.Friday Firesmith - Bits & Pieces

Friday Firesmith – From Russia with love

June 13, 2025 by Mike

Back a few years ago, one of my sister’s friends paid a woman from Russia to move to South Georgia and marry him. He knew what he was getting into, but the woman was drop dead gorgeous. Six feet tall, natural blonde hair, well built, and perfectly willing to give the man what he paid for, she stayed until she got her green card then away she went. The guy said it was the best six months of his life. He’s still living in a single wide trailer behind his parents’ house.She’s running an Only Fans site at fifty bucks per month.

There for years I would get messages from very pretty, and very young, Russian women looking for an American husband. Having a small bank account and an even smaller set of social skills, none of these blue eyed beauties ever gained much ground with me. The older I got the less I was interested in blowing my life’s savings to rent a wife until the paperwork cleared.

Then suddenly, AI appeared on the scene.

Now, I’m getting well crafted messages from women who are perfect in every possible way. Articulate and graceful, they are clearly not from Russia ( or any other country for that matter) and they seem to be totally immersed in all the things I like.

One really strange thing about AI women is their distance between their belly buttons and their nether regions seems to be disproportional. Their arms seem to be too long sometimes, too. Their faces are perfect. Perfectly perfect in such a way that the uncanny valley effect kicks in.

When they ask, “How are you today?” I usually respond with, “A shark bit my leg off.”

There is a pause, and they say, “I hope you are well.”

The mail order brides that were once so common are still there, to be sure. But the thing now seems to be getting a guy talking to a computer with good visuals, and luring him into a sexual relationship that can only be described as handy. And it is working. “Build your own girlfriend” sites allow you to adjust the woman you want to any specifications. Some allow you to upload a photo so you can get your ex back. I don’t even want to speculate on that one.

I did connect with a woman from Russia, and she was blonde, blue eyed, and she was looking for a way out of that country. But she realized I wasn’t going to marry her, so we had a years long conversation about life here versus life there.

She told me she went out to eastern Russia, where a cave existed with petroglyphs carved into the stone. As she took photos and made sketches of the markings, a bear walked out of the woods and watched her. She knew better than to run, so she kept working and eventually the bear walked away.

Honestly, listening to her talk about that drew me in closer than anything else she ever did.

Take Care,

Mike

friday firesmith – Russia’s burning bombers

June 6, 2025 by Mike

We may never know how many bombers Russia actually lost but from the video footage the answer is certainly, “Plenty.”

Putin has to punish someone inside his security system for this and will. He also must wonder how in the name of Stalin were the drones delivered to the target site, and how long was this planned.

Who, Putin must wonder, planned this? NATO? The Ukrainians?

Why,Putin must wonder, why did they plan this? One war or the next war?

First Strike Capability is wounded, severely, and retaliatory strikes will be weaker.

Surely, Putin must think, NATO would not invade now, just because Russian defensive capability is diminished.

The Germans and Poles line up on the west, the Finns are a long car drive from Moscow, and NATO comes in from the Ukraine.

Know what’s more difficult than beating American intel being used by Ukraine? How about an American armor division heading to the Crimea backed up by the US Navy using that same species of intel.

And if Putin is as smart as he thinks he is, now, at this very moment, he cannot afford to worry about what he thinks NATO might do, oh no, for now he has to worry about what they are capable of doing.

If they can, is that something Putin will ignore?

Meanwhile, Ukrainian Intelligence seems to be flawless. Perfectly flawless, in fact.

And the Russian military has no way of replacing the bombers for quite some time.

The world of Vladamir Putin just got rattled, hard. Now, he must think of a way to save face, to make sure his security people are punished, make sure there isn’t another box of yellow jackets waiting near his oil fields, and oh by the way, he’s in a war with Ukraine.

President Putin might be on the way out. I could see that happening. What he must do as opposed to what he’s going to do might not look exactly similar.

But I think if there’s more attacks deep, very deep, in Russian territory, Putin is done.

Take Care,

Mike

+17

Friday Firesmith – the raccoon apocalypse tree

May 30, 2025 by Mike

When a raccoon hid in the hollow of a tree in 2016, Marco and Greyson, my sister’s dogs, lost their damn minds. Having a great deal of Black Lab in them, they were hunting dogs and as such, wanted to hunt the raccoon. The raccoon was not amusedand not coming out to play. I dragged the dogs away and the raccoon slipped out and was gone.

The Cousins dogs were returned to my sister back in 2019. The rain came in 2023 and flooded the back of the property.That tree sat in water for nearly two years and finally died.

