicken my pace whenever I pass by a street musician. Similarly, I would not stand on the sidewalk and read from one of my novels, stories, or essays.
I want to consume my music selectively: the music I choose, at a time and a place of my choosing. I don’t want a restaurant, fitness club, or a grocery store to tell me that listening to the music of their choice, at the volume of their choice, is the price of admission to their place of business. This is especially true when I find their preferences actively annoying.
As a long-ago failed musician, I understand how difficult it is to become a real, skilled practitioner of that craft. How many hours of practice is required to perform music at even a journeyman level.
All the more reason not to cheapen music, by turning it into aural wallpaper.
I grew up in pre-Internet times, when it wasn’t possible to verify things online. In that era—let’s say, the late 1970s and early 1980s—you grew up with a lot of half-true and completely fabricated campfire stories. Some of them were rather disturbing, especially when they came from seemingly trustworthy sources.
For example, when I was eleven years I was in the Boy Scouts. In March of 1980, our troop was getting ready to go on an overnight hike and camping trip at East Fork State Park, a reservoir and public woods in southern Ohio, not far from Cincinnati.
Just before our departure, our scoutmaster warned us not to wander off the path, and get separated from the group. A reasonable enough suggestion, of course.
Then he told us the story of another boy, from another scout troop, who had wandered off the path at East Fork State Park two years ago, shortly after the park opened. The boy, according to our scoutmaster, had been driven mad by what he had seen and experienced in the woods. He had gone feral, and was believed to be lurking in the woods. He no longer looked entirely human. His hair, now long, had gone white, and he wore the tattered remnants of Boy Scout uniform.
Our scoutmaster added that if we heard the sound of anyone scratching at the opening of one of our tents late at night, we should remain still and make no response. It would probably be the feral, lost boy, looking for food. But he would go away eventually, if we simply remained silent.
This story was delivered to us deadpan. Was it true? Forty-five years later, I am certain that it was pure hokum. I suspected as much in 1980. But at the age of 11, I wasn’t entirely sure. And it wasn’t like I could Google it back then.
Kuwa6226, the story presented in the videos that follow, is a tale about an Internet-based urban legend: an entity that supposedly tracks down and kills those who make online inquiries about it. Is Kuwa6226 a supernatural entity? Or is it a human conspiracy of some kind? That is the mystery.
The story takes place on two continents: Asia and North America, with two groups of urban legend hunters: one American, and one Japanese.
In the first installment, we meet Hajime Takagawa, a 34-year-old Japanese office worker who is searching for a different urban legend: the gashadokuro, a mythical creature from Japanese folklore.
In 1938, the planners in Nazi Germany know that war is coming. They are eager to acquire the atom bomb.
They are working against Allied governments, operating both in Germany and abroad. (And not all of the Reich’s accomplices are German nationals.)
A group of ordinary Americans and Germans are forced to choose sides. Their choices will lead them into a web of betrayal, murder, and espionage.
Their paths meet in Cairo, Egypt, where the Reich is hunting a fugitive atomic physicist.
The main characters:
Betty Lehman is a 19-year-old girl from Dutch Falls, Pennsylvania. Her family is active in the German-American Bund. Betty has been recruited to betray her country in the service of the Reich.
Rudolf Schenk is an undercover agent of the German Gestapo. He wants to do his duty. But can he abandon his last shred of conscience?
Jack McCallum is an American treasure hunter in Cairo. He falls for two women: one who is working undercover for the Third Reich, one who is fleeing the Gestapo.
Heinrich Vogel is a physicist who fled Germany for Egypt. He and his young adult daughter, Ingrid, face a daily game of cat-and-mouse with the Gestapo. His goal: to reach Britain or America before the Gestapo reaches him and his daughter!
One day in the early spring of 2018 I traveled to a rural part of southern Indiana to attend to some family matters. (I live in Ohio, but I’m half Hoosier. My dad grew up in nearby Lawrenceburg.)
I spent most of that day in Switzerland County. You’ve probably never been there. Switzerland County, Indiana looks nothing like Switzerland. In early spring, that part of Indiana, along the Ohio River, can look a little bleak.
