The Unfortunate Incident in the Base Housing Area

13. October 2005 · Comments Off on The Unfortunate Incident in the Base Housing Area · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front, Military

As it so happens with so many unfortunate incidents, it came out without much warning, and piece by piece, the first harbinger being in the form of an emergency spot announcement brought around from the front office by our admin NCO. The radio and television station at Zaragoza AB was situated in two (later three) ancient Quonset huts. The radio and engineering sections occupied the largest, which was two of them run together at some long-ago date. (We were never able to get permission to run all three buildings together with an extension— the cost of building such would be more than the real estate value of the three buildings being combined, and so, of course, it couldn’t be done. My heartfelt plea to build extensions to the existing buildings which would take them within six inches or so of the other structures… and let us fill in the gap with a self-help project was routinely and cruelly rejected. Base Civil Engineering can be so f**king heartless, you can’t believe.)

Sgt. Herrera found the radio staff in the record library: a small, windowless room almost entirely filled with tall shelves roughed out of plywood, and filled with 12’inch record discs in heavy white or manila shucks. A GSA metal utility office desk, and a couple of library card-file cabinets filled up the rest of the available space, which was adorned with outrageous and improbable news stories clipped from the finest and most unreliable tabloids, Far Side cartoons, and current hit charts from Billboard and Radio & Record. The morning guy was putting away the records that he had pulled for his show, the news guy was using the typewriter, and I was supervising it all, and prepping my playlist for the midday show.

“The SPs want this on the air right away, “He handed the slip of paper to me. “The dogs are real dangerous.”
I looked at the announcement: a couple of stray dogs had been reported in the base housing are and everyone was asked to call the Security Police desk if they were spotted. Under no circumstances was anyone to try and corner the dogs. Hmm, I thought. This was curious. There was supposed to be a pack of feral stray dogs on base— they were rumored to have occasionally menaced the lonely jogger on the more remote reaches of the base— but venturing into the housing area?
“What did they do?” I asked, idly.
“They killed a dog in the housing area.”

Ohhh… well, that was nasty and unfortunate. I assured Sgt. Herrera that we would have it on air at the top of the hour, typed up the spot announcement into the proper format, and finished, just as the buzzer alert went off, in the corner, over the desk. Half-past, time to run into the studio for the changeover. In ancient radio days, the programs were recorded on 12-inch disks, 27 minutes of program on each side… meant that at about 32 minutes past the hour, the on-duty board op had to make a dash into the studio and catch the out-cue, and start the second record player, in order to ensure an uninterrupted flow of “Charlie Tuna” or “Roland Bynum” or “Gene Price” or whatever.
When I came back to the library, TSgt. Scott, the program director, was there.
“You got it? The announcement about the dogs?”
“Yeah, I’ll hit it, at the top of the hour, over the fill music. So, what’s the story?”
TSgt. Scott coughed, slightly.

“They mauled and killed a dog in the housing area.” For some reason, TSgt. Scott was trying to hold a somber face.” A pet… an old, half-blind toy poodle… let out onto the terrace to take a leak… the two stray dogs crashed through the hedge, and just ripped it up, and ran off.”
“OK,” Obviously there was something more going on here. “OK, that’s awful… but what’s the story.”
“It was Colonel G—–‘s poodle.”
All four of us thought about that for a couple of moments.
“Oh, dear, “I said, and then… overtaken by the sick humor and canine misfortune of it, all four of us began snickering, guiltily. Colonel G—– was the Wing Commander on Zaragoza. He was a kindly gentleman of Finnish extraction, who came by once a week to record his comments responding to various local concerns relayed to the Public Affairs office— one of our junior troops had the truly outstanding ghost-writers’ gift of writing Colonel G—–s’ remarks for him in words and phrasing that sounded perfectly naturally, coming from him. He had immigrated to America in the late 40ies, after a childhood that was so impoverished it had him and his sister sharing a single pair of shoes and going to school on alternate days. He usually came by the radio station in a flight-suit to record his remarks, on his way to rack up his required flight-time hours, and always gave me the impression of a schoolboy bidden to do one last chore before being loosed to freedom and play. I often wondered how his staff got any useful work out of him at all; I assumed they probably shackled his ankles to his desk, or something. Colonel G —– always seemed so cheerful, blasting out of the radio station, having done that one little Public Affairs chore for the week, heading out to the flight-line for a couple of hours of fun and freedom.

The Wing Commander and the Air Base Group Commander lived in the two largest houses on base— both with generous driveways, and porches and terraces. Oh, what fatal mischance had led a pair of stray dogs to brutally slaughter the cherished pet of the one person on post who could immediately bring all base responses into play! Of course, if someone elses’ pet had been killed, right at their own house, we very well knew that the base forces of law, order, and protection would have been called into play… just on a bit slower schedule. TSgt Scott listened to the morning guy give his verbal impression of what the two stray dogs must be thinking, and the news guy a mock-monologue of Colonel G—– at the controls of an F-16, patrolling the skies over Zaragoza, looking for a pair of stray dogs with merciless intent, and me saying.
“Oh, dear, that was a very bad choice, wasn’t it? And it’s sick and warped to be making fun of it… but, oh, it is kind of funny, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is, “Said Sgt. Scott, “But have your mad moment here. Not a $#@!! word of this on air. Just read the announcement.”
“Of course,” I said. All of us had pets, some of us lived on base, and it was awful indeed. But still: Colonel. Poodle. Feral Dogs. Sometimes, the sick jokes just write themselves. As much as we wish they wouldn’t!

Christmas Stockings

11. October 2005 · Comments Off on Christmas Stockings · Categories: Domestic, General

Well, that is my project for the next few weeks or so— Christmas stockings for all of us, Mom and Dad and JP and I, plus Pip and Sander, and all our in-laws, significant others and offspring. I am doing my best at replicating the knitted stockings that Granny Jessie made for us, about the time that JP was born— Dad had come back from Korea, and he and Mom and JP and I were well embarked on that mid-20th century, baby-boomer suburban American family life, complete down to the station wagon and little white house with a swing-set in the back yard. Mine and JP’s, and Mom’s and Dad’s were all alike, from the same pattern and done all at once. Those she did first were red, with white toes and heels, and tops, with our names worked into the tops in red letters, and loops with little pom-poms, out of heavy-weight cotton yarn, and a green-felt Christmas tree sewn with multi-colored sequins carefully stitched into the mid-shin part of the stocking.

Five years later, she unshipped the knitting needles and the seasonal patterns and did a stocking for Pip, in green acrylic, with Santa knitted into the shin portion— Santa had a white wooly mohair beard— but by the time Sander made his entrée, Granny Jessie seemed to have lost all interest in knitting (although for the infant Cpl. Blondie, she did blow the dust off the needles and shoo the moths out of the yarn hanks long enough to knit a salmon-pink matinee-jacket). Sander made do with a commercially procured stocking— it was, I think, a freebie from an upscale gourmet-food provider like Harry & David, and when we put out the Christmas things every year, I always felt regretful that my dear baby brother did not have a proper knitted Christmas stocking with his name knitted into the top, as the rest of us did.

I couldn’t knit for shit, myself. This was proved abundantly when I was a Brownie Scout, and it was decreed that we should all knit a little six-inch square. Each of our six-inch-square output would be crocheted together into a baby blanket for some unfortunate… and truly the unfortunate that depended on our output, for mine emerged painfully and looked like nothing so much like a well-used string washrag… no, I realized that knitting was not my skill, and from the alacrity with which both my grandmothers gave it up, I suspect it was not their skill… or their interest, either. It was just something that was dunned into them as something they were expected to do… and which they did, rather grudgingly, for as long as it was expected and not a moment longer. I myself bought a knitted Christmas stocking for Blondie, at one of those country craft stores in Layton, Utah, early in the 1990ies— red and white stripes with a black cat knitted into it. I took some red crewel-embroidery yarn left over from another project, and wove her name in chain-stitch into to the top of it, and there was her Christmas stocking, but hers and all the others burned up, in the Valley Center fire that took Mom and Dad’s house, two years ago this month.

Oddly enough, it was the Christmas things which Blondie and I first agreed that we felt the loss of, most grievously. We always tried to be home at Mom and Dad’s at Christmas— that eclectic assortment; the antique Santa-shaped light-bulbs, the ornaments that JP and I had made in grade school, the things I had set from Europe— all of those were dear, and familiar. The stockings, and an assortment of not terribly valuable Christmas ornaments, all packed into a couple of battered cardboard boxes, stowed in the rafters of the garage— the garage, of course, was the first to go. Mom went through the house, calmly and rationally picking out the things that could be easily transported, and which were not replaceable, and packed them into her car, along with the dogs and cats. The firemen later grabbed an assortment of framed photographs and bundled them into a scorched and grubby bed-sheet, but who would have thought about the Christmas things?

