Having reason to head up to Fredericksburg last Saturday, we decided to explore doing it by the back roads; honestly, I would rather – unless in a tearing hurry – travel across Texas by the secondary roads. (Unless it is in the dark, or in the rain, and when the deer are especially depressed and suicidal.) We decided to travel north on the old Bulverde road, and stop and take pictures of anything interesting – and of course, one of the first things we pulled over to stop for was a very charming vista of a turn-of-the-last century cottage painted yellow with aqua-blue trim, surrounded by oak trees, a mown field of grass, and backed with a couple of stone buildings. The nearest stone building still had a roof – the farthest didn’t. I took some pictures from the roadside, and then my daughter noticed that there was a driveway, and a sign; obviously the place was some kind of enterprise more or less open to the public. We’re the public … so we pulled in. From the circular parking lot we could see the screened porch on the back of the cottage, and a round table and four chairs under the huge ancient oak tree at the back – and in a moment the owner came out to join us. Essentially, we had a tour of the old buildings; it’s what remains of the old Pieper farmstead, which was established round and about 1850. (It’s now an event venue, and the cottage is a bed and breakfast.)
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Well, that was interesting – Blondie and I watched about the first fifty minutes or so together, and then she watched to the very end, as I had already pretty much given up hope of the Obaminator melting down entirely … the consummation that I have been devoutly wishing for since his administration began. Well, he was looking a bit melty and sweaty, and what was with all the constant blinking? Reassuring that he can speak sort of coherently without the crutch of a teleprompter, so he had that going for him, but I have to say that he did not seem confident at all; good at coming out with the predigested and memorized talking points, but no sense at all that he really, really, knew what he was talking about.
Romney, on the other hand, was there – on point, knowledgeable and authoritative. I know, I know – Blondie and I have both had the experience of being briefed in a military setting by someone who knows the subject inside and out, and one who is just reciting the required materiel. We both of us can tell the difference. I was reassured by how good Romney was; as I said, neither of us had him as first choice for the GOP, but we are now thinking that he was a good pick after all.
Of course, the major media melt-down is grimly amusing to behold … in the same way that a massive, spectacular wreck on the interstate is. Reporters and reporterettes, you got sold – and you believed in the Obaminator being the superior being and sang his praises in four-part barber-shop harmony … and framed Romney as a bumbling and doltish caricature. Have fun, sucking up what little remains of the respect for your profession, trickling in little steaming streams out of the wreck. Trying to belatedly redeem yourselves in the eyes of conservatives, libertarians and Tea Partiers will be another interesting spectacle over the next few weeks. I look forward to it, and am making popcorn.
So – next challenge; an open town-hall meeting, and a possibly much more partisan moderator. This should be interesting, especially if Romney handles it all with the same aplomb, Obama sweats bullets, and the mainstream media goes into overtime-spin, explaining just one more time how Obama really, really came out the winner. Fun times … maybe I’d better get more popcorn.
PS – from the expressions on the faces of both the Obamas after the debate, I don’t think that celebratory anniversary nookie was in the cards last night.
(A bit of topical political humor, from one of those emails, going the rounds.)
President Obama walks into the Bank of America and says to a
cashier, “Good morning Ma’am, could you please cash this check for me”? * *
Cashier: “It would be my pleasure sir. Could you please sho w me your ID”?
Obama: “Truthfully, I did not bring my ID with me as I didn’t think
there was any need to. I am President Barrack Obama, the president of the United States .
Cashier: “Yes sir, I know who you are, but with all the Government
regulations, monitoring of the banks because of imposters and forgers, etc., I must insist on seeing ID.”
Obama: “Just ask anyone here at the bank who I am and they will tell you. Everybody knows who I am.”
Cashier: “I am sorry, but these are government and bank rules and I must follow them.”
Obama: “I am urging you please to cash this check.”
Cashier: “Look, this is what we can do: One day Tiger Woods came into the bank without ID. To prove he was Tiger Woods he pulled out his putting iron and made a beautiful shot across the bank lobby into a cup. With that shot we knew him to be Tiger Woods and we cashed his check. Another time, Andre Agassi came in without ID. He pulled out his tennis racquet and served an ace shot directly into the center of our bank logo 90 feet away. With that spectacular shot we cashed his check. So, what can you do to prove that it is you, and only you?”
Obama stood there thinking, and thinking and finally says: “Honestly, nothing comes to mind. I can’t think of a single thing I can do.”
Cashier: “Will that be large or small bills, Mr. President?
It’s been another one of those weeks, blog-fans … now, I do want you all (all both of you) to put your hands together and welcome back Radar, a contributor from away back, who has decided to get back into long-form blogging again. Yay, Radar! Welcome home!
As for the rest of it … well, welcome to interesting times. Now it is something like six weeks, give or take a handful of days until Election Day, and honestly, it cannot come too soon for me. Every week and every day there’s some new bit o’drama inflated by the lapdog mainstream media into something that spells Certain Doom for Romney/Ryan, and Glorious Victory for the Dear Leader. A sooper secrit recording of Romney talking to fundraisers and being bluntly honest that a certain percentage of potential voters probably wouldn’t vote for him and upset their entitlement applecart … oooh! Gaffe of the week, according to all the talking and editorial heads. That a good number of the conservative-libertarian blogger types taking note of all this would not have disagreed with this insight – although the exact percentage might be open for discussion – appears to be something that the usual media lapdogs have chosen to ignore. Also – that the tape was edited, and Jimmy Carter’s hapless grandson chose to do his bit for the Dems … jeese, doesn’t he have a real job to go to? Apparently many of these Millennial’s don’t. The Daughter Unit, better known as Blondie does – having several different jobs to go to, none of which offer health care benefits. Not a shock, considering that some of them are part-time, and for the rest, she is an independent contractor – and is qualified to go to the VA.
OK – back to election matters – wish I may, wish I might – know why Mittens Romney is the party of the clueless, disconnected rich, Thurston Howell-type … whereas, a candidate who has a fund-raising event at a venue owned by a fabulously wealthy rap music* entrepreneur and his performer wife featuring a tower made of $800 bottles of champagne and charging $40,000 a plate for the privilege is a defender of the downtrodden middle- and working-class. This is probably one of those mysteries, like that of Hollywood blockbusters which never turn a profit to pay off the hapless actors and writers who signed contracts for a percentage of the net profits.
But $800 bottles of champagne, all in gold – Talk about ghetto fabulous. I’ll shudder over the gross vulgarity of that and move on, while noting that if the stuff tastes any better than Crystal, I’ll be mildly surprised. And Blondie has sampled Crystal – through the offices of a date with a surfer dude she met in Ocean Beach, once upon a time. She tells me it didn’t taste any better than the $6 supermarket champagne that we buy for celebrating the New Year.
It does look as if the O-Man did, in his rounds of entertainment and talk shows, actually stumble into some real reporters, prepared to ask hard questions instead of the usually softly thrown Nerf ball. Just a hint, big guy – the local Hispanic community does care very much about what has been happening south of the US border for quite a while. Fast and Furious has managed to kill hundreds of Mexican citizens, many of them innocent bystanders to the drug gang wars. Meanwhile, the rest of us look at the Middle East going up in flames, and wonder if a brand-new Obama campaign motto and a logo featuring a re-imagining of the US flag with stripes bearing a curious resemblance to the dragging finger-marks made in blood on the doorway of the US consulate in Benghazi was all that good an idea. Your mileage may vary, however.
Let’s see … is Twitter a means for hapless celebrities to reveal themselves once and for all as utter morons and/or bigots? I guess so; the evidence is compiled at Twitchy. Alas, it looks like Bette Midler joins my steadily lengthening list of stars and personalities who have so pissed me off that I will never pay money for anything they are in. Bette, Bette, Bette … we do not, in fact, have a blasphemy law in this country. Citizens may not be arrested for saying things that embarrass the government or an established religion … and if they were, then Andres Serrano and the producer of The Book of Mormon would be in big, big trouble.
And that was my week – yours?