(Portions of the 1988 Molly Ringwald/Andrew McCarthy movie, Fresh Horses, were filmed in Switzerland County. McCarthy said of the area, “There’s the whole starkness up there; it helped the mood of the movie.” )
Southern, rural Indiana is home to several large casinos. I ordinarily have no interest in gambling venues. I ate lunch at the nearby Belterra Casino that day, though, because…there weren’t many other dining options in the vicinity.
My visit to the casino got me thinking: What if a young couple in debt visited the casino in a make-or-break effort to get ahead financially? What if they were lured there by a special offer? $300 worth of ‘free’ gaming chips?
What if their beginner’s foray into gambling went horribly wrong, and they fell further in the hole? Then suppose that a narcotics kingpin offers them an alternative plan…another way to get ahead.
All they have to do is run an errand for him. What could possibly go wrong?
That’s the premise behind my 2020 casino novel, Venetian Springs. Set in a fictional version of Belterra Casino, Venetian Springs is a story of two down-on-their-luck high school teachers who succumb to the lure of easy money. They soon discover that easy money doesn’t exist. But this is a lesson that may cost them both their lives.
Kindle Unlimited is Amazon’s main subscription ebook reading program. Kindle Unlimited gives you virtually unlimited (hence the name) reading privileges to a wide variety of titles, for a low monthly fee.
Not every title listed on Amazon is enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Literary fiction from the big New York publishing houses generally is not included. You likely won’t find the latest Jonathan Franzen novel in Kindle Unlimited anytime in the near future.
Kindle Unlimited is heavy on genre fiction. This means: romance, space opera, LitRPG, fantasy, and horror.
I have a fair number of horror titles in Kindle Unlimited. I write supernatural horror, in the tradition of Peter Straub, H.P. Lovecraft, Bentley Little and E.F. Benson.
And yes (I know this sounds a bit pretentious) Stephen King. I have achieved barely a gazillionth fraction of King’s commercial success. But his formula of character-based, fast-moving horror is always on my mind when I sit down to write a horror tale.
What kind of horror don’t I write? If you want splatterpunk, or “extreme” horror (aka “torture porn”), then you should skip my books and stories. I have no interest in writing horror fiction that is endlessly grim and/or sadistic. My horror fiction is more akin to the campfire ghost story.
Below are the horror titles that I presently have enrolled in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program. This means that you can read them for free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited subscriber.
To view one of these titles on Amazon, simply click on the image of any book, or any hyperlink below.
(Don’t have a Kindle Unlimited membership? Click here.)
A college student takes a walk down the most haunted road in rural Ohio for a cash prize. This is a “haunted road” story, basically a tale of being stuck on a cursed country road at night. Ghosts, evil spirits, and hellhounds abound. Also, an evil witch that inhabits a covered bridge.
A coming-of-age story set on Halloween night, 1980. This is a tale of supernatural events in the American suburb. A classic horror tale for Generation X.
The year is 1976, and the Headless Horseman rides again. This coming-of-age horror thriller is sure to please readers who appreciate character-based supernatural fiction with lots of twists and turns.
The basic idea is: the ghosts of American history coming back to haunt Middle America in 1976, the year of the American Bicentennial. (And yes, I’m old enough to remember the Bicentennial, although I was rather young at the time.)
In early 2016, I read an article in The Economist about the luk thep “spirit dolls” of Thailand.
Manufactured and sold in Thailand, these are factory-made dolls with a unique sales point: each doll is supposedly infused with the spirit of a young child that passed prematurely.
The luk thep are intended to bring comfort to their owners. (They are marketed to childless women.) To me, though, the whole idea sounded rather macabre.
And I couldn’t help thinking: what if one of the dolls was infused with a child spirit that wasn’t very nice? What if that same doll ended up in the possession of an American woman who happened to visit Thailand on a business trip? Luk Thep is a fast-paced ghost tale that spans two continents.
Looking for horror stories you can read online for free?
While I recommend Kindle Unlimited for fans of horror fiction and ebooks, I should also point out that I have a number of horror stories you can read online here for FREE.