Mom missed some things that I think of with a pang— her wedding dress, the family christening dress, the huge box of newly-sorted and identified snapshots and pictures, the fragile little Victorian flower-holder, trimmed with tiny china apples— but only things. Dearly familiar, much-loved things, reminiscent of our past, the ancestors that have gone before us, but at the end of all things…. Merely and only things. We replace what we can, and build again; the new house is all but finished, nearly two years after the fire. I am cutting out holiday shapes from scraps of green, white and red felt, and running miles of zig-zag stitching through my sewing machine. For Mom and Dad, Pip and her husband, JP and his wife; it’s easy enough to rebuild, when the family is safe and whole, and resilient. We got way very lightly, as disasters go; there is nothing like worse happening in other places to keep you from feeling sorry for yourself.

(I am slightly tempted to ornament the stockings for William and my brother-in-law with a motif of two small round Christmas ornaments, on either side of an oval one… William and my father would be no end amused, but I hate to take a chance on my brother-in-laws’ sense of humor being a ribald one.)

Debasing the Currency: Part 2

08. October 2005 · Comments Off on Debasing the Currency: Part 2 · Categories: General, History, Media Matters Not

It’s not that the news media were ever that shining, impartial, unbiased city on a hill, in days of yore— in the 19th century, American newspapers were as partisan as they come, and open enough about it to put their political affiliation on the masthead. And the usual run of partisan political abuse was venomous enough to make the various Something-gate ruckuses of the late 20th century look like the local Lutheran church general membership meeting in comparison. Early in the decades of this last century, the term “yellow journalism”— inflammatory, partisan, selective with facts— was practically a synonym for the Hearst chain. It goes without saying that Hearst’s newspapers were widely read, enormously popular, and innovative; sort of the Ted Turner and CNN news of the day. (Although Ted Turner has not yet to build an enormous fairy-tale castle filled with art and architectural salvage on top of a mountain in California. Yet, anyway.)

The newspaper magnates of that day, and their reporters were not without bias, or a taste for the sensational, either; mark the Lindberg kidnapping and resulting trial, or the New York Times’ Walter Duranty’s predilection for trimming his reportorial sails to suit the winds of Soviet Stalinism. But if there could ever be said to have been a golden age of print and broadcast journalism in America, though, it would have had to have been the thirty years between WWII and Watergate, and it’s presiding saint was Edward R. Murrow, present or in the memory of those who worked with him, or followed after. He set the standard, and a high one at that; fearless, principled, observant, and willing to go beyond the merely superficial, telling his listeners not just what they wanted to know, but what they ought to know, in order to make sense of it all. He was not the first to do this, but is the individual that we think of first when we try to think of someone who exemplifies the gold standard of news. Whether trivial or of import, readers and listeners operated from the assumption of credibility during that era.

Reporters might be mistaken, might not have the whole story right away, sources might be lying through their teeth, but we assumed that reporters were setting their personal biases aside (whatever those biases might be) and telling us what they saw before their own eyes. What we saw on TV, or read in the better sort of non-tabloid newspaper, or serious magazine, our assumption was that it was accurate, as the reporter saw it. A long, sad slow series of events began shredding this assumption, beginning long before the blogosphere, long before 9/11, degrading the value of the news currency. The gold coinage of the Murrow era was slowly replaced with pot metal, and the worst of it was, the media did it to themselves, for what seemed to be the best, but short-term reasons at the time.

People have always wanted to know about crime, bad weather, celebrity travails and disasters near and far; this does not change from age to age or country to country. It sells newspapers and advertising, after all, and it’s easy to write about. As early as 1988 Peter Boyer ( in “Who Killed CBS”) was chiding CBS news for consciously emphasizing the visual, the superficial, the emotional image of news events, for having fallen from the high standards set by America’s “Tiffany” network, from being serious news to merely entertainment. Boyer singled out for especial disapproval Van Gordon Sauter and Dan Rather. Other commenters, some of them to this blog, have dated the rot to have been in the wake of Watergate, when budding young journalism students were fired with the lure of being investigative reporters like Woodward and Bernstein (who got a movie, with Robert Redford, and Dustin Hoffman playing them!) and not incidentally, brought down a president. A decade after Boyer, James Fallows (“Breaking the News”) put the blame on a reportorial establishment that framed itself as well-paid elite, magisterial and above the fray. Fallows hoped for the rise of public journalism, of reporters being truly involved as citizens; what he hoped for came to pass, and I can’t help wondering how he feels these days, of ordinary citizens and bloggers empowered to report and editorialize. Citizens’ journalism with a vengeance, as it were and about time.

The list of media dishonor goes on, and on: the Peter Arnett “Tailwind” disaster, CNN’s much-vaunted Baghdad bureau pulling their reportorial punches in return for continued access, the fraud of Jenin and Mohammed-el-Dura, (and the dependence upon Palestinian stringers for reportage in the West Bank and Gaza generally), the whole Rather/TANG memos thing, the Katrina/New Orleans disaster, and the willingness of various media to repeat without any sort of reservation or quick-double-checking any number of sensational stories…. Well, any comprehensive list would be about three pages longer, and tax my ability to provide links after two glasses of Chablis.

Slightly buzzed, or completely sober, my conclusion is pretty much the same. The major media is debased coinage. I can’t take it as a given any more, that what I see, or read, or hear from them is true. My assumption is, that they have their own agenda, I will have to do a bit of fact-checking, and wait for a while before I can come to any sort of conclusion about what I have had put in front of me— make allowances, tease out the implications, come to my own conclusions from the jig-saw assembly provided to me.

It all kind of reminds me, in a minor way, of what people in the former Soviet Union had to do— and that is a sad comment on what the major media has become. Eager young journalism majors used to burble that they wanted to be reporters so they could make a difference. So they have… but not a good difference.

Pay No Attention…

06. October 2005 · Comments Off on Pay No Attention… · Categories: Domestic, General, Local

…to the woman screaming “Freedom!!!! FREEEDOM!!!!” and rushing around opening all the windows. It’s just me.

The high today, when I walked out of the humongous building where I work was about 80 degrees. It’s predicted to drop to the fifties tonight… after highs into the nineties, and overlight lows in the seventies.

Autumn is here at last, and about bloody time. It’s a perversion of nature to be in the first week of October, and still having to run the *#$%@!! air conditioner!

Debasing the Currency: Pt 1

05. October 2005 · Comments Off on Debasing the Currency: Pt 1 · Categories: General, History, Media Matters Not

A long time ago, when currency in the West of the world was in the form of coins and monetary policy was an infant science, the most-valued coins in the marketplaces were those minted of precious or semi-precious metals, each coin valued approximately to the content of the metal and based on that relationship of content to the official value stamped upon it—or so is my understanding of the grim science of economics, given that I was an English major, and given to interpret these things from a literary worldview.

Changes, variations and plain old criminal fiddles upset this tidy understanding almost immediately by the creatively larcenous. Thieves shaved minute scrapings of precious metal of gold and silver coins— did you know that the milled edge was an innovation designed to defeat this criminal stratagem? And of course, out-right counterfeiters did their ingenious worst. It got to the point where clever merchants had to be as careful of coins as modern retail establishments are with large-denomination notes, since there was always the chance of the bad penny turning up, and being a distinct loss to a commercial establishment. In those early days, coinage crossed borders freely, mostly because the currency distributed by a well run, prosperous, and fiscally sound state, city or kingdom could be assured of being worth its assigned value. (Bonus trivia note: certain coins later assumed to be equal to a dollar were cut into eight pieces, to make change in the American colonies; this is the origination of the slang “bits”, as in the use of “two bits” for a quarter, or 25 cents. And the word “dollar” itself is drawn from the German “thaler” coin… )

OK, enough trivia, back to the point: I do have one, honestly. The general use of currency implies an act of trust. We trust that the coin or bill is worth what it is supposed to be, as true now as it was two hundred, four hundred, or two or four millennia ago, and in the brutal financial meritocracy prevalent in the hurly-burly of interesting historical times, some coinage was always counted as more valuable than others. There were always established states, or kingdoms whose rulers fell to the temptation of short-lived gains earned by fiddling with the coinage… who took the short way out of economic problems by shorting the quantity of good metal in their coins, for what they viewed as the best of short-term reasons.

But short-term expedients have long term consequences, and the major media lords who control imperfectly, that appears in print, on the radio, and most importantly, on TV, may yet discover this at first hand. They have taken a good, solid coinage, a trusted, solid precious-metal coinage— at least, that which existed at the mid-point of this last century— and for immediate, short term gain, chosen to substitute dross for value.

(To be Continued)

Overheard at Work: #1

04. October 2005 · Comments Off on Overheard at Work: #1 · Categories: Domestic, General, The Funny, Working In A Salt Mine...

