Todd Strasser

The Author of Summer of '69

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The #1 killer of children and teens in the U.S. may not be what you think it is.

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A recent New York Times investigation uncovered high rates of sexual abuse by J.R.O.T.C. instructors against young female cadets.

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What JROTC doesn’t want you to think about

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Edibles are nothing new. Alice B. Toklas was baking them for Earnest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso 100 years ago.

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A recent article in the New York Times reveals that many minority high school students are being forced to take J.R.O.T.C. (Junior Reserve Officers Training Corps) classes in high school, sometimes against their wills. The schools claim that J.R.O.T.C. promotes leadership and discipline, but a disproportionate number of those students enter the military, become soldiers, and face the possibility of being sent to war.

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Here’s what could happen if the war between Ukraine and Russia escalates into World War Three

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The Two-Steps of Destruction Caused by Nuclear Weapons

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Ukraine And The Danger of Nuclear War 

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This is the closest we’ve been in 60 years to a global nuclear World War III. I’m going to do some videos about what it was like last time we were this close to a nuclear holocaust.

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A clip from Some Old Guy’s Show on YouTube

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SOME OLD GUY'S SHOW EPISODE 1

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Following yesterday's Dali post came this 1968 Fillmore West poster. How cool and surreal is this? The 1960s concert posters were as groundbreaking as the music they promoted.  

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Some Background on Joni Mitchell’s Carey

Along with Dylan and Leonard Cohen, the songwriter I admire the most is Joni Mitchell. She wrote so many phenomenal songs. One that I've always loved was "Carey," right from the first line: "The wind is in from Africa. Last night I couldn't sleep." During the research for my book I learned some of the background for the song, but there was no place to put it in the story without it becoming what my editor likes to call "an info dump."

The song refers to a village on Crete called Matala where there are caves that hippies lived in back in the day. I remember hearing about them in the 1960s as a top hippie/freak destination. ("And they're playin' that scratchy rock and roll beneath the Matala Moon." which I heard as "beneath the mantle of the moon.")

Not surprisingly, there was a fellow named Carey. And also a Mermaid Cafe.

Here's a version of Carey where she talks about him: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1kcTjtdVE8Th

Here's another pretty cool link: https://www.messynessychic.com/…/the-hippie-caves-of-matal…/

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I'm thinking about starting a blog called Losing It, dedicated to the dumb stuff we do as we get older. Many of my friends are in their 60s and I get the feeling we all do this stuff, but are afraid to admit it because it feels like we're admitting that we're starting to fail as "fully functional" human beings. The thing is, some of the stuff we do is pretty amusing. Yesterday I put on my surf shorts to go surfing. I remember noticing that the shorts looked much more sun-bleached than I recalled. I also had an issue tying the strings at the waist. Did I stop to think about why my shorts seemed to sun-bleached or why I was having a harder time than usual with the strings? Nope. I just went surfing ... with my shorts on inside out.  #LosingIt

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Skyping to a class in a cool school library.  #toddstrasser  #toddstrasserskypes

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Not quite the right title? I know how Ms. Delacroix must feel. I'm having trouble with a title, too. That's why I'm inviting you to read the first few chapters of my new mystery comedy romance at toddstrasser.com  and enter the title contest. You could win enough for a pretty good meal.

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Contest entries are flooding in! To read the first two chapters and find out more about the contest, please go to Wattpad https://www.wattpad.com/373338883-untitled-dieselpunk-roman… Thanks!  #ToddsTitleContest   #toddstrasser