Ain’t That America? – Page 34

End Run

05. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

The crescendo of the writers’ life waltz, as I have been calling it, is yours truly making a determined end-run around the established behemoths of the literary industrial complex, thanks to contributions gratefully received from fans and supporters… and from Mom and Dad. I have been able to pull in enough to start the process rolling for “To Truckee’s Trail” with those nice people at Booklocker.com. I have sent them the formatted text, and in a short time, they will have one of their contracted artists do the cover, and once I approve it, they will include it in their website and catalogue… and there you go, Sgt. Mom’s next book. It’ll be available on Amazon.com, of course.

It’s not just going to stop at that, though. It just doesn’t. I will be buying a box of copies, to use to generate reviews in various websites and magazines. Once I have a nice collection of kind words, then I will use the cover art and the kind words to purchase advertising space, and to print up some folders or flyers to send to various bookstores. Do you know how many museums there are, along the Western emigrant trail, and how many of them have bookstores? You may not, but I am making a concerted effort to build a list of each and every one, and I’ll know when I am finished. I’ll also know about any independent bookstores anywhere in towns of note along the trail… especially if there is any kind of trail-related tourism in that town. All hail Google, the avatar of the DIY advertising campaign!

It’s been dawning on me, that perhaps the world of book-publishing, or as I have begun to call it, the “literary industrial complex” is beginning a slow downward spiral in the face of the POD revolution, the internet and DIY marketing, and even the availability of quality color printing at Kinkos. All those processes that were once owned by a big publisher because the technology involved was huge, complex and expensive… now they are reduced, pared down and available to anyone who cares. Once upon a time, doing a book on your own used to be called a vanity press, and it cost a bomb, but now self-publishing is within reach. The resulting books aren’t any more dreadful than what is churning out of the traditional publishing houses; so much for the sneering about vanity presses, and writers so pathetically eager to be in print.

It’s been kind of curious, to hang around in the book and publishing blogs, and read what insiders say about it: that agents are harried and harassed, and have only enough time for a tenth of the good-quality stuff that crosses their desks. That publishers are risk-adverse… and like the producers of block-buster movies, want that sure-fire good thing that is just like the last fifteen or twenty sure-fire good things that came down the pike. It’s a crapshoot for writers; even if you do grab the brass ring, and get a deal from a traditional publisher, you’re likely to be treated like dirt anyway… and wind up doing most of the marketing yourself. So, POD looks more and more like a viable alternative.

And I am wondering if the literary-industrial complex is going to start feeling the pinch of competition, and considerable dissatisfaction from the consuming public… just like the major news media is feeling now. Old news stalwarts like the NY Times, Newsweek and the CBS evening news are all beginning to tank. Bloggers like Michael Yon can do news reporting from a war zone, expert analysis comes from someone like Wretchard at Belmont Club, and the dreaded Mo-Toons o’Doom were featured on more blogs than were published in newspapers. The entire news industry looks fair to going down like that enormous spaceship in that old Disney movie that spiraled down into a black hole, emerging in the fourth dimension as something entirely different… what was the name of that flick? Anyway, I wonder if current technology is going to send traditional book publishing in the same direction.

On This Day in 1776

04. July 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History

(It was the custom in many 19th century communities to have a public reading of the Declaration of Independence as part of the 4th of July Festivities. It’s a good tradition, and I hold to it on this site.)

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

Ratatouille

29. June 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, That's Entertainment!, The Funny, World

So, we went to see Ratatouille this afternoon, and are still giggling. I will do a review tomorrow, when I am finished giggling.

Or, I may be giggling until next weekend. To tide you over, a recipe for “ratatouille”… in which no rats are harmed.

Combine in an 3-quart ovenproof casserole:

3 TBsp olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 clove minced garlic
1 1-lb eggplant, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 medium zucchini, cut in 1-inch slices
1 1-lb can whole tomatoes and their juice, chopping tomatoes roughly with a spoon
1 tsp basil leaves
1/2 tsp salt

Cover and bake in a 400 deg.oven for about two hours, until vegetables are very soft, uncovering and stirring once or twice. Serve garnished with parsley.

(from Sunset “French Cookbook” 1976 edition“)

As an aperitif, the website for the movie.

And I am still blegging for funds to cover printing and publicity for my next book, “To Truckee’s Trail.”

PS: The introductory short to this is a hoot, too!

Garden Greenery

24. June 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, The Funny

I have only had to run the sprinkler to water the garden once, so far this year. A rainy spring is extremely unusual … well, at least for the whole twelve years that we have been living here. There has been a nice, deep-drenching rain about every week and a half, almost as if it has been scheduled. The only thing to equal it was four or five years ago when for some mysterious reason tropical storm systems kept stalling right over Bexar County for several weeks at a stretch. Not only was Memorial Day weekend rained out that year, but the Fourth of July weekend also. And not just plain old pitter-pat little showers, but a full bore tropical deluge that went on for hours. And days. And weeks.

Everyone went around expressing their surprise that South Texas appeared to have a monsoon season, although I think the story of kayak racing on North New Braunfels avenue between the Nacogdoches and Austin Highway intersections was an exaggeration. Not an impossibility, though. It is one of the embarrassments of our fair city that it is entirely possible to be swept away and drowned within city limits, given sufficient rainfall over certain urban locations.

The upside is that everything is green – green, green, green and ever more green; gardens, parks, highway verges and hillsides. The wildflowers have lasted for weeks longer than usual. Every tree has put out vigorous new growth as regards branches, and the crepe myrtles all have great piles of old bark shredding off their trunks, like snakes shedding their old skins for the new one underneath.

Our neighborhood was scheduled for the bulk-trash pickup during this week just past. We’re still waiting for the huge trucks with the mechanical claw that reaches down to scoop up the great piles of rotting fence palings and landscape timbers, building waste and cut tree branches. On Monday when I went out for a run with the dogs, I saw no less than three tree-trimming services at work on various streets – and an equal number of battered pickup trucks driving very slowly down the blocks, pausing to look at those piles featuring other items – mostly busted furniture.

I think my neighborhood is moving slightly upwards on the socio-economic scale. The people moving in lately have taken to throwing away a better class of stuff. Last bulk-trash pickup week, Blondie and I scored a sturdy wooden chaise-lounge very neatly constructed of two-by-fours, which gravitated to our back yard once I made an oilcloth covered mattress for it. Until it became too hot, it was pure bliss to lay out on it in the afternoon, with a cool breeze stirring the branches overhead and the scent of sweet-olive, almond verbena and jasmine teasing the olfactory senses. When Blondie bought a long extension cord so she could take her laptop out there too, blogging nirvana was achieved.

Gleanings this year were not so rich, but also garden oriented; the junkers with pickups may have beaten me to the good stuff, unlikely as that seems. I did score one very heavy terracotta garden urn in perfect shape (no cracks or damage) and a pair of shiny metal spheres the size of softballs that were the bodies for a pair of a wire-form garden ornament flamingoes. The wire had gone to rust, so I popped out the spheres, and took them home.

They’ll make very satisfactory gazing spheres – and better yet, gave me the chance to walk in the house and say to my daughter,

“So, you wanna polish a pair of big steel balls?”

Southernisms

15. June 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Local, The Funny, World

(Another one of those amusing e-mailed lists, posted at the Far East Network Yahoo Group chatroom)

1.) Only a true Southerner knows the difference between a hissie fit and a conniption, and that you don’t “HAVE” them, — you “PITCH” them.

2.) Only a true Southerner knows how many fish, collard greens, turnip greens, peas, beans, etc. make up “a mess.”

3.) Only a true Southerner can show or point out to you the general direction of “yonder.”

4.) Only a true Southerner knows exactly how long “directly” is – as in: “Going to town, be back directly.”

5.) All true Southerners, even babies, know that “Gimme some sugar” is not a request for the white, granular sweet substance that sits in a pretty little bowl on the middle of the table.

6.) All true Southerners know exactly when “by and by” is. They might not use the term, but they know the concept well.

7.) Only a true Southerner knows instinctively that the best gesture of solace for a neighbor who’s got trouble is a plate of hot fried chicken and a big bowl of cold potato salad. (If the neighbor’s trouble is a real crisis, they also know to add a large banana puddin’!)

8.) Only true Southerners grow up knowing the difference between “right near” and “a right far piece.” They also know that “just down the road” can be 1 mile or 20.

9.) Only a true Southerner both knows and understands the difference between a redneck, a good ol’ boy, and po’ white trash.

10.) No true Southerner would ever assume that the car with the flashing turn signal is actually going to make a turn.

11.) A true Southerner knows that “fixin'” can be used as a noun, a verb, or an adverb.

12.) Only a true Southerner knows that the term “booger” can be a resident of the nose, a descriptive, as in “that ol’ booger,” a first name or something that jumps out at you in the dark and scares you senseless.

