Welcome home Sergeant Hardy

Came upon this obituary on the website of a funeral home that is back where I'm from originally.  I find this fascinating, on so many levels.

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Official Obituary of

David Eugene Hardy

November 1, 1928 ~ February 28, 1951 (age 22)

SGT David Eugene Hardy was born on Nov 1, 1928 and died on Feb 28, 1951 as a POW at Camp 5, Pyoktong, North Korea.  Under Operation Glory his remains were exchanged in 1954.  The Central Identification Unit at Kokura, Japan was unable to associate remains with Sargent Hardy and the remains were sent to Honolulu for burial as Unknown in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1956.  In 2019 his remains were disinterred and sent to Hickam AFB for analysis.  SGT David E. Hardy was ultimately identified on 27 September 2024.

David's father and mother were the late John and Mary Hardy.  David's brothers were the late James (died June 14, 1944 Normandy France), Willard, George and baby Hubert.  James, Willard and George all served during WWII.  David's sisters were the late Cleria, Lessie, Mary Sue (Sudy), and Bobbye.  David is survived by nieces, nephews and children of his cousins.  

Military Services for David will be held on March 8, 2025 at Citty Funeral Home, 308 Lindsey Street, Reidsville North Carolina.  Visitation will begin at 10:00 am and the service will begin at 11:00 am. The interment with full military honors will follow at Danview Cemetery in Eden, North Carolina.

Veterans who are able are welcome to attend the services.  We honor all veterans, first responders, and active military.  Thank you for your service.

The family would like to acknowledge the dedication of the United States Army Repatriation Division for their work to identify fallen soldiers and return them home to their families.  It is work of the highest calling.

In lieu of flowers, donations to Tunnels to Towers 2361 Hylan Boulevard Staten Island, NY 10306 in David's memory are appreciated.

Citty Funeral Home is assisting the Hardy family.

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Welcome home, David. It's been a long time, but now you can be at peace.

UPDATE: Television station WFMY in Greensboro, North Carolina has an in-depth story about David Hardy.  He was indeed from Reidsville.  The story goes into his army career, the circumstances of his being taken prisoner, and how he was identified by DNA.

I'm almost tempted to drive out to Reidsville for the service.  We aren't related so far as I know, but this is the kind of thing that merits paying respect.

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J.D. Vance is right: Europe is becoming totalitarian

Okay, I watched Vice-President J.D. Vance's speech at the Munich conference.  And he was absolutely spot-on.  

The same European countries we fought for and lost lives for are now becoming as oppressive as the Soviet Union was.  There is for all intents and purposes no more freedom of speech in places like England and Germany.  Dare to speak against the government and you're declared "far right" and subject to arrest and imprisonment.  Even posting a meme on X/Twitter is grounds for prosecution.  Say something about the massive problem with criminal migrants coming into the countries and that's also considered "hate speech".

And then there are the people who have been arrested for the "crime" of praying in public near abortion providers.

Europe has taken a terrible, terrible turn for the worse and is becoming the very nightmare that George Orwell warned about.  Why should the United States tolerate this kind of behavior from its supposed greatest allies?

This seems to be something that's got a lot of people hot and bothered (I can't believe the CBS reporter who suggested that the Nazis weaponized freedom of speech... what the hell planet did she drop in off of?).  The German leadership is especially honked-off that a hillbilly boy from Ohio just told them to their faces that they have apparently learned nothing from their own history.

(Vance is fast becoming the most proactive and vigorous vice-president that I have seen in my lifetime.  Maybe even the lifetime of any living American citizen.)

I'm working on an op-ed piece about this, suggesting that the United States turn off its support of countries that don't really give a damn about democracy and basic human rights.  It's time to use that "big stick" that Theodore Roosevelt spoke of.

If the countries of Europe want to be totalitarian regimes, they can do it without our help.

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After backers burned by Mythic, Privateer Press has news about Monsterpocalypse

Over the years I've expressed my fondness for Monsterpocalypse: Privateer Press's game of giant kaiju battling it out in cities that players put together before thrashing them to smithereens.  It's an awesome game that has a lot of appeal and when it first came out a decade and a half ago it enjoyed quite a dedicated fan base.

Then some decisions were made.  And they weren't necessarily for the better.  In its original iteration Monsterpocalypse was a "blind box" game that you bought a package of without knowing what was in the box.  The idea was that you could trade game pieces with others.  Some of us filled out our factions by purchasing the wanted pieces on eBay.  That in itself was sort of a fun pastime "game within the game".  That wound up being replaced by traditional packaging that let you see what you were getting.  And then came the movie rights getting optioned by Tim Burton, and that put the game in a holding pattern of sorts.  A few other things happened too that impacted Monsterpocalypse.

And then came the Kickstarter for the board game edition.  The one that licensee Mythic Games promised the fans.  It was basically the same game as the regular miniatures game, but with a few things like the game maps upgraded to sturdy stock as well as the pieces being higher quality plastic.  It was a project that launched on Kickstarter: the premiere platform for crowd-funded games, books, music albums and even movies.  The Monterpocalypse board game Kickstarter revved up on November 2nd, 2021 and by the time it ended it had pretty much met all its stretch goals.