From classic ghost tales to creature features, you’ll find a considerable range. Check them out!
In the fall of 1984, I was a junior in high school. I had a passion for the novels and short stories of Stephen King.
My high school English teacher, not so much. He was a devotee of two twentieth-century writers: Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. So I read a lot of Hemingway and a lot of Fitzgerald that year.
I was 16 years old, and really two young for either writer. Hemingway and Fitzgerald wrote about adult concerns, and concerns of what was already a long-ago, bygone era. As a teenager of the Reagan-era American suburbs, I had little interest in the social conventions of the Jazz Age, or the moody ramblings of World War I veterans.
As an adult, I’ve developed a new appreciation for both writers.
I’ve recently begun digging into The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A New Collection. This collection, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli, contains all the Fitzgerald short stories I remember as a junior in high school: “Winter Dreams”,“A Diamond As Big As the Ritz”, “Babylon Revisited,” etc.—as well as many that my high school English teacher never assigned.
Fitzgerald wrote his short stories long. Not all of them can be read in a single sitting. Many of his short stories resemble compressed novels more than typical short stories, as they deal with events stretching out over many years, even decades.
Fitzgerald’s writing style is accessible to modern readers, but his subject matter is a hundred years removed from our time. It takes some effort to put oneself in the mindset of an adult living in 1925. (I am soon to turn 57 years old, and that is the era of my great-grandparents. The one great-grandparent I knew was born in 1895, one year before Fitzgerald.)
Still, there are some universal themes in Fitzgerald’s fiction. One of my favorite stories is the aforementioned “Winter Dreams”. This is the tale of a man who, between adolescence and early middle age, mistakenly projects all of his ideals onto a woman with whom he has a fleeting romantic relationship.
1922 magazine illustration for “Winter Dreams”
“Winter Dreams” is basically a story about the pedastalization of femininity. The theme is as relevant in 2025 as it was in 1922, when Fitzgerald wrote the story.
(Note: When I first read “Winter Dreams” in 1984, I “got” what Fitzgerald was trying to say. Some years would pass before I learned the real-life lesson.)
You might be hesitant to dive into a book of century-old stories. I would encourage you, though, to give Fitzgerald a try. Many of his tales, like The Great Gatsby and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, have been adapted for film in the modern era.
There is a reason why Fitzgerald endures, when so many other writers have fallen by the wayside. Fitzgerald was a skilled and insightful storyteller.
So much was superior about the Gen X childhood. We had decent schools, conscientious teachers, no social media madness, no “AI” nonsense, and no smartphone obsessions.
We also had a thriving children’s book industry. And no—I’m not referring to Harry Potter. (Most Gen Xers were in our 30s when Harry Potter appeared.)
We had comics and storybooks, of course. But there were also plenty of children’s books that respected the intelligence of children. Many of these books were quite sophisticated by today’s standards, what might accurately be called “middlebrow”.
Among these was the How and Why Wonder Books series. Most of these were published in the early 1960s.
I owned this volume: The How and Why Wonder Book of The Moon.
Out of print! So no Amazon link!
This title, targeted at the casual juvenile reading market, went into considerable detail about the science of the moon and the history of lunar observation. Since this was published before the 1969 lunar landing, that event was not covered, but plenty else was.
In the 1960s and 1970s, it was still assumed that intelligent people would spend more time reading than staring at electronic screens. How and Why Wonder Books, though written for children in the 1960s, would be beyond the reading comprehension levels of many adults born after 1990. Make of that what you will.
Melania Trump has announced that the upcoming audiobook version of her memoir will be narrated with an AI clone of her voice.
Posting on X, the First Lady spun this as a nod to modernity. “Let the future of publishing begin,” Mrs. Trump declared.
As is typical of social media in these divided times, many of the comment replies were vindictive, and largely fell along partisan lines.
This got me thinking about First Ladies, and my memories of them.
I was born during the final full year of the Lyndon Baines Johnson administration (1968). I was alive during all the years that Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford were in office, but I remember almost nothing about either president, or their wives.
Jimmy Carter is the first POTUS I remember from Election Day forward. I was in the third grade in November 1976, when Carter was elected.