Whilst peacefully filing correspondence in the large cabinets in the work area closest to the corridor, I overheard the following startling snippet of conversation from one of a pair of maintenance workers, who were taking something bulky down in the freight elevator:

“I’m gonna bed down the iguanas early tonight… give them their medicine early and…”

But then the freight elevator door clanged shut, and I lost the rest of it.

Terry and the Pirate Movie

01. October 2005 · Comments Off on Terry and the Pirate Movie · Categories: General, History, Media Matters Not, Military, That's Entertainment!

OK, Ok, I probably will go to see Serenity, and maybe The Corpse Bride, in the near future, should I have a couple of free days between temp assignments. (Yes, still job-hunting, still temping— this month at a corporate behemoth so huge that it has— I kid you not— a Starbucks concession at each end of the building. It’s even more boring than the overnight TV boardshift, and the daily commute is a killer; I hate it already, thanks for asking – but it is a paycheck)

With Hollywood on this graphic novel/nostalgia/action flick/remake kick, I continue to be ever more amazed that the great adventure comic strip, Terry and the Pirates hasn’t gone all big-screen on us in the last couple of years. Sure, sure, there was a brief movie-serial version, as well as a radio show, at the very height of it’s popularity during WWII, but I’ve always believed that Terry had the potential to knock the socks off Indiana Jones as far as cliff-hanging, non-stop adventure in exotic places, featuring a studly two-fisted hero, and gorgeous, strong-minded women of occasionally ambivalent moral principles. Throw in the bright teen-aged kid sidekick— the Terry of name, and add lashings of lost gold mines, Chinese warlords and freedom fighters, mercenaries of every nationality, colonial officialdom whiling away the afternoon on the verandah with a gin sling and the ceiling fan whirring overhead, pilots and sailors, thieves and bratty kidnapped children, freelance relief workers, glamorous globe-trotting debutants, and the distant rumble of Japanese expansionism across the Far East – oh, what Stephen Spielberg could make of this, if he hadn’t gone all high-toned and meaningful on us, to lofty to meddle with good-humored intrigue, glamour and adventure.

That was always Milton Caniffs’ thing; that and a drop-dead wonderful artistic sensibility. I remember that Steve Canyon, his follow-on strip to Terry & The Pirates was still being carried by the LA Times when I was in grade school. The sheer visual style of that strip, meticulously detailed, complex, almost cinematic, was artistically the most eye-catching thing in the color supplements on Sunday, even though I couldn’t force myself to be interested in the characters and plots. It wasn’t a kid’s comic, I sensed— it was something for grownups— and by the time I would have taken an interest in it, Steve Canyon was gone from the papers. The hero was a military pilot, and like the original GI Joe doll, and like much else military and of the cold-war era, fell out of general favor during the Vietnam War.

I can’t say I discovered Caniff’s most famous cartoon predecessor to Steve Canyon when doing historical research in the CSUN newspaper archives, since I already knew of it: Mom had been a fan, like just about every kid in the late Thirties, and there were excerpts in various books about the comics, or media that I had run across, one way or the other, but when I started my history project, I had a chance to read the whole run of Terry, over a decade’s worth of daily newspapers, starting in 1935. It was cartoonish and kind of sketchy, early on, but in about 1938 or so, Caniff hit an artistic stride and it just got better and better. The Dragon Lady, the beautiful Eurasian gang-leader turned freedom fighter— was she an ally? Sometimes she was, and there was this love-hate thing she had going on with the ostensible hero, soldier of fortune Pat Ryan. And then there was the mysterious torch singer, Burma, a blond bombshell and fugitive from the law — for what was never made quite clear, but her signature tune was the St. Louis Blues. Then there was the lovely Normandie, hounded by bossy relatives into marrying someone other than Pat, and the dashing Raven Sherman, fearless doer of good deeds in the dark world of war-torn China. Raven earned a small footnote in the history of the comics for being a major character and dying in the line of duty, thrown off the back of a truck during a hairbreadth escape. (The daily panel of this is entirely wordless.) Fans turned east for a moment of silence and mourned, and Caniff got black-edged notes on the anniversary for years afterwards.

The death of a fictional character occurred a bare two months before an event in real time that shook up the real, and the created world— the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Curiously enough, Terry had fans in Japan during the 1930ies, and in deference to American neutrality, Japanese forces were referred to only as “the invaders” up until that point, even though Caniff’s natural sympathies were with the long-suffering Chinese nationals. After Pearl Harbor, all neutralities were off. The character of Pat Ryan shifted off-screen; Mom always said that Caniff had written him into Singapore in early 1942, and the real-life fall of the city put Pat into a corner, while Terry— the kid who had grown up over the last six years of the series— joined the Army Air Corps and took center stage as far as adventure and romance was concerned. Caniff had always done a lot of research for the strip, and with a military angle, he acquired even more. Like a proto-blogger, he took tips, suggestions and corrections, and carefully read what news coverage of the Far East generally was available. One account has it that he was questioned once by the FBI, because a story-line he had concocted for the Terry strip— suggested by a mention in an obscure newspaper story— came altogether too close to an actual classified wartime operation.

The difficulty of doing a proper Terry movie is— aside from the intellectual rights to it all— is the one that would send the PC set screaming in the opposite direction. That is, the fact that some of the major Chinese characters, besides the Dragon Lady herself, would just not past muster today, not without changing them beyond recognition or eliminating them entirely. Big Stoop, the mute and fearless giant might be able to pass muster, but the comic relief, fractured- English-speaking cook and houseboy Connie – oh, dear, how to turn that 1930ies pigs’ ear stereotype into a proper 21st century politically correct silk purse? That would be a challenge to whoever would want to take it on – and seeing how Hollywood is doing with portraying our enemies in this war, I would assume it is one they are not up to accepting.

Pity— Terry and the Pirates would make a very nice movie. I’d pay money and go to it in the theater, which is more than I can say for most of the drek out there, these days.

Why We Fight: New Version

28. September 2005 · Comments Off on Why We Fight: New Version · Categories: General, GWOT, History, Media Matters Not, War

To: Karen Hughes
From: Sgt. Mom
Re: The Modern Version of “Why We Fight”

1. It is a pity that explaining ourselves to the outside world in this current war has to be left to the government, but there you go. You fight the war with what you have, not what you wish you had. Hollywood this time is too incestuously self-involved, too out of touch with everything outside it’s tight little bicoastal enclaves of wealth, ease, and depravity to bother much with the rubes of flyover country – and too afraid, al la Rushdie and van Gogh, to risk a fatwa, a knife in a public street, a car bomb in Morton’s, or a representative from CAIR parked in their outer office. Pity about that— and a pretty sorry showing on the part of those who usually preen themselves on their audacity in “speaking truth to power.” It all depends on the power addressed, I guess.

2. I also gather that Charlotte Beers’ “softly, softly” series of advertisements featuring American Muslims singing the joys of life in the good old US of A went over like the proverbial lead balloon in the Muslim world. Well, if they were anything like the spots that used to air on AFRTS which expanded upon the joys of living in the country we served— well, we were left pretty much rolling our eyes and heading for the latrine, so I can’t see that Ms. Beers whould have been surprised. It’s a tough audience, which requires a tough sell. At this point, it may be necessary to take off the tidy white Madison Avenue gloves, and punch from the gut. Hard.

3. Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” series, from the Second World War might prove to be an instructive guide, editing together our enemies’ propaganda and newsreel film— turning their own words, deeds— and by implication their own hypocrisies against them, giving an audience an unvarnished look at the intentions and actions of our enemies. Skip the pretty pictures of nice American Moslems in their suburban 2-car garage lives; go straight to the point, and turn the video images of the Islamic Jihad, of Al Jazeera, and the Al-Quada websites right back at the Moslem world in every gory, stomach-churning detail.

4. Show the head-choppings, the murders and the executions, with blade and stone and shot to the head— of Moslems and Westerners alike. Show the jihadis blowing up busloads of schoolchildren and murdering election workers. Show them shouting “Allah Akbar!” as they saw the heads off live people, replay their every murder, boast and claim of responsibility- and give the credit for the source of the video. Show the video of Osama chuckling to his guests as he describes how the Towers collapsed. Include the ferocious, hate-filled rants of those bearded, spittle-beflecked Imams – those in the mosques of the West and the East, too; all those who don’t think anyone but their own congregations are listening.

5. Show too, the aftermath of their work— again, giving credit to the TV media of the Moslem world; show the blood, the body parts strewn all over, the wrecked lives of innocents. Show it all, and choke with blood and shame, anyone who still will try and claim that this version of Islam is a religion of peace. Show every instance of Islamic terrorism’s lies, hypocrisy, and bloodshed – especially the blood shed amongst Moslems by their coreligionists…

6. And finally, show us and the Islamic world as a footnote, the remains of dead jihadis, bits and pieces of their gruesome dead bodies, all mixed in with bits of metal from suicide bombs, dead in the dirt like so much garbage, or shot down like a dog by an American sniper. . . Show how clear and inglorious is the modern jihad, shoveled into an unmarked, un-mourned grave. Throw it all back in their faces— credited, and exhaustively footnoted— every ugly boast, word and deed.