And then for whatever reason, Mythic Games went bust.  There was going to be no delivery of the game.  Many people - and I was one of them - went "all in" on the project: backing the core game itself and all the miniature sets.  It was a few hundred dollars investment (but I had saved up from the COVID "stimulus checks" that the government had handed out).  Anyone who invested in the board game wound up all out of the money they had pledged.  Meanwhile Mythic seems to have split the scene entirely, and I don't think anyone got their dough refunded.

Here's my write-up about the situation, from October 2023.  That post got a lot of attention from all over the place.  Maybe what I'm about to post this time will be as widely read, for other reasons.  It's not a complete salve for the wound but it's at least something...

A few weeks ago on January 30th Privateer Press published a massive update on the state of Monsterpocalypse, with an especially strong emphasis on what went down with Mythic.  Privateer Press has expressed a lot of regret about what happened with the Kickstarter, and I believe we should take them at their word.  What happened was completely beyond their control.  But it looks like they are taking steps to make right that situation.

So going forward, Privateer has announced that they're shifting their production to make it "made to order" for Monsterpocalypse.  And that furthermore, those who got left high and dry by Mythic are going to be given the STL files that will allow players the option of 3D-printing the various monsters, units, and buildings.  There is also something of an authoritative book in the works, and Privateer is hinting that there may be other things coming down the pike for the franchise.

Personally, I think that Privateer is playing it safe, maybe too much.  The game started out solid and there's no reason why it can't be solid again.  The pieces don't have to be fully painted: just produce them the old-fashioned way with plastic molds and they will sell well in the brick-and-mortar stores.  All it needs is some marketing to help get it past the King Kondo-size gorilla in the room: the Mythic fiasco.  I for one would certainly invest a little in putting together a complete army for my favorite factions (especially the Lords of Cthul).

For anyone else with an interest in Monsterpocalypse, there may be reason to be of good cheer.  The franchise is back firmly in the hands of its creators and they are paying attention to what has happened and are doing something to win back the fans.  That's a lot of responsibility they're assuming and I think, again, we should take them at their word.

(Maybe I'l be able to once again play on my self-designed map of Reidsville, North Carolina!)

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I'm starting to feel like this guy...

And hey, I've got a dog too.

The Tramp.  Charlie Chaplin's classic character.  Seemingly forever making his way from one set of experiences on to another.  A life of un-sedentary misadventures.  And that's where I've wound up once more, also.

I've had to find out the hard way that my training and experiences in regard to working with adults in the mental health field, do not necessarily translate into something that can also work with some children.  And neither is my academic background as a student of secondary education pedagogy, plus time spent teaching middle schoolers, very adaptable toward helping young people with severe special needs.

There is much more that could be said about what happened but I'll keep those thoughts to myself.  I believe that I was giving it my best, and I can hold my head high about that.  I'm a very hard worker, I always give something not less than my greatest effort.  A lot of people will attest to that.  But as friends have reminded me in the past two days it's not a perfect world.  I have to try to remember that.

In the meantime, I'm trying to keep hold to my faith.  Trying to cease questioning myself about if I am not thankful enough, because I truly believe that I was thankful and still am.  Is all of this some kind of test from God?  Is He wanting to see how well I hold up under the pressure of it all?  Is He entertained, by watching me holding on by my fingernails for the past few years?

I know.  What I'm going through right now isn't peculiar to me.  A lot of people in recent years have had to struggle.  Many are having it even worse off than I'll ever know.  There again, I should be thankful.  For the time being I still have a roof over my head.  I'm not feasting every night but neither am I starving.  I have my beloved dog Tammy (who is lately determined to drive me batty with her new ball that she keeps getting stuck underneath everything!).  Mental issues aside I am in very excellent health for someone who will be 51 next month.  Some don't get to say such things.  So I suppose on a level playing field, I'm doing all right, more or less.

I just wish that I could once again have a career with meaning and purpose that would provide for my needs.  I'm not interested in being "wealthy".  It doesn't take much to make me happy.  And I'd seriously love a real crack at having that.

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Movies I've Never Seen finally returns with EVENT HORIZON!

Almost exactly ten years ago I launched a new series on The Knight Shift: Movies I've Never Seen.  It's just what it suggests.  I would watch a movie that until now I've not beheld before and write about it.  It would be an attempt to fill in the many gaps that exist in my personal motion picture database.  It would be contributing to the cultural dialogue.  And it would be a lot of fun.

Well, that new series until now has had one... and only one... entry: my viewing of The Big Lebowski.  And then like with so many other things at the time the wind was just lacking in my sails.  It was a few months after Dad passed and I was still reeling from that.  I was also trying to maintain some income as a freelance technical writer.  And failing miserably at writing my book (which was only completed in the past two and a half months).  Writing about movies that until now had escaped notice enough to finally view them was something I very much wanted to make a regular feature out of.

