A Short Exerpt From a Historical Speech

18. January 2010 · Comments Off on A Short Exerpt From a Historical Speech · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Rant, Tea Time

This was found among the comments at Neo-Neocon – somewhat appropriate, considering the special election in Massachusetts tomorrow, and the marked degree of unhappiness generally with our re-elected aristocracy.

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.

“Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess? Ye have no more religion than my horse; gold is your God; which of you have not barter’d your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?

“Ye sordid prostitutes, have you not defil’d this sacred place, and turn’d the Lord’s temple into a den of thieves by your immoral principles and wicked practices? Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here by the people to get grievances redress’d; your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse the Augean Stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings, and which by God’s help and the strength He has given me, I now come to do.

“I command ye, therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors. You have sat here too long for the good you do. In the name of God, go!”

Well, yeah, it was Oliver Cromwell, on the eve of the English Civil War, and he eventually became as odious a dictator as those he fulminated against. Still, a cracking good speech … and in the current political situation, curiously resonant.

Later: and in the current mood, and from the same source – a Hitler Movie Parody Edit:

Road Trip!

17. January 2010 · Comments Off on Road Trip! · Categories: Ain't That America?, Air Force, Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, Home Front, Military, World

I’ve been invited to be on one of the panels at the 5th Annual MilBlog Conference, in Arlington, Virginia, April 9th and 10th – and Blondie and I are intending to drive, since she will be on spring break! (Route tentatively planned as Dallas-Memphis-Knoxville-Harrisonburg)

Any other milbloggers from the San Antonio or Ft. Hood area also going to the Milblog Conference? Anyone in Arkansas, Tennessee or Virgina want us to stop and visit along the way? Recommend some good eats, or something interesting to see?

We are all Spartacus

16. January 2010 · Comments Off on We are all Spartacus · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Rant, Tea Time

You know, it amuses me no end, checking out the comment sections on various websites and blogs, especially when the commenter start to go to town, with regard to tea parties, tea partiers and the whole Tea Party thing. After the obligatory snigger about teabagging, I find out that Tea Partiers are screeching-angry, hateful, racist, rude, Nazis, sister-humping rednecks who hate everyone else, and most especially the fact that we have a black president. That apparently is supposed to be the thing that sticks in our craws the most – I guess the oh-so-observant commenters have missed the sign that said, “We don’t like his white half, either!” Oh, and we’re all old, and/or uneducated losers, and the Tea Party rallies are more of a mass temper-tantrum, there’s only a handful of them, and they’ve all been deluded by Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, or perhaps by the Republican Party, and we’re secretly being lead by all of the above, or maybe Sarah Palin and her little dog, too . . . So they can be safely ignored and scored by all right-thinking people.

Seriously, I’m almost sure that none of the commentators holding forth in this manner, from the high – say, the New York Times, down to the very low, which would be some whacked-out Kos diarist, or possibly some more than usually-deranged denizen of Hollywierdland, like Janeane Garafolo – have actually ever gone to a mass Tea Party event. Nope – I’d be surprised as heck, to find out they are opining from actual, real-world encounters with Tea Partiers.

See, folks – I’ve been to one monster Tea Party event, a good few smaller ones, worked on media strategy for a metropolitan Tea Party, and helped pound out their long-term strategy. I have something to base my opinion of Tea Parties and Tea Partiers on – such as the evidence of my own lying eyes. While it might make a portion of the public and the old-line media happy as a pig in swill to believe the angry-racist-red-necking-dumbass-sheeple meme, and to agree with all the other voices in the echo-chamber . . . I have to say up-front – y’all aren’t doing yourself any favors. Especially, you won’t have done yourself a favor, when the Obama Administration, and all its works and all its ways goes down faster than a Japanese carrier at the Battle of Midway. You won’t be able to figure out why, having been blinded by willful mis-perception. Reality, she is a right bitch, and she will eventually crash any party of the delusional.

Mind you, there is a smidgeon or sometimes more to justify the stereotypes: yep, there are Rushbo and Glenn Beck fans among the Tea Partiers, and a goodly number of evangelical Right-to-Life types; there are Republican establishments and politicians who have been quick to grasp the advantages of being perceived as having something to do with the Tea Party, and lord help us, there are a scattering of screeching, ignorant ranters and racists who call themselves Tea Partiers. But to assume that is the truth and sum of all is to delude yourself – and if you are a media person or an academician saying this, than you are deluding the public that you are supposed to be informing.

Here’s the real deal: the Tea Parties have a couple of unifying principles: small government, fiscally-responsible and strict constitutionalists pretty much says it in one sentence. Everything else is secondary, and at this point, kind of a distraction. Blessedly most are not distracted – although because of the sheer number of passionate people involved in a Tea Party does mean that sometimes contrary opinions are involved. Groups split, morph, form other groups. Among the flavors of political opinion drawn into the Tea Party brew are libertarians, people who run small businesses, generally middle-to-working-class, veterans, people who pay taxes, people who are angered by the same old, same old. There is anger as deep as an ocean about politicians who seem to be more of an aristocracy, spending decades in office doing what is best to secure reelection rather than what is best for the country. Many of the Tea Partiers that I know are just as angry at Democrats as they are Republicans – and they come in all colors and religious backgrounds. Myself, I’ve been describing the Tea Party movement for months as a herd of cats, all motivated by pretty much the same thing, and going in more or less the same direction.

Tea Partiers may also rightly be described as angry; there is temper-tantrum angry, but there is also purposeful and focused anger. The sort that I see within my Tea Party is the purposeful, goal-oriented kind. Their focus and their strategy – and it is a focus, not spasms of temporary anger about administration policies – is to search out, and elect people who will uphold the principles of small government, fiscal responsibility and adherence to the Constitution. In other words, they are starting from the bottom up. This is not spectacular; this doesn’t make a flashy television statement, or make it easy to follow, if you are not directly involved. There is no known leader, really – oh, everyone in the lefty commentariat goes on about Sarah Palin or Glenn Beck, or Rushbo, but they aren’t really our leaders. There are no leaders. We are all leaders, each of us pushing on towards a goal, according to our own inspiration and our own beliefs. Such beliefs are buttressed not by Fox Television, but in the provisions of the Constitution, which we are – if not familiar with it before – are studying with a renewed attention and appreciation.

And I sense, this is what may prove to be much for frightening to the powers that be, the old-line media sitting in easy and ignorant judgment, or the internet commenter who has enough actual first-hand knowledge about the Tea Party to fill up a small cheap tea bag. Not that we are all they have proclaimed us to be – but that we aren’t. And that there are a lot of us, working quietly and with intelligent focus within our communities, picking up the trash after our protest events, seriously applying ourselves to the intricacies of applying to be precinct chair, or running for local office, recalling to ourselves what it meant to be truly politically involved, instead of hiring through pro-forma elections some empty cipher with good hair and a smooth line of patter, to go to Washington and bring home enough pork to be elected again, one way or an other.

Yes – we are all Spartacus. And there are a lot of us, who have remembered what it is to be citizens. Not subjects.

Art Humor

14. January 2010 · Comments Off on Art Humor · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, The Funny

Found through 2Blowhards, who thought it was a clever concept, but the examples posted just weren’t all that funny.
I disagreed – the whole blog is here: obscure vintage works of art, with new titles.
#91, The USS Conan O’Brian is especially hilarious.

Snow Bound

11. January 2010 · Comments Off on Snow Bound · Categories: General, History, Media Matters Not, Old West

I’ve been offered an opportunity to review a new movie about the Donner Party – which seems to be one of those arty flicks, with some moderately well-known actors in the cast, which appeared at a couple of festivals and then went straight to DVD. I can’t find much on line about it – certainly no hint or clue that it ever had a general release. The plot as outlined actually appears to focus on a small group of fifteen, who called themselves the Forlorn Hope. As winter gripped hard, in November of 1846, they made a desperate gamble to leave the main party, stranded high in the mountains, and walk out on snowshoes. They took sparingly of supplies, hoping to leave more for those remaining behind, and set out for the nearest settlement down in the foothills below. They thought they were a mere forty miles from salvation, but it was nearly twice that long. (Seven of the Forlorn Hope survived; two men and five women.) Although the poster art makes it seem as if it verges perilously into horror-movie territory – which I usually avoid, having an extremely good imagination and a very low gross-out threshold – I am looking forward to watching the movie, and doing a review. The subject – a mid 19th century wagon-train party, stuck in the snows of the Sierra Nevada – is something that I know a good bit about. And I’m interested in what this cinematic take will be; being that ghastly experience of the Donners and the Reeds, and their companions in misery, starvation and madness has horrified and titillated the public from the moment that the last survivor stumbled out of the mountain camp, high in the Sierra Nevada, on the shores of an ice-water lake.

Their doom unfolded inexorably, like a classic Greek tragedy. It seemed to historians, no less than the survivors, that in retrospect, every step taken closed off an escape from the doom of starvation, of murder, betrayal and grisly death which waited for them in the deep mountain snows of the Sierra Nevada. They had departed from the established emigrant trail on advice of a man who had never actually traveled along the route which he had recommended in a best-selling guidebook. They lost precious time, wandering in the desert, lost supplies, lost a portion of their draft animals – and what may have been a worse misfortune, at a critical point, they lost a large portion of their faith and trust in those outside the immediate family circle. (Comprehensive website about their journey, here.)

And yet, two years earlier, another wagon-train party, the Stephens-Townsend Party had also become marooned in the mountains, on the very same spot. Ten wagons, carrying fifty or so men, women, and children had also gambled against being over the wall of the Sierras before winter blocked the passes. They also had suffered in the Forty-Mile Desert, had also taken short-cuts along the trail, consumed nearly all of their supplies, become lost, and occasionally distracted with personal disputes, and had made the same hard choices. They also had split their party – but by choice rather than chance, exhaustion and accident. They also built rough cabins – barely more than huts and brush arbors – and slaughtered the last of their draft oxen for food. And yet, the Stephens-Townsend Party, with the Murphys and the Sullivans and the Millers, and young Mose Schallenberger and the rest of them – they survived. Better than survived, for they arrived in California with two more than they started with, two wives in the party having given birth along the way. But hardly anyone has ever heard of them. The eighty or so of the Donner Party, the Reed family, with the Breens, the Graves and the rest – under the same circumstances, same kind of gear and supplies – they lost nearly half their party to starvation and perhaps murder, and became pretty much a byword in the annals of the West.

What made the difference; why did one group manage to hold together, under challenging circumstances, and the other fall apart, spectacularly? I don’t suppose anyone could give a definitive answer at this point, although I wrote a fictional account of the Stephens-Townsend emigrant journey experience in an attempt to explore that question.

It was my theory that the Stephens-Townsend people were fortunate in two respects and that would be their salvation. (Of course, they were also hampered in one respect – of not actually having a trail to follow once departing from Ft. Hall, save the faint tracks of the Bidwell-Bartleson Party from three years before.) Against that handicap, of having to scout the longest and most perilous section of the trail to California themselves, they had men among them who were knowledgeable about what they faced generally, if not specifically. Hired guide Caleb “Old Man” Greenwood was one of the old breed, a mountain man and fur-trapper, who had married a Crow Indian woman. Another member of the party, Isaac Hitchcock, who was traveling with his widowed daughter, had also spent much time in the far west. He is thought by some of his descendents to have been an associate of Jedediah Smith, and to have ventured to California, sometime in the late 1820s. In any case, he also had vast experience, existing in the untracked wilderness which lay beyond the ‘jumping off’ places, all along the Mississippi-Missouri. Their elected leader, Elisha Stephens, one-time blacksmith and all-around eccentric may have been a teamster on the Santa Fe Trail; he appeared to have superior skills when it came to maging the daily labor of moving a number of heavy-laden wagons over rough trails.