Yesterday, the 27^th of May, I finally took the tree down with a chainsaw, and as always, using a chainsaw can be an adventure.

Dead and hollow, like my dreams of finding romance at my age, the tree offered me an opportunity to watch the trunk splinter and crack, possibly falling apart, and maybe even falling in a direction I could not predict. Videos of this sort of thing are terrifying for those of us who use chainsaws.

I cut the notch and was happy. The notch did not get into the hollow yet looked deep enough to guide the fall in the right direction. As I began the main cut into the truck, opposite the notch, the cutting was easy, too easy, as the hollow offered no resistance. I stopped and drove in two wedges, to keep the tree from settling back on the saw, and to ease it in the direction I wanted it to fall. I cut a few inches more and the wedges began to vibrate. This meant they were loose and the tree was leaning in the right direction. I started cutting again and as soon as the wedges fell out, away I went, saw in hand. The tree began a perfect fall.

And perfect was this all. Then the falling tree caught on the limbs of another tree that had died. For a brief moment in time I looked on and thought to myself, yeah, it can just stay there. I aimed for the woods, the woods I hit, and… then the tree branches holding the felled tree all started snapping. The fell tree began falling again, but the branches that held it up also changed its momentum. The tree kicked back, about ten feet, and had I been standing where I had been cutting this would be a much more interesting story, or last week really would have been the last week. Back ten feet, over three, and it almost got my metal wagon.

When you cut a tree, and it starts falling, you better be moving. Move as far away as you think you should and add ten feet.

Imagine the butt end of that tree hitting you.

Take Care,

Mike

+15

Friday Firesmith – Fred and Rose West

May 23, 2025 by Mike

If you’ve never heard of Fred and Rose West, they’re the British couple who murdered at least a dozen people in England back in the late 1900s. There’s an interesting Netflix series on it, three episodes, and you have to wonder how they managed to kill for so long without getting caught.

Couples who are serial killers are rare. Sexual depravity among serial killers is not only common but almost universal. Ted Bundy was the first American serial killer to be loved by the press, and therefore the public, but Bundy’s behavior was sanitized by the press. Even as news stories talked about his soaring intelligence (which wasn’t true) and his ability to charm women (which was overplayed) they left out the necrophilia and cannibalism. Bundy’s undoing may have been an odd form of suicide for he wandered down to Florida and murdered a twelve year old girl. Florida will execute someone for that sort of thing, and Bundy knew it.

Fred West denied his wife, Rose, had anything to do with the murders, and for years they both said he was the sole murderer. She was a prostitute operating out of their home, and Fred liked watching.

While Fred was in prison for a short while, his daughter from a previous marriage was murdered but the body was not found for over twenty years. Fred led them to where the body was hidden, and this is where the story gets even stranger than ever before.

The ten or so women who were murdered, and Fred West confessed to all of the murders, was one thing. But the murder of the eight year old daughter of Fred West and his ex-wife, was pinned on Rose.

No confession, no murder weapon, no cause of death, no witnesses, and no evidence of time of death, yet Rose West was convicted of this murder and nine others. Fred had conveniently committed suicide in prison before the trial.

Do I think Rose was involved in the murders? At the very minimum she had to know about them. The one victim who escaped claimed Rose was a willing partner to rape and attempted murder. Yet that is one witness who did not come forward for over twenty years. No other evidence exists. The bodies buried in their cellar and under their patio speaks to at least one person in the house knowing what happened, and Fred West confessed to all the murders. Both he and Rose said she had nothing to do with it.

In an American court of law, Rose either walks free or gets out on appeal. In a jury box, if given the lack of evidence against her, and also given that Fred defended her until the trial began, you’d find one, maybe more, jurors unable to pull the trigger on Rose.

I think she was 100% guilty. But I also think they didn’t prove it. The members of the jury simply refused to believe a woman lived in the same house with a killer who buried bodies in their basement yet never knew what was going on. I refuse to believe it, too.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – Seventeen Dog Years

May 16, 2025 by Mike

“Are you Mike Firesmith?” the woman asks at the event, and I wonder if she’s looking for the guy in dog rescue, the writer, the political activist, snake ID, or the guy who loans out the cat trap.

“Yes, and you would be?”

“Tammi. I was friends with your wife. We met once at the art gallery.”

Wow. Now this story ended, I thought, back in 2002, when the divorce was final and my brand new ex left the state.

“That was a long time ago, Tammi. I do not remember you, sorry,” I reply, hoping this ends well and soon.