Maybe things have gotten better enough that I can commit some time toward that.  It's rare that I find myself enjoying a new movie anymore.  Perhaps doing this will be a good thing for me in other ways.

So in rededication of Movies I've Never Seen, here is the the second film in the series.  A motion picture that I have heard various things about over the past few decades...

Event Horizon (1997)

Fifty years into the future, the rescue ship Lewis and Clark is dispatched from Earth to investigate the sudden reappearance of the Event Horizon.  The massive starship vanished seven years earlier after embarking on humanity's first attempt to venture out beyond the confines of the solar system.  Now it has been discovered, in orbit around the planet Neptune.

Captain Miller (Laurence Fishburne) and his crew have escorted Dr. William Weir (Sam Neill) - the engineer who created the Event Horizon - to the wayward vessel.  They are tasked with finding out what happened to the ship and its personnel.  Weir explains to his colleagues that the Event Horizon was an experimental ship designed around a gravity drive that would fold spacetime between two distant points: where a normal spacecraft would take tens of thousands of years to reach neighboring Proxima Centauri, the same voyage with such an engine would be able to be accomplished in a matter of days.

But things went wrong on the Event Horizon.  The people who made it envisioned the starting point and the end point but unfortunately they didn't seem to consider what was between the two.  Where the craft was going to be traveling through.  And that's where the ship went to and is now back from and as the crew of the Lewis and Clark come to discover, the Event Horizon didn't return alone.

This movie is all over the place.  I can understand why it has become a cult classic, for the most part.  But it's too disjointed for me to really say that I love it.  I like the general premise of Event Horizon the film: that a spacecraft has gone to nowhere less than Hell itself.  But there was a lot missing in the execution that keeps it from being a true horror classic on par with The Thing and Alien.  I did like the performances by Fishburne (before his iconic role in The Matrix and there is a little bit of Morpheus peaking out from his portrayal of Captain Miller) and Neill, still on a crest following Jurassic Park.  The film also stars Sean Pertwee, who has become an actor I appreciate.

The real star of Event Horizon however is the titular spaceship.  It evokes some reminiscing about the U.S.S. Cygnus, the gigantic vessel from 1979's The Black Hole. Each of these ships is in a subgenre all its own: the "haunted house in outer space".  When done right it could be amazing.  Unfortunately I can't think of any examples where any film has stuck the landing on that particular milieu.  But design-wise the Event Horizon is certainly imposing enough of a superstructure to darken the thoughts of any who would dare trespass aboard her deck plates.

Now a few hours after having watched it, I find myself thinking that Event Horizon is a high-concept film that misses the mark.  I won't say that I can't recommend it however.  It's worth catching at least once, and who knows: it may interest others enough that they would want it in their own personal library of movies (please Lord let physical media last a long loooong time still, I am not ready to have everything streamed from a remote server).  Director Paul S.W. Anderson swung for the fences with this movie, and it shows.  And that's also admirable.  This plot and execution needs a bit more finesse though.  Maybe in another few years the time will be ripe for a remake, because it's certainly a notion worth visiting anew.

I believe that every film should be judged by the standards of the time it was released in, as much as anything else.  As it is, 1997's Event Horizon is a model example of Nineties sci-fi filmmaking, and there is some respect to be had in that.  So for anyone who considers himself or herself a scholar of that era, I will heartily suggest Event Horizon as something to complement your broader knowledge of that decade's culture.

One last thing: I had heard, several times in fact, that Event Horizon could serve as a distant-era prequel to the Warhammer 40,000 franchise.  Having finally seen this movie, I can say that I absolutely understand why!  Maybe Anderson needs to be extended an invitation to direct something from the upcoming Warhammer 40K projects in production at Amazon.  If that happens, I definitely believe he could nail it.

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How Elon Musk and DOGE did it (and are still doing it)

The past three weeks in American life have been extraordinary, to put it mildly.  There hasn't been this much history made in my lifetime since the collapse of communism.  In some ways there are parallels between the two.  The Soviet Union fell because of Gorbachev's reforms in the face of that country's unsustainable bureaucracy.  And what some are calling American Revolution 2.0 is now transpiring as a consequence of even worse bureaucracy in the United States at last being made accountable to its people.

What President Donald Trump and his administration, and especially Elon Musk and his crack team of boffins at DOGE, are accomplishing just might be the second most dramatic "kicking over the tables at the temple" ever recorded.  There will be volumes written in years and decades to come about the winter of 2025 and the shaking up of the American government that has transpired in less than a month.  It's been a beautiful thing to behold... and I am of the mind that it's going to get even better.

A writer calling himself Eko over on Substack has published an intense account of what transpired in the wee hours of the Trump years just less than 21 days ago.  "Override" reads like a William Gibson cyberpunk novel as envisioned by Ron Paul.  Eko's write-up begins thusly:

The clock struck 2 AM on Jan 21, 2025.  

In Treasury's basement, fluorescent lights hummed above four young coders. Their screens cast blue light across government-issue desks, illuminating energy drink cans and agency badges. As their algorithms crawled through decades of payment data, one number kept growing: $17 billion in redundant programs. And counting.

