The Tiny Publishing Bidness @ Half a Year In

02. June 2014 · Comments Off on The Tiny Publishing Bidness @ Half a Year In · Categories: Domestic, Literary Good Stuff, Local, Veteran's Affairs, World

It actually hasn’t been exactly half a year since I bought out the founder of the company, contract signed and witnessed and the major down-payment made, but it has been about six months since she – her favorite niece and executor rather forcefully backing her up – suggested that the time had definitely arrived for me to step up and formally and officially buy her out, website, client files, and all. Alice had always intended that I would take over, eventually. We were both cranky and independent spirits, and tired of working for other people or enterprises. Since I had been carrying just about everything to do with the firm for more than a year at that point, I didn’t have any argument. A nice chunk of the savings that I had from sale of the California property went to buy the Bidness – which we are pretty certain will be earned back – I have three projects working at present, two of them with repeat projects … plus a number of other repeat clients who may come up with re-orders at random intervals. The Bidness is a going concern, with nice local word-of-mouth among authors who would prefer to go independent, and a some profitable repeat clients.

Alice, who founded the company some three decades since, had spent some weeks in the hospital last year, eventually being diagnosed with cancer in the upper lobe of one lung, and being successfully operated on for it … but alas, it seemed that it had begun to spread, insidiously. She tried out chemo, lasted two rounds and then essentially said, “Sc**w that and the horse it rode in on.” They had given her six months with chemo, which made her miserable and even sicker… but even with giving up chemo and feeling temporarily much better, she was not up to much. Her insurance plan paid for home hospice care (not for nothing had she worked in the days when she worked for other people, at an insurance company!) and the regular nurses came every couple of days since she bagged chemo. We accepted this – so did her family. Blondie went to her house two and three days a week, to keep house, run errands and drive Alice to required appointments. Alice herself plodded on, much as she had always done, plagued by fits of exhaustion, forgetfulness, and inability to navigate anywhere without a walker. She told Blondie several times that she wouldn’t in the least mind if Blondie appeared one mid-day, walked into the house and found her dead in her chair with a book in her lap. What better way to go? She hated hospitals – another thing we had in common.

Any kind of work at editing gradually became hopeless, and what was the worst part – she knew and was exasperated at how her steel-trap mind was painfully rusting shut. She was, in her seventies, an early adopter of computers and the internet, but that went by the wayside. Over the years when we were in partnership, I would get up in the morning and find a half a dozen emails or forwarded, from her in my yahoo.com account – but not in the last few months, when she spent most of her waking hours in an easy chair in the living room, reading. She was one of the very few people I know in real life who possessed more books than I do – with the added fillip of having edited and published a good few of them, or at least had been acquaintances of the author. In mid-May she urged me to take any of the reference books that I wanted and would need – I came away with two bags full of books. I think that was the last time that I saw her, still fairly fit and able to go into her home office.

The final spiral came two weeks ago, and in one terrible rush. I went to see her again, when she was not able to get out of the hospital bed they had brought in; her one old-friend client, whom she had held back upon sale of the company, had a book that she was working on, in fits and starts. She handed the project on to me, I searched out the files and went home with a couple of letters from her friend. I’ve basically had to start the project paperwork all over, Excel worksheet, contract and all. A week ago, Memorial Day weekend, her sister called to say – not going well. We hurried over, dodging rain all the way, which only seemed suitable. She was not conscious – I don’t think ever became really conscious again. She passed away about mid-day last Saturday.

So, that’s what I have been up to, for the last couple of weeks. Real life, and all that.

For Memorial Day

26. May 2014 · Comments Off on For Memorial Day · Categories: Ain't That America?, Military, War

American Cemetery at Chateau Thierry (Picture by Sgt, Mom, August, 1985)

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

(from Laurence Binyon’s For the Fallen)

Found Objects

25. May 2014 · Comments Off on Found Objects · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General Nonsense, Technology

You know, now and again I wonder if the habits of frugality ingrained by almost fifteen years of living pretty close to the poverty line have turned me into my grandmothers – especially Grannie Jessie who was reputed to pinch pennies so hard that a booger would come out of Lincoln’s nose. I have never had a brand-new car, a totally-new-to-me house, and only occasionally a new piece of furniture or major appliance – the last two such items have come from the Scratch-and-Dent Store. Now and again I do have a brand-spanking new minor appliance – usually freebies from Amazon Vine. There was an electric kettle, gotten for the price of having to write a review of it. The same for the shop-vac, a great clumsy thing and no prize for appearance, but by god, it will suck the paint off a Buick fender. The usual small appliances though, are lightly second-hand; there was the once-top-o-the line Zojirushi bread machine, from a vast community-event garage sale, almost untouched and in the original box for $5. My most recent favorite small appliance toy was the vacuum-sealer, also bought at a yard sale for $5 – and also once top-o-the-line as well as also being barely used. Now, though – I think I have struck some kind of nadir, as far as slightly-used kitchen appliances go. But there is a bit of a back-story.

My kitchen is a small one; storage space at a minimum, you see – and I have a constitutional dislike of kitchen gadgets which only do one thing, and one thing only. Not for me an item like the electric waffle-maker that I remember that Mom had in her kitchen; about twenty-two inches square and eight or ten deep and which only made waffles. These appliances that I give shelf and counter space to ought to be good for more than one task, or amazingly, dazzlingly efficient at that one task … and for extra points, small and easily stashed away. I bought a KitchenAid stand mixer, yea those many years ago, precisely because it had multiple useful attachments, many of which I also purchased.

The current stove does not have a griddle option. (Once we lived in a rental house which had one, and I loved it.) Such things are, apparently, only an option in the high-end gas stoves these days, which is fair enough. One can make do with any number of electric griddle appliances, and there … there is where my multi-tasking option comes in. We have a small electric Delonghi indoor grill (bought at Williams-Sonoma when they were on sale and I was working at one of the reliable but deathly-boring corporate jobs) and a Toastmaster electric griddle, gotten through one of my daughter’s employers who intended donating it to a thrift shop. Both of them are quite adequate to the tasks required … but I had a hankering for something that would neatly combine their various functions … two, two, two in one! And maybe even more … I saw information on-line about a Cuisinart multi-griddle which would do all this and more; it could be a Panini-press, fold out and lay flat to be a griddle, or a grill, and had any number of different dish-washer safe plates, which could be swapped out … yes, that would be exactly the ticket! I put it on my Amazon wish-list, and some months ago, I spotted the exact same multi-griddle for an enticingly-reduced price at an HEB-Plus supermarket. Yes, I’d have to do a bit of finagling; including going halfsies on it with my daughter … but we put it into the shopping cart, and continued through the produce section. There we were approached by a middle-aged woman and her husband who asked most politely if we were going to buy it. I answered yes, I had been looking at and thinking of buying one for months and it all seemed providential … and she launched into her tale of woe. Yes, she had one, had been given it as a Christmas present from her husband … and to make a long story short, it proved to be a total disaster. The handles and catches for the interchangeable plates melted, it didn’t work anything as advertised, bits and parts had been replaced by the manufacturer, it still didn’t work anything like it had been represented to … and. It’s kind of more personal than reading a one-star review on Amazon, when a total stranger comes up and tells you that the item is a total dog. She advised us very strongly to give it a miss.

Which I did, sneaking it back onto the shelf from whence it came, with considerable regret; yes, it was a bargain, compared to the original price, but not at the price of the hassle involved. My daughter and I concluded that maybe Cuisinart was going to come out with a new and improved model soon, which would fix many of the problems, and that was why this one was on sale. I’d wait until the new and improved model to be available. There’s always time.

This week, though – when I was doing the early-morning jog that my daughter insists that we ought to do, in the interests of our health and well-being – I joggled past a house in the neighborhood where the residents had put out a stack of stuff on the curb. Look, I pay attention to this sort of thing, especially at bulk-trash pickup time. We’ve scored no end of useful elements for the garden, this way. We know the family in this house to speak to, since they put out some nice things on the curb before. Paring down the possessions, they said; a relatively-newly-wed blended family. (These days, two adult persons marrying and merging their once-separate households usually have two of everything … so, yes; good and usable stuff extraneous to current needs being put out on the curb. I can totally understand that.) Among the items extraneous to need was a bright red George Foreman grill – the model with a number of extra and interchangeable plates. We took it home, plates and accessories and all, carefully detailed the main unit, ran the washable items through the dishwasher, looked up and printed the owner’s manual, and gave it a test run … and yes, it works beautifully. It’s only lacking one of the grill plates, and they are available for a small sum.

It’s not quite what I had in mind – but if it works out very well, I might later get one of the later models which does open up all the way to offer two flat surfaces for grilling or griddling. But most importantly … the price was right.

