Today is the UN’s International Day of Peace. So, even if you are a follower of the incandescent flaccid golf popsicle from south of the 49th—and are therefore ideologically opposed to the UN for some incomprehensible reason (draws deep breath) —you may want to meditate on peace for a few minutes.

Couldn’t hurt, right?

Here’s a squawk from the rearmost pew; a story called “The Peacemongers” which first appeared in The MOON magazine in June 2017. This story was also chosen to be included in the publication’s recent, beautiful anthology, “Out of This World” The Best Short Stories from The MOON Volume I (2013-2019).

Peace. Conscientious Objectors. “Just War”. Leaders we are bound by the bible to follow, chosen by and given authority by God, we are told… even leaders with triangular moustaches.

My cousin Doug and I used to jump aboard the tractors lined up for sale on the Case dealership lot in Steinbach, Manitoba. We were, in those long-ago summers, U.S. fighter pilots shooting down Messerschmidt 109s in our P-51s. If a few things in our ancestry had gone differently, maybe we would have been in imaginary Luftwaffe cockpits instead of those of the USAF. A few more twists of fate and we might have had ancestors in the Russian infantry meat-grinder or the Polish resistance. Or maybe, had our forefathers stayed in Frisland, our Opas past would have considered a “MANNEN VON NEDERLAND!” recruiting poster and become real Flying Dutchmen.

Had our great-great-grandpa Toews chosen Mountain Lake, MN instead of Manitoba’s East Reserve, Doug and I may well have found ourselves singing along to Country Joe and the Fish in Da-nang or some other place of less-than-righteous smiting. My fiction, “A Vile Insinuation” revisits this troubled time on the borderline.

Anyway, please find highlighted and hyperlinked above a couple of peace inclined short stories of mine. Give’em a read and afterwards, maybe give some waiter or waitress a twenty-buck tip to address the war on poverty. THAT’s a JUST war!

Also, here’s a link to Slaughterhouse-Five, a true book of peace for this day of peace. So it goes.