"We're in," Akash Bobba messaged the team. "All of it."

Edward Coristine's code had already mapped three subsystems. Luke Farritor's algorithms were tracing payment flows across agencies. Ethan Shaotran's analysis revealed patterns that career officials didn't even know existed. By dawn, they would understand more about Treasury's operations than people who had worked there for decades. 

 

This wasn't a hack. This wasn't a breach. This was authorized disruption.

It's a helluva read, well worth recommending to anyone with even a passing interest in information technology or constitutional government. 

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I started a new career today!

Over the two decades of this blog's existence there have been times when I've landed a new job.  Sometimes, like the TV master control operator and the vocational instructor and the mental health peer support specialist, I've shared about here.  Guess I couldn't resist holding back on the good news.  Other jobs (like the part-time one I had recently that... nah, nevermind) were quietly not mentioned.  That part-time job was mostly supplemental to being an artificial intelligence trainer: something I really enjoyed doing but the work had petered out more or less.

So for the past several months I've been hanging on by my fingernails.

But today, there is cause for rejoicing.  There has been a change in fortune.  God is being very good to me lately and I need to share that thankfulness.  Today I started training for something that I think is going to be a real career.

What is it?  I am now a behavior professional at a place that works with autistic young people.  I'm going to be guiding them toward how to better communicate with others.

It's going to be a very challenging position.  But also very rewarding, personally and otherwise.  I'm going to get to use my training and experiences as a mental health professional, along with what I've gained along the way as a teacher, especially my training in college.  It's the most technological job I'll have ever had.  Among other things today at orientation they issued us each a new iPad.  They're on lanyards to wear around our necks!  I look like I'm wearing official Apple bling.  But that iPad is going to see some heavy use, maybe even more than my personal iPad Pro.

I can't fully describe how wog-boggled I am by this.  In a good way.

I may make a post every so often about it.  I can't talk about much, given various regulations like HIPAA compliance.  But a general sense of where I am and how far I'm going (hopefully far) will be befitting this blog's mission of chronicling the human condition, just as it has for the past more twenty-one years.

I'm so excited!!  Things are really turning around.  And I'll be able to continue writing too.  Maybe at odder hours but that's okay.  I don't think this job is going to be as draining as the past few I've had since leaving the mental health department over two years ago.  Some of those nearly killed me.

This new job is going to be different.  It's going to lift me up.  It's going to be the kind of challenge that makes me a better person.  And I am very thankful for that.

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Book status for early February 2025

It's been over a month and a half or so since I've posted an update about the manuscript I spent a decade of on and off work on, that I finished writing a few days before Thanksgiving.  As with a lot of other things in my life since I began this blog, some chronicling is in order.  Because this site is all about documenting the human condition and also for sake of anyone who might come across it and find themselves likewise wanting to write a book.

I guess the biggest thing (pun intended, maybe) is that it's occurred to me that I have not written a memoir, but a full-size autobiography.  Or perhaps it's two or three memoirs bound up cohesively with one another.  A memoir is supposed to be a personal reflection about just a few or even only one situation in a person's life.  That is not what my book is and I don't honestly know if what it became could have really been avoided.  My life today is the product of fifty years of many bad things as well as quite a few good things, and that is a tapestry from which removing even a few threads diminishes and even destroys the work entire.  I could have written an entire book about the swindling operation episode, or made it about pop culture as seen through the eyes of someone who was at the cutting edge of fan-driven Internet activity, or a how-to manual about running for public office.  My life has enveloped all of those things and so many more.

This may make pitching the book to a potential agent considerably more difficult.  Autobiographies by people who aren't established celebrities can be a tough thing to sell, no matter how colorful their lives may have been.

Then there is the lingering issue with the inherent nature of the book.  I may have written something that per the marketplace is nigh on unpublishable.  It's too Christian for strictly secular audiences and it's too secular for more spiritual readers.  One example: there is a point later in the book where I drive to a cemetery to conduct a ritual at the stroke of midnight.  What sensible Christians are going to approve of my doing such a thing as that?  And it may rub others the wrong way, also.

Other than those matters, I've been editing and revising and shifting elements around.  I've also been letting a few trusted friends read parts of it.  Recently I shared the prelude, which is an account of my first attempt at suicide.  Many told me that it was especially powerful and that it drew them in to wanting to read more.  I guess it's nice that something good came out of that experience after all.  I just don't ever want to be in that kind of place again.

I'm not giving up on my dream of seeing this on a store's shelf.  Dad believed in me and so have a lot of other people who have asked for a book about my life all these many years.  But I'm also having to accept the reality that this is going to perhaps be more difficult to bring to market than most other books are.  And I'm discovering that it is a hard thing indeed.

Perhaps next time I'll be able to post something more upbeat.

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Here is a new photo of Tammy!

Today was a very good day.  God answered prayer and provided for my needs in a mighty and powerful way.  I am going to bed tonight thankful for His provision and for the people He used to accomplish it with.

And since it's been awhile since I've posted a pic of her, here is my miniature dachshund Tammy making a German spectacle of herself.  How shameless!

