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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Books I would recommend to others. Sinclair Lewis knew America better than it knew itself: delusional, subject to extremism, and vulnerable to grift. Self-serving platitudes since this book on American exceptionalism fails with the Republican Party, MAGA, Conservatives, and Trump. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Thinking Jazz. Metheny and his band were considered fusion at the time, but one only needs to hear "So May It Secretly Begin" to come to the realization that he expresses in music the inner voice in us that says: “I know this. I have lived this. I have felt this.” It’s jazz. #Music #Jazz #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Books I would recommend to others. Few writers can look at themselves and the culture around them and write so honestly and fearlessly as Baldwin did in this work. Even today, it is both shocking and disturbing in its ability to tear down facades of race, love, sex, and self-image. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Congressman Frost of Florida gave his State of the District briefing this past weekend. He has done a great deal for Orlando and environs and is well versed on the issues. Key takeaway: issues of oligarchic governance and immigration started in FL first. #AlejandroFrost #CongreemanFrost #Florida10th

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

Thinking Jazz and feeling blue. Driving to music this morning a bit under the weather and Wes comes on with Hancock on piano, Carter on bass, Tate on drums, and Barretto on percussion along with a full orchestra playing “Eleanor Rigby” and that healing thing happens. #Music #Jazz #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

Books I would recommend to others. The template for the corruption and abuse of power we’ve experienced. Defeated by an independent judiciary and strong professional institutions in 1974, our anti-democratic Republican and MAGA insurgents attacked those first. Take it back. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

Unidentified individuals in balaclavas without a badge taking people is abduction. With the absence of a legal warrant or due process it is criminality. Remember that undocumented status is not a criminal issue, it is a civil one. Local police are usually not aware of the raids. #ICE #DHS #Raids

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

I agree with the sentiments and did at the time, but it led to the all-volunteer military and the imperial presidency. War powers must never be exercised by one person. When the country is wrong it must course correct and citizens be allowed to protest. The power elite, instead, insulated itself.

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 22/06/2025

Books I would recommend to others. I was a Jersey shore boy before it was overdeveloped and a joke, and later a Florida naturalist. I came across this book at the age of 10. Since then, I learned that dollarized and exploited, what people covet and develop destroys the thing itself. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Thinking Jazz. One of the mainstays of bop, by the 1960s Max Roach had fully integrated his music with the social consciousness of equality and civil rights, evolving into post-bop and modal. This album aurally captures the chaotic advances and setbacks of the time. #Music #Jazz #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

Books I would recommend to others. I am a product of a good liberal arts education. When I become overwhelmed by the misinformation and fuzzy thinking of our time, I return to science as a restorative. Physics is a precise science, presented here by a giant of the 20th century. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Thinking Jazz. You didn't imagine it: I had started to post Nina Simone, but I had honored that album previously. Instead, here is Coltrane at Birdland containing the thoughtful and mournful "Alabama." One of his best across a lifetime of consistent brilliance and exploration. #Music #Jazz #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Books I would recommend to others. Written during the McCarthy era and in light of the Nazi book burnings, Bradbury’s novel is as urgent in its message today. That we have a president mentored by a McCarthy lieutenant speaks volumes. Ignorance and malice doesn’t rest. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Books I would recommend to others. This book is not about battles, it is about the social, political and military events that led to open battle. We are in a similar period today, facing an oppressive neo-Confederate regime, but, instead, having subsumed our central government. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

Fatty McFascist with Little Mussolini of Tallahassee are going to find that to vets, this not so veiled threat is a challenge, not a warning to heed. In the Services, deadly force is a strictly defined rule and accountability means you answer for your actions. Time to outlaw police unions.

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Thinking Jazz. What is old is new again. Music for liberty, and liberation from oppression and autocracy. Haden looked back to connect the dots to how Vietnam disfigured American institutions in his time, which we are still dealing with half a century later. #Music #Jazz #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Books I would recommend to others. Though our present circumstances are unique in the challenges that confront us by a dictatorial madman in the White House, Americans have faced more insurmountable challenges. Time to step up. Give this a read and become part of the solution. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Books I would recommend to others. Non-violent resistance is based on “holding onto the truth.” Authoritarianism depends on a core of true believers combined with compliance and collaboration by the populace. Here Gandhi teaches active resistance and how to disrupt that base. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Books I would recommend to others. The best book on the lie of “warrior ethos” that mines the chaotic disfiguring power of America’s self-delusional war in Vietnam. That the post 9-11 wars resurrected these dark human faults makes our own times a prelude to the disaster to come. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Bombus (Cullumanobombus) griseocollis (brown-belted bumble bee) on Firebush in Central Florida. #Gardening #entomology #nature #pollinators

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

Zebra Longwing Butterfly (Heliconius charithonia) in my garden this week. The Florida state butterfly. #Gardening #entomology #nature #pollinators

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 24/05/2025

Books I would recommend to others. Most have seen the movie, but the book is the epitome of writing economy, condensing a trove of primary sources and interviews of the invasion to liberate Europe. The focus is on the men who fought and those who gave the last full measure. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

Books I would recommend to others. “The Naked and the Dead” provides a perspective on war that most histories miss: the stupidity, horror, moral injury, and meaningless of battle cannot be papered over by words, medals, and talk of heroics. Better be just to ask for this sacrifice. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 23/05/2025

