.Friday Firesmith

friday firesmith – the war on persia

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General Minoru Genda, an Imperial Japanese Navy flight officer, JASDF general and politician served in World War Two. He is best known for helping to plan the attack on Pearl Harbor and Midway.

As the flight officer, it was his responsibility to develop an air defense plan for the fleet during the Battle of Midway. When asked by Admiral Yamamoto what their plan was if the American aircraft arrived, Genda replied, “We will defeat them!”

As it turns out, Genda was not only wrong, but horribly so. At the Battle of Midway, American pilots in planes that were far inferior to the Japanese, sunk four Japanese aircraft carriers and downed many Japanese aircraft. Many more Japanese planes sank with their carriers, or landed in the sea, their pilots rescued by the Japanese navy.

The Japanese High command sent the surviving pilots to remote airfield in the Solomon chain, notably Rabal. Many never returned home to their families.

Later, after the war, Genda called Midway, “The fruit of arrogance.”

Trump said the day after Putin invaded Ukraine, that Putin was smart for  “just walking in and taking it.” Four years later, no believes Ukraine will fall. Many think Putin will. We know Trump is gone in about two years and some change. Hmmm, a lot of change.

Trump bombed Iran at the behest of Israel. The missiles flew and Trump, overstimulated by the fireworks, demanded “unconditional surrender,” but that never happened. Record high gas prices and a depletion of our missile supply did happen. But Trump was never truly prepared to go to war with Iran. Bolstered by his kidnapping of the president of Venezuela, Trump might have thought he could bully his way through the Middle East.

Trump was terribly wrong, more so than even Genda but for the same reasons. Trump is incapable of understanding why he’s lost the war.

Iran is a land of mountains and the people there have been there for quite some time. 

Persia was a civilization two thousand years before America was formed. Their sense of history goes back a lot longer than a fat man painted orange wearing diapers.

The Japanese had every reason to be self-assured in war. They had run amok in the waters off Southeast Asia, and had taken the Philippines, wrecked Pearl Harbor, sank British ships and had taken Singapore, a trillion dollar asset in today’s money, and no one could stop them.

But the Americans knew they were coming, and the Japanese were caught out of position, and with many of their planes with dry tanks.

Trump went into the war with Iraq without any considerations as to how to end the war. He thought “unconditional surrender” would occur on the first day, the day he first declared he had won the war, and from that point on, Trump has simply no idea what to do.

China is helping Iran. Iran with that help, had targeted and destroyed American bases in the region. Now, Trump is scrambling to rebuild and restock, and rearm places he doesn’t have the wherewithal to defend. He’s lost, totally lost, the Strait of Hormuz to the Iranians. The Red Sea is in jeopardy and midterms are racing towards Trump like a wet box of Depends.

And Trump is still in the Epstein Files.  Thousands of times.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – the haunted house

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Way back in the 1960s, my family lived in the small town of Blakely Georgia, a town famous for nothing at all except having a peanut butter factory that let contaminated peanut butter to kill seven people nationwide with a salmonella outbreak. That was many years ago, and I haven’t been back to that town in more years than that.

The road going to school, and we rode our bikes to school, was dirt, so those kids worried about their clothes getting muddy would ride slow. We rode fast and got dirty. Then they paved the road one year and ruined it.

A green and white house at the end of the road had home made signs that read, “No Trespassing” and “Keep out!” but we never saw anyone in the house or a car in the yard. We kids decided it was haunted. We had no reason to think ghosts had written the signs, but that didn’t stop us.

The yard wasn’t mowed on a regular basis, weeds popped up, the fence around the yard, which looked terrible even to kids, eventually fell over and it disappeared. We worried the ghost was now free to roam the earth and that’s not a bad beginning for a ghost story.

Yet over the years, just a few actually, but three or four years for a ten year old is almost half a lifetime, we ran out of reasons to believe in ghosts. A family with two little kids moved into the house, and since they were little kids we suspected the ghosts would eat them, not that there was a reason to believe that ghosts had to eat.

Then they bused us to the other side of town, to the middle school and we stopped riding our bikes as much. Suddenly, we were in high school and one day I went by the haunted house and they were tearing it down.

My family had moved to another neighborhood by that time and no one rode bikes to school when they could drive. The stories we would have told about the ghosts murdering the family, and as far as I know no one was murdered at all, would have kept us going, but it was too late . I realize now, having driven by the place where the haunted house once stood, it wasn’t ghosts that were haunting that house, but us.

What there a house in your home town people thought was haunted?