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For anyone in a relationship...

Writing my book compelled me to examine a lot of situations that have come about in my life.  Especially where other people are involved.  I've forced myself to take a long and hard and on occasion very difficult look at how I've related to them.  And that includes all the times... all of them... when I have wound up hurting others.

I had a feeling from the start of writing this over ten years ago that my book would in many ways be an act of penance.  That feeling was not unwarranted.  In the end, the manuscript I finished two months ago is replete with the longing for atonement.  I have sinned against God and I have brought about grief to so many people.  And I had I been a wiser person, maybe some or even all of that could be avoided.

It would be easy to say that the bipolar disorder was the cause of it all.  Yet that's not entirely accurate.  Yes, being a manic depressive has complicated relations with other people.  It has wrecked havoc with my thoughts and my emotions and brought me down so many times.  It turned me into someone who was the furthest thing from the person I really am.  But in the final analysis, it was my own weaknesses that brought about ruin.

I see now where my greatest failing was to communicate.

I've only been in two relationships during my lifetime.  One of them resulted in marriage that ended in divorce, the other was a dating relationship that lasted a few years before it also ended.  Each of them could have benefitted greatly if I had not been so withdrawn in sharing my thoughts and feelings and desires and fears.  I thought that I was strong enough to not have to do those to the utmost.  And that was was a great mistake.

I don't know if God will ever let me be in another relationship.  It would make me very happy if He does.  It would have to be someone very special.  I know the kind of woman who I am looking for.  I haven't found her yet.  If she exists and somehow our paths were to cross and we end up in a place where we find that God is leading us into holy matrimony, then I want to be completely open with her.  I need for each of us to do that with one another.  Including sharing our weaknesses, as hard as that might be to do.  I didn't do that before.  Maybe if I had realized that a long time ago it would have prevented a lot of anguish and heartbreak.

I should not have tried to do it alone.  A relationship is two people, come together, out of mutual love and respect.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition this is taken to mean that a love culminates with a man and woman become as one in the eyes of God.  That means the totality of each person, given to God and to one another, lumps and all.

Maybe it took going through decades of pain to come to a point where I could realize that.

If you love someone and are committed to that person, respect them and trust them enough that you can be open with them.  About anything and everything.  Especially about your weaknesses.  I believe that your beloved will understand.  And that he or she will fully accept you.  Being in love means you have each other's back, no matter how ugly or broken things may seem.  But you can't get through that without complete and utter honesty with one another.

That's just something I'm feeling led to share tonight, while looking over a particularly grueling chapter of my book.

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BEING BIPOLAR, Part Thirteen: A New Project

Being Bipolar is a series that began in the winter of 2011.  Every now and then I post a new article, as an ongoing attempt to chronicle what it is to have a mental illness.  In my case it is bipolar disorder, also known as manic depression.  Perhaps in doing so others might gain greater insight and understanding of what it means for millions of people who likewise must deal with severe mental and emotional disorders.  As always during this series I strive to be as honest and forthright as one possibly can possibly be.  I am not a psychiatrist.  However I do come from a background of being a state-certified peer support specialist for four years.  And it is especially in that capacity as having been a mental health professional that I endeavor to document mental illness.  If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, especially if you are having thoughts of self-harm or harm to others, please consider calling 911, or go to your nearest hospital emergency room.  Trust me, I've been there, done that.  You may also find help and encouragement from a support group, such as those sponsored by mental health advocacy organizations like National Alliance on Mental Illness (nami.org).  Help is available.  You only need reach out for it.  People care about you.  Remember that.

Throughout the course of Being Bipolar, going back fourteen years now on-and-off, I have written extensively about the disease and its consequences.  Those being the episodes, the medications, the affects on my faith, how it's altered my outlook on life... lots of things.

It struck me in the past few days that maybe it's time for another edition of Being Bipolar.  And perhaps it's time to change things up a bit.

I've been defined by this disease for too long.  I've let it touch upon aspects of my life that should have by all rights been mine, not a chronic misfire of my neurobiology.  Unfortunately that's what I've allowed to happen.

And I'm finally sick and tired of it.

I'm fifty years old, going on fifty-one.  For fully half of my life I've had to struggle against a mind turned against itself.  Something that has cost me careers, friendships, a vibrant relationship with God, and even a marriage.

It's time I take back my life and everything pertaining to it.  I'm in a place where I believe I'm finally able to do that.

In a week and a half I begin a new career.  One that will let me help other people, much as I did when I was at the state mental health department.  It will require intensive training.  It will also require much patience.  It will certainly require a focused mind and an empathy for others.  It will call upon skills and experiences that I have gained at various times throughout the course of my life but have not had to employ for quite awhile.  But it will be personally rewarding.  It will have me feeling accomplished every day when I leave, and eager to come back the next morning.  It will also, I have to believe, be a little fun.

This job comes after more than two years of a career drought.  I had to depart from my position at the mental health department because the economy turned bad and I wasn't able to afford living on it.  Exiting that was one of the worst things that ever happened to me.  I had to leave behind many good people.  People who I worked with and the people I was helping on a regular basis.  I became part of their lives and they became part of mine.  I miss them.

