Life's Lessons
By Arthur A. Jennings; published by Czar Struck LLC; $8.99
The blurb: "Life's Lessons" is an honest account of the things we least like to talk about, the stains we keep covered up for years after an emotional incident. With a fluid and unapologetic style of storytelling, Jennings gives his audience permission to say what they really mean, feel and think — however late in life. His off-color humor and revelations of the best and worst moments of his life paint an unvarnished picture of human existence.
Excerpt: In October 1986, my wife ruined my life. She decided that she no longer wanted to be with me. She took everything from my life that I ever had and left me a shell. The event blindsided me almost to a state of shock. I did not see it coming. The actual, physical pain in my heart did not leave me for months.
What affected me the most was the cruelty that my wife and her new boyfriend used to implement whatever agendas she had in mind at the time. There were a lot of flirting and long phone conversations that seemed only to antagonize me. She would go to Eugene and spend the day with her new man under the guise of job hunting. At one time she told me that they were going to get a motel room at the Brownsville exit on 1-5 so they could just "talk."
Occasionally, we speak of the incident and I believe, purposely, she remembered it all wrong. I believe it was her way of justifying what she did to me. She claimed that she asked me to go away with her to the coast and I kept saying I could not get away from work.
"Excuse me? That's just bull crap."
She became very moody and I kept pursuing her to tell me what was wrong. She said she wanted some time alone with just herself. I told her of course. Later, however, she admitted that she was planning a trip with her male friend. Naturally I was devastated.
From the beginning of this incident, I knew I deserved what was being dished out to me. That did not take the pain away, but it was one of those "What can I say?" things. I had been such a (jerk) when it came to infidelity in my marriage. I did not care even if she told me she had slept around while I was overseas those four years in Thailand, Korea and Greece.
My mother told me that when I was on my first tour in Thailand, she and her husband visited my wife and the kids in Tillamook (Oregon). When they pulled up, they saw a man leave by way of a back window. I was too devastated to care at the time my mother told me the story. I brought it up with her years later and she became very defensive. It still would not bother me; I rather found it kind of hot considering my record of infidelity.
I spent four months, from October '86 until February '87, trying to convince her to put our marriage back together. Thinking back, what kind of marriage was it? I had volunteered for Vietnam twice; Korea and Greece, for the good of my military career and to get a break from her. In doing so, I left the kids to her destructive ways and they did not fare well at all. My bad!
I apologized to the kids for my shortcomings as much as I could, but I feel that it did not, nor should not have, let me off the hook. I knew soon after we were married in 1964 that it was a mistake. I wanted to walk away from the nuptial numerous times but could not because of the kids. It may sound admirable but it is just basic if you love your children.
Luckily, I am an optimist to the extreme and learned early in my marriage to use the term "yes, dear." And again, due to my early training, I stuck in there and made the best of it. I can't say it was all bad. We had a lot of good times exploring, camping, fishing and traveling cross country, visiting many of the states. I would never want anyone to change what or who they are and that holds true with my second wife. I became very good at deflecting her effects on me and my sensitive nature. I don't think the two children we had together survived as well as I did.
White Sharks of the North
By Denny Akeya; The Catchall Press, $19.95
The blurb: Beginning with the "whiteness" of the cover, the reader is at once transported to the cold, harsh environment of a family of polar bears, whose existence is threatened by dangers from all sides. The reader feels the stark, fragile aloneness experienced by today's polar bears in a conflicting world where togetherness and cooperation are necessary for survival — not only cooperation between siblings, but also a symbiotic sort of cooperation between polar bears and the arctic fox and between other creatures whose lives cross in a continuing spiral of Arctic life where the present evolves from the past and the future from the present.
The author has woven together the sights and sounds, the smells and tastes, and the emotions in a white world whose total fabric is the daily challenge to survive, the thread of which is the combination of instinctive and learned behaviors of four generations of polar bears, behaviors meticulously observed and captured from the author's unique been-there, saw-that perspective.
Excerpt: The sun was more than past noon and descending fast toward nightfall, and the urge to move on was now stronger than before. The two bear twins didn't know that they were miles apart heading in the same direction. Whitie was more successful in hunting than his twin sister Snowdrift due to his size. He had gained a lot more weight eating rich blubber from his kills of seals of different sizes. His twin sister had to feed two mouths and two stomachs. But now and then they would think of each other and dream of each other playing as young cubs. All the hunting tricks that their mother taught them were helping them to stay alive in the harsh northern world. Whitie had even killed an injured walrus that was on the ice after a fight with another bull walrus. It didn't put up much of a fight against Whitie due to his injury. Whitie took hold of the walrus on the back of his neck with his powerful jaws biting him, trying to crush his skull in the thin area. He swatted him with his strong paws, hurting him with each swat and weakening him.
Finally, the walrus was motionless on the ice, and Whitie was breathing very hard from all that fighting. He just sat for a while, catching his breath before gorging himself on his fresh kill. Sniffing the air, he stood up looking around, trying to spot any other bears that might be coming his way. Before long, he was biting the tough skin, trying to get underneath to the blubber. His sharp and powerful teeth were cutting through with each bite, and he was tugging on it and pushing with his front legs and paws. Finally, he had made a hole in the very tough skin and was licking the blubber. He bit off a large piece and swallowed it whole, then started to wrestle with the tough skin again, making it larger. He had enough grip on the skin, peeling it back with bits of blubber still on the skin. With each jerk that Whitie made trying to open up the skin more, the bull walrus moved side to side, as if it were still alive. Whitie was feasting on his prize kill, taking large chunks of blubber and swallowing them whole, just like a shark devouring its prey.