Books and Stuff

30. April 2011 · Comments Off on Books and Stuff · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Old West, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

So, today I had the signing – supposed to be more or less the launch signing for Daughter of Texas, at the Twig – and it was actually a bit of a bust, scheduled as it was to start in the afternoon at exactly the time the Farmers’ Market around in back had already closed down. Alas . . . it seems that the Pearl Brewery pretty much resembles a tomb, once whatever big event scheduled folds up and goes away. Part of this was my fault, for scheduling release to coincide with Fiesta, and not realizing that Easter this year coincided also with my range of dates, and that the Fiesta celebrations would actually put the Twig out of commission on a couple of relevant days, because of traffic and parking, and their immediate vicinity being the staging area for a parade . . . And it seems to Blondie (no mean detective when it comes to trends and atmosphere) that they are preferring to emphasize their place of business as sort of the FAO Schwartz of kid’s books, in San Antonio, and downplay the local, adult, independent, small-market author sort of thing . . . without entirely nuking their bridges to that community. But still – one does sense a certain chill in that respect. And it’s not just me, BTW – another indy author of a gripping book about the Texas war for independence had a signing event on a Saturday in April – and if it weren’t for me and three of his friends showing up, I don’t think he had much more in the way of interest and sales, even though his event was on a Saturday morning. Just about everyone who came through the door was a parent with a kidlet in tow.

Anyway, a two-hour stint of sitting behind a table in an almost-deserted bookstore, before Blondie and I packed it up at the hour-and-a-half mark. A bore, and a demoralizing one, at that, although I managed to get through one-third of a book about the Irish on the 19th century frontier; which I might have bought, if the author had written more about the Irish in Texas. We left then, as we had passed a parking-lot rummage sale that Blondie wanted to check out, before everyone packed up the goods or the good stuff was taken. Honestly, only two people even came up and talked to me during the whole hour and a half . . . and there were things that I could have been doing in that hour and a half, like working on chapter 12 of the sequel, posting and commenting to various websites, working the social media angle. The excellent thing is that Daughter of Texas has sold big, during April, especially in the Kindle format. Working through Watercress and by extension, Lightning Source has let me price it at a competitive level and at an acceptable discount for distribution to the chain stores – and it is selling, a nice little trickle of sales, through thick and thin. In the last month there was also a massive up-tick in interest for the Trilogy and for Truckee, through the halo effect. All of my books have very high level of presence in search engines on various relevant terms . . . so, honestly, I believe now I would better be served by working more on internet marketing, on doing book-talks, library talks, and book-club meetings – and the internet stuff. Doing a single author-table at a store just does not work without massive local media interest. I have managed to score a little of that, but not enough to make an appearance at a local bookstore a standing-room-only event. I have one more such on the schedule, at the Borders in Huebner Oaks, but after that I will probably pull the plug on any more single-author book-store appearances. They just do not seem to have any useful result; they are an energy and time sink – and I only have so much of either to allot to them. Joint appearances with other local authors; yes, indeedy, I’ll be there. Book-talks, book-club meetings, special events, special events like Christmas on the Square in Goliad, and Evening with the Authors in Lockhart, the West Texas Book and Music Festival in Abilene – and any other events that I am invited to . . . I’ll be there with bells on, and with my full table display and boxes of books. But the individual store events – It’s just not paying off, relative to the time and effort spent on them.

Stand-off at Salado Creek

27. April 2011 · Comments Off on Stand-off at Salado Creek · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West

Like a great many locations of note to the tumultuous years of the Republic of Texas, the site of the battle of Salado Creek does today look much like it did in 1842 . . . however, it is not so much changed that it is hard to picture in the minds’ eye what it would have looked like then. The creek is dryer and seasonal, more dependant upon rainfall than the massive amount of water drawn into the aquifer by the limestone sponge of the Hill Country, to the north. Then – before the aquifer was tapped and drilled and drained in a thousand places – the water came up in spectacular natural fountains in many places below the Balcones Escarpment. The Salado was a substantial landmark in the countryside north of San Antonio, a deep and regular torrent, running between steep banks liked with oak and pecan trees, thickly quilted with deep brush and the banks scored by shallow ravines that ran down to water-level. Otherwise, the countryside around was gently rolling grasslands, dotted with more stands of oak trees. There was a low hill a little east of the creek, with a house built on the heights. Perhaps it might have had a view of San Antonio de Bexar, seven miles away, to the south and west.

In that year, San Antonio was pretty much what it had been for two centuries: a huddle of jacales, huts made from plastered logs set upright in the ground and crowned with a roof of thatch, or thick-walled houses of unbaked clay adobe bricks, roofed with rusty-red tile, all gathered around the stumpy tower of the Church of San Fernando. A few narrow streets converged on the plaza where San Fernando stood – streets with names like the Alameda, Soledad and Flores, and the whole was threaded together by another river, lined with rushes and more trees. The river rambled like a drunken snake – but it generously watered the town and the orchards and farms nearby – and was the main reason for the town having been established in the first place. That street called Alameda, or sometimes the Powderhouse Hill Road, led out to the east, across a bend of the river, and past another ramble of stone and adobe buildings clustered around a roofless church – the Alamo, once a mission, then a presidio garrison, and finally a legend. But in 1842 – the siege of it’s Texian garrison only six years in the past – it was still a barracks and military establishment. In the fall of 1842, the Mexican Army returned to take temporary possession.

General and President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna had never ceased to resent how one-half of the province of Coahuila-y-Tejas had been wrenched from the grasp of Mexico by the efforts of a scratch army of volunteer and barely trained rebel upstarts who had the nerve to think they could govern themselves, thank you. For the decade-long life of the Republic, war on the border with Mexico continued at a slow simmer, now and again flaring up into open conflict: a punitive expedition here, a retaliatory strike there, fears of subversion, and of encouraging raids by bandits and Indians, finally resulting in an all-out war between the United States and Mexico when Texas chose to be annexed by the United States. So when General Adrian Woll, a French soldier of fortune who was one of Lopez de Santa Anna’s most trusted commanders brought an expeditionary force all the from the Rio Grande and swooped down on the relatively unprotected town . . . this was an action not entirely unexpected. However, the speed, the secrecy of his maneuvers, and the overwhelming force that Woll brought with him and the depth that he penetrated into Texas – all that did manage to catch the town by surprise. Woll and his well-equipped, well-armored and well supplied cavalry occupied the town after token resistance by those Anglo citizens who were in town for a meeting of the district court. So, score one for General Woll as an able soldier and leader.

Texas did not have much of a regular professional army, as most western nations understood the concept, then and later. Texas did have sort of an army, and sort of a navy, too – but mere tokens – the window-dressing required of a legitimate, established nation, which is what Texas was trying it’s best to become, given restricted resources. But what Texas did have was nearly limitless numbers of rough and ready volunteers, who were accustomed to respond to a threat, gathering in a local militia body and volunteering for a specific aim or mission, bringing their own weapons, supplies and horses, and usually electing their own officers. They also had the men of various ranging companies, which can be thought of as a mounted and heavily-armed and aggressive Neighborhood Watch. Most small towns on the Texas frontier fielded their own Ranger Companies. By the time of Woll’s raid on San Antonio, those volunteers and Rangers were veterans of every fight going since before Texas had declared independence, a large portion of them being of that tough Scotch-Irish ilk of whom it was said that they were born fighting. That part of the frontier which ran through Texas gave them practice at small-scale war and irregular tactics on a regular and continuing basis.

One bit of good fortune for the Anglos of San Antonio and the various militias and of Texas generally, was that the captain of the local Ranger Company was not one of those caught by Woll’s lighting-raid. Captain John Coffee Hays and fifteen of his rangers had actually been out patrolling the various roads and trails, in response to rumors of a Mexican force in the vicinity. It was they who – upon their return in the wee hours of a September morning – found every road into San Antonio blocked by Mexican soldiers.

Naturally, they did not let this event pass without comment or response . . .
(to be continued)

Coming Home in Dress Blues

22. April 2011 · Comments Off on Coming Home in Dress Blues · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Military, War

Found, through Bookworm Room –

The Westboro “Baptist Church” Freaks (note the viciously skeptical quote marks) had made plans to turn out for this. The citizens of SSgt. Jones’ home town took action that ensured they did not. What a wonderful place to be from. Even if it is one of those no-count (insert satirical quote marks here) tea-b***er-infested, ignorant, flyover-country places that no decent respectable person of the mainstream media, or our political elite would ever claim to come from, or know, at all.

Easter Eggs – A Repost from the MT Archive

20. April 2011 · Comments Off on Easter Eggs – A Repost from the MT Archive · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Memoir

Grannie Jessie, who had grown up on a farm in Pennsylvania, and imbibed all those do-it-yourself virtues when it came to vegetable gardens, home canning, and making ones’ own clothes, drew the short straw when JP and I were small. Lucky Grannie Jessie got to supervise the dying of the Easter eggs. We would usually be spending part of Easter Week in Pasadena, since Mom would be fitting us all out with new shoes, and the proper accessories: in the early years, Pippy and I would have new hats, wee white gloves, and ornamental ankle socks to wear to Easter services with the new dresses that Mom had sewn herself. JP would have a new suit, a miniature of Dads’, with a smart pint-size fedora.

