Who Are You? What Do You Want? Where Are You Going? Whom Do You Serve – And Whom Do You Trust?!
I’m sure you’ve heard it – as boring as the car itself:
“It’s always the same ones… the quiet ones… They sit in the back of the class – never ask any questions… And then the test comes…”
Alternate ending:
“And then they pull out an AK-47, and blow everyone in the school away.” Then we have a Lucerne spinning donuts around Lexus’ and Infinities. But, instead of Led Zeppelin “Cadillac’s theme music”, we have Def Leppard.
Yeah baby – that’ll build some brand excitement. đ
I went to Boyo’s TaeKwonDo class at the Youth Center tonight to watch like I do on most Thursday Nights. Beautiful Wife watches on Tuesday Nights. We all enjoy that…for the most part. Other parents with smaller children often-times let their hellions run wild and they get in the way of the class and are generally disruptive. They’ve been talked to. Other parents have tried to calm the offending kids only to be glared at by the parents. It’s no worse than any other place with kids who can’t or won’t behave with parents who can’t or won’t parent, but yeah, it kinda sucks.
Tonight I noticed that there were a few parents in the snack bar and as I entered the gym I noticed there were no parents watching the class in there. One woman who is in the class and acts as a sort of liaison walked up with a letter on letterhead in her hand. She told me that parents were no longer allowed in the gym to watch the class. That was the solution. I found the Director of the Youth Center and told her that I understood, but I wasn’t happy about her solution. She looked annoyed that anyone would question her GS-ness and informed me that it’s ALWAYS been the policy that parents couldn’t be in the gym while class was going on. Okay, myself and other parents have been watching our kids for over a year in there and no one’s ever said a word before this, I knew I wasn’t going to get anything like a straight answer out of this self-important twit. She cited safety concerns and yadda-yadda and I stopped her and asked, “Why not just ban little kids who aren’t in the class from the gym and solve the problem? There’s like four kids who’s parents won’t discipline them, simply ban them.” She looked horrified. “We couldn’t do that, it wouldn’t be fair if we didn’t do it across the board. Besides the instructors can decide on SOME nights that parents can watch.”
Okay, I was done. When they have an across the board hard policy that isn’t an across the board hard policy…
So because a few parents won’t discipline their brats, none of the parents can watch their kids in class anymore.
Crap like this makes me livid. Everything I’ve learned in 22 years of service about responsibility and culpability is trashed at the Youth Center. These are the people who are watching my boy after school. Don’t hold the responsible parties to a standard, simply punish all the parents and kids who want us there watching. The very last thing I expected from any organization on an Air Force Base.
Personal responsibility has always had a decent stronghold in the military, and it’s eroding at the edges.
Set a standard. Enforce the standard. When did this become hard?
The twist of lime to this story is that I found out today that it wasn’t even the brats in OUR class that caused the action. It was ONE kid in an entirely different class. One parent who wouldn’t control one kid completely ruins things for at least a dozen other parents.
I’ve been off-line since Sunday midnight, when a thunderstorm rolling through fried my Time-Warner provided modem. We have been waiting all day (and growing steadily more discontented with the service provided) awaiting the arrival of a skilled tech, with a replacement modem… who was cheerful, apologetic and competant, when at last he finally arrived.
I had sworn an oath in blood to find another internet and TV service provider, if we were not back on line by 9 PM tonight. Thanks to Orlando, I do not have to deliver on that threat. This time, at least
So, I’m back… did I miss anything?
As might be expected, from this post, I’ve been reading up on Social Security lately. Mostly it’s been focused on SSDI/SSI. But I believe that, in this case, similar rules exist for regular retirement.
Let’s say Joe Citizen gets out of high school, and starts earning wages – perhaps civilian, perhaps military, it really doesn’t matter. All that matters is that he’s earning wages, and paying FICA. Thirty years down the road (at the ripe old age of 48), Joe Citizen stops earning wages… perhaps he becomes a street bum, or perhaps he “retires”, and simply lives off pension and savings – whatever. (I would include going expat, but I believe the US is one of the few nations of the world which goes after its citizens for taxes when they are living, working, and paying their host nation’s taxes, in a foreign country.) What’s important is that Joe Citizen doesn’t pay FICA for twenty years…
As I understand it, when Joe Citizen turns 68, and goes to collect Social Security, it’s as if he had never paid FICA at all. Is this correct?
Trust Fund my ass!