The other fortunate aspect which strikes me, in reading the accounts of these two emigrant parties, is that the Stephens-Townsend group was a more cohesive organization. Over half the party was an extended family group, that of Martin Murphy, Senior – his sons and daughters, son-in-law, and various connections. But although they had lived for a time variously in Canada, and in Missouri, they seem not to have been accustomed to the west in the way that the two old mountain men were, and sensibly accepted the leadership of Elisha Stephens. Indeed, Stephens appears to have been trusted implicitly by everyone in the California-bound contingent, even before splitting off at Ft. Hall from a larger group bound for Oregon. The Donner Party was also made up of family groups, but in reading the various accounts of historians, it becomes plain that during the increasing hardships attendant on crossing the worst stretches, they fractured, with each family left to look after their own. James Reed, who emerges as the strongest and most able leader, killed another emigrant in a violent dispute, during the arduous passage along the Humboldt River. Exiled from the wagon-train, he borrowed a horse from his friends, and went on ahead, later bringing back help and spearheading the eventual rescue of his friends, family and friends.

But at the time when active leadership was most required – the ill-fated emigrants were deprived of it. As historian George R. Stewart described it, their crossing of the 40-Mile Desert – that deathly stretch between the last potable water at the Humboldt Sink, and the Truckee River – turned into a rout. They had lost draft animals, wagons, supplies, many were on foot, straggling up the twisting canyon of the Truckee River. They had no margin for making considered choices after that point. They could only make a desperate gamble on whatever chance seemed to offer slim odds of success over none at all.

It makes for terrific drama, after all. Still, it has never seemed fair that one party should be infamous, and the other barely known at all.

A Gentleman from the NY Times Looks Down from a High Balcony

05. January 2010 · Comments Off on A Gentleman from the NY Times Looks Down from a High Balcony · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, Tea Time

And raises a lorgnette with trembling hands and wonders “Who are these people?” And then scurries back into the safety of his cubicle and tries to explain it all to his readers, who promptly break out in an epidemic of pearl-clutching in the resulting comments not seen since the days of Margo Dumont and the Marx brothers.

Of course, since this is David Brooks, the NY Times token “conservative” * whom I sort of visualize as being kept around the august premises of the NY Times as a live exhibit in an upper-crust menagerie – a sort of miniature, well-clipped, tamed and polished pet buffalo, neutered and well-housebroken, so that everyone else can look at him and coo “Oh, so that’s what one of them look like . . . really, they don’t appear all that dangerous, do they, Pinchy?”

Yeah, he’s a real expert on tea parties, and the people who run them, having noted magisterially from his high balcony that, well, yes – there are an awful lot of people down there, who appear to be a little upset, and oh- the horror – they are not being led by . . . well, anybody, let alone the best people . . . and well, what do they know? The poor dears, how can they really cope, without one of the well-educated, well-heeled, well-known and duly anointed to lead them? Oh, the horror – where is my fainting couch and my smelling salts! They actually have the nerve to think they can think for themselves!

And the comments get even more insulting, although I should be used to it now; the same old, same old – just a bunch of old white people, racist to the core, tools of the Republican Party, Beck & Limbaugh-worshipping, barely-literate, drooling, sister-humping, gun-loving morons, all they have is unfocused anger . . . oh, and a new twist: apparently the Tea Partiers are the new incarnation of Weimar-era Nazis – and we all know how all that worked out, don’t we?

Of course, this would have to be the same day that NPR posted an antimated cartoon which combined ignorance and insult to such a degree that the comment thread has now coalesced into a mass so dense that it threatens to sink into the earth’s core and emerge out the other side . . . of course, at a guess, a portion of the commenters are outraged Tea Party sympathizers who floated in on a link from Da Blogfaddah, and the rest are NPR regulars, a large portion of whom think that Garrison Keiller – evidence to the contrary – is razor-sharp cutting edge and still funny. Basically, another heaping helping of the above. SSDD**, as the saying goes. Or maybe just SS, different sclerotic old media dinosaur with delusions of detachment and adequacy.

If all you know is what you read in the NY Times, and hear on NPR, well then … you are a bit limited, I think.

All righty then – here’s the scoop, Brooksie. And Pinchy and Muffy and Buffy, and all of the rest of you wanna-be aristos with three last names and an Ivy degree. By all means go on believing all the tripe displayed in the comments on these two items. Go on believing all that balderdash about moronic, directionless, Nazi-like racists. Do, please – it’s what your chosen dispensers of news have fed to you, either explicitly or implicitly, through laziness or chosen ideology over the last year or longer. Pass over any evidence to the contrary. Ignore anyone who points out in a small, still voice that the Tea Party people are small-government, fiscally responsible constitutionalists, of all colors, and religious persuasions, and that many of them are doing a sudden crash course in political activism at the local, nuts’n’bolts level. And that yes, they are angry – but not ignorant, and not unfocused.

That flaccid little pink thing which they may very well be handing to you all after the next mid-term election? That will be your ass. Try not to look too surprised – the pleasure will have been all ours.

* Viciously skeptical quote marks
** SSDD – Same S**t, Different Day

Another Set of Foundations

31. December 2009 · Comments Off on Another Set of Foundations · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

Yep, I am starting again, on another book – so here I go, into that kind of giddy and receptive stage, doing research and reading the usual tall stack of relevant books, where the details of plot and character are not quite nailed down yet, where I might at any moment read or hear about a fascinating someone, or tiny detail of an event, which will be that something that will suddenly set a lock on my imagination, whispering seductively ‘this HAS to be in “The Book.”’ (It’s always “The Book,” even though I am actually juggling two of them, set in Texas but fifty years apart.)

The basic characters are there – a selection of minor characters from Adelsverein that I never got a chance to really develop; either whose characters whose stories were either fascinating in themselves because it was hinted at here and there of what they had seen and experienced, or because they were just introduced in the final chapters, and I had already hit a certain word-count and had to simply wrap up the existing narrative, and not take any more time to explore who they were, and what would happen to them.

Margaret is the subject of the earlier book, time-wise, and the one that I am now doing the most research for – Margaret, who was Carl Becker’s sister, political hostess extraordinaire, who survived two husbands, her brothers, and three of her sons, and who knew everyone important in mid-19th century Texas; she’s an imperious survivor, who scared the c**p out of Sam Houston in his prime – among others. As outlined, she comes to Texas in the early 1820s, marries a wandering schoolteacher from Boston, and settles in Gonzales with him – just in time for the War of Independence, the “Come and Take It” fight, and the horrors of the “Runaway Scrape” – and the tomcats-in-a-sack aspects of Republic-era Texas. So, I am studying up first on the days of early settlement, which will mean basically becoming as much of a walking encyclopedia about those aspects, as I already have about Fredericksburg and the Gillespie County German settlers. I’ve even spent the day in Gonzales, on a research trip – I have to say, it’s easier to carry off this sort of thing, having already been a “published Arthur.”

I have to form a kind of mental map of Gonzales, and indeed all of the landscape of that time. How did people talk, dress, how much did they keep in touch, how did they furnish their houses, find their fun, what did they worry about, how closely were the Anglo settlers entwined with the Tejanos: if you wanted a printed book, a length of calico or a bottle of patent medicine, where would you go to get it, and what would you pay for it? How drastically did the changing political situation affect everyday life, from the mid-1820s on? What did people talk about, what were the day-to-day concerns – and most importantly, from my point of view – who were those very local people, those characters that their neighbors talked about, wondered about, worried about? What were they like, can I somehow dredge up a few small personal quirks from the great well of historical memory, and build a believable and interesting character out of those small shreds of verifiable fact?

In one way – the field is wide open to me. I am still not much interested in writing about the Alamo; simply everyone seems to have written about the Alamo, but if I touch on it in this new book, it will be to put it in perspective. And sometimes it seems as if no one who does a novel about early Texas has written about anything else BUT the Alamo. I think to pay more attention to the second and third-rank spear carriers, especially the thirty or so volunteers from Gonzales who answered the plea for reinforcements, sent out just as Santa Anna’s siege began to choke off a garrison too small to chew what they had bitten off. Granted, Jim Bowie has a sort of dark, violent glamor about him. He was perhaps Mexican-Texas’ very own Lord Byron: mad, bad and dangerous to know. William Travis was a hot-tempered pain in the ass, with an elevated sense of his own magnificent destiny – but they were only two, among all the personalities at the time. And there are so many stories – again, like the German settlements, there were so many likely and unlikely heroes and heroines, so many incredible happenings . . . some of them have appeared in fiction, many more not. And no one has ever heard of those who have not, although their stories are at least as gripping.

Among the militia volunteers from Gonzales who went to the Alamo, three of the youngest were teenaged boys. The first husband of my heroine, Margaret, is a schoolteacher, when the war for independence begins. Those boys would have been his pupils, for at least some of the time. Like just about every other fit and able-bodied male settler, he is also a member of the militia, of the company of horse-mounted volunteers. All the others are his friends, neighbors and the parents of his students; Margaret is a friend and neighbor of their wives. But on the day assigned – he is too ill to climb on his horse . . . and so he remains behind.

Something like a fortnight later, the exhausted and traumatized young wife of a Gonzales neighbor stumbles into town, riding on a mule and carrying her toddler daughter in her arms. She is accompanied by two black slaves, and the leader of a troop of scouts, whose men have found her wandering along the road from San Antonio; she is one of a handful of survivor-witnesses. She has been sent as a messenger from General Santa Anna . . .

Oh, I can hardly wait to get started.
But research first . . .

One Little Cannon – Come and Take It

30. December 2009 · Comments Off on One Little Cannon – Come and Take It · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West, War

It was small – up on that, everyone agrees; a six pound cannon, most likely of Spanish make, very likely of bronze, or maybe iron, perhaps of brass. It was called a six-pound cannon because it fired a missile of that weight; pictures of an iron cannon of that type and thought to have been the original show a rather small – barely two feet long, from end to end, and hardly impressive piece, since it had been spiked and otherwise rendered nearly useless. Really, it appears to have been intended mainly for show, or as one early chronicler observed in disgust, for signaling the start of a horse race. Nonetheless, this little cannon – or perhaps another of similar size and made of bronze was issued to the settlers of Gonzalez, Texas early in the 1830s, for defense of the infant settlement. Texas was wild and woolly – plagued by raids from various Indian war parties – Tonkawa, Apache and most especially, the feared horse-stealing, slave-trading Comanche. Anglo settlers newly come to an entrepreneur-founded settlement near the Guadalupe River, and their Tejano neighbors succeeded in making some kind of peace with all but the Comanche. Knowing this, the Mexican authorities in San Antonio de Bexar approved issuing that one small cannon to the settlers.