Checking Privilege

20. May 2014 · Comments Off on Checking Privilege · Categories: Ain't That America?, Rant, sarcasm, World

Oh, not to worry – I had my privilege topped up last week. Full of privilege I am, and ready to go … I assume that this is the ephemeral white privilege that these undergraduates-of-excruciatingly-top-drawer-non-state-uni muppets are referring to? Is this the female privilege, the veteran privilege, or the mainstream religious privilege, or even the privilege of having been brought up by a relatively well-adjusted heterosexual married couple in those benighted times when it was possible and even laudable for a male to go out and earn a living, while the spouse (usually referred to as a help-mate) stayed at home, raised the children, organized the housekeeping and the meals, the education, clothing and schooling of those children, the social sphere in which she and the pay-check winning spouse moved, and volunteered in the community where they lived … that must be it. (Hey, I’ll swipe my privilege card through the dispenser, just in case I have burned through some of my previously-deposited privilege.)

Here’s the thing, though. It’s been at least fifty years since in-your-face racism was socially acceptable and possibly even longer in some places and spheres … at least, open and totally unvarnished, un-self-censored racism displayed by people of non-color towards everyone else. The matter of open, totally unvarnished and un-self-censored racism displayed by certain ethnic groups of color towards practically everyone else is another matter entirely. The guardians of privilege seem to have no problem with that stripe of racism. See: We’ve had affirmative action, we’ve had ‘insert your ethnicity here’ history month, week or day, and we’ve had endless consciousness-raising and social actions-mandated training of one sort or another for at least that long. The unlooked for and annoying result of all – as I see it – is that those who have ground out a living or a career from raising everyone’s level of consciousness now have to work harder, and harder, and look for the tiniest of tiny incidents which might be construed as racially-based aggression on the part of those of no particular color towards those of color.

This is reaching the point of ridiculousness, considering the various affirmative action programs in effect when it comes to institutions of higher learning, doing business or being hired by federal, state and local government agencies, getting hired by MSNBC, in spite of being barely literate and incoherent in public speaking, at least as it is judged by those of us who are really literate and accustomed to speaking publically and being understood by the greater majority. (Yes, looking at you, Al Sharpton, although this could extend to other notably dim-witted media affirmative action clones, such as Melissa Harris-Perry.) To recapitulate – irredeemable white racism exists, but it lives in a trailer park in a low-rent district in the hinterlands somewhere. On the other hand, black racism has a nice media gig, a mega-church pulpit, academic tenure, or is – ironically – a media star with a house the value of which computed by a single square foot equals the value of my entire house with contents and both cars, White House residency or an enduring gig as political representative of a majority-minority Gerrymandered safe district. (OK, missed any particular sub-set of the grievously and professionally racially-annoyed? BTW, hearing that fabulously wealthy celebrities of color – who have gotten to be fabulously wealthy by appealing to largely audiences of non-color – are bitching and moaning about racism and prejudice is getting … well, pretty tiresome at this stage of the racial game as it is played in this century in America.. Word to the wise; n’est-ce pas? )

So, what really-o-truly-o emerges from this whole ‘check your privilege’ thing is a two-fold message. The first and almost inadvertent is that home schooling is a good thing, as it spares your children from being mind-f**ked by a bunch of trendoid quasi-Marxist educators leaping on the latest intellectual fad.

Second and most important; this has and will continue to do a number on the minds and barely-formed intellects of the impressionable school-age youth of all colors. For the so-called advantaged and privileged class (that is, those of non-color, or pallor) it will destroy any rightful confidence and pride in their ethnic heritage – because it’s all reduced to ‘white’. Never mind about any deeds of valor, intellect, or simply decent striving to better ones’ self. Nope- sorry, you are automatically privileged and henceforth morally damned … even if a quick look around to the real life around you gives you plenty of personal observations countering that supposition of superiority. For those children of other-than-pallor, the implicit message is every bit as malign, as damaging to the self-image – which is ‘there is nothing you can do, can strive for – because white privilege trumps all! Yer a looser before you ever start, kid! Because of that nasty privilege thing! And your darker epidermis! You poor dear child of color – you are doomed, I say–doomed to un-success and oh, yeah-BTW-blame it all on those evil-nasty-people-of-non-color!’

Essentially, that’s what the message is, when parsed down to the lowest level. Look; when there are abusive pervs willfully and energetically destroying the self-image and confidence of a single child-that’s a reason to call CPS and press charges. What therefore, is our response, when it is a whole generation of kids, systematically abused by the establishment? What then, oh wolves?

(Crossposted at www.chicagoboyz.net)

RIP, Mary Stewart – So Long And Thanks For All the Novels

17. May 2014 · Comments Off on RIP, Mary Stewart – So Long And Thanks For All the Novels · Categories: Geekery, Literary Good Stuff, Wild Blue Yonder

From the temple of Poseidon at Sunion, Greece

From the temple of Poseidon at Sunion, Greece

I see from a link from a Facebook friend that author Mary Steward has passed on to that great and ultimate publisher in the sky. (Facebook links and Twitter posts – I swear, this is how we find out news of a relatively minor nature these days.) She was well into her nineties, and the books that were her mega-popular best-sellers were all from several decades ago. (Including The Crystal Cave – the first of a five-novel retelling of the Arthurian cycle; these are the ones which most readers remember.) I, on the other hand, remember finding, reading and adoring her earlier books – the romantic-suspense-mystery ones. Yes, because they not the least bit risqué, no bad language or anything more sexually-explicit than a fond kiss or a close and comforting embrace – I recollect that I first encountered them in the library when I was middle-school age and no one burst any blood vessels over me reading them. I might even have read them first in the Mount Gleason Junior High library, at that – since the movie that Disney had made from The Moonspinners was shown in the school theater over summer. Although I was a bit disappointed when I looked up the book and read it after seeing the movie. Everything was different, just about! But for the setting and … well, the setting; I did get to appreciate the books, later on – as the memory of the movie faded. Especially those of her books with a setting in Greece; My Brother Michael, (Delphi and environs) and This Rough Magic (Corfu), especially … and then I had a soft spot for her very first book, Madam, Will You Talk? – which was set in southern France. I never did get to check out Corfu – but I did visit Athens and Delphi – and Provence, as well – motivated in large part because of the beautiful way that she had of establishing a place and the character of it.
Never mind about the romance and all … dumpy and rather plain fifteen-year-olds, cursed with glasses and metal braces – still have a wistful affection for romance. Even if the prospective hero is at first meeting grumpy and impatient – even slightly mysterious. Someday, my fifteen-year old self hoped – I would go to Greece, or the South of France, although the romance part was perhaps a little bit too much to hope for.

And I did – but that is another story. At any rate, she and Rosemary Sutcliffe were among the first writers that I came back to, over and over – because of the way that they wrote about a place; every leaf and tree and flower of it. I would like to think that I have taken some lessons from them, or at least had their very good example before me when I began to write about specific places.

Continued Musings on Upstairs, Downstairs

16. May 2014 · Comments Off on Continued Musings on Upstairs, Downstairs · Categories: Domestic, History, Media Matters Not

We have carried on with watching Upstairs, Downstairs – warming up to it every evening with a half-hour palate cleanser of Blandings … which reminds me, I must steer my daughter towards those copies of PG Wodehouse which I have on the shelves, and my volume of the collected works of Saki, otherwise HH Munro … a writer of short stories only equal in my estimation to Rudyard Kipling … whose collections I also have on the shelves. Yes, HH Munro died in WWI, and so did Kipling’s only son, John. One was in his forties and over-aged for the military combat duties, the other seventeen and a trifle young for it … but they both rushed to join the forces, such was the tone of the time. (Munro turned down a commission and served in the ranks, John Kipling’s influential father wrangled his near-sighted son a commission in the Irish Guards.)

This once-proud and forward-thinking world and it’s brutal disillusion is reflected in the current series of Upstairs, Downstairs – first, the tenor of the time, of optimistic patriotism, outrage at German brutality in Belgium and France, the honestly-felt obligation to serve King and country … and then shading into war-weariness and despair, as the casualties mounted, up and up and up. England, France, Germany and Russia were gutted of a whole generation of men – some time in college (or maybe it was a grad school course) there was reason in one of my textbooks for a couple of tables of statistics for males by age in certain Western European countries. There was a considerable divot when it came to the male population of certain countries who would have been of an age to serve in WWI. That was statistics on a page; brought home now and again by the local war memorials in various towns all across Britain, France and Germany – a small stone obelisk in a corner of the town square, or a panel let into the side of a wall, with fifteen or twenty names on it. Heartbreakingly – especially in smaller places – there would be a couple or three identical surnames. Brothers, fathers and sons, cousins … the only wartime losses in the US to equal the English toll in WWI had happened fifty years before, in the Civil War, when local companies went down in sheaves like wheat under the scythe, in a storm of shot where the minie balls came down like hail, and there went just all about the fit men of age from some small town in Illinois, or Virginia, Vermont or Ohio, in some contested field – a sunken road, a wheat-field, a peach orchard or an angle of trench.

