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Nineteen years is not long enough for a young man to mature. Add in a case of beer, a house full of college football players on the last day of two-a-day practices, and there’s bound to be trouble.

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The phrase “fake news” first came to the public forefront during the 2016 Presidential election. I recall it first being used by candidate Trump, but it soon became a phrase dominating journalism. I figured I’d thrown in my two cents, since it seems a worthy blog topic.

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Jack was soaked and shivering as he stumbled across the Espinosa’s fields toward their house. Lightening lit his path before the rumbling thunder vibrated through his body. The sound of thunder was replaced by angry shouts as he neared their front door. Jack’s fear and anger were reawakened. He realized, Jorge, his stepfather, was home from work. Jorge sounded drunk again. He was probably beating Jack’s mother, Esther.

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This blog was inspired by the 1993 song Jesse by Joshua Kadison in which he sings how Jesse’s dreams are never free. Listening to this song got my thinking of how costly my own goals in life have been, and yet how rewarding those goals have been upon completion. By “dreams” I’m referring to distant goals in one’s life, not the mental images produced during R. E. M. sleep.

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Making a good story great often involves including details of the story such as demographics and personal characteristics of the plot’s time and place. It’s for this reason that I typically write of places I’ve been and things in which I’m well versed. Otherwise, I depend on research. When writing my current historical -fiction novel “Team” which takes place in the 1940s, I’m depending more on research, since I wasn’t alive. The players and football weren’t hard to do, since I’d played football most my life. I t was the airplanes and their missions which required research.

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lease forgive the blasphemous implications of my jokes, but everything negative regarding the evils of lawyers seems appropriate here. Why did God create snakes before lawyers? He needed the practice. Why did God create lawyers? So death didn’t come as such a disappointment.

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Jack Espinoza forms a brother-like bond with his teammates as they strive to win the 1939 Michigan State football championship. It is an unbreakable bond the U, S. Army Eighth Air Force uses to sell War Bonds by writing the story of the team going to England to crew a B-17 bomber during the strategic bombing of Axis forces in occupied Europe during World War Two.

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This blog began about poor manners, but as I thought it out, it was leading toward parenting. Recent news and events brought my thoughts more toward parenting again. What are parents thinking these days? How’s buying children entrance into college going to help them in the long run? The student still has to pass their courses to graduate. Are parents going to buy their children their first job post-graduation, and then let them live at home? How does a child learn to deal with reality if Mommy and Daddy do everything for them? They will never learn to respect anyone or be respected. Another similar episode surprised me. Years ago, I heard parents were buying their teenage girls breast implants for their birthdays. That one backfired with them revealing these implants are causing cancer now. A recent newscast claimed that parents were purchasing their sons “muscle” cars so they could drag race. Obviously not a well thought-out gift. Now these kids are dying in car accidents. Finally, there’s the measles epidemic. Twenty years ago, measles had been eradicated. Then parents decided not to get their kids vaccinated. Measles are back, endangering everyone, including their children. Hindsight might be 20/20, and you might want to help the ones you love, but a parent has to use what minimal intelligence they have to help their child’s future.

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