I've been without reliable income all this time.  And I have had to rely on help from others to get me through.  It's not an enviable situation, but it was having to accept reality.  Maybe God has needed me to go through this.  Perhaps it's His way of making me more thankful for the blessings He has given me.  Perhaps it's making me hungrier, to be the person He made me to be as I've never been before.

I am ready for the new career.  And now maybe I'm ready for other things, too.  The things that have mattered for most of my life.

Throughout this time without a real career, I have had to put my writing on hold.  I've been too busy trying to stay afloat, keeping my head up in spite of the financial difficulties.  It's not just for my own sake: there is also my dog Tammy, who I promised my father as he was dying that I would take care of her.  I can't let him down.

I've lost my writing.  Something that my freshman English teacher in high school told me was my gift.  That's something I've tried to exercise and cultivate ever since.  When I was seventeen I began writing for publication.  I thrived on that.  It led to some really amazing opportunities, like working at a couple of newspapers (okay, one of them turned out to be a swindling operation, but that was not my fault) and being an associate editor of a major pop culture website.  I've maintained a blog for more than two decades.

The past two years caused me to lose my touch.  I know it.  I can recognize it.  It's one of the worst things that's ever happened to me.  And in great part it's not only because of struggling for better employment, it's because of the bipolar disorder and especially the meds I take to manage it.

The meds take a lot out of me.  They take my edge off.  Have stricken me of much of my passion.  I'm not the Chris Knight who I used to be.  I can't write as I once did.  And a few weeks ago it struck me that if I were to engage in community theatre again, I couldn't be as good an actor as I had been when I was living back in North Carolina.

I've become someone different from the person I once was.

But I believe that I can find it again.  And that's what this installment of Being Bipolar is about.

Two months ago I finished writing my first book.  It's a memoir.  Actually, it's more like two or three mushed together into a cohesive autobiography.  Every phase of my life - childhood, the Christian school and then transition to public education, the Elon years, the onset of manic depression, my marriage, coming to terms, the year spent driving across America, the "chrysalis" stage - is included.  The book is something that I've spent ten years of on and off laboring upon, and now it's done.  I was able to commit three months of solid work, when I wasn't eating or sleeping or a part-time job or playing with Tammy, on the manuscript.  It was very difficult.  It demanded a lot of me.  But in the end it was done.  I'm hoping to eventually see it published.  If it can make it to a real brick-and-mortar bookstore's shelf then that will be a supreme accomplishment.

Doing that showed me that maybe I haven't lost all of my touch after all.

Earlier this month (January 2025) I began an endeavor.  That being to write a new op-ed piece every week for the rest of the year.  Hopefully for publication elsewhere but if not when I'll post the essays here on The Knight Shift.  It's already been a challenge.  I have come to spend my Saturday and Sunday evenings (helpful hint to self: a lot of work can be done while Svengoolie on MeTV is on every Saturday night) thinking about new pieces and composing the with my iPad Pro.  As of this writing I've had two pieces published.  And it's sparked my inner fire again.  Like Rocky Balboa I'm re-discovering "the eye of the tiger", the part of me that enjoys taking part in the arena of ideas in this world.  That's been gone too long.  And now I'm doing something about it.

So committing to write op-ed commentary articles is going to be one part of a greater project.  I'm going to strive to bring the original Chris Knight back, absent the occasional depression and racing thoughts.  In writing, and also in other ways.  Who knows, maybe I'll be back on stage again sometime in the future, collaborating with others on a theatrical production.  If that desire is there, then I have to believe the drive and the ability and the raw passion is there too, waiting to be uncovered.

It may take awhile.  But it will be worth it.  At fifty I don't believe that I'm done with life yet.  Not by a long shot.  Manic depression has taken a lot from me, but there is still plenty of time to make the most of my life.  Hey, maybe I'll even be blessed with a relationship again someday.  I would be very thankful for that.

In the meantime though, there is zest for life and the hunger to make an impact on this world for the better to find again and cultivate.  I aim to play that particular sword to the hilt.

Expect the unexpected from here on out.  That is my mission.

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Nobody is trying to take citizenship away from Native Americans

"Trump wants to deprive Native Americans of their citizenship!"

That's what I've heard from a number of people since yesterday, so I looked into it.

Yes, it's true: per the strictest interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment at that time, indigenous Americas were not counted as citizens of the United States.  They were instead citizens of their respective tribal reservations.

So the attorneys et al on Trump's side are literally correct.  Up to the time that the Fourteenth was adopted, at least.

But the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 clarified that Native Americans who were tribal citizens were also American citizens, to be counted and taxed as much as any other citizen.

I doubt that anyone in this administration has even a passive thought to deprive any legal citizen in the United States of their citizenship.  Congress has already stated through legislation that indigenous Americans are fully American citizens.

President Trump just gave federal recognition to the Lumbee tribe.  Something that particular demographic has wanted for a very long time.  That doesn't sound very "Indian exterminationist" to me.

