Flying the Friendly Skies

Photo by Ross Murphy By Geoff Carter Summer is season of sun, surf, festivals, picnics, family reunions, baseball, and barbecues—and the Experimental Aircraft Association Fly-in. This convention includes air shows, pilots, historical reenactments, vintage aircraft displays, and demonstrations of the latest in state-of-the-art military technology.  This one-of-a-kind event takes place annually in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. According …
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Kickass and the Britannicas

Photo by Phyllis Stokes By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, noting the keeper’s inclination to dig things up that might better remain buried, reviews the long saga of the Encyclopedia Britannica.  As a symbol of knowing everything the Encyclopedia Britannica was “it”, in the keeper’s early adult years and when he scored a complete …
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Kickass and Surviving High Tech

Attribution: Photo by Ilya Pavlov on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper as Phyllis does her best to keep him precariously balanced on the gangplank of today’s high-tech ship as it sails into the seas of push-button wars, in-house thievery and unopenable plastic containers. The keeper lived most of his life when going …
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Kickass and Tech Disaster

Attribution: Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports the keeper and Phyllis temporarily capturing what could be considered a substitute grandchild as measured by the ability to help with tech problems. His name is Colin and he and his employees are actually in the business of rescuing the inept from the …
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Kickass and Hi-Tech

Attribution: Photo by phyo min on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, endorses the keeper’s New Year’s resolution that he will never again complain about the abuse continually bestowed on him, and Phyllis, by the ever-changing tech world.  With the subject of tech torture eliminated from the flow of the keeper’s communicating, expect more observations about …
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Kickass and Hi-Tech

Attribution: Grj23, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, observes how Phyllis struggles to maintain the keeper’s tentative grip on technology, showing him on a daily basis how to do the simplest things, like retrieve messages or save images. There has been discussion as to whether the keeper’s need to be …
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Kickass Rides the Elevator

Attribution: Photo by Derrick Treadwell on Unsplash By Bill Stokes Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper and Phyllis in lamenting that among the annoying ups and downs foisted on a considerable portion of their “Independent Living” age group is the elevator.  Perhaps not as insidious as the so called “smart phone” that assumes a brain take-over for …
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The Pen in Hand Guide to the Movies: Review of “Kim’s Video”

Illustration by Michael DiMilo Digital Killed the Video Store: Review of Kim’s Video By Geoff Carter The documentary is one of the few cinematic genres that consistently defies expectations. It covers a huge range of content from the journalistic to the sublime, reconstructing history, muckraking corruption, exposing social ills, documenting human experience, or—as in the …
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