The red sandstone rested nowhere near a hillside or rocks of the same material. Sam picked it up and looked it over.

The surface had a petroglyph of the humped back flute player, Kokopelli, in black and not the usual dark red pigment. Sam slipped it in his pack.

Once home, he placed it on his front porch. Shortly after midnight, Sam awoke to the sound of distant music.

He stepped out onto his front porch to listen. An unfamiliar blackness overcame him.

Once conscious, Sam found himself pressed into the stone and the flute player dancing around a fire.

My Cousin Elmo says, “Don’t let anyone take your temperature by pointing that thing at your forehead. It erases your memory. I went to the grocery store for beer and came home with tampons.”

My Cousin Elmo says, “Can a person get drunk on Fire Ball? Asking for a friend.”

U.S. citizens left behind in Afghanistan, so let’s hold a press conference on why we need a COVID-19 booster shot.

“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” — Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia and Confession of Nat Turner.

James Froude, an English historian, and novelist gave a different twist: “Toleration is a good thing in its place, but you cannot tolerate what will not tolerate you and is trying to cut your throat.”

Either way, if you want to get the COVID-19 vaccine, that is your business. The same goes for masks.

Neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.

Since I’ve no family on Mars, been unable to befriend anyone, and bored inside my isolation chamber, I have begun writing.

A week into isolation and a week to go. It solves two things, the return of “space sickness,” this time akin to getting one’s balance back after being at sea for too long. The other is to keep any bacteria or virus from spreading to the rest of the colony.

The word “colony” sounds so quaint and old-fashioned. But don’t be fooled — I am told this colony is anything but quaint. However, it is old-fashioned in the sense that it is like a roaring 1800s boomtown.

Before I forget, I am using paper created here, on Mars, from a ponic process that takes plant material and pulps and presses it to form. It is a grayish-brown, rougher, and slightly thicker than the 20lbs stock I have been used to writing on.

As for a writing instrument, it is a remarkable invention. It is solid like pencil lead but flows like ink and housed a synthetic composite material that is refillable.

It took me less than two hours to pack everything I owned and have it at the Express Depot for a flight that was leaving three days ahead of mine. I was able to watch as the rocket lifted into space and disappeared.

It did not enter my mind to be concerned for myself until I strapped into a hard-framed seat and the rumble of the engine beneath me. My stomach turned, and my vision blurred as the ship lifted away from the pad.

I thought that we were all going to die.

My journey was only beginning, but already I wished for the three months it would take to be over. I cannot imagine how anyone could keep from going mad when such travel took over 200 days to complete.

Fortunately, I had found an inexpensive way to travel, a working-class vessel. It was a frigate where I would earn my passage as assistant to the medical doctor.

Illness quickly gripped me. Called “space sickness,” it is a loss of gravity, motion sickness, and a lack of navigational bearing brought on by not seeing sky, land, or water.

A new medicine patch every day and constant hydration helped me battle through it. But it took near two weeks before I was over the symptoms enough to leave my berth.

Four thousand people or more gathered for events in Nevada must prove they have received their COVID-19 vaccinations, to avoid mask mandates.

“This is cutting edge,” Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak said. “There [are] no other venues in the country that are doing this. I think it is going to get people, more people, wanting to go to an event because they know that when they walk in that arena or that stadium, everybody is vaccinated.”

No, Mr. Governor, this is not cutting edge — it is still Communism as in, “Let me see your papers.” And it fails every time instituted.

Robert Heinlein is one of the most controversial authors of hard science fiction. He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped raise the genre’s standards of literary quality. 

He was the first sci-fi writer to break into the mainstream, general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post in the late 1940s. Heinlein also spent time with Parsons and Hubbard at Parsons home. 

Later, he would write “Stranger in a Strange Land,” a book referenced by Charles Manson, who believed he was both “Valentine Michael Smith” and “Jubal Harshaw.”

Valentine Michael Smith is a human raised on Mars, newly returned to Earth. Among his people for the first time, he struggles to understand the social mores and prejudices of human nature that are so alien to him while teaching them his own fundamental beliefs in grokking, water-sharing, and love.

According to Wikipedia: “Jubal E. Harshaw, LL.B., M.D., Sc.D., bon vivant, gourmet, sybarite, popular author extraordinary, neo-pessimist philosopher, devout agnostic, professional clown, amateur subversive, and parasite by choice.”

Neither character seems to mean anything to me, but the word “grokking” jumped out at me. It means to understand something intuitively or by empathy.

Time to return to the original story by Parsons.

Tired of waiting for something to happen on Earth, more directly in the U.S., to halt the ever-growing threat of runaway government, corporatization of liberties, and a frustrating lack of fundamental values like family, faith, and freedom, I left for Martian planet. It is here that I plan to kick-start my writing career.

Interestingly, letter writing is emerging as a popular method of correspondence on the Red Planet. Martians have adopted this for two primary reasons: embracing humanity’s written language tradition and establishing a “private life.”

Early Martians deemed that physical paper and writing instruments were a waste and used digital devices instead. However, the recent emergence of paper on Mars, made from hydroponic plant fiber, has allowed for letter writing to become a popular pastime.

Students as young a five are encouraged to write letters to each other in class, practicing penmanship, punctuation, and grammar. Because of this example, adults often write letters to their family, friends, and neighbors.

Martians have always held the “private life” as one of their guiding tenets. They define the “private life” as a life that cannot be observed or controlled by any form of a physical or digital entity.

The concept originated because of a lack of privacy on Earth, surveillance technologies, and digital systems/corporations that capture and use personal data. It has manifested into measures taken to safeguard peer-to-peer communications.

Although Martians have access to the Internet, email, and social media, many realize the importance of the written language and letter writing, opting to use letters as a more meaningful form of correspondence. As a result, Martians write one letter a week that will never find a digital platform.

Instead of a computer hard drive and monitor, I happily opted to ship reams of loose-leaf paper and thousands of pencils to myself.

My brother and I transferred from public school to Catholic School. I quickly found myself in trouble daily for saying or doing this or that.

So the afternoon Sister Angela yelled my name, claiming I was not reading the book assignment in class as directed, I wasn’t surprised.

“Did anyone see Tommy reading like he is supposed to be doing?” she demanded.

Pam Kimble raised her hand and said she saw me. But because she was looking at me, she was sent to the office for not following the assignment as instructed.

“Anyone else?” Sister asked.

Silence followed as I looked around the room and watched my classmate’s eyes suddenly avert from mine. Anger overcame me as I was sent to the office for disobedience.

Minutes later, Sister joined Pam and me, telling us to return to class.

My jaw clenched, I glared hatefully at anyone who dared look at me. Pam was nearly in tears, mortified as she was never in trouble.

Sister soon came in and announced, “See how easy that was?”

Heads pivoted left and right because none of us had any idea about what she was speaking.

“Neither Pamela nor Tommy did anything wrong, but none of you wanted to say anything because you didn’t want to get in trouble,” she finished.

The reading assignment? The Diary of Anne Frank.