A free series that marries books, films and discussion about them kicks off Saturday at Santa Ana Public Library with a Marine's account of the early days in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The author's hand-held video journal from that time will be shown later in the month.
The Blue Cascade is First Lt. Mike Scotti's raw, hard-hitting memoir from the early 2000s, when he participated in both Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. He shares what it was like from him and his fellow Marines serving in those wars.
Limited copies of The Blue Cascade will be available at the library for card holders, or you can buy a copy at the bookstore or through Amazon.
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The discussion of the book's first eight chapters begins at 2 p.m. Saturday at the library, 26 Civic Center Plaza, Santa Ana. Free parking is available at city lot P4 on Ross Street. Registration is required by contacting Milly C. Lugo-Rios at 714.647.5271 or by e-mail at ml***@sa*******.org.
The rest of the chapters will be discussed at 2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 27, when Scotti's powerful film Severe Clear will be shown. He used his Mini-DV camera to give first-person accounts of the Marines on the front lines. (Viewer discretion is advised for violence and language.)
Leading the events both dates will be Janice McInally, an American Red Cross therapist who specializes in Deployment and Post-Deployment workshops. The event flier follows …
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.