“No, I didn’t think you would. You’re wearing the same style hat you wore back then.” Tammi hesitates. “That’s not the same hat is it”

“No, different. Three or four hats ago, at least.”

“She owed me some money and never paid me back. I didn’t care about the money but she just left and never told anybody where she was going. What happened to her? Do you know?” Tammi seems concerned rather than vengeful. She’s a bit older than I, with soulful eyes and I bet she’s got a cat that just showed up one day.

“No idea.”

“Okay. Thanks.” And Tammi wanders off.

I’ve lived long enough now that things pop up from the past that are old enough to legally drink alcohol. This doesn’t mean they should, but they do anyway, like some sort of sexually transmitted disease that randomly reappears. Personal History Herpes. I can go months without remembering I was married for 989 days, or as I refer to it, “Seventeen Dog Years.”

Yes, I did know she left owing money and she took artwork from artists who had no idea she was skipping town. Or at least that was what I was told by the artists. I suspect she stiffed her divorce attorney.

Tammi wanders over again, curious, like those people who slow down to take a photo of a car wreck. I worked in traffic and learned to hate those people. I still do.

“Mind if I ask you a question, Mike?” she asks.

“Shoot.”

“Did you think she had enough to survive when she moved out? I mean, I know there were a lot of issues, but honestly, what was she left with?” Tammi is serious. She isn’t taking a shot at me, I don’t think, and she seems to be trying to understand what caused the wreck, not just stare at it.

“I signed the agreement she and her lawyer drew up, Tammie, what else was I supposed to do?” I can feel the anger rising from the grave again.

“I’m sorry, it’s just, I don’t know. This is none of my business,” and Tammi flees.

I sit and eat a third doughnut, wash it down with more coffee than I truly need, and I remember Rachel Louise Snyder’s memoir, where she says, “I want to be more gracious in my writing here. I want to say my parents did the best they could under the circumstances and with the resources they had. But I don’t think this is true. I don’t think they did their best.”

We both went where the lawyers led us. But the money and property were in my name, and her lawyer fumbled the ball. She wound up with nothing.

I’d like to be more generous with my writing here, and say I did the best I could ending my marriage, but now, looking back, I don’t think I did. I don’t think I did my best.

Take Care,

Mike

+10

Friday Firesmith – Fire!

May 9, 2025 by Mike

I always wondered why that Live Oak tree was still standing. The lean was pronounced, to say the least. But it stood for over two hundred years, and twenty since I’ve been here. Eleven inches of water in six hours brought the water level up higher than anyone had ever seen or imagined. I went out in my wading boots and could hear the Oak’s roots groaning and popping. By the time I got back inside and got the cell phone the tree fell with a splash.

That was 12 April 2023.

A likely young man who had no small amount of skill with a chainsaw helped me get the branches off the tree, we waded in waist deep water to get a lot of it into the woods, and at the end of two weeks, we had all but the main trunk hauled away.

The water level receded enough for me to burn the top branches, some of them thicker than my waist. Then the rain came back and forced me away.

A week or so ago I started burning again and this time the weather held and I’m making good progress. But a Live Oak that has been dead for two years is still not giving up the ghost that easily. Live Oak is a dense wood, and I started a fire on a Monday, and it burned until Saturday, in some form or another. I’m averaging about a foot off the tip of the tree per burn.

It takes a lot of fuel to do this, and I’m not willing to use gasoline or anything like that. I also don’t want a giant fire that can be seen from the space station. I have time. There’s no reason to make a mistake with this fire.

As odd as it may sound, the fire can still escape. Yes, it’s a foot away from a pond formed by the flooding. Yes, I have three outdoor faucets within range, and yes, keeping the fire burning hot enough for the Live Oak wood to burn has been an issue. But fire is a willful and hungry demon who calls no man her friend. I will neither turn my back on her nor will I allow weariness to pull me into some sense of security when the fire burns bright and hot.

I sit now, and wait until the wood dries from yesterday’s rain, and the mud isn’t as slick. I’m getting down to the trunk of the tree, thick and heavy. I’m thinking about drilling large holes in the trunk, some down and some sideways, and see what this brings when the fire digs deep. This is a time for experimentation as well as heat, as all things should be.