7. Considering that most of the nastier stuff has been common video currency in the radical Islamic world, this might accomplish nothing more than a sort of “greatest jihad hits” highlights video – but it might also grab the attention of that so greatly hoped-for moderate Moslem demographic; those that might be greatly horrified about what has been perpetrated in their name and to their alleged benefit. And of course, the mainstream media-consuming American audience might also be enlightened.

8. At least, think about this public affairs outreach option. It’s not like there’s anything worse that hasn’t been done already.

Sincerely
Sgt Mom

OK, Just To Get Some Things Straight

25. September 2005 · Comments Off on OK, Just To Get Some Things Straight · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General

OK, I just took a telephone call from Mr. Tran, in California, whose family was incredibly worried about me, after seeing all the Hurricane Rita coverage and visualizing San Antonio as some sort of suburb of Houston, and spent a couple of hours trying to call me on their cellphone (and not getting any results, which frightened them quite badly)…

I am OK, I am fine, the skies here are hot and blue and cloudless— and we were actually sort of wishing that we would get some fall-out rain at least from Rita— and it is about 400 miles from Houston. San Antonio is stuffed full of evacuees, and the worst that has happened to me was that I had to go to three gas stations yesterday on the way to the radio station to find one that had any gas or anything but the top-grade. Hurricane news has filled the local paper to the exclusion of practically anything else for the last two days.

I have heard from a coworker that Sequin (the town just to the south of us, where the highway contraflow along I-10 ended) was all but a parking lot, with evacuees camping along the side of the highway, and in every available place in town, too tired, exhausted and pissed-off to drive any farther.
At the radio station, they had the room and phone banks we have for pledge drives being used by a community disaster preparedness group soliciting and registering volunteers who wanted to help, routing them to the organization that could use them to best advantage. We were running announcements all day today about the schedule for returnees.

So, I am OK, San Antonio is OK, nothing else of importance to report from here. It’s hot, it’s a Sunday, it’s my day where I don’t have to go anywhere. I’m OK. Wish it would rain, but we can’t have everything.

Byzantine

25. September 2005 · Comments Off on Byzantine · Categories: General, History, Memoir

We bumptious Americans are always being reminded by everyone from Henry James on, that things in Europe are old, historic, and ancient. We are told that some places are piled thick in layers of events, famous people and great art, like some sort of historical sachertorte… and to a student of history, certain places in Europe are exactly that sort of treat. What they hardly ever mention is that most usually, the most ancient bits of it are pretty sadly battered by the time we come trotting around with our Blue Guide, and what there is left is just the merest small remnant of what there once was. The sanctuary at Delphi once was adorned with statues of gold, silver, bronze… and they were the first to be looted and melted down (all but one, the great bronze Charioteer) leaving us with the least and cheapest stone, sadly chipped, battered and scarred. (My daughter at the age of three and a bit, looking at a pair of archaic nudes in the Delphi museum asked loudly “Mommy, why are their wieners all broken off?”) The great Athenian Akropolis itself was half-ruined, many of the blocks of which it was constructed scattered across the hillside like gargantuan marble legos. In Rome, most of the ancient buildings had been stripped long ago of the marble and stone facings, leaving only the battered concrete and tile core to hint at what splendor had once been… and again, only the smallest portion left to us to admire, the smallest, cheapest portion, or that hidden away by chance.

But there was one place, just one place where the last few artistic relics of the classical world looked as fresh, as unmarred as if they had just been installed the day before, in the little provincial town of Ravenna, where the VEV needed a new air hose and some other essential innards, and fortuitously mushed to a halt right in front of the very garage capable of providing it, although the junior mechanic had to rush off on his Vespa to fetch the essential parts from another source. I was driving to Spain from Greece, having taken the car ferry from Patras to Brindisi three weeks before, in a bright orange Volvo sedan with AFG plates and all of my daughters’ and my luggage crammed into the trunk and the back seat.

We had just come from the grand artistic buffet that was Florence, crowded with tourists and tour guides, and touts, enormous motor-coaches everywhere, and everywhere the grasping hand, wanting a substantial payment to see this or that. It was actually a relief to get to Ravenna, which in contrast seemed like a graciously hospitable place, proud in a casual sort of way about the monuments and churches with their splendid late classical mosaics, imbedded into their pretty little town like raisins in a loaf of raisin bread. The Arian Baptistery was, if I remember correctly, down a little side street in back of a large chain drug store. Most of the other places that drew tourists were in similarly modest locations; no crowds, no touts, no being nickeled and lire’d to death. Local residents just seemed enormously pleased that people came all the way to Ravenna to marvel at their lovely, historical chapels and churches, and some smaller sites asked nothing more of the tourists than to feed come coins into a meter that would turn on the spotlights in the Mausoleum of Galla Placida, so we could better admire the mosaics in the ceiling.

There was no need for the meters and lights in the New Church of St. Appollinaire, with it’s splendid procession of saints and martyrs along the nave. Windows allowed the autumn sunlight to spill into the church, and outside when the winds rippled the tree leaves, the whole wall seemed to shimmer, in a blaze of gold and rich colors. Much of the mosaic was made of glass, tiny squares and slips of jewel-colored glass, or clear glass backed with gold-leaf. In San Vitale, Justinian and Theodora looked down from amidst their courtiers, generals, priests and ladies, and in the old sanctuary of St. Appollinaire-in-Classe (Classe, which had once Ravenna’s port on the Adriatic) the Savior was enthroned in a lush green garden, amid a flock of sheep under a golden sky full of angels… all of it as jewel-bright, new, and unchipped by time, as if the artists, and tile-cutters and plasterers had just finished the work last week, not twelve hundred years ago, a last splendid blaze at the end of the Roman Empire in western Europe. For a very brief time, this out of the way little provincial town had been the capital of the Western Roman Empire, the last flickering light of civilization in a darkening world, rent by war and barbarian invasion, and the memory of times when things had been much, much better.

When these mosaics were being installed, the dark ages were already falling, the Legions gone from Britain, the roads and forts and harbors falling derelict without the skill and direction to keep such massive works functioning. There was no one left to see to the waterworks, to protect the essential trade and communication which was the lifeblood of the Empire. Science and literacy were useless luxuries in the face of the brute barbarian tide, and the stifling hand of religious orthodoxy. The remnant of the Empire remained for a little while in the east, in Byzantium which was renamed Constantinople, the city of Constantine, but all it’s battles after that were defensive; static and scholeric looking to the past, to the way things had always been done. There is a sadness and resignation to the mosaics of Ravenna, as if those who were pictured, and those who did the work already knew their world was in twilight, and not much could be done to hold back the night, but it didn’t matter, because the next world would be a better one.

There was no confidence left in their society, no belief in their ability to make things better; all they had was a determination to hold on to what they had, to put off acceptance of the inevitable as long as possible. In the end, Constantinople would fall as well, and the last of the Roman Empire would be gone forever, but the mosaics of Ravenna remain. For now, anyway.

In the Autumn of Butterflies

24. September 2005 · Comments Off on In the Autumn of Butterflies · Categories: Domestic, General

We are in that part of summer in South Texas where we are waiting, desperately hoping, paying for that blessed day, when the heat of summer breaks into a thousand shards, and the daily high shifts into the mid eighties… and, oh blessed relief… the nightly low is in the sixties. All during the sweltering summer, we pray for this day, look for it like the starving look for sustenance, that wonderful, blissful day when we can turn off the air conditioner, and open all the windows to a temperate breeze, that day when it is possible to spend more than twenty minutes out of doors— never mind whether we are doing any more heavy labor than waiting at one of Texas’s interminable traffic lights— without being drenched thoroughly in sweat. (When I run in the mornings, at the end of an hour and half, my running things are as sopping-wet as if I had stood under a shower. Hard-core runner that I am, I sometimes DO run in a shower, a shower of rain.) Alas, we are balked of our cool weather yet once again, as we are outside the range of rainfall from the current hurricane; the skies are still blue, and the clouds in them are thin, mackerel-patterned patches, interspersed with the kind that looks like wisps of fiberglass, teased out with a comb.

But the continued hot, fair weather is good for one thing… it is good for the butterflies. My neighbors and I have never seen so many, so many kinds, as we have these last few weeks. Suddenly, it seemed that everywhere we looked, bright little scraps of lemon-yellow, black and yellow, and orange stripes erratically orbited certain bushes and trees. This morning, Parfait, (the white and brindle cat who lives somewhere up the road) seemed to be teased by a butterfly who hovered just beyond reach. He made a couple of fruitless leaps into the air, then gave it up as a hopeless case and sat down to wash himself. Fragile, slow-flying, aimless; none the less, something looks after butterflies.