(* insert viciously skeptica quote marks around that word)
The Sixties never die … and oh, how I wish they would. But here they are, once again.
So, Mika Brzezinski thinks that a train-wreck of a reality show that I have never, ever seen, “sums up everything I have to say about America.”
OK, then.
A smug television news personality like Mika Brezezinski sums up just about everything I have to say about smug, judgemental, fundamentally isolated television news personalities … especially those who got their jobs on the basis of nepotism.
So I guess we are even. You don’t even want to know how much I despise Nancy Grace and Anderson Cooper.
The Cure – reminded of this by those nice folks at Ace of Spades HQ.
I was very fond of this song, when it was first popular, and when it was in our reocurring hit-list, because the musical up-ramp to it was just about a minute long, and when I used it as the last song in the playlist at the end of an hour, I could do an outro, promo the next hour and read about half of the spot reader book over that mad minute of music.
Enjoy, y’all.
… that there was some kind of secret high-sign or signal that we could give to other conservative-libertarian-Tea Party adherents in casual social situations. Even in Texas, a mostly red-state and stronghold of prickly independent free-marketers, there is enough of a leavening of blue-state Dems and Obama worshippers that one need be constrained in discussing politics … by good manners, if nothing else. Especially in the neighborhood where one lives; there are, I know, at least a few Democrats sufficiently enthused about the One to actually display bumper-stickers and yard signs. One of them is a very sweet and cordial gentlemen dog aficionado; he and his wife always adore and pet our dogs, when they see us, and we recently mourned together when they had to put one of their own dogs to sleep. He and his wife are nice people, decent people; good neighbors, home-owners who keep their place beautifully – they fly the Texas and American flags, and a military service flag with two stars upon it – but… But on the back of his truck he has a home-made magnetic bumper sticker implying that the Tea Party in combination with the GOP equals the screwing of America. So there is one thing that we can never talk about, not without risking neighborly amity, and I just don’t want to take the risk. He had an Obama-Biden yard sign the last time out, anyway, so we can’t say we weren’t warned. The nice older couple with the lovely garden just down the street from them were precinct-walking for a Dem candidate this year, so any casual conversation with them also must avoid politics. My own next-door neighbor, an irreproachably middle-class retired civil servant of African-American heritage has an Obama tee-shirt that she has worn now and again, so there again … a careful avoidance of my Tea Party sympathies.
But now and again we have stumbled into a potential political minefield in conversation, most often when the other person ventures an opinion to do with the economy, race-relations, or the upcoming campaign, and then hesitates, looking at us nervously until we assure them of our own libertarian/conservative Tea Party leanings. This happened most recently last weekend, during a venture into the Hill Country, and a stop in a small shop featuring vintage Americana. The place was empty, and the owner was probably very bored, when Blondie and I wandered in. Soon we were comparing our favorite episodes of American Restoration, mutual in our wish that they would show more of the actual nuts and bolts of the restoral job, instead of the manufactured interpersonal drama. Then Blondie mentioned a similar show – Abandoned, which features a couple of guys spelunking through abandoned buildings, looking for stuff they can refurbish, refinish, or repair and sell at a profit. I said how I thought it was just tragic, these factories and churches like the neo-gothic monument in Philadelphia featured on a recent show were just left to ruin, where once they had been the pride of the cities and towns where they were located. In the 19th century and early 20th, people had spent good money to build solidly and well, had manufactured good and useful things, paid wages … and now, it was all left to rack and ruin, and the rag-pickers, raking through the ruins looking for something to sell. The shop owner sympathized, and made a remark about eastern and rust-belt cities which the political leadership had essentially trashed … and then he got a very nervous look on his face, obviously fearing that he had said too much and possibly to the wrong people. Until we assured him that we were Tea Partiers from way back. And then we had a nice conversation, speculating on the eventual outcome of the various campaigns … and really, that is why I wish there were some kind of secret handshake or signal that we could give, so we know right off the bat when it is OK to risk being open about political leanings.
(Cross posted at chicagobotz.net)
You know, I meant to do this on Monday, for part of my Monday Morning Miscellany series, but I had a deadline or two, and the time and writing energy just got away from me … but all to the good, for the last five days have actually provided something to muse upon, in these dog days of summer. (Fittingly called the dog days, as one of them is curled up underneath my desk at this very moment.)
The first of these is that Newsweek – tottering towards it’s nearly inevitable doom – has either recovered something of its journalistic backbone, or thrown caution to the winds and tried to win back those droves of disgusted conservatives and libertarians by doing a cover story suggesting that it might be best for all if the Dear Leader start packing. I couldn’t have been more astonished to hear the White House Press Corpse-men suddenly break out singing, “Hit the Road Jack, Don’t You Come Back, No More, No More,†in four-part a-capella harmony during the morning White House briefing . Not surprised that a pop historian like Niall Ferguson should say so, but in Newsweek? The deeply cynical opine that it’s a sort of “Get out of Jail†marker, against future accusations of being biased in favor of the Dear Leader – so at a later date, they can say in their defense, “We did too criticize him, so there!†I wonder if it isn’t one last vain attempt to cut themselves free from the sinking USS Obama, seeing that the ship is going down by the head, the engine room is flooding rapidly, and the last lifeboats are being lowered.
Further indication that the White House Press Corpse is perhaps less enamored of the Dear Leader lately is this recent picture … captured by a Reuters photog. Further comment would be superfluous … but somehow one senses that the bloom of enchantment with Dear Leader is pretty much wearing off with the working press stiffs.
And as for our own Mittens, our hero in the upcoming joust in the 2012 campaign lists … the phrase “Bless your/his/her heart†is a somewhat loaded one, in flyover-country-speak. It can be a mild and gently charitable wish for the person of whom it is said to have a nice day … but when said in a certain tone of voice and under certain circumstances by certain practitioners of the passive-aggressive arts (usually but not always Southern ladies of a certain age) the unstated meaning is a suggestion that the person referred to should sodomize themselves with a rusty chain-saw … or something even more painful and humiliating. Glad to clear that up for my bi-coastal and international readers. Moving on …
And it seems to be true that the Obama campaign is stiffing host communities on paying for the additional expenses attendant on hosting a Presidential event in their dear little towns. Whereas the Romney/Ryan campaign is paying up front, even paying in advance. Seriously, I wonder how long this kind of thing – stiffing cities and municipalities for the extra expense of having Dear Leader swoop into town for an event – can go on without serious repercussions. A pattern? Do bears perform ablutions in the woods? IIRC, Los Angeles commuters got pretty darned tired of the Presidential motorcade making traffic a nightmare … or more of a nightmare than usual, whenever he attended a Hollywood event.
The Todd Akin rape kerfuffle … hard to know what to say about that; he is not running for office in a district where I vote, and the suspicion remains that if a sentiment so dubious and so clumsily expressed were mouthed by a candidate with a D after his or her name, it would get the full-enable treatment. Still – a clear pitfall, in the question posed to him and a bad response to it. Seriously, if you need follow-up explanations, clarifications and footnotes about what you said – then you have not put the best foot forward … unless that foot is comfortably lodged in your mouth up to the kneecap. I note that the gentleman in question is a long-term establishment Repub, which in my way of thinking is at least one strike against him. The other strike being that if you cannot enunciate what you mean, clearly and unmistakably, without legions of commenters arriving on gossamer wings on a mission to disentangle you from your thoughts … then perhaps you should consider another career, outside politics. One mush-mouthed, gaffe-producing and deeply confused career politician of Social Security age at a time, please – and that slot is already filled bountifully by Joe Biden. Alas, the only useful suggestion I have for GOP/Independent/Tea Party voters in Mr. Akin’s district is to consider a write-in vote, and to campaign on that basis over the next two months and a bit.
And finally, Prince Harry in the tabloids after a loosing round of strip pool in Los Vegas. Hmmmm, yes. Very nice and thank you, sweetie. Now put on your trousers before you catch your death of cold, as your Gran is going to be pretty pissed for a while.
And that was my week; yours?
