The Red Rover Blues
Trigger Warning: I am about to make light, where making light is due, of some of the more sensitive topics currently sucking up so much of our collective bandwidth. But before you remember, suddenly, that time I called you “sweetheart”, or brushed your bosom, or inappropriately sang the old schoolyard chanty “Chinese, Japanese, Dirty Knees, ...
A Bronx Cheer
A few days ago I happened to be in the grocery store, buying some stuff to nibble on during the American League Championship Series, when I noticed a young man—I’m in a post-season mood so I’m going to call him Billy Martin–re-stocking the older fruits and vegetables. He was doing a tidy, efficient, job of ...
Unzipped in the Land of Oz
In the wake of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s spectacular mid-air explosion, the unholy relationship between Hollywood money and obsequious political ambition has never been more transparent. Sure, a few months ago we were all treated to the infamous “Grab’em by the pussy” bus tape, which was a window into President Trump’s narcissism, but Weinstein & ...
The Petrified Man
In 1782 Ben Franklin published a fake edition of an otherwise real newspaper. It was meant to curry sympathy for American resistance to the British, by claiming that natives allied with the British were on the warpath, slaughtering settlers by the hundreds. Complete with phony ads and other articles, it was all fake news. Fake ...
Grunt
The graduation of a female from the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course has left many of my fellow veterans conflicted. To be clear, there is no short-shrifting her accomplishment thus far—IOC is the most difficult infantry school anywhere in the world–but we are conflicted because we are, most of us, raised with no small pride ...
Unsportsmanlike Conduct
The biggest problem with the NFL isn’t the mostly meaningless and entirely self-congratulatory fad of anthem protests. The biggest problem with the NFL is that the product is becoming unwatchable. A football game lasts, on average, about 3.5 hours. A prime time game between two teams with anything on the line can last even longer. ...
The Shoulder Season
“Lord, let me die but not die Out.” For the Last Wolverine, James Dickey A few weeks ago, on our way to the End of Summer Concert and bbq at the Camp Sherman Store, my wife and I crossed paths with a ...
A Word, If You Please
Today I wanted to take a brief moment and offer my sincerest thanks to you all, the readers and followers of The Bunkhouse Chronicle. We have recently reached a humble milestone: over 30,000 individual views of the Chronicle. From Bosnia to Mozambique, Guatemala to Estonia, Morocco to Cambodia, readers have checked in to see what ...
The Cajun Navy Handbook
I have a friend from the Marine Corps, John “Scoot” Davenport, who lives in Youngsville, Louisiana, and is an Admiral in the Cajun Navy. That’s a joke–there is no such thing as an Admiral in the Cajun Navy—but recently I had the opportunity to talk with Scoot about his experiences as a volunteer during the ...
Nuclear Winter
Oregon is burning, and we’ve now lost a month of summer to the smoke. Each morning I look out toward the barn, where it sits in a kind of primordial orange pall, and I can see the ash falling like snow in the offing. Inside the house, which is buttoned up, it smells like a ...
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