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Democratic incumbent Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, “was unable to name three books that influenced his life…and blamed his lack of an answer on being ‘brain-dead,’ reports the Washington Free Beacon. The same thing happened to Sarah Palin when asked what newspapers or magazines she reads, “Umm – all of them.”

If put on the spot, very few of us could name three books that have truly influenced our lives. In fact, I doubt most of us could honestly claim that the Bible has been a real influence, since many of us have yet to study it’s content fully save for a few verses here and there.

It took me about ten minutes to think my list of three books. And I believe I read them all before I was nine years old.

The first one was given to me by my first grade teacher, Mrs. Helen Puls. Called “The Puppycat,” it was first published in 1953 by Nora Sanderson and Eileen Mayo and centers on a pet that was half-dog and half-cat.

I say it influenced me because it’s the first book I read on my own.

Next is “Goops and How to be them,” by Gelett Burgess. Described as “rude creatures devoid of beauty and grace,” and each Goop adventure in the book is a lesson on ‘good manners.’

First gone to press in 1900, I found the rhymes fun to read even though I was tongue-tied as a kid. For instance:

“The Goops they lick their fingers,
And the Goops they lick their knives,
They spill their broth on the table-cloth–
Oh, they lead disgusting lives.”

(Now maybe Kyle will understand when as a little boy he made a mess, I’d call him a ‘Goop.’)

Finally, I enjoyed “Catcher with the Glass Arm,” written by Matt Christopher in 1964. I begged Mom to let me order it from some fundraiser we were having at school.

‘Glass arm,’ is more than jus’ a baseball story to me – it’s a template for building good character. The story builds upon good sportsmanship, adapting to situations, hard work and never giving up.

As I continue to watch the leaves drop from the trees, I’m reminded of a book given to me by our neighbor and my sisters’ God-mother, Margaret Keating, when I was 16 years old. Printed in 1903, it contained hundreds of Haiku and assorted short stories.

A few years later, it disappeared, stolen by former landlord. Anyway, one story I remember was about ‘raking leaves,’ and though I can only paraphrase the original story, it went something like this:

A young student was in charge of a garden, where he meticulously raked up all the dry autumn leaves. As he worked, his teacher watched him with interest. 

When he finished, the student stood back to admire his work, calling out to his teacher, “Isn’t it beautiful?”  

“Almost,” replied the teacher.

The student watched as his teacher walked to the tree, grabbed its trunk and shook it, showering leaves all over the once raked garden. The teacher then walked back to where the student stood, unable to speak and said, “Now, it’s beautiful.”

With leaves scattered around our backyard, I told Mary the story. She then brought me back to reality.

“Nice story,” she smiled as she handed me a rake.

The Arcata Police are searching for Randy Markin, who disappeared last Friday afternoon. A friend told authorities that he saw him at the Intermodal Transit Facility between two and three.

Randy graduated from Del Norte High a year before I did. He is a decorated U.S. Coast Guard veteran and is trying to collect a ‘Guinness World Records,’ number of lava lamps.

Randy’s 55-years-old, white, 6’3” tall and 230 pounds with long grey hair, brown eyes and wears glasses. He was last seen wearing a tie-dye T-shirt, long leather jacket, and jeans.

He’s a diabetic and need medication and left both his cell phone and wallet at home. Randy uses an electric wheelchair at times due to his osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, but didn’t take it with him when he left.

If you have any information or see Randy, you’re urged to contact APD at (707) 822-2428.

UPDATE 12/03/2014: Randy’s body was found in a creek near Heather Lane in Arcata on December 2nd.

His head throbbed beyond belief and he was certain that if he could see in the dark, where ever he was, it would be spinning. The air hung heavy with the stench of dried blood, vomit, human feces, fear and death.

Sam Jacobi also realized his wrists were clamps in metal bracelets and attached to a chain and then attached to a wall. The chains were not very long and were attached lower than he could stand up straight.

His knees buckled and he dropped to the smooth stone surface, banging his already aching head against the wall jus’ above the chains attachment. He couldn’t help it and though he fought hard against throwing up where he was kneeling, the urge over powered him.

That was two years ago, and Jacobi’s conditions were jus’ slightly better. At least he had several shafts of light that filtered in from where ever he was being held captive.

This morning he was unbuckled from the wall and given an orange silken robe and pants to put on. He was also allowed a cold-shower, something that only happened when he was to appear before the jihadist’s cameras.

Within an hour his head was covered with a black bag and he was loaded into a small vehicle, bouncing along a rock strewn road someplace in the never ending desert of the Middle East. Jacobi listened intently to chatter among the four men who held AK-47s on him.

Though Farsi was not a language he knew well, he had been deprived the sound of any English speaking people since he was taken prisoner while trying to take video footage of Islamic Militants battle their way through Baghdad. And what words he picked up and only slightly understood, made him feel ill to his stomach.

One had said something about, ‘one way,’ while another laughed at the words Jacobi was certain meant, “chopped off,’ and ‘headless.’ By the time the ride ended, Jacobi was sure he was being taken to his place of execution.

It was the fifth or sixth time he’d seen men, who were also prisoners, given clean orange clothes to wear, before being taken away, never to be seen again. After each time, rumors swirled down the row of cells that that man was dead.

Rumors, then but now it was Sam Jacobi’s turn.

“I’m not gonna beg for my life,” he thought as he was dragged from the vehicle and the heavy black covering yanked from his head.

They were nothing, if not efficient, with three video cameras set up, a sound man ready for recording and a knife-wielding man garbed in black, whose dark, ugly eyes were showing and a leather holster with pistol hanging from his left side. Jacobi felt the bile rise to the top of his throat and rather than swallow, he spit what he could in the direction of the man wearing black.