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – after the flood

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For two and a half years the back part of my property was flooded. One seriously freakish rain event came in on the 12th of April, 2023, and over the next two years, three hurricanes would pass through, giving me a cat, but not giving me my land back.

It is fortunate I didn’t lose a dog, or a cat, during this time because there wasn’t enough dry land out here to dig a grave.

Some things I learned about having flooded property:

It’s cool as hell to kayak around a place you’ve only walked. That gets old pretty quick because having a flooded property means there so much more you cannot do.

Trees die when they’re submerged in water for too long. I lost a pine that was close to one hundred feet high, a Live Oak that had a serious lean to it fell over the first hours of the Flood, and it was nearly two hundred years old, and a good dozen or so trees close to the edge died, too.

The water finally dried up in July of 2025, and I had to scramble to get the fence back up before the dogs realized it was down. The Big Pine, well tall enough to tag the house, got the fence instead, and in that I was content.

Someone asked me if my compost pile was dead, and I hesitated. Dead? Yeah, as it turns out compost piles can drown. Mine did. Also, it takes a while for the engine to start turning again, and it’s finally cranked back up, almost a year after the water left.

But the environment of the back of my property has gone through a change. Many trees died, so there’s a lot more open sky between the branches. That brings in sunlight, and one thing I never truly grasped was this: floodwater, especially if it’s grown pond scum on top of it, is incredibly fertile.

A patch of land in the backyard had never seen floodwaters but it stayed wet for nearly two years. Soft rushes grew there, and a willow tree. I have never had either on my property. Pond birds, wood storks, herons, egrets, and ducks were spotted swimming or wading over the compost pile. The area was far too wet to mow, so now about a quarter of my backyard is still covered in weeds.

Worse, infinitely worse, the dead trees are all falling down now. My compost pile has been a favorite target of Water Oaks breaking apart and falling, but I have plans for these dead logs. They will be cut to serve as a perimeter of the compost pile.

The irony that I will now use more water keeping the compost pile wet, because of the overabundance of sunlight, is not lost on me.

When I first moved out here, twenty-five years ago or so, the back of the property was overgrown with weeds and vines. I hacked away at them, and saplings appeared once I fenced the area in, and released the dogs back there. The dogs scared the deer away, and the saplings grew. The first tree that grew tall enough to house a Cardinal nest died in the flood.

Nature carries on. My brief time here will be erased sooner or later, and all traces of my existence will disappear. Unless one of the trees I saved from vines and deer continues on and spreads its seeds throughout the property.

Oddly, I can accept that, if it is the only thing left of me on this earth.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – tis the 4th of july

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“Tis it’s the 4th of July. Another June has gone by, and when they light up our town I think what a waste of gunpowder and sky.” Aimee Mann, 4th of July.

The 4th of July fell on a Sunday and the town of Leslie Georgia, population 500 or so, threw a party at the pool. We had a contest involving a watermelon smeared with Vaseline, one team of kids trying to get it to one side of the pool and another trying to move it in the opposite direction. We had innertube races and I got robbed of that victory. And the lifeguard poured some gasoline in the water, set it fire and dove through it from the Life Guard’s stand.

Then a few Roman candles and sparklers were lit, we ate the watermelons, and as the sun sank low in the sky, everyone went home or to another party.

“It’s one of my faults that I can’t quell my past

I ought to have gotten it gone,”  4th of July, Aimee Mann.

Gerald Ford was President of the United States, and no once really spoke a single word about him all day. There was a party in Washington DC, everyone had a great time, and no one was waving a flag with Ford’s name on it. The National Mall of full of people, and Philadelphia had a lot of tall ships in the harbor. It was an epic day for America. I know the pool party doesn’t seem like much, but the whole day felt different. We were living in historic time, but the day was important for the nation as a whole, and we felt it.

I haven’t felt it in a while. After reading, “In the Garden of Beasts” by Erik Larson, I haven’t felt the same. The idea American’s would invest so much of their emotional well being in one man is, to me, unbelievable. I never thought after so many civilizations have fallen because of one ruler who led them all to ruin, voters would be smarter.

And it’s the one thing I thought we had learned from the fall of Richard Nixon. I thought after Nixon we would know better than to trust a man that morally bereft.

Yet here we are.

American voters have to step off the treadmill of party politics. There is no Left, or Right. There are words invented to divide. There are no Republican or Democrat voters, only American voters. There is no one in office who is held accountable by the voters until the voters decide they’ve had enough of two sides of the same coin.

You do not donate enough to their reelections for them to care about you.