Their town was called Gonzales, after the then-governor of the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. Called informally the Dewitt Colony, it had been established after a couple of false starts by Green DeWitt, who spent a great deal of his own personal funds in recruiting families and adventurous single men to an outpost on the farthest western fringe of the various Anglo settlements. Eventually Green DeWitt’s settlement was laid out in a neat grid of city blocks, each block divided into six lots. This layout is still preserved in present-day Gonzales; including a row across the middle of town set aside for civic purposes, although the historic buildings lining those streets are from much later. Only one building – a dog-trot log cabin with a shake roof – remains to give an idea of what this thriving little town would have looked like in 1835, when a small party of Mexican soldiers sent by the military governor in Bexar came to get the little cannon back.

The political situation in Mexico, which had once been favorably-inclined towards Anglo settlers, and entrepreneurs, like Stephen Austin and Green DeWitt had deteriorated into a welter of mutual suspicion. For a while, it had appeared that Mexico, with a Constitution modeled after that of the United States, would evolve into a nation very similar, with fairly autonomous states, a Congress, and a central federal authority which administered with a light hand. Unfortunately, a newly-elected President of Mexico, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had other plans – plans involving tight central authority, revoking liberal reforms, dissolving the Congress, and establishing rather a kind of dictatorship backed by armed force. Out on the far frontier, even with shaky and irregular communications with the larger world, the settlers in Gonzales may not have known much for sure, but their suspicions had a firm basis. Resistance to the central government, especially in the outlying regions – accustomed to managing their own affairs in the face of more or less benign neglect from the governmental authorities in Mexico City sprang up at once. Rebellious provinces included Zacatecas, Jalisco, Durango, Nueva Leon, Tamaulipas . . . and Texas. Santa Anna, a brutal and efficient commander of armies utterly smashed the rebels in Zacatecas, taking 3,000 prisoners and allowing his soldiers to loot, burn and rape at will – making it abundantly clear that any other acts of organized defiance would earn the same punishment meted.

In September, 1835, Col. Ugartechea, the commander of Mexican military forces in Bexar sent a corporal with five soldiers and a small oxcart, to retrieve the cannon from Gonzales. Andrew Ponton, who was the alcalde (mayor and justice of the peace) cagily stalled for time, not wanting to give up a cornerstone of local defense, and suspecting – along with may other Anglo citizens of Texas, that the little cannon might very well be turned upon them, next . . . “Cannon, you say? What cannon – are you sure there is a cannon around here? I don’t see anything of the sort . . . “ The cannon was hidden, buried in a peach orchard near the river. Baffled of their aim, the soldiers returned to San Antonio, empty-handed – but Colonel Ugartechea did not give up as easily as all that. He sent an officer and a hundred mounted troopers, with a more strongly worded request. There were only eighteen settlers, standing on the riverbank at the edge of Gonzales when Ugartechea’s soldiers appeared on the far bank of the river – but that handful had hidden the ferry-boat, and anything else which might be used to cross the rain-swollen Guadalupe River. Again, they pointedly refused to hand over the cannon – and wisely, they had also sent out word to other settlers.

Frustrated, the soldiers from Bexar retired northwards along the river-bank to a more defensible position, but on the night of October 1st the Texian volunteers – who now outnumbered the Mexican force, with more arriving every hour – crossed the river in force. They brought with them the little cannon, repaired and mounted on a make-shift gun carriage – and a banner made from the skirt of a silk wedding dress – adorned with a single star, and a rough outline of the cannon which was the cause of the whole ruckus – with a taunt “Come and Take It”. There was a slightly farcical face-off between the two sides, among the corn and melon-fields, aided and impeded by morning fog, and a well-meaning go-between, during which the cannon fired a load of scrap-metal in the general direction of the Mexican dragoons, but in the end, they retreated, leaving the Texian volunteers in possession of the field, and the little cannon . . . for the moment. The time had not yet come for open war; Colonel Ugartechea did not wish to press the issue too far – and for a time, neither did the citizens of Gonzales. But still – the first shot had been fired. Within the space of six months, a good few of the Gonzales volunteers who had stood on the riverbank and taunted Ugartechea’s soldiers, telling them to come and take the cannon, if they could – would be dead. Thirty-three of them would answer a desperate plea to come to the aid of another strongpoint under siege – the Alamo, and Gonzales would be deserted and burned to the ground . . . but that is another story.

Proposed Derisive Nicknames for the Christmas Day Jihadi

29. December 2009 · Comments Off on Proposed Derisive Nicknames for the Christmas Day Jihadi · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun With Islam, General, GWOT

In furtherance of my ambition to fight the war against the more homicidally inclined jihadist by humiliation and laughter directed at them – the following derisive references to the Nigerian who attempted to blow up a landing airliner with an explosive b*tt-plug on Christmas Day are suggested. Vote for the one you think the funniest, or of you have heard of a better one, add it in comments.

Weapon of Ass Destruction

The Knicker-Bomber

Fruit of the Boom Guy

BVD-Boomer

The Crotch-Rocket Bomber

The Undie-Bomber

The Panty-Boomer

A Favor From a Blog-Friend

27. December 2009 · Comments Off on A Favor From a Blog-Friend · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Local, Military, Wild Blue Yonder, Working In A Salt Mine...

(Recieved this request from a reader of my Open Salon Blog

I am an officially middle-aged, female, Canadian civilian from the Toronto area in Canada. You can find the first of several weekly Sunday night posts at my Open Salon blog, here.
Sgt Mom, I am hoping you may be willing to help me with a writing project I am developing. The project is about the stories of the fans, or fanatics as he likes to call us, of Henry Rollins. I am going to take time this next year researching, and compiling the personal stories of a significant number of ‘fanatics’ who have been inspired, influenced, helped, and otherwise impacted, by Henry. While the personal stories will not be specific to those in the military, it is absolutely critical that as many of those stories are captured as possible. During the first week of this project I have received some great personal stories, both military and civilian, through my preliminary post at opensalon.com.
If you would be willing to put this request for stories from Henry Rollins fans out to your online community at The Daily Brief, and any other blogs or networks you might be connected to, I would be so grateful.

Any personal stories, will not be published without the consent of the writers, prior to final publication. At this early stage I am thinking it will be an electronic publication, with a completion date of December 2010. I will stay in touch with all contributors as the project evolves to answer any questions, and keep people up to speed on how it’s unfolding. I would like to send the final work to Henry Rollins for his 50th birthday in February of 2011. None of the information I receive will be published elsewhere without the consent of the authors prior to publication. I will keep people posted on the project as it starts to roll out. I expect it to take most of 2010 as I will be working on this around my paid gig and teenagers, responsibilities I am grateful to have, yet leave little time for life’s other passions like writing.
Questions, stories and comments can be emailed to me at bennettangela@rogers.com, or through my Open Salon Blog.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about posting this to your online community. I sincerely appreciate anything you might be able to do to help. I’m just another Rollins fanatic, trying to give back a little something to someone who has had a significant impact on me, and many others in our global neighbourhood.

Sincerely,
Angela.

(All right then – got any good stories for Angela?)

An Oddly Satisfactory Christmas

26. December 2009 · Comments Off on An Oddly Satisfactory Christmas · Categories: Ain't That America?, Critters, Domestic, General, Politics, Tea Time

It was shaping up not to be a very merry Christmas for us, under circumstances which at first appeared even more strained than last year, when I was still working at the hell-hole job – a job which brought in a regular paycheck, but earned under circumstances which . . . well, least said, soonest forgotten. (Never forgotten though – but leaving me with a burning determination to henceforward earn a living doing work that pleases me, not work which I hate every second of every minute of every hour performing.)

This year I am working for a teensy boutique press. I thought we would be able to finish one project in time for a Christmas release, which would earn me enough of the profits from it to pay some bills, buy some presents and pay enough that I could afford the drive to California. That did not work out – the book will most likely be delivered to the client by mid-January. Dad absolutely freaked at the thought of me driving to California alone, (Blondie being in school and needing to care for the pets!) and Mom’s hospitable nature is worn to tatters by Christmas, anyway. So, gave up on that plan early last week, and Blondie and I spent Christmas at home . . . our home. The one with dogs and cats, and a Christmas tree which has seen all the ornaments removed to the upper 2/3rds of the tree, due to the Lesser Weevil’s tail, and the cats’ proclivity to knock down and play with those ornaments within in reach.

Even with not finishing that book, I have two clients who are paying me to edit their own memoirs, a possible contract to ghost-write another book, beginning in January, and a regular client who pays me for content for a real-estate blog; plus a constant trickle of royalties for the Trilogy, and Truckee’s Trail. All things considered, I’m economically better off than I was last year – or I may be, once everyone gets back to work after the holidays!

We even were able to afford a bit of a splash for Christmas. Through another member of our local Red Hat Ladies chapter, Blondie scored three days of work, delivering for Edible Arrangements. Last year, no one was hiring temporary workers for Christmas, so this year she had given up entirely. And I had my royalty checks, and the usual generous gift from Mom and Dad. We also had another unexpected and totally unlooked-for blessing. We did a good deed, agreed to do a favor for someone, almost in a fit of absent-mindedness. I was scribbling away on one of my writing projects, with an eye on the pizza dough rising – (yeah, our family tradition has pizza for dinner on Christmas Eve. We do home-made, with whatever we like on it, by god! Even anchovies!)

One of my nearby neighbors pounded on the door – totally ignoring the doorbell, and it’s a mystery to me why people don’t see that, since it has a little illuminated button anyway – and explained, breathlessly that as he and his wife were about do hit the road, could we do them a favor, do a good deed over Christmas, if we were going to be at home over the holiday. It was about a stray dog, he said. As he was loading the trunk of their car with luggage, this dog came up to him. A nice little black dog, sort of poodle-ish, very friendly and well-mannered, and he thought it might be the same dog as was being advertised on a flyer attached to various mailboxes and light-posts. At this very moment, his wife was feeding the dog, but they absolutely had to hit the road in the next few minutes – could we keep the dog, and call the number on the flyer, and see to returning this nice little dog to it’s owner? Well – it’s not like we haven’t done that before. Sometimes I have thought that Blondie and I are magnets for every lost dog in our neighborhood, and beyond. On particular memorable weekend, there were four of them returned to owners; we have gotten particularly experienced at this. It’s almost a routine; check for tags, call the clinic which issued them, call the local clinics, call the various voluntary groups. If it’s a weekday, take the dog to the nearest service for a chip-check, put an ad in the paper, and walk around the neighborhood with the animal, asking everyone we know if they recognize it . . . this works, it really does. We have kept stray dogs in the back yard, and in the house, never for more than a few days, before finding the owner – usually people who have been frantically searching for their pet. There is something about a dog which is cherished, and beloved; they behave themselves, they gratefully eat the kibble in the bowl, make friends with our dogs, tolerate the cats and generally . . . behave like dogs who have people who are missing them, and ransacking the neighborhood.

Blondie came home, just as the neighbor was going down the walk – he was relieved no end to be able to pass off this project on us, for he couldn’t leave a strange dog alone in their house with their own dogs, unsupervised over the weekend, and what if the owners were going away for the holiday weekend? So Blondie took the telephone number from the poster, and called, leaving a message which was returned in a few minutes. Yes, they had been looking for their little black schnauzer, he was ten years old, neatly groomed, but no collar, neutered and with unclipped ears – they would come immediately and look at the dog which seemed to match their description. We had cheerfully put amongst our menagerie. He was very sweet and well-mannered; he sat obediently for a dog-treat and allowed the cats to dubiously sniff at him.