In Upstairs, Downstairs, this carnage all happens off-stage. It was a television program after all – and even if by Season Four it was a winner in the popularity stakes, additional budget largess went to more scenes set on location, rather than the studio set, and rather better costuming for the female characters. I have not noticed so many eye-blindingly awful selections with obvious zippers up the back as there were in the first two seasons. It is telling, though – that the fashion for rather more practical and shorter skirts for every-day wear is quite obvious, although the older generation, exemplified by Lady Pru resolutely keeps to toe-length, and Mrs. Bridges holds on to the old-style of dress, apron and cap. The sun will never set on Mrs. Bridges in a hair-net and a knee-length dress.

James is a total and self-centered jerk … but there must have been something to him, else why would Hazel ever have seen something to him, and stuck around? Perhaps she was just out of her mind for a couple of months in 1912 or so. Poor Rose missed her chance of domestic happiness – kick and scream as she must, she’ll be the rest of her life in service. Hudson still holds up his end – although as blind as a bat himself, he had a go at volunteering for the Army. And there we stand, with four or five more episodes and the final season – the one which I never actually saw, since I was in the military myself and overseas when it aired on PBS the first time around.

The Advent of Her Inevitableness

11. May 2014 · Comments Off on The Advent of Her Inevitableness · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun With Islam, Politics, Rant, Tea Time, Veteran's Affairs, War · Tags: , , ,

I guess that the over-under bets are already being taken that Hillary Clinton, AKA Her Inevitableness, the former Secretary of State, Mrs. Bill, or Wonder-Cankles will sweep in and scoop the Dem party nomination in 2016. Meh – and I’ve always been ‘meh’ about the former First Lady; even more ‘meh’ since she didn’t kick her conniving horn-dog of a hubby to the curb upon exiting the White House … or even before. I am sorry – but in my judgement, a woman of worth does not tamely swallow the humiliation of hubby being a serial sexual adventurer several times over, capped by several rounds of widely publicized Dirty Games With Interns. No. Just … ick. I prefer to respect women who will not put up with humiliation, although I will not go as far as lauding Lorena Bobbit’s method for responding to serial marital humiliation. I would respect Her Inevitableness rather more if she had at least deposited him adjacent to said curb and gone out and done something on her own. But that’s not the way it goes in this nepotistic new America. The American version of Evita is all the rage in the corridors of power, and the spouses and spawn of the wealthy, well-placed and political are well-positioned to scoop up gold rings galore. Tell me again how Americans rejected patents of nobility, back in the day. Obviously that is one of those racist things, an invention of old white men who didn’t have the advantage of 21st century intellectual sensitivities.

It has been long-established that being the son or cousin of a former president or senator is a gateway drug to nomination for presidential office; now it appears that being the spouse of one is no bar, either – even if the resume is a bit thin on the accomplishment side of the ledger. That doesn’t seem to have hampered the career of the current presidential incumbent … but moving on. Benghazi; going on two years this fall and still considerable of a mystery, how a US ambassador and three others got themselves killed by a violent mob and what they were even doing there in the first place. The explanations offered by the Obama administration at the time and ever since have been unconvincing, to say the least, and as the Secretary of State at the time, Her Inevitableness must bear at least some responsibility, and afford us all a more convincing explanation for what went on in Benghazi, and a rationale for delaying any kind of rescue until too late.

As a veteran myself of several tours overseas, I can just about guarantee that any American serving overseas as a member of the military or the State Department now is looking around and wondering now exactly what their lives are worth to this administration. It used to be that you could be certain that if you were asked to risk it, than the mission must have been considered worthwhile. Now, it’s a certainty that being caught up an event that might be embarrassing or inconvenient for the administration to respond to … well, then, suck it up, hard-charger. They will write off your life and the lives of your comrades without another moment’s thought, if doing anything substantial will have the effect of being misinterpreted, or potentially disastrous. Loyalty is a one-way street to our would-be aristocracy; ours is owed to them, they owe less than nothing to us peons, and this has been demonstrated often enough in the last six years to make it pretty plain.

Finally, over and above everything else, the thing that I do resent most about Her Inevitableness is the casual assumption that just because I am a woman of certain age that of course I will support her, just because … woman! Which is infuriating in the extreme, especially when it comes from the same people who joyously took part in trashing Sarah Palin.

Something Silly For a Friday

09. May 2014 · Comments Off on Something Silly For a Friday · Categories: Critters, Fun and Games, Geekery, History

Found through Insty – had to watch it several times, giggling.

Dear America, I Miss You

09. May 2014 · Comments Off on Dear America, I Miss You · Categories: Ain't That America?, Politics, Rant, Tea Time

Remember when the “norm” after a disaster was for your people to pull together and rebuild (ala Joplin, MO) and not to stand, helpless and scared, waiting for the feds to “solve” everything? The free people of your country rebuild, on their own, competently and together; the people who’ve been re-enslaved by Democrats sit, wait, become the victims of violence and their own lethargy. It’s really sad. Whole neighborhoods were destroyed by Katrina . . . and are still destroyed all these years later. Look, too, at Hurricane Sandy. Again, these people depend on the feds. They are, of course, ill-served, even mocked by Christie. Americans, real Americans, don’t sit around waiting for the feds; they get to work and rebuild, they thrive.

We used to know this, America.

The whole essay is here at Fuzzy Logic – found through a comment at The Diplomad.

The Well-Stocked Pantry

04. May 2014 · Comments Off on The Well-Stocked Pantry · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic

Taking it into consideration that costs of various foodstuffs appear to be going everywhere but down these days, my household is considering several different strategies as a means of keeping level. Oh, some items have not gone down in price, but the size of the package or the can they are in has certainly … shrunk, and don’t you think we haven’t noticed. I was born at night, but it wasn’t last night, not by any means. The garden for seasonal vegetables is one front in this campaign, the ongoing effort to home-can any number of pickles, preserves, pie-fillings and relishes is another. Planting some small fruit-trees along the perimeter of the back fence of Chez Hayes is another. Buying fresh fruit and veg in season, when they are at rock-bottom price per-pound is one more, and buying dry staples and cooking oils in bulk is yet another. At the first of the month, we hit Sam’s Club; restaurant-sized packages of frozen vegetables – we vary the vegetable-type so as to ensure that we always have a good selection in the freezer, since there are always packets left over from the previous month. We keep bulk stocks of staples like twenty or thirty-pound bags of rice, beans, flour and sugar, restaurant-sized bags of macaroni and gallon jugs of cooking oil. We also buy case-lots of the canned goods that we use often; mainly tomatoes, tomato sauce and Rotel brand tomatoes and green peppers. A good few pounds of tea, at any one time – the Wagh Bakri international blend, at the local Asian food store is what we like. It makes a morning cuppa strong enough – as Grannie Dodie used to say – strong enough to trot a mouse over. All this somewhat reduces the cost per unit, which is pleasing … and there’s always something on hand to make an appetizing meal from. This makes my inner Explorer Scout very, very happy.

And bricks of cheeses – again, slightly varying every month. What I like to have a stash of in the fridge is enough different varieties to make just about anything that I would like to make for supper which has cheese as an ingredient; bricks of cheddar, mozzarella, jack, feta, smaller bricks of Emmenthal and parmesan … sometimes we made the dinner decision on the spur of the moment. Butter, cream, sour cream and yoghurt also figure prominently on the refrigerator shelves. We have also tried to establish the habit of hitting Granzin’s Meat Market in New Braunfels at or around the beginning of the month, and laying out about thirty or forty dollars each for hefty quantities of what we know we will use during the month; chicken breasts and quarters, hamburger in the five-pound family pack, beef ribs, ground turkey, pork chops and an assortment of Granzin’s made-in-the-store sausages. Granzin’s is an old-fashioned kind of place – yes, they do have groceries, but the meat counter is about half-a-block long, everything is superior in quality and at a good price. We also have plenty of meat left over at the end of month. Yes, that’s deliberate, too. The prices of beef and pork are likely to go up, although if the power ever goes out for a week we will be so screwed!
One of the other food-stashes is my daughter’s particular interest; from cruising the marked-down shelves at the grocery store, where they sometimes have bottled sauces, or mixes of faintly exotic items that we wouldn’t have bought at full price. Usually these are items nearing their ‘best-if-sold-by’ date … it’s an eccentric assortment, but handy for added-on seasoning. Note – best if sold by does not come anywhere near equal to ‘best if consumed by.’