When Grannie Jessie did the shopping that week, walking around the corner to Don’s Market on Rosemead Boulevard with the wheeled wire basket, she would buy extra eggs— three dozen white eggs—and let us pick from the modest selection of packets of Easter egg dyes. You could buy just the basic packet, just a strip of cellophane sealing in six or seven concentrated little pills of dye, but we always yearned after the fancy boxes with the circular perforations on the back which could be punched out to make a holder for the dyed eggs to sit while the dye dried, which also contained a couple of wire holders, a set of transfers on thin tissue paper, and a plain wax crayon, with which JP and I could demonstrate our artistic prowess. Grannie Jessie always relented, and bought the fancy box of egg dye with the transfers and implements.

On the appointed day, she boiled up all the eggs in her biggest kitchen pot, and brought out an assortment of egg-cups, old teacups, small bowls and measuring cups, and the battered old spoons. The kitchen table was already covered with an oilcloth, but she brought out a couple of Grandpa Jim’s old shirts, and aproned us in them, back to front and rolling up the sleeves. Then she boiled up a kettle of water, while we opened the dye packet, and placed the little colored pill of dye at the bottom of each cup or bowl. Grannie Jessie’s kitchen was never fashionable, in the way of the women’s magazines: functional in the way of a farmhouse kitchen, a gas range with a metal match safe on the doorjamb next to it, and bead-board cabinets with varnish which had gone slightly gummy with age and wear. The sink was enormous, the size of a baby’s bathtub, and the plain vinyl countertops were edged with a band of metal. Her original Kelvinator fridge, with the round metal coils on top was replaced about the time I was born with something slightly more up to date. Her kitchen things were an assortment from the dime store, sturdy but worn — Depression era jelly glasses, tin metal measuring cups given away by the flour mill companies. (Many of them, disposed of at garage sales when she moved into the Gold Star Mother’s home in the mid-1970ies are now the sort of thing I see for sale in the antique malls for quite astounding sums.)

The kitchen table at Grannie Jessie’s was wedged into a narrow ell, against the wall where three windows, their sills a little above the level of the table, overlooked the driveway, the next door neighbors’ back yard, and Mt Wilson in the far distance. In the morning, the sun came into her kitchen through these windows. Grannie Jessie’s chair was wedged into the space between the head of the table and the hutch, where her crossword dictionaries were shelved next to the old-fashioned coffee grinder. Grandpa Jim’s chair was at the foot of the table, an elbow-length from the door to the utility porch, with its concrete sink and the old-fashioned washing machine with the rollers on top to squeeze the water out of the clothes and sheets. The long side of the table, facing the windows, could accommodate two chairs, three at a pinch, and was where JP and I sat for meals, where Mom and Uncle Jimmy had doubtless sat in their turn.

When the kettle boiled, Grannie Jessie brought out the bottle of vinegar and the tin tablespoon measure.
“It sets the dye properly,” she explained. A tablespoon of vinegar in each cup, and a splash of boiling water, and we watched, breathlessly as the dye pill dissolved instantly, transforming the water into opaque, vividly colored liquid. She put on another kettle of water to boil, and brought over the pot of eggs, now cooled to luke-warm, and only a few of them cracked or broken, while the steam and the scent of vinegar rose up around us. (Grandpa Jim would have egg-salad sandwiches for a couple of days.) Carefully, loading each egg into the wire holder, we slid them each— carefully, carefully— into the cups of dye, where they sank to the bottom. If the cup was one of the shallower ones, we would have to turn the egg over and over— otherwise there would be a paler oval on one site of the egg. As we gained in experience and expertise, JP and I experimented with different colors— holding an egg half in the dye of one color, then turning it over in the wire holder, and dying the other half in another. The wax crayon came into play, first resulting in pastel eggs squiggled over with a white pattern, and then JP upped the ante by dying an egg yellow or pink, then patterning it with the crayon, and then putting it into a darker color. He spent twenty minutes one year, cutting finicking tiny squares and triangles of scotch tape, to color an egg in checkers of yellow and maroon.

Even when we had dragged out the process long enough and all the cups of dye had cooled, and only one or two eggs were left, the fun wasn’t entirely over. Grannie let us pour a bit of each dye into the largest cup, and the last egg ceremoniously dipped in the murky mixture— it usually came out a rather subdued greenish or bronze color, contrasting with the pastel blues and pinks and yellows. She cleared away the cups and poured the dye remnants down the sink, but we weren’t done yet. She poured boiling water into a washbasin with a couple of clean white dishtowels in it, and while they cooled, we cut apart the delicate paper transfers— flower and bunny motifs, and crosses and mottoes. Placed bright sides down against the dyed egg, and closely wrapped in a hot towel; the transfer inked itself blurrily onto the eggshell within a few minutes. There were always more transfers than eggs— sometimes we tried two of them to one egg, but there was always the difficulty of getting the transfer to be pressed against the eggshell without wrinkling.

Eventually, that job would be done too, and the finished eggs replaced in the paper cartons they had come from Don’s Market in, and put away in the refrigerator, until Saturday when Mom would drive over in the green Plymouth station wagon, and take us— and the eggs— home. She and Dad would hide them after Easter dinner, for JP and Pippy, and I, and the children of any families who had been our guests, and we would have the fun of finding them, which was somehow never quite as much fun as that of decorating them.

Lately, I have noticed that at Easter-time, the grocery store stocks ready-dyed eggs; what possibly can be the fun of that, I ask you?

A Miscellany of the Writer Life

12. April 2011 · Comments Off on A Miscellany of the Writer Life · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West, Rant

Just spent most of my working day editing a MS which features lots of chapters which are transcripts of various late-night radio shows, of which the less said the better, since this client have actually paid me money in advance.

Paid a large part of the SAWS bill, and also on Saturday – thanks to that same client – paid the tax bill due on my California real estate. This land, which is about three acres of howling unimproved wilderness in the neighborhood of Julian, California, is currently on the market. At this point, I do not think I can, want to, or ever will go back to California to live and to build a nice little writer’s wilderness retreat on the property, which is what I hoped when I bought that land, ever-so-many-years ago. But I am damned if I will let it go for lack of payment of taxes, which is why a good few parcels of eventually-valuable real estate that my G-Grandfather George owned were lost to the family treasury during the Depression. G-G George was a wiz at this sort of thing; unfortunately his wife had neither the skills nor the pocketbook to hold on to them all. If she had, Dad and I might have been real estate/trust fund babies. We might have taken different paths in life – I am sure I would have been a writer, no matter what.

Daughter of Texas is launched, with lots of review and pre-paid copies going out this week. Just have to see which ones will hit the interest and resulting sales jackpot. Da Blogfaddah – Instapundit – probably won’t be one of them. I didn’t bother sending a copy or a query to him . . . it seems that we have been dropped from his blog-roll. Anyone notice at all? Meah – I didn’t, for weeks. It has never seemed in the past couple of years that being on his blog-roll got me any notice as a writer or as a Tea Partier – thank you very much and I otherwise would be rude about this – but this is Instapundit that we are talking about, and the occasional lordly-dispensed link was very good. I guess this is just an ordinary unobserved milblog once again. There is a review for Daughter of Texas posted on Amazon. The first of many, I should hope.

I am kicking about the notion of doing a hard-cover version of the Adelsverein Trilogy, through the Tiny Publishing Business that I am now a working partner in: I would like to offer a hard-bound version of all the separate volumes of the Trilogy, at slightly under the rate of buying all three in paperback. So, what would please all the fans – a cloth-bound and paper jacket edition, or a hard-cover version with just a bright-color laminated cover. Let me know – the laminated cover is slightly less expensive to publish than the cloth-bound and paper dust-jacket version – but the cloth and dust-jacket version just looks so classy! This wouldn’t be something I would look to put in the big-box stores, since to do so would involve a discount more than would make this doable, economically.

So – are there any readers out there?

Oh, This is So Not Good

07. April 2011 · Comments Off on Oh, This is So Not Good · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Military, sarcasm, Working In A Salt Mine...

Just so we get this perfectly clear, the active, serving military will go on earning their pay over the period of the shut down of the federal government . . . they just won’t be getting any actual paychecks, or automatic deposit of it into their bank accounts. In a time where there are kinetic military events going on – what we used to call hostilities – in three different countries. No matter what you call ‘em, it means that the families of troops serving in an active war zone are not going to be happy. Especially the families of those junior troops who are already living close to the bone anyway; there were years when I finished out the last day or so before a payday with $1 in my bank account and a handful of change in my handbag. And I’ve lost track of how many times I floated a check for groceries at the Commissary, a day or two before payday.

Just to throw some gasoline on the fire, it seems that just that very week that the paychecks won’t be arriving, the First Lady and Mrs. Biden are launching a big push to support military families. Nice timing, ladies – because they certainly will be needing support by then. Seriously, though, I would reconsider rescheduling any events involving actual military members’ families during this period, as you’re liable to get an earful of how they really feel and I don’t think the protocol officers are gonna be able to cope.

Heck of a job, Barry. Heck of a job.

Dreamweaver

31. March 2011 · Comments Off on Dreamweaver · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Veteran's Affairs

My daughter and I just lamented this week – that for two people who are not employed full-time, we are indeed awfully busy. We must maintain a calendar, to keep track of it all, and when one of us is due someplace, to do something or other. The patchwork of part-time jobs that we hold between us is sufficient to our needs. I am retired military; she draws a small disability pension from the Veterans’ Administration and is intermittently going to school in pursuit of a bachelor’s degree. I write books – which brings in a trickle of royalties and direct sales – blog for pay at a local realtor’s website, partner in a small publishing firm, free-lance edit and write, also part-time at a tiny ranch real estate firm, occasionally constrict a website . . . all of this does not produce a predictable income-stream, but it does produce one. Free lance; that is, I am a soldier of writing fortune, and to put it in modern terms, an independent contractor. I work for straight pay, when I want to, and take my pay from those who I agree to work for on specific projects for writing services rendered.

