To a half million vets & Harley riders who participated in yesterday’s Rolling Thunder event, Joe Lozano is “Dragon Joe”. Joe is a Viet Nam veteran, and travels these days from Georgia each May to participate in Rolling Thunder. His wife, Mee owns & rides her own Harley Davidson motorcycle as well, and is a veteran of the US Army and of Rolling Thunder.
To us, Joe & Mee are also our former neighbors from our first apartment, and we try to see them each year after the Rolling Thunder events have wound down. We met them and several of their military brothers at an old favorite restaurant – Magic Wok in Springfield, Va. We even saw our original waiter from the 1990s there. He remembered all of us. It was a great reunion!
There are a half million brothers & sisters of Dragon & Mee in town, and we salute them all with gratitude. Thank you for your service & sacrifice.



I noticed that seated just a behind us was a familiar face. It was
I was (naturally) wearing my blue & orange Mets jacket. Between innings, I stood up, gestured to him (as my friend yelled “RAY!”) and he looked my way. When he spotted my wave, I tapped on the big Mets logo on my chest, and gave him a big thumbs up. He smiled, nudged his fellow broadcaster Johnny Holliday to get him to look over as well. He returned the thumbs up, put down his scorecard & clapped, winked and nodded approvingly.

This morning, my five year old son became suddenly agitated as he played with one of his favorite toys. It’s a firehouse. The roof is lined with five buttons. Each button triggers a different electronic sound. Peter began to yell, “It sounds different – it sounds different!” I went over, and pressed each button. The bell button still sounded the bell, the siren still sounded the siren noise, etc. He grabbed the toy back, and repeatedly pressed the fire truck’s horn button. ’Dad – it’s not right anymore – it’s the wrong sound now”, he cried. I listened carefully – the diesel horn tooted the note F. I grabbed a screw driver & removed the battery compartment cover. I pulled out the aging AA batteries &
replaced them with fresh ones. With the new batteries in place, the diesel horn still sounded an F… but one that was ever-so-slightly higher in pitch – less than a quarter tone in my estimation. Peter smiled & declared, “Now it sounds right, Dad – that’s the right noise”.
Peter watches a little TV in my bedroom before he goes into his own bed to sleep each evening. There is a digital clock on top of the TV. AT 8:40 pm, I told Peter that we’ll watch the movie Wall-E until 8:50pm, and then we’ll shut off the movie and go to his room to got to sleep. He watched the movie for a few minutes, looked at the clock, and reported to me that it was 8:48. We need to go to bed in 2 minutes.

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