Bob Jonas's Blog
December 22, 2024
Phantom Patriot: Launch Date 02/13/2025
1967At fifteen, traveling alone, scrambling to stay ahead of a nationwide manhunt, Jake Garrity is forced to temporarily suppress the pain of his father’s recent death. He has no other family. The Commandant at the military school where his father had him enrolled was succinct: The mine exploded, his death was instantaneous, he never knew what hit him. Sorry for your loss. Vietfuckingnam. Jake has no alternative. He has to run, run like hell.
A Long JourneyAfter three months, he becomes another statistic. It’s January, he has until June to find his way to San Francisco, the Summer of Love, the epicenter for the new counterculture, a place he hopes to find answers. In the time of the hippies, he’s heard of a mythical order forming on the west coast, where his generation is about to reinvent itself, and the world. He has no place else to go.
At 6’2”, sporting a military buzz cut, he looks more man than a kid, more military than civilian. His training may have given him the survival skills, but he is not ready for a country that has gone sour on an unwinnable war. Not yet.
Halfway through his journey, he is robbed, stranded in a desolate outpost in Oklahoma. The need to survive finds him apprenticed to a mortician, a wild, crazed vet whose Vietnam stoked obsession with death is eased when he becomes mentor to a lost kid on a journey to the west coast. The death biz for Reginald Hoover has been reduced to nothing but farce and theater, a PTSD symptom his mother fears has detached her son from the real world. If only for a while, she is thrilled when Reg has a new friend and purpose, focusing his mind back to the living. Jake has no idea the education he receives from Reginald Hoover will one day put him at the center of a mystery that will take thirty years to solve, thousands of miles away.
1997
Portland police receive an anonymous tip about a body buried under the right field stands in Multnomah Stadium. The historic Portland ballpark is scheduled for demolition in two weeks. No one would have known.
JT and Griff, two homeless teens, occasionally sleep in the stadium’s catacombs. Freaked out when they hear about the body, they pray it isn’t one of their friends. When the coroner announces the remains have been down there at least thirty years, they’re relieved, yet intrigued: intrigued enough to pay the library a visit, always a safer, dryer venue than panhandling in the freezing rain.
The coroner’s timeline suggests their research begin around 1967. Digitized newsprint in the library’s microfilm readers is filled with three repeating headlines about: a prank-playing, anti-war protester the press nickname the Phantom Patriot; a vengeance-seeking cop who swears to kill the traitor; and the mysterious disappearance of a body—a fifteen-year-old vendor who tripped down a long flight of concrete stairs and died. And then disappeared.
For months the news alternates between pranks played by the Phantom Patriot and the search for the missing vendor. With the discovery of the grave, the two unsolved mysteries collide, revealing truths buried for over thirty years.
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September 17, 2023
Other Motorcycle Diaries–Apologies to Che
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
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July 24, 2023
Jump Launch Party
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June 23, 2023
Guy Billout, the Ironic Illustrator
Appeared in All things Ruffnerian Blog, 2010. . .
. . and whose art will soon appear the cover of a soon to be released memoir entitled: Jump, by Bob Jonas
Guy Billout (b. 1941) is a French illustrator whose work has been featured regularly for years in The Atlantic Monthly. His style is characterized by delicate and economical line work, heavy shadows, beautiful gradients and almost always, irony. The following examples of his work have all appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. More great illustrations can be seen at Guy Billout’s Web gallery, here .
The story of our relationship, and how his work—the work of a world-famous artist—came to appear on the cover of my book, Jump, is so meaningful to me, that I decided to devote the entire Afterward of the book to this subject.
Cover Evolution
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June 14, 2023
Not fake news
Arkansas librarians sue to block new law that could jail them over explicit books
Daily MailMapped: The U.S. states where school librarians face years in prison and tens of THOUSANDS in fines for providing ‘harmful’ books for children
ABC News
Proposed Missouri book ban could jail librarians for loaning ‘inappropriate’ content
The GuardianWe’ve moved backwards’: US librarians face unprecedented attacks amid rightwing book bans
KVBT 7Measure that could fine, jail librarians passes Idaho House
Intellectual Freedom Blog—American Library Association
The Office for Intellectual Freedom of the American Library Association
Beyond Book Banning: Efforts to Criminally Charge Librarians
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May 24, 2023
Jump Gets ready
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Ready to rumble
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May 18, 2023
Instant Gratification
Part 1:
Observations from a repatriating American and what it means to be back after being gone for twenty-five years.
. . . living in an age where instant gratification is not fast enough.
When I order online, I don’t need it delivered immediately, although now, the expectation seems to be, by the time you get off the pot, no matter the time of day, or where you live, your order will arrive.
Maybe it’s just me, in retirement, living a slowed down existence. As much as I hate to admit it, I do appreciate not having to go out for ever last thing I need. In fact, I hate to go shopping, period. Of course, this is a relatively new thing, since the pandemic. The package locker at our apartment is a well-designed convenience for tenants, but who would ever have expected that one day it would need to be big enough to hold half of Macy’s? So, what I now see is:
Texts at 5am telling me, guess who’s here—even on a Sunday morning.Or gosh gee whizz, we left it with a neighbor—which one I ask, because there are forty in this building and I don’t know a single name or where they live. But then again, I never got a chance to ask the driver, because this is all so high tech, no need to speak to anyone.Or gosh gee whizz, we left it outside, for some street person to see if one of Susan’s bras fit.Or when the delivery guy shows up on a tracking map on my cell, I go down to get the package, but he doesn’t believe I am Susan, and guess what—he doesn’t speak English and he will not give me the package no matter how I try to prove who I am. If it hadn’t been for another tenant who spoke Spanish, the package would have gone back on the truck.Repeated texts telling me to tap a special URL to get my special Amazon ODP, then copy and paste it back to the driver. Unfortunately, I am not fast enough, so not wanting to waste any more time, he leaves it behind with—who knows, or on the apartment’s front door step, out in the open.I can’t help thinking how many more trucks are now on the road, how many more jumbo, gigantic warehouses demanding tax breaks continue to be built, to expedite our relentless need for more stuff, and how many more injuries Amazon workers will sustain to fill over the top quotas to get us our shit.Not to mention how much more traffic and fuel consumption to get us our shit.And then I can’t help ponder how convenient it is for us to return anything, anytime. And how many mountains of returned shit are reduced to thousands and thousands of bundles that go to auction because the stuff is not even worth putting back on the shelves or to the dump. And how enterprising people are having a ball turning masses of unwanted shit into businesses and bucks. Onward, America.