Unless you start voting them, all of them, out, and electing candidates you actually know something about. And that something would be where they get their money.

At some point, Ford, who also served on the Warren Commission that determined the cover story in the JFK assassination was true, decided to pardon Nixon.

I wonder if some sort of deal had been struck, and I wonder if we will see that happen again soon. It won’t matter. As long as there is big money in buy votes, the voters will be slaves to that money.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – the summer of 2026

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We are a couple of days into July, yet the heat and the humidity are already trying to kill me. Technically, Summer is only a week or so old, but the reality is this one is shaping up to be one of the hottest Summer on record. I remember a time when September offered some relief but now that month has become August 2.0. October begins warm, but at least the days are shorter, but even that brings its own misery.

With leaves falling not because of cooler weather but the lack of sunlight, October has a unique talent for radiation poisoning late in the day. We started noticing this years ago, but now the heat is making it worse. Temperatures are not going down in the autumn of the year, and even Thanksgiving and Christmas have become accustomed to eighty-degree heat.

Tropical Storm Arthur formed briefly in the northern part of the Gulf of Mexico and brought a lot of rain, five inches in two days for South Georgia, and yes, we needed it, but that seems to be a trend in the last few years; wet storms coming out of the Gulf of Mexico bringing a lot of rain all at once. A pattern is forming, lots of hot dry weeks followed by a flood, followed by drought.

Of course, it’s not very smart to extrapolate climate from a few years of weather, but a trend seems to be forming. This is not the world I grew up in.

In 1998, the temperature hit one hundred and five and an asphalt crew mutinied. All of them quit at one time, and their supervisor vowed to fire all of them. I was out there with them and had a nineteen-year-old guy they just hired to be out there with me. He quit. They allowed him to come back but he never worked with me again.

I remember the next day, which was Saturday, I was cooked. I stayed inside all day and drank beer. I had never been so exhausted in my life. I also stopped daring the heat to kill me.

The woods, which for twenty-five years have been clear of underbrush now is crowded with fast growing weeds. Dog fennel, beauty berries, and a host of other plants I’ve never seen around here have exploded from the now fertile and suddenly unshaded woods. I lost dozens of trees in the floods and the hurricanes, and some are still toppling over.

Now, however, the big thing is heat.

I can mow, and I’m using a push mower because gas is $3.60 a gallon, and before nine in the morning it’s not hellish. It’s light enough to see by about seven. I have two hours a day to do what I can before the heat gets to the point I know it’s going to drag me down more than the actual work.

At 65, I can still function in this environment and do well, but I wonder what this will be like in five years.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – the fool and his pool

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A Tragedy on “The Strait of Warm-Ooze”

Trump gave a no bid contract to a donor to redo the Reflecting Pool and turned them loose with no oversight.

Had this all been done in a reasonable manner nothing would have ever been said about it. Had  the contract been let through normal channels, had the contractor been reputable, had the work not been “done by my birthday” and had process been held in higher regard than personality, we would not be talking about this.

But no.

It had to be done by the biggest White Trash Event in American history. It had to be done the way that Trump wanted it to be done, and when he wanted, and how he wanted, and that, my friends, is the problem and nothing else.

The problem was caused by one man wanting things his way and he got it. The solution was also his, and because everyone knows he doesn’t like to be told no, staffers were pouring gallons of Hydrogen Peroxide into the pool and clearly, that didn’t work. It actually made things worse, which is also something Trump is famous for.

But things went south in a bigly way. The algae bloom turned the pool a sickly color green usually associated with horror movies and Ghost Busters. That was bad enough. But the “American Flag Blue” paint that the pool was painted on Trump’s demand, began to peel away. Hydrogen Peroxide is a paint stripper, it seems. But it got even uglier. The seal that Trump wanted in the pool began to disintegrate and come loose.

Trump did what Trump does. He at first blamed Obama, who hasn’t been in office in a decade. He then blamed Biden.

Then came the photos of the Trump motorcade riding in the pool before it was filled with water. I’m not sure what sort of sealant or paint they used, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t designed for vehicle traffic.

Having no traction with blaming former presidents, Trump then went deep and declared “Antifa” did it, and arrested people who were doing more than taking giant flakes of paint out of the pool.

Then came the fences and razor wire to protect the green pond from terrorists.

All of this, every moment of this disaster has been paid for by taxpayers. And it’s just beginning. The damage has to be reversed. In a just and true world, the contractor would be on the hook for repairs. But in Trump World, the taxpayers pick up the tab for every whim and every mistake.