I have been gratified by the sight of them all, because last year I went to a great deal of trouble in digging out an extended flower planting along the back fence, and planting in it things guaranteed to attract butterflies and humming birds: fire-bush, and esperanza, and dark purple duranta. A couple of seasons ago I planted an almond verbena bush away back to fill up the corner, and now everything is grown up to the height of the fence, and blooming generously. The almond verbena has tiny clusters of nearly invisible white flowers at the end of all the new-growth branches, but they fill my garden with a lovely scent, and the bees find it irresistible. The duranta has purple and white flowers shaped like tiny orchids, but in clusters like a lilac, and the esperanza bears larger, bell-shaped yellow-orange blossoms.

Esperanza looks delicate, but it’s as tough as nails; TxDot plants them all along the highways around here, and hummingbirds love them. From the kitchen window I have spotted one methodically orbiting the esperanza, several times in the last week. Success on the humming-bird attraction front at last. I used to put out a feeder, without any particular result except having the sugar solution in it go bad. The experts say it is better to plant the flowers they like, rather than have the hummingbirds grow dependent on a feeder. Also, what happens is that one particular hummingbird will take over the feeder as his particular territory, and lurk around driving all the others away. We used to be amused by this; the bully hummingbird squeaking like a rusty hinge, and zipping through the air like an enraged winged lawn-dart, all that concentrated fury in one tiny bird. I haven’t seen this happening in my yard— everyone shares and shares alike; the bees and the hummingbird, the butterflies on the shrubs, and the tiny wrens, mockingbirds, and the native doves at the feeder.

Consider the lilies of the field… they provide for themselves, and give us to much quiet happiness in contemplating them, while we wait for the cooler weather.

Walking in the Forest of Stone

20. September 2005 · Comments Off on Walking in the Forest of Stone · Categories: General, History, Memoir

The ancient building at the heart of Cordova’s old quarter breathed quiet, and the cool dimness of an old-growth forest, that kind of forest where the straight trunks of ancient trees spring from the leaf-mast, moss or bracken fronds at their feet. There is no intermediate brush, no smaller trees clogging the sightlines between the tree trunks, which go on forever in every direction. Shafts of sunshine sometimes find a break in the green canopy overhead, and in the morning, wisps of fog tangle around the tree-trunks like tatters of silk scarf. There was no early morning fog here, no bracken or grass at our feet, only the ancient floor paving, undulating slightly with twelve hundred years of wear and settlement.

My daughter and I blinked, coming in from the dazzle outside— pillared groves of orange trees in the courtyard outside, under a brilliant blue sky, magenta bougainvillea flaming against whitewash and the rose-honey color of weathered terracotta tiles.

Blondie in the Court of the Oranges, Cordova 1990

(Blondie, in the Court of the Oranges, Cordova, 1990. That is the roof of the cathedral, over the roof of the mosque)

It was like a forest, a forest of stone columns in every direction, a forest of columns holding up an endless series of horseshoe arches striped in rust and cream-color, a maze without walls that went on and on, and on… at least until one got to the ungainly cathedral plunked into the very center of it, like a horsefly imbedded in a perfect piece of amber. The monarch who had bidden it to be built was said to have chided the architects afterwards, saying “You have built here what can be built anywhere else, but you have destroyed what was unique in the world.”

The great mosque of Cordova had this in common with other venerable ecclesiastical structures— so large as to be able to absorb great numbers of people, yet still seem hushed, near to empty, as if to raise a loud voice; to make any sort of noise would be a sacrilege. It was holy, beautiful, and alien… the high-water mark of Moorish Spain, the third largest mosque in the world. It was built in the 8th century, when Cordova was probably the most urbane, cultured and tolerant city in Western Europe, all the markings of high civilization as we know it… although given the standard of sanitation, literacy and religious toleration prevalent elsewhere in Europe, not a hard mark to surpass. The Cordova Caliphate disintegrated into warring mini-states, and the Reconquista painfully and over six centuries clawed back every kingdom, city, and acre. The Moors vanished from Spain like mist in the morning, leaving their marvelous palaces, mosques and cities behind, adorned with jeweled tiles, intricate plasterwork, and cool water fountains; such marvelous buildings that set the architectural tone of Spain and by extension, the Spanish Colonial and Beaux-Arts buildings run up by the homesick or nostalgic in the Southwestern United States.

Plaster walls, colonnades overgrown with brilliant bougainvillea, horseshoe arches, and geometric tile, terracotta tiles and orange trees, distilled over centuries into something worn and familiar, something I know as well as the street I live on… but at the core of it, that alien, hostile something, the niggling worm of militant Islam. They would have Al-Andalus back, and rip out that silly, ill-considered cathedral, take back all that was lost. And more. Or so they say, if you take them at their word.

Memo: To the Media, Re Katrina

19. September 2005 · Comments Off on Memo: To the Media, Re Katrina · Categories: General, Home Front, Media Matters Not, Rant

To: Major Media—TV Division
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Katrina Koverage

I honestly wonder why I even bother with NPR any more, the odor of sour sanctimony emanating from such as Diane Rehm and Daniel Schorr is enough to make me gag, most days, but I can avoid the one, and yell through my radio at the other that he is a senile old idiot stuck in his Watergate glory days. Oh, yeah, now I remember: the alternatives are worse. Morning Edition and All Things Considered and the rest of the news programs do make an attempt to cover the news in depth, to examine the genuinely quirky and offbeat, to have sound-bites that are actually longer than 20 seconds, and on occasion to use words that contain three syllables. Also they gave a miss to covering the saga of the runaway bride, the missing student in Aruba, the trial of whatsisfern who murdered his pregnant wife, and other such sensational fare— for which I am profoundly grateful. (They found one, didn’t find the other, and convicted the third, just in case there is anyone else who cares.) Besides, it’s not good to live in an echo chamber, as far as news is concerned: I figure since I listen to NPR, I can give a miss to DU and the Kos Kiddies. (And I still think that would be a great name for a garage band.)

It actually wasn’t a guest interviewee on one of the news programs that set off this week’s Sgt. Mom rant, it was a guest on “Whadda Ya Know”, a sort of comic quiz and variety program, which is Prairie Home Companion’s poorer cousin. This week, the show was broadcast from Cleveland Ohio, and the first interviewed guest was one Connie Schultz, a Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist from the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I’d never heard of her, but then I’d never heard of James Lileks, either, before I took up blogging. She came off rather charming at first, with a good radio presence, and nice voice… but then she started talking about news coverage of Katrina, gloated over the horrible plight of those told to take refuge in the New Orleans Superdome and the Convention Center, noted even that the Fox news reporters came unglued over the horrible conditions there, and dumped responsibility for it all onto FEMA. She wound up with a note of pious self-satisfaction by noting that the news media had got their soul back, with the Katrina coverage. Never a mention of course, of the drowned school busses, the evacuation plan that was never followed, or the stunning contrast between the actions of local authorities in New Orleans, and those in Mississippi and Alabama. Of course not— it’s all Bush’s fault.

I hope that beautiful thought gives her some satisfaction— she apparently specializes in writing about the downtrodden and disenfranchised— but, no, I don’t think the news media has got their soul back. Maybe some of the print journalists have, with stories that go back and look at some of the existing issues and events that weren’t rushed in front of the cameras (like this, or this, or this *)but the majority of TV “journalists” have their souls right where they always were… that is, whoring after the bloody, the immediate dramatic image, the simplistic, the sheer drama of a large number of people descending straight into the lord of the flies mode, right in front of the camera. “Look at what Bush made us do!!!!!”, but never a word about the logistical challenges of getting effective help into a large area, when the infrastructure is wrecked, never a word about the absolutely stunning failure of the local and state government to even begin to live up to their commitments to local citizens, never even a bit of healthy skepticism about some of the more audacious claims of riot, rape and murder… Well, really, as commanding officers doing condolence letters were supposed to have written about personnel who managed to get themselves killed in unusually stupid ways, “They behaved in the manner which we had come to expect of them”.

There is a story, about a gossip who regretted spreading a story, and went to the local rabbi, who told her a parable about opening a feather pillow into the wind… and then trying to collect all the scattered feathers. Our TV news-people scatter the feathers, unthinkingly into the wind, and then try to justify their inability to collect them… and wonder why no one respects them any more. Perhaps Ms. Schultz will figure that out, but don’t ask me to hold my breath while she does.

Sincerely,
Sgt Mom

(* Sorry, can’t work out a link for this one that circumvents their registry. It’s the story that Instapundit linked late last week about Louisiana FEMA personnel being under investigation for misusing funds)

The Ongoing Quest for Gainful Employment #5

16. September 2005 · Comments Off on The Ongoing Quest for Gainful Employment #5 · Categories: General, Home Front, Working In A Salt Mine...