⊠and put up a parking lot. Well, not exactly that, so far. Half of the green belt, in the back of my house is doomed. The first harbinger came months ago, in a notice about a change in zoning, affecting those homeowners who lived within a certain distance of an area where the city was proposing to change the situation to favor the establishment of⊠well, housing. Neither Judy, or I, or any of the other immediate neighbors could fathom what sort of housing was meant; small, free-standing cottages like our own? McMansions, with back bedroom windows that would command an intimate view of our backyards, and cut off our view to the sunset over the trees and grass, and the great marble faced Celtic cross put up at great expense by the congregation of St. Helenaâs, the Catholic parish that owns the green belt behind all of our houses? Or some sort of apartment complex that would house an inordinate number of the rude, crude, low-rent and barely housebroken? Of such horrible possibilities are the stuff of suburban nightmares made. None of us are all that high-rent ourselves, but we do like our peace, and quiet, and a change in the status quo and view of the sunset over the greenbelt is not welcomed.
The presence of the greenbelt is precisely the reason I settled on this house, out of all those properties the realtor showed me, more than a decade ago; it was the smallest of the lot, about the most expensive, but the best-built⊠and that, over the fence at the back of the tiny house and tiny yard was nothing but green and open space. It made the place seem larger, oddly secluded, and very, very quiet. The greenbelt went all the way between the major cross-streets, with St. Helenaâs floating in the middle of it like some great stone ship, the rest of it all empty and windswept. But it has all been nibbled away at the north, with short streets of development coming down to just short of the parish holdings, and now the southern part of it absorbed in one fell swoop; there is a fence across, just below Judyâs house, and everything to the south has been scraped, leveled, graded, terraformed and staked; I suppose to mark the eventual streets and house plots. The machinery of development has been hard at work during every working day for the last month; were I not at work during the day, the noise would drive me to distraction⊠that and the dust.
The dust blows in whenever the wind picks up— a fine, gritty grey coating on the floor and kitchen countertops. If I werenât holding on to those precious weeks of cool evening temperatures, and low electrical bills, I would say the heck with that, close all the windows and run the AC; but the wisteria and the jasmine are blooming, the nights are cool— these are the days that I live for, all during the furnace-blasting heat in summer. I canât possibly give it up. I just bought a formerly-expensive wind-chime (at a chain that provides up-scale goods at dollar-store markdowns) and I love to hear it at night, when the breeze picks up, and smell the jasmine, and hear the birds in the morning.
But the new houses are coming⊠not near to me, but close enough that I will have to see them when I look out at night, close enough to think about encouraging the hedge plants against the back fence to grow tall, and leafy enough that I donât have to see them. The Lesser Weevil has trashed a lot of the back yard, after the December frost got to it first, but Blondie and I put up an electric fence to keep her out of the borders, and the construction company (from those nice people who did the roof last year) came today to pressure-wash the whole place, and tomorrow they will do some small repairs to the siding and trim, and over the next two weeks, Blondie and I and maybe Judy, and some of our friends, will repaint the house exterior. (Peach colored, with white and sage-green trim, for anyone who cares to know about fine details like that.) I have it in mind to Weevil-proof the back yard by fencing off a small part of it just for her, and doing the space that was formerly a patch of lawn in gravel and limestone pavers⊠with maybe a small water-feature in the middleâsomething modest, to trickle a small steam of water into a pool, in the middle of a collection of jewel-toned pottery planters full of herbs and lemon tree-shrubs⊠a private paradise.
Something dog-proof, anyway. It is shaping up to be a long, and hot, and dry summer, so making it xerioscape would be even better.
Do you recall the “rain forest” in Iowa from last year’s pork-laden transportation bill? Well, it seems as though all is not paradise with that project:
Yet despite the high profile of the project and Sen. Grassley’s generous boost, the Environmental Project has not raised a dime in private financial backing, at least none that has been announced publicly. Moreover, the management of the project has been widely criticized for missing numerous deadlines, switching architects in midstream and strong-arming the local government in Coralville over land-use and municipal-financing issues.
Meanwhile, the burn rate has been considerable. According to Department of Energy records, the Environmental Project has drawn down $3,735,558 in federal funds, as well as, according to Environmental Project Director David Oman (a former AT&T executive and one-time Republican gubernatorial candidate who earns a salary of $210,000), the entire $10 million donation by Mr. Townsend.