Had this not been “on time for my birthday” the process would have worked itself out. And even if issues had arisen, again, the contractor would have to pay.

But Trump will make you pay again, and again, and again, for his mistakes and vanity.

Take Care,

Mike

Admin note: Does anyone else think the pool contractor looks like a movie villain?

friday firesmith – I ran: How Trump lost a war and went TACO

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In the end, Venezuela was far too easy. The people around Trump saw in this the opportunity to stroke his ego to the point of dizziness, and so the war on a country barely able to defend itself led to Trump believing if he could murder fishermen in South America, he could get away with it anywhere he went.

Isreal called and said they were about to bomb Iran, so Trump took an already deficient carrier and tired sailors who just really needed a bathroom break, and he headed toward the Gulf of Hormuz.

In 1953 the CIA overthrew the elected government of Iran and inserted the Shah of Iran in the place of the will of the Iranian people. Oil was the reason and keeping the people of Iran subdued meant doing those things the CIA does to people.

In 1979, the Shah was chased out of the country by radical Muslims, and despite some low grade action, peace has more or less held up until the point Trump decided he could bomb Iran into a nation he could use.

Iran responded by flinging missiles at everyone but Liechtenstein.

Trump responded by bombing a girl’s school and killing 165 people.

Whoever doing the targeting for Trump, and we can only hope and pray it wasn’t Pilsner Pete Kegsbreath, either did it on purpose or was just popping targets for the hell of it.

But Iran was a lot more precise. They destroyed or rendered unusable nearly every military installation in the Middle East owned and operated by the United States. Meanwhile, the carrier Gerald R Ford had to take a bathroom break when their washer and dryer set caught on fire.

A raid to kidnap the Iranian nuke material caused two cargo planes and a helicopter to be destroyed.

Iran, who Trump demanded “unconditional surrender” closed the Strait of Hormuz. Oil prices and gasoline prices went through the roof overnight. In the meanwhile, Isreal, who started all this, is bombing everyone they can reach and blaming terrorists.

China starts helping Iran, and Trump forgives Putin and drops all sanctions on Russia.

Trump begins to panic. His base is cracking. This looks like an endless war from the beginning and shows no signs of improving.

Trump offers Iran everything they wanted just to open the Strait of Hormuz and stop the war. Iran gets billions of dollars, the right to set up a toll booth on the Strait, and reparations.

Trump gets nothing, except the ire of the American people.

Let’s step back a moment. Remember the murdered children? To a lot of ethnic Persians, which most Iranians claim to be, those dead children represent a Blood Feud.

Iran now controls most of the world’s oil transportation, have money to burn, and the United States cannot seem to fix the toilets on their largest carrier.

Donald Trump didn’t merely lose a war he went in alone and tried to cowboy his way through, oh no. He pissed off an entire country, gave them money, and a toll booth worth billions more. Iran is rising from the ashes of this war as the preeminent military power in the Middle East.

Trump lost the war, ran away, and after he leaves office, this will be our problem.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – hair today, gone tomorrow

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When I was a young teen my first real facial hair was a single black hair that looked like an eyelash that grew on the front of my chin. It’s was my entire beard. Later in life, I grew my hair out long but facial hair grew like weeds on a rock. Finally, in my mid twenties my beard filled out, specked with grey, but my forehead started to grow about the same time.

In 1998, I was working in a town whose grocery store had a Deli and a guy working there had spiked up the hair on his forehead to make it look fuller. I shaved my head that weekend. Nothing looks worse than a balding man trying not to look like he’s lost his hair.  Everyone freaked out, but now it’s normal because most people have never seen me with hair.

But nature is cruel.

I dated a woman who asked me to grow my hair out, just to see how it looked. During the process I was sitting outside a coffee shoppe and a woman dropped some change into my cup. I have to admit my hair, growing out like drunken dandelions. The hair on my forehead was still a no go, but in other places it grew in, and other did not. I looked mangy. I looked like a drug addict whose family had kicked him out for stealing the good silverware.

She brushed my hair one night and was going to trim it and the brush got more than it left. She sighed. The realization was clear: If she wanted a boyfriend with a lot of hair she was going to have to find another one.

That was years ago, and she is, like my hair, long since gone. This morning, however, I found a hair, long, thick, and black, but it was growing out of my ear. The daily shaving and trimming of the ears missed this one, and I could have used it as a flyswatter it was so long. Why? Why is there hair growing in places I have no need for hair yet my head refuses? Worse, how long had I missed executing it, and it was waving around in public like one of those cobras charmed by a flute player?