It’s fun – perilous but fun. I just can’t look at the beginning of the month and predict with any degree of absolute confidence exactly how much will be in the bank account by the end of it. That there will be enough to meet needs – is usually the case. It’s just that I never know when or where they will be coming from. Something always turns up, usually without any warning at all. It’s a bohemian way to live without the je ne sais quoi of actually being a bohemian, but it does have rewards, such as being able to set one’s own work schedule. I know what I have to do, to finish the current job; I can do it early in the morning, on the weekend, on a holiday, there is no one hanging over me, logging every key-stroke, I can kick back on a mid-week afternoon and we can go to a movie, if we feel like it.

I worked for all kinds of businesses after retiring from the military, none of which I built a second career out of, although I had kind of counted on doing exactly that. But it just didn’t work out. My business partner in the Tiny Publishing Bidness says that it didn’t work out for her for very long, either – she got bored, and couldn’t work days. For myself, I could never work for a monolithic big company again – reliable and enduring – but also boring as hell. I also worked for small local firms, which turned out to be just as unsatisfactory but in a different way. The best of them went broke or relocated out of state, and the worst of them were advertised to me as places which regarded their employees as just like family. What I came to realize is that they treat them as part of a viciously dysfunctional and abusive family. OK, then – getting out from under that kind of burden is another reward of being a free lance.

My daughter also has an eccentric work schedule, aside from her occasional classes: she cleans house once a month for a neighbor who has health issues and is confined to a scooter-chair. Lovely person – lives just around the corner from us. She also had a gig doing computer training for another neighbor who was just dipping her toes into this new-fangled computer/internet thingy, and needed about an hour of coaching once a week, in order to cope with her email and her Netflix account. Twice a week, she collects the children of another neighbor from school, and baby-sits them until their older brother gets home from school. She also works as my personal assistant when I do a book-talk, which is no-end useful to me, although currently this is for no pay. She’ll inherit the rights to my books, though – so that’ll work out. And when it comes to doing what we call “being a real Arthur” – having an assistant helps no end. She has an occasional job, delivering for a local company which does fruit-flower arrangements, thanks to a friend who recommended her. It’s only on major holidays, but she is trusted as a reliable and professional part-timer; every month that there is a gift-giving occasion in it, she’s there and on the job for anything from two to five days. She’s also been helping with the work of the Tiny Publishing Bidness, and is thinking of taking classes in graphic arts – and courses which would be of use to a tiny independent publishing firm. And she also earns a paycheck with the Tiny Publishing Bidness; doing housekeeping for my business partner twice a month, and weekly performing errands and fix-it stuff. This makes her income a little more predictable. She was let go from her own full-time/flex time job two years ago; another one of those local Tiny Bidnesses which could no longer afford an office manager. So – there it is. I think we got our hard times a couple of years ago, and now we’re ahead of the game, at least by a couple of lengths.

Relatively Phidless

27. March 2011 · Comments Off on Relatively Phidless · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Two weekends, I went to uphold the morale of another indy- and Texas-history-obsessed author at a local signing, at a bookstore which shall remain nameless because I am quite annoyed with them and don’t want to give them the traffic and it’s over a relatively piddling amount and I really ought to be big and forget about it but it’s the bloody principle of the thing and why the heck should I who subsist on freelance editing jobs and a military pension and an irregular stream of royalty checks be expected to subsidize a bookstore located in a very trendy and very likely expensive location and if they are on the financial rocks through miscalculation and their own business practices . . . well, again – why the heck should I be expected to bear some of the brunt of their various miscalculations? Oh, yeah – because I’m an indy writer, working for a teensy local subsidy press, and this enterprise is just about the only indy bookstore in town.

Getting back to my main point; frankly, doing an event at an indy bookstore or big-box outlet is usually ego-death-onna-stick anyway, unless by some miracle of persuasion, you have managed to BS local media outlets into going along with the pretense that you are a big-name-arthur. Which is what I told my new indy-author friend – who has actually had some luck with this . . . Anyway, one may as well have some friends come along, to while away the desperate hours with sitting behind the dreaded author-table and watching customers come in through the door, studiously avoiding your eye as they slither through the immediate area, heading for the Stephen Kings and the Philippa Gregorys and the latest Oprah pick.

Really – as I told my fellow obsessive – you might almost have better luck at a Christmas craft show, if it weren’t for the iron-clad tradition of authors appearing at bookstores. I know another local author who has a cute little cookbook, very well designed and edited, and she takes a table at regular gun shows. She cleans up, BTW. Guys, guns, hunting apparel and accessories. Wives and girlfriends, feeling obliged to come along, are not really much interested in the guns, apparel and accessories. Drawn to her cute little table display like insects to a bright porch light on a Texas summer evening, they are. Marketing, baby – sometimes it’s all about sorting out an unconventional venue where there are customers with money and where your product stands out.

Anyway, there were enough of my fellow Texas-history-obsessive friends showing up that we had a good time of it – alas that he didn’t have the good time that I had at the fund-raising luncheon the week before, where I nearly got writer’s-cramp scribbling messages and a stylized initial in the front of what seemed like an endless stream of my own books . . . hey, that’s a problem that is nice to have. I can get used to it. I promise onna-stacka-Bibles that I will never be a witch about this, I will be pleasant and obliging and always have time to talk at least briefly to a fan, even if it’s not a convenient time or a welcome interruption – I will make it seem like it is. I have skills that way. After the requisite time-behind-the-table was done, my author friend, three of his friends, and Blondie and I repaired to a table at Sams’ Burgers, to replenish the inner person and to talk about Texas history, a mad passion for which is shared by all of us at the table save perhaps Blondie, and then only because she is dragged into it by my interest. At the age of five, she got dragged into every significant museum and location of historical interest between the then-Iron Curtain and Gibraltar, so she ought to be used to it by now.

A matter of wry amusement to me is that I don’t have any sort of advanced degree for this. S’help me god, all I have is your basic state university English degree and only a BA at that. I did all the classes towards a Masters in public administration, way back before Blondie was born – but I swear it was only because I was bored silly and that was about the only higher ed program offered at Misawa AB . . . and the education counselor must have talked a good game or I had no sales resistance at all, because I wound up taking all the classes . . . even though I had no interest what-so-freaking-ever in public administration. Still, a lot of the classes were interesting, in and of themselves, so I suppose I took something away from that educational experience. Not that any of it applied in a way that I can see to my eventual career of scribbling respectably well-researched genre historical fiction . . . but it’s just as well there is no entry-qualification for that. Nope – no licensing procedure for those who wish to trot out our creative works of fiction before a (hopefully) appreciative audience . . . yet, anyway. There is no end to the writing of theses and papers and that sort of thing by those possessing PHDs, but very few of them have the ability to make them gripping reads, appealing to the general public.

But I was thinking, as I was scribbling this – I’ve been able to hold my own, when it comes to those matters that hold my interest – with all sorts of people, and some of them are . . . ummm, academically credentialed well above and far above my own level. I’ve always liked the thought of being an autodidact, a person who basically educated themselves, a person who read voraciously and thought about . . . things, outside the mainstream of currently acceptable intellectual thought-processes. And I’ve been thinking – that when it comes to writing agreeable, interesting and accessible genre fiction – it may be more doable to start with someone who can write vividly and with some degree of competence and discipline, and who might have learned or be taught mad historical research skills . . . than it would be to teach someone with all the skills to be a good story-teller and writer.

You know, I am also thinking – for dramatic story-telling potential, this could be a great rom-com; a serious and academically credentialed historian, married/involved with a historical novelist. Hilarity definitely guaranteed to ensue. Plot – oh, I could come up with something. I’m a novelist, after all.

The Duck of Death Quacking Up at Last?

21. March 2011 · Comments Off on The Duck of Death Quacking Up at Last? · Categories: Ain't That America?, Air Force, Fun and Games, Fun With Islam, General, sarcasm, World

Yeah, I know – juvenile humor at best, but somehow that’s about the only reasonable response you can make to a walking, talking comic-opera cartoon villain like Moammar Khadaffy. Or Quadaffi, or what the hell – Khadaffy-Duck. I mean, the clothes, the sprocket-hung uniforms, the transparent megalomania, the fembot body-guards, the rip-off of Mao’s Little Red Book . . . and was he the inspiration for the villain in Jewel of the Nile? And then you remember the serious stuff: the airplanes and discos bombed, the terrorists like the IRA generously funded – the politicians and intellectuals paid to be his respectable front, the plight of those foreign doctors and nurses who were accused of deliberately infecting patients with AIDS, the death of a British policewoman in front of the Libyan embassy in London (who was shot from within the embassy), and the brutalization of his own people . . . no, Quadaffy-Duck was every bit as malevolent as Saddam Hussein; his pretensions and dress-sense was just a little more risible. Otherwise, just a matter of degree, and frankly, I can’t think of a nicer person to have a J-DAM coming down the chimney with his name on it, no matter how the heck you spell it. I did so hope that he would wind up like Mussolini (his corpse hanging from a gas-station – which would be ironic in the extreme) or stood up in front of a wall like Ceausescu; the thing being that it would be Libyans themselves performing the necessary chore of taking out the flamboyantly-clad trash. Ah, well; however the job gets done.