The growing perception in the state that the project was, if not a boondoggle, then a money pit, led Sen. Grassley to pull the plug on federal funds in November last year, passing legislation that froze further outlays until the Environmental Project raised $50 million in matching funds. If it fails to do so by December 2007, the grant will be withdrawn.
A very interesting article. But one caveat: author Michael Judge claims the funding for Alaska’s “Bridge[s] to Nowhere” has been terminated. It is my understanding that Stevens terminated the specific earmarks, but was able to get the same funding transfered to a general grant for Alaska’s transportation.
I’m currently watching the generally very good History of the Chopper on the Discovery Channel. And they just had this club, of mostly old-timers, from South Dakota. And their standards for membership include, “must have own bike, of at least 650cc, and it must be a chopper.” And looking at the clip of one of their rides, everyone’s bike had an extended fork and ape-hangers.
But is that what defines a chopper? I think not! One of my old detail clients was a very successful Jaguar mechanic in central Orange County. One of the things his success had bought him was a high-6-figure bus-based motorhome, with a custom bike, which resided upon a hydraulic lift in one of the motorhome’s luggage bays. This bike, by dictates of the packaging, if not the owner, had neither extended forks or ape-hangers – it was in the “drag bike” style. But few that saw it would doubt that it is a “chopper”.
But it did have a big cube, Harley-based motor. Is that a requirement? I think not! While a Harley V-Twin is virtually de rigor for today’s “choppers”, lots of customizers in “my day” were doing beautiful bikes based upon Triumphs, Hondas, and others. And no-one doubted that they were “choppers”.
So, just what constitutes a “chopper”?
Our local public radio station (which full disclosure impels me to mention that I am employed by their 24-hour classical sister station on a part-time basis) is advertising a special which airs this weekend on âborder radioâ— that is, a collection of stations located just over the Mexican border which during the 1950ies and 1960ie— joyfully free of FCC restrictions on power restrictions⊠or practically any other kind of restriction— blasted the very latest rock, and the most daring DJ commentary, on stations so high-powered they could be heard all the way into the deep mid-west⊠and probably on peoplesâ fillings, too.
My parents were⊠umm, kind of stodgy about radio entertainment, and Mom kept the radio at home always tuned to the venerable Los Angeles classical station, with the result that I may have been the single â most totally clueless about popular musicâ military broadcaster trainee ever to graduate from DINFOS. I knew about Elvis, and the Beatles, of course— JP played the âWhite Albumâ incessantly, and the Beach Boys were omnipresent in California⊠and I rather liked Simon & Garfunkle, but everything else⊠major unexplored territory there. Except for obscure and weird stuff like⊠umm, classical music. And the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. JP was a fan. I actually won money in tech school, betting on the existence of a band called the âBonzo Dog Doo-Dah Bandâ. (They had a single in the AFRTS library— my winning move, going to the index file and triumphantly producing the card for âI am the Urban Spacemanâ.) Otherwise, popular music, country music, all the rest of it was pretty much new news to me. I could be really open-minded about it all, which turned out to be a good thing, in the long run. DJâs with strong personal inclinations about genre, decade and groups sometimes had a problem when it came to being ecumenical. (Weekend jazz⊠no problem. Midnight AOR.. no problem⊠just give me a couple of bottles of extra-strength Anacin. Afternoon drive-time⊠eh, no problem.)
So I managed to get to that point in my life without ever having heard of Wolfman Jack, the king of the border radio personalities. Raunchy, borderline profane, very funny, the Wolfman was about the most daring DJ in the regular weekly AFRTS package of radio programming for a good long time, which might have seemed even longer to station managers gritting their teeth and crossing their fingers that there might be nothing potentially offensive to the host nation in his show⊠this week, anyway. Master-Sgt. Rob, the first station manager that I worked for, at FEN-Misawa had been around for at least fifteen years before that. MSgt. Rob was one of the old-timers, who had served tours in South-East Asia, a clannish set loosely known as the âThai Mafiaâ⊠so many of them had passed through a tour of duty at Udorn. Thailandâs reputation as a sort of sexual Disneyland dates from that time— although I swear Scoutsâ honor, (fingers crossed here) that military broadcasters contributed very little to that. (Military broadcasters tended to be a little odd. Iâd be willing to take bets that many of them had some degree of Ausburgersâ Syndrome). The Thai government was and is extremely embarrassed about this reputation, and sensitive of slight against national honor. So late one night, MSgt. Rob happened to turn on the radio, and of course, the Wolfman was on, and the first words MSgt. Rob heard was a joke:
âWhatâs brown and lays in the forest?â And the Wolfman answered his own question in that deep baritone that seemed especially made to relay the punch-line of raunchy jokes. âSmokey the Hooker!â
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This makes me nuts because I had a high school history teacher that pounded the Bill of Rights into our thick noggins:
CHICAGO – U.S. citizens are far more knowledgeable about the
cast of “The Simpsons” television show than they are about
their First Amendment Freedoms, a poll shows. The McCormick
Tribune Freedom Museum in Chicago found 28 percent of people
are able to name more than one of the five fundamental free-
doms granted to them by the First Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution. But 52 percent were able to name at least two
members of the cartoon family. More jarring is that 22
percent of those polled can name all five characters —
Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie — but just 1-in-1,000
people surveyed — 0.01 percent — were able to name all
five freedoms.