Other items on hand in the well-stocked pantry? Seasonings, of course; herbs, spices and flavored vinegars. Many of the herbs come out of the garden, but there are always back-ups in small sealed jars in the pantry. Vinegars – an assortment of them, in quarts and jugs and small bottles; everything from pickling vinegar to the best syrupy balsamic of Modena. (Yes, a handy score from the marked-down shelf, and lovely stuff it is, too, measured out by the drop.)
Of course, there are still some items we should add to the bulk foodstuff inventory; honey, for one, and perhaps some more sealed containers of dried milk and emergency water. But at the moment, we cruise pretty finely through meal-times – and the side benefit is that we only rarely have to hit the grocery store upon considering the dinner menu. Right now, it’s for fresh vegetables and fruits only – and when the garden begins to bear, that chore will be reduced even more. In some ways, I think we are approaching a rather more 19th century frame of mind when it comes to putting by … just in case of that hard winter or zombie apocalypse or something.

Letting It Burn

29. April 2014 · Comments Off on Letting It Burn · Categories: Ain't That America?, Geekery, Literary Good Stuff, sarcasm, That's Entertainment!, Working In A Salt Mine...

As a matter of interest as an independent author, with some affection for science fiction … (principally Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series, and once upon a time for Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover series, both of which explored in an interesting and readable way, a whole range of civilizational conceits and technologies with a bearing on what they produced vis-a-viz political organizations, man-woman relations, and alternate societies of the possible future … oh, where was I? Complicated parenthetical sentence again; science fiction. Right-ho, Jeeves – back on track.) … I have been following the current SFWA-bruhaha with the fascinated interest of someone squeezing past a spectacular multi-car pile-upon the Interstate. Not so much – how did this happen, and whose stupid move at high speed impelled the disaster – but how will it impact ordinary commuters in their daily journey, and will everyone walk away from it OK? So far, the answers to that are pretty much that it will only matter to those directly involved (although it will be productive of much temporary pain) and yes – pretty near everyone will walk away. Scared, scarred, P-O’d and harboring enduring grudges, but yes, they will walk away, personally and professionally. Some of these are walking away at speed and being pretty vocal about why.

The crux of the matter in this particular instance, is that the SFWA (Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America – hey, what happened to the ampersand and the second F … guess the domain name was already taken or something) – got overtaken by the minions of the politically correct. The SWFA is, or was – a professional association of writers of science fiction and fantasy materiel (traditionally-published writers only, BTW), intended as a kind of support group, to lobby with publishers on behalf of wronged writers, and provide professional services, like health insurance. Sort of like the AARP … only for science fiction and fantasy writers. Alas, it seems that the minions of the politically-correct now appear to insist that to be members in good standing and to be considered for various book awards (and this is the short version) one must write glum and politically-correct bricks of sensitivity, emphasizing obedience to all kinds of shibboleths regarding race, gender, et al. Never mind about writing a cracking good story … the glum gruel of a liberal arts curricula at an expensive university is what the Social Justice Warriors at the SFWA have said we should have, and that readers deserve to get it, good and hard. Through a tube down the nasal passage, apparently, if all else fails. Naturally, being a somewhat cantankerous and creative provider of popular amusement, many of the existing membership has sad ‘no’ and not just no, but ‘no, with bells on.’ It seems from various discussion threads that many of the long-standing, better-selling and more popular creators are bailing out of SFWA, or at least, warning caution.

The organization may survive – or not. From the viewpoint of someone passing by the tangled wreckage on the Interstate, it’s of only academic interest. But I began to meditate on it all – another once-thriving and valued establishment, overtaken by the grand Gramscian march through our social and political establishments. Sure – they have taken them over, but at what cost? Yes, the politically correct, the Social Justice Warriors in every theater and establishment … they HAVE taken them over – and many others besides the SFWA, but at what cost if what they have is just a wrecked and hollow establishment?
So, this leaves me to wonder, whither SFWA? If the popular writers, with an existing or a soon-burgeoning readership leave, what then as far as the future of the organization is concerned? Indeed, what then, o wolves?

What then, of the many institutions, taken over and hollowed out by the Social Justice Warriors, or their Gramscian ilk? Most of them are bigger and more influential, then a little pool of writers perpetrating science fiction and fantasy … and yet they also appear to be ridden by factionalism, if not teetering on the edge then cratering economically. Just a few and from off the top of my head – the Episcopal Church, old-line print publications like Newsweek and Ladies’ Home Journal (and possibly very soon Time Magazine, too), and broadcast networks like CNN and MSNBC. Instapundit often points out how colleges and universities are staggering, and how more and more people who can are choosing to home-school their children. I can just barely remember the last Oscar-nominated movie that I went to see in a theater, (The King’s Speech, BTW) and the TV audience for the Oscars is plummeting also. Mainstream publishing is fragmenting, as independent writers go out on their own, cable television is also fragmenting. Just as the long march through the institutions is nearly complete … the institutions themselves crumble. They are run into the ground, as the audience, consumers, and genuinely creative flee in all directions.

There is talk of a non-ideological organization to replace the SFWA; likely the disaffected refugees from the establishments and organizations listed above (as well as many, many others) will form new associations. Creative destruction at work? I’d like to think so. Discuss.
(cross-posted at www.chicagoboyz.net)

Give Me Land, Lots of Land

24. April 2014 · Comments Off on Give Me Land, Lots of Land · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Old West, On The Border, Stupidity, Tea Time, Working In A Salt Mine... · Tags: , ,

This would appear to be the new theme song for the Fed-Gov’s Bureau of Land Management – that bane of ranchers like Cliven Bundy – as well as a whole lot of other ranchers, farmers, loggers, small landowners, and owners of tiny bits of property on the edge of or in areas of spectacular natural beauty, west of the Mississippi and between the Mexican and Canadian borders.

Yes, indeedy, folks – the maw of the Fed-Gov appears to be insatiable, although it is veiled over with the rationale of wanting to protect endangered species – many of which do not seem to be endangered so much any more – and miles and miles of unique old-growth Western forest. Some of these old-growth forests are so well-protected that they have burned down to the roots in catastrophic fires of late, as local environmental groups went into fits of spastic pearl-clutching, at the very suggestion that … well, pine-bark-beetle and drought-killed trees needed to be cleared away, and so did the duff and accumulation of flammable trash-brush. (The nature of many Western ecologies meant that being burned over every couple of decades was required for the good health of the ecology generally. Well-meant intervention seems to have made the situation worse. But never mind, say the environmentalists…)

This raises the natural suspicion among those of us who have been paying attention, as well as those who have had to make a living in parts of the West lately, that quite a lot of the endangered-species, famously-unique-old-growth-forest, and spectacular-unique-bit-of-landscape legislation which was passed a good three decades ago are now being used for other than their stated purposes. That they are being misused in the service of some international plot (Hello, Agenda 21!) to move us all into urban concrete Stack-a-prole apartment blocks where we can be observed and controlled by the functionaries of the Outer Party, 24-7 … well, I am not quite ready to order my tinfoil chapeau … but I am to the point of becoming concerned, shading to somewhat worried. I can see – rather clearly – that the ostensible care of establishment environmentalists has been used – and the degree of knowledge and malice aforesaid may be debated – in order to close off public lands to any economic use at all, even recreational use, if it is the wrong sort of recreation and by the wrong people. This has all has the whiff of a royal forest being established, for the use and recreation of the small numbers of the anointed, and the lesser orders – the ranchers, hunters, hikers and campers (or cabin-owners) being strictly forbidden on pain of death.

I cannot begin to guess how serious this latest threat to land along the Texas side of the Red River from the BLM is. Likely it will not go very far, now that the Texas AG has drawn a line in the sand. Maybe it is just a feint or even a campaign strategy by Mr. Abbott … but given recent history, and the resentments of all kinds of small-property ranchers and land-owners it’s a shrewd one. The state of Texas, in a handy turn of fate retained ownership of public lands upon becoming a state, instead of the Fed-Gov taking over and retaining vast tracts of wilderness. To this day there are only a couple of national parks within Texas, plus military bases – and for the BLM to even think of appropriating privately-owned lands on the Texas side of the Red River – is breathtakingly ill-conceived. If the BLM is serious in doing so, I guarantee that they will be resisted, furiously. It would make the brouhaha at the Bundy ranch look like a kindergarten playground squabble. It appears at this point, though, that the BLM has backed away, piously disavowing any such intent. For now, anyway, say I, cynically. Five years ago I might have written such a step up to ignorance rather than malice. Five years ago I wouldn’t have thought the IRS would be turned loose to harass political opponents of the Dem Party machine, either.