13.) Only true Southerners make friends while standing in lines. We don’t do “queues”, we do “lines,” and when we’re “in line,” we talk to everybody!

14.) Put 100 true Southerners in a room and half of them will discover they’re related, even if only by marriage.

15.) True Southerners never refer to one person as “y’all.”

16.) True Southerners know grits come from corn and how to eat them.

17.) Every true Southerner knows tomatoes with eggs, bacon, grits, and coffee are perfectly wonderful; that redeye gravy is also a breakfast food; and that fried green tomatoes are not a breakfast food.

18.) When you hear someone say, “Well, I caught myself lookin’ .. ,” you know you are in the presence of a genuine Southerner!

19.) Only true Southerners say “sweet tea” and “sweet milk.” Sweet tea indicates the need for sugar and lots of it – we do not like our tea unsweetened. “Sweet milk” means you don’t want buttermilk.

20.) And a true Southerner knows you don’t scream obscenities at little old ladies who drive 30 MPH on the freeway. You just say, “Bless her heart” and go your own way.

Words to Remember

12. June 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, sarcasm, The Funny

….when it comes to the age-old battle of the sexes:
(gleaned from the FEN Yahoo news-group)

1. Fine: This is the word women use to end an argument when they are right and you need to shut up.

2. Five Minutes: If she is getting dressed, this means a half an hour. Five minutes is only five minutes if you have just been given five more minutes to watch the game before helping around the house.

3. Nothing: This is the calm before the storm. This means something, and you should be on your toes. Arguments that begin with nothing usually end in fine.

4. Go Ahead: This is a dare, not permission. Don’t Do It!

5. Loud Sigh: This is actually not a word, but is a non-verbal statement often misunderstood by men. A loud sigh means she thinks you are an idiot and wonders why she is wasting her time standing here and arguing with you about nothing. (Refer back to #3 for the meaning of nothing.)

6. That’s Okay: This is one of the most dangerous statements a women can make to a man. That’s okay means she wants to think long and hard before deciding how and when you will pay for your mistake.

7. Thanks: A woman is thanking you, do not question, or Faint. Just say you’re welcome.

8. Whatever: Is a women’s way of saying F@!K YOU!

9. Don’t worry about it, I got it: Another dangerous statement, meaning this is something that a woman has told a man to do several times, but is now doing it herself. This will later result in a man asking “What’s wrong?” For the woman’s response refer to #3.

(Post any additional loaded words or phrases in coments)

Absolutely the Very Last Word

09. June 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, General Nonsense, sarcasm, Stupidity, That's Entertainment!

On Paris Hilton. Really. I promise. I also promise you won’t stop laughing.

Art Appreciation

09. June 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, General Nonsense, World

This has nothing much to do with the topic at hand, but I would like a t-shirt that says “As a matter of fact I am not a $#@!ing tourist, I live here!”… but Blondie says that would be rather too hostile. And what brought that on? Oh, just the experience of going downtown late yesterday morning, intending to partake in the multicultural delights of the Texas Folklife Festival, which we had heard was starting on Friday.

Which it was… but not until Friday afternoon at 5:00 PM. So we decided to prowl the little art galleries and shops in La Villita, instead. It’s a collection of very old houses, nearly the oldest in San Antonio, most of which were restored over the last thirty or forty years or so; electricity and plumbing being added to them with considerable difficulty. A good few have very low doorways, and very thick walls, and once were heated (if at all) with tiny fireplaces. The neighborhood is adjacent to the River Walk, and the Alamo… even if the shops and galleries offer merchandise that is a couple of cuts above the usual tourist tat, it remains that nearly everyone wandering through is in fact most usually…from out of town.

And since it was Friday, and there weren’t too many people wandering around, most of the vendors were a little bored and very friendly, well disposed to be helpful; really this part of the world is a very friendly place. If you are antisocial, you’d have to beat them off with a stick, but about the first thing anyone asked was “So, where are you folks from?” I just got tired of growling “From here!” by the fourth or fifth time; hence, the wish for the tee-shirt.

Blondie bought a silver and garnet ring from a small jewelry and art gallery, and admired a bronze cat statuette, one of an issue of fifty, by an artist who lives in Kerrville; she might very well go back and buy it next month. I fell in love with some paintings by another local artist, who does lovely impressionalist Texas landscapes: great sweeps of meadow, or gently rolling hills… but above them the even bigger clouds, piling up in a clear blue sky. It looked like what I saw out of the car windows on last week’s road-trip, so there was no surprise when the gallery manager said the artist lives in Victoria and paints the countryside thereabouts. Oh, yeah… when I’m a rich and famous writer, I want a couple of those!

I couldn’t afford anything at all yesterday, so I had to get my amusement out of describing my ideal piece of Texas kitsch art: it’s a big-ass painting of a field of bluebonnets, with some longhorn cows, standing knee-deep in them. In the background is a windmill, and a tumbledown old barn with the Texas lone-star flag painted on the roof, and the clouds in the sky form the silhouette of the Alamo! Maybe even on black velvet, too! I’d have it somewhere where I could see people’s faces when they looked at it, and know that if they looked absolutely horrified, then they did know something about art. Alas, irony was taking a vacation somewhere away from La Villita yesterday; most of the people I described this vision to said that it sounded rather nice… and did I want to commission an artist, since all they had in stock along that line were painting of bluebonnets only.

My parents had a painting that performed the same function for them; separating those who really knew something about painting from those who just thought they did. It was a painting that had been done as part of a TV show set design; we actually spotted it, once, on an old rerun of a Perry Mason mystery, in the studio of an artist who was the corpse du-jour, about twenty years after a friend of my parents had given it to them.

It was an oceanscape, in blues and blue-greens; the moon over the ocean, with a pier on one side and some rocks along the other, only the rocks were sort of cubist and blocky, and the pier was vaguely impressionalist, and the water in between kind of blah; anyway the colors were pretty and matched Mom’s dining room décor at the time and for years afterwards. Mom and Dad used it as sort of a gauge of taste. Anyone who admired it extravagantly got points of manners but none for artistic taste. Anyone who sort of winced and looked away obviously knew it was a piece of dreck as art, but was too well brought up to say so. Mom and Dad rather relished anyone who had the nerve to come right out and ask what in heck it was hanging on the wall for: one very dear friend cemented their high estimation of his artistic taste by finally asking if he could sit on the other side of the dinner table so he wouldn’t have to look at it.

Summer is here, it’s hot and the clouds are piling up. Some day, with luck, I’ll walk into that one gallery and buy one of the landscape cloud paintings.

Slightly Accelerating Waltz

08. June 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Home Front, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Kind of a scrambled week, overall: Saw William off to California after his long visit. T’was ever thus, just as I get accustomed to him being here, he is off again. Blondie started her summer term of classes, and my part-time employer is off and away most days showing properties… so I spent most of this week chained to a hot computer, metaphorically speaking, writing away. I’m well launched into the second book of the “Adelsverein” saga, or “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees”. Four chapters drafted, covering the lead-up to the Civil War, which here in Texas turned out to be more than usually interesting. Especially as not everyone bought enthusiastically into the noble gallantry of the Confederacy. I had a notion to stage a family wedding at the same time as the secession crisis came to a head in Texas, which will allow me to do a sort of “Duchess of Richmond’s Ball on the Eve of Waterloo” set-piece, all swirling crinoline and gallant men being called away to rejoin their militia units, while the women bravely wave their lacy handkerchiefs… oh, yeah. 19th century drama by the cart-load. Margaret Mitchell, eat your heart out!

The anticipation of writing this almost makes up for receiving another regretful rejection letter; this from the agency that wanted to review the first fifty pages of volume one , a detailed synopsis, a copy of my original query letter, a copy of their reply, etc…(and I think they wanted a small sample of belly-button lint. That would have been in the very small print at the bottom.). Their letter thanks me for sharing, and says that the story just doesn’t send them into the transports of excitement and enthusiasm that are necessary for them to take it on, blah-blah-blah, wishing me luck with another agent blah-blah-blah. I have enough of these letters in the last year to see the pattern forming; it’s one of the polite ways to say ‘no, thanks and while your book may or may not suck the paint off a Buick fender there’s a hundred like it on my desk every day and I can only pick one by some whimsical and mysterious process of personal taste and cross my fingers that you don’t get a deal somewhere else and I’ll look like a chump for having given a pass on a best-seller in case you save the damn letter’.

As you can see, I’ve gone lurking among some of the book publishing blogs lately… reconnoitering the territory, so to speak. What is really amusing is that the publishing and lit-agent bloggers insist that while there are piles of dreadful slush for them to wade through, in search of the potential pearls… those pearls do stand out! They gleam with a holy light, and the publishing world is just aching to discover them, and it’s not that hard to do! (Blow loud raspberry here.) I’d put more credence into that… if the so-called pearls thus discovered didn’t actually suck so badly themselves. If that’s the immediately obvious good stuff in the slush pile, the bad stuff must be so bad it’s toxic. Like Love Canal, Chernobyl or Michael Bay movie toxic.