Anyway – as you can guess, I’ll be breaking out the popcorn and celebrating the immanent demise of the Duck of Death; it’s been long overdue, no matter who or what is responsible for seeing that he achieves room temperature. However . . . the infamous however, well-freighted with irony . . . I do have a few small concerns, chief among them being – who and what are the anti-Khadaffy Libyans, exactly? When all the dust settles, and someone who is not the Duck of Death or of his ilk and kin is in charge . . . who will that person be, and will they be an improvement?

Secondly; what next? Are we just clearing out the Duck’s flyable assets so that a no-fly zone may be installed? How long will the no-fly zone be in effect – as long as the no-fly zone over Iraq, which protected the Kurds? Months, weeks, days? Of the allied nations assisting in this, who will have the resources to continue that long? Should it be necessary to put boots on the ground . . . whose boots will they be, and what exactly will be the assigned duties of those boots?

And the irony of Obama doing just about what Bush was damned up one side and down the other for doing, with regard to another middle-eastern oil-rich nation ruled by a brutally iron-fisted autocrat with a penchant for seeing his own face everywhere? Rich, I tell you – as in two scoops of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. Watching half of Obama’s backers turn themselves into pretzels trying to explain how one of these things is so not like the other, and the other half going into gibbering hysterics realizing that it is . . . it’s turning out to be quite a giggle for me. Enough reason for anther round of popcorn, anyway.

And finally – you know, they told me if I voted for McCain/Palin, that there would never-ending war in the Middle East – and damn if it doesn’t look like it.

More Unsung Texians:The Mayor and the Newspaperman

16. March 2011 · Comments Off on More Unsung Texians:The Mayor and the Newspaperman · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

Thomas William Ward was born in Ireland of English parents in 1807, and at the age of 21 took ship and emigrated to America. He settled in New Orleans, which by that time had passed from French to Spanish, back to French and finally landed in American hands thanks to the Louisiana Purchase. There he took up the study of architecture and engineering – this being a time when an intelligent and striving young man could engage in a course of study and hang out a shingle to practice it shortly thereafter. However, Thomas Ward was diverted from his studies early in October, 1835 by an excited and well-attended meeting in a large coffee-room at Banks’ Arcade on Magazine Street. Matters between the Anglo settlers in Texas and the central Mexican governing authority – helmed by the so-called Napoleon of the West, General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna – had come to a frothy boil. Bad feelings between the Texian and Tejano settlers of Texas, who were of generally federalist (semi-autonomous) sympathies had been building against the centralist (conservative and authoritarian) faction. These developments were followed with close and passionate attention by political junkies in the United States.

Nowhere did interest run as high as it did in those cities along the Mississippi River basin. On the evening of October 13, 1835, Adolphus Sterne – the alcade (mayor) of Nacogdoches – offered weapons for the first fifty volunteers who would fight for Texas. A hundred and twenty volunteers signed up before the evening was over, and Thomas W. Ward was among them. They formed into two companies, and were apparently equipped and outfitted from various sources: the armory of the local militia organization, donations from the public, and ransacking local haberdashers for sufficient uniform-appearing clothing. They wore grey jackets and pants, with a smooth leather forage cap; the color grey being chosen for utility on the prairies. The two companies traveled separately from New Orleans, but eventually met up at San Antonio de Bexar, where they became part of the Army of Texas. They took part in the Texian siege of Bexar and those Mexican troops garrisoned there under General Cos – who had come into Texas earlier in the year to reinforce Mexican control of a wayward province. Thomas W. Ward was serving as an artillery officer by then; a military specialty which men with a bent for the mathematical and mechanical seemed to gravitate towards. The Texians and volunteers fought their way into San Antonio by December, led by an old settler and soldier of fortune named Ben Milam. Milam was killed at the height of the siege by a Mexican sharp-shooter, and Thomas W. Ward was injured; one leg was taken off by an errant cannon-ball. The enduring legend is that Milam was buried with Ward’s amputated leg together in the same grave. Was this a misfortune – or a bit of good luck for Thomas Ward?

Not very much discouraged or sidelined, Thomas Ward returned to New Orleans to recuperate – and to be fitted with a wooden prosthesis. He would be known as “Pegleg” Ward for the remainder of his life. He came back to Texas in the spring of 1836, escaping the fate of many of his fellow ‘Greys’ – many of who were among the defenders of the Alamo, their company standard being one of those trophies captured there by Santa Anna. Others of the ‘Greys’ were participants in the ill-fated Matamoros expedition, or became part of Colonel James Fannin’s garrison at the presidio La Bahia, and executed by order of Santa Anna after the defeat at Coleto Creek.

Thomas Ward was commissioned as a colonel and served during the remainder of the war for independence. Upon the return of peace – or a condition closely resembling it – he settled in the new-established city of Houston, and returned to the trade of architect and building contractor. He was hired to build a capitol building in Houston – one of several, for the over the life of the Republic of Texas, the actual seat of government became a rather peripatetic affair. When the second President of Texas, Mirabeau Lamar, moved the capitol to Waterloo-on-the-Colorado – soon to be called Austin – in 1839, Thomas Ward relocated there, serving variously as chief clerk for the House of Representatives, as mayor of Austin and as commissioner of the General Land Office. As luck would have it, during an observance of the victory at San Jacinto in April of 1841, Thomas Ward had another bit of bad luck. In setting off a celebratory shot, the cannon misfired, and the explosion took off his right arm. (I swear – I am not making this up!) To add to cannon-related indignities heaped upon him, in the following year, he was involved in the Archives War. Local inn-keeper, Angelina Eberly fired off another cannon in to alert the citizens of Austin that President Sam Houston’s men were trying to remove the official national archives from the Land Office building. (Either it was not loaded with anything but black powder, or she missed hitting anything.)

Fortunately, Thomas Ward emerged unscathed from this imbroglio – I think it would have been plain to everyone by this time that Mr. Cannon-ball was most definitely not his friend. He married, fought against Texas secession in the bitter year of 1860, served another term as Mayor of Austin, as US Counsel to Panama, and lived to 1872 – a very good age, considering all that he had been through. He will appear briefly as a character – along with Angelina Eberly – in the sequel to Daughter of Texas.

(Next – the story of the two-faced newspaperman.)

Japan Update

14. March 2011 · Comments Off on Japan Update · Categories: Ain't That America?, Air Force, General, Wild Blue Yonder

From an email by a member of a Yahoo discussion group for FEN broadcasters – dated Sunday

About one hour ago or 12 noon Misawa time I had the privilege of watching the USAF Misawa trucks and buses convoy out the main gate on their way to the local coastal areas to provide relief assistance. A half dozen buses filled with local military and USA teams that landed here. Also a dozen 60 foot flatbeds loaded with supplies and equipment. Local townsfolk came out to the curbside to wave and bow. A very heartwarming display indeed.
The northern coastal areas near Misawa AB were hit hard by the tsunami as was Hachinohe though not much was mentioned by the media.

Misawa has just announced the all clear for tsunami. Aftershocks are all but absent now. Power is back on after 36 hours without. Base has limited power. Japan has a lot to do now to clean up and get started again. This has been one really bad week. We grieve for those not far from here.

Info can be had at Facebook under “AFN Misawa” or by visiting the Stars and Stripes online newspaper.

Bill Bunch
Misawa, Japan

Negotiating the Price

09. March 2011 · Comments Off on Negotiating the Price · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Fun With Islam, General, Media Matters Not, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!

So, observing the current imbroglio with the leadership of National Public Radio being played like a fish on the line for a five-million dollar donation from a so-called Muslim Brotherhood front organization . . . well, my feelings are mixed. It’s about 95% schadenfreude-drenched pure pleasure mixed with a 5% sprinkle of regret. I once did like NPR very much and listened faithfully, donated regularly to the local affiliate stations in Salt Lake City and San Antonio, even went to work part-time as an announcer at the classical-music public radio station for nearly ten years. I never missed an airing of Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion, which I thought at one time was about as close to a modern Will Rogers-type comedian as there was.

Alas, in the run-up to 2008, GK chose to go mean-spiritedly partisan, fell down on his knees metaphorically in worship of the One, and went full-on rabid bigot with regard to Tea Partiers, Republicans and conservatives generally since then. Ok, fine – free country and all that, and I am free to take my fanship – and my pledges elsewhere, preferably to a news and entertainment venue which doesn’t feel the need to kick me in the face, morning noon and night, and three times that on Sunday. Which brings me back to NPR – and yes, I know the two NPR executives featured in the video are management materiel and not reporters or on-air personalities . . . but to appear not to know anything about the Muslim Brotherhood, to be apparently eager to curry favor with a big-money donor, and be so willing to trash Christians and Tea Partiers, not to mention a well-respected former employee like Juan Williams, not to mention appearing to go along with the whole –Jews-control-the-media meme . . . Words fail me on that one, at least the words that I can put onto a family blog. Yes, it’s one thing to gracefully appreciate a potential donation, quite another to look like you’re about to break out the kneepads and the Binaca. So – like the old story of the woman who would sleep with a guy for a million dollars, but not for ten dollars – now NPR is just negotiating the price.

Sheesh . . . at this point, I’m not only convinced that NPR and PBS ought to be de-funded – I want back every dime of every pledge I ever contributed.