Thinking Jazz. Booker Ervin produced one of the best albums of the 1960s and Freedom Book is it. Modern hard bop and covering all of the themes of the time, his muscular tenor sax sets the stage for group interplay and improvisation. A desert isle disc. #Music #Jazz #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Books I would recommend to others. Memorial Day is arriving. Here, Halberstam writes of a war that most people preferred to overlook and--as a result--one shrouded in mystery, misunderstanding, and ignorance. The author shines a light on power and its inherent hubris. Essential. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 21/05/2025

Behind on Posting Jazz. San Fran was always a great town for Navy and the Fairmont Hotel its crown jewel. McCorkle was a great songstress at the height of her talents when I saw her sing there. She breathed new life into standards and mined meaning from every song. #Music #Jazz #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

Sunday Jazz. Creed Taylor brought Turrentine and other Blue Note talent into CTI, updating their sound to much controversy. In hindsight, this album with Freddie Hubbard, George Benson, Ron Carter, and Billy Kaye from Van Gelder's studio is a high point in his discography. #Music #Jazz #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 18/05/2025

Books I would recommend to others. How do you navigate hate and ignorance and still work to make the world a better place? Parks is one of the 20th century’s greatest photographers. He writes about being black in America up until the 1960s. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

“You keep on saying that word, but I don’t think it means what you think it means.” #Comey #FreeExpression #FirstAmendment

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Friday Jazz. Whenever I need to find my grounding and chill out a bit, I return to Horace Silver. The core quintet he had worked with for five years were at their peak when this album came out. The title track introduces a young Joe Henderson, just beginning to shine. #Music #Jazz #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Books I would recommend to others. In this important work, Yacovone demonstrates just how deeply ingrained is the meme of white supremacy in our educational system and, as a result, our social systems. As a result, it is up to all of us to address this reality and correct it. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Thinking jazz. I saw Hargrove at Blues Alley in DC in a smaller group setting after this album, but it is clear that this is what set him on a journey from looking back at bop, to bridging a post-bop exploration via Afro-Cuban jazz. His voice is missed. #Music #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 14/05/2025

Books I would recommend to others. In this straightforward book on American gun culture, Haag reveals that it was a creation of gun entrepreneurs and industrialists. It’s all about the money, with legend and lie employed to drive demand and sales of a deadly product. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 13/05/2025

Thinking jazz. Dirty Dozen Brass Band has transformed traditional New Orleans brass-based jazz, updating its form, but maintaining the joy and lust for life exhibited in the music. The emphasis here is in the compositional chops of the members; full of surprises, joy and innovation. #Music #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 12/05/2025

Books I would recommend to others. A hyper-surrealist novel of American politics about the Rosenberg executions with Nixon as protagonist and narrator, with caricatures, some intentional and some barely veiled, of McCarthy, Cohn, Hoover and others. A grotesquerie anticipating MAGA. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Whomever it was at DHS who ordered arrests of, and takes further action to arrest, a Member of Congress inspecting an ICE facility is the lawbreaker. Lawmakers who were arrested should file charges with a federal court and request that a Marshall arrest the perpetrator(s). #ImpeachandRemove #Resist

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Books I would recommend to others. Ulysses Grant was Lincoln’s protege and caught fire that the martyred president did not. Here, with an assist from Mark Twain, is his story and of a slaveholding class insisting on nothing less than submission to their “peculiar institution.” #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 11/05/2025

Thinking jazz. Perhaps “A Love Supreme” would be more appropriate for a Sunday, but my go-to meditative music is here: Coltrane in a blue mood with Lee Morgan, Curtis Fuller, Kenny Drew, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones. A virtuoso on the cusp of greatness. #Music #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Books I would recommend to others. With “1984” and “Animal Farm,” Koestler’s book should be on everyone’s shelves. An indictment of absolutist ideology and self-deception, this powerful book unmasks the vicious meme within human nature to believe in simplifications. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Thinking jazz. West coast cool jazz acolyte, bop virtuoso, and vocal jazz heart throb. The “Prince of Cool” had it all until drug use took all but his talent. Here he is playing at his peak with ‘59-era Davis rhythm section, Pepper Adams, Kenny Burrell, Herbie Mann, and Connie Kay. #Music #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Books I would recommend to others. VE Day Edition Roosevelt saw the coming threat and prepared the country for the awful military math behind all warfare that was to come. This well researched bio is not a laudatory tome, but fairly critical. Some of the conclusions don’t withstand #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Thinking jazz. One of the greatest blues songwriters of the 20th century, his wry humor and quirky lyrics have drawn interest across genres. At his core, he was a jazz vocalist and innovator. The lyrics, “Your mind is on vacation but your mouth is working overtime,” are iconic. #Music #JazzSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 07/05/2025

Books I would recommend to others. Our country was conceived with three great faults that it has struggled to overcome: race, class, and sex. Foner lays out our first failed attempt to address race. With Wilkerson’s “Caste,” we gain insight into their interconnectedness. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Pollinators busy at work today following overnight rain. #Gardening #Entomology

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Books I would recommend to others. The immigrant experience in America is essential to its identity. In this enlightening novel of interwoven stories, Alvarez explores the intersection of being “the other” to some, and the inherent internal conflicts of defining a new self. #Books #BookSky

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OldNavyGuy @oldnavyguy.bsky.social · 04/05/2025

Jazz? Music Sunday Is it jazz? Is it funk? Is it hip-hop? Is it soul? Is it psy-rock? Yes, it’s Lettuce. When I first heard the music I thought it was ToP or Headhunters-era Hancock. Instead, it is a Boston-based sextet that push the boundaries of improvisation. Exhilarating. #Music #JazzSky

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