THE CARBUNCLE MOON
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May 25th, 2020

5/25/2020

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Sometimes you can't repay people for an act of kindness, loyalty, charity, sacrifice, or courage, but you can try -- sometimes life is in the effort...

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"He did not understand the war --

"He understood the blistering injustice of it; the stroke-like fear in the faraway sight of the raped as they blamed him for not being there; the accusing eyes of the children that leered from atop distended bellies even as they starved; the seeping lines of grief lacerated into the faces of fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives who had lost all they loved; the tortured and the maimed becoming in part or in whole separate from who they once were; and the Dali-draped carcasses of the dead…
"The evil of the war bored into his heart, twisted with agony until he learned to ignore it --
"Until he could ignore it no longer."     - from The Invisible War aka The Forgotten War, a short story by Kevin O'Kendley
 
  
"He’d seen a lot of death in his life but it hadn’t inured him to the pain of it, the tragedy, the loss, the suffering.  On the contrary, it had a cumulative effect: on darker days this effect swamped him in a Tsunami of emotion, after all the smaller waves passed, a big one threatened.  He would watch it nearing shore with a rising dread…"    - from Chandler's Bar, a novel by Kevin O'Kendley


Happy Memorial Day to my father, Major Patrick O. Kendley, U.S.M.C. retired, who served as a decorated private in Korea and as a decorated lieutenant and captain in Vietnam.

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​Please give to The Paralyzed Veterans of America: VA Palo Alto Health Care System/
3801 Miranda Avenue/ Palo Alto, California  94304/ 650-858-3936/ And: 
The Wounded Warrior Project: National Processing Center/ P.O. Box 75840/ Topeka, Kansas  66675/ 877-832-6997
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May 23rd, 2020

5/23/2020

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Happy birthday Conor:


Printed originally on 7/10/2013:


​   Taken from real events the following is dramatized:

   
   We climb in our new used truck.  We close the doors.  Sniff, sniff.  Wow.  There's a jagged cloying smell.  P.U. 
    My son groans, “I can’t breathe dada.*  I can’t breathe.”
   I grab the offending deodorizer, which is hiding in plain sight and hanging from the rearview mirror, and I rips it down.
   My son yells, “No dada it stinks in here!  We need that artichoke-looking deodorizer thing!”
    I calmly rebut, “No we don’t,” and instruct the lad in a wise and fatherly way: “Roll down the freakin window, son, we live in Maine.”

* The a in the first syllable of a central Maine word for father is pronounced like the a in dad.  The second syllable in pronounced duh.  Da-duh.

​

added 8/18/20: My son, Conor Finn O'Kendley, is in the Navy.  
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May 10th, 2020

5/10/2020

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                                                       "Happy Mother's Day."
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April 22nd, 2020

4/22/2020

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​                      "It's the water that makes this beer so special: happy Earth Day."

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April 12th, 2020

4/12/2020

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​Happy Easter.


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April 08th, 2020

4/8/2020

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Happy Passover:

 
Passover 2020 begins on the evening of Wednesday, April 8, and ends on the evening of Thursday, April 16.  - Google Feedback



Inside most cynics is a failed idealist just waiting to rise from the ashes, reborn. 
​    - O'Kendley
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March 17th, 2020

3/17/2020

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Happy St. Paddy's Day:

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"There is good in the world, simple, uh, complex, dysfunctional.  I'm related to outlaws that lived in America during the 1930s, they were horse thieves, uh, not screws -- er, ah, Garda -- or priests and nuns like my family in Ireland.  I like to believe that if the O'Brien boys had come across a Klan lynchin they would have risked all, includin their lives to have stopped it:  Good isn’t perfect…   Slainte.” 