The goal, that shimmering Holy Grail of regular, well-paid and gainful employment still tantalizes, and is, alas, as elusive as ever, although I have to say at least I have been smarter than Barbara Ehrenreich, and have not been so foolish as to actually pay anyone to coach or workshop me into it. I have been temping, for much of last month, courtesy of a major national temp agency. That would be the legitimate sort of agency, which screens, tests, and guarantees a degree of proficiency in the employees they supply on short notice to employers who don’t want to bother with doing all that themselves.

I enjoyed the last assignment enormously (all but the commute to the job site which was brutal!), practiced some useful skills, and made myself indispensable for three weeks— just long enough to not get bored. One of the other agencies had a follow-on assignment that was supposed to start today, working at the front desk of the corporate HQ for one of our local business magnates for a month or six weeks, but they wanted to have a quick meeting with me first, or so said the agency rep; “They love your resume,” they said, “They just want to meet you first.” Well, I’m OK with that— make sure I am not a bag lady, or have two heads, or whatever— very important to make that good first impression, when a client walks in the door. I arranged to meet them on Monday, expecting to begin training with the person I’ll be replacing on Friday.

You know the old joke about how to tell if you are working class, middle-class or rich? If your name is on your shirt, you’re working class. If it’s on your desk, middle-class. When you’re rich, your name is on the building. This guys name was on the building. I was impressed, so I hid the VEV in the very darkest spot in the visitor section of the parking garage.
Unfortunately, what I thought was just a pre-employment meeting turned out to be a regular job-type-interview, which kind of takes away the advantage of working with a temp agency, you’d think… that, and the fact they hired someone else and took until Thursday morning to inform the agency. And that meant three days that I didn’t use to pursue other openings… and jobs I may have missed out on. Agencies usually make it very, very clear when you are interviewing for a prospective position, and when you are assigned to show up and start to work for three weeks, four weeks or whatever. Annoyed, am I? Yes, slightly.

I am interviewing at two more agencies early next week, and being processed by a third one to work at another huge corporate establishment, so we’ll see what comes up first. Being on the books of five different agencies ought to guarantee a lock on anything interesting available in the administrative assistant/executive secretary line, one would think. Maybe I should loan Barbara Ehrenreich my resume.

I’m tired of being around the house, and running out of projects to do; I’ve already painted the kitchen cabinets and put in new shelf-paper. Blondie says I should clear out the garage, but a third of the stuff in there is hers, for her prospective student apartment. It’s still too hot to work in the garden, and nothing on tap to date from Joe’s editor friend is anything I am qualified to write about. So I sit at the computer and send my resume whirling out into cyberspace, hoping that somewhere out there is something worth putting on my whole interview drag for. In the long run, we are all temping— just some of them are longer assignments than others.

Crescent City Requiem, #8

15. September 2005 · Comments Off on Crescent City Requiem, #8 · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General

Post Office, New Orleans 1920ies

Although I have still a couple of 192oies New Orleans postcards in my collection, this is the last of them I shall post. The “Big Easy” will live and perhaps prosper: residents and workers are being allowed to return this weekend (according to NPR), the good times will roll, and the party will continue.

All these assurances have a kind of hollow sound to them, though. Many of the evacuees interviewed in the local San Antonio paper are seeking jobs, looking for housing, and putting their children in local schools— no less a person than Mayor Nagin has already done two of those three (albeit in Dallas), and one does wonder if he will be eventually looking for another job, given his performance on national TV over the last three weeks.

Katrina may yet change the political face of New Orleans, given that many of it’s citizens have discovered first hand that the outside world is not so bigoted, flamingly incompetant or politically corrupt as they had assumed it to be, given their experience of living in America’s own Third World city.

Hurricane Ophelia: Cherry Point Update

14. September 2005 · Comments Off on Hurricane Ophelia: Cherry Point Update · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front

Just spoke to Cpl. Blondie, at 5 PM CST: she says the rain has been coming down slantways, first from one direction, then the other. The winds are at about 80 MPH, and the eye of the hurricane is expected to pass over Cherry Point at about 10 PM EST, tonight. It’s not too bad now; everyone has been sent to their quarters and told to stay under cover tonight. She is going to stay with a friend of hers in the married housing area.

She was on the list to deploy to the Gulf Coast for Katrina recovery, but tells me that the Marines who were sent there earlier, have already come back— their job is done!

Sic Transit Scriveners’

14. September 2005 · Comments Off on Sic Transit Scriveners’ · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Local

I drove the 410 this weekend, for the first time in a couple of weeks, and noticed that at 410 and Broadway, there was a bulldozer, busily scraping away in what was left of one of North-side San Antonio’s retail landmarks. What was physically left of Scriveners’ made heartbreakingly small piles, but then it was never all that large a building to begin with, or distinguished, architecturally speaking. It was one of those places which just grew, organically, bumping out a wing here, an ell there as necessary, incoherently sprouting departments to no particular plan. The gourmet chocolates abutted the garden supplies and the kitchenware, and ran straight into the hardware department. Describing Scriveners’ as a “department” store is kind of like describing “Star Trek” as an old TV show… while technically accurate, it doesn’t even begin to do justice to the reality.

It started as a hardware store, just after World War II: a local GI returning from the service teamed up with two of his buddies, and opened the establishment when the location was the other end of nowhere, adjacent to nothing but the airport, the intersection of 410 and Broadway being respectively, a two-lane roadway and an unpaved lane. Last week one of the assistants at my own local hardware establishment pointed out that independent hardware and department stores in small towns have a tendency— if they pay attention to what their customers ask for—to stock all sorts of oddments, because there is really no other place to buy them. The original founder of Scriveners’ must have had the same philosophy, because he bought out his partners and began paying attention to the suggestions of his sales’ staff.

I was told (or read in the local paper) that they branched out to patio furniture, and tiki torches and barbeques, and paper plates and picnic things in the early 1950ies— all those necessary accoutrements of post-war baby-boomer suburbia. Suggestions to stock this, that or the other inevitably resulted in another addition to an already rambling structure— I don’t think there was a consistent ceiling or floor level throughout the place— and another department: Stationary, gourmet foods, embroidered baby and children’s clothes. A wonderful fabric and notions department, with imported laces and silk ribbon. Kitchenware, fine china and crystal, collectables. Designer accessories, jewelry and handbags, Christmas ornaments, wind-chimes, bird-feeders, and ornamental brass fireplace accessories, and a tea-room that served dainty lunch dishes straight out of the 1950ies. Every menu item came with a little cup of consommé, and for the first course, the waitress came around with a tray of fresh-baked sticky buns, which were legendary in San Antonio, baked by a little elderly lady who came up on the bus from the South Side for years, to bake them specially.

For decades haute San Antonio registered at Scriveners’, bought their wedding-dress fabrics there, bought baby-clothes and barbeques. All of this, and still there was the hardware store; the gentle joke being that women could drop off their husbands in the hardware section, and shop for hours, undisturbed.

I came there mostly for the fabrics— lovely, quality stuff that I could barely afford, but the sales staff in the fabric and notions section knew me quite well as a discriminating customer, if not as rich as some of the other regulars, and one of the very few with the skill to tackle Vintage Vogue, and the very difficult Vogue Designer patterns. They always had wool suitings, and silk— there was no other place in town that stocked silk—and the sales table was always worth a look-see. I did Blondie’s high school graduation dress from Scriveners’, and an elaborate wedding dress for a co-worker, and any number of things for myself. There are just not many other places in San Antonio, or anywhere else, where you could walk out with a spool of thread, an envelope of black cut-glass buttons from Czechoslovakia, a cookie press, a bag of bird-seed and a three-way light-fixture fitting.

Scriveners’ eccentric old-fashioned charm carried it into the 21st century, but some of the original owners’ business principles— as admirable as they were for the employees— probably lost it business to competition, competition that grew and flourished in the decades after Broadway outside-the-loop was paved, and 410 became a ring-road, circling the metropolis. It closed evenings at 5:30, and did not open on Sundays; I am sure this would have cost them. These days, even clientele of up-scale retail establishments have Monday-to Friday jobs.

A couple of years ago, the founder of it all finally retired and Scriveners’ was bought by Berings— a store in Houston which was pretty much the same kind of place, or so they said. They promised that nothing much would change, save the name which appeared on chic new green awnings, all the way around the old, rambling building. But they closed the fabric section, and remodeled the inside to accommodate more china and upscale housewares; I considered that a shrine had been desecrated by barbarians, but still patronized the hardware store, and the kitchenware department, but in April everything was marked down, and the notices went up. Everything was cleared out in short order, by generations of customers in deep mourning. One of the hardware managers told me sorrowfully, they could not find a building large enough in the ’09 neighborhood where they wanted to relocate— where their customer base was— and the real-estate at the corner of 410 and Broadway was just too valuable in the present market.