Oh, well, hope still for me, anyway: another agent asked for the whole manuscript of “Adelsverein”. I am assured that the secret is to grab them in the first chapter; what could be more grabbing than a leading character escaping a massacre, I ask you?

In the meantime, while I await word from that agent, and any of the other agencies and publishers I have applied to, I am doing reviews for Blogger News Network… for the exposure (and to score free books and CDs!) and for a local monthly magazine of quite stupendous glossiness: also for the exposure and for what they pay, which is a tidy little sum. Not a fortune, but an amount well worth the time. I have proposed a handful of other article ideas for upcoming issues to the editor. I’ll hear which ones she would like me to pursue for publication towards the end of the month. I seem to be viewed with favor though being totally professional and ego-free as regards editing and rewriting on request. The essay on Hot Wells that I posted this week was the stuff that didn’t make it into the final draft. Blog material is not magazine materiel, but nothing goes to waste, as far as I am concerned. And one of my book reviews is actually now posted on the author’s website, along with a couple of reviews from the major media outlets; something to feel a little flattered about, even if it is for a book that is not yet published in the US.

Stay tuned… I am still taking donations, towards doing “Truckee’s Trail” in the fall, as a POD, and marketing it myself.

The Ghost of South Presa Street

06. June 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, World

On a mild spring day, my daughter and I walk on a narrow trail, trampled out between tall grass and wildflowers grown knee-high, waist-high, shoulder-high. A light breeze ruffles the flowers, around which orbit a fair of butterflies. We are on a quest, looking for the past, and exploring the ruins of the old Hot Wells resort, a sort of architectural sleeping beauty. There is no crystal coffin protecting this place, just a prosaic chain-link fence… but the place exudes quiet enchantment nonetheless. A feeling of serenity wraps around us; nothing threatens us. It is quiet, restful… even soothing.

Hot Wells today lies in a clearing among a grove of trees, across the railroad tracks, between South Presa and the San Antonio River. Someone casually driving by might think the ruins are of a factory, or a mill… but they would be judging by what the neighborhood nearby is now, little knowing that once there was a long elegant promenade, which terminated in a circular carriageway in front of the bathhouse and the hotel, a carriageway ornamented with a planting of flowerbeds, hedges and footpaths on either side. Little is left of that glory now, only the ragged stand of palms and some pomegranate shrubs grown lank and wild, far back in the scrub trees. The central ruins seem to float in a rippling green sea, a wrecked ship of buff-colored brick.

A few ranges of wall go as far as their original three stories. Some walls support a cob-web fragile roof over what had been changing rooms. Everywhere in the crumbling walls there are regularly-spaced openings for windows and doors. Faded flecks of aqua paint still adhere to the otherwise weathered grey wood. Mats of dark green vines shroud some walls, as if trying to pull them down to ground level. Trees of a good size grow up through what were once interiors; a prickly-pear cactus perches on top of a high wall, above a narrow interior courtyard

And yet, if you close your eyes, sit quietly and hold your breath in this place, one can almost hear the sound of ragtime music floating on the air from a nearby bandstand under the trees, or a wind-up Victrola paying in a high-ceiling room behind a deep verandah. Gravel crunches under the narrow tires of tinny little sedans and open touring cars, sweeping up to the front of the sprawling grand hotel, and a train-whistle blows, from the spur where a wealthy magnate has his private parlor car waiting. The past is just barely out of reach here at Hot Wells, the sounds of it just beyond our hearing, in this twenty-first century.
More »

The New Aristocracy

03. June 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Politics, Rant, World

For a people that with a great deal of fanfare and self congratulation threw over a monarch and the accompanying aristocracy over two centuries ago, Americans have displayed an avid interest in the doings of such parties, and a dismaying tendency to genuflect before a patent of nobility and a decorative coat of arms, no matter how dubious. Mark Twain sent up this tendency very aptly, with the Duke and the Dauphin, at a time when fabulously but newly wealthy American families were busy marrying off their spare daughters to impoverished European aristocrats. As a small ‘d’ democrat, and amateur historian who is more often amused by ancestor-worship, I wondered why they would bother: forking over tons of cash for the privilege of being condescended to by the descendents of successful mercenary soldiers, social-climbing whores of both sexes and businessmen whose initial successes were made centuries previous just seemed like a pretty bad trade. But this sort of social game is at least consensual; and the families involved at least got their houses fixed up, or built new ones, and presumably injected a little hybrid vigor into their gene pool. Whatever floats the boat – or the familial pretensions, and it gave good materiel to the likes of Twain, Edith Wharton and Henry James.

The domestic variety of aristo-worship has been around nearly as long in our dear old republic. Or at least since the early days of mass communications, and a voracious and fairly literate readership, many of whom were interested in whatever celebrity tidbits a newspaper editor chose to throw in their direction. No, newspapers in the 19th century were not all the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, or portentous deliberations about this or that great political matter. Quite a lot of the newsprint pages were taken up with pretty much the same fleeting concerns as the newspapers today: horrific crime, dreadful accidents, bad weather, scandalous doings among people who were supposed to have known better, and the doings (scandalous and otherwise) of celebrities. Yes, indeed, Lilly Langtry and Lola Montez, and Sarah Bernhardt (among others) were followed just as avidly by 19th century fandom as Paris Hilton is today, although none of them seem to have been quite as witlessly air-headed, and Lola Montez might have been just as rotten an actress. None of them showed off their whoo-whoo in public anyway, although in private might have been another matter. No, an interest in the doings of silly and aimless celebrities is no more a hazard than an interest in the doings of silly and aimless aristocrats. Such interest meets some kind of human need, sells a great many magazines, and provides amusement to people standing in supermarket checkout lines reading the tab headlines.

I can’t be quite so indifferent and amused by the third sort of American aristocrat, even though one particular clan has a tiresome propensity to overlap with the celebrity class as far as the tabloid covers are concerned. I refer to the Kennedys, of John F. and his ilk, and all their various descendents; they are the most colorful but not the first and least of our political dynasties. Such a family as that of John Adams, the Rooseveldts, the Bushes and Gores and all the rest of them where generation after generation gravitated into elected office or public office have served the nation well – but still, the whole notion of political dynasties in America gives me the heebie-jeebies. It’s one step away from a hereditary aristocracy and a bad precedent, operating on the assumption that a recognizable name constitutes entitlement to political office. This bothered me during the 2000 election; frankly I couldn’t see much to choose between either one of the candidates. But these political families have been around for a while, and on balance they’ve probably done us more good service than otherwise.

In one of Lois McMaster Bujould’s Vorkosigan books one of her characters remarks that an egalitarian has no trouble living in an aristocratic society – as long as they can be one of the aristocrats. It’s coming to me that we have become well-stocked around here lately with supposed egalitarians who nonetheless display an unseemly eagerness to secure themselves a high perch from which to lay down the rules for others. This would-be aristocracy runs the whole gamut from well-paid entertainers and journalists, active and retired politicians, to tenured academics and busybodies of every stripe and variety. They all have certain things in common; their personal lives are secure and comfortable, if not downright lavish – but they spent a lot of time in public venues of late urging the rest of us to eschew certain things which they themselves seem to have no intention of giving up.

These Marie Antoniette ‘Let them eat cake’ moments seem to be happening with more frequency. Cheryl Crow’s TP rationing, John Edwards humongous house, lavish travel arrangements and princely fees to make a speech about poverty, the high cost of Prius cars and other “green” accoutrements, intellectuals falling all over themselves rationalizing so-called national leaders like Hugo Chavez, and pricing the working class out of the labor market with docile work-gangs of illegal immigrants. Oh, it goes on and on, and I wonder sometimes in dark moments if such people are like the old Soviet revolutionaries, who overthrew the czar, and then lived in no less privilege and comfort, all the while giving lip service to the ideals of equality. I wonder if in their innermost hearts our would-be aristos wish to demoralize, impoverish and destroy the bumptious, unruly and independent middle class, the rock of any enduring republic. It is almost as if they would prefer a new and docile serf class, who would vote in easily controlled blocs as long as the bread and circuses kept coming – and never talk back to their betters. Who of course, know what is in their best interests. Lately, every time I hear someone sneer at flyover country, or the middle and working class, their taste and preferences in anything, I hear the ghost of Marie Antoniette, and I wonder anew about our new aristocrats.

Texas Road Trip

30. May 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Local, World

This has been most unusual spring in South Texas… it has not gotten really hot, except for a day or so at a time, before reverting to mild days and cool nights more typical of early spring. And it has rained… a lot. Holy Rubber Waders, Batman, it has rained so much that the wildflowers have lingered and lingered, well past the time when they have usually withered and died back into the grass, which is usually looking pretty crispy by this time as well. But no, as of this week there are still acres of scarlet and dark gold Mexican hat, purple thistles along the roadside, and masses of little yellow daisies. And everything is still green… so lush it looks variously like England (according to William) or North Carolina (according to Blondie.)