(Crossposted at www.chicagoboyz.net)

Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines

23. April 2014 · Comments Off on Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines · Categories: Air Force, Fun and Games, History, Technology, That's Entertainment!, Wild Blue Yonder

Just for fun, and because I am thrashing out a review of The Birdmen, for Amazon Vine – a song from a movie about the early days of aviation, which became a British hit…

Original Upstairs, Downstairs – Revisited

21. April 2014 · Comments Off on Original Upstairs, Downstairs – Revisited · Categories: Domestic, Geekery, History, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not · Tags: , ,

OK – so, since we are now almost a year into giving the heave-ho to cable TV, and busily exploring the delights available through Hulu/Amazon Prime/Acorn, I took it into my head that I should like to watch the original Upstairs, Downstairs series. The very first season of this, which aired on Masterpiece Theater when it was hosted by Alistair Cooke, was seriously truncated when it showed on PBS … which was when I was in college, umpty-umph years ago. Not only did I miss seeing most of the first season, but I also missed absolutely all of the last season, through having enlisted in the Air Force and promptly been assigned overseas. That was the season which romped through the post WWI decade. Very likely I missed other episodes throughout the run of the program. Although I regretted this, I have always declined to spend however much it would cost to buy the entire series of Upstairs, Downstairs, no matter how much I wanted to watch it and no matter how much it is marked down through Amazon specials, or considered in comparison to How Much It Would Have Cost When First Made Available. (Yes, I laid out an ungodly sum of money for the VHS set of Jewel In The Crown, which I watched again and again and thoroughly enjoyed, but never again shall I spend more than I did then for a costume mini-series. So, bite me, vendors of classic TV series – I will wait and wait and wait until the ones that I want are available in slightly-used DVD editions. Or on streaming internet … yes, where was I? Oh – Upstairs, Downstairs.)

First off, my daughter says that she hopes that producers, writers and show-runners for Downton Abbey are paying a mint, or at least giving the original producers miles and miles of artistic credit and acknowledgements. Downton has re-used sooooo many characters and situations. They’re probably in public domain these days, though – so never mind.

Yes, it is screamingly obvious that the first season was produced on the cheap – and very obviously on a set; outdoor shots were at a bare, bare, bare and almost daily soap-opera minimum. My daughter even noticed the walls shivering slightly, whenever a door slams. Outdoor scenes only begin occurring in the second season, wherein Miss Lizzie’s marriage is turning to dust and ashes. There’s a lot more indoor-to-outdoor scenes at that point; obviously there’s more in the budget, and the producers pretty much established the cast below-stairs that would carry on for the next four.

But dear god – what they had to do for the female leads’ costumes. Not so much for downstairs; plain black or pastel-colored long-sleeved dresses with elaborate aprons – hard to mess up the working costumes of the female working class way back then. Their get-up was obviously uniform and practical. But for Upstairs, they obviously, went into some vast internal closet for long dresses that at a squint appeared vaguely Edwardian. A good few of Lady Marjorie’s costumes look as if the costume department had cornered a herd of wild 1960s upholstered furniture, slaughtered them whole-sale, skinned them, and made her dresses from their pelts. It’s bad. How bad? I frequently spotted my own particular bête noir when it comes to period pieces; obvious zippers up the back. No – in my admittedly less than expert study of female costume, circa 18th-19th-early 20th centuries … zippers did most emphatically not figure. They fastened in just about every other way and in every other place than a zipper up the center-back seam. Trust me, when I tell you this. Let this particular book – Nancy Bradfield’s Costume in Detail be a guide, should you wish further enlightenment. I leaned on it rather heavily, in working out Lady Isobel’s wardrobe in Quivera Trail; my own take on the perils and challenges of Upstairs and Downstairs. Otherwise – I am enjoying renewing my acquaintance with the series, and if memory serves, the latter seasons did get very much better as popularity of the series grew.

Plaza Mayor

19. April 2014 · Comments Off on Plaza Mayor · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, History

The present-day Plaza Mayor, with San Fernando Cathedral

The present-day Plaza Mayor, with San Fernando Cathedral


That is what they were called in towns and cities in Spain – the main plaza or town square, which served as the center of civic life, around which were ranged the important civic buildings, the biggest church; this the regular market place, the assembly area for every kind of public spectacle imaginable over the centuries. Every plaza mayor in every Spanish town is alike and yet different; different in size and shape, and in the confirmation of the buildings around it. Some are bare and paved in cobbles, and some have trees and gardens in them now. This custom carried over into the New World, and San Antonio is no exception. The town as originally laid out early in the 18th century was more or less in the shape of a cross, outlined by four intersecting streets, incorporating a large square with the church (later cathedral) of San Fernando in the center of it. This essentially split the plaza into equal halves – Main and Military plazas. The oldest streets in town – Soledad and Lasoya, Navarro, Dolorosa and the road which led out past the mission across the river, the Alameda – now East Commerce – are the heart of historic San Antonio. Well, that and the old mission, out at the then-edge of town and over a loop of the San Antonio River. The house belonging to the commander of the Spanish presidio’s garrison – which may have been the largest of the early dwellings – occupied part of the western boundary of Military Plaza. Late in the 19th century, San Antonio’s city hall would take up much of the center, where once soldiers had drilled, and General Lopez de Santa Anna’s soldiers had bivouacked. The Bexar county courthouse would take up another side of Main Plaza – but not until the Plaza had been the center of life for San Antonio de Bexar for more than a century.

It is a curiously restful place, these days, considering that invading and resident armies fought over San Antonio and around the Plaza several times. A momentous peace treaty between the residents of Spanish Texas and the eastern Apache was marked by a formal (and one assumes eventually rather raucous) ceremony in the Plaza involving the ritual burial of weapons of war … including a live horse, while the Apaches and the Bexarenos danced in celebratory circles. The catastrophic failure of 1842 peace negotiations with the Comanche at the Council House – a civic building on the Plaza set aside for that sort of thing – led to a running bloody fight in the streets and gardens of San Antonio and more than three decades of bitter warfare with the Comanche. The first stagecoach to arrive from the east stopped in the Plaza – the first commercial hotel was there. At the very beginning of the Civil War, according to some stories, a senior U.S. Army officer commanding the Department of Texas was unceremoniously hustled from his residence on the Plaza by Confederate sympathizers, taken to the edge of town and told in no uncertain terms to leave at once. As the story has it, the officer had voiced it as his opinion that assisting in a Texas withdrawal from the Union would betray the principles of the Founding Fathers. In a private letter, the officer had condemned the so-called Cotton States for a selfish and dictatorial bearing, and for wanting to re-establish the commerce in slaves from Africa. Kidnapped or not, Colonel Robert E. Lee went to spend some quiet quality time at the cavalry post at Fort Mason, before returning back East and withdrawing his services from the U.S. Army upon the secession of his home state of Virginia from the Union.

Everything happening in San Antonio until the arrival of the railway tended to happen in the Plaza Mayor; a lively and eccentric community split into three different ethnicities by the mid-19th century, as Frederick Law Olmsted realized during his visit to Texas in the mid-1850s.
One of the local peculiarities which Olmsted and other visitors noted were the numbers of open-air restaurants – moveable feasts in various public squares, beginning with the most august of them – the ancient Military Plaza – local cooks, most but not all Hispanic – set up tables and benches, and cook-kettles full of chili simmering over mesquite-wood fires. Local musicians played – often hired by the proprietresses to entice patrons … as if the taste of peppery meat and bean stew for hungry patrons wasn’t enough. The picturesque spectacle of the ‘Chili Queens’ tables – as they would come to be known – enchanted locals and travelers well into the 20th century. Imagine – good, simple – and tasty food – all eaten in the open air. The after-sundown breeze rustles the leaves of the trees fringing the swift-flowing San Antonio River, oil and kerosene lanterns flicker, the musicians play, while stars sparkle in the sky overhead and the evening business of certain establishments spill out into the relative cool of a South Texas evening …yes – that would be a draw, especially to people accustomed to cooler and less highly-spiced localities. The popularity of things like canned chili and specialty chili seasonings came about when an enterprising cook and owner of a saloon and beer garden in New Braunfels – Willie Gebhardt – developed a process for making and packaging a dried seasoning powder – chili powder. Up until then, the chili had been a local and seasonal specialty, but Gebhardt’s process, which preserved the flavor of the chili peppers, and which he sold himself from the back of a wagon, grew into a million-dollar business and inadvertently popularized Mexican food … including chili … when his company published a small cookbook instructing cooks who were unfamiliar with Tex-Mex cuisine in how to use his product.
From civic architecture – to chili powder; how eccentric is that?

Harbingers

15. April 2014 · Comments Off on Harbingers · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Good God, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, Wild Blue Yonder, Working In A Salt Mine... · Tags: , , ,

I’ve been surfing my usual internet hangouts over the last week or so – in between working on various editing, formatting and sales projects for the Tiny Publishing Bidness – so although I did surf, and read and observe reports on a number of different and rather disturbing events – I didn’t have time to write anything about them until after I had finished the biggest of the current projects on my plate.