And with the issuance of two announcements this week regarding the upcoming Presidential campaign, the usually interesting quadrennial race just got a little bit more … interesting? Bizarre? More than usually contentious? All of the above and more, to judge from this week’s surfing across the oceans of the internet. So Mittens discovered the existence – heretofore unsuspected by the larger public – of his fiscally responsible and constitutionalist backbone and tagged Paul Ryan as his running mate… that makes for a snappy bumper sticker right of the top of my head; “Time for a little R & R.†Said prospective VP nominee had never swam across my ken as a possible, but then Mittens himself had never seemed to me to be a likely prospect for the top o’the ticket either … altogether too bland, to nice, too establishment GOP … but then I am only an interested amateur and Tea Party enthusiast. All props to him for seeing that the fiscally responsible, strictly Constitutionalist and relatively free market segment of the libertarian-conservative public constituted a powerful voting block.
So … Paul Ryan; hope that he and his family, all of his friends, neighbors and and everyone that he has ever known are all battened down against the coming onslaught headed his way from the usual media crowd, also known as Pravda on the Potomac. Frankly, no wonder at all that Paul Ryan or his people didn’t want in the least to be interviewed by a whiny regular at Salon.com. Mainstream media establishments have proved comprehensively that they were so deep in the tank in the tank for Obama last time that they probably needed a deep-sea diver’s helmet and someone up above feeding them oxygen. And nothing much has changed – yet again, they seem dedicated soul and body to drag his tottering Juggernaut over the finish line. At least those who still have a job and whose organization is still functioning will be dedicated to that project, although it would seem that at least some of them must be entertaining doubts.
Yes, established media organs – you have showed us where your loyalties lie. I wouldn’t want to talk to you either. Over the last four or five years, you have dedicated yourselves to trashing Tea Partiers, libertarian-conservatives, and traditionalists generally. So, no – we really don’t want to talk to you. Not you, not the pollsters that call incessantly: who knows who is really asking, and what will that information obtained from us really be used for? No, we don’t trust you, and we certainly don’t trust this current administration. Look at what happened to Joe the Plumber, to the owner of Gibson Guitar and any number of others … and include the owners of Chick-fil-A, too. Don’t’ forget about how the Department of Homeland security made grumbling noises about veterans and tea partiers being potential terrorists, too. And we don’t much want – unless we are a stubborn and stalwart sort – to even go out and joust in those wide open public internet spaces available to us … since, in a lot of cases (notably this one) the administrators are pretty obviously biased. Pity, that.
We’ll vote in November – that’s all that I’ll admit to at this present time.
The other announcement – that Joe Biden, the one-man walking gaffe machine would still adorn the bottom of the ticket. Knock me over with a feather – I thought sure that the announcement would concern health issues and a desire to spend more time with his family. But whatever – the man’s got a gift … and the gift is to the Romney-Ryan campaign, especially if Biden makes too many more appearances. Of course, the man at the top o’ the ticket seems to have stuck his beautifully polished Gucci loafer in his mouth a good few times, too. The ‘you didn’t build that’ meme seems to have gone down like a whole pineapple enema with the small business community … which, as sources like the Chambers of Commerce never tire of reminding us, are the engine running the whole American middle class economy.
Yes, a small to medium business of their own, and being their own boss is one of those things that just about every American, or prospective American with a bit of hustle and drive in them aspires to. Count me among them – as I have just spend the last week tediously transcribing a 19th century ledger book for a client – and thanked the deity every morning that as tedious and exacting as it was, I’d rather be doing that at my own computer in the corner of my own little home office, then climbing into the office business drag and driving across town to someone else’s office to spend the next eight hours. Way to piss off just about every striving American and independent consultant, President Obama. Do, by all means, stay loyal to Joe Biden, and whoever is strategizing your campaign. Encourage your administration bureaucrats and officials to be vengeful, you media minions to be ugly, your local protest element to be ugly and threatening, and all of them to be irrational. Every instance will be reason for any number of quiet Tea Partiers to decide that R & R is good enough on November 2.
Me, I think this is the beginning of the preference cascade – that moment that everyone who has been made deeply unhappy by the policies of this administration looks around, and discovers that they are not alone.
I’ve been thinking for a while – based on my own use of the service – that the good old US Post Office is something well past its best-if-used-by date. Oh, no – not that it should be done away with as a government service entirely. But I can contemplate delivery of the mail only two or three times a week with perfect equanimity … which is at least a little tragic for there were times when the daily arrival of the mail was a much-looked-forward-to thing. When I was overseas, or in a remote location – like Greenland (and in military outposts today I am certain) the arrival of the mail (three times a week) was anticipated with keen interest, since it was our lifeline to the outside world. There were letters from family, loved ones, magazines, catalogues and packages with goodies in them – sometimes gifts, sometimes items ordered … the whole world, crammed into a tiny box with a locking door in the central post office; the magical envelopes, the catalogues and magazines in a tight-packed roll, the little pink slips that meant a package … and then, between one or two decades, it all changed.
Now, the packages come mostly through UPS or Fed-Ex. The various utility bills arrive as emails and are paid on-line. My pension and my daughters’ VA disability are paid by automatic deposit to bank accounts. Magazines? I dropped a lot of my various subscriptions through lack of interest (I am looking at you, Newsweek and Entertainment Weekly) or through the magazines or the publications themselves going under. My news and intellectual-contact jones is fed on-line. Email works for just about everything else save for birthday cards to Luddites like my mother. My various businesses as a freelance are conducted thru Paypal, or through email with my business partner. I realize that not everyone has this kind of luxury – and in the case of the zombie apocalypse or some sort of solar event that crashes the internet I will be SO screwed … but then I am not advocating abolition of the post office. Just that in those metropolitan areas in the continental US that are well-served by internet services and by the various rival delivery services, the Postal Service can probably dial it back, quite a bit. Nothing much comes in the daily mail any more, save the print equivalent of the stuff that I empty out of my spam email box. Really – I am never going to respond to the Capitol One offers for a credit card, so do they need to have their weekly c**p underwritten with tax dollars? My way back into the house from the group mailbox leads past my trash and recycle cans; convenient, as that is where the bulk of it winds up.
I’ll shed a nostalgic tear for the USPS, when they cut back services. I really will – as there are (or were) the occasional business that would send a payment check by mail, instead of an automatic transfer. And the businesses which depend upon cheap bulk mail deliveries will be set back a peg or two. I do dispatch my own books when bought by readers through media mail, and the workers at the post offices where I do and have done business are wonderful, competent and cheerful people (Yeah, I know that is SO much against the usual stereotype) … but otherwise I fear that the USPS is a zombie corpse, being kept alive out of habit. To enable it to keep shambling around in those places where it does truly provide a neccessary service, I’d be willing to give up delivery service on Saturdays and at least two weekdays.
I’d also be able to avoid encountering my slightly-deranged and very chatty neighbor, who haunts the group mailbox; another win-win, as I count it.
(Cross-posted at www.chicagoboyz.net, and my book blog)
Taking it into my head to go to the local Chick-fil-A last Wednesday was another one of those odd things, like getting involved in the Tea party which happened because of a friend. In this case, a purely on-line friend; the friend who inveigled me into attending an early San Antonio Tea Party planning committee meeting was a blog-friend whom I had actually met on a couple of social occasions, so when he said, ‘Hey, we need someone to write press releases and stuff, and you’re a writer and you were a broadcaster, so can ya?’ And being a stubborn independent libertarian-conservative sort, it seemed like a good idea. That the planned event very shortly turned into an all-Texas blow-out with 15,000 to maybe as many as 20,000 in attendance … well, I didn’t have anything much to do with that … I just kept my head down and sent out the press releases and made myself available for local media interviews.
So, I got caught up in Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day in the same manner, when Sarah Hoyt, another writer-blogger (who is in favor of same-sex marriage) wrote a long post condemning at length the way the militant pro-same-sex marriage advocates were going about it. She held that ganging up on Chick-fil-A was an appallingly bad move, being based upon not much at all save a mild remark by the president of the firm regarding favoring traditional marriage in an interview published in an relatively obscure denominational publication. She predicted that this would alienate and infuriate people across the political spectrum, and that it would backfire hugely … which seems to have been the case. It is only fitting that she would be a writer of science fiction, a genre which lends a boost to ones’ powers of accurate prophecy.