Bundles and bundles o’shyte
We have always been a consumer society but now we have transcended, well on our way to wallowing in so much shit that one day for sure, it will consume us.
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May 10, 2023
JUMP Jumps the Gun
She warned me, but I just got so excited I couldn’t control myself. “Just a little hint here and there,” I promised. “Sure, honey, but I know you. There won’t be anything little about it.” And sure enough, with enough hints, people started to share my excitement. And then they wanted to know when the book was coming out, and then more people started asking, and more and more. And finally, I had to cave.
So, to meet Susan halfway, I said, “can I at least suggest a pre-pub date for the ebook, so it can be ordered right now, making it available June 1, automatically delivered to anyone’s Kindle library on that date? That’s not too far from launch of the paperback on September 1, the date I promised myself I would wait for, is it?”
By that time, it will be up on Kobo, Barnes & Nobel, and many more online sellers.” She said that sounded reasonable, and after all, she is the marketing director.
Thanks for all your interest, can’t wait to hear from your attorneys and cancel culture minions. Seriously, just a little sex, a few blue words, some politically incorrect—maybe more than some—undocumented opinions, and some knock down killer, can’t put it down entertainment.
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Cpap Quandary
Facebook post seven years ago:
It’s a Miracle (can now be found on my websit
First night, monster me, so afraid that Susan wouldn’t want to sleep next to Hannibal Lector. Lucky me, she likes me a lot and her patience and understanding really paid off. I slept eight hours, didn’t get up to pee once, and according to the snoring police, I didn’t warble all night long. And my breathing didn’t stop any time during the night. I had energy all day long and did not fall asleep at the keyboard or while watching television. It’s now been thirty days and this pattern has repeated itself every day I’ve worn the mask. It’s a miracle!
Seven Years Later
We still sleep in the same bed,the snoring has never returned, or the interruption to breathing. I still have more energy at the end of the day, but I can’t truly attribute that to the machine, as other lifestyle changes have had an impact. And the machine does not guarantee a good night’s sleep. Once I fall asleep, it deepens, but for the times I have had trouble falling asleep, it does not help, and many times I have had to remove the mask so it doesn’t bother me as I’m trying to fall asleep.
So why am I now having doubts about the treatment—because I hate it. After seven years, it is a pain in the ass. In a recent report—one of many made possible by a secret cpap satellite—said I was doing poorly on the rubric set out to measure my daily success. So now, in addition to my machine, I have a chin strap to keep air from escaping my mouth, making for a better seal and all the benefits that entails. In other words, it keeps my mouth shut better. My sleep doc, when she found out my numbers were not great, had me do yet enough sleep test, one of those all-night gigs, hooked up to a million cables and told to sleep—right. When she found out I had lost about 25 pounds, she said it was possible that I might be a candite for stopping the treatment, as weight gain is a very big determinant in causing sleep apnea. I had never known this, and thus, the incentive to keep losing weight escalated.
But the real cause for my concern is the marketing of this affliction. As my generation has grown older, marketers come out of the woodwork, looking to cash in on our age-related infirmities. I remember as soon as I signed up for Social Security, I was assured by the government all my information would be kept under wraps, but as soon as I signed up, I began getting an overflow of information from mortuaries, wanting to plant me as soon as possible, not to mention tons of other vendor ads wishing to sell whatever they thought old people needed.
And my supplier of Cpap stuff, Apria, sends me constant mailers, snail and email, and texts, and phone calls, about what the government is willing to pay to keep me in gear I do not need. And then I go to the dentist, thinking I am cpap safe, and the first thing the dentist gives me is a form to fill out, about my sleeping habits.
“Why this?” I ask the receptionist.
“To see if you have sleep apnea,” she says.
“But I do have sleep apnea, and I do not need to fill out this form, and why oh why does this affliction fall into a dentist’s lap?” Obviously, it’s another way to make money.
“Because people can have sleep apnea for years and not know it, and they see a dentist much more often than a sleep doctor.”
“Really? A dentist has as much training in sleep disorders than a sleep doctor? I also see my car mechanic much more often than my dentist.”
“If you have a seat, the doctor will be with you soon.”
Me and my big mouth. I am now supremely aware of a whole generation who now have this affliction. At times it seems as every other person at the airport is carrying their handy dandy little bags of sleep apnea gear. And at parties, it’s not what your mental health professional is saying, or which brand of incontinent gear you buy, but what your sleep doctor is prescribing.
I have searched and searched for any support to indicate that this is just one big sham, but alas, it is so universally prescribed and recommended, I do not have a leg to stand on. And then there is my wife, so ready to put up with my monster look every night, just to get me to live longer. Well, if she can stand me, I guess I am stuck.
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