The building sat empty for a couple of months, the brave new green awnings unfaded, but the bulldozers have come and gone— I expect the site to be entirely empty, the next time I drive by. If they build something tacky like a McDonalds on it, I shall be really, really annoyed. All unknowing, they are desecrating a shrine, and pouring concrete on the place where one of San Antonio’s memorable establishments once stood.

Someday Soon….

12. September 2005 · Comments Off on Someday Soon…. · Categories: Domestic, General, Memoir

There’s a young man that I know
His age is twenty-one
Comes from down in southern Colorado
Just out of the service
And he’s lookin’ for his fun
Someday soon
Goin’ with him, someday soon

My parents can not stand him
‘Cause he rides the rodeo
My father says that he will leave me cryin’
I would follow him right down
The toughest road I know
Someday soon
Goin’ with him, someday soon

And when he comes to call
My Pa ain’t got a good word to say
Guess it’s ’cause he’s just as wild
In the younger days

So blow, you old Blue Northern
Blow my love to me
He’s drivin’ in tonight from California
He loves his damned old rodeo
As much as he loves me
Someday soon
Goin’ with him, someday soon…

I hadn’t heard that old Judy Collins song in years, but it popped up last weekend on a Public Radio variety program I was listening too, and put me in a melancholy mood, because it brought this guy to mind.

Ted

Someday soon never came, and he apparently loved the damned old rodeo more than me, and every once in a while—- like last weekend— I do wonder what it would have been like, if it had worked out.

And then I remember that he went back to live with his parents, so I may have been luckier that I thought at the time.

Crescent City Requiem, #7

12. September 2005 · Comments Off on Crescent City Requiem, #7 · Categories: Domestic, General, History

Cabildo, New Orleans, 1920ies

Another antique postcard of Old New Orleans— this is the old prison courtyard. The wry comment about Louisiana is that it’s half under water and half under indictment. In the old days, this is where the half under indictment in New Orleans would have been held.

Reporters and historians may disagree over wether it was more or less comfortable than the Superdome.

Anniversary Meditation: Oceana, Eurasia

11. September 2005 · Comments Off on Anniversary Meditation: Oceana, Eurasia · Categories: General, GWOT, History

So the anniversary rolls around again, fainter yet and fainter as we put distance between ourselves, and a brilliant September day. A work-day then, a Sunday now, but still the great crack across our world-view, our basic assumptions, and for the families of some 3,000 a great jagged break in their lives. People set off for work, or to Disneyland, or headed home… grabbing a last cup of coffee, stuffing things into briefcases, focused on a day of travel, or at their desk, teleconferencing, checking out a suspected gas leak in the street, or pretending to pay attention to a cabin attendant going through the required safety brief. They were setting appointments, eating breakfast at their desk on the 102nd floor… and then the day stopped being ordinary, and everyone remembers where they were, and what they were doing.

Of course, some of us caught on faster than others; at mid-afternoon on the 11th, I was gently trying to explain to my employer why no one wanted to take calls, or come into the office to talk about their invention, that this whole planes-crashing-into-the-WTC-and-Pentagon thing was huge, unimaginably huge, and the repercussions would be enormous, and unforeseeable. (One of them being eventually the death of the enterprise I was employed by, but that is another story.) The planes being grounded— that’s what brought it home to him. The office in the Mercantile building had a gorgeous, unobstructed of downtown San Antonio, and the final flight-path of airliners coming in for a landing at the airport, sliding past our windows like beads on a string every few minutes… and then the sky was empty, and things were never quite the same again.

Reactions to 9/11 varied according to an infinite number of variables; how close to New York or the Pentagon, how connected to financial markets, or the media, or emergency services, or what kind of interest one had in politics, history, military, current events… but not always predictably. A fair number of people who had always been comfortably settled somewhere along the liberal segment along the range of political thought suddenly discovered their inner Jacksonian, moving abruptly and sometimes painfully into the conservative segment. Others, including many public intellectuals, moved farther along the range, and not a few toppled off the edge entirely… either that, or the spectrum itself lurched in the Jacksonian direction, leaving some like Lewis Lapham and Gore Vidal hanging from their fingertips and bleating about their own relevancy. And a clown like Ward Churchill could, thanks to weblogs and the internet, suddenly become all the more visible, and considerably less amusing to a national audience. The main-line news sources; newspapers, television, radio— they all have been stirred up, shaken out, questioned and dissected mercilessly by bloggers over the last four years, and in a couple of cases, actually driven to cover stories that ordinarily would have been passed over as irrelevant.

But it has been four years since that Tuesday morning. Children who were babies on that day are starting kindergarten this month. Children who were in the first or second grade that day, barely aware of anything more complicated than the alphabet, are on the verge of being teenagers in a world where the towers have never been, save in movies and history lessons. The reality of them, the solidity of steel and concrete fades and dissipates like smoke, shock and grief overlaid with time and the business of living in the world day to day. It is just something that has always been, and will go on for the forseeable future.

Indeed, the edges of my own memories are now blurred around the edges: in the last four years, my daughter deployed to the Middle East twice, my parents’ house burned to the ground, I have repainted and rehabbed my own kitchen, and gone to other employment , and taken over management of this weblog. We have gone through a bruising presidential election and a war on two fronts, we continue to face the threat of terrorism by international Islamic radical elements, and a slew of rotten Hollywood movies based on comic books and old TV shows. We have seen revolution in Lebanon, a tsunami in Thailand and Indonesia, terrorism in Bali, Beslan and London… and a hurricane wrecking one of our major cities and a swath of coastal lowlands the size of most European countries. Yes, the world does move on…

But today, we remember.

Crescent City Requiem #6

10. September 2005 · Comments Off on Crescent City Requiem #6 · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front

Courtyard in the Little Theater, Nrw Orleans

Another antique postcard from my collection, a vision from the past, of what people wanted to see in old New Orleans.

(Last night I was talking to Mom about FEMA, and disaster relief… since she had Dad had been on the recieving end of a national disaster when the Valley Center fire took their house nearly two years ago, they have had some experience of coming away from the disaster zone in just the clothes they stood up in. Mom said it did take FEMA and the Red Cross about a week to get everything really effeciently set up, and processing all the people who had lost homes to the fire. And she and Dad had sufficient resources, and good friends close by (and some who were from farther away, some who only knew them through this blog!) who were quite marvellous with help, they were not entirely dependent whatever official help was offered. But, there were some local community charity drives that got up to speed in the first few days, who made direct cash grants to people who had lost houses— not very much, really, a hundred dollars or so here, fifty there. Mom said it was enormously touching, because it came right away, without strings, or having to fill out complicated claims. Those little cash grants beat out the first of the insurance claim payments by weeks, and let them feel that, yes, they could bounce back from the loss of the house and practically everything in it.
The new house is nearly finished, by the way— just another inspection or two, and they will be offically moving in from the RV.)

Memo: Katrina, Deep Water, and Invincible Ignorance

07. September 2005 · Comments Off on Memo: Katrina, Deep Water, and Invincible Ignorance · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Home Front