I wonder myself if the better than huge turn-out in support of Chick-fil-A isn’t at least as much of a cultural seismic shock as the various Tea Party gatherings in 2009 were to the political arena. Certainly there was the same air of friendly cheerfulness and purpose about the other customers in the Chick-fil-A outlet where I went on August 1 as I remember from the first huge Alamo Plaza Tea Party rally. No kidding – it was a fun gathering, like the world’s biggest and happiest block party. There were whole families there – and it was as if the plaza was full of good friends whom you had never met before. So was the Chick-fil-A; and from the comments and posted reports on the internet it was pretty much like that all over. The illusion that it was some kind of grotesque grotesque and hateful mass exercise in gay-bashing must be difficult to maintain, in the face of so many actual participants who saw nothing of the sort. Just so the Tea Partiers were constantly accused of being dumb, disorganized, violent red-necked racists. This meme was so constantly pushed by mainstream media over the last three years – against considerable evidence to the contrary as well as the experience of actual participants – that a good portion of the public now readily believes the worst of the Tea Party. It goes without saying, such is the weary cynicism of experience, that the mainstream news organs of course painted the militant gay advocates who responded to Support Chick-fil-A Day in the most favorable colors, in spite of vandalism, harassment and generally distasteful conduct … just as the Occupy Whatever Street activists had breathlessly positive press in spite of turning their various occupied locations into unsanitary, lawless and repellant hellholes. I’m not even surprised by this tendency on the part of the mainstream media any more.
It is interesting that this all happened just as the self-organized, social-media savvy Tea Party adherents are managing to elect more and more fiscally-responsible, free-market favorable strict Constitutionalists into political office. I disagree with those commenters who hold that the Chick-Fil-A thing was brief distraction from the series matters at hand; this might be one of those huge turning points. The chain may be just another national fast-food outlet – but their local franchise owners are deeply-embedded in their communities, where apparently they do a lot of quiet good works, and are looked upon favorably by loyal customers, and their employees. To cynically and carelessly malign and insult them, just as the Tea Party is maligned and insulted is every bit as much a blunder as Sarah suggested. Beware the cold anger of quiet and patient people who have been pushed once too many times. Those who stood patiently in line for hours for a chicken sandwich and waffle fries to make a point will also be standing in line to vote in November. Depend on it.
Crossposted on www.chicagoboyz.net)
Late in the fall of 1862, under the mistaken assumption that they had been offered a thirty-day amnesty by the Governor of Texas and allowed to depart Texas unmolested rather than take the loyalty oath, a party of Unionists gathered together at Turtle Creek in Kerr County. They elected a settler from Comfort named Fritz Tegener as their leader, and Henry Schwethelm as second. Their number included Phillip Braubach, who had served as the sheriff of Gillespie County, and Captain John Sansom, a Texas Ranger before and after the war, and also the sheriff of Kendall County, two sons of Edwin Degener, a prominent free-thinker from Sisterdale, Heinrich Steves, whose large family had helped establish Comfort, and the Boerner brothers, one of whom had married a Steves daughter. Heinrich Stieler was also one of them; he was Henry Schwethelm’s brother-in-law and son of Gottlieb Stieler, an early settler whose family later established a ranch between Comfort and Fredericksburg which still exists today.
The Unionists in the group were bound by ties of kinship, by community as well as personal loyalty. There were sixty-eight of them: all German, save four Anglos (including Sansom) and one Mexican. They intended to travel on horseback westward towards the Mexican border; most meant to go from there to the United States and join the Union Army. Having a three-day head start and no heavy baggage wagons to contend with, they should have been well over the Nueces and into Mexico but for their belief in the non-existent amnesty … and so they made their way across country in a fairly leisurely manner. Duff was enraged when he heard of their departure. To his mind, they were deserters in time of war and deserving of death. He sent word to Lt. C.D. McRae in San Antonio that Tegener’s party was to be pursued at all cost; implicit in his orders was an understanding that he didn’t want to hear much about survivors. McRae led out a company of more than ninety men after the Unionists and prepared to follow Duff’s orders to the letter.
On the evening of August 9th, 1862, Tegener’s party camped in thin cedar woods, not far from the Rio Grande, between present-day Brackettville and Laguna. The built campfires and set out four sentries a good way from the camp. Sometime early the next morning, McRae’s scouts encountered Tegener’s guards, and the exchange of shots alerted the Unionists. There followed a short and confusing firefight. Some sources claim that McRae’s company had overridden the sleeping Unionists and caught them by surprise in their bedrolls. Other accounts have it that nearly half of Tegener’s party had decided to give it up as a bad job, and go back to the Hill Country to defend their families … or scattered when it seemed clear that Tegener had chosen a bad defensive position. John Sansom, certainly no coward and not unaccustomed to dirty fighting was one of the survivors; he urged Hugo Degener to come away with him, but the younger man refused. Most of those who stood and fought were killed outright. Eleven of the wounded were executed upon capture, to the horror of one of McRae’s volunteers who left an account; one survivor was taken to San Antonio and executed there. Others were hunted down and executed a week later by McRae’s troopers as they tried to cross the Rio Grande. The survivors scattered, including Sansom and Schwethelm; who both made it safely over the border. Others fled back to the Hill Country, bringing news of the fight to the families of the dead.
Captain Duff refused to allow the families of the dead to retrieve the bodies. Minna Stieler, the sixteen-year old sister of Heinrich Stieler, and her mother managed to get permission to go to where the bodies of her brother and another comrade had been left unburied, and cover them with brush and stones, the ground being too hard to dig a grave, and the bodies too far decayed to remove. The other remains lay unburied for three years. Exactly three years to the day after the Nueces Fight, Henry Schwethelm returned with a party of kinfolk and friends from Comfort, and gathered up the scattered bones. They brought them to Comfort, and buried them in a mass grave, on a low hillside on what then would have been the outskirts of town.
The stone obelisk is plain and stark, shaded by a massive oak tree: panels on three sides list the names of the 36 dead of Tegener’s party, all of whom were True to the Union.
(Crossposted at my book blog, and at www.chicagoboyz.net)
As I am going up to Comfort on the 11th, to take part in the 150th anniversary observences of the Nueces Fight, and since it has been a while since I wrote about this — herewith some background.)
Who would have thought that deep in the heart of a staunchly Confederate state, there would have been a large population of Unionists? But there was; and not only did they vote against Secession, but the governor of Texas himself was a Unionist. He was none other than Sam Houston himself, the hero of San Jacinto, who more than any other Texas man of note had politicked and maneuvered for ten long years so that Texas could join the United States. In the end, Texas seceded; instead of going it alone again, the secession party joined the Confederacy with what some observers considered to be reckless enthusiasm – especially considering the perilous position of those settlements on the far frontier. Those settlements had been protected from marauding Comanche, Apache and Kiowa by the efforts of US troops – and who would guard them now? When the Texas legislature passed a law requiring all public officials to swear an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy, Sam Houston resigned rather than take it. Being then of a good age, of long and devoted service to the people of Texas and held in deep respect even by citizens who didn’t agree with his stand, Sam Houston retired without incident to his home near Huntsville.