William was originally going to go down to Corpus Christi to visit an old friend, but he lost the address, and we couldn’t locate a current telephone number… so I thought it would be at least interesting to go down to the coast anyway. I rather wanted to see the site of Indianola, and the citadel at Goliad. Blondie was on spring break, and I had the day free, so what the hell. And the Lesser Weevil had never seen the ocean… or any body of water much bigger than one of the seasonal creeks at McAllister Park.

It was a beautiful morning, we had a cooler full of water, bottled tea and energy drinks, Weevil had peed her bladder dry, and so we set out early in Blondie’s Montero sport. My idea, the early start, and Weevil at least was enthusiastic. Blondie and William, being late night-owls and late sleepers were somewhat less enthused. My idea, also to take the secondary roads… well, there was no more direct way to get there, anyway. So, two-lane road, sometimes with a median, slow-down to go through towns that sometimes aren’t more than a hiccup of three houses and a post-office… but no traffic light. A stop sign, maybe. A mixture of houses, set back from the road out in the country closer to it in the hamlets, everything from an ornate wedding-cake of a mansion on a hill near Karnes City (it was a multi-million dollar house, on the market for years) all the way down the scale to houses that appeared suspiciously to be double-wide trailers battened onto a concrete slab and tarted up a little, and everything in between, from little craftsman-style bungalows to modern McMansions in two tones of brick

But in between was the countryside, green and rolling and beautiful. The hills go on for quite a way south of San Antonio, gentler but still recognizably rolling, but all of a sudden just south of Goliad and Victoria… the land abruptly becomes as flat as a pancake, and there are no more oak trees, and nothing to block the sight of the horizon in any direction. The clouds skated over in long lines; it all looked as big as Texas is always advertised to be. The road was elevated and many houses were on stilts, for an excellent reason; apparently there’s nothing to stop a storm surge coming in from the Gulf for a good few miles.

There was nothing left of Indianola but a monument and some markers, a scattering of holiday homes and pavilions by the water-edge. We induced Weevil to venture into the water, and watched a loaded barge move up towards Port Lavaca, and that was about it as far as amusements by the seaside went.

We couldn’t even find a place to eat, in Port Lavaca where we could sit outside with the dog, so we settled for a Whataburger in Cuero… That would have made somewhat more of a point to the trip, having something by the coast, but we just kind of planned on stopping wherever our fancy and chance took us. For some cruel reason, thought, there was nothing of the sort on any of the coast roads we took: no quaint smoky BBQ places where you eat off paper plates and clean up with a roll of paper towels, no funky sea-food restaurants complete with mooching seagulls. Blondie will be extremely annoyed if we find out we missed such a place by half a block or something stupid like that.

Now, Quero is a decent little town, with many beautifully kept old houses…it looks at least alive, which is more than can be said for Nixon or Smiley. Nixon looked like a sad, half-shuttered place, and if you sneezed as you drove into Smiley, you missed it entirely.
Karnes City and Goliad were lively enough, and the citadel was most interesting… of all the places where the Texas War for Independence were fought, it’s the one that still appears most like it did in 1836. Frankly, most people are a little disheartened about the Alamo; all that is left of it is the chapel and part of the barracks, but the Citadel la Bahia has a complete circuit of walls and buildings; much easier to visualize how it would have looked when Fannin’s men were marched away.

To me it was worthwhile, though; a chance to see that part of Texas looking more impossibly beautiful than I had ever thought it could be. Now I know why the early settlers were so taken with it, but I warn anyone who will come and hope to see the same, next year at this time: this year was an anomaly… it will not look this good again for about another fifteen years.

The Long Hot Summer of 1860

22. May 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Media Matters Not, Old West, Politics, Technology

The summer of 1860 culminated a decade of increasingly bitter polarization among the citizens of the still-United States over the question of slavery, or as the common polite euphemism had it; “our peculiar institution”. At a period within living memory of older citizens, slavery once appeared as if it were something that would wither away as it became less and less profitable, and more and more disapproved of by practically everyone. But the invention of the cotton gin, to process cotton fiber mechanically made large-scale agricultural production profitable, relighting the fire under a moribund industry. The possibility of permitting the institution of chattel slavery in the newly-acquired territories in the West during the 1840s turned the heat up to a simmer. It came to a full rolling boil after California was admitted as a free state in 1850… but at a cost of stiffening the Fugitive Slave Laws. And as a prominent senator, Jesse Hart Benton lamented subsequently, the matter of slavery popped up everywhere, as ubiquitous as the biblical plague of frogs. Attitudes hardened on both sides, and within a space of a few years advocates for slavery and abolitionists alike had all the encouragement they needed to readily believe the worst of each other.

Texas was not immune to all this, of course. Of the populated western states at the time, Texas was closer in sympathy to the South in the matter of slavery. Most settlers who come from the United States had come from where it had been permitted, and many had brought their human property with them, or felt no particular objection to the institution itself. In point of fact, slaves were never particularly numerous: the largest number held by a single Texas slave-owner on the eve of the Civil War numbered around 300, and this instance was very much a singular exception; most owned far fewer. Only a portion of the state was favorable to the sort of mass-agricultural production that depended upon a slave workforce. In truth while there were few abolitionists, there were many whose enthusiasm for the practice of chattel slavery was particularly restrained especially in those parts of North Texas, which had been settled from northern states and around the Hill Country and San Antonio, similarly settled by Germans and other Europeans.

One of the subtle and tragic side-effects that the hardening of attitudes had on the South was to intensify the “closing-in” of attitudes and culture towards contrary opinions. As disapproval of slavery heightened in the North and in Europe, Southern partisans became increasingly defensive, less inclined to brook any kind of criticism of the south and its institutions, peculiar or otherwise. By degrees the South became inimical to outsiders bearing the contrary ideas that progress is made of. Those who were aware of the simple fact that ideas, money, innovation, and new immigrants were pouring into the Northern states at rates far outstripping those into the South tended to brood resentfully about it, and cling to their traditions ever more tightly. Always touchy about points of honor and insult, some kind of nadir was reached in 1854 on the floor of the US Senate when a Southern Senator, Preston Brooks of South Carolina caned Charles Sumner following a fiercely abolitionist speech by the latter. Senator Brooks was presented with all sorts of fancy canes to commemorate the occasion, while Senator Sumner was months recovering from the brutal beating.

And even more than criticism, Southerners feared a slave insurrection, and any whisper of such met with a hard and brutal reaction. John Brown’s abortive 1859 raid on the Federal armory at Harper’s Ferry sealed the conviction into the minds of Southerners that the abolitionists wished for exactly that.

When mysterious fires razed half of downtown Denton, parts of Waxahatchie, a large chunk of the center of Dallas, and a grocery store in Pilot Point during the hottest summer in local memory, it took no great leap of imagination for anti-abolitionists to place blame for mysterious fires squarely on the usual suspects and their vile plots. Residents were especially jumpy in Dallas, where two Methodist preachers had been publicly flogged and thrown out of town the previous year. The editor of the local Dallas newspaper, one Charles Pryor wrote to the editors of newspapers across the state, (including the editor of the Austin Gazette who was chairman of the state Democratic Party) claiming “It was determined by certain abolitionist preachers, who were expelled from the country last year, to devastate, with fire and assassination, the whole of Northern Texas, and when it was reduced to a helpless condition, a general revolt of slaves, aided by the white men of the North in our midst, was to come off on the day of election in August.”

The panic was on, then, all across Texas: Committees of Public Safety were formed, as so-called abolitionist plotters were sought high, low, and behind every privy and under every bed, and lynched on the slightest suspicion. Conservative estimates place the number of dead, both black and white as at least thirty and possibly up to a hundred, while the newspapers breathlessly poured fuel on the fires… metaphorically speaking, of course… by expounding on the cruel depredations the abolitionists had planned for the helpless citizens of Texas. When the presidential election campaign began in late summer, Southern-rights extremists seamlessly laid the blame for the so-called plot on the nominee and political party favored by the Northern Free-States; Republican Abraham Lincoln. Texas seceded in the wake of his election, the way to the Confederacy smoothed by rumor, panic and editorial pages.

It turns out that the fires were most likely caused by the spontaneous ignition of boxes of new patent phosphorous matches, which had just then gone on the market, and the usually hot summer. But speculation and conspiracy theories are always more attractive than prosaic explanations for unsettling and mysterious events… and were so then as now.

