The Story
Scat, by Jim Graham is an imaginative and intriguing story set in the far future that follows Sebastian Scatkiewicz, a.k.a. Scat – an American in the US Marine Corps and decorated war hero. After ‘retiring’ from the Marines he finds himself on a distant planet working in a mine. He gets caught up in a riot there, and is shipped to another planet where he is unwillingly swept up in a planetary rebellion. The major players in the war that ensues are not governments so much as mega-corporations, a regulatory commission and the people of the planet he’s on. All he wanted was to do his tour of duty in the mine, get paid and buy a patch of dirt to settle on. Now he’s embroiled in a war and he has to choose a side.
Mr. Graham employs some unique science and offers a very dark view of corporate domination that may appear all too realistic given the way things are going. The story undergoes several convolutions that turn the plot on its head and leaves you guessing where it will end up, and I love the twist at the end that serves up retribution for the villainous. All of the villainous. Continue reading “Book Review: Scat”
These days it’s easy to lose sight of the true meaning of Christmas, for the things we see and hear so often are not what it’s really about. It’s about the birth of a very special child; the Christ child. But his birth alone is not what made Him special, it’s what He did with His life and death that makes Him our savior and Lord.
There is a lonely place to which hurting people sometimes go. It is called “withdrawal.” They go thinking they have found a safe haven from their woes. They wrap themselves in an emotional cocoon as a cushion against their pain. They internalize their grief and often get locked into a rut of only one way of thinking. Their imaginations play tricks on them as they lose touch with reality. Many times withdrawal causes folk to lash out at those who love them most and could care for them best. It is not easy dealing with life’s complications, but retreating within oneself does not make it easier. People who turn inward to lick their own wounds have a limited source of healing. 
Across the aisle from the itemizing area were a honking big set of Blodgett ovens; two ovens with doors 5 feet wide and decks about 3 feet deep stacked atop one another. They were gas fired and the gas burners heated the 3/4” thick slate slabs that formed the floor of the ovens. We ran them at 400 degrees. Want a pair of these beauties for your kitchen? They’ll only set you back about 18 grand!
To get the pizzas into and out of the oven, we used a pizza peel – which looked a little like a giant aluminum fly swatter, but we NEVER swatted flies with it; I swear. The technique was to grab the long wooden handle about half-way along its length so the end of the handle lay under your forearm and gave you leverage. Slide the peel under the completed pizza (on an expanded metal screen) and lift. The peel was quite slick, on a busy night you didn’t have time to move gingerly. To keep the pizza on the peel meant learning to “bank” the peel as you swing around 180° to put it in the oven the way a motorcyclist leans into turns to keep from being thrown off the bike, lift the nose as you reach into the oven to prevent the pie from sliding off the end of the peel and splatting all over the back of the oven, then gently deposit it on the deck with a quick backward jerk of the peel. As soon as it was 
One of the first known usages of the term “flash fiction” in reference to the literary style was the 1992 anthology Flash Fiction: Seventy-Two Very Short Stories. Editor James Thomas stated that the editors’ definition of a “flash fiction” was a story that would fit on two facing pages of a typical digest-sized literary magazine[