Other staunch Unionists in Texas were not able to refuse the demands of the Confederacy as easily as wily old General Sam. Among those who felt the wrath of the Confederacy most keenly were the German settlers of the Hill Country. Most of those settlers had come from Europe in the late 1840s; others had settled in San Antonio, Galveston and Indianola. In many cases they were the mercantile elite, as well as providing a solid leavening of skilled doctors, engineers, scientists, artists, teachers and writers in those communities. They were also Abolitionists; and in an increasingly perilous position as the split between free-soil states and those which permitted chattel slavery widened during the 1850s. Once Texas went Confederate, they were in even more danger, although they did not at first appear to realize this. Those citizens and counties which favored the Union and abolition could not easily separate, as West Virginia had from Virginia: they were stuck. The war began and ground on … and the breaking point came early in 1862 with passage of a conscription law. Every white male between the age of eighteen and thirty-five was liable for military service. This outraged those who had been opposed to slavery and secession, to the point of riots, evasion and covert resistance. Texas abolitionists and Unionists would be forced to fight in defense of an institution they despised, and for a political body they had opposed. Only a bare handful of men from Gillespie, Kendall and Kerr counties volunteered for service in the Confederate Army throughout 1861 and 1862, although good few more were perfectly willing to serve as state troops protecting the frontier, or in local volunteer companies of Rangers. Anyone who wanted a fight could take on the Indians, without the trouble of going east for military glory.
Before very long, the distinct un-enthusiasm in the Hill Country for the Confederacy and all its works and ways became a matter of deep concern to military and governing authorities. In a way, it was a clash of mind-sets: the German immigrants were innocently certain that the freedom of speech and political thought which they had always enjoyed since coming to Texas were still viable. The pro-Confederate authorities saw such thought and speech as disloyalty, clear evidence of potentially dangerous spies and saboteurs … and acted accordingly. In the spring of 1862, Gillespie and Kerr County was put under harsh martial law. All men over the age of 16 were ordered to register with the local provost marshal and take an oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. Few did so – and many never heard of the order, until the state troopers arrived to enforce it, under the command of a peppery, short-tempered former teamster; Captain James Duff.
By summer, Captain Duff ordered the arrest of any man who had not taken the loyalty oath. His troopers waged a savage campaign; flogging men they had arrested until they told his troopers what they wanted to hear, wrecking settler’s homes, arresting whole families, and confiscating foodstuffs and livestock. Men of draft age took to hiding out in the brush near their homes, while their families smuggled food to them. Frequently parties of Duff’s men assigned to arrest certain men returned empty-handed, with the subject of the arrest warrant left dangling on a rope from a handy tree on the return journey. Four out of six men arrested near Spring Branch in the Pedernales Valley and taken to be interned with other Unionists were summarily lynched when two of them escaped while their guards were asleep. A state trooper serving in the Fredericksburg area at that time remarked, “Hanging is getting to be as common as hunting.†Suspicion followed by repression bred resentment and defiance, which bred violence… and resistance.
(To be continued …)
Yep – when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro … Here we are, shaking our heads in amazed disbelief that now a fast-food chain purveying tasty chicken entrees, distinguished among other fast-food outlets only for a corporate policy of being closed on Sunday and a rather witty advertising series featuring illiterate cows urging us to eat chicken … is now is the hill to be defended in the culture war. That would be the newly-vicious cultural war between the forces of tolerant political correctness and those conservative and libertarian defenders of free-market principles as well as the freedom of belief and expression. Most of us of that persuasion are actually rather stunned at how suddenly Chick-Fil-A is suddenly now the demon that must be defeated! And defeated by any means, fair, foul, shrill or underhanded as is required by the mission, naturally. Is there some PC target of the week decided upon? Last time I looked around it was the Koch Brothers who were the Goldstein o’the Week. One can hardly keep up without a scorecard.
It seems that the offense against the gods of Political Correctness that has been committed by Chick-Fil-A is that the owners of the company in an interview have elucidated their belief that marriage is one of those traditional things: between a man and woman, families for the production and support of, which they personally (and in their own donations) support wholeheartedly. That kind of thing apparently sends the Shrieking Harpies of Political Correctness into overdrive. Such opinions appear in their view to be the same thing as urging that gays be bundled up and thrown alive into furnaces, or have walls toppled onto them … something fatal and unpleasant, anyway. So Chick-Fila-A is to be scorned, harassed, and driven from the public marketplace, through consumer boycott, urged on by the comments of has-been and soon-to-be has-been celebs, and a couple of deluded local pols pandering to their voter-base or fishing for payoffs in some form or other. (Cash or goodwill – can’t see from this distance what it would be. Evil-minded as I am, I can probably guess with a fair degree of accuracy.)
This new targeting of Chick-Fil-A, as another blogger/writer of my acquaintance has outlined, is liable to backfire in a big, big and ultimately counterproductive way, as far as the partisans of same-sex marriage are concerned. For a sitting politician, using the power of local government to block establishment of a business because of the personal beliefs of the CEO or owner, or their pattern of charitable giving is a violation of Constitutional principles any way you slice it, and the chief offenders in that respect are already walking back from public statements to that effect. The degree of fury over this is curious, though. How the heck did the love that could not speak it’s name become the love that won’t shut up about it? Are there really that many gays out there relative to the general population, wanting to take that hike down the aisle and collect kitchen appliances and silverware from their nearest and dearest and settle down to suburban conformity? Or is it just that the adherents carrying on so loudly ad infinitum about of same-sex marriage (who may not necessarily actually be gay and wanting to get married) have latched onto it as the trendy cause du jour with which to epater the bourgeoisie, and to prove that they themselves are really hip and tolerant people.
It would be pretty funny if Chick-fil-A had the best couple of months they ever had – from people deliberately going out to their local Chick-Fil-A get a spicy chicken wrap and some waffle fries. What with a fairly devout religious element in the US, and a fair number who may tolerate an ostentatiously gay life-style lived by their fellow citizens, but draw the line at being forced by social pressure to express approval of it, not to mention contrarians who are just tired of being hectored by the politically correct, I suspect the boycott will fizzle out.
Besides, the food is great, cooked fresh to order, and the service from the employees is excellent. I can attest to the fact that the single Chick-fil-A outlet in North-eastern San Antonio was sparkling clean, and on last Saturday night it was jammed to the rafters. I had never seen quite so many people in a fast-food place at one time, and the drive-through lanes were practically grid-locked, there were so many cars pulling through. We’ll probably go again, the next time we have a fast-food jones.
(cross-posted at Chicagoboyz.net)
This week in the neighborhood where I live was designated for the annual bulk-trash pickup – so residents were notified a week or more ago. Once a year we can put out on the curb … well, just about anything except concrete rubble and chunks of stone. The city sends out a couple of long open-topped trailer trucks, and a special truck with a large mechanized claw that reaches down and gathers up the bulk items.
Well, all of those who have not been picked over thoroughly by the pros … and the other neighbors, of course. This year, we were amazed at how little was left for the city crew, as the professional junkers had already descended like a swarm of locusts. Usually there are only two or three; they are easily recognizable. They are the people driving battered pick-up trucks, sometimes towing a rough flat-bed trailer of the kind usually used to haul yard-maintenance equipment – and pick-up and trailer piled tower-high with salvage. Rusted-out barbeques, metal frames of this or that, battered furniture of all kinds, upholstered chairs with gruesomely stained upholstery and stuffing and springs bursting out of the cushions, clapped out appliances and monitors, cheap furniture with the thin veneer peeling off the disintegrating pressed-board that it is made out of, and construction grade kitchen/bathroom cabinets that have been replaced by upgrades …
Yes, and if I am sounding very familiar with the contents of what is put out in front of my neighbor’s houses … it’s because I am. We inspect the bulk-trash offerings quite thoroughly ourselves, and have shamelessly selected a number of still-useful and/or salvageable items for our own use. At least half of the ornamental elements in our garden were picked out of trash-piles, including a good number of large pots, plant-hangers, plant stands, a standard to hang a banner from, shepherd’s crooks, bird-houses, the big pottery chiminea, a small ornamental bench … and those that weren’t gleaned from the bulk trash were bought at yard sales for pennies on the original price. So, I have that funky-junky shabby chic style going in the garden. It works, and it’s cheap. A good number of the plants in it were also rescued from here and there.