More here on the Texas Troubles

The Writers Life Waltz: Divertimento

10. May 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Somewhat diverted this week by simultaneously beginning the first chapter of the second book about the Texas Germans (see the website, in a couple of days I’ll post the sample chapter there) and by actually having nearly a full week of work with my some-time employer… or as I call him, the worlds’ tallest ADHD child. I’ve now been working for him long enough that I have said this to his face, and he knows himself well enough that he can laugh… mostly because it’s true. I’ve been working a half day, two or three days a week, just doing basic office admin, filing, data entry, doing letters and brochures and reminding him about things like… oh, I dunno, answering telephone queries about properties for sale, and paying the bills regularly. And finding things. Very important, that…being able to find things. My personal tendency is to put things away, and remember where I put them. Therefore, it will tend to appear like the deepest sort of black magic when I can produce them almost before he can finish asking “Where is….??!!!”

His preferred method, BTW, is to just let it accumulate on his desk— notes, bills, reminders, reports, correspondence and all, and when the piles get too deep, scoop it all into a file box, stick it in the corner… and then wonder why he can’t find anything.

Hey, that’s why I get paid the big bucks. But wait, there’s more.

Dave the Computer Genius had installed a very workable little scheduling and data program on the office computers, and showed me how it functioned: it’s called “Time & Chaos” by the way… the nonconformists answer to “Outlook” I think. Up until this week it was just another funny icon on the bosses’ desktop, but last week I commandeered his Palm-Pilot and transferred the client and contact information and sorted them neatly into various categories. Nearly 500 of them… but hey, who’s counting. Data entry… it’s the office workers version of ditch-digging.

Beginning this week, I stood over the boss with a whip… no, not really, but the thought was really tempting… and I showed him how to open the program, and the field where he could enter reminders and notes for himself, link them to his client/contact data base, prioritize them, and check them off as they were done. And to enter appointments… and even to enter new contacts, instead of scribbling them on post-its and bits of scrap paper, or on the backs of envelopes or pieces of junk mail… all of which were prone to being thrown away, lost or misplaced, accidentally stuck to a completely unrelated file, gathered up and dumped into a box, played with by one of the cats, or eaten by the dog… (Yeah, it’s that kind of office. 4 office cats, one office dog.)

So, the boss is as nearly organized as it will ever be possible for him to be, and meanwhile I have been working away in my own little office, cunningly disguised as the south-west corner of my bedroom, sending out query letters about “Adelsverein” to an assortment of agents. There is a website that lists the fairly legitimate, reputable agencies, and I have been methodically working my way through it. I sent out to all the ones who accept email submissions months ago; now I send out about five to seven query letters every week, sometimes with a synopsis or sample chapter attached if requested, and the always-required self-addressed-stamped-envelope. This has taken on the feeling of a necessary chore, like putting out the trash cans. As this blogger sympathetically noted, “Writing it is easy. Selling is the hard part”. Honestly, I put the submissions and the queries out of mind as soon as I send them; somehow it just feels mentally healthier that way.

I do own to being mildly curious about one thing; I send out five or six letters and submissions a week, each with a self-addressed-stamped-envelope. I’ve been doing this since about October of last year, so I would normally expect back about the same quantity to come trickling back… but I never seem to get more than three or four in a week. (Although I did get four of them in one day… bummer!)

So, what is happening to all the others? In this best of all possible worlds, the submission is sitting on someone’s’ desk, or being reviewed by a committee and I might hear back months later. Or, they are peeling off the stamps and using them for their office correspondence?

I have had an email request from one agency for 100 pages, as they were somewhat intrigued by the premise… and just yesterday I opened the usual little return envelope and barely glanced at the letter before throwing it into the reject file… but no! They want to look at the first fifty pages, a detailed chapter outline, a copy of my original submission letter, a cover letter with a current telephone and email, another self-addressed-stamped-envelope… and way down at the bottom in teensy print I think they are requesting a small sample of belly-button lint, also. I’ll send it off, of course (all but the lint, I was joking, people!) and forget about it the minute I drop it in the mail.

So, that’s were it stands this week. Same Stuff, Different Day.

Another One

09. May 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, The Funny

…of those e-mailed lists going the rounds:

Number 10: Life is sexually transmitted.

Number 9: Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

Number 8: Men have two emotions: hungry and horny. f you see him without an erection, make him a sandwich.

Number 7: Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach a person to use the internet and they won’t bother you for weeks.

Number 6: Some people are like a slinky … Not really good for anything, but you still can’t help
but smile when you shove them down the stairs.

Number 5:Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

Number 4: All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

Number 3: Why does a slight tax increase cost you $200.00 and a substantial tax cut saves you 30.00?

Number 2: In the 60s, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take prozac to make it normal.

And the number 1 thought for 2007: We know exactly where one cow with mad-cow-disease is located among the millions and millions of cows in America but we haven’t got a clue as to where thousands of illegal immigrants and terrorists are located. Maybe we should put the Department of Agriculture in charge of immigration.

And finally, this little warning: “Life is like a jar of jalepenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow”.

American Century Mass Cas

01. May 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, World

I can pretty well figure out the source of my interest in 19th century American history; some of it can be blamed on the ï¿½Little House Booksï¿½ of Laura Ingalls Wilder. But the larger portion can be laid squarely at the foot of my motherï¿½s subscription to ï¿½American Heritage Magazineï¿½. Which she still has, but the magazine is a pale, paltry and advertisement-poxed version of what it was when Mom first began subscribingï¿½ shortly after the beginning of the magazine itself. There were only a handful of the very earliest, dawn-of-time-issues which I did not know very, very well. It was a bi-monthly, or quarterly hard-back publication, with no advertisements and articles by serious, well-respected if seemingly obscure historians who managed to be interestingï¿½ without being the least bit sensational. I have the impression that most of them were passionately interested in their topicï¿½ whatever it might be, and wrote with enthusiasm equal to their knowledge of subject. The articles were well-illustrated with contemporary art or historic photographs, or an appealing mix of modern photographs, drawings and artifacts. I couldnï¿½t have imagined a better introduction to the vagaries of our national history.

These articles and essays ranged over three centuries of American history, events and movements, personalities, triumphs and tragedies great and small, obscure or well known, all mixed together, and I pretty well sucked up every word. In hitting up the library shelves over the last couple of months, though, Iï¿½ve been reminded of some events that I first read about, courtesy of American Heritage. These events hit at a most peculiar nexus in our history; just at that point when a certain level of technological development combined with a decided carelessness as to consequences when people were encouraged to move to a part of the country where large numbers of people had not been before. Or in some cases, where too many people happened to gather in a venue where not so many of them could have been accommodated previously. At the same time, communications and travel were made much easier, while the appetite for national news grew ravenous. Did anyone think that ï¿½if it bleeds, it leadsï¿½ was an invention of the present cynical age? Or that breathless coverage of a disaster was something that came along after the invention of radio and television?

Oh, no, my friends. From about 1870, until the beginning of WWI, our nation was rocked pretty regularly by horrific disasters, natural and otherwise. The astonishing thing is that most of them have been forgotten, save by local historians. For every one that is noted in the textbooks and in the memory of popular culture; the Chicago fire, the Johnstown flood, the sinking of the Titanic, there are a half a dozen others.

The Peshtigo fire, for example: a tornado of fire that roared through Wisconsin in 1871 and burned a thriving lumber town on Green Bay. That fire incinerated perhaps 2,000 people. Those who survived took refuge in a river, where they had to keep ducking under water, as the fire burned all around with such intensity that their hair kept catching fire. But that fire happened at the same time as Chicago was burning to the ground, and so a major city in flames grabbed most of the headlines. Twenty-three years later, another huge firestorm swept through another Minnesota lumber-town; Hinckley, where about four hundred saved themselves in a nearby gravel pit and a shallow, muddy lake, while another four hundred suffocated or were burned alive. The heroes of that day were the crews of three trains, who stayed to evacuate residents until their coaches were all but catching fire from the blowtorch flames around them.

Catastrophic weather took a toll in that last bit of the 19th century, accurate forecasting being more of a dream than a reality. On a January day in 1888, the temperatures across a wide swath of the upper Plains abruptly dropped nearly seventy-degrees in a few hours. It was a mild day until early afternoon, until a sudden blizzard swept over Montana, Nebraska, the Dakotas and Kansas. Farmers doing chores were a short way from their homes were suddenly isolated, and children were trapped with their teachers in their tiny schoolhouses. Over two hundred were dead of exposureï¿½ many of them children. One of the heroines of the Schoolhouse Blizzard was a young teacher who supposedly tied her 17 pupils together with clothesline and led them all to safety in a house a bare mile away.

Along the Texas Gulf coast, two hurricanes ten years apart destroyed Indianola, the Queen City of the West. At the turn of the century a third hurricane hit like a pile-driver through Galveston; it is thought at the cost of over 8,000 lives. The city fathers of Galveston rebuilt, raising the level of their barely-sea-level island behind a huge sea-wallï¿½ and the benefits of accurate weather forecasting and storm watches became clearly evident.