No sooner had he spit, than he felt the crack of a rifle butt smash into the right side of his head. The blow wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but that didn’t mean it did not hurt all the same or cause him to topple over.

“No!” shouted the man in black, “Do not damage his face.”

Jacobi lifted his head from where he had been knocked down, surprised at the crisp British accent that came from the man in black. The sound of English being spoken meant his captors spoke it too after all.

As he looked towards the voice, two others jerked him from the ground and dragged him, his feet dangling, to beside the ominous figure with the knife. He was forced to his knees in the hot sand, where he looked up at the man whose hate-filled eyes glared down at him.

“Read the placards,” the Brit ordered, “and perhaps I’ll spare your life today.”

Jacobi looked at the first card. It reminded him of the last two times he had been forced through acts of torture, to read threats directed against the United States, the military and other Americans.

This one was different – it read like an apology for forcing the extremists to do the thing they were about to do. Jacobi knew at that moment he was as good as dead whether he read it or not.

Looking up at the man the media had dubbed ‘Jihad John,’ and said, “Go to hell.”

Without a word, ‘Jihad John,’ twisted the knife as Sam Jacobi felt the bite of the blade against his neck. He had jus’ enough time to cry-out, “Jesus save me!”

About half-an-hour into one of my favorite movies, “Big Trees,” ‘Yukon’ Burns, played by actor Edgar Buchanan, interrupts an outdoor church service. He politely listens as the church elder quotes Luke 10:27, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might,” to which Burns calls out, “Amen.”

Burns then explains that when God uses the word ‘might,’ He’s speaking ‘fighting talk.” And though the Elder disagrees, claiming it goes against their belief system, Burns continues: “I believe in turning the other cheek, but you’re jus’ about run out of cheeks,” he then adds, “It’s time you start growing some religious muscle.”

He finishes his testimony by pointing out, “The Lord didn’t make strong backs jus’ to let the wicked seize the Earth.”

There have been many times when I’ve thought about this scene and how it measures up to my faith – which has taught me to ‘turn the other cheek.’ I don’t want you to mistake this for doctrine, but when enough is enough, maybe we need to up our dukes and defend ourselves and others too.

The story, “Tribal Memories of the Flying Saucers,” written by Oge-Make, a Navaho Indian, recounts a Paiute story about flying saucers and extraterrestrial beings, and appeared in a 1948 issue of FATE magazine. Interestingly enough the same story appears in a book by Bourke Lee, called “Death Valley Men,” published in 1932.

There is very little information on Bourke other than publisher ‘Macmillian,’ acknowledges he had at least two book printed by them. Also, Richard E. Lingerfelter, in his book, “Death Valley & the Amargosa: A Land of Illusion,” describes Lee as, “a talented writer-publicist and former Navy flyer Thomas Burke Lee,” who used “the pen name Bourke Lee.”

Oge-Make is actually science fiction writer L. Taylor Hansen, who contributed a lot of material for Amazing Stories in the late 1940s and probably used the pseudonym to further give the tale an aura of mystery. She passed away in May 1976.

Stranger still is the fact that most Paiute elders in the Northern Nevada area know of this same tale. Many of them were young children when they first heard it from their elders.

As one woman, who lives on the Hungry Valley Reservation, jus’ north of Reno, Nevada said to me: “This could be a White-man’s tale that has found its way into our lore, since most of us were kids back in the 30s and 40s.”

Stop beating yourself up over old mistakes.
We may love the wrong person and cry about the wrong things, but no matter how things go wrong, one thing is for sure, mistakes help us find the person and things that are right for us.
We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past.
But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.
Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come.

While hanging out in the backyard, early Sunday morning, trying to catch a view of the comet named ‘Siding Spring,’ I recalled an event from July 1995. At the time Mary, Kyle and I were living in an apartment on Sutro Street in Reno.

During the evening of the third, I sat outside with my friend Gene and his three girls, Elyse, Renee and Lauren. The five of us lay back in the grass watching the sky.

We were looking for the U.S. and Russian space ships to zip through the darkened night. The two ships were docked together and visible for only a few minutes as they were traveling so fast that they were out of sight in no time.

It was such an amazing sight that wrote about the event in my private journal that night: “I am still in awe of the space program, knowing that man can leave the gravity of this Earth and go beyond the limits of what was once considered imagination…”

It’s those small bits-and-pieces of memory that make life worth living.

Sitting on my front porch, enjoying an autumn zephyr that felt more like a winter breeze, I got to thinking about what wisdom I could impart if we had no more time left.  Politics, civil liberty, historical essays, family stories and old photographs would no longer matter.

So what’s left?

Then that tiny voice, I often call my conscience, but is really the Holy Spirit we each have, whispered in my head. Despite the rushing of God’ breathe across the valley, I heard His message loud and clear: “Love and care for each other.”

For the past month I’ve played ‘cat and mouse,’ with a couple of real mice. That leaves me in the role of the cat.

Because I have dogs, I don’t use poison bait to kill the mice. In fact I prefer to live-trap them, then release them far away from the neighborhood, deep in the desert scrub.

Unfortunately, Mr. Mouse and his buddies are too smart for their own good, evading every live-trap I’d set to capture them with. So, I finally had to resort to a few good old-fashioned mouse traps.

The end of the first mouse came at around four in the morning when Mary woke me saying, “I jus’ heard the trap go off.”

She left for work shortly afterwards and that’s when I got up and disposed of the now broken dead mouse. All my other traps remained unsprung even though the bait of peanut butter I left on them was gone.

Since that morning, I’ve managed to get two more mice — and as counter-intuitive as it might sound — killing mice should be easy to do, but on the contrary, it upsets my tiny universe and leaves me out of sorts.