This year it seemed like there were a much larger number of junkers, circulating. As soon as it hit the sidewalk, within minutes – or hours at best – the battered pickup swooped in, and the item was gone. We noted that one neighbor had put out three or four clapped-out vacuum or carpet-cleaning units; they were gone by the next day. I had read somewhere or other, of a tinkerer who would scoop up items like this, repair and clean them, and sell them for a small sum on eBay, and was doing very nicely out of it, too. There are gifted amateurs, people like my Dad who could take apart an appliance and put it back together again and have it work, but there wasn’t – well, until a bit ago – too many many professional small-mech tinkerers working the retail trade any moe, not when it’s usually cheaper to throw it away and buy a new one. When I wrote about this once before, commenters waxed lyrical about items they had salvaged entire, or rehabbed for their own use; it’s all to the good, you know – it’s all being recycled, one way or another. Better to fix it up, and use it again, than let it take up space in the dump.
This year, we put out a garden chaise lounge made from lengths of two-by-four, which had weathered to the point that it was near to falling apart. We had actually picked it out of a bulk-trash pile five or six years ago, but now the legs and armrests were rotting away, the squirrels had raided the cushion (bought on sale at Lowe’s at the end of the season) and I didn’t want to take the time or effort to repair it. It was gone by the next morning. My daughter thinks another neighbor scooped it up. It will be kind of amusing to see if it continues going the rounds.
(Cross posted at my book blog, and at www.chicagoboyz.net)
Nat Love, who was born into slavery in Tennessee in 1854, went west to Dodge City after the Civil War and cadged work as a wrangler and cowboy. He was already a pretty good rider and bronco-buster, and in a very short time had picked up the other requisite skills – with a six-shooter and lasso, earning the nick-name ‘Deadwood Dick’ through a contest of cowboying skills at a 4th of July celebration in Deadwood, Dakota Territory. He not only won the roping contest, but the the grand prize pot of $200 in the shooting contest. He was a hit with the audience, as well as with his fellow cattle drovers. He cut a striking figure in his star cowboy days; lean, slim-hipped and cocky, with a mop of long black hair to his shoulders, and a wide-brimmed sombrero with the front turned rakishly up – a Jimi Hendrix of the 19th century rodeo.
As a teenager, Nat Love worked the legendary long-trail cattle drives; when Texas cattle ranchers faced with a glut of native long-horned cattle and no other means of making money in the desperate years following the Civil War thought to trail them north to where the transcontinental railroad was slowly creeping across the upper Plains. There, in the open prairies of Kansas, there was no hazard of infecting local farmers’ cattle with tick fever, and for ten years, millions of Texas cows walked north to the stockyards of Abilene, Hays City, Wichita and Dodge City. For a few years he was employed on the Duval ranch, in the western part of the Texas Panhandle – near Palo Duro, the sheltered canyonlands that were last heartland of the wild Comanche.
His autobiography contained many stories of derring-do familiar to aficionados of classic Westerns; accounts of chasing bandits and Indians who had absconded with the best part of a herd of longhorns. On one memorable occasion, when under the influence of something stronger than lemon sarsaparilla, Nat Love tried to lasso and drag away one of the cannons that sat in the open compound at Fort Dodge; he told the astonished soldiers that he wanted to take it back to Texas to fight Indians with. He was one of those who also were enshrined in cowboy legend by riding his horse into a drinking establishment (a Mexican cantina, location unspecified) and grandly ordering drinks for himself … and his horse. He had cleared the way for himself and horse with a splatter of wild shots from his revolver – which rather excited some wholly understandable hostility from the local citizens, and so he had to depart at speed before having a chance to enjoy his drink. He even claimed to have been captured by Pima Indians while working at a ranch in Arizona. In the best tradition of adventure novels, he was thought so much of that he was adopted into the tribe and only made his escape a year later, presumably leaving several broken hearts behind him.
Even if his life as a cowboy had not been all that eventful … and many of his adventures remembered with advantages … it was still a life better suited to a young man. The work itself was physically hard, most of it in the out-of-doors, and not that well-paid. Most working cowboys only did it for a couple of years until something better came along. So after two decades, Nat Love wisely took up a second career. He became a Pullman porter on the railroad; apparently being just as well-respected by his employers and fellows as in his first career … and with more remunerative and regular paychecks. He died of respectable old age in the 1920s, after completing an autobiography which related his gloriously rowdy days as a cowboy.
I read a good few chapters of his autobiography – he comes across as a very appealing person; unusual in his charm and swagger, but not for his color; something like one in seven or eight cowboys were black, one in seven or eight Mexican. An actor like a young Will Smith could have played him, in his younger days. There will be a character very like Nat Love in the next book – I promise.
I am not one of those people who thrive on discord – which may be one of the reasons that I gave up posting on Open Salon yea these many months ago. I am at heart a rather peaceful and well-mannered person who does not actively seek out confrontation, on the internet or in real life … no really, stop laughing! I merely present myself as someone who doesn’t suffer fools lightly, and who will not hesitate to squash them, which has the pleasing result of not being very much bothered by fools. It’s called ‘presence’… and has worked out pretty well, actually online and in real life. I can easily count the number of fools I have squashed … only a dozen or so that I remember. And none of them came back for seconds.
I don’t deliberately slow down to gawk at epic highway pileups either … except that in real life, everyone ahead of you has slowed down anyway, and the full spectrum of destruction is spread before you. And as for epic internet crackups … one can go for months without being made particularly aware of them, but this week my attention was caught by news of the mother-in-law-of all internet crack-ups to do with books. This one I must pay some attention to, as books are my vocation. It’s a more appalling spectacle than the Great Books And Pals/Jacqueline Howett Review Crackup of 2011, which should have served as an object lesson in how an author should not respond to a mildly critical review. This fresh slice of internet literary hell is what I am dubbing the Great Stop the Goodreads Bullies Cluster of 2012.
Goodreads, for those who have not had it wander across their ken … is kind of like Facebook for book enthusiasts. More specifically, for readers of books – although I do have an author page there, for all the good it does me. Not much; this is why I am not inclined to spend much time and effort on it. Anyway, it seems that a handful (or maybe more) of the regular Goodreads reviewers have earned a reputation for what is – or could be interpreted – as snark, scathing wit, or just dismissive disinterest. As the fictional food critic, Anton Ego said, “…the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.â€
Yes, it is fun and easy to cut loose with all barrels on some hapless bit of publication – and since the mad and wonderful world of books in this year of our lord offers such a wide array of targets, I can’t really blame various Goodreads reviewers for being rather spiky and judgmental about books. It’s a site for readers, after all. And there are plenty of wallbangers out there. (That is, a book so awful that you throw it across the room hard enough to bang against the opposite wall) But handful of Goodreads reviewers who have have been colorfully blunt in expressing their opinion of particular books now are classed as bullies? And that a handful of aggrieved Goodreads members (who may be writers, or just overly-impassioned fans) have set up a website, specifically dedicated to ‘outing’ those reviewers, terming them ‘bullies’ and tacitly encouraging other people to stalk and harass them online and in their real off-line lives. The irony, it burns. OK then – is the principle being established here is that the cure for bullying is … more bullying? Must be merely one of those interesting coincidences that the intended targets of Stop the Goodreads Bullies are women … oh, and the whole schmezzle of revealing Goodreads members personal information is a violation of the Goodreads policies, anyway.
Say, was there some act of Congress or the current regime passed lately which demanded that all book reviews are slavishly adoring, else the wrath of someone-or-other be excited? Is this the natural outcome of giving trophies for participation? Are certain writers thinking, “I wrote a book so I deserve nothing but glowing reviews for it?†I’ve reviewed books myself, often enough, and now and again administered an unfavorable or a mixed review. Not too many of those lately, as really don’t want to waste valuable hours reading a stinker, and fortunately the ‘Look Inside’ feature pretty much lets me screen out the really awful selections. A review isn’t a advertisement for the book; it is, or ought to be at the very least, a reasoned analysis of why or why not a reader should spend a good few hours of their life reading it. Nothing more, nothing less, although this rule is frequently trampled upon.