Unless someone can thoroughly persuade me otherwise, my stance remains as it already long has been: illegal aliens are already citizens of their countries of origin.  And unless they have become naturalized citizens, per an originalist interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, their children are likewise citizens of those countries also.

Yours Truly,

Robert Christopher Knight

1/16th Tsalagi and proud of it

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Happy Birthday Barney Miller!

Barney Miller premiered fifty years ago today, January 23rd, 1975.  This is definitely high up on my list of most favorite television series ever.

Here's one of my favorite episode, "Hash".  This is the one when most of the detectives get stoned from eating cannabis-laced brownies...

Happy fiftieth Captain Miller and the staff of the 12th Precinct!

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Have a new op-ed piece at American Thinker

Continuing my commitment to write a new op-ed piece each week of 2025 (or aspiring to anyway), news and commentary website American Thinker - a site I can't recommend nearly enough - has just published my latest.

In 'It's Time to Cleans the White House Press Corps", arguments are laid out for why the gaggle of journalists assigned to cover the president and his affairs should be thoroughly pruned down.  Not just because too many of them have demonstrated they can't strive for impartiality either.  If for no other reason it's because "traditional" outlets like CNN and Washington Post have had their audiences wiped out over the course of recent years, while more "alternative" media has emerged as the inheritors of that mantle.

Here's a snippet:

When the Internet first came into widespread use, it was envisioned that it would bring with it the end of gatekeeping. Never more would the spread of information be controlled by a few “professional” outlets. Every individual could be his own publisher, and even become a live news broadcaster as the technology further evolved.

It has taken more than thirty years, but that time has come. Indeed, it has been with us for a while already. Now at last it is being fully engaged with. When online broadcasters like Joe Rogan command regular audiences in the tens of millions while longstanding network broadcasters struggle to maintain a hundred thousand viewers, there has been a dire sea change that cannot go unacknowledged.

Trump Administration 2.0 has a glorious opportunity before it. And that is to end the mainstream press’s influence as it has come to be known and reviled.

Mash down here for more.

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Joe Biden is gone today (thank the Lord!)

The infamous "red speech" in Philadelphia, September 2022

Before I render a final grade for Joseph Robinette Biden's term as president, let's wind the clock back four years ago on this blog.  I predicted then that come January 2025 the United States of America would be in the worst condition it had been in, in half a century.

A bold forecast.  I swore then that if I was wrong, I would eat my fedora.  And I would have.  With A1 steak sauce.

I knew there was no chance of me getting it wrong.  Biden has certainly not let me down in that regard.

To everyone who voted for this fool: please don't do that again.  Because of Biden and his disastrous policies I had to leave a job that I loved.  That's my own particular tale of woe that came about.

And a few hours ago Biden "pre-emptively pardoned" Anthony Fauci, Mark Miley, and the members of the "January 6 committee".  Stevie Wonder could have seen that coming.

Joe Biden is leaving politics as he has always lived it for more than fifty years: corrupt, craven, and criminal-minded.

So how does Biden rate with his peers, in the estimation of this trained historian?

In keeping with my history education, I am thus grading most of the Presidents of my lifetime...

Reagan: A

GHW Bush: C

Clinton: D

GW Bush: D-

Obama: F

Trump: B+

Biden: F

Indeed, Joe Biden is the F-iest president I've ever studied.  Not even James Buchanan caused as much destruction to America as Biden and Harris did.

Reagan is the gold standard by which I measure the presidents of my lifetime, but he wasn't perfect.  The first Bush never really wanted to be president but even if he did, reneging on his "no new taxes" promise consigned him to being just average.  Clinton damaged the rule of law in this country, immeasurably.  The second Bush was a terrible little man who made the rest of us suffer for his personal frailties (while also exploding the size and power of government).  Obama was truly "One Big A-- Mistake America", he vowed to change the country and that's what he did in all the wrong ways.  Trump's first term was the most proactive and positive since Reagan, but it suffered from a poor choice of staff and also the incessant chicanery and "lawfare" by Trump's opponents.  Perhaps he will have learned from this and his second administration will be far better.

As for Biden, there is no redeeming the past four years.  This very incompetent and corrupt man, who has done absolutely nothing virtuous in his half a century of political life, is leaving America in a MUCH worse place than when he became president.  I don't even know if it can honestly be said that we've had a president these last four years at all.

Biden and Harris and everyone associated with them will be remembered only for being the worst gang of freaks and thugs and criminals in the history of American politics.  May we NEVER tolerate such immaturity and fraud and corruption again!

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GOOD NEWS: Short Sugar's BBQ Sauce is hitting store shelves soon-ish!

This blog has been SLAMMED with visitors since three days ago coming to read about Short Sugar's Bar-B-Q in Reidsville, North Carolina shutting down after more than 75 years in business.  The counter has been ringing up visits from all fifty states, Canada, Ireland, Australia, Germany, even some people in Brazil. There were few corners of the globe that hadn't heard of Short Sugar's, it seems.  Judging by the comments and e-mails that have come in there have been a lot of folks who are regretting that they will now never have an opportunity to eat at a place that once was judged to have the best barbecue in America.  Short Sugar's was the kind of place that they just don't make anymore and it's not just a loss to a small town, but to our culture as a whole.