The loss of the White Star liner Titanic, colliding with an ice-berg in the mid-Atlantic is one of those things that practically everyone knows aboutï¿½ but barely ten years before, the steamship General Slocum burned within sight of New York harbor. It was an excursion ship, hired for the day by a large Lutheran church on the lower East side, to take the families of its parishioners for an all-day picnic outing on Long Island. The General Slocum burned while the captain tried to run it aground where the fire wouldnï¿½t endanger anyone elseï¿½ while his crew discovered that the fire hoses were rotten, the lifeboats couldnï¿½t be dislodged from their places, or lowered away if they couldï¿½ and the life-vests were filled with rotted cork. Over 1,000 people were lostï¿½ like the Schoolhouse Blizzard disaster, many of them children. Another excursion steamship, the Eastland, was hired in 1915 for the employees of Western Electric Companyï¿½s annual company picnic. The Eastland was an unstable and top-heavy ship, and while taking on passengers at a Chicago dock rolled over to one side in 20 feet of water. Almost 900 of her passengers died within 20 feet of the dockï¿½ but the Eastland has nothing of the enduring grip on the imagination that the Titanic does.

This is only a partial list of these sorts of disasters; Iï¿½ve probably missed at least this many and moreï¿½ but they had an effect, even if the headlines did not last as long. The inquiries into the Slocum and the Eastland disasters resulted on at least as many safety improvements as regards their operations. The train of natural disasters caused by weather likewise resulted in such things as forecasting, and storm tracking being taken more seriously. The loss of whole cities and a good chunk of the countryside to fires became unacceptable, after Chicago and Peshtigo firesï¿½ and especially so after the Hinckley fire. It was all cumulatively too much. People got very tired of opening their paper every few years and reading of some horrendous loss of lifeï¿½ and then finding out that it might have been could have been, and should have been prevented. Just blindly trusting to luck, goodwill among men, and a benevolent nature would no longer cut it, now that disaster news could fly beyond a single town, or a neighborhood and touch people half a world away.

Still, itï¿½s curious, how few people have heard of some of these I have listed. Blondie only knew about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and only because it was her freshman history textbook.

(- note: correction on location of Peshtigo fire noted – thanks!)

Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

25. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Politics, Rant, sarcasm, Science!, World

There are a good few reasons besides sheer contrariness that I am standing off to the side, pointing and snickering at the antics of the “global warming” warming crowd. One of them is that I have been to the “omigod-it-could-be-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it” rodeo before. Several times, actually; when I was in junior high school the panic-du-jour was about overpopulation. Eventually we would all wind up, standing shoulder to shoulder, running out of food and clean water. When I got to high school, it was global cooling; great honking ice sheets were going to advance across the earth, the sun would grow dim and we would all freeze to death. If we didn’t starve, first.

Before and during that was the oldie but goodie of global thermonuclear war; we were all going to be annihilated by the Russkies or a melting power plant. Or die of starvation afterwards. For a while in college we were supposed to be all freaked out by the scourge of “future shock” wherein things changed so fast and so suddenly that our poor little minds just couldn’t cope, and we would… oh, I forget what was supposed to happen to us with “future-shock”. Curl up in the fetal position, suck our thumbs and turn up the electric blanket up to high, I suppose.

So, I am a little resistant to someone jumping up and down and screaming “oooga-booga!” and demanding that I panic along with the rest of the lemmings about the latest panic-du-jour. Deal with it.

See, I know the climate of the world has changed, is changing and will go on changing. There were glaciers over the upper Mid-West, once. In Roman times, it was warm enough in England to grow grapes. Until about the 14th century (give or take) it was warm enough in southern Greenland for subsistence farming. A volcano eruption on the other side of the world resulted in a year without a summer early in the 19th century in the northern hemisphere. So it went. So it goes. How much global warming in the last umpty-ump years-decades-whatever is due to human activity? I don’t know, but I am not going to rush into taking a position on the say-so of the same sort of people who were banging on about global cooling, overpopulation, nuclear annihilation, future-shock or whatever in the days of yore.

Sorry. I’ll make jokes about them, though.

Which brings me down to the one over-hyped panic-du-jour that followed upon all the others listed, the one that commanded tabloid-style headlines all during the mid 1980s. That would be the “ritual-satanic-abuse-of-children-in-daycare-centers” scare. While it is not the same kind of issue, it seems to be meriting some of the same kind of popular press. Standing off to one side and looking on, I keep seeing the same sort of shrieking hysteria, the same light-speed jumping to conclusions, the same degree of absolute conviction, the same kind of ‘piling on’, and the same shouting-down of all the people who said “now just wait a darned minute”.

The global-warming trend might very be as real an issue, as much as the day-care ritual abuse wasn’t, but the degree of shrieking hysteria on display when the issue comes up doesn’t do it any favors. Or win me over as a convert, because I am pretty sure that in ten years, the usual suspects will be banging on about something else.

No Such Thing

24. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, World

…As too many books.

There is however, such a thing as not enough bookshelves.

When Blondie and I PCSed out of Spain over fifteen years ago, the packing crew had a pool going on how many boxes of books they would eventually pack. The grand total topped out at 64 boxes at that point. Since we returned to the land of the Big PX, replete with establishments such as Half-Price Books, the sales tables at Borders, Barnes & Noble, and various library and book-club events, the increase on the 1991 book census has been geometric. At a certain point, accommodating all the books in free-standing bookcases would have reduced the house to a kind of solidly-packed, book-lined burrow, dark and fusty, with barely enough space for a reading light, and a stove.

Beginning bout five years ago, I took the situation in hand, and began buying lengths of shelving and brackets of the ornamental sort— for the ends that showed— and utility brackets for the interior of the shelves which wouldn’t show when properly packed full of books. The first efforts at securing order among the books involved a narrow stretch of wall where the kitchen merged into the dining area, to one side of a large window looking out into the back yard. Three small white-painted shelves advanced up the wall towards the ceiling, for the cookbooks that I used most frequently, and the jar of pencils and notepads best kept close to the telephone. The rag-tag collection of shelves that had served us until then were banished to the garage. Most of them were heavy, ugly dark-wood things that took up a lot of space, bought at the PX because I had an urgent need for storage at the moment, and they were cheap. A couple of weekends later, another set of shelves went up on the other side of the window, for the not-so often used cookbooks, and the gardening and home-improvement porn. I put up a long shelf over the window for the blue-flowering Danish china, and there was that whole end of the house rendered light, and bright, and all the books in order. So, I looked around and said, hmmmm.

The wall opposite the big window was next. This had a double-doorway from the living room into a little room that we used as a TV den, more or less in the center. Four-foot-long shelves went up on either side, all the way to the top of the door… and then five more shelves above those which ran the width of the wall, but shortened to follow the angle of the ceiling. I need a very tall ladder to get to the top three shelves… in fact; the stuff that I never use is all parked up there. Everything was ordered by subject or genre, and a couple of nice vases and knick-knacks interspersed between the books. Last of all, I fitted six shelves on either side of the fireplace, and all but one of the old bookcases were banished to the garage. Now the living room was lined with books on three walls, and all the space between freed up. The three wooden shelves I kept in the house still, were squeezed into the TV den, as they were oak and matched the stereo/media center.

The only place where chaos, clutter and disorganization still reigned was among the oldest collection of books… the paperbacks, banished to a set of tall walnut-veneer bookcases in the hallway, and shelved two ranks deep. I had made a stab at alphabetizing them by author, but locating a particular book was a particularly frustrating crap-shoot. But this last weekend, Blondie had prevailed upon me… since she had a shelf of her own books, overflowing in a most untidy way… to bring order, discipline and installed shelves to that last holdout.

We took ourselves away to Home Depot for brackets and five lengths of 5-inch wide shelving, and ran a series of shelves from the end of the hall to the washer and dryer closet. We’ll need to put in another three shelves, actually, but at least everything is now only single-deep. Heck, I can now find stuff that I didn’t lay eyes on since the last time I unpacked it.

Hey, I knew I had a copy of “That Darn Cat”… Granny Jessie took us to see that movie, and my copy was a tie-in, bought at Vromans for 35 cents! And I do have all of Dorothy Dunnets’ Francis Lymond books… read the first of them when I was sick with the flu in a youth hostel in Lincoln. And there was the episode guide to “Blakes’ 7”, and every damn one of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “Darkover” books. Wow, that’s kind of an embarrassment. So is the R.F. Delafield “The Dreaming Suburb”. Not too many Agatha Christie mysteries, though. They always seemed a little formulaic to me; I preferred Josephine Tey. And one of the most uproarious novels about the Restoration ever written, John Dickson Carr’s “Most Secret”… So what if they are all stacked sideways on the shelf? At least they are not all hiding behind each other! In not a few cases, I despaired of finding a book that I thought I had, and bought another copy. (Half-Price Books buy-back desk, here we come!)
At least now, we can find what we are looking for. And the hallway seems a great deal wider, too.