Rosalynn Carter made less of an impression on me, though, than her daughter. Amy Carter was, and is, one year older than me.
Amy Carter was often promoted as a typical American kid, just like one of us. My teachers made her a topic of classroom discussions.
In those days, Amy Carter made occasional appearances with her father. Decades later, I met an adult about my age who met—or claimed to have met—the presidential daughter during a visit the Carters made to her Kentucky school.
The Reagan administration (1981-1989) spanned my formative years, ages 12 through 20. First Lady Nancy Reagan was very interested in American teens, and adamant that we should not use recreational drugs. This was the era of Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) and “Just say no” (to drugs).
What can I say about Barbara Bush, the First Lady of George H.W. Bush? The elder Bushes were members of the World War II generation, the generation of my grandparents. First Lady Barbara Bush reminded me of my grandmother. I had a favorable, but unremarkable impression of her.
First Lady Hillary Clinton famously billed herself as her husband’s co-president. “Two for the price of one!” was a phrase that the Clinton Administration actually used on occasion. In the still-conservative early and mid-1990s, Mrs. Clinton’s chief initiative, a national healthcare plan, gained little popular traction.
Always the bridesmaid, and never the bride (politically), Mrs. Clinton would herself run for the White House—twice. The first time (2008) she lost out to Barack Obama in the Democratic Party primaries. The second time (2016), as the Democratic nominee, she lost to Donald Trump in the Electoral College (though she took a greater percentage of the popular vote).
Laura Bush, the wife of President George W. Bush (2001 – 2009) did not shun the inevitable glare of the spotlight. Nor did she project any pretensions of being her husband’s co-president.
Laura Bush has sometimes been described as our most popular modern First Lady. It is difficult to argue with her numbers. A January 2006 USAToday/Gallup poll gave Laura Bush an approval rating of 82 percent. This came at a time when her husband’s approval was sagging, due to the quagmire of the war in Iraq, and looming economic turmoil.
Since 2008, the Democratic Party has given us two more First Ladies: Michelle Obama and Jill Biden. During their time in the White House, there seemed to be attempts on the left to transform both of these women into feminist icons. In the meantime, they became minor villainesses for the right.
And then there is First Lady Melania Trump. There is much about Mrs. Trump, her marriage, and her origins which are unusual.
First, Melania Trump is only our second foreign-born First Lady. The first foreign-born First Lady, Louisa Adams, was born in England in 1775, raised in France, and was the wife of our sixth president, John Quincy Adams.
Melania Trump, on the other hand, was born Melania Knavs in Yugoslavia in 1970. She had a modeling career in the 1980s and 1990s before she met Donald Trump in 1998. Melania Knauss, as she was then known, would become Donald Trump’s third wife.
There is a significant age gap between Melania and Donald Trump. Allow me to put it in personal terms. Melania is two years younger than me. (I was born in 1968.) Donald Trump was born the same year as both of my parents (1946).
Melania and Donald Trump do not seem to be close as a couple. Some would blame the age gap, but there are plenty of age-gap couples who are quite close. The problem, rather, is that there is something about their relationship which seems distant and transactional. A European fashion model wedding a twice-divorced American billionaire who was old enough to be her father. What could possibly go wrong with a union like that?
Which brings us to Melania Trump’s memoir. Would I like to read it? Sure. I suspect that the political chapters will be rather thin gruel, but I would definitely like to know more about her origin story.
I remember watching news stories about communist Yugoslavia during the 1980s. Neither I—nor anyone else—would have ever guessed that we’d someday have a First Lady from there. Politics aside, Melania Trump’s journey, from there to here, must be a remarkable one. I do plan to read her memoir.
(Or…maybe I’ll wait for the AI audiobook. As I’ve said before, my TBR list is very long, indeed.)
I collected historical coins of all denominations: Morgan and Eisenhower silver dollars, Buffalo nickels, and Mercury dimes.
And yes, pennies, too.
I’m not an active collector anymore, but coins still interest me. This is why I note the passing of the US penny with mixed feelings. The US Mint has confirmed that it will begin phasing out the penny after 2026. Existing pennies will remain legal tender for the foreseeable future. But the heyday of the one-cent coin is clearly behind us.