Return to the Writer’s Life Waltz

06. March 2011 · Comments Off on Return to the Writer’s Life Waltz · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Local, Old West

I know, I know – posting here from me has been a bit pro forma over the last couple of weeks. There are so many things that have happened, in several different arenas that I could have written about, but either just didn’t feel enough interest/passion/irritation about them, or have been swamped in launching the latest book. Yes, Daughter of Texas is being published by the Tiny Publishing Bidness in which I am now a partner, as part of our venture into POD. Just this last week, DoT was added to Amazon and Barnes and Noble, to be available as of April. (To coincide with the 175th anniversary of the war for Texas independence from Mexico. Yeah, I chose that deliberately, as a release date). Alice has always worked before with a number of different litho printers and binders, but increasingly over the last couple of years I am convinced that we have lost potential customers who really, really only wanted a small initial print run, or access to mainstream distribution and to get their book on Amazon. So, I convinced her to let me set up an account with Lightning Source – which I did – and Daughter of Texas is our test run. We’ll offer the POD option – to include a very strict edit of the manuscript, as well as professional standard cover design and formatting. I know, I know – the Tiny Publishing Bidness is late to the game with all this, but she has established a nice little niche market and gotten all kinds of local referrals which have afforded her a regular income over the years that she is in business. San Antonio is a small town, cunningly disguised as a large city. She is a very good editor – I joke that she has been married three times; twice to mere mortal men and once to the Chicago Manual of Style.

I am also looking at the option of having the Trilogy and To Truckee’s Trail in a second edition through The Tiny Publishing Bidness as well. I have a good relationship with the current publishers . . . but the individual per-copy cost is increasingly unbearable to me and to customers actual and potential. Since I am now the slightly-less-than-half partner in an existing publishing company, and have my dear little brother the professional graphics designer doing book-covers . . . well, it’s only logical. I am only held back by the hassle, and additional chore of paying the various fees. On the upside – fixing the various typo issues – priceless! Truckee was thick with them and very obvious to me now that I have had the experience of working with Alice on various editing projects. (To those readers who have noticed them – mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. To those who have not – bless you; these are not the typographical errors you seek. There are no typographical errors. You may go on your way.)

This last weekend was the 175th anniversary of the fall of the Alamo – Blondie and I went to some of the reenactor events in Alamo Plaza. Gee, first time in two years that we haven’t been there for a Tea Party protest! Anyway, lots of fun and I got some good pictures. On my list of things to fix – why I can’t do pictures on this blog, but I put the best of the best on my Open Salon blog. Link here, as soon as OS gets their a** in gear.

I may even be scoring a bit of local media interest, through having chosen to release Daughter of Texas to coincide with Fiesta San Antonio, the commemoration of the San Jacinto victory, and an excuse for a two-week long city-wide bash-slash-block party. Next Saturday, I am off to New Braunfels, to speak at a fundraising brunch for the local DRT chapter – which is really kind of a lift for me, as last year’s famous local scribbler-slash-guest speaker was Stephen Harrigan, of Gates of the Alamo fame. The Daughters – Lindheimer Chapter – have bought a boatload of copies of the Trilogy, to be on sale after the talk and personally autographed. (Note: it’s a kick to autograph my books for someone, but now I have awful nightmares about botching the message and signature. In that case, do I owe them another copy? Did Margaret Mitchell have this nightmare?)

Finally – I haven’t written much about Mom and Dad, since returning from California, for a reason. Mom asked me not to blog about this – too personal. She’s OK, being basically one of these flinty and resilient pioneer types. Besides my brothers and sister, and bro-in-law, she and Dad had lots of friends; we’re looking out for her. Wish I could have talked her into getting the internet, but no luck with that.

Oh, and one final thing – anyone who wants to be on the email list for my monthly author newsletter? Send me a private message, and the email addy you would like it to be sent to. I promise – I will only send it out once a month.

Because You’re Pissing Us Off

03. March 2011 · Comments Off on Because You’re Pissing Us Off · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Ain't That America?, Domestic, Home Front

I saw an online headline in the past couple of days that read, “Teachers wonder:  Why the scorn?”  Had a similar question pop up from an old friend from high school on Facebook.  It also came up up last election season when yet another old friend was running for some position in California (he’s a teacher by trade) and wanted to know why military people seemed so dismissive of “Teacher’s rights?”

I can’t say it’s the right answer or the only answer, but it is my answer:  Military people teach every day.  We train our subordinates, in and out of the classroom.  We help them develop their careers.  We act as mentors, counselors, teachers, friends, parental surrogates, and boss.  We don’t think it’s all that big a deal.  Yes, some people are better at teaching in a formal situation than others, but the passing on of information is not magic.  Not in 2011 when people actually get degrees without interacting with a teacher other than via email or online forum.

One old friend argued that because she has more formal education than most lawyers, and certainly more than “most idiot Republican” politicians, she’s entitled to more money.  I asked if she were teaching MORE as a result of that education?  No.  Was she teaching harder material as a result of that education?  No.  I asked her how her level of education effected how well she taught a standardized curriculum and she got downright pissy.  “There is NO such thing as a standardized curriculum, if you’d ever REALLY taught, you’d know that.”  I ignored that entirely and drove home my point:  A teacher’s level of education has little to no effect on their ability to communicate a set collection of information to their students.  Follow up questions, in-depth subject background, oh-by-the-way-you-might-find-this-bit-of-minutia-interesting, THOSE all benefit from you’re having an advanced degree IN THE SUBJECT YOU’RE TEACHING.  Your advanced degrees make YOU a more informed person, but you’re not doing my kid any more good than the fresh faced youngster with a new BA and teaching certificate who may actually still CARE about teaching.

“Back where I come from, we have universities, seats of great learning, where men go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts and with no more brains than you have.”  ~The Wizard of Oz to Scarecrow.

Unions:  At this point, unions aren’t helping teachers one bit.  When teachers’ unions were formed, they were necessary to ensure that teachers could make a living wage.  And they ARE making a living wage.  They don’t get paid a lot, in most cases, but they now have pay and benefits that are above the poverty line by a good margin.  Good teachers, exceptional teachers, get paid exactly the same amount as really crappy teachers.  Why?  Unions.  The unions are for equality, across the board, no matter how much you suck.  They are a beast that must be fed and to be fed, they must get more for their union members so the union members can feed them more.  They’re like many another bureaucracy, the initial reason for their existence has LONG passed, but they must justify their continuation and the way they do that is to insist that their members are some sort of victims, insist that only the union can keep the evil political machine at bay, only the union can “fix” what is broken.

The problem is that these days we’re all victims, we’re all not making enough, we’re all working harder for less money and teachers unions trying to argue that they’re still worse off than most of the rest of us, just isn’t flying.  If you’ve got a salary AND insurance these days, you’re doing pretty damn well.  We’re broke too, and for you to ask more of us while we’re still struggling to get back on our feet, is just damn insulting.

THAT’S why the scorn.

BOHICA

01. March 2011 · Comments Off on BOHICA · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Tea Time, That's Entertainment!

All righty then – maybe the book that this inspired this upcoming TV series is as funny as some of the reviewers made it out to be – somehow I doubt it. Desperate Housewives set in Dallas? Erm, OK, then. Divorced mother moves back into town and gets treated badly by the so-called upper crust. This was funnier thirty years ago when it was called Harper Valley PTA. And I suppose it’s necessary to keep the title; gotta keep on kicking all those devoutly observant Christians in flyover country smack in the kisser. The Lords of the Entertainment Industrial Complex will show those no-class rubes who’s in charge, boy howdy! The upside is – they’ve probably pissed off at least a third of the potential audience before the show even rolls out. Honestly, sometimes I wonder if they do want people to watch their shows.

And speaking of discouraging people from watching shows – we used to like Glee. Enjoyed the heck out of it, actually: decent music, original concept and characters, a great deal of wit, a talented cast, and writing that sparkled . . . and then it all drained away, and somehow we can’t bring ourselves to watch the latest season. It all seemed to deflate gradually, but the episode where they all went ga-ga for Lady Gaga stuck the fork in it. (Note: is Lady G’s fifteen minutes of fame up yet?) Maybe the show became less about characters and situations and more about pounding home certain points with a sledgehammer, which brings to mind the rule attributed to movie mogul Sam Goldwyn: If you want to send a message, call Western Union. Or Sgt Mom’s version: Skip the pious platitudes and just entertain me, thanks. And now they’re going to finish off what is left of Glee’s audience by incorporating a Tea Party Mom/Sarah Palin type political candidate character and not in a nice way . . . all together with me now: Oh, that will go over real well!

Swiftly and efficiently alienating at least a half of the remaining audience, which leads me back to my original point – do they even want us to watch their damn shows?

Memo: With a Bang and Not a Whimper

26. February 2011 · Comments Off on Memo: With a Bang and Not a Whimper · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Politics, sarcasm, World

To: AIG
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Things Happening Almost Too Fast to Keep Track

1. So, it looks like the End is Nigh for Moammar Ghadaffy, or however the heck his name is spelled. I swear, over the last thirty years, it’s different every time he swims back up from the cesspool and back into public consciousness again. There is probably some rule governing this; something to do with whether there is an “r” in the month, or if the aurora borealis is showing . . . anyway, I suspect that when a dictator gets to the point of hiring masses of obviously foreign mercenaries because he can’t trust anybody but his immediate family – not his military, or his secret police, or his own body-guard – and orders those troops who do obey him to drop bombs on their own people . . . game over. There hasn’t been an equal to him as megalomaniacal, totally erratic, terrorist-enabling, crazier-than-a-shit-house-rat brutal dictator since Idi Amin shuffled off the international scene. Is anyone setting up a pool on when Ghaddaffy Duck gets the Mussolini-stone-dead-and-hanging-from-an-urban-gas-station-canopy? Can I get in for Friday?