Well, it's been a very depressing past 72 hours but there is a little bit of light to break through the gloom.  Short Sugar's as a location may be gone, but its signature barbecue sauce will live on!  And it may be coming to your front door before too awful long.

Here's what Short Sugar's owner David Wilson posted on Facebook earlier today:

"We will continue producing the sauce. I think we will start on Amazon and in local stores... I’m going to change our social media presence to focus on the sauce."

I hope David and the rest of the Wilson family are bracing themselves.  Because for years a lot of us have been wanting Short Sugar's sauce to be widely distributed.  Until now bottles of it have only been really available for sale at the restaurant.  It has been highly demanded for a very long time.  Bringing this sauce to the larger marketplace is going to be a veritable goldmine.  It is going to take the world by storm!  There is no sauce like Short Sugar's, is something unique all its own.  It's not something you slather onto meat, it's more like you saturate your pork or chicken or whatever with it.  This is the perfect thing to accentuate chopped barbecue especially.  I've also had a bit of success using it on ribs.  So maybe this will be like the second coming of Short Sugar's.  It has been more than a place to eat, it has been an enduring idea: a spot for the mind as much as for the taste buds.  And now it seems that it will endure.  Not just that but also thrive!  Short Sugar's sauce is poised to take the greater world by surprise and in my mind there is not a product that more deserves a position in the global market.

I shall be keeping my eyes open about this with great interest!

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Dateline: Reidsville, North Carolina: Short Sugar's is no more

Of all the things that the Biden economy has destroyed, in its final days it has taken down one last victim.  And being a proud son of the town of Reidsville, North Carolina, this is the most bitter loss of all.

Short Sugar's Pit Bar-B-Q

1949 ~ 2025

The sad word came down earlier today.  Reidsville's most famous restaurant has shuttered for good.

Short Sugar's had been hobbled, first by COVID closures but mostly because of economic downturn in the past few years not related to the pandemic.  People just couldn't afford to eat out like they used to be able to.

This really does feel like a piece of my heart has been ripped out.  Short Sugar's was the kind of place you just knew would be around forever.  It is at the heart of the identity of the City of Reidsville, North Carolina.  Some of my earliest memories are of eating at Short Sugar's.  At first the hot dogs but as I got older it was that wood-fired barbecue.  Sometimes I would even order and devour two plates, I could get so hungry for it.  I hadn't been back to Reidsville as often as I'd like in recent years but whenever I did, I always stopped at Short Sugar's for lunch and afterward went to Mayberry for a chocolate milkshake.  And that was my "coming home" ritual since leaving Reidsville in 2016.

My sister worked at Short Sugar's for a number of years, too.  There was a real sense of family at the place.  We knew them and they knew us.

I don't know when the next time I'll ever visit Reidsville will be.  The more I hear about the place the more it sounds like a foreign country, now.  The tobacco field near where I grew up is today a vast solar farm.  Some businesses have gone and others have come in.  Thomas Wolfe really was right, "you can't go home again."  And with the departure of Short Sugar's, I'm feeling that harder than ever this afternoon.

Who knows though, maybe someone will swoop in and resurrect the place sometime.  But it would be too different.  The Wilson family has owned and operated it all this time, it won't be the same without them.

I'm going to miss that barbecue sauce.  A vinegar and brown sugar-based concoction unlike any sauce I've ever encountered.  The perfect enhancement for chopped pork.  Now I wish that I had stocked up on it.

Wow.  So much that could be said about a barbecue restaurant and drive-in.  Short Sugar's really was the kind of place that that they don't make any more of in America.  In 1982 it was judged as having the best barbecue in the country.  I don't know if they held that competition again but if they ever did I've no doubt that Short Sugar's would still be a worthy competitor.

And now, it's... gone.

Damn.  I finally feel old now.

Edit 01/17/2024: More than a few have noted something, and I was woefully remiss to mention this.  That Short Sugar's was not only famous throughout the state of North Carolina, but also across America and even known throughout the WORLD!  Short Sugar's hosted quite an international clientele over the decades.  I myself brought friends from Belgium to eat there a few times and they made sure to take bottles of barbecue sauce home with them.  I also have it on very good authority that several bottles made it to Germany in 1993.  For there to be no more Short Sugar's is truly a loss to us all.

Speaking of the larger world, since making this post 21 hours ago yesterday it has been read nearly 5,000 times.  The blog has always had a faithful global audience but yesterday this post especially has found visitors from almost all fifty states and also places like Canada and Ireland.

I have heard from David Wilson, the owner of Short Sugar's, and he is truly overwhelmed by the many tributes that people are making.  David, on behalf of everyone: thank you and your family and staff, for everything.

(Note: the photo is from Roadfood.  I had just grabbed any pic I could find of Short Sugar's without looking at the link.  They're the ones who originated the photo.)

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