He had been missing for five days, as it turned out – and his owners’ family was frantic. This was sentimental movie material, when the husband and older daughter walked into the living-room, and he scampered up to them; of course he was theirs. And how wonderful to get him back safely on Christmas Eve, although where he had been for five days was anyone’s guess. It had rained on Wednesday night, and then been bitterly cold, and he was a sheltered indoor dog, for the most part. The owners said, they had posted a reward, for whoever returned him – would we accept it. We’ve only been offered a reward once – and the first time, we were very noble and turned it down. This time, I admitted that, well – Blondie’s a student, and I’m an erratically employed writer, so, yes, we would accept a reward. We truly expected it to be in the range of 25$ or so. When consulted, the neighbor who had left the situation in our hands didn’t want a share. Although we really hadn’t done all that much in this case, we had taken an awful lot of trouble on previous occasions, with all the other strays. We could consider this our cumulative reward, for all we had done for other dogs, and feel all right with accepting it. The husband thanked us again, and said they would be back in a bit.

Which they were, this time with the wife, who has been papering the other side of our neighborhood with flyers; the dog was her particular pet. They all teared up again, thanked us profusely, admired our own dogs, told us how worried they had been, and how desperately they had been searching . . . and to get him back again on Christmas Eve. They left us with a Christmas card, which contained a check for an absolutely stunning amount . . . so, yes, we were enabled to have a very pleasant Christmas, knowing that our casually-accepted good deed would help us pay a couple of bills, too.

It’s just that last year, outside my own personal situation – everything seemed more hopeful. We could cross our fingers and hope that B. Obama, once inaugurated, could grow into the job of president, that maybe having come out of the Chicago political machine would not be so much of a bad omen. After all, he did seem intelligent, politically adroit, reasonable and well-spoken – or at least the people in his proposed administration seemed to be. All the political experts, media personalities, and big intellectual authorities kept assuring us so Harry Truman came out of another such big-city machine, and he turned out OK. We could hope a little. Last year at this time, I had never heard of a Tea Party, save in the history books, would never have considered being party of a protest, carrying a sign, or sending a message to my congressman. And now . . . here we are, not yet on the edge of an abyss, but fearing that one will open up at our feet, any moment now. I am now haunted by a line a year-end roundup by Wretchard at Belmont Club, enjoy the champagne, this year – for by this time next year, we will be eating the glass.

So Many Decades of Hope

22. December 2009 · Comments Off on So Many Decades of Hope · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, That's Entertainment!, War

Bob Hope, that is.

(Link Found courtesy of the Belmont Club)

Feel the Love

17. December 2009 · Comments Off on Feel the Love · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!

. . . As well as the jaw-dropping, industrial-strength, armor-plated ignorance displayed in the comments appended to this story. Quite honestly, I ought to have become used to this, since the usual tools used to have about the same misconceptions – and probably still do – about military. All of this industrial-grade bigotry on open display, without ever actually coming anywhere near the military, a military base, or any members of the military. So, I very likely am right that the most virulently hostile of the commenters here quoted, and which I have seen in other internet venues have never actually come to a Tea party rally, or personally know anyone involved with a local Tea Party. And of course, the most ironical part is that these people very likely take a great deal of pride in how open-minded and tolerant they are.

Just a sample, for your delectation:

I DESPISE the fascist tea-party movement. If they get into office, this country is going the way of the Nazi party, in essence. No thank you. They are the most dangerous and evil movement in the United States since the John Birch Society, which they very much resemble. – Susan in Redmond, WA

Didn’t the Nazi party start kind of like this? Desperation is scary to say the least. – Dash Riprock

A bunch of bible banging – racist – right wing domestic terrorists – running around with tea bags stapled to their foreheads? – Feisty Redhead Roselle

And then, of course, I realized that a lot of them must be fans of the recent seasons of Law & Order, which explains quite a lot.

Historical Trivia Question

02. December 2009 · Comments Off on Historical Trivia Question · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, sarcasm

(Not an original – from one of those satiric e-mails going around)

Do you know what happened way back in 1850 – a hundred and fifty-nine years ago this fall?

More »

So Who Invited Al Gore to San Antonio

02. December 2009 · Comments Off on So Who Invited Al Gore to San Antonio · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Local, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine...

The local weather forecast for Friday is predicting a better than 50% chance of snow.
In San Antonio. You know, the cold white stuff.
Well, no one around here know it… they know of it, since they still talk about the last time it seriously snowed here…
Twenty years ago.
Seriously, I’ve seen the natives around here drive on wet streets during rainstorms. On Friday I will not be going anywhere.
I just may stay in bed, curled into the fetal position, with the electric blanket thermostat set to high.

(But you don’t have an electric blanket!)

Shaddup! For an occasion like this, I might very well go and buy one!

PT Barnum Was Right

25. November 2009 · Comments Off on PT Barnum Was Right · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, Rant, Science!

There is a sucker born every moment, and who else should have known better, but the shameless old huckster? Even though it’s most probably one of his competitors who actually voiced that deathless observation, PT is the one that we remember today. Fleecing the credulous for a living is not a game which was thought up yesterday. People who desperately want to believe something are as common now as they were in the 19th century; they lined up then to gawk at the so-called Cardiff Giant, and now and again, there are enough poor gullible schmucks who answer a Nigerian spam email . . . and really think that someone with an uncertain grasp of vernacular English and indifferent punctuation skills is really going to transfer umpty-million dollars into their bank account. But belief in such improbabilities is not a crime, and does not generally do any more harm than to the believers’ pocketbook.

Part of this whole ‘free country’ thing is that you are free to believe in any such improbable thing you want to, like Megan Fox can act, or that Dan Brown can write a good book. Or as is sometimes the case – to not believe in something. I, for example, do not believe in global warming, or that sort of alleged global warming supposed to have been caused by human activity, the sort of global warming that calls down unexpected blizzards where-ere Al Gore doth appear, and causes polar bears to fall out of the sky. Never did, don’t and never will. As I have been tiresomely reminding certain of my friends over the years – it was warm enough in Roman times to grow wine grapes in Britain, and in the 10th century for European-style subsistence-farming in Greenland. It was also cool and wet enough for the Pueblo tribes in various places in the American southwest to do pretty much the same. Conversely, during the 16th and 17th centuries it was cold enough in some English winters for the Thames to freeze solid, at or above London. Once there were lush oases in the North African desert, and glaciers covering most of Europe and the North American continent . . . and all of that happened before human kind existed, or that our technologies, and our presence created nothing more than a gentle burp in the cosmos.

So, are we all clear now on the concept? The earth’s climate has changed in the past, sometimes quite drastically, it will change in future, and in fact the weather changes every darned minute. We don’t even have that much precise and reliable data about it anyway: systematic records are spotty at best, much before the 19th century. So, thinking human activity does much to change the climate of the Earth one way or the other? It’s a theory yet to be proven, and massaging, or vigorously pummeling the existing data, and not being able to provide enough of it for anyone else to reproduce the same result? There is a word for that – several ones, actually, but the one I have in mind is ‘opinion’. And dragooning scientific peers and rivals into seeming to share it by monstering or ostracizing them does the actual science no favors. (I would agree, in passing, that generally it is not good to foul our own nests, and to be tidy-minded and to refrain from spilling dangerous pollutants into the air, the earth, or the water; on the whole that has proved to be one of those Good Things that a concern for the environment has engendered over the last forty years.)

The assumption that mere human activity is having Dangerous World-wide Consequences And We Must Do All In Our Power To Ensure Perfect Entropy; that is marvelous to behold, how it became the trend of the moment, among public, the media, corporations and politicians . . . old PT Barnum thought only to fleece the gullible masses by exercising his own creativity! The suspicion about the Global Warmenists – that they were hoping to fleece the gullible by drawing governments into it, as well as corporations – or at the very least, score some more grant money and fat speaking fees for beating the good ol’ Global Warmest/Coolenist/Changiness Drum like a rented mule has been richly rewarded by the leaking of a body of emails from the institution most prominent in recent years for propagating the theory as if it was a matter of established fact. So, no surprise to me, the revelation that the smugly certain Global Warmenist/Coolenist/Changiness advocates were swapping e-mails about how to reward their friends and punish the insufficiently enthusiastic comrade-scientists. What is a bit of a surprise is how miserably like a bunch of middle-school snots deciding among themselves who is really cool enough to hang with the in-crowd that they appear . . . and alternately, how much like a cat trying to hide the crap on the kitchen floor by frantically scratching at the linoleum.

The theory of anthropomorphic global warning is certainly up for more discussion, and for more research . . . that is, honest research in the sense of the search for pure data, uncontaminated by any thought of arriving at the predestined conclusion, or corrupted by receiving the monetary benefits derived from magisterially insisting that it is settled, no more discussion. That’s what a theory is – and to bend the observations in order to serve a conclusion, which is what appears to have happened here – this is not good science. Or it isn’t the science that my dear old Dad taught to us. Science is never settled – what we think to be true is ever-evolving, and one of the first requirements is to be rigorously honest about the data. Fudging the data in order to provide the expedient and much-desired answer? That is not good science. And making social and political demands based on it is even less desirable.

On Being a Real Arthur

16. November 2009 · Comments Off on On Being a Real Arthur · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine...

That expression became something of a family joke, as I came around, by easy steps, from being a teller of tall tales, an intermittent scribbler, an unrepentant essayist, a fairly dedicated blogger … to being – as my daughter put it – a real arthur. Yes, a “real arthur” in that I have a number of books, ranging free in the wilderness of the book-reading public. Not that I am in any danger of buying the castle next-door to J.K. Rowlings’, and my royalty checks and payments for consignments and direct sales dribble in but slowly. Slowly, but steadily, which is gratifying. Readers are buying my books, as they find out about them in various ways; through internet searches, through word of mouth, and the odd book club meeting, casual conversation and interviews on blogs and internet radio stations. It has been my peculiar good fortune to have come about to being “a real arthur” just when the established order of things literary was being shaken to the foundations, and not wasted very much time fighting – or trying to smuggle my books past the toothless old dragons of the literary-industrial complex, defending the crumbling castle of Things That Once Were.

Time was – or so the older “real arthurs” tell me – there was an excellent chance that if you were a fairly adept storyteller, with a pleasing voice, a discriminating way with vivid description, and could construct a setting and create characters which the general public would want to pay some trifling amount to read about – you would eventually find a literary agent to talk you up to any number of established publishers, or that someone sifting through the slush-pile would fall upon your MS with tears of happy joy. It might take a bit and a couple of tries – but it would happen. The publishing world was small enough, and the body of ambitious scribblers convinced that they had the “next great novel!” within them was small enough that the good stuff would be sifted out from the dross in fairly brisk order; if not at one publisher, then another. And there you go – you would have the benefit of an editor, a printer, a team of publicists to get the word out about your book, ready acceptance at all the established sources for reviewers. The only alternative to that was (*shudder*) the cold hell of a so-called vanity press, the last resort of a scribbler with more money than actual talent. This is what I was assured time and time again, and what I trustfully assumed the case when I was a teenager, scribbling embarrassingly derivative fan-fiction in spiral-ring notebooks.