The bottom line is that the only response an author should make for a favorable, or even mildly critical review – and even if any response should be made is debatable among the cognoscenti – is, “Thank you for your consideration.†For a critical or scathing review – no response at all is best. There is no crying in baseball, and there should be no whining from authors; especially not to the extent of setting up a website to complain about being bullied. You put your stuff out there for everyone with the interest or the wherewithal to read it. Accept that there will be a number among them who will not like it, miss the point entirely, fail to grasp the whole point … well, grownups and professionals bleed about that silently and move on. Comfort yourself with those reviews and the appreciation of people who did get the point, and who loooooove it.
Frankly, I also comfort myself against unappreciative reviews by going and looking at my vast collection of publisher and agent rejections for Truckee’s Trail and Adelsverein. I think of it as the best kind of plate armor against bad reviews.
(Crossposted at my book blog, and at Chicagoboyz)
Actually, no – not the ruins of Athens … that’s a Beethoven piece that popped into my head – the Turkish March, from The Ruins of Athens … I’d always wondered in a desultory way, what would happen to me, if I played that classic music piece without comment, when I was stationed at EBS-Hellenikon, back in the day. I was never reckless enough to do the experiment and find out, actually. The Greeks were hair-trigger temperamental about any mention of Greece, Turkey, or the EEC (the forerunner to the EU) on the perilous airways of the American Forces Radio station where I worked – mostly on the swing and mid-shifts in the early 1980s. As exasperating and sometimes as deadly as the political stuff got during those years – and it did get deadly, for the N-14 organization and elements of the PLO were more or less targeting Americans on a regular basis – I loved Greece unreservedly. More »
Well, because of the drought and all, and in spite of the occasional productive storms blowing through, it’s not entirely bone-dry and ready to blow away on the next stiff breeze. As a matter of fact, the garden is looking quite beautifully lush, almost tropical. Of course, this may be due to about half an hour of hand-watering the pots and the hanging baskets every morning. But still – the back yard is no longer something I am embarrassed to have people see. Nothing like the desolation left in the wake of a hard and prolonged frost a year and a half ago, and the depredations of a pair of stray mutts that my daughter took pity upon, and we housed until we … umm, passed them off on a couple of likely suckers … no, make that fond and indulgent dog-lovers. As for rain – we went halfsies on a rain-gauge, and there’s been rain in it, every couple of days; how coincidental is that?
Anyway, the back yard was left pretty much as a wreck after these twin disasters, but now it is brought back, and if I can figure out a way to cram in even more raised beds to grow vegetables in, I will – for next year, at the very least. And there seem to be more and more people doing that backyard homestead thing; keeping chickens for eggs, bees for honey and all. If I had half an acre to spare, I’d consider one of those mini-cows … one of the regulars at Chicagoboyz suggested that breed, a couple of months ago, and don’t think I didn’t consider it, for when I have my eventual country retreat. My grandmother kept chickens during the Depression, and we had a hive of bees for a couple of years.
We went up to Canyon Lake for the 4th of July – rather than spend a day baking under the hot sun at the rocky edge of the lake, as we did last year. Since we took the dog, we had to go to the campground, rather than the public beach, so this year we omitted the dog and floated a bend of the river instead. Candidly, it wasn’t all that much fun, since the current wasn’t all that, and the river ran so shallow that we wound up portaging the tubes over the last third. Struggling out of the tube, schlepping through the rocky shallows, wondering what the heck is that nasty thing you are stepping on all unseen, knowing that the odds of turning an ankle on a slime-covered rock are pretty good, seeing that most everyone else is pretty well toasted – from alcohol and the sun – before they have gotten out of sight of the launch-point … not again, I don’t think. Unless we do the Comal, take some friends, a picnic lunch and remember to slather our shins with waterproof SPF-30 … I did remember to bring a hat, though. But the views of the banks, of cypress trees and of vacation houses that cost more than my entire family (including the brother-in-law who works for JPL) will make in five years or more were very nice. They went by, very slowly … and the tubers with loud, waterproof radios were … not pleasant. Mom and Dad always preferred a ‘stay-cation’ – they were doing it before it was cool, and now I see the wisdom of that.
(So I’m old-fashioned – I believe this should be read aloud at celebratory gatherings on this date every year.)
Action of Second Continental Congress, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.
WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The History of the present King of Great-Britain is a History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid World.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public Good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing Importance, unless suspended in their Operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the Accommodation of large Districts of People, unless those People would relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature, a Right inestimable to them, and formidable to Tyrants only.
He has called together Legislative Bodies at Places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the Depository of their public Records, for the sole Purpose of fatiguing them into Compliance with his Measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly Firmness his Invasions on the Rights of the People.
He has refused for a long Time, after such Dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the Dangers of Invasion from without, and Convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the Population of these States; for that Purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their Migrations hither, and raising the Conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the Tenure of their Offices, and the Amount and Payment of their Salaries.
He has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and sent hither Swarms of Officers to harrass our People, and eat out their Substance.
He has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a Jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, and unacknowledged by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all Parts of the World:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pre-tended Offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an arbitrary Government and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it at once an Example and fit Instrument for introducing the same absolute Rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all Cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our Seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our Towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.
He is, at this Time, transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the Works of Death, Desolation, and Tyranny already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous Ages, and totally unworthy of the Head of a civilized Nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the Executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic Insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the Inhabitants of our Frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known Rule of Warfare, is an undistinguished Destruction, of all Ages, Sexes and Conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions we have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble Terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury. A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free People.
Nor have we been wanting in Attentions to our British Brethren. We have warned them from Time to Time of Attempts by their Legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the Circumstances of our Emigration and Settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and Magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the Ties of our common Kindred to disavow these Usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our Connections and Correspondence. They too have been deaf to the Voice of Justice and of Consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the Necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of Mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace, Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, that they are absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political Connection between them and the State of Great-Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as FREE AND INDEPENDENT STATES, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which INDEPENDENT STATES may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
(All righty then – memories freshed, everyone? Ready to go out and ensure that a government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth? Good.)
… and figgy wine, whole preserved figs, dried figs and jam of figs … As you can deduce, we have a bounty of figs, at this very moment. This miracle has occurred, even as the small tree in my front yard stubbornly refuses to bear more than five of six measly figs in a season, which the birds usually beat us to anyway. How is this possible? Because we have neighbors who have fig trees … one of which – of the huge-and-purple-when-ripe Celeste variety – has the most of it’s fruit-bearing branches leaning over the fence into a public space. The other – to judge from pictures – is of the small-and-pale-yellow-when-ripe Kadota variety – and is growing in the front yard of a neighbor who has given us permission to pick the darned things when we feel the need. They are both prolific trees, the Kadota especially; and there is a point when the owners of a fruit tree get damn sick of eating the output. I know this – I had something like ten or fifteen apricot trees lining the south boundary of the house that I rented in Utah, and it was years before I could bear to look at an apricot again … dried, or ripe, or especially rotting in the grass. In any case, we have gleaned nearly fifteen pounds of them this week, and have barely scratched the surface of the Kadota bounty. In other words, there appear to be just about as many unripe figs left on the tree after we’ve spent ten minutes snagging all the ripe ones in reach and filled two plastic grocery bags half-full.
Now we know why figs are so expensive in the market – the things are delicate, almost impossible to pick without bruising them or splitting their skin. The supermarket sort must almost be wrapped in bubble-wrap in order to get them to the market in any condition at all. They are almost instantly perishable, which must be why most people only know them in their dried incarnation, or as the filling for fig Newton cookies. And the only way that I can only afford to explore the myriad modes in which ripe fresh figs can be preserved … is by having access to the fresh-from-the tree source. (Warning – do not rub your eye, with fresh fig-sap on your hands.)
Fig jam is easy enough – the dried version is a bit of a challenge, because drying them whole in the American Harvest Gardenmaster dehydrator which was a souvenir of my tour in Utah … is a tough fit, at first. Even the smaller Kadota figs are too fat to fit onto the drying trays – which are designed to accommodate fruits and vegetables sliced to inch-thick or less slices. I did three trays of them sliced in half, which was not satisfactory, aesthetically or taste-wise. Then, I put a tray of them in the oven at lowest temperature for a couple of hours to shrink and dry at least a little bit … and they seem to be moving on very nicely.
