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Vee Bdosa
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As Ron Wilson, my birth name, I began my writing career in short-story, article, and poetry writing, and early publication ranged from multiple markets from FIELD AND STREAM magazine, a prominent Boston Literary Publication called IN-POSSE REVIEW, a regular contributor to Springfield MO News-Leader OVER THE OZARKS, The Sacramento BEE and Weekender. Most of my early writing was as Ron Wilson, but there have also been nearly a dozen pseudonyms, most of whom I have forgotten without looking back in my scrapbook albums.

Today, if you see the names Ron Wilson, Ron Wilson Arbuthnot, Ron Arbuthnot, or Vee Bdosa the Doylestown Poet, they are all me. My second book of poetry, LOVE POETRY by Vee Bdosa,  was awarded the (coveted) honor of EDITORS CHOICE by the Editors. However, only a few hundred are in existence now as I have stopped publication in order to re-write all of my poetry under my ancestral name of RON ARBUTHNOT. I also have written over 300 songs, and am in the process or doing new recordings of all of them and a lot of audio-video of my selected poetry. Much of it, the early, the new, the good, the better, and the best, can be found at YOUTUBE and searching for Vee Bdosa. More later.

Sputnik - The Joke

Blog Posted by Vee Bdosa: 4/14/2016 9:29:00 AM

This will be, when finished, a blog about the very first satelite in history, Sputnik. This being an event that happened well over 50 years ago, I think, cruising southward through the Suez Canal on board a US Navy Destroyer, I may have a few if the details a little wrong and in conflict with one of me sources, to aid in my memory gathering, being Wikepedia. Some times we hust have to trust our memories.

It was HOT, and of this I am very certain, Wikepedia does not even mention that. We had just seen the wreckage of many ships, some of them their masts sticking out of the water at Poet Said. Or was it Port Suez, of that I am really uncertain right now, but it was the one at the North end of the Suez Canal. I saw my first camel that morning, with a rider on board, it was then that I wished I had a camera, a feeling I did not correct until a few weeks later in Genoa Italy.

About noon, the Captain came on the ship's intercome, announcing, of course, that "Ths is the Captain speaking..." But of course, what else could the Captain say, being that he never, ever had come on the ship's speaker system before about anything, and so we all knew that this just had to be some big news. To be sure, it was so rare that many of us wondered if we even had a Captain.

His announcement, to wit being, "I want announce that the Soviet Union has just launched the first satelite in history, the Sputnik Satelite. Carry on."

"Soviet Union? " we asked ourselves, "Isn't that in Russia or someplace?"

The rest of the afternoon was spent making up a stream of Sputnik jokes, that seemed to have no end. Even when, 2 days later, playng softball in Eritrea, which was known to be the hottest place on the planet. We even called our softballs "Sputnik," to the joy and excitement of hundreds of Africans who had obviously never seen softball before.

When our batters got a hit, we shouted, "There goes Sputnik..." and the excited native Africans, many of them scantilly dressed, caught on and began shouting, "Sputnik! Sputnik!" when the balls were hit.

But it all ended a few days later, when President Dwight Eisenhower decided to give military support to Lebanon, during its most recent crisis. So, our PersianGulf tour, to everyone's sincere and great dissapointment, was abruptly ended.

And so, our course was reversed and we sailed back through the Suez Canal, (Or is that the Said Canal?) back past the same wreckages of ships that Israel had just sunk the year before, and when we got off the coast of Lebanon, we put the first of a stream of US Marines ashore in full battle dress and gear.

The Marines were great, and there were dozens of beautiful, bikini clad Lebanese girls watching them and cheering them on. This in itself made the whole tour of duty with the 6th Fleet worthwhile and it was probably the strangest invasion in history.

But it did not stop the Sputnik jokes. 



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Date: 4/14/2016 8:46:00 PM
Fantastic write, and having read the history of those events and times, is great to see it thought the eyes of someone telling is through every day life and experiences like you have. You are a great story teller!
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Previous Blogs

 
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