But the world changes and we move on. Sometime around 1997 I remember going to a local writer’s club meeting, where there was a presentation by a local printer, outlining more than just what was possible, for a writer who was tired of standing outside the castle of the publishing establishment trying to lob their MS over the battlemented wall. What set this little presentation apart was his statement that some authors who had published and printed their books through his business were marketing them to local outlets – and that a good few had gone into second and third printings, due to high demand. He named some titles, which I had recognized because I had seen them, here and there. But even a print run of a couple of thousand copies was well-outside my budget at the time. Still, I tucked that tidbit away for consideration at a later time; I hadn’t written a book, anyway, only some freelance articles and short stories.
Even then, it was becoming harder to get the attention of the major publishing houses; and as I began moving closer and closer to be serious about my own writing, the word around the book-blogs was that you had to have an agent. More and more of the big publishing houses were swamped with manuscripts, and the onus of actually screening them, and searching for the next big literary thing was something that had shifted to agents.

And then, the agencies were swamped, with the flood-tide of manuscripts, to which I contributed my own bits, only to be sadly informed by a couple of them who did take the time to read them, that although I was a very good writer (or at least fairly competent) my first novel just wasn’t what they termed “marketable to a traditional publisher. I went back to consulting the handful of professional writers that I knew, and to the various knowledgeable book-blogs; ah, the received wisdom was that publishing a novel, and especially a novel by a new and unknown writer was very much in the way of a gamble for a publishing house. Before going through all the trouble, and the considerable expense of publishing such a book – major publishers wanted to put their chips on a sure thing, or something very close to a sure thing. Sometimes publishers would ask for marketing plan, including a website and blog, as well as a manuscript. More and more, mainstream publishing looked like Hollywood: ten humongous ten-million-dollar block-buster sure-thing movies a year, rather than a hundred one-million dollar not-quite-sure-thing-maybe-a-little-adventurous movies a year.

Around the time that I was really getting serious about getting published – Print On Demand technology had changed the whole publishing paradigm once again: unlike the old vanity press, which required an outlay of at least a couple of thousand dollars, it was now possible to get in print for considerably less. Of course there were, to put it kindly, quality issues, now that everyone out there who wanted to publish – could do so. POD-published books had a horrible reputation – still do, in many corners of the traditional book-publishing and reviewing. I also heard frequently that having done a POD book was the kiss of death, in trying for an agent, or a mainstream publishing deal. Submission guidelines for quite a few agencies specified that manuscripts must not have been published.

But the reluctance of traditional publishing to even consider more than just a tiny portion of new authors out there drove more and more first-time authors, and authors with considerable experience with the written and published word to consider POD publishing. Many go with the various POD services, and the truly dedicated set up as their own publisher. If the filtering mechanism provided by literary agents, and publishing houses can no longer cope with the quantities of books out there, then publishing through POD at least allows writers to circumvent that bottle-neck, and have readers themselves to be that ultimate filter. Very likely, my own next book will be published by the boutique press which I currently work for, once we set up printing services through Lightening Source – the print service used by many POD and traditional publishers. I will have an editor, and the services of a design studio for the cover and interior formatting – why do I need to go through the whole submission process again, now that I have an established fan base through my books?

There have certainly been some widely-reported success stories over the last decade or so, of books like The Shack or The Christmas Box and The Lace Reader which sold initially and widely as POD books – and suddenly became visible to a traditional publisher. With those books, it seems as if the acquisitions editor at a traditional house came out of a torpid state, exclaiming “OMG, that book has sold a bomb of copies already, we’d better hop onto the gravy-train and sign that author to a deal!” (Note – in 2006, a NY Times article estimated that the average POD book sells 150-175 copies, other experts quoted less than a hundred, possibly as low as 50.) In the last six months or so, I have encountered hints and portents that traditional publishing houses may be reconsidering POD books; yes, even to the point of patrolling Amazon.com, searching out those POD and boutique-press of excellent quality and a consistent, but unspectacular record of sales.

At least one IAG author that I know of, Dianne Salerni has a contract with a small, but substantial traditional publisher, on the basis of her first book and an option on her second. Harper-Collins UK set up a website called “Authonomy” which allowed authors to put up all or part of a published or unpublished MS and allow other people to read and recommend. I have read some terrific historical novels at Authonomy, and am considerably mystified that some of the best have not been published with much acclaim months ago. Another book-blog & website, the Publetariat has recently set up a searchable database of books offered by POD authors, to include hard stats on sales and royalties. It appears to be the hope of the Publetariat that making offering this, along with a synopsis and sample chapters, would make it easier for agents and publishers to locate promising books with a proven record. I don’t imagine that the business of writing books – and it is a business, never mind how much one enjoys the writing aspects of it – will ever go back to the old way, of lobbing manuscripts over the castle walls, in the hope that they will magically fall into the hands of a kindly editor. Seriously, though – I think I’m having more fun this way.

In Honor of the USMC Birthday – Marine Rules for Gunfights

10. November 2009 · Comments Off on In Honor of the USMC Birthday – Marine Rules for Gunfights · Categories: Ain't That America?, Devil Dogs, General, History, Military

1. Bring a gun. Preferably two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns.
2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.
3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.
4. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral and diagonal movement are preferred.)
5. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a long gun and a friend with a long gun.
6. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
7. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running.
8. Use a gun that works EVERY TIME. “All skill is in vain when an angel pisses in the flintlock of your musket.”
9. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.
10. Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
11. Have a plan.
12. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won’t work.
13. Use cover or concealment as much as possible.
14. Flank your adversary when possible and always protect yours.
15. Never drop your guard.
16. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees.
17. Watch their hands. Hands kill. (In God we trust…everyone else keep your hands where I can see them).
18. Decide to be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH…hesitation kills.
19. The faster you finish the fight, the less injured you will get.
20. Be polite. Be professional. And have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
21. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one.
22. Your number one option for Personal Security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.
23. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun the caliber of which does not start with a “4.”

Happy Birthday, Devil-Dogs! And as a bonus – Colonel Jessup’s speech!

Memo – Fort Hood Fallout

08. November 2009 · Comments Off on Memo – Fort Hood Fallout · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, General, Military, Rant, sarcasm, Stupidity, War

From: Sgt Mom
To: Various
Re: Ft. Hood Murders

1. To the families, loved ones, comrades and friends of those killed at Ft. Hood this last week: I am so sorry; our prayers and condolences go out to you all.

2. To our current President: Please start going to your local Toastmaster’s organization, and work on your impromptu speech-making techniques. You are acceptable when prepped and reading it off the teleprompter, but looking all over the place in a triangular pattern – up left, down right, across and up left again – it’s really distracting. Oh, and as the C-in-C you should really learn the difference between the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Maybe working with flash cards would help you remember this stuff.

3. To CAIR, and other prominent members of various mainstream Muslim-American associations: Clean house. Start shopping violent jihadi a-holes to law enforcement. Immediately, if not yesterday.

4. To various deep thinkers, bloggers and trolls of the leftish persuasion, who are inclined to write and post with variations of really, those violent, warmongering and racist, hicks all got just what they deserved; just stop. Just stop it.

5. Department of Homeland Defense: Nice set of priorities, Janet! Looks like everyone was too busy running around in circles, looking for violent Tea Party activists to pay any attention to a whacked-out jihadist. Nice job, lady.

6. Army Personnel Management cadre at Walter Reed: Yeah, I know the usual drill for dealing with a problem troop/officer – quietly send them TDY, give them a pencil-pushing job someplace where they can do the minimum amount of damage, and eventually transfer them someplace remote. Didn’t work out well this time –maybe it would have been worthwhile doing some direct attitude adjustment on Major Hasan?

7. Major Hasan: Hmm … I guess Leavenworth still has a place where they can stand up traitors against a wall and have the firing squad finish the job?

8. Police Sgt. Kim Munley: most excellent job. Need something with more stopping power than a 9mm. Just sayin’…

Sgt Mom.

The Best of Times, the Wurst of Times

03. November 2009 · Comments Off on The Best of Times, the Wurst of Times · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, Local, That's Entertainment!

So, once the Halloween decorations were sorted out and put away, we could think of nothing better to do than to drive up to New Braunfels on Sunday morning to join in the Wurstfest celebration. What better place, and what better day is there to celebrate suds, sausage and song than in a small town, in a park by a cool green river, and on one of those gloriously cool autumn days? Music and revelry, carnival rides for the kids, and plentiful seating, under the pecan trees, or in the big and little tents, or the main hall. Wurstfest is one of those gloriously scrambled ethnic holidays that can only happen in the US – and possibly only in Texas. For sure, it might be the only place on earth where you can see a woman wearing a dirndl and cowboy boots, or have a serving of nachos and cheese with sauerkraut, while listening to an oompah band play the National Anthem, followed closely by the chicken dance. A monumental beer stein in the main hall features – you guessed it, a painting chickens dancing.

Besides the official leitmotif of sausages in every form – and there practically is every other variety of meat-onna-stick known to man available, the food vendors also have a wide range of fried stuff; regular fairground things like funnel cakes, but also deep-fried pickles and a delight which about made my arteries close up just to consider it; chicken-fried bacon. One of the vendors, the New Braunfels Smokehouse is well-established, but most of the other food vendors were run by local booster clubs and associations, like the Little League, the Canyon Lake Masonic Lodge, and the various Lions Clubs.

Of course – beer is the second official leitmotif, by the glass or the pitcher. New Braunfels was the second town established in the mid-19th century by a massive influx of German settlers brought over by a well-meaning, but ultimately disorganized group of nobly-born philanthropists. The Germans – those who survived the journey and the vicissitudes of the frontier – brought along an appreciation for arts, culture, and technology – and straightaway set to producing beer. It is only fitting that one of the largest, if not the largest collections of beer bottles in the world is permanently housed on the Wurstfest grounds in the Spass Haus, which is either a museum cunningly disguised as a bar, or a bar cunningly disguised as a museum. In either case, no one dares begin to sing “9 thousand, 9 hundred, 99 bottles of beer on the wall,” because they’d be there for at least the whole run of Wurstfest. The bottles are from all over the world; the oldest American beer bottles are from the 1840s.

And finally – it’s hats, some of them very strange; hats shaped like chickens seemed to be awfully popular, I spotted one shaped like a beer keg with a spigot on the side, another shaped like an over-flowing stein, (which really came from Germany, the wearer of it informed me) and the hat with a number of green tentacles on it also seemed pretty popular.
Wurstfest runs until Sunday, November 8th, not only at Landa Park, but throughout New Braunfels.

Random Book Club Questions and Comments: Adelsverein

29. October 2009 · Comments Off on Random Book Club Questions and Comments: Adelsverein · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

I’ve done three book club meetings so far with groups who have read one or anther of the Trilogy, and have another two scheduled in the hear future, so I thought I’d get around to answering some of the questions that I have been asked about the setting and the characters – both the real ones, and the ones that I made up.

Question: How could a very intelligent and observant girl like Magda – who grew up on a farm – be so clueless about sex when it comes to her wedding night?

Answer: Firstly – because it wasn’t something that girls in the 19th century were supposed to know anything about; and yes, she might have noticed animals mating on the farm, but still not have had any clue that the same applied to humans. There wasn’t a lot of general information about sex commonly available in most respectable middle-class circles, especially where it concerned unmarried young women. Secondly, if one wasn’t especially interested in the subject in the first place, one wasn’t moved to go out looking for it – because the information just wasn’t there, in the way it is today. Magda was bookish and intellectual, not terribly interested in a subject which wasn’t being thrust at her, 24-7 anyway. My parents had a very dear friend, who had been a young woman in the 1920’s, and in her mid-twenties was dating a young artist. She also did not know anything about what sex involved, and as she told us, her boyfriend drew pictures for her, by way of telling her – and this was in the 1920’s! If a young woman in the 1920’s could have not known about sex, it’s no great leap to project backwards and assume that a woman in the 1840’s – who wasn’t much interested in the prospect – wouldn’t have known much more.