The biggest of them was the new-old range war of the Bundy ranch. I suppose that technically speaking, the Fed Gov had some small shreds of technical justification in demanding grazing fees … but the longer one looked at the whole of L’affaire Bundy, the worse it looked … which is doubtless why the Fed Gov backed down. A tactical retreat, of course; The optics of a shoot-out between the minions of the Fed Gov and the various Bundy supporters would not have been good, for Harry Reid and his clan and friends most of all, although they may eventually act – seeing that they have a position which will be at risk by tolerating defiance.

First it was state land, then it was Fed Gov property, and all this supposed to be for the benefit of desert tortoises? Dad did an early life study of the California desert tortoise, back in the day. Tough little critters, and seemingly in no particular danger of extinction in the Mojave, unless and until they paved over the desert with solar panels, which was why Dad was tasked with the research. (He went out into the desert near Needles, California, every six months for a number of years, rounded up the randomly-assorted selection of 50 tortoises fitted with radio-transmitter devices, and hauled them into a veterinarian’s office for an x-ray, and for other examinations. No, I don’t know of anything else that Dad discovered, peculiar to the tortoises, only that they seemed pretty easy-going about the whole process…)
Say, the Bundy family has been running cattle on that range since the late 19th century, and now they are the last ranch family standing in that part of the world? Hmm, says the observer, upon seeing a sudden interest by the political powers that be in otherwise pretty unspectacular desert property owned by someone else. This plot was played for laughs in Blazing Saddles – I guess this time around, Harry Reid is doing the Hedley Lamar part. A bit ago, one of the regular commenters, (Subotai Bahadur, if memory serves or perhaps it was Wretchard at Belmont Club), speculated that the cold civil war would turn hot in earnest at the point where a locally respectable, well-thought of and otherwise respectable good citizen was unjustly and viciously brutalized by the minions of the Fed Gov, or as in the case of the following – by a governmental body or several acting in collusion. As a note to L’affaire Bundy, a lot of people not living in flyover states, or in rural areas – have no idea of how heavy the hand of the BLM or the Forest Service lies upon those in the rural west. Living in Texas, I have little personal experience in this regard, since by a historical twist of good fortune, most of Texas is privately owned. One does hear stories, though. Do not underestimate the resentment felt by residents of western states toward representatives of the Fed Gov when it comes to the BLM or the Forest Service. There is a pile of dry tinder there, well-soaked in gasoline, only wanting a lit match or two.

The second local story of which I speak – is the case of a family in Colorado who own – for now – a tiny cabin, a little island of private property within the boundary of a national park. The Forest Service appears to be colluding with the local county to confiscate the property, with the stated purpose of making the park all pristine, by means of eminent domain. No, this park is the preserve of the general public who don’t have any existing property rights, so for the good of all, the property of the one must be confiscated. This will be another stick of tinder for the National Forest Service, by the way.

The third instance is a curious one, of a reclusive collector of a wide variety of artifacts in a little out of the way neighborhood in Rush County, Indiana. Suddenly the FBI is descending on a modest house and supposedly confiscating certain items for examination … and what? The owner appears to be a wholly respectable collector who acquired the items legally, through a long career as a missionary and as an archeological enthusiast? What gives, really? The few news stories concerting the matter are unrevealing when it comes to the question of – what brought this on? Why now? And why is the elderly owner being treated as if he is an international art thief with millions of dollars in looted Nazi art stashed in a warehouse somewhere? And would the same consideration be given to a multimillionaire with a private gallery and a house in the Hamptons? Especially if he were a generous contributor to acceptable Dem Party political causes? Yes, one really does wonder.

The final story regards the recent dismaying policy of the IRS to scoop up tax refund monies from descendants of people who – mirable dictu – are found to owe money to the Fed Gov. Usually, according to this story in the Washington Post (who astonishingly, now appear to be committing acts of journalism) the debts were incurred by long-deceased parents and grandparents, and the legal means established for going after such long-time debts was in an obscure provision of a farm bill passed some years ago. Well, as Speaker Pelosi once so airily remarked, we would have to pass the bill to find out what was in it. This case is curiously illustrative.
I take away from all this a somewhat more discouraging insight – that the various offices of the Fed Gov now seem to see themselves as above the original intent of the law.
Which would be worrying enough; but the underlying tendency that I sense in reviewing all this is a bit more worrying, as a property-owner and one with the odd bit of original art and small artifacts collected in legitimate sale from distant lands, as well as having parents and grandparents who might in the distant past have been briefly in debt to the Fed Gov. Extrapolating from these separate stories, one can’t help coming to the conclusion that if you have something in the way of real property (even just as paltry a thing as an income tax return) and the Fed Gov has a reason for wanting it – they will come and get it.
If such is the case, we are not citizens any longer – but sheep to be sheared whenever the Fed Gov needs a few more pennies. In which case, the Fed Gov sees their prime duty as mulcting the citizens of what items of value they possess, by fair means or foul (usually foul and by the misuse of the laws they choose to enforce), in order to pay for the towering edifice of the Fed Gov as we know it, or to pay off those to whom they owe favors. Discuss.

(cross-posted at Chicagoboyz.net)

You Know, I Always Wondered…

10. April 2014 · Comments Off on You Know, I Always Wondered… · Categories: Ain't That America?, General Nonsense, Media Matters Not, Rant, sarcasm · Tags: , , ,

… about the egregious Al Sharpton, whom I will not dignify with the title of reverend, first because there is no record of the fat, illiterate, race-baiting rabble-rouser ever having attended a seminary of any sort, and secondly because … oh, good lord, just look at those old pictures of him from the 1970s and 80s; jheri-curled, velour track suit and gold pendant the size of a man-hole cover. People, trust me when I tell you that I require a smidge more dignity from those who hold churchly office in any denomination, a standard from which Al Sharpton fell so far that he would need a bucket-truck with a three-story-tall extension even to get close.

Yes, in the interests of keeping abreast of news events in the pre-internet days, your Dear Author bought or subscribed to a great many print publications, to the point where on days when bulk mail came in to the military post office, I practically had to use a crow-bar to extract them all from my post-box. One of the regular reads – gotten from the Stars & Stripes bookstore, since I didn’t particularly feel the need for a subscription – was The Village Voice. So – yes, I had heard of the unsavory Mr. Sharpton some years before he burst upon the wider world of New York with the Tawana Brawley affair in the late 1980s.

Subsequently, I always wondered why the wretched little man seemed to be legally untouchable, even in spite of being ordered to pay out in the case of the Pagones defamation suit. The Crown Heights riots, the Freddy’s Fashion Mart fire – all of that had Al Sharpton’s smeary fingerprints all over them … and yet … he seemed to talk away always, unscathed by any meaningful payback. Falsely shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theater and setting off a panic which kills people – that would be actionable, surely?

And yet, nothing ever happened to the so-called reverend; he appeared to thrive as a particularly scummy and public race-baiter – and indeed, even to recent times, ascending to a presumably well-paid position at a major broadcast television channel. Which again – this really gives one cause for wonder, seeing as that the egregious Sharpton, who appears to have lost some weight and refined his sartorial taste – has gone vaulting up into higher and higher levels of visibility and social authority. Still – why?

Part of the answer, according to this story, courtesy of the Daily Mail, is that Al Sharpton was an FBI snitch. (Why again, are so many stories of this kind appear on a publication like the Daily Mail, which seems to have semi-literate high school students write their headlines, cut-lines and badly re-write stories lifted from other places? Well, at least they do, which is more than what can be said of our very own dear national media.) And if you believe he volunteered to be a snitch with regard to the FBI investigating two prominent Mafia families out of the goodness of his heart and as a fine upstanding citizen with a deep concern for the welfare of his community … then bless your heart and I have some fine Nevada swampland that I’d like to sell you. I’ll throw in a small bridge in Brooklyn, just because I am a good upright citizen myself.

No, Al got leaned on by the Fibbies, and I hope I live long enough to read in the headlines exactly what they held over his head and threatened to charge him with to ensure his cooperation. I’ll break out a $20 bottle of champagne or maybe a fine Fredericksburg Winery Fredericksburg and Northern vintage red Zinfandel and drink a toast. Al was a valued informant, and therefore Teflon in his subsequent career. Interesting also that it is revealed now – and I also wonder if there is some FBI agent a couple of weeks from retiring with a good pension who decided to square things by slipping the word to The Smoking Gun. Discuss.
(Cross-posted at chicagoboyz.net.)

The New McCarthyites

07. April 2014 · Comments Off on The New McCarthyites · Categories: Ain't That America?

Seriously, I am wondering how on earth the politically correct of this blessed nation manage to keep a straight face and their heads from exploding; ritually demanding sympathy for the so-called victims of the 1950s black-list of various Hollywoodians of distinctly Communist sympathies, while in this present century demanding that those who are not vociferously laudatory with regard to same-sex marriage be cast into the outer darkness. Not that I can specifically put a finger and a link to a person or body doing exactly that – but it is noted for the record that same kind of so-called liberal, generous and tolerant thinker who routinely condemn the antics of Joe McCarthy with regard to Communist infiltration half a century and more ago, is in these degraded days prepared to drag those who decline to enthusiastically support same-sex marriage to the stake, the courts, or the unemployment line. The irony abounds … and is likely to achieve such a density as to drop it all the way to the core of the earth and out the other side.