From Bizarre News.
The First Amendment to the Constitution reads:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Although now that I think about it, if you actually spend time to read blogs you’re either smarter or more political than the average bear anyway so you already knew that.
The advent of spring brings with it the serious start of auction season. I only went to one or two auctions prior to taking up residence in the land of pigs, corn and soy beans, so I canât speak much in the way of what they are like elsewhere. I suspect that because they are, in a way, a passion play that tends to be governed by human nature, they are pretty much the same no matter where you go. Iâm not talking about the artsy fartsy auctions like Christiâs, or the charity type auctions where the only purpose is to provide a social means of funding something or another. I mean the kind of auctions where the auctioneers wear cowboy hats and the bidders are there for blood sport.
Real Wife and I traded a small two-bedroom bungalow for a large Victorian soon after our wedding and upon learning of the upcoming arrival of Red Haired Girl. As a consequence we needed lots of furniture. Keeping with the architecture of the house, we decided to hit the auction circuit and decorate the house with antiques. It seemed to us that if we bought carefully, we could obtain many pieces for prices equivalent to those of new ones, and that appreciation rather than depreciation would be the rule. Certain things needed to be new â Victorians were alien to the concept of a queen bed or comfortable living room furniture. So we bought some new and went auctioning for the rest.
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All of the celebrity culture folks I’ve heard to date have harped upon this “rift” that has developed “between these two former friends.” Well, I think these two media savvy New Yorkers know how to play the “any press is good press” game just as well as they do in Washington or Hollywood.
What do you want to bet that they won’t be kicking back together in a penthouse at One Central Park West in a week’s time, beatin’ back 40 year old Laphroaig, and laughing at the sheeple?
Many on “the right” seem to be considering former Harvard President Larry Summers as some sort of conservative martyr. This is a bit amazing, as he is hardly a “conservative” – more of a left-of-center sort of guy, really. They are lamenting that he is some sort of victim of a Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) “political machine.” The fact of the matter is, if there is a “machine” there, he enabled it.
Some think that Summers simply didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to stand-up to the FAS. I tend to subscribe to the opinion of Ruth R. Wisse1 (herself a Harvard professor):
In my opinion, the truly ghastly aspect of this whole affair is that the accused man actually believed he had committed an offense. Summers apologized not because, like Nikolai Bukharin, he was forced to, but because he was convinced he had done something wrong.
And what was that? “I deeply regret the impact of my comments and apologize for not having weighed them more carefully,” the president wrote in a letter to his faculty:
I have learned a great deal from all that I have heard in the last few days. The many compelling e-mails and calls that I have received have made vivid the very real barriers faced by women in pursuing scientific and other academic careers. They have also powerfully underscored the imperative of providing strong and unequivocal encouragement to girls and young women interested in science. . . . I was wrong to have spoken in a way that has resulted in an unintended signal of discouragement to talented girls and women.
I see no reason to doubt Summers’ sincerity; he usually says what he means and means what he says. Taking him at his word, then, I conclude that he was not sorry for having offended liberal orthodoxy; he was sorry, genuinely so, for having given some sort of offense to women, for sending them “an unintended signal of discouragement.” Having first done our sex the courtesy of treating us as peers, he was now determined to treat us as a victimized species. Henceforth, he would tailor his thoughts to the ability of women to bear the hearing of them.
If Prof. Wisse is to be believed, Larry Summers is hardly the champion of free inquiry that some might make him out to be. James D. Miller thinks Harvard should hire him as President2. I don’t know about Jim, but I think a good model would be John Bolton, who is kicking ass and taking names at the UN. (BTW, with Bush looking rather “soft” now on international affairs, it might be a good time to renominate Bolton as permanent UN ambassador.)