Her sister Liesel, on the other hand – had a healthy sexual appetite and a passionate interest in the man she adored, and so she was able to find sufficient information, and to act on it. One reader commented that Liesel may not have known much – but what she did know, she knew very, very well.

Q: In interviews, actors often claim that they love playing villains – more of an opportunity to pull out all the stops and chew up the scenery; is it as much fun for you to to write a menacing, and hateful villain, like JP Waldrip?

A: Ugh – no, not really. I wrote JP Waldrip as a sadist and sociopath, and not quite sane, a very ugly person, and it was not fun, but more of a grim duty, writing him. That kind of madness frightens me in real life, and spending even a little time in an imaginary space with him was quite unpleasant. I did make up the part about him having odd-colored eyes – but not about wearing a fine-quality hat. Historically, there isn’t really much known about him, for sure – including his reason for he came back to Fredericksburg, two years after the Civil War was over, when he and the other hanging-band members had terrorized Gillespie County during the last years. One local historian says he was brazen, a bully – and he was essentially daring the people in Fredericksburg to make their move. Which they did – although no one knows who shot him dead in the street under an oak tree by the Nimitz Hotel Stables. For dramatic purposes, I came up with my own reason, and version of who shot J.P.

Q: How could Magda have accepted Trap Talmadge’s sword, when it was brought back to her after the war by Robert Hunter – and even had it hanging on the wall of her parlor, given how Trap Talmadge had betrayed her husband? I’d have wanted to throw it at him! Speaking of Trap Talmadge, since he was such a serious alcoholic, however did he mange to serve as a scout for the Confederate Army?

A: Well – it was sent with Trap’s dying confession, and carried by the young man who was courting Magda’s sister Rosalie; I visualized her as being first a little stunned, and then unwilling to say anything hurtful to the man who was about to be part of the family, a man who obviously worshipped Trap as a hero. I think she would have put the sword away for a good long time. She brought it out and had it hung in her parlor, when she was an old woman, and able to remember that Trap was her husband’s good friend, and employee for years, before he made that one horrific mistake – and that he had done his best to atone for it. And I described him as the intermittent sort of alcoholic, who functions for weeks or months, then goes on a horrific bender. As for being able to serve in Benjamin Terry’s regiment – by the time his enlistment was accepted, the Confederacy was getting rather desperate for men: warm, breathing, and possessing three out of four extremities would have been accepted for military service.

Q: Where did you get the character of Mrs. Brown, who came after Magda and the children, brought them food and assistance when they were evicted from the farm by the Confederate authorities? She was fearless, and kind, and didn’t look for any reward – and was the only one of the Becker’s friends who dared come forward and help, when they were in such need.

A: I thought that Mrs. Brown and her family could stand in for the more typical edge-of-the-frontier settler, the roaming Scotch-Irish type, perennially cash-poor but proud, who preferred hunting and herding, never put much effort beyond the minimum in their homestead, lived pretty much in squalor and moved on when the fit took them. They were pretty much looked down upon as shiftless poor whites by the better-off traveler and commentator like Frederick Law Olmstead, sort of the 19th century equivalent of trailer trash – and of course, Magda would have been secretly horrified by the Browns. But it was a kind of a lesson to her – that when the chips are down, the people who will astound everyone by their courage and clear sight are the ones that you don’t really expect heroism from.

Q: I just had to stop and cry, after Chapter 9! That was just so shattering!

A: Umm, yes. Quite a lot of readers have had to stop and have a quiet weep – as they had rather fallen in love with that particular character. But I had always planned it to happen that way, from the very beginning. Some of the elements in Magda’s story are based on reminiscence by Clara Feller, who arrived in Fredericksburg as a teen-aged girl, and lived into the 20th century.

Q: The story reminds me very much of Cold Mountain – that it was about an aspect of the Civil War that I had never heard about; that there were so many Unionists in Confederate states, who were disinclined to fight for the South.

A: Oh, yes – the Civil War was much more complicated than it appears – and the astonishing thing is that there was so much happening out in the West which is generally left out of the standard Civil War narrative. The beginning of the fighting meant a range of difficult and thoughtfully considered choices for all the male characters. And that’s the essential tragedy of the Civil War – every choice made perfect sense to the man making it. I tried to show the whole range of possible reactions: everything from enthusiastically joining the Confederate cause, like the Vining boys, to wanting to serve in the Frontier Battalion to protect against Indian raids like Fredi, and Dolph with the Cavalry of the West. Then there is Charley Nimitz, calculatedly playing it straight down the middle, and Carl, who can’t bring himself to take up arms because he has friends on either side. Hansi wants just to be left the heck alone, and Johann detests slavery and what the Confederates have done to his family – so he joins the Union Army.

Q: When the heck did Charley Nimitz get married? He was such a charming and amusing fellow, I think Magda should have chosen him?

A: He got married towards the end of Book One – The Gathering, having begun courting another girl – the girl which the historical C.H. Nimitz actually married – almost as soon as Magda turned him down. I did take a few liberties with his character, since he had to be at least an appealing a potential husband as Carl Becker, but in the accounts which I read of him, he seems to have been the most notorious teller of tall-tales and perpetrator of practical jokes in all of Gillespie County. And he was a well-respected man in Fredericksburg for all of his life – before, during and well after the Civil War, so painting him as a sort of Scarlett Pimpernel may not have been too far off the mark.

Q: So, what are you working on now, and how soon will it be available?

A: Another trilogy about the frontier, spinning off on some the minor characters in Adelsverein, but only very loosely linked to it. I’m planning all three as ‘stand-alone’ narratives. The first will follow Margaret Becker, in pre-independent Texas, during the War for Independence and in Republic-era Austin, when she keeps a boarding-house and becomes a political hostess. Parts of her story are hinted at, all through Adelsverein; she was one of those peripheral characters who kept threatening to take over. Her life was very interesting – two husbands, experienced the Runaway Scrape, had a career of sorts, and knew all sorts of fascinating people – so she should have her own book. The second one will be the adventures of Fredi, Magda’s younger brother, taking cattle to California during the Gold Rush. I’ve always wanted to write a picaresque Gold Rush adventure, and this is my chance. I had never heard of a cattle drive from Texas to California, in the early 1850s, until I read of it in “The Trail Drivers of Texas” – so there’s another grand unknown frontier adventure for you. The third book – which may very well be the first available because I have four chapters roughed out already – picks up the story of Dolph Becker’s English bride, coming to Texas in the middle of the great cattle boom. I’m hoping to have that one done by Christmas, 2010.

Redline Overload

23. October 2009 · Comments Off on Redline Overload · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, That's Entertainment!

Sometimes, it’s a real pain in the ass, knowing history – kind of like one of those lines of telepaths in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover novels, who could see all the possible futures, resulting from any deliberate or random action and usually went mad, from it – not daring to take any step at all, seeing all the millions of possible results.
Knowing history is a bit like that. You know what happened before – sometimes many times before – as a result of specific actions or inactions – and even though those baleful results didn’t happen every single damn time, the unfortunate and unlooked for results happened frequently enough to make you jumpy when you start seeing certain things happening one damn more time. And saying, between slightly gritted teeth “No, as a matter of fact, I am NOT paranoid – I just have good pattern recognition!” is of no particular comfort, or defense.

I’ll leave to more qualified and credentialed intellects than mine to take a resounding thwack at the current administration – they’re being beaten like a cheap piñata at a kid’s party where everyone present has slipped off the blindfold, taken up a baseball bat and had a fair old go at it; hey ACORN – how ya doing, still facilitating setting up whorehouses stocked with underage Third-world staff? Lizard-Lips Lady, still adoring Mao and Mother Theresa … geeze, how did someone with a disability that makes you look as if you are trying to pry peanut-butter off the roof of your mouth mid-speech get a job as communications director? Oh, never mind – wife of old Chicago crony – I can do the math. Like I didn’t see that kind of deal coming, from when the serious politicking began, all these long months and years ago. And adding Fox News to the enemies list? Bad move, sports-fans … never pick a fight with someone who buys printer ink by the barrel or pixels by the cart-load. Besides, you are increasing their viewer-stats by degrees, and raising uncomfortable memories of Richard M. Nixon, he of the White House enemies list – and many of those so-called enemies have been dining out forever on their established reputation. You’ve made their reps well into the next couple of decades as ‘fearless chaps and chapesses who dared speak truth to power’ – at least, if they have a sinecure in broadcasting like the dear old croaking saint Daniel Schorr of NPR, in which case they will have a cause to go on croaking about unto the next generation or two. Yeah, like never give a hack a cause to harp on about, endlessly. Eternity, that is thy name.

No – the thing that seriously worries me is what I first started to notice, when I occasionally went spelunking through the deeper lefty-depths of regular bloggers at Open Salon. What initially unsettled me was the casual and usually much applauded (to judge by the appended comments) demonization of the “other.” The “other” in this case being – depending on the issue under discussion – conservatives, Republicans, Sarah Palin fans, Tea Partiers, church-goers, Obama Administration critics, or critics of health-care reform. And these same leftish OS bloggers were not – for the most part – the sort of screeching howler-monkey Kossacks that I would have avoided anyway. I’ve been blogging at OS for more than a year, and many of these exact same bloggers were in a way of being fans of my own OS blog and my writing in general – so the free-floating contempt for conservatives and non-Obama fans of every variation was a little disheartening. I post at OS for the literary exposure, more than engaging in political fisticuffs, so I haven’t made many attempts at open discussion. It’s kind of like your grandmother’s house at Thanksgiving, encountering some of their reactionary old friends: yeah, you could start an argument with them – but it’s not the time or the place, and the whole exercise would be kinda pointless anyway. The minds are already made up, and your Grandmother would be hurt over having a good dinner ruined. Just bite your tongue and have another helping of chestnut stuffing. This sort of thing has been going on since the first ur-blogger put on his saber-toothed tiger PJs, crawled up to his stone keyboard and pecked out “Urg-rok is a moron!” I may not want to get drawn into the discussion—but I’m fairly used to it, after blogging since mid-2002. Used to it – and tired of it. I just observe and analyze, these days and in that venue.

The automatic denigration of the “other” starts to worry me, though, when it slides seamlessly past an equally automatic disregard of whatever argument or position the “other” holds – merely because it is the “other” holding it. The default position becomes “There’s no need to even bother considering “x” because everyone who holds position “x” is *insert group identity label here* – say, a “Tea Partier”, or a “conservative” or “a Christian” or – going even farther “a Fox TV fan” , “a global warming denier” or “someone who wants the poor and uninsured to just die already!” It’s not good and it’s not healthy to have this kind of contempt normalized, especially among people who otherwise pride themselves on being right-thinking, tolerant and broad-minded. And then, a little farther along the continuum of contempt, I get a little more worried, when one starts to hear sincerely-expressed wishes that the “other” just go away, just vanish – so that the well-meaning and sensitive and caring sorts won’t even have to bother with considering those nasty “others” any more. I fear that a dangerous threshold has been reached, when this kind of emotion seep out into the commentary of a semi-mainstream commentator like Garrison Keillor – who most famously of late commented: “one starts to wonder if the country wouldn’t be better off without them and if Republicans should be cut out of the healthcare system entirely and simply provided with aspirin and hand sanitizer. Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off healthcare to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.” Kind of a sweeping statement there; would Mr. Keillor also recommend that people he disagreed with be subjected to a sort of modern political Nuremburg Law? I suppose he intended to be witty – but it comes off as sour, and angry – and more than a little unsettling, given that he would be talking about a third of his fellow citizens and countrymen.