Take Care,

Mike

Friday Firesmith – Garden 2025

May 2, 2025 by Mike

For years my garden was something I took pride in and grew great plants. The first garden here was smol, an old wheelbarrow and a large oak stump that had a hollow in the middle. They survived for a few years then I expanded, and grew tomatoes and peppers in a small plot. This, too, was expanded, and four years ago I decided to go big, and turned a chunk of my front yard into a miniature farm. Three growing seasons ago, I expanded again. Things went to hell on me

Heat got my garden three years ago, and only the peppers survived, and not all of them did. Two years ago, we had hurricanes that flooded the garden and killed everything. Last year, an eleven inch rain killed every plant I owned. Then the hurricanes came to rid me of the notions I was going to grow anything at all.

Weeds took over and I couldn’t be bothered with trying to keep the dead garden in shape. The back of the property was flooded, trees were dying and falling and there was no respite from the never endingrain.

Few weeks ago, I stood in front of the tangled mess that was a garden, a good garden, and I wondered how much work it would be to just get it cleared. Did I want to try again, really? I took the garden rake out and dug up a large weed that looked somewhat like an alien creature, and maybe it had drowned, too.

I smelled the dirt.

Garden dirt, when dirt is done right, smells different.

I know this dirt. Most of it came from the compost pile that is still under a foot of water. I hauled wagon loads to the garden to make the soil deeper, to give the garden a chance to have better root systems, and earthworms by the score tagged along.

The soil is good, made better by the coffee grounds I tossed in, and there I found some random piece of plastic, an ingredient I worked hard to rid the garden of for years. I pulled up a patch of grass, knocked the dirt off the roots and squeezed it in my hand. I made this dirt. Weather took my plants away, killed the tomatoes first, then the squash, and finally the okra and peppers, but the dirt is still here.

I sent my plant person a text and she send back, “I wondered where you were.” But the hurricanes ravaged her hot house. She has tomatoes, squash and okra, but no peppers. I stop by the next day, and she loads me up with plants, and back home, in the freshly cleared garden, I do what I have always done in the Spring. I start a garden.

Yeah, I’m oh for three in the last three seasons. Yeah, hurricanes are stronger and coming more frequently. But part of me that matters wants to grow stuff I can eat and share with my friends.

I’m back.

Take Care,

Mike

+13

Friday Firesmith – TomAHtoes and Bullfrogs

April 25, 2025 by Mike

(I told you I would ~ MikeCo)

During the wee hours of the night, 12 April 2023, the rain began. The forecast called for hard rain, and they were right. I awoke as soon as it started because the sound of the rain on the roof was loud. I listened for a while, checked the clock, which read just after midnight, and waited for the rain to slack off. It didn’t. For six hours the rain came down in a hurry and we got eleven inches.

The next morning, the aftermath of the storm manifested with a giant Live Oak toppling over, and the driveway being underwater. My backyard flooded to a point I had never seen before. It was incredible in the magnitude of the amount of water.

Things didn’t get better over time.

2023 saw a couple of hurricanes come in close and add more water to the problem, and my garden drowned. 2024 saw even more hurricanes and even more water, and my garden drowned again.

2025 began wet, and a series of weekly rains kept the water level way too high.

March saw the water level down a bit. April has been a dry month, so far, and little by little, the water is receding. A few more feet and I’ll be able to burn what is left ofthe Live Oak that fell back in 2023.

Believe it or not, I had to don some wading boots to look for the water hose in what was once dry land but is now a small lake. I found the hose, fished it out, and watered my garden, which is in pretty much the highest ground on the property. There is just so much rain tomatoes and squash can handle before they die, however.

Over two years’ worth of flooding has brought in different species of both animals and plants. Frogs, of course, moved in from the pond that overflowed into the yard, and with the frogs came those things that feed on frogs. Water snakes, cottonmouths, wood storks, a great blue heron, a green heron, all followed the frogs. Ducks of all sorts, an egret or three, and assorted wading birds all came to visit.

A couple of alligators, small ones, have swam around in what once was where I mowed the back yard.

My compost pile, that turned out enough compost for me to fully stock the garden, is still under a foot of water. My fire pit is under at least four feet of water. And all of this is after the water started going down.

I mowed today, moving into the swamp grass and reeds, creating space to see what’s there and what’s still mud, and opening up the yard a little more for the dogs. I cut two meters wide into the very back, a meter and a half wide near the shed, and about a meter and a half path to the woods for the dogs to run freer. All the assorted grasses were half a meter tall, at least.

Now, with the swamp grass cut back, and not all the way, I can see that if the water recedes a few more feet, the ditch in the back of the yard will still be full, but within its banks. The compost pile will begin to emerge butbe useless for a while. The pond will begin the process of returning to where it has been for the last twenty-five years.