Perhaps I saw this coming, even when I was collecting coins as a kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s. That was, after all, an era of high inflation. As a kid, I always picked up a stray penny found on a sidewalk, but there was no sense of having hit the jackpot. As a kid of that era, found wealth began with the quarter.
Moreover, this isn’t the first time that US currency has been phased out or changed in my lifetime. Almost all currency has undergone design changes since I was born. Throughout my life, I’ve seen the two-dollar bill and the one-dollar coin revived, discontinued, and revived again. At present, the Kennedy half-dollar seems poised to make a genuine comeback.
But the penny? Maybe we can live without it. As a collector I hoarded wheat pennies and Indian head pennies. Few of them were worth any real money, according to the 1980 Whitman coin value guide that served as my bible.
Some casual research has shown me that historical pennies have even less relative value than they did 45 years ago. The childhood coin collector in me, that kid from 1980, will miss the penny. But the penny’s fate was sealed even then.
For much of my life, its primary significance was that it was the gateway to summer vacation. During my school days (1974 through 1986) Memorial Day weekend was always the final weekend of the academic year. Therefore, Memorial Day was a time for celebrating, not reflecting.
I was of course aware of the dead at Pearl Harbor and Iwo Jima. But those were historical figures, frozen in amber. Not people whom I actually knew. My grandfather was a World War II vet. My father and uncle served during the Vietnam era. But they all made it back okay.
Now let me tell you about Keith.
Keith ran high school track with me during the mid-1980s. We weren’t best friends, but I definitely knew him and liked him. (He was one year ahead of me in school.)
Keith was a great sprinter. He received a partial track scholarship to the University of Cincinnati. But things happened, and he ended up leaving college to join the US Navy. He served seven years.
After being honorably discharged from the US Navy, Keith joined a US Army Reserve unit in Wisconsin, where he had settled.
Keith was deployed to Iraq shortly after the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He died near Mosul, Iraq, in the summer of 2004, the result of an IED explosion.
Keith was 37 years old by then. He was survived by his wife and two children.
Since 2004, I tend to think about Keith on Memorial Day. Because he is someone I actually knew. I remember watching him run at track meets. I remember him making wisecracks. Back then (circa 1985), he was just another ironic Gen Xer.
A final note: Keith’s real name was not Keith. I intentionally gave him a pseudonym, because I wanted Internet searches on his name to go to his online memorials, not to my website.
I had never heard of Paul Hirsch until I read his memoir, but I have been watching his movies since the age of nine.
Paul Hirsch is a longtime film editor and Hollywood insider. He edited the original Star Wars (1977), along with its 1980 sequel, The Empire Strikes Back. Other films in Hirsch’s editing oeuvre include: Carrie (1976), Creepshow (1982), Falling Down (1993), Source Code (2010), two Mission Impossible films, and The Secret of My Success (1987). All movies that I’ve enjoyed watching, literally for my entire sentient life.
I don’t read a lot of Hollywood books, but I made an exception in this case. I am not a movie editor, nor do I aspire to be one (aside from the editing of my YouTube videos). Hirsch’s memoir, however, provides some insights that can be applied to any creative process. Hirsch is observant, and he’s been doing what he does for a long time.
For those who are interested in Hollywood, this book contains tidbits like: the challenges of working with the late John Hughes, Tom Cruise’s fitness and diet routine, and the bad blood between Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte that turned I Love Trouble (1994) into a flop. The chapter on the ill-fated The Adventures of Pluto Nash (2002), starring Eddie Murphy, is also worth reading.
Hirsch adds enough of his own life and beliefs to this book to personalize it, but not enough to turn it into a manifesto or (heaven forbid) yet another Hollywood political screed. Hirsch makes his left-leaning politics fairly clear in his memoir, but he doesn’t beat the reader over the head on the topic.
My only real disappointment with Paul Hirsch is that unlike me, he does not enjoy horror movies, even though he edited several of my favorites (Creepshow and Carrie). Fair enough. Supernatural horror is not for everyone, including, perhaps, some of those who have a hand in making it.