2. Contemplating current unrest in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain, Iran and Lebanon, it looks like a good time to get out that old record of Barry McGuire, singing “Eve of Destruction.” Just saying.

3. It looks like the Koch Brothers are selected as this month’s Emmanuel Goldstein for the progressive-lefty media. Not bad for two guys who hadn’t been heard of until two or three months ago, out outside of libertarian and big-charity donor circles. Note: they really aren’t that big as donors go – the Tides Foundation and George Soros probably spend as much on coffee and crullers as the Koch Brothers donated to libertarian-oriented politicians. It seems to be that the Koch Brothers have committed the solecism of not doing things properly. Donations from billionaires ought to go to the proper causes and people. You know, the causes and people that that all socially conscientious and proper-thinking people endorse – because otherwise it would just wreck everything.

4. Madison, Wisconsin as the epicenter of the political s**tstorm-du-jour, American-style . . . whoever would have thought it, eh? Good old progressive, earnest mid-west Wisconsin, who elected a governor (by the same margin as the current resident of the White House was elected to his current office) who said what he meant, meant what he said, and then went out and did it. Wow – and now we are seeing the public employee unions and their sympathizers having a major meltdown. I somehow think that this will not end as the proper progressive people expect it to end; those who believe with the force of holy writ that a 21st century workplace is just exactly the same as a 20th century factory floor or a 19th century sweatshop. Allow me to break it to you gently, people: All the good things that unions did, they did a good while ago, and yes, it’s OK to be sentimental as all get-out about that and to honor the organizers – well, many of them anyway – who fought for all that. But that was then, this is now. The Man is just not slavering to put all working-class people back in the company town, working for a pittance and persecuted by the Pinkertons any more. (Maybe in China they are, or in Burma, though.) Now, a lot of ordinary, working-class and middle-class Americans do not have a good opinion of union labor as practiced in their own working lifetimes – because they have had experiences with it that were less than salutary. Rotten teachers in public schools to can’t be fired, surly and unhelpful DMV clerks, closed shops with enforced union membership, the antics of the SEIU –also known as the Purple People Beaters, unions who seem to benefit the union management rather than the rank and file, assorted criminal goonery, union demands which essentially wrecked various manufacturing companies, and insupportable levels of pay and benefits charged to taxpayers, politicians in the pocket of public employee unions . . . a word to the wise, oh union bretheren and sisteren – our affection and respect for unions has been worn to a thin shred. Don’t presume upon it. And the noisy antics of your union members and allies in public spaces everywhere in the last year or so is neither winning friends or influencing ordinary people – and voters – in a positive way. Especially when y’all don’t pick up the trash afterward.

5. Finally, how long was that plea for civility in the civic arena honored? A whole six weeks, eight weeks, tops? Ah, well – pleasant while it lasted.

Sincerely,
Sgt. Mom

Stupid Spam Blog Comments – Another collection

24. February 2011 · Comments Off on Stupid Spam Blog Comments – Another collection · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Local

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Who the heck generates this stuff? Not only is their first language not English, I am pretty sure it isn’t even language…

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Hey, maybe the Administration could hire some of these ‘bots to write speeches for President Obama…

Logical Progression

19. February 2011 · Comments Off on Logical Progression · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Politics, Tea Time

So, it looks like what is unfolding in the streets of Madison, Wisconsin is a logical outgrowth of the last election cycle, in which droves of Tea Party-ish conservo-libertarians replaced Dems and an assortment of RINO squishes at the state level . . . and then promptly set to work doing what they had promised during their campaigns that they would do. Hey, democracy – it’s a wonderful thing. Normally, we’ve seemed to elect candidates who mouth the expected promises and platitudes during the campaign, and once in – or returned to – office, we might get thrown a couple of chunks of pork and maybe get a street or a local government office building named after them. I think we had gotten to the point that most political observers kind of expected that. But to actually say what they mean and mean what they say, and have it last for a nano-second past being sworn in? *enable Vizzini voice* Incredible! *disable Vizzini voice.

And for some reason this is now unfolding in Wisconsin, of all places, and in uber-liberal Madison, and I can’t decide which aspect of it is providing more cynical enjoyment to connoisseurs of state political establishments; the public employee union meltdown/temper tantrum, the fleeing legislators, trucked in protestors or the presence of Jesse Jackson. The Texas Lege set the bar pretty high, in the old days, being usually described as the best free show in town aside from the circus parade – Madison as a state capitol is providing more merriment than Austin, which may be a first. But only holding sessions every other year, and being a right-to-work state, and being fairly fiscally-responsible when it comes to state spending has held a lot of the legislative insanity in Texas to a minimum. Although there are a number of state-level spending black holes, most to do with roads and excessively splendid highway rest stops . . . anyway, back to Madison, and the way that this confrontation has been unfolding . . . Was anyone holding their breath waiting for Jesse Jackson to pop up, like one of those round-bottomed clown dolls that just won’t stay down? Guess it’s truly a national story now that he has helicoptered in to town.

Anyone tracked down the wandering Dem legislators by now? I know they were chased from their cozy digs at the Tilted Kilt, and are now rumored to be in Chicago, which only seems logical. Like to like, birds of a feather . . . can we call them ‘Flee-baggers’ now? It would be a laugh-riot for Governor Walker to declare that since they are no-shows at their assigned duty station, a special election ought to be called to replace them. Elections do have consequences.

The big-time, mega-big time losers are going to be the unions, or at the very least the established union leadership cadre. I mean, way to win friends and influence people – first for having – and insisting on retaining – pay and benefits packages for members that are generous far and above equivalent non-public employee workers compensation, and in a time of what looks increasingly like a depression. And insisting on retaining them in spite of the fact that municipalities and counties are near to going broke keeping pay/benefits and retirement packages current levels, and that the people who are paying the taxes which go to funding them don’t have anything near as generous or as secure . . . it’s a kick in the teeth and mega-awful public relations, people – this makes y’all look greedy and careless of consequences. But this is all of a piece with urban schoolteachers now going on sick-outs for most of a week and closing down schools Those workers who had to organize child-care on sudden notice must be near-nuclear with rage.

Threatening to picket and protest at private homes – that’s a lose-lose. Carrying signs with a Hitler mustache painted on the governor, and targets superimposed on his face? Nice to see that the call for civility and a dialing-down of eliminationist rhetoric lasted a whole . . . what, six weeks. And leaving piles of post-protest trash around for someone else to clean up just underlines contempt for fellow citizens and taxpayers that the union demonstrators seem to be holding.

Interesting times – in the ancient Chinese curse sense.

The Bad Neighbor Policy

13. February 2011 · Comments Off on The Bad Neighbor Policy · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General

For many years, I’ve kept in touch with some friends – a retired couple who live in … well, let’s just say it’s a semi-rural, and congenial neighborhood in a western state blessed with rather nice hills and mildish winters. They have a near neighbor whose antics over the last twenty years have enlivened the occasional communications that I have with these friends … because this individual has the opposite of the golden touch. Everything he touches invariably turns to the stuff that is swept up from the street after the horses have gone by. It’s been an unfailing gift; in the words of the demotivational poster, his purpose in life is to serve as a bad example.

If he were just feckless and congenial, that would be one thing: My friends say their other neighbors all are nice people; they would work hard to rescue such a person from various disastrous consequences. Alas, he is not. Besides the leaden touch, he is also self-regarding, confrontational and a bully. My friends and their neighbors have all learned cynicism, and to sit back and await the inevitable spectacular pratfall. Every neighborhood has one of these people; there was a resident of my parent’s old neighborhood in Sunland-Tujunga who earned an official injunction against ever dialing 9-1-1.

My friends bad-example neighbor got off on the wrong foot, yea these many years ago in buying at the peak of the local real estate bubble. The property was a goodish size, planted with a thriving fruit orchard, mature trees, a lath-house and a beautiful garden planted with many exotic specimens. There was a well-kept double-wide trailer -many residents in this neighborhood lived in trailers or RVs while building a permanent house. The bad-example neighbor moved in with his spouse and children, telling everyone that he had bought this hilltop property as an investment. The bursting of the real estate bubble and a subsequent drought put an end to that plan; the bad-example neighbor pinched pennies by not watering the orchard – the fruit-trees all died. The garden also died, although the specimen plants could have been sold to local plantsmen and nurseries for a tidy sum … if the bad-example neighbor had only known. Bad-example neighbor turned out to be slightly delusional about where his property-lines ran, and engaged in a bitter conflict with the owners of two adjacent properties when they put up fence-lines.

Maintenance on the double-wide was deferred, and deferred again: The electrical system was outright dangerous and the roof leaked. Bad-example neighbor did not really have any construction or technical skills, as many of the other neighbors did, and his spouse was, charitably, not the best housekeeper in the world. To save money on getting the septic tank pumped, bad-example neighbor insisted that his family not flush the toilet until they had been used three times. At that point, my friends and the other neighbors agreed that the place had become unspeakably squalid. Bad example-neighbor and his spouse divorced; most everyone agreed his spouse was struck with a moment of clarity. He kept custody of their children; she engaged in professional training and eventually got a good job.

Around that point, a wild-fire swept through the area, and bad-example neighbor’s double-wide and the remaining outbuildings were casualties … which did solve the problem of deferred maintenance, although several neighbors were appalled to discover that when bad-example neighbor evacuated ahead of the fire, he left two dogs behind. The neighbors fed and tended the dogs, one of which was slightly burned.