To: Various
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Aftermath
The decent thing— which I would really prefer to do— would be to wait to criticize various responses to the hurricane disaster until the dust has settled, the water drained, and every hurricane evacuee neatly tucked up in freshly-washed sheets in a pleasant and semi-private temporary refuge, while the recovery and rebuilding proceeds apace – but what the hell, I have been practically deafened by the chorus of bickering, blaming and second-guessing. I may as well join in and chew a number of good juicy hunks off those who have managed to annoy me the most.
1. To our foreign (mostly European) friends— please understand that this was an enormous disaster. The area most damaged is about the size of entire independent nations, and we have never had a major city so thoroughly trashed: Chicago lost about a third in the great fire, and Galveston was on the far fringes in the hurricane of 1900. Really, only the San Francisco earthquake and fire comes anywhere close. So, the first few federal resources to make the scene were pretty overwhelmed, and spread about as thin as a pat of butter on an acre of toast. And keep in mind that anyone going into the devastated area has to come a fair distance. You can drive on the interstate at a good clip for three days straight, and still only cross two or three states.
2. To the panjandrums of the major media (but I am looking straight at NPR’s croaker-in-chief, Robert Schorr)— please repeat this mantra to yourself: local, state, federal. Again: Local, State, Federal. (I can’t hear you!!! ) That is the order in which civic authority has responsibility for responding to a disaster. Write it on a body part with a Sharpie, if you have trouble remembering.
3. This goes to Sen. Nancy Pelosi, also.
4. Also keep in mind, oh media geniuses, that the Mississippi/Alabama coast was body-slammed directly by the hurricane, and the smaller coastal cities look from the air as if they were nuked. Try and wrap your searching intellects around this: with a similar racial and socio-economic makeup, they managed to not go all lord-of-the-flies on national television. Their communities held, their municipal and state authorities apparently did their jobs, and their police forces refrained from looting retail establishments. From the reports I have seen or heard they are clearing away rubble, banding together against looters and loss, and generally behaving like responsible citizens. Please amuse me by coming up with a rationale for this that does not mention FEMA, the Bush administration or institutional racism – or condescension to the blue-collar working classes.
5. Governor Blanco: you are not being paid to cry on television. You are also not being paid to be vapid, indecisive, and flutter around like a Barbara Cartland heroine, waiting for the big strong, studly hero to rescue you. This is the sort of woman I have always fought down a desire to slap silly. I’d do it in your case, but fear I would have to get at the end of a long line. Thanks for being the sort of woman that male chauvinists always insisted that a women in so-called authority would be. God, please butch up before you embarrass us any further.
6. To the “Reverend” Jesse Jackson; please make yourself useful. Sit down with Mayor Nagin and review New Orleans’ disaster preparedness plan with him. Please pay special attention to the bits about stocking emergency shelters with food, and water, evacuating the sick and elderly, and the use of publicly owned transport to do so. Also, pay special attention to the bit about how long it will take the federal authorities to arrive in force.
7. To “Hizzonor” Mayor Nagin; I’d be laughing at your impromptu performance of the old Coasters’ hit “Along Came Jones”, if your crisis-management skills hadn’t worked out on so many embarrassingly inept— and probably fatal levels. I haven’t seen such appalling news footage since – well, the last humanitarian disaster in a less-than-third-world country. Obviously, you are doing the “Sweet Sue” (Oh, hep me, hep me! He’s tying me up again!) whilst General Honore plays the part of the stalwart rescuer . (See note 4, above.) Frankly, I hope most of your constituents relocate permanently in cities where a simple desire to have a stable job, an adequate housing situation, a police force that can be distinguished from the local gang-bangers, and crisis managers who can actually manage a crisis may actually be indulged. You might be able to win re-election to mayoral office after this. But I cannot imagine where, or by what turn of machine politics.
8. So many idiots, so little bandwidth.
Sincerely
Sgt Mom
PS As always, those are not “scare” quote marks— they are “viciously skeptical” quote marks.

Crescent City Requiem #5

06. September 2005 · Comments Off on Crescent City Requiem #5 · Categories: Domestic, General, History

Iron-work in Royal Street, 1920ies

The city that once was, and may yet be again… at least the old-timers had the sense to build on the highest bit of low ground around.

(I feel a rightous rant coming on, in addition to a strong desire to slap Governor Blanco silly— sweetie, it’s not in your job description to cry in front of the cameras, leave that to the newly named Miss America, m’kay?
Strong women in high office, and positions of responsibility do not cry in public. Ever. It’s just not done. Butch up, and carry on.)

Crescent City Requiem #4

04. September 2005 · Comments Off on Crescent City Requiem #4 · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front

Old St. Louis Cemetary, 1920ies

From my collection of antique postcards…

(This is where the careers of some local politicans in the “Big Easy” may very well wind up… however hard they are trying to shift it off onto practically anyone else.)

With Cat

04. September 2005 · Comments Off on With Cat · Categories: Domestic, General

I truly believe that our pets choose us, rather than the other way around. Sometimes we are chosen because that particular dog or cat is a crafty sort, detecting the presence of a “soft touch”, those of us who have “incredible sucker for our dumb chums” writ in invisible letters across our foreheads. We are singled out of a pack of humans as an acceptably reliable source of kibble, shelter and affection which any dog or cat considers its’ rightful due. They decide “Well, that one will do very nicely”, and move in.

But at least as often, it is an instant, passionate affection, motivating an animal to attach itself to our household or person, and that is what has happened to Cpl. Blondie and the white cat, Sammy From Across The Road. Sammy is actually not exactly white, more of an ivory color with faintly orangish points and watery, severely crossed blue eyes. He looks as if he were a white cat washed with insufficient bleach, or an orange cat washed with entirely too much. He was found as a tiny kitten a couple of years ago, by the neighbor in the rental house across the street, and bottle-fed. By curious coincidence it was the previous tenants of that very house whose un-neutered and bounteously fertile queen provided me with Henry VIII, Morgie, Little Arthur, and the sadly deceased Bad Nimue-cat. These neighbors are just as soft about animals; besides Sammy and one or two other cats, they also gave house-room to a pack of half a dozen or eight yappy, excitable teacup Chihuahuas— all them merged together would barely make a fraction of a proper sized dog, although they would produce enough noise for a good many of them.

This was not a situation that any self-respecting cat could tolerate for long, so Sammy soon began hanging out in the Garden of Cats, a peaceful, gentlemanly retreat for a peaceful, gentlemanly sort of cat, who only wished to snooze on sun-warmed stones and watch the birds at the feeder, without being pestered by a pack of yappy, noisy, teasing little rat-dogs. Sammy and the senior clubman, Bubbah From Down The Road exchanged the usual cat-rudenesses (hissing and spitting) until I bought another cat dish, so they didn’t have to share. They got along, rather grumpily, after that, taking very little notice of the junior member, Parfait, who waits patiently until his bettors are finished, until Cpl. Blondie was home for Christmas. And Sammy fell hopelessly, haplessly, deeply in love, much to his owners’ surprise.

“He isn’t really all that good with people, usually, “ they said in baffled surprise, but his adoration was open and demonstrative. He was constantly twining around her ankles, or curled in her lap, purring and blinking his bleary blue eyes at her in rapt adoration. After she went back to Cherry Point, he returned loyally every day for a week or so, and then he didn’t show up at all… and my neighbor Judy told me he had been struck by a car while crossing the road, struck a glancing but not fatal blow. I hated to tell my daughter this, and Judy and I sincerely hoped that after this, his owners would keep him inside for his own safety. Alas, they did not: when Sammy ventured into his old haunts in my garden again, he was thinner, and held one front leg close up against his body, the paw curled uselessly, but hopping easily on three legs nonetheless. He flopped down onto a sunny patch of the stone path, purring with as much enthusiasm and affection as ever. I did take this up with his owners— they said he yowled and clawed at the door so much, they had to let him out. Well, were I stuck in the house with all those little dogs, I think I’d be yowling and clawing at the door myself… but still. Judy and I worried, nonetheless.

A couple of weeks ago there was a for-sale sign on the front lawn of the house across the road— Sammy’s owners were moving to another house in the neighborhood, lock, stock barrel and yappy little dogs. But Cpl. Blondie asked; would they take Sammy? Perhaps they would just leave him to us— would I ask, at least?
They didn’t want to at first, but Sammy made his preference quite plain. He was missing for three days, they said indignantly, the three days where they were moving to the new house, and I said,
“He was over at my house that whole time. If you ever can’t find him, look in my yard first.”

The husband didn’t care all too much; he was agreeable to leaving Sammy where Sammy obviously wanted to be. The wife, though— she was in two minds. She came to the house to get him, the day after they were in their new place, three blocks away, trailing two of the little dogs on leashes. She sent a neighbor boy to ring the bell and ask for Sammy. I carried him around from the back, and made one last plea.
“He’s so fond of the garden, and my daughter loves him— if you take him away to the new house, I’m afraid he’ll be killed trying to get back, unless you keep him in the house all the time.” And I promised that Blondie would always take care of him, and she relented— the dogs were yipping without pause, and it was late in the day. I carried Sammy back, and closed the gate on the outside—so full of dogs and noise and busy streets, and put him down, safe in the quiet garden that he loves so much.
Blondie, sweetie, you are “with cat”… and he’s waiting for you, in the garden.

(Note: Actually, after a through check-out by the vet, he is in the house now. He sleeps in the foot of her bed, and doesn’t have all that much to do with the other cats. They are curious, but fairly polite. The veterinarian thinks he must have some Siamese ancestry— the crossed blue eyes and the raucous yowl are very, very Siamese. So, five cats… but I hold to my self-respect by insisting that only four are mine— Sammy is my daughters’, and when she has her own place, Sammy will go with her. I think he is adjusting to the indoors thing; he would like to go out… but he is not insisting on it very strongly at all)

Crescent City Requiem #3

02. September 2005 · Comments Off on Crescent City Requiem #3 · Categories: Domestic, General, History

Bonaparte House

Another from my collection of antique postcards… an image of the city that was, the city of memories, of the good times rolling.

It may yet be again.

(The concerted rescue effort is rolling into town this afternoon. Four days, people. We cannot collapse the space-time continuum— it will always take about four days, as much as everyone wishes otherwise.)

Later: Additional for Mayor Nagin— what about the busses, then?!!

You Deserve a Break, Today

01. September 2005 · Comments Off on You Deserve a Break, Today · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Home Front

From all Katrina, all the time…

It’s official… I have spotted the first holiday catalogue of the season. It was in my mailbox this afternoon.
September 1… and three months and 25 days of shopping left until Christmas, courtesy of this fine establishment.
(Of course, I can’t afford any of the stuff I want until I land the well-paid executive assistant job… but I can dream can’t I?)

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