To friends and family:
“I'll drink to our coffins: may they be built from the wood of a hundred-year-old oak tree that I’ll plant tomorrow.”   - author unknown 



​Please give to St. Baldrick’s Foundation: 1333 South Mayflower Avenue, Suite 400/ Monrovia, California   91016/ 888-899-2253/ sbinfo@stbaldricks.org 
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March 11th, 2020

3/11/2020

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March is Women's History Month:


Ms. McTavish
By Kevin O’Kendley                                                                                      

 

Darlene McTavish jumped in a cab: her twenty-two-year-old Harley was in the shop, she’d dropped it on an icy corner a week earlier; fortunately she hadn’t been injured but the bike had been pounded.   

When the taxi glided to a stop in front of FitzGerald’s Grocery Emporium the cabbie said, "Six smackeroos." 

To Darlene's surprise the meter was double-jointed or two-faced showing separate prices for males and females.  The fare for women was $6.00 and the ticket for guys, $4.62.  Darlene grumbled, "What the?  Where in the Constitution does it"--

“Ahem.  Pardon me?”  Inscrutable with hoodie eyes the cabbie then explained briskly, "That's just the way it's always been.  Ask anyone, missy."
            
Missy?  Darlene took a deep breath, a brilliant calming technique learned from her YWCA Lamaze lessons.  Though mystified as to why it was cheaper for a man to ride in a cab than a woman Darlene still shelled out a fair tip: two bucks. 
            
Inside Fitzy’s it was the same thing, the same inflammatory mystery lurked behind every price tag: milk was $4.00 for women and $3.08 for men, coffee $7.00 for women and $5.39 for men, and then the kicker, the final flipping insult, Tampons were $5.00 for women and $3.85 for men! 

Tampons?!
            
Ahhhhh --

Despite being outraged -- her little clamshell ears were fire-engine red -- Darlene gently -- breathing in and out -- asked the mustachioed cashier with the pug-lumpy face, "What's going on?  Y’know this is unfair -- un-American.  It's flat out wrong."
           
The cashier shrugged, and said with no small kindness, "Sorry, ma'm, but on the average women make seventy-seven cents for every buck a man makes in this country -- you do the math."   -end-
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a short from 2013.
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February 17th, 2020

2/17/2020

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Happy President's Day.

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There are those in this country that believe our political interaction has no sane guiding hand behind all that we do.  
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February 11th, 2020

2/11/2020

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The Citizen's United vs Federal Election Commission Supreme Court Decision is still King of the Hill.

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    A carbuncle is a roiled mass of skin or a beautiful gem.  The incredible gem is pictured in the logo below and at the bottom of the short story section...

    ​
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     Kevin O'Kendley is the owner of Carbuncle Moon, and the author of all original material -- cartoons, blogs, shorts, essays, articles -- on the website (there has been a very limited editorial input in some of my work).  Quoted sources are noted.  I am responsible for all posts.  

    ​Kevin O'Kendley: P.O. Box 172, Winterport, Maine, 04496, and 200 P Street, A-32, Sacramento, California, 95814, ksokendley@outlook.com.  


    Technical help is provided by an evolving computer genius, my son, Conor O'Kendley:  A good kid with a great heart who can be reached at P.O. Box 172, Winterport, Maine, 04496.  (Conor is in the Navy now, a swabby)

    Photography provided by a visual artist, my daughter, Caitlin O'Kendley: a young woman with a beautiful soul.  (Caitlin is in college now, a media-journalism student)

    If your nonprofit is advertised on this site and you wish to have it removed please contact me at the above listed snail-mail or email address or use the contact form on the website.

    If you download a blog, cartoon, a short story -- or for any other reason -- and wish to donate $ to this site, its author and technical support personnel, please send donations to above listed addresses payable to Kevin O'Kendley.  My family and I could use the dinero.
    All cartoons, blogs, and short stories are for sale. 

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  • Blogs & Cartoons
  • Short Stories, Book Reviews, Book Excerpts
  • Contact Kevin O'Kendley
  • Buy a T-shirt
  • Reviews of Otis Moon
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