Anyone Want to Bet

24. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, General Nonsense, Rant

…That in about twenty-five years, Cheryl Crow will star in an advert for toilet paper?
About a third of the audience will laugh, once they are reminded by someone else who Cheryl Crow is. Another third will ask themselves: You mean the old broad isn’t an actress? She was …what? Really? And the remaining third will not care. At all.

So, anyone else besides me getting tired of being lectured by well-heeled celebrities with lavish personal life-styles about how many pieces of TP we ought to use, and chided about leaving the lights on?

This is what we had grandparents for, people. Shut up and go get another $400.00 hair cut, or a dozen Priuses for your entourage. That or build another 20,000 square foot mansion. Just spare us the damned lecture about our carbon footprint.

Tales of a Citizen Militia: Northfield

20. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West

It would seem from the history books that most veterans of the Civil War settled down to something resembling a normal 19th century civilian life without too much trouble. One can only suppose that those who survived the experience without suffering incapacitating physical or emotional trauma were enormously grateful to have done so. Union veterans additionally must have been also glad to have won the war, close-run thing that it appeared to have been at times. Confederate veterans had to be content with merely surviving. Not only did they have to cope with the burden of defeat, but also physical wreckage of much of the South – as well as the wounds afflicted upon experiencing the wreckage of that whole Southern chivalry-gracious plantation life-fire eating whip ten Yankees with one arm tied behind my back- anti-abolitionist mindset. But most Confederate soldiers laid down their arms and picked up the plow, so to speak fairly readily – if with understandable resentment. In any case, the still-unsettled frontier west of the Mississippi-Missouri basin offered enough of an outlet for the restless, the excitement-seekers and those who wanted to start fresh.

The war had been conducted with more than the usual brutality in the mid-west, though, in Bleeding Kansas and even Bloodier Missouri, where the dividing line between murderous vigilante bandit-gangs and well-disciplined mobile partisan units was considerably more blurred than elsewhere and some of those who had participated in warfare on that basis, were even more reluctant to shake hands like gentlemen and go back to a peaceable life when it was all over.

Such were men like the James brothers, Jesse and his older brother Frank, and their friends, Cole and Jim Younger. Jesse and Cole Younger had both ridden with the Confederate partisans led by the notorious William Clarke Quantrill. The Coles and the Youngers were so disinclined to give peace a chance that they hardly waited a year before holding up the Clay County Savings Association in Liberty, Missouri. Over the next decade, they hit banks from Kentucky to Iowa, Kansas and West Virginia, varying the program occasionally with robbing trains. By July of 1876 they appear to have made Missouri too hot to hold them, even though they had sympathy and quiet support among kinfolk and local residents who gave them the benefit of the doubt for having fought for the Confederacy. Casting around for a new and profitable target for robbery which would get them away from Missouri, the James-Younger gang may have taken up the suggestion of one of the gang members: Minnesota. Not only was gang-member Bill Chadwell a native, and presumably familiar with the lay-out – but no one would be expecting such an organized gang, so far off their usual turf. And robbing a bank in Minnesota would have the added piquancy of taking money from the hated Yankees.

In August of 1876, eight members of the gang, Frank and Jesse James, Jim, Cole and Bob Younger, Clell Miller, Bill Chadwell and Charlie Pitts all arrived in Minnesota – by what exact means is not certain. They pretended to be legitimate businessmen, and scouted various locations in southern Minnesota, in groups of two and three. They spent some time shopping for horses and equipment in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and did some gambling, drinking and recreating. Although they gave false names, they wore long linen dusters, to conceal their weaponry, and this had attracted notice. After some weeks of careful consideration, they settled upon robbing the First Commercial Bank in Mankato. On the day of the planned robbery, they noted a large crowd in the vicinity of the bank, and wisely decided on turning their attentions upon their second choice, the First National Bank of Northfield. They split up into two groups, to travel to Northfield, and arrived there on the morning of September 7th, where an alert citizen noticed that two of them had passed through Northfield and cashed a large check at the bank, some ten days earlier.
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Pouring Scorn and Derision on Terrorists

19. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Fun With Islam, General, General Nonsense, sarcasm

I thought we ought to have started stuff like this, ages ago. Here’s one small step on the road to making Binny and Friends a laughingstock.

I thought the line about taking out the Verizon guy was giggle-worthy. Courtesy of Rantburg, one of the finest veins of sarcasm around.

Our Peculiar Local Institution

18. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Rant, World

OK, now I am in the mood to thump the head of a spectacularly ignorant commentor….

“Being able to walk into a supermarket any time day or night, and buy a gun and bullets is obviously too much for the weak-minded American. It’s basic stupidity. Surely, surely the US can no longer deny the fact that their “freedom of protection” is a load of crap. Or must thousands more innocents die?”

Emily, Cape Town, South Africa, comment on Sky News thread, via commentor Dylan Kissane at Tim Blair’s place

Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit, if that doesn’t qualify in my book as purely the stupidest, most ignorant and bigoted statement I have run across in regards to the recent sad events. Of course, I have charted a careful course to avoid some of the deeper and most notorious fever-swamps in the blogosphere. There may be more densely concentrated blocks of ignorance out there, but fortunately I am not moved to hunt them down… stumbling over that little example was enough to get the bile ducts going like Old Faithful.

That and the fact that South Africa, as dear little Emily must be aware, has a hell of a problem with home-invasion robberies, rapes and violent carjackings just puts a nice shiny gloss on the phrase “freedom of protection”. Wasn’t South Africa the place where an inventor had worked up a flamethrower that shot out from either side of the car, scorching the hell out of anyone standing there and menacing the driver or passenger? Why, yes it was. Doesn’t look like it was popular for too long, though. Must have been hell on the poor squee-gee guys, too.

As a matter of fact, you cannot buy guns and bullets from a supermarket, any time day or night… either that, or I have persistently missed seeing that aisle at HEB Grocery, or Smiths or Kroeger. Nope, sweetie… not even in Texas.

You can buy ammunition during the wee hours at Walmart, though… and guns from those Walmart outlets which have a well-stocked sporting goods department, and they are open twenty-four hours a day, but it’s stretching things a bit to call Walmart a supermarket.

Here’s what the Constitution says about our “right of protection”, Emily dear…
“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

Savor the taste of the words “security of a free state” and “Right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed”. So, the part about “well-regulated militia” is a little loose and lumpy… somewhat like Michael Moore, come to think on it. My point is that a lot of common, ordinary Americans think of guns as tools… sort of like a band-saw, or a power drill, the sort of thing that a do-it-yourself enthusiast has around the house.

Because we are still, for a variety of reasons, a do-it-yourself kind of people… kind of prone to take care of stuff ourselves, especially in those places which do not boast 24-7 private security. We’ve been that way for a while… and sometime it gets ugly when it happens, but the odd thing that I keep noticing, is that it happens in the w-a-a-a-a-y biggest ugly way in those places…oh like Darfur, and Somalia, Kosovo and Zimbabwe, where the means of providing Miss Emily’s , “freedom of protection” is a little on the sketchy side. For the foreseeable future though, we are all stuck with the existence of unbalanced losers who want to go out in a blaze of glory and 24-7 news coverage, as well as the distain of people as exquisitely well-informed as Emily from Cape Town. It’s tragic and horrible… but it happens in other places than the US. And when some raving loony, or some hopped-up robber is disuaded by a do-it-yourself good citizen, it’s a couple of lines on the local police blotter… maybe on the local TV newscast for an evening.

I don’t own a gun, myself, and even though I have lived in Texas for a dozen years now, this last weekend was the first time I had seen a lot of people walking around with a surplusage of side arms. Even in the Air Force, our SPS were held down to one major weapon per person, two at max. Most of the antique firearms enthusiasts I saw this last weekend were dressed up in old West costume, and they were having fun plinking away at metal targets. It’s just not my cup of tea…but it amuses me as much as it would probably horrify Emily from Cape Town, to think that my own neighborhood may be as well equipped, weapons-wise as many small European militaries. (Say, San Marino, or Monaco? Do they even have militaries?) It guarantees that violent home invasions and car-hijackings in Texas are refreshingly not as frequent as they might be in those places where everyone has decided that “freedom of protection is a load of crap”.

Memo: L’Affaire Imus, and Other Matters of Passing Interest

13. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Media Matters Not, Rant, sarcasm

To: Various
From: Sgt Mom
Re: The Smell of Hypocrisy in the Morning

1. My mind boggles actually, that someone who was around long enough to have a comedy disc in the AFRTS library (from the late 60s, if memory serves) with a piece called “2,000 Hamburgers to go” was actually trying to sound hip, trendy and with-it four decades later. Mmmm, ‘kay. Well everyone has hobbies. Mine is gardening… mercifully, I have come to that stage in life where I do not have to even pretend to be trendy. Nothing looks more ridiculous than extreme trendiness a couple of decades past its “best if used by” date.