So, on to a recipe from a much-lauded Southern cookbook, which calls for them being washed in a bicarb-of-soda and water solution, and then simmered and steeped over most of a week in a sugar solution; this has promise, I think. And I will bottle them, and save on the pantry shelf, which is now taking over the top shelves of various closets in the house …
I don’t know quite why I am moved to do all this now. Something in the air, I think. Even thought it is scorchingly hot now … there is a winter coming. And I want my pantry shelves to be full. I want my household to have food to eat – to have pickles and jams, and canned bounty. It’s one of those atavistic impulses, I know. But winter is coming.
OK, so it’s Sunday afternoon. I’m just planning ahead, ‘kay?
1. So the Supremes upheld Obamacare … well sort of. Is it a tax, or isn’t it? Dessert topping or floor-wax. All that I can tell from here is that the closer and closer it gets to being implemented, the more unpopular that the whole program seems to be becoming. Why, oh, why couldn’t the Obamster have just tweaked Medicare to cover those uninsured. What towering illusion of adequacy led him to devise what appears to be Britain’s National Health scheme writ large and applied willy-nilly to the US. Anyway, now he’s staked his political career – what’s left of it – on ramming it through, over objections.
2. Oh, and his reelection campaign is going big in Paris for the 4th ofJuly, which kicks off a campaign swing through Europe. Guess the Obama reelection campaign has squeezed enough out of Wall Street and Hollywood, so it’s on to greener pastures. Words fail, they really do. I’ll probably never watch George Clooney in anything, ever again. If Mittens has any sense at all, he’ll be at a traditional down-home American community 4th of July bash. I swear, the campaign ads practically write themselves.
3. Colorado burning … the pictures of the fires burning along the mountains, and the homes going up in flames give me the cold shivers, they really do. The Obamster did show up to console the good citizens of Colorado Springs though … Which is nice of him. Texas burned last year though, with nary a peep.
4. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes breaking up. I think there must be some order of contemplative religious in a monastery on an isolated mountaintop somewhere who did not see that coming.
5. I posted a sample chapter of the next book – The Quivera Trail, on my book blog, here. Check it out, if you’re interested.
And that’s my weekend. Yours?
“I have never made but one prayer to God; a very short one: ‘Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God answered it.â€
I have a feeling that Mittens Romney, the heir-apparent to the Republican Party nomination in this year of our Lord 2012 also made that prayer in the last couple of weeks – and the deity came through like a brick. I speak of the jaw-droppingly tacky suggestion that the Obama campaign be added to bridal registries – that friends and loved ones give a donation to to his campaign rather than a gift to the happy couple. Mind you, it’s been my observation that couples marrying their fortunes (or lack of them) together in these modern times had usually been living out in the real world long enough to have acquired most of the necessary impedimenta and furniture – and that in marrying they needed to get rid of duplicates, once their separate households were merged, rather than acquire any more. But times have been tough enough lately – and many of these single-and-soon-to-be-merged households might have been living on a string and cheap Walmart/Target c**p anyway. I am a traditionalist – I believe in the gravy boat (yes, it is a gravy boat), the good china, and silverware, the crystal, a good toaster, and all of that. Getting married is when your kin and friends lovingly provide you with the items that you will use for special occasions and cherish for decades. That’s why – when I realized one day in 1984 that I probably would never marry and thereby score any of the really good stuff, I went and bought a set of good china for myself. (Bing & Grondahl Blue Traditional – no trim, and yes it was a good bit cheaper in the AAFES Catalog, back in the day)
So, this … method of presidentially Hoovering up additional campaign funds just seems to me as crass as it is unseemly. This is not anything like asking mourners at a funeral to skip the flowers – which the honored dead and their dearest kin are usually in no position to appreciate anyway – and just send a donation to a cause that the deceased favored or a medical research front against the ailment which carried off the dearly the departed. This fresh horror verges more into the political landscape North Korea or some other totalitarian state demanding that the Dear Leader get first dibs on the social and emotional lives of his/her subjects, and that the subjects must make a public demonstration of their devotion. What’s next – a picture of his Highness Barry displayed on the gift table with all the china, crystal and silver? Maybe all the attendees turning towards it and drinking a fulsome toast to him, before toasting the happy couple? I guess we only should be grateful that no one in his campaign thought to ask for a pledge on first night with the bride … or the groom. And I await the announcement of some scheme to dedicate birthday party money, and kid’s Tooth Fairy quarters to the Glorious Leader. Really, the jokes about this about write themselves. Like this particular visual.
Who, in what must be a terribly closeted and blinkered administration/campaign thought this was a good idea, the bee’s knees, a scathingly brilliant notion to milk a few more dimes and dollars from the faithful? Honestly, I might speculate on the existence of a mole within the Obama campaign – perhaps a Hillary fan with a grudge and a long (as these things go) memory, ensuring that every bold new step forward instead makes the Obama-naughts the laughingstock of the blogosphere. Which is a notion that I – in a cruel sort of way – would like to see take hold in the bowels of whatever gatherings, meetings and focus-groups that the Obama campaign holds over the next few weeks and months. I would like to see paranoia strike deep, into their minds it will creep … the notion that the guy, or gal over there is a Romney saboteur.
Yes, I am being cruel and devious, but I live to serve.
(Crossposted at Chicago Boyz)
The clouds of self-destructive stupidity gathering around the brows of those writers and entertainers who believe with the force of holy writ that they are not affected by the laws of action and consequence which govern the world and the rest of us, has now achieved an almost early 1960s Los Angeles smog-like density. And where I once was fairly indulgent towards those big names in the literary and entertainment industrial complex who entertained political opinions incongruent with mine and were mouthy about it, I am not inclined to be indulgent any longer. In fact, I’m downright annoyed … no, worse than annoyed; I’m fed to the back teeth with tolerating it all. Yes, this blog doesn’t have half the readership it did, back in the mists of time, and no, I do not delude myself that the world trembles at the frown of Sgt. Mom.
I am a writer, with a small and hopefully growing readership, and I do understand that kicking potential readers in the teeth by going full-bore on political matters is … well, it can be a self-limiting thing. I understand completely the tension between being dependent on the affection of a public, and the draw of publically attaching yourself to a cause or a political campaign which might prove to be controversial. I’m not such a big wheel in the grand literary scheme of things that I want or can afford to be perceived as kicking half my potential audience in the teeth … I’d rather convince readers subtly and through my books – not scream at them from a podium. I have friends, and even family who do not espouse the same Tea Party principles that I hold dear – and so I do not want to declare a sort of scorched-earth policy. I am fond of my friends, and my family. A mini-civil war is not something I want to have, especially around the table at a family Thanksgiving dinner.
I am OK with disagreeing on matters political, with someone merely registered to vote Dem, or anything else, like Green or Libertarian. Let it also be admitted that I disagreed vociferously with many of my Tea Party comrades on certain matters, matters which we all agreed should take second place to the Big Three of fiscal responsibility, strict constitutionality and free markets. What I will not tolerate any longer is being insulted, openly and repeatedly by various entertainers with delusions of political acuity. Garrison Keiller lost me as a listener three years ago – not so much for his slobbery worship of Obama, but for his disgusting slams against conservatives generally, Morgan Freeman is about to come under the same ban-hammer, and regretfully Tom Hanks is teetering on the verge. Janeanne Garafalo – banned. Rosanne Barr, Whoopie Goldberg and Rosie O’Donnell – all banned and boycotted. There’s a growing list of other offenders; from what I have observed in various discussion threads over the last year or so, other bloggers and commenters are working up their own lists. From the whip-lash reaction by HBO to the ruckus over the severed head of GWB in an episode of Game of Thrones, I seriously am wondering now if the cleverer and more far-sighted denizens of the entertainment world are sensing the danger to their own careers in being overtly partisan in their political commentary and attitude. As the classic stand-up on-the-spot reporter closes the story while standing in front of a government building, ‘Only time will tell.’