Bad-example neighbor lives in town, now – usually coming out to the property on weekends. He keeps a small tractor, in a storage shed. He has delusions about sub-dividing the land, and to that end has constructed a dirt road along the property-line, which has had the effect of shifting a seasonal watercourse to now drain directly into one neighbor’s driveway and another’s horse corral. There will be the inevitable repercussions from those neighbors about this. My friends sigh, with exasperation, now and again, wondering just how it could be worse. That it could be worse is not much comfort.

When the Rock Gods Get Old

12. February 2011 · Comments Off on When the Rock Gods Get Old · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, The Funny

Courtesy of Ed Driscoll… Yeah, I laughed my a** off. Or I would have, except that I had to take a couple of Tylenol first…

The Joys of Junking

07. February 2011 · Comments Off on The Joys of Junking · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General

Yeah, I know – embarrassing to admit: we’re scroungers and scavengers. We’re not quite up there with the junkers in pick-up trucks who circulate in ours and other neighborhoods during that week when householders are putting out items for bulk trash pickup, but heaven knows, my daughter and I have staggered home of a morning, burdened with discarded but perfectly good pottery pots, with revivable plants, garden knick-knacks, a twelve pack of brand-new canning jars (as if someone got the urge to make jam or something, and thought better of it), and a chaise-lounge made of two-by-fours which may have had a leeetle bit of wood-rot on one leg . . . oh, the list is endless.

I suppose I hit some kind height – or nadir – when I was surveying one large curbside mound outside a home from which someone had evidently just moved and had hit that ‘oh, s**w it, I’m gonna throw it away rather than pack another thing!’ wall. There actually was one of the professional scroungers with his junk-laden van parked by the curb, industriously rummaging through the pile – a lot of cheap knock-down furniture and faintly dingy electronics, IIRC – and I very politely asked him to hold the dog’s leashes, so that I could retrieve a large and slightly wilted Brugmansia (Angel Trumpet) from a position on the very top of the pile. He did – apparently having no interest in slightly past their-best-if-used-by-this-date garden plants. (The Brugmansia has done pretty well, by the way – a little nipped by frost now and again, but it always comes back. The trick to making them thrive, by the way, is using plenty of the fertilizer designed for hibiscus.) And then there was a pile of discards by a house undergoing renovation . . . we scored a replacement sliding screen door out of that. A pair of dogs that my daughter had decided to shelter in a fit of noble high-mindedness had thoroughly shredded the previously existing screen and bent the heck out of the metal frame. What does it say that a construction discard was a step up, quality-wise? At least, the price was right.

Plants and pots – especially pots: those are the most excellent finds in my neighborhood. Not quite sure about why that should be so, except that the turnover during the PCS season in our neighborhood is pretty brisk. Heavy pottery pots just don’t transport well . . . not to mention the plants in them. In a military move, that tends to be the kind of thing given away or discarded, right off the bat . . . so they wind up on the curb, in spite of being in perfectly good shape and even rather expensive to start with. So – when they finish up in my garden, it’s just karmic payback for all the plants and their pots that I gave away, upon departing assignments in Greece, Spain and Utah.

I do wonder now and again, what the pickings would be like in other neighborhoods – those which reflect a higher socio-economic level than mine. That is to say, the rich ones. Probably some very nice things, if the experience of one of my mothers’ neighbors in California is anything to go by. He’s a building contractor, who does very high-end renovations, and his own house and garden is almost entirely fitted out with materials that were excess to the needs of various projects, or perfectly good and salvaged from them – even the tiles on his roof were from a job.

On the day when someone in my neighborhood replaces a granite counter-top with whatever the new trend in counter-tops will be – I will be so there.

A Vintage Joke

04. February 2011 · Comments Off on A Vintage Joke · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Local, World

… from Dad – about the little bird called the Key-bird. And why was it called the Key-bird?
Because, as it went hopping and shivvering from branch to branch, it’s constant lamenting call was –(wait for it)–
“K-k-k-k-ke-Rist! It’s cold!”

Which it is. It snowed here in San Antonio last night. It was an accumulation of less than an inch or so, but it was cold enough that it stuck, and the remains will doubtless freeze again tonight … and no, I am not planning to go anywhere at all. Why do you ask? – I’ve seen these people drive when it’s wet outside. Yeah, fer sure – all they need is ice-puddles at all the normally soggy intersections.

Book Talk at the Antique Store

03. February 2011 · Comments Off on Book Talk at the Antique Store · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, Literary Good Stuff, Old West

So, on the coldest winter day for several winters running in South Texas, Blondie and I set out on a book-talk excursion. This was unique – not just for the very coldness of the day, but also for the fact that this time the location was within city limits, and about a hop-skip-and-jump from the house. Previous book-talks have been as far as Beeville (twice), Junction and Harper, all of which were at least an hour and a half drive away. The weather being what it was, I don’t think we would have risked such an excursion, icy roads being a component. Too many drivers here freak out when it rains heavily – adding ice to the mix is courting disaster. As it was, we encountered the rolling black-out; our first clue being that the traffic lights were out for a good part of the way along Bitters Road, and in Artisans’ Alley.

The venue was to be at Back Alley Antiques, which is – suitably enough – at the back end of Artisans’ Alley. We love a couple of the little shops there, including the one who has a guardian Shi-Tzu dog named Harley – but our very favorite is Back Alley Antiques. Not that we’ve ever been able to afford much there, but what they do have in stock is enviably wonderful, from the large pieces of classic furniture, down to the linens, the accessories, the china and milk glass. (When I’m a best-selling author, and fit out my dream retreat in the Hill Country, a lot of the furniture for it will come from there and from the Antique Mall in Comfort, thank you very much.) The last time we were there, I had a nice leisurely chat with one of the owners, who took my card and seemed interested in the fact that I had written extensively about local history; and so in January, Rita C. invited me to speak to a small circle of antique enthusiasts which she belonged to, about the Trilogy.

Very fortunately, there was not much traffic out on the roads – also, even more fortunately, the power came back on, almost as soon as we walked in the door. It was a nice gathering of ladies about my age or a little older – could have been mistaken for a Red Hats gathering, save that everyone was tastefully dressed in other colors than red or purple – and all of us had on substantially heavy winter coats. They gathered around a couple of antique dining room tables, carefully decked out with equally antique place settings, silverware and linens, held the business portion of their meeting – and then, it was show-time!

I have notes, carefully printed up for the first book-talk that I did – an outline of early Texas history, about the adventures of the Adelsverein representatives in Texas, and the subsequent transmission of settlers from Germany, straight to the wild-n-woolly frontier, together with a short explanation of how I came to write about them. Didn’t look at the notes once, I’ve done this talk so often, since. Took a few questions – some of the lady members had heard in a vague sort of way about the German settlers, one or two – including one who owns a historic home in Castroville – had heard of the general specifics, but the mini-Civil War in the Hill Country was an interesting and fascinating surprise. We had bought along the few copies of books that I had, and some order forms and flyers about the Trilogy. After the meeting, we repaired to the Pomegranate for lunch – another nice round of conversation. Blondie and Rita C. explored a mutual interest in vintage pressed glass, and we had a lot of fun discussing how much more rewarding it was, finding splendid vintage and antique items at estate sales, and thrift stores. Another club member – who has fitted out an entire frontier town as a venue and B&B at her family’s hunting ranch – turns out to know one of my clients, the ranch broker – yet more proof, if any were needed, that San Antonio is just a small town, cunningly disguised as a large city.

The Word for the Day

03. February 2011 · Comments Off on The Word for the Day · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General

… is “shrimplets.”

Shrimplets are the last few frozen shrimp and parts of frozen shrimp left at the bottom of the large bag. Not quite enough to do anything with, except maybe add to the top of an individual cuppa noodle soup for additional protein and flavor.

On the Edge of the Wilderness

25. January 2011 · Comments Off on On the Edge of the Wilderness · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Home Front, Veteran's Affairs, World

Well, it’s not the wilderness, actually – that place where my parents built their retirement house, but it would certainly look so to someone more used to living in the city. No streetlights, and the houses are set back from unpaved roads, so a possessing good stock of flashlights and fresh batteries are something that every household out here needs, especially if people are planning to go somewhere and return after dark. I had to work the combination to the front gate by the light of my cell phone at one point, so no – I won’t forget a flashlight on my next visit, especially if I am going someplace after dark. There may be starlight and moonlight on occasion, but underneath the trees, it can get as black as the inside of a cow.

Which some of the neighbors have, by the way. A cow. And some goats. At least half of them have horses, too, now all winter-shaggy and bored, mooching around in their corrals, next to the road. At once place, the horses managed to chew away a lot of the three-rail wooden fence. The previous owners used to keep it all in good repair and painstakingly painted white. The new owner doesn’t seem to care quite so much. Everyone has dogs in their yards. At my parents’ place, one can track a pedestrian around the neighborhood by following the sounds of sequential dogs barking. There are also coyotes on the prowl, especially at night. This does not make it healthy for outdoor cats; my parents and most of their neighbors have lost cats to coyotes and other predators, in spite of taking every care. It seems that the only way to keep cats entirely safe is to keep them indoors.