We’ll know this hurricane season is the new normal or if the old one holds sway.

I’d like to have some tomatoes to talk about this year, but I also love to see storks and herons. I love the sound of frogs. Love what you have, says I. The garden or the swamp, each has a draw that is undeniable.

Take Care,

Mike

In all the photos that you see this week, all the area that can be seen was once lawn, or at least mowable. The old shed you see has never been flooded like this before. Oh, and the hose? Got it out without a Kraken attacking me.

+12

Friday Firesmith – Cats are universal conversation currency

April 18, 2025April 18, 2025 by Mike

Cats are Universal Conversation Currency. If you have cats, or just a cat, you can talk feline with anyone else who has been a recipient, or a victim, of the Cat Distribution System. Aqaba Thomas, the Cat Unexpected, has a Urinary Tract Infection. I have asked for advice and gotten a lot of it, but I also took Aqaba to the vet. I love my cat people, but I trust in people who went to the University of Georgia to study animal medicine. The vet runs tests and confirms the UTI. But now I have to figure out how to get pills into the cat without trauma to the feline and blood loss to his owner.

Enter The Cat People!

Okay, first off, because they are my cat people, and cat people, like cats, never really belong to anyone, I get a lot of smart ass replies online that references full body armor, destroyed furniture, and blood. Lots of blood. Buckets of blood. There are eleventy billion “giving a cat a pill” meme, jokes, and that sort of thing.

All of them are accurate, but useless.

Yet there are those who have been in my paws before, and know I need help. Hid the pills in food, use the tube food as a treat hider, soak the pills in tuna oil, and the list grows. But this time it is accurate and it also works.

The first dose goes in through a syringe but it’s not pretty. The next dose goes in with scrambled eggs and is a success. But the cat treat in a tube hits the home run, and works twice in a row. The Cat People are there for me, and for Aqaba.

But it doesn’t stop there. I also get lessons in cat food that includes urinary health, I get a lecture of blockages and why I have to find out where he’s hiding his pee if he isn’t using his box, and I also get stories about long term effects and long-term answers.

Aqaba Thomas came in bloodied and terrified. The Cat People were down for that, andlet me know I did the right thing by leaving Aqaba in the trap on the trip to the vet’s. Rabies was unlikely, but not impossible, which was my thing, and The Cat People saw my caution as a sign of wisdom.

They also recommended I find Aqaba some sort of box to hide in and that I did, too, so he felt secure and hidden.

Whatever else may be, I have not faced being a new cat owner alone.

And so all the Cat People who were certain I would keep Aqaba were right. And now all of them are giving me advice, the vet agrees with. Aqaba Thomas, through whatever device the Universe used to get him here, has found a home The Cat People approve of, and that is no small thing.

I discovered I speak fluent feline just by caring.

Take Care,

Mike

+20

Friday Firesmith – Missing Barbara Bach

April 11, 2025 by Mike

I’m not a musician, can’t read music, but play the radio proficiently. I pretty much can’t speak intelligently about the subject of music except I know what I like, and I feel it.

Years ago, I bought classical music CDs because they were cheap, and I was destitute. I also discovered I wrote better when writing under the influence of classical music.

I bought a boxed set of three CDs that had a wide variety of classical music on them for three bucks. This is how I met Partita No. 2 in D minor for solo violin, BWV 1004, by Johann Sebastian Bach. Now, the listing on the CD was “Partita No.2” and I had no idea it was a solo violin piece, and one of the most difficult, and well written pieces, ever created by humankind.

I could, of course, tell it was beautiful, and as I would listen to it on my cheap CD player,I felt this piece of music deep inside my soul. Forgive me my inabilities in music, but I thought it was a duet. I could identify a violin, easily, but that was as far as my talents went.

One day, many years after falling in love with this piece of music, I heard it on NPR and they played the entire piece, all eighteen minutes or so, and then the announcer spoke as to how some thought Bach had written part of it, especially the last part, in memory of his wife, Barbara, who had died while he was composing the piece.

Monday, I took my truck to the shop for a minor adjustment they had failed to make while repairing it and was listening to this song and pulled over. The connection was finally made in my heart and mind. I originally thought this song was a duet, and perchance, I heard it this way because the composer had written it while missing his wife, the person who was the other half of his duet in life. It would be something masterfully done, expertly, exquisitely, and painfully beautiful.

Three hundred years later, I can still feel a man’s heart breaking, as he grieved for his wife through music.

Is there a song, or a piece of music out there that hits you hard?

Take Care,

Mike

+17