2. It is kind of amusing, watching some of the very people who lined up to be on Imus’ show, line up to throw him under the bus. Please check out the definition of “shock jock”. One of the things they do is… er, shock. Also offend, belittle and berate. Or so I have been told. I’m more a classical music fan, myself. NPR’s “Performance Today” is about as cutting edge as I feel like getting these days.

3. So the ladies of the Rutgers women’s basketball team were shocked, hurt, insulted, etc. by his crude remark about them. They have a perfect right to be shocked, hurt, insulted; ladies should be offended when men say vile, demeaning and misogynist things about them. I hope that they have been kept in blissful ignorance about the lyrics of most rap and hip-hop hits, thought. That sort of language might very well prompt them to curl up in the fetal position with the heating blanket turned all the way up. Oh, but that’s different….

4. Right on schedule, here come the race-hustlers; Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton grown as fat as ticks by playing the race card, carefully inflaming old grievances and playing their version of a protection racket. “Give us what we want, or you’re a racist!”. MLK must be so proud. He’s probably revolving in his grave like a Makita drill.

5. Oh, and as regards ‘Affaire Duque La Cross’ ? If there are any communities in these United States who would instantly recognize such a thing as a lynch mob, virtual or otherwise, I’d expect it would be the academic community… and the African American one. That certain members of it were so quick to join in is only sad proof of the axiom that those to whom injustice has been done are just as quick off the mark in dealing it out to others. And the sainted “judged not by the color of skin but the content of character” MLK had such hopes that it would be otherwise.

6. And our lords of the Mainstream and Legacy Media were right there, with the pitchforks and torches. Thanks, guys… you covered yourself with glory, as usual. Now take a gallon of bleach and the garden hose, go around in back and try and scour some of it off.

Sincerely
Sgt. Mom

YOU KNOW YOU’RE AN AGING DISC JOCKEY WHEN…

05. April 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, General Nonsense, Working In A Salt Mine...

(Courtesy of the FEN news group: One of those nostalgic things going around. I do, in fact, have scars on my fingers from miscalculated cuts, while editing audio tape with a razor blade. Just call me Miss Butterfingers)

– You were first hired by a GM who actually worked in radio before becoming GM.

– Radio stations were no place for kids.

– You excitedly turn the radio up at the sound of “dead air” on the competitor’s station.

– Sales guys wore Old Spice to cover the smell of liquor.

– Engineers could actually fix things without sending them back to the manufacturer.

– You worked for only ONE station, and you could name the guy who owned it.

– Radio stations used to have enough on-air talent to field a softball team every summer.

– You used to smoke in a radio station and nobody cared.

– Engineers always had the worst body odor, not because they worked too hard, but because they just didn’t shower that often.

– You know the difference between good reel-to-reel tape and cheap reel-to-reel tape.

– Religious radio stations were locally owned, run by an old Protestant minister and his wife, never had more than 20 listeners at any given time, and still made money.

– You have a white wax pencil, a razor blade, and a spool of 3M splicing tape in your desk drawer – – just in case.

– You can post a record, run down the hall, go to the bathroom, and be back in 2:50 for the segue.

– You knew exactly where to put the tone on the end of a carted song.

– You only did “make- goods” if the client complained. Otherwise, who cares?

– You can remember the name of the very first “girl” that was hired in your market as a DJ.

– Somebody would say, “You have a face for radio”, and it was still funny.

– Sixty percent of your wardrobe has a station logo on it.

– You always had a screwdriver in the studio so you could take a fouled-up cart apart at a moment’s notice.

– You always had a solution for an LP that ‘skipped’. (usually a paper clip or a dime on the tone-arm, somewhere)

– You would spend hours splicing and editing a parody tape until it was “just right”, but didn’t care how bad that commercial was you recorded.

– You still refer to CDs as “records”. (really old hands refer to them as ET, or electrical transcriptions)
– You played practical jokes on the air without fear of lawsuits.

– You answer your home phone with the station call letters.

– You used to fight with the news guy over air-time. After all, what was more important: your joke, or that tornado warning?

– You knew how to change the ribbon on the Teletype machine, but you hated to do it because “…that’s the news guy’s job.”

– You know at least 2 people in sales that take credit for you keeping your job.

– You have several old air-check cassettes in a cardboard box in your basement that you wouldn’t dream of letting anyone hear anymore, but, you’ll never throw them out or tape over them. Never!

– You can still see scars on your finger when you got cut using a razor blade and cleaned out the cut with head-cleaning alcohol and an extra long cotton swab on a wooden stick.

– You still have dreams of a song running out and not being able to find the control room door. (I have nightmares about the various players not working, or the control board has magically reconfigured itself)

– You’ve ever told a listener “Yeah.I’ll get that right on for you.”

– You have a couple of old transistor radios around the house with corroded batteries inside them.

– People who ride in your car exclaim, “Why is your radio so loud?”

– You remember when promotion men brought new LPs to the station – and you played them the same day.

– You have at least 19 pictures of you with famous people whom you haven’t seen since, and wouldn’t know you today if you bit ’em on the ass.

– You wish you could have been on “Name That Tune” because you would have won a million bucks.

– You even REMEMBER “Name That Tune”.

– You were a half an hour late for an appearance and blamed it on the directions you received from the sales person.

– You’ve run a phone contest and nobody called, so you made up a name and gave the tickets to your cousin.

– You remember when people actually thought radio was important.

AARGH

17. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Home Front

Red Haired Girl competed in the regional Scripps Spelling Bee this week – a victory there would have taken her to Washington for the national competition. She’s a very good speller, but these things tend to be luck-of-the-draw (I never heard of a cruller, or for that matter, a muumuu). She did well until the second from the last (p-e-n-u-l-t-i-m-a-t-e) round when she got the word fuselage. When asked to repeat the word, the pronouncer – consistent with her performance the entire evening – gave it a somewhat British flavor. RHG, who reads a lot but not the things that boys read, spelled it the way it was pronounced that night – fusilage. Another girl was eliminated for spelling angst as ongst, and yet another for spelling chronology as chrinology – in both cases they spelled it as it was pronounced to them.

I have always considered my time in the USAF in the early seventies to be a defining point in my life, and have an on-going fascination with airplanes, so this particular defeat was somewhat crushing. RHG took it in stride though, looking forward to next year. On the way home we went through some words that she might encounter in the future, like empennage.

One of Those Days

05. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, My Head Hurts, Veteran's Affairs

So, this is one of those calls that you don’t want to hear on the answering machine, first thing after coming back after being dragged around the neighborhood by the dogs; a kind-of-upset voice from one’s only and dearly-beloved child saying

“Mom…I’m OK… I was run into by a truck and the car is totaled… I’m at 35 and Theo Malone, can you come and get me?”

There may be crappier ways to start a Monday. Frankly, I can’t think of any of them at the moment. Cpl/Sgt. Blondie is ok, but rather interestingly bruised. She is loaded up on painkillers, and her poor little Mitsubishi is in the SAPD impound lot; the concensus from the investigating officer, the EMT, the tow-truck driver and the FD response unit is that it is indeed, totaled.

It was only a light pick-up truck that hit her, after a very complicated series of events best left to the insurance people to sort out. She had the presence of mind to gather up most valuable items from it— including her textbooks from the trunk (which the tow-truck driver had to pry open for her).

She was waiting far me by the side of the road, with everything from the car loaded into a plastic tub, and a very nice and understanding SAPD patrolman (Yay, SAPD… where gallantry is not yet dead!) waiting with her, who gave me a lecture about having a cellphone of my own, since the accident had set up the most awful slow-down of traffic. I swear, I could have walked that last mile faster.

She is OK for now, but will probably feel like heck in the morning, especially when she starts to thread the maze of claims and adjustments, never mind the bruises. We plan to hold last rites for the Mitsubishi, and bury a portion of it in the garden sometime this week.

In about 500 years, someone doing an archeological dig in my garden is going to go nuts.

News Flash: Military Health Care Sucks

05. March 2007 · Comments Off · Categories: AARRRMY TRAINING SIR!!!, Ain't That America?, Air Force, Air Navy, Media Matters Not, Stupidity, Veteran's Affairs

You would think that the absolute cluelessness of the American Media, and many bloggers I might add, would fail to shock me. You’d be wrong.

Anyone who thinks this is going to do more than cause some hospitals to paint a wall or two, raise your hands.

For almost 23 years I’ve mostly been given Vitamin M (Motrin) and/or Flexoril for just about every ache and pain that I’ve ever had. I’ve been to a physical therapist twice even though I’m supposed to see one every other week…he’s usually so overbooked here he actually says, “When it hurts bad enough, come in, I’ll crack it again.” After 20 years of rather constant “shin splints” they finally figured out I had compressed compartments. The only reason they decided to operate was that they’d become chronic and were “getting ready to blow.”

And most of my crap is just muscles and nerves not doing what they should. I can’t imagine being in need of any real treatment.

The Daily Brief