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Kung Fu
From about 7th grade on through high school I was stuck with a nickname that I didn’t like very much, “Kung Fu.” It came about after the television show of the same name and the fact that I had been taking martial art classes at the air base. After a year and a half of training, the…
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Revising the Death of a Terrorist
U.S. authorities, relying on Pakistani intelligence, say the raid on the compound where Osama bin Laden was living wasn’t the first time the property was targeted in a search for a top al-Qaida figure. A senior Pakistani intelligence official says the Pakistanis staged a 2003 raid there in search of a man regarded as al-Qaida’s…
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Campaigning Amid Convolution
Jus’ days after the death of Osama bin Laden, President Barack Obama paid a visit to the place where al-Qaeda inflicted its greatest damage. The president placed a wreath at the outdoor memorial where the World Trade Center once stood, then met privately with about 60 relatives of those killed on Sept. 11, 2001. On…
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Bin Laden — Dead!
Only a few months shy of the tenth anniversary of the 9-11 attacks on America, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is dead. President Barack Obama announced from the White House that bin Laden was killed by a U.S.-led operation in a mansion outside the Pakistani capital of Islamabad and the al-Qaeda leader’s body is in…
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Those Other Acquisitions
Not every book I purchased from the libraries recent sale is a winner with me. While I really love my Doten Journal and the two Don Garate books on the Susanville-Reno connection – one tome – “Tahoe beneath the Surface” – is not so good. It’s written by Scott Lankford and is about “the hidden stories…
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Second Story Man
Somewhere in the back of my mind I sensed I might be walking into an ambush. But I also knew I had to face the five men at some point so I decided the sooner, the better. Normally I would have come up the back stairs of the barracks as the door to my room…
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As Goes Superman — So Goes the Nation
Superman has started a stink by declaring he intends to renounce his U.S. citizenship in a move aimed at giving him more global authority. He makes the decision in “Action Comics” No. 900. Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, who created the comicbook hero, must be spinning in their graves. It has caused anger among readers who liken the Man of Steel’s declaration…
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Buying Someone Else’s Diary
For 25 years now, I have searched to find “The Journals of Alfred Doten,” a three-volume set, weighing in at roughly forty-pounds. They were edited by Walter Van Tilburg Clark and published by the University of Nevada Press. Each volume contains plates from engravings, photographs and maps and are bound in cloth with spines lettered in gilt.…
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A Trial for a Hoodlum
Grandpa got me the job alright. However I didn’t know what to expect. All I really knew was that the money sounded good. At 14 I was at that in between stage – I had a grand interest in the girls but I was too young to legally drive. So instead of wasted my time…
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The Stubborn Scot
There is never a good time for bad news. And that bad news came late Saturday night when I received a phone call from my friend Elizabeth — telling me her husband of 16 years had breathed his last. But this ain’t no regular obituary… Duncan had been ill for years, battling cancer in one…