In the end, I am of an age where people expect me to lose control of some of my grooming habits. I wear mismatched socks, but so far, not shoes. I did show up for six in the morning Pilates with my shirt inside out, but at least it wasn’t backwards. And one day I forgot my underwear and so the whole trip was wasted. You can’t hang out at the gym if you’re hanging out.

            As we age, we lose our hearing, our eyesight, our ability to bend and get up off the floor. In return we get a shiny new head, hair that grows in places it’s not needed, and stories about forgetfulness.

But we are also still alive. The teachers and cops who told me I would never survive myself are all dead now. Life, no matter what form it takes, is victory.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – the zombie

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“I want to be a cocaine dealer,” Greg said. It’s not that I asked Greg what he wanted to be when he grew up, but we were both in our twenties, and we were both working as kitchen help at Shoney’s. I had my doubts about Greg’s ideas towards career change, but I didn’t say anything to him.

The next day he didn’t show up for work. I did not attribute his disappearance to his new life as a wealthy drug dealer who was living on the beach with supermodels.

Greg did buy some cocaine, and he sold cocaine, so yeah, somehow he got his toe in the door, but he started doing more cocaine than he sold, and then he started doing crack.

He was behind on rent, bills, and he started stealing from his roommates so they kicked him out. Greg set his bed up in the yard and slept there for a few days. It was surreal to see a man in a bed in a yard but that was how it happened. Then it rained hard one day, and Greg started living under the overpass at Exit 16.

Greg would haunt the people he once knew, but he would steal anything he could. And ex-girlfriend named Susan let him stay in her parents garage, and it wasn’t a bad set up. He had a cot and access to hot and cold water, and a bathroom. Someone called Susan’s mother the next day and asked her if she was having a yard sale, and Greg had taken Susan’s mom’s belongings and was selling them in the front yard. They got there before any of the good jewelry was sold but they lost a toaster over and some smaller stuff.

So Greg was officially not living anywhere after that. None of us had anything to do with him, and he drifted away. He would come back to Valdosta, and I would see him at one of the Exits, but until I saw Susan at the Y one day, and told her I had seen him, I didn’t think twice about it. Susan sent me with her husband, Jim, who hated me and Greg both to look for Greg. We didn’t find him, but a man who will go out looking for his wife’s ex boyfriend to help him get off drugs is a damn hero in my book. That was ten years ago.

So yesterday I thought I saw Greg. No. I am sure it was him. He was at Exit 16, just like he always was.

But a few years ago his bones were found in a wooded area near I-75 and returned to his parents. Id-ed via dental.

I’m not sure what to do with this one.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – trumpty dumpty

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Trump comes home from China, blithely unaware how deeply he, and America, have been insulted by the Chinese, and immediately warns Taiwan about declaring independence. Trump went to China to plea for help with Iran, and we have no evidence any such thing has happened. The art of the deal may be, in this case, Trump surrenders something bigly and hopes for the best.

Considering the low regard he holds little girls, the bombing of the school in Iran that killed 168 children is no surprise. Betraying Taiwan shouldn’t surprise anyone, either. Trump has systematically alienated all of America’s allies and he’s creating generational hate among those enemies we might establish ties with later.

Russia, who firmly holds the leash attached to Trump’s neck, now realizes Trump could have, but did not deliver Ukraine, as he promised. The speed at which Europe reacted in boosting Ukraine’s drone expertise was stunning to some, but those paying attention to Trump realize he tips his hand before the cards are dealt.

Flatly put, Europe has no need of a bumbling boy-king who wrecks more than he can repair. Russia is learning the hard way that what Trump could accomplish is never anywhere near what he does.

China is not in a war, and has avoided military conflict on a large scale for decades now. They cannot be extorted by a threat to their energy needs, nor do they owe anyone large amounts of money. Their economy is stable and other than their never ending food supply chain issues, China is unlike many countries willing to bend to Trump’s will.

And as Trump betrays and dismays one ally after another, the exit is filled with former friends of America fleeing the unpredictable and unstable force that an aging Trump represents. Trump’s tariffs shocked and destabilized allies we had cultivated for decades. And now, as Trump stands alone against Iran/China/Russia in the War of the Strait, we see how vulnerable and weak Trump has made America.

Midterms must cause a sea change in American politics. Trump must be tried for his many crimes, including all the Epstein Files hold. He must go to prison for his crimes. America must return to unity and to justice. American must not live and die by slogans and reactionary politics.

Trumpism must end and it must end forever.

Take Care,

Mike