So – in this last week, the “Gaystapo” managed to get the CEO of Mozilla/Firefox resign, on the grounds of having contributed to a political cause defining the establishment of marriage as consisting of a man and a woman; husband and wife, one each, for the propagation and nurturing of the next generation. In the eyes of the militantly tolerant, this is enough to qualify one for a nomination as the Worst Person in the World, and deserving of being cast out of the human race, if not out of polite company. This is kind of like throwing Pablo Picasso out of the art department because he was such a toad with women. Which Picasso was, arguably; he was also one of the great artists of the 20th century, or at least most everyone claims now that he was. Being a total cad with the ladies was not against the law, although at the rate things are going these days, it very well soon may be. So it doesn’t matter a lick to the militantly tolerant that Brendan Eich, the founder of the company, and the inventor of Javascript, exercised his personal beliefs with his own pocketbook and categorically refused to do penance for it. It’s clear – or it should be to the dimmest of bulbs by now: express the wrong opinions with regard to gay marriage, global warming, and fiscal responsibility on the part of the government … and the militantly tolerant are on your case.

How much longer this can go on is anyone’s guess – but I am definitely loosing patience with the hysterical demonization of opinions counter to the current politically-correct ones. I am also pretty certain that a lot of other people who have been paying attention are loosing patience, also – just look at what happened with Chick-fil-A, and then Duck Dynasty, over the expression of personal sentiments with regard to marriage. Chick-fil-A must have had the best week ever, they were boycotted so thoroughly, and the Robertsons pretty well won their slugging match over having Phil Robertson continue on the show. I seriously don’t envy anyone employed this week at Mozilla. I dumped Firefox as the alternate browser on my computer and so did my daughter on hers. A small thing, admittedly, like a pinprick to an elephant, but I am fairly certain the pin-pricks accumulate.

(Cross-posted at Chicagoboyz.com)

Iztvestia and Pravda

04. April 2014 · Comments Off on Iztvestia and Pravda · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Health and Wellness, Tea Time, Veteran's Affairs · Tags: , , ,

Ah, yes – The News and The Truth, although in the bitter Soviet-era saying; there was no news in one, and no truth in the other. Our own very dear mainstream news establishments have not quite descended to that naked degree of lack of news and truth, but bless their hearts, they are trying, and at the current rate of progress, may achieve the ultimate goal of being a slavish organ of the state sometime around the end of this year, or possibly in time for the next presidential election. That Piers Morgan was bounced from whichever one of the alphabet networks that was misguided enough to assume that just because he had a British accent that he was intelligent and perceptive is cause enough to hope that a sense of reality might be in the cards – but that Great Britain won’t take his supercilious Limey ass back again doesn’t give cause for hope. (Note to the egregious Mr. Morgan – yes, in Texas we like big guns and we cannot lie… and we can even use them, in defense of our home and hearth.)

Now and again there are heartwarming stories of little old ladies who – upon being threatened by some scum-bag low-life attempting forcible entry into their humble abode – have given fair warning, and drilled the miscreant through the front door, dropping him on the doormat, dead as a doornail. This does not excite any more comment among law officials than subdued congratulations for having taken out the trash – unlike England, that blessed green jewel, set in a silver sea, where lately this kind of citizen resistance to criminal depredation draws frowns and prison sentences upon the good citizen. The larcenous scumbags are apparently a protected species, to be coddled and cherished; and anyone objecting forcefully to being depredated upon by them is landed upon with the full force of the law and the shrill disapproval of the intellectual and the ruling classes. Let it be here noted that I am so very glad that three of my four grandparents decamped from the Isle of the Blessed early in the 20th century, and that the Air Force fortuitously deposited me in Texas, which seems at the beginning of the 21st century to be emerging as the last, best hope for a middle class-based, free market economy and constitutional democracy … which is kind of ironic, considering the degree of free-wheeling political corruption in certain Texas counties back in the day. But I digress…

Back to truth and news, then; from a couple of different sources, the appearance of Ms. Valerie Jarrett, the President’s closest and most trusted advisor – his office wife, as it were – on a certain television program oriented towards women, not just urging the audience to sign up for Obama-care, but asking the producers of TV shows to include an Obama-care friendly plot-line … Damn. Well, at least they are being out in the open about it. Time was, when the Hollywood Reds had the decency to be subtle, and not advertise their allegiance to the Party line … although when called upon it, they did kick and scream mightily.

So, here we are – the current administration is nakedly, openly calling upon the purveyors of the entertainment to flack for Obamacare via popular entertainment. It’s anyone’s guess as to how this will work out; everything from a throw-away line of dialog to a whole Very Special Episode dedicated to a government initiative that is shaping up to be an even bigger and more unpopular disaster than Prohibition. Because this is how it is going to work out at my house – given that we’ve bagged cable and now to to Hulu, Amazon Prime and Acorn for our television watching – we’ll immediately drop any consideration of watching any scripted programs that comply with the desires of the current administration in this regard. Last week, it seems that Rachael Ray went all sobby and ostentatiously grateful for Obamacare, which moved me quietly to not only never, ever buy any of her cookbooks, pet food or kitchen implements again, but also to skip any of her recipes available through internet searches. There will be a cost paid, for any highly-visible flacking with regard to Obamacare – a cost which will, I hope, become painful very, very soon.

Just for Fun – Food-Blogging

02. April 2014 · Comments Off on Just for Fun – Food-Blogging · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic

How to be the best food-blogger evah! (Found through a Facebook link…)

On Ice

28. March 2014 · Comments Off on On Ice · Categories: Ain't That America?, Critters, Domestic, History, Technology · Tags: , ,

Just this week and thanks to gaining a new book-publishing client, I was able to complete the purchase of a new refrigerator-freezer. Oh, the old one was staggering along OK, still keeping the refrigerated foods cold and the frozen food frozen … but there were so many dissatisfactions with it, including the fact that it had such deep shelves that in cleaning it out we discovered an embarrassingly large number of jars of condiments whose best-if-sold-by-date were well into the previous decade … not to mention a couple of Rubbermaid containers with leftovers in them that we had quite forgotten about. Well, out of sight, out of mind, as the saying goes. Truly, I don’t like to waste leftovers, but in this case, we had a good clean-out and as of now are resolved to do better, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die. The new and larger refrigerator-freezer has relatively shallow and many adjustable shelves in its various compartments; so that we dearly hope that the buried-at-the-back-of-a-deep-shelf-and-totally-forgotten-about syndrome will be banished entirely.

Anyway – enough of my failings as a thrifty housekeeper; the thing that I was marveling on this afternoon was that the new refrigerator-freezer has an automatic ice-maker. Better than that – an automatic ice-maker and ice-water dispenser in the door, and a small light which winks on when depressing the lever which administers ice (in cubes or crushed) and ice-water and then gradually dims once released. And if all that is a small luxury compared to the previous refrigerator-freezer, it is a huge luxury compared to the electric ice-box that made my Granny Jessie’s work and food-storage capabilities somewhat lighter than those of her own mother. It’s monumental, even – and no one thinks anything of it today, unless the electricity goes off.
More »

Winston Churchill Funeral

27. March 2014 · Comments Off on Winston Churchill Funeral · Categories: European Disunion, Good God, History, Military, World · Tags:

Found through a comment at Neo-Neocon.
A reminder of what Britain used to be.

Ice, Ice Baby

25. March 2014 · Comments Off on Ice, Ice Baby · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic

So, we finally got the new refrigerator-freezer delivered today. In Late January, when the washing machine turned up it’s toes, metaphorically speaking, and went to join the appliance choir eternal, I had to go straight out and buy a new one … from my favorite purveyor of cut-rate quality appliances, the local scratch ‘n’dent store. This enterprise does a thriving business in slightly dinged new appliances, floor models, returned merchandise or rehabbed second-hand ones. I had bought the original refrigerator-freezer, the washer and dryer new for the house in 1995; just your basic economy Whirlpool models from the BX, and so everyone tells me that almost twenty years is darned good for such appliances, and that the new ones are much more energy efficient. So much more efficient that as a matter of fact, CPS offers a rebate for replacing a refrigerator-freezer manufactured before 2001 with an energy efficient model.