This very week, the White House has made a fairly concerted and so far unsuccessful effort to de-legitimize Fox News as a news source, arguing that it is just dishing up too much ideological content to be a real news organization. One might suspect that the real problem is that Fox isn’t genuflecting deep enough for the White House press office’s taste, and has the embarrassing tendency to cover issues that the White House would rather be left uncovered. De-legitimizing Fox as a news organization is all of a piece with the tendency noted above; essentially, “what you think and say doesn’t matter, because all good-thinking people have decided that you are beneath notice, that you are ignorant at best and malign at worst, and maybe it would be best for all if you just weren’t around.”

Yeah, knowing history can make reading the headlines a little discomforting; sometimes paranoids really do have people out to get them.

Contemplating Throwing in the Towel on Larry McMurtry

18. October 2009 · Comments Off on Contemplating Throwing in the Towel on Larry McMurtry · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Rant, Working In A Salt Mine...

You know, I’ll be hanging in there for several reasons – sheer stubbornness and the fact that I bought all four of them for pennies on the dollar at various library book sales being chief among them – but I just wanna say that at this point, me carrying on with reading Dead Man’s Walk, Comanche Moon, Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo is already shaping up to be a long and, I fear, ultimately frustrating slog through the deserts of the metaphorical southwest. I might very well get to the end of it all, rejoicing and acclaiming the author as one of the epochal bards of the Texas frontier … but at this point – which about half a dozen chapters into each book, except for Dead Man’s Walk where I am nearly to the end – the odds are about even that I’ll pack it in and go get some unanesthetized root canal work done instead, or maybe watch the whole season run of Bridezillas’. Hey, at least there, I can root for some of the more sane family members and friends of the bridal party and hope that a much-harassed and out-of-patience MOH will haul off and serve up the ‘Zilla-of-the-moment with a richly-deserved knuckle sandwich. This hope will string me along for at least a good few hours – with Bridezillas and McMurtry alike. Drama, baby – it’s all about the drama.

I just keep hoping that something similar will happen, somewhere along in the Woodrow Call/Gus McRae cycle. I so dearly hope it will, because everyone else says such wonderful things about it all, including some of my very own dear fans who have, most flatteringly compared my books to his – on the basis, I think, that I wrote about frontier Texas, and had a hero who was an early Texas Ranger, and included lashings of war, local and historic color, tragic romance and the fading of the Old West. Of course, the lucky author, Mr. McMurtry got a whole couple of TV miniseries made from his books, (with surging royalties and residuals and all, and reissued paperbacks with stills of the stars on the covers, all of which would make his agent worth every penny of the 15% of which Mr. McMurtry earns out of his labors as a creative scribbler and raconteur of the Old West) and so it isn’t all just sour-grapes from an aspiring author, hardly blessed or even barely noticed by the literary-industrial complex … ohhh, do I get any recognition for having written a totally complicated and sort-of-run-on-sentence in the Grand Victorian Tradition? (Oh, guess not, not this time around – better move on, then.)

The first hurdle in my path of eventual acceptance is – that so far, it’s all build-up and character, but no actually delivery. I am sorta-intrigued, but not-really grabbed by interest, in the characters so delineated. I keep wondering why the deadpan flat, detached affect? Why should I care about various characters if the author doesn’t seem to give a damn about them, or even display much interest, other than in the strictly clinical? As a reader I am also a little exhausted by following the constant leaping one character’s POV to another, and another within the same chapter, and just when I have recovered from the last of them and remember who it is, exactly that I am supposed to be interested in – then I trip and fall flat over a large chunk of expository back-story, which doesn’t much lead to anything much happening. A friend of mine, also a fan of both McMurtry and I explained to me that this is very much a Texas thing, to meander and meander, and wander … eventually to come around in a circle again, without anything very much having happened. Apparently, the process of the story is supposed to be the main bit of enjoyment. So how was a couple of hours of heavy petting, leading nowhere other than a chaste kiss of the hand at the doorway supposed to be rewarding – when you have been led in happy anticipation to look for something a bit more energetic? When this happens, romantically, one tends to be a bit disappointed, think of the other party as a dreadful tease, write off the evening as a waste of time and make-up, and resolve to let the answering machine pick-up next time. With a best-selling, and to all appearances, very popular author, who started off Lonesome Dove with one of the very best opening sentences evah … well, maybe one should be a little more indulgent.

Alas – I have a bit of trouble with another aspect of the cycle, especially the earlier books, in being a bit of an amateur specialist in history. That is, amateur in the antique sense of a person who zestfully acquires knowledge for the sheer love of the field. I have no academic training, other than that required of English majors three decades ago, not even a minor in history, or any fancy qualifying initials after my name – only a burning passion to learn as much as I can about any particular aspect, and to get it right, and to weave that knowledge into my stories. Which is all very well, but has absolutely ruined me for watching westerns on television; don’t even get me started on the fantasy west, of pulp novels and TV series and movies. I’m too apt to notice that there is a zipper down the back of the heroine’s dress, notice that the traveling cowboy is camping with a lot more gear than he could have packed into a teensy bedroll on the back of his horse, and there is a deep-rock gold mine right next to a cattle ranch, and to wonder where the heck in the West that could have happened?

Plowing gamely through the first two books has been a bit of a disconcerting experience, as I keep running across names, historic characters and incidents of Texas history but as if someone had jumbled them all together in a small box, and then emptied them out in random order, omitted some pivotal incidents and people, exaggerated others for effect, and now and again threw in something completely bizarre, just rang off-key for me. The real Buffalo Hump wasn’t a hunchback, if the description of him at Meusebach’s peace conference is anything to go by. The real Bigfoot Wallace lived to die of ripe old age; he drew life from a jar of dried beans in Mexican captivity … which incident happened to the survivors of the Meir expedition, not the Texan attempt to take Santa Fe, which occurred twenty years later and during the Civil War anyway. Austin was never raided, looted and burned over by a Comanche raiding party – that happened to Linnville, in 1840 – and the aftermath of that involved a massed force of Rangers, local militia and volunteers giving as good as they got in the Plum Creek fight. Makes me wonder why McMurtry needed to make anything up, when what really happened historically would have made at least as much of a good story. And it is a bit of puzzlement, wondering how the early Rangers in the first two books are pretty consistently pictured as being neophytes, hopeless little golden carp in a sea of hungry sharks – a tasty mouthful for every passing predator … which reminds me of the character who was neatly scalped of all of his hair by Buffalo Hump going past at a gallop. I’m almost sure scalping someone took a little bit more than a single swipe with a knife from horseback, although if anyone had perfected the art of a ride-by scalping, it would have been the Comanche.

It sounded a bit improbable, anyway – and the hapless recipient of it as disposable as any of the red-shirted crewmen on Star Trek, beaming down to an alien planet and being killed in the first act. And that sort of disposing of a character, and other characters, and having characters appear and disappear, and such strange and improbable turns of the plot, such as having a naked English noblewoman with leprosy and a pet snake sing a Verdi aria to bluff a party of hostile Indian warriors into letting a our heroes pass by … well, that was just too television for words, and I came to that realization with a certain shock of recognition. I know they’ve made the books into movies, or into miniseries, and that’s more right than readers and watchers could possibly have known – because it is more like one of the old television westerns than has been along in years! A jumble of historical events and happenstances, check – interminable, episodic adventures – check. Handful of basic, easily identifiable characters – check – some vicious and inscrutable villains (some of them with baroque torture chambers and suitable evil henchmen) – check. Rotating stable of supporting characters, and endless supply of disposable extras – check and check again. And a disconcerting tendency for certain startling shifts in the cast to occurs between seasons …or between books. And there you go – it’s a TV western writ large; no wonder the Lonesome Dove cycle has so many fans. Having come to this conclusion, I will probably carry on for a bit, keeping it in mind… but isn’t Bridezillas on tonight?

I Love the Smell of Dripping Sarcasm in the Morning

15. October 2009 · Comments Off on I Love the Smell of Dripping Sarcasm in the Morning · Categories: Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, sarcasm, The Funny

(From one of those e-mails going around, this one from the military broadcaster’s discussion group, a well-known nest of racists and terrorist sympathizers. This will no doubt get me on several watch lists as a person of doubleplusungoodness.)

Wonderful news! After astonishing the world by receiving the Nobel Peace Prize that was so richly deserved (according to the Democratic leadership and all right thinking people everywhere) Our Dear Leader Barack Hussein has been honored again; the Pentagon announced today that the wonderful light of greatness that is our glorious leader has been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor! this after visiting a Marine Corps base last summer. General Sabot, the new military czar in charge of “honoring dear leaders” stated today “We know some reactionary types both in the civilian sector and those in the military (who unlike myself have had their decision making process clouded by actual combat experience) will not agree with this decision. Nevertheless, a careful review of a cellphone photo-capture of the presidents’ arrival clearly shows the light of virtue and really great greatness that is our savior and bringer of change, his majesty Barack (the peace bringer) He has the clear facial expressions of someone who is really going to do something really really brave and stuff!”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stated: “It’s about time we gave this award to someone who deserves it!” she then expanded: “In the recent past we have given this medal to mostly Warmongering military types who followed the orders of the disgraced prior administration! These mostly Republican types received this award while committing horrible war crimes during the period when this was a illegal war. It is appropriate then that his majesty be given this honor as the war has magically become legal under our more enlightened leadership.” Col. Savemyarss, under-military czar of “sayin’ good stuff about our dear leader” stated: “We believe this award is a proper follow up to all those on the General Staff who are now saying that the new administrations’ war plans are enlightened and much better than the old plans of the prior administration and that it is better way to show our loyalty to the new administration since after almost a year we still have no idea what the new administrations war plan are yet. But don”t take that to mean that I think that a year is to long to come up with a plan! It’s just about right! and I am sure the plan will be like the greatest ever! As a matter of fact I hear there is a school in New Jersey that is writing a new song of praise for our dear leader based on the wonderful new plan we all know he is putting together! “and that you can quote me on!”

Around in Back of the Alamo

14. October 2009 · Comments Off on Around in Back of the Alamo · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West

The front of the Alamo is instantly recognizable; almost like a stage set. Everybody knows the bed-stead outline with what would have been a pair of towers on either side, a pair of shell-supported niches on either side of the door, and the window over it … were there ever statues in those niches? I’ve always wondered about that. It was a mission church, when first built, then a chapel for the Mexican Army garrison, and at some point the roof over the nave and sanctuary collapsed in. When the Alamo achieved fame everlasting, in the space of 14 days and a murderous hour and a half of pitched battle on a dark April morning, the church building had made into a bastion, filled with a platform and a ramp of packed earth and rubble to make a gun-platform for three cannon at the apse end. Later, it was repaired, and re-roofed, serving for decades as a US Army garrison and warehouse, as what was left of the mission compound was torn down, and the town of San Antonio de Bexar crept closer and closer to the old mission buildings. Eventually, the Army decamped to a new-built compound a little way north of town, and the old chapel became a shrine again.