For some strange, atavistic reason, my parents have always loved living on a dirt road, out in the hills. Possibly this cuts down the numbers of door-to-door evangelists and vacuum cleaner salespeople, but it’s heck on automobile suspensions … especially when a heavy rain has gouged huge gullies across the roadway, and what would have been the gutters on either side became canyons capable of swallowing up Mini-Coopers. Or they would, if anyone was demented enough to drive a Mini-Cooper along some of these roads. This last December was nothing but wall to wall rainstorms. A couple of their close neighbors are contractors, with small businesses and earth-moving equipment. They have a lot of fun playing around, re-grading the road, although one of them, known as the Bad Neighbor, didn’t helped much at all. He tried to fill the ruts with adobe, scraped up from his property. Alas, wet adobe turns into slippery mud; in the next heavy rain, one particular spot will be a kind of automobile slip-n-slide for an unwary driver traveling at more than 20 miles an hour. The water and power authorities offered more useful assistance by dumping concrete and asphalt rubble into the deepest of the gullies.

The rain made everything even greener than the winter rains usually do, though. The big fire seven years ago cleared away a lot of undergrowth, and of course, the various fire departments since then have cleared even more. The familiar marks of an old brush-fire are evident everywhere: the parti-colored dead branches of a tree or a shrub, bleached white in some places, soot-blackened in others, sticking up out of the middle of a lush thicket of new green growth.

Birds were everywhere – humming-birds squeaking like rusty hinges, and quail rustling through the undergrowth. I would surprise rabbits in the morning, when I walked down the hill for the newspapers: tan-colored, with a little white-cotton powderpuff for a tail. They lolloped lazily out of my way, as if humans didn’t frighten them very much at all. Probably they don’t: dogs and coyotes must be more of a real danger to the rabbits.

And that’s what it’s like, back in the hills. Given a choice, I’d have my own country retreat … but I think I’d skip the unpaved road part of it. Asphalt paving is a wondrous invention.

Winterreise 2010

20. January 2011 · Comments Off on Winterreise 2010 · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Veteran's Affairs, Wild Blue Yonder, World

(Hey, I’m back – got in last night … or, um … very early this morning. Here is a post that I wrote at my parents’, but had no way to post at the Brief from their house!)

Over the last decade – or perhaps even longer – all of the adventure, the fun and the excitement of traveling by air has been removed with cruel and surgical precision. Slowly, slowly, all of the frivolous extras have been chipped away, or become expensive add-ons. A small bag of peanuts and a cup of juice, enjoyed while sitting elbow to elbow in a tight-packed flying cattle car, and the only thing to look forward to (aside from the whole journey being over) is a long slog through the wide-flung nodes of a hub airport in order to catch a connecting flight at another gate. Which as luck usually has it, is as far from the gate where you were unceremoniously decanted as it can get and not be in another county. Or state.

No, about the only good fortune one can hope for these days is meeting a congenial person, whilst waiting for your flight or during it, and passing the idle hours in interesting conversation. Here I was most fortunate – even with the East Coast being socked in with Donner Party levels of snowfall, and the West Coast being served up with relentless rainstorms – I passed the time traveling home with a succession of no less than three very congenial fellow travelers.

The first of these had been at the San Antonio airport all day, trying to get into onto flight to Salt Lake City and very tired of working Sodoku puzzles. There is only one kind of young man under the age of 21 who routinely wear a black business suit, conservative tie and white shirt. LDS missionaries – they hardly need the nametag, at all. Turned out his home was in Windcrest, he was going to the 9-week long LDS missionary training course in Salt Lake City before going to South Florida for his tour of mission duty, because he was fairly fluent in Spanish. Then, he thought he might join the Air Force. I don’t think he had ever been to Salt Lake City – and I used to live there.

The hour on the ground – and the two hours in the air to Salt Lake City were enlivened by the guy in the seat next to me; he was going to Park City for the skiing and a better time to do that doesn’t exist. He’s a native Texan – and it proves that San Antonio really is a small town because he had gone to school with one of my former employers. Turned out that we had some other mutual friends and interests, including one for local history. His grandfather and great-grandfather were cattle ranchers out in West Texas and I had written a book touching on the great days of trailing cattle north to Kansas – heck, I even had a copy of J. Frank Dobie’s book about longhorns in my bag.

Because of the delay on the ground, I was pretty sure I’d miss the connecting flight to San Diego … but they had just begun boarding as I jogged breathlessly along the concourse between gates (note to self: start jogging regularly again). Made the flight with about fifteen minutes to spare; I could have just walked fast, but not keen on spending the night sleeping in the terminal, fond as I am of watching the sun come up over the Wasatch Front. For the fight to San Diego, I shared a row with a young Coast Guard member’s wife, who was coming home to San Diego after a flying trip to Fargo, N.D. We had a lot in common, as it turned out: her trip was a last visit to her grandfather, whose health was failing rapidly, mine to be with my family and to sort out matters after my Dad’s death. She had three-month old baby son whom she adored – and laughed and laughed when I told the story of how my father had snake-proofed my brother and I. On one of the first dates with her husband, he had proudly brought a rattlesnake that he had killed, and skinned it in her kitchen sink

So, the flight home was passed very agreeably – although Delta did their part, I think the people I met along the way were the main means of making the journey at least a little pleasanter than it could have been.

Snakeproofing the Kids – An Archive Post for Dad

28. December 2010 · Comments Off on Snakeproofing the Kids – An Archive Post for Dad · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Memoir

My father died very suddenly, the day after Christmas, at the age of 80. He was a research biologist, a veteran of the Korean War, and an excellent parent to all four of us; my brothers JP and Sander, and my sister Pip, and a grandfather to all of our children. I first began writing about my family in 2002, when I first began contributing to this blog. Those were the posts that everyone seemed to like the most, and it led to my first book … and which led to other books. In all of this Dad was one of my biggest fans. So – I am going back and re-posting some of the very earliest posts – those which are presently lost in the bowels of the internet.

I’ll be flying out to California on Wednesday afternoon to help Mom and my brothers and sister sort out things, all thanks to Proud Veteran for her gift of Delta miles. My parents didn’t have internet at the house, and I probably won’t have much time … but then again, I might. In any case, I’ll be back for sure around the middle of January.

* * *

When I was about three and a half, and my brother JP a toddler of two, we lived in a house away back in the hills. My parents had a penchant for howling wilderness, and any property at the end of a couple of miles of dirt road was their dream house, never mind that when it was going to rain heavily, they would have to leave the cars by the mailboxes, about a mile and a half away. The house seemed to me to be as large as a cathedral: it was actually a small cottage, as I discovered when we visited years later, and I could see out of windows that had once been far above my head. It had a graveled drive, and sat in a grove of trees, mostly manzanita and eucalyptus. There was a range of pyracantha bushes, with bright orange berries that Mom told us time and time again to NEVER put in our mouths. (JP, obedient and logical stuffed one up his nose, instead.)

Almost immediately upon moving in, my parents made a very unsettling discovery: the hillside was alive with snakes; primarily rattlesnakes of a dismayingly large and aggressive nature… dismaying because they did not stick to their usual habitat of brush and rocks, but sought out the sunny, sheltered flats around the house… where JP and I were likely to be playing. Rattlesnakes and toddlers are incompatible life forms, and no alternatives were viable. We could not be kept in the house all day, and Dad could not kill every snake on the hillside. He made a gallant try, his favorite weapon being a long handled hoe wielded with pinpoint accuracy and considerable force. Scarce a dent was made in the population, and Dad considered a revolutionary solution: knowledge.

JP and I were immediately enrolled in Dad’s seminar on “Snakes, General knowledge pertaining to, with special attention towards the dangerous varieties” and an ancillary course on first aid for snakebites.

He captured king snakes and the other harmless varieties with a snake hook, showed us the holes and shelters they preferred, let us handle them, lectured us on what they liked to eat. We were drilled on identifying them by their colors and markings, the patterns they made in the dust. For a time, there was a picture of me calmly handling a six-foot long specimen, about twice as long as I was tall.
“They eat rats and mice, “Dad lectured, “They are useful, keeping things in balance.”

Then he upped the ante and captured a rattler, keeping it in a large aquarium with a sturdy lid on the top in his study, so we could study it.
“Look at the diamond markings on the back…. Also it has a neck. In this part of the country the dangerous snakes almost always have a pronounced neck…. Listen to the sound it makes. “Dad tapped the side of the aquarium, and the snake coiled into a taut spring, tail rattling madly. “When you hear that sound, you should hold still until you see where it is coming from…. Then back away, slowly. They strike if they are cornered; given a chance they will go away. Be careful about large flat rocks, snakes like to lie out to get themselves warm. And never, ever put your hands or your feet into a place where you can’t see in.”

Grandpa Al and Granny Dodie were visiting, while Dad was keeping the rattlesnake in the den, and from the living room they could hear the sound of it buzzing distantly.
“What on earth is that sound?” Granny Dodie demanded, and Mom quickly replied.
“Cicadas!”

First aid for snakebites was the final segment of the seminar:
“The bite would look like this,” Dad showed us the picture in the First Aid Book, “You would first need to make a tourniquet, and put it on your arm or leg between your heart and the bite.”
How to make a tourniquet from a belt or shoelaces, how to widen the wound and suck out the venom and blood, being careful not to swallow any of it, Dad drilled us and made us practice: it’s outdated practice now, but we were letter perfect. I honestly think if I ever did have to administer snakebite first aid, I would revert automatically to what Dad taught us so carefully.

It turned out that this knowledge was so powerful, we never actually encountered a snake in the wild, except at the end of Dad’s snake hook. And we grew up with no fear of them, whatsoever. In fact, I think the zoo snake house is really neat, and snakes are way cool. It’s spiders that give me the creeps, but that’s another story.

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