Anyway the upshot if it all is that Blondie noticed the rather nice side-by-side refrigerator-freezers on display at Scratch ‘n’ Dent when we were shopping for the washing machine. Truth to tell, the old one was giving honest cause for concern, even though it still kept the cold stuff cold and the frozen stuff well-frozen. The supports for the two crisper drawers had fallen apart ages ago, the molded shelves in the door were beginning to develop hairline cracks at certain stress points, the pebbled finish on the outside collected tiny lines of grime that were impossible to clean thoroughly – and being just the average standard 19-cubic-foot sized model meant that stuff gravitated to the back of deep shelves, not to be seen again for months. The side-by-side model was slightly taller, and all the shelves, to include those in the doors much shallower. Stuff in it could be easily seen, in other words. Most of the shelves slid out, and there were three drawers. It was just about the size to fit in the space designated in the kitchen. So … no, I didn’t need my arm twisted very much.

What it looks like now!

What it looks like now!

Because there was also the matter of the automatic ice-maker and the dispenser of ice and drinking water in the door; as Texas is hot enough in the summer to historically warrant being compared unfavorably to Hell, ice water and ice are highly-valued. I had meant to buy the automatic ice-maker kit for the original refrigerator, but never got around to doing so before that model became a back-number. We rather envied those of our friends who did have the jazzy, side-by-side models with the ice and water dispenser … and so, with the payments from several clients, I was able to put the gorgeous side-by-side model on layaway. When I went to Scratch ‘n’ Dent to make payments, Blondie would go along to admire it, murmuring, “Soon, soon, my pretty!” until they moved it to the back area with the ‘Sold’ merchandise.

So, they delivered and assembled it to day, two guys horsing it through the sliding door on the patio – and very kindly moved the old one out to the patio, where the recycling contractor will come for it at the end of the week. We had spent some hours this morning, taking most everything out of the old unit … quite a lot got pitched, especially some jars of condiments with best-if-used-by dates in the last decade. (Damn, that jar of black bean sauce was from 2008?) Hereby also resolved, that we use leftovers within four days, or if not, label and freeze it. Blondie spent an hour or so, reattaching all the magnets, and cartoons and stuff to the side of the new one and I don’t think she was muttering, “My Precious, my Precious!” But she might have been …

The magnet and clipping collection - confined now to the side.

The magnet and clipping collection – confined now to the side.


Anyway, we have to let the icemaker cycle through and throw away the first batch, but the water is fit to drink now, and the contents are beautifully organized and visible. It does take up a bit more space, top to bottom and side to side, but on the whole we are quite pleased with what is essentially a big-money purchase not driven by absolute necessity.

I Was Always Told …

20. March 2014 · Comments Off on I Was Always Told … · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Good God, Military, Rant, sarcasm · Tags: ,

Not to speak ill of the dead. But in the case of Fred Phelps, of the loathsome Westwood Baptist Church (which actually had no connection whatsoever with the formal Baptist church establishment save the name, and that was doubtless a bit of self-serving publicity. I’d lay any amount of money that the regular Baptists would have liked to have paid a pretty penny to make him promise to call his nasty little sect anything but Baptist … where was I? Oh, back to the convoluted sentence…) I could be tempted to make an exception.

God is infinitely merciful, and He is the ultimate judge, so I’ll leave it to Him to decide if Fred Phelps should be eternally deep-fried like a basket of French fries in the everlasting boiling lake of Hell … but I would argue that he richly deserves that fate for several reasons: One – he and his loathsome little sect coldly and deliberately used the pain and grief of other people. This was either to torment them for their own micro-sectarian jollies, as a means of getting in front of the TV cameras – or provoking outraged mourners into laying violent hands upon their disgusting and manipulative persons for the purposes of extorting money out of them by means of a lawsuit. All three reasons are sufficiently loathsome, IMHO, to justify hellfire. This judgment is not mine to make. It was not theirs, either, but this realization didn’t seem to instill any degree of Christian humility in the members of the cult.

Two – their actions noted in the above paragraph certainly did not reflect any credit on the Protestant denominations, or on American Christians, generally. Likely, they served to drive ordinary people away from an understanding of God and his many mansions.

On the other hand, I am told that Fred Phelps was a long-time Democrat party activist. So he can and probably will go on voting. There is life after death, you know.

Airplane, Airplane, Who’s Got the Airplane?

17. March 2014 · Comments Off on Airplane, Airplane, Who’s Got the Airplane? · Categories: Cry Wolf, Fun With Islam, Mordor, Wild Blue Yonder, World · Tags: , ,

I speak, of course, of the missing Malaysia Airlines Boing 777, which took off last week from Kuala Lumpur and came to earth … or sea – we know not where. The whole saga just gets weirder and weirder as reported. Possible terrorists? Piracy and ransom? Complicity of the flight crew? Transponders turned off, and flying in a zig-zaggy pattern, and then vanishing entirely? There’s a new angle almost every day or so. Increasingly those who wonder about such things are wondering if those who do know or suspect with good reason what really happened to Flight MH370 are keeping their mouths shut as well. Yes – the oceans are wide and deep, and an airplane – even a Boeing 777 – is large and full of stuff, and people.

Wherever it came down, on land or on sea and if catastrophically … well, searchers usually have found something by now, especially by following along the original flight path. But MH370 went rogue, although why, how, where and at the hands of whom is a puzzle most extraordinary – in the words of Hercule Poirot. I’ll make no pretense of being an expert in investigating missing aircraft, but I only remember one other such case of a large aircraft vanishing so thoroughly and completely in the last decade or so. (It was in Africa, under weird circumstances, flight crew of three and … no one knows what happened to it after it took off.)

Usually, three days max, and somewhere along the expected flight path – the searchers find what’s left of the aircraft, and begin to make an educated guess at what happened, even if all there is to go on at first are some floating seat cushions and a fuel slick. But this, as I say, is just weird. Everything that is reported – and what is reported is sketchy, contradictory and filtered through the news media of several different countries – only adds to the weirdness. Speculation runs all the way through the possible, the probable to the ‘thriller-novel-plot’ and into the frankly extraordinary. But the thing is that once you have seen a plot to hijack four passenger airliners and crash them into tall buildings get carried out, one knows that what was once ‘thriller-novel-plot’ and conspiracy website fodder may very well turn up among tomorrows’ headlines.

Taking a Break – Saurkraut

17. March 2014 · Comments Off on Taking a Break – Saurkraut · Categories: Domestic
The raw ingredients

The raw ingredients

I never ate sauerkraut, growing up. Why Mom never had a go at making it is a mystery: the basic ingredients are cheap and plentiful, the process simple and the results tasty. Likely this was because our own ethnic background is English and Scots-Irish; sauerkraut is just not one of those things, even if cabbage is a sturdy green vegetable and well-adapted to the frozen northern hemispheres. But it is a mainstay in peasant cooking in Germany, Eastern Europe and Russia generally. Even as far as Korea, where they make a high-octane version spiced with garlic and hot red peppers known as kimchi. Plain ordinary sauerkraut is the simple to make at home; just thinly-sliced fresh cabbage and Ball pickling salt.

This week at the Container Store I bought a very large, 5-liter glass lidded glass jar, as I have long considered making it in a large batch. An acquaintance of ours in Fredericksburg picked up an old-fashioned 5 gallon crock in an antique store, which would make enough sauerkraut for an army. Back in the day it was customary to make it in bulk – the recipe I have calls for twenty pounds of cabbage, which works out to something like ten heads of cabbage. It takes about six weeks to ferment properly.
Sauerkraut - Wilty Cabbage
This is the process:

Trim off the outer leaves of four heads of cabbage, quarter the heads and cut out the solid core, then either thinly sliver the quarters, or cut into eights and run through a food processor fitted out with a slicing blade, or a mandolin – or even an old-fashioned sauerkraut slicer. I do have a huge metal mixing bowl made for restaurant use, so ten pounds of thinly shredded cabbage fills it very handily. Sprinkle over it 6 TBsp. of Ball canning salt, and knead it all gently together. The cabbage will give up some liquid – let it sit for a bit, and then pack into a large lidded jar or salt. If there isn’t enough brine from the cabbage to cover the leaves, then mix 1 ½ Tablespoons of salt in hot water, allow to cool, and top the jars with the additional brine. The cabbage has to be below the level of the brine.
Sauerkraut - Topped with whole leaf

One recipe book suggested cutting a whole cabbage leaf to size and putting it on the very top of the shreds, to keep them submerged. Either cover the top of the jar with cheesecloth cut to size – which I didn’t like to do, as it lets the brine evaporate. I’ve just closed the lid on the jar – and it is already busily fermenting away. Around the beginning of May, I’ll process it all through the hot-water canner – and there’ll be our sauerkraut for another season.

Some More Amusing Linkage

16. March 2014 · Comments Off on Some More Amusing Linkage · Categories: Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, Fun and Games, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not

This one laments life in a quaint old English village … where there are just too many dead bodies. Read the whole thing, and then try and watch Midsomer Murders…

« Older articles
Newer articles »