What hardly show in the usual pictures are the trees and gardens on either side, and in the back, which served as a backdrop for the San Antonio Living History Association’s “Fall at the Alamo” last weekend. My daughter thought there would be quite a few more re-enactors than there were – and as it turned out, I was much more interested in the re-enactors who had demonstrations and talks about early Texas than she was.

She was enchanted by the lace-making demonstration, however. Two ladies were hand-making thread lace, weaving thread from dozens of slender ivory or wood bobbins, each bobbin trimmed with a bauble of beads. The lace pattern was mounted on either a pillow or a little round drum, studded with pins in a precise pattern, and the threads were woven around the pins and twisted with other threads – it was fascinating to watch. There was a spinner, with a basket of hanks of yarn, dyed with natural dyes, all in very muted shades, including a pink made from cochineal … which according to another re-enactor, dressed as a Delaware Indian, was one of Texas’s main exports, in the early days. He actually had a bottle of cochineal insects, little grey-whitish scale bugs that feed on cactus plants. When dried and pulverized, a red dye is extracted from these little insects, a red dye which takes superbly to wool. He had a table full of samples of commodities harvested or produced in Texas in the early days – by early, meaning Republic of Texas or earlier. Some of them I had already known about – like pecans. And leather goods, rice and salt.

I think very fondly of re-enactors when I am working up a book; there is no better way to get an idea of actually how something was accomplished, like starting a fire from flint and steel. Another re-enactor showed us how – not just with a chip of flint rock and what looked like a link from a steel chain, but also with the aid of a little scrap of carbonized cloth to catch the spark, and a wad of vegetable fiber – from, of all things, a mouses’ nest – to feed that little spark and nurse it along. I would have never thought of that, so accustomed to using matches or a lighter in these days.

As nearly as I could see, the gentlemen re-enactors took it all very seriously, being turned out in the finest early 19th century finery; waistcoats, high-buttoned jackets, tall books and all – even to fancy spurs with jingle-bobs on them. My, their spurs really do go jingle-jangle! One of the marked differences in the two movies about the Alamo (The John Wayne one, and the Billy-Bob Thornton version) is that the more recent one seemed to be a bit more authentic as to costuming. I recall reading an interview with the costume designer, who was asked some sort of question about if the cast was dressed in the usual sort of western gear, and the designer replied that, no – nothing especially western, just what would have been the proper fashion for 1836, or maybe during the decade or so before. Kind of interesting to contemplate – that the Texians at the Alamo, when dressed in their best, may have looked very much more like Mr. Darcy than Shane. So – no cowboy hats or boots, no jeans, nothing like what people are used to think of as “western” dress, which is rather more a creation of the later 19th-century west. These gentlemen of early Texas wore tall top-hats, or billed caps, tail-coats or hunting coats made of heavy canvas or buckskin, trimmed with fringe – and very fancy waistcoats. That was a very male bit of a splash- the fancy waistcoat, especially when accessorized with a huge hunting knife.

Droit de Seigneur

02. October 2009 · Comments Off on Droit de Seigneur · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Good God, Media Matters Not, Rant, That's Entertainment!

According to the invaluable but frequently erratic Wikipedia, that translates to “the lord’s right” – that is, the right of a noble lord to be the first to bed any or all of the local girls, willing or not, who caught his lordly eye. Further, Wikipedia states that although there is not much credible evidence to suggest this legal right ever existed or was practiced in Western Europe, the phrase has been used ever since, as a convenient short-hand, in reference to all those rights that a noble lord exercised over the tenantry – especially those rights and privileges which infuriated those they were exercised upon. The rights of the lord with regard to the lesser orders variously infuriated, insulted, demeaned, degraded, or at the very least inconvenienced the sturdy peasantry. And there is, I think, something of a race-memory of this in middle- or working-class Americans, for they don’t much like it when someone attempts to claim a lordly privilege. Nothing is more calculated to earn a snappy comeback from a hard working American prole with nothing to loose, then someone in a high dudgeon demanding “Don’t you know who I am?!” There are whole sub-categories of stories of independent mechanics and plumbers who reply, “Yeah, the guy who ain’t gonna get his Hummer back until next Wednesday,” or “Yeah, the a-hole who’d better call another plumber!” The original of this tale involved the English investor, visiting an American cattle ranch, in the far West, circa 1880, and accosted one of the ranch-hands, saying, “Where is your master?” and the hand replying (doubtless with a spit into the weeds and something of a John Wayne snarl) “The S-O-B ain’t been born, yet!”

So, no – traditionally claiming special privilege on account of exalted wealth or blood never went down very well over on this side of the pond, although there is an element in American society that does tend to go all wobbly-kneed when it comes to Euro-royalty. Or royalty of any sort; just look at the covers of the magazines on the rack by the supermarket check-out station. But an over-developed interest in aristocracy of the old, or the new-made kind ought not to be confused with any eagerness to allow law to be set aside for the convenience of a member in good standing of the aristocracy – as the usual Hollywood crowd is discovering to their horror in the wake of the Polonski business. I’d have called it l’affaire Polonski, but that doesn’t quite translate the sense that it wasn’t an affair, in the sexual sense. It was plain old rape (and drugging, and unconsenting sodomy) of a minor, for which the perpetrator bargained down to a lesser charge, was found guilty and skipped the country. And nope, I don’t give a rodent’s patoot that it was upty-odd- decades ago, that he’s a really sooooper-talented, and all his nice Hollywood friends with their faultless moral compasses and quasi-aristocratic assumptions are rallying around, demanding that he is a very, very special person, and entitled to clemency. Nope – that will not do. It wouldn’t do if it had been the plumber Ronnie Polonski, or the Father Polonski the Catholic priest – in fact, I think – no, scratch that; I know the reaction of the Hollywood set would have been much different, in those cases.

I think most of us have assumed for years that Hollywood was a weird, and insulated little world, all to itself, and now we see how very, very easily they assumed the trappings of privilege, and a sense of how the laws that apply to everyone else, somehow, magically do not apply to them, and their very special, talented friends. And now we see, exactly, what they would justify and excuse, and explain away. Frankly, I find it pretty sick-making. Even more sick-making, is the list of actors, directors, and other illuminati who have come out in support of their good buddy, the child-rapist. From what little I might know of some of them, I had expected a little better. Especially Whoopi Goldberg, whom I used to think funny…

Well, then – there’s another ten of fifteen entries on my private movie boycott list, some of them with movies that I still would watch. But not now, not after this sick little exercise in droit de seigneur. Really, are these people trying to make everyone in the whole damned country not watch their movies?

The Road Goes Ever On and On

29. September 2009 · Comments Off on The Road Goes Ever On and On · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Local, Old West, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Or at least it seems to go on ever and ever in Texas, under a sky that also seems to go on ever and ever, infinitely blue, with clouds floating in it like puffs of cotton. The tops of the clouds are white, the bottoms slightly gray and absolutely flat, as if they were floating on the surface of some airy, invisible sea. The horizon is not masked by atmospheric pollution, or haze, or dust – it’s as clear and as sharp as if there were a line drawn by a compass, or a pencil on the end of a string. This last weekend, I drove to Abilene, in company with another writer, a lady from Kerrville. We had arranged to share expenses and a table at the West Texas Book and Music Festival – a farther journey than to the Richmond Folklife bash the weekend before. This road-trip went west and north, rather than east, out into the fabled lands that I described in Adelsverein as the Llano country – as one character explains,” You should know there are really three parts to Texas. This part is the first: flat and rich, with many rivers and easy to farm. This is shaped like the palm of a hand, with rivers for fingers, running down through it. Then there is the second part, the hills where those rivers begin. Just north of San Antonio de Bexar, it begins: a line of hills like a palisade, a curving wall. Limestone hills with forests of oak trees – meadows in the spring that are nothing but wildflowers, blue or red, or pink. . . . then behind the hills is the last part … they call it the Llano Estacada. In Spanish it means ‘the Staked Plain’ . . . an empty plain covered with short grass, mostly. It is not quite flat, but it looks as if it would go on to the ends of the world. There is also a sort of bush growing there, with leaves like the points of a spear. It sends up a single flower stem, taller than a man; that is what looks like stakes, for miles and miles. I do not think it would be good farm country. All the land can grow is grass – too harsh, too dry – even if it were not for the Comanche.”

This is the country, running north from Junction, set into a river-valley on the far side of the Hill Country, into which few white men ventured, after the Comanche claimed it for their own. Eventually, after the Civil War – with railways, and the US Army, with little towns clustered around crossroads, and river-crossings, and where the iron rails intersected both – this part of Texas became endless pasturelands for the white man’s cattle, rather than the red man’s buffalo. We did not see many yucca plants growing, as we followed the more or less straight arrow of secondary highway, to Menard, and Paint Rock, Bellinger and Winter, all those little towns set out about every thirty or forty miles, towns where the oldest extant buildings seemed to be from the last quarter of the 19th century, and to huddle close around Route 83, which became the Main Street for a couple of blocks, and then the last sheds and signposts flew by and we were out in the country again, with now and again a cultivated field, or a handful of black, or red, or fawn-colored cattle drifting lazily in a fenced pasture, among the scrub-mesquite and patches of cactus.

We stopped here and there – for it is my considered opinion that if you stop every hour and fifteen minutes or so, and get out of the car and walk around, the trip does not seem nearly as long or tiring. At Menard we stopped out of curiosity at a little place on the outskirts of town called the Country Store, which advertised baked goods, jam and handicrafts of all sorts – true to form, it smelled wonderfully of baking, inside. The proprietors sell cookies, pies both sweet and savory, and home-made frozen casseroles. We bought a bag of so-called “cowboy cookies” – stuffed with oatmeal and coconut flakes, and raisins.
In Paint Rock, we took some pictures of the Concho County courthouse, and a down-town that seemed to be completely deserted on a weekend. I don’t think we saw a single person; the town square, such as it was, looked like an abandoned Western movie set.

Both of us had forgotten to bring a tablecloth, for our book table in the Abilene Convention center exhibition hall; so we thought we might buy an inexpensive one, somewhere along the way. We kept our eyes peeled for a second-hand store – which we never found, but in Ballinger, we spied an antique store in an old hotel building, and thought – well, these sorts of places always have old linens, and why not? It would probably cost less than a new plastic one at Walmart, so what the heck? The shop had an interesting miscellany piled up out front, and seemed to be just two rooms at the front of an old storefront – but the proprietor directed us to go down a long, dim corridor lined with more shelves and bits of furniture – and rooms on either side of it were filled, filled to the brim with tables and cabinets and chairs, with vintage clothing and china and glass – beautifully jewel-colored Depression-era pressed-glass. We decided, after working our way down the rooms on one side, and back up the other, that the building must have been a hotel. It possibly could have been an enterprise slightly less savory – but not on a main street. When we found a suitable tablecloth, we asked the owner about this. She laughed, and said that it was rumored that a good few decades ago, some of the upstairs rooms housed an establishment of negotiable affections.

And so, on to Abilene, and a tiny cabin at the local KOA campground, in a grove of pecan trees out on the northwest of town; probably the only thing that would have ever brought me to Abilene besides the book festival, was Dyess AFB – but since my military job specialty was an overseas imbalance, I would never have had reason to be assigned there.

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