And, for more from Wisse on the Summers ousting, check Coup d’Ecole: Harvard professors oust Larry Summers. Now they must face their students, in Thursday’s Opinion Journal. She seems to think that the student body, who broadly support Summers, will have some sway over the FAS. I’m skeptical. After all, Harvard is so rich, it’s been called “a hedge fund with a medium-sized university attached.”
1. This excerpt from her article “Dear Ellen”; or, Sexual Correctness at Harvard in Commentary, April 2005 (subscribers only), via Steve Burton at Right Reason. If anyone can forward me a copy of the full article, it would be appreciated.)
2. Hat Tip: InstaPundit
Granny Clarke was the mother of my mothersâ dearest friend from the time that JP and I were small children, from that time before Pippy was born, and my parents were living in a tiny rented cottage in the hills part of Beverly Hills⊠a house on a dirt road, with the surrounding area abundant in nothing much else but chaparral, eucalypts and rattlesnakes. Mom and her friend, who was eventually of such closeness that we called her âAuntie Maryâ met when Mom began to attend services at a Lutheran congregation in West Hollywood, rather than endure the long drive to Pasadena and the ancestral congregation at Trinity Lutheran in Pasadena.
Auntie Mary Hammond was a little older than Mom, with four sons, each more strapping than the other, in spite of Auntie Maryâs wistful hopes for one of them to have been a girl. The oldest were teenagers, the youngest slightly younger than JP⊠although Paulie was as large and boisterous as his older brothers and appeared to be more my contemporary. They lived all together with Auntie Mary Hammondsâ mother, Granny Clarke, in a townhouse in West Hollywood, an intriguing house built on a steeply sloping street, up a flight of stairs from the concrete sidewalk, with only a tiny garden at one side, and the constant background noise and bustle of the city all around, not the quiet wilderness of the hills, which JP and I were more used to. But there was one thing we had in common with Paulie and his brothers— an immigrant grandparent with a curious accent and a long career in domestic service in Southern California.
It is a little known curiosity, outside Southern California (and maybe a surprise to even those inside it, in this modern day) that there was once a thriving and very cohesive British ex-pat community there; one that revolved around the twin suns of the old and established wealthy families, and the slightly newer movie business⊠united in their desire for employment as high-class and supremely competent domestic service, or just residence in a place offering considerably nicer weather. They all met on Sundays at Victor McLaughlin Park, where there were British-rules football games, and even cricket matches, all during the 20ies and 30ies. (My maternal and paternal grandfathers may even have met there, twenty years before their son and daughter resolved to marry their respective fortunes together).
All unknowing, my own Grandpa Jim and Auntie Maryâs mother, Granny Clarke, represented the poles of that lonely expat community. Grandpa Jim worked for nearly three decades for a wealthy, well-established Pasadena family of irreproachable respectability⊠and Granny Clark, for reasons that may be forever unknown, sometime in the mid teens or early 20ies of the last century, took it into her head to work for âthose Hollywood peopleâ. According to my mother, who took much more interest in Granny Clarke and held her in considerable reverence, this was an irrevocable career move. In the world of domestic service in Southern California in the late teens or early 20ies, once a domestic had âHollywoodâ people on the professional resume, they were pretty well sunk as far as the other respectable employers were concerned. It is all rather amusing at this 21st century date to discover that the Old Money Pasadena/Montebello People looked down on the New Money Los Angeles People, who all in turn and in unison looked down on the very new Hollywood People⊠who had, as legend has it, arrived on a train, looking for nice weather and a place to film those newfangled moving picture thingies without being bothered by an assortment of ⊠well, people that did not have their best economic interests at hand, back on the Other Coast.
So, while Granny Clarke might have been originally advised that she was committing professional suicide by casting her fortunes with âthose Hollywood Peopleâ, it turned out very well in the end, for her, even though she appeared, personally, to have been the very last likely person to take to the waters of the Tinseltown domestic pool with any enthusiasm. She was a being of the old breed, a stern and unbending Calvinist, the sort of Scots Lowlander featured in all sorts of 19th century stories; rigidly honest and a lifelong teetotaler, fearlessly confident in the presence of those who might have assumed themselves to be her social and economic betters, honest to a fault⊠and thrifty to a degree that my mother (no slouch in that department, herself) could only genuflect towards, in awe and wonder. One of the first things that I remember Mom telling me about Granny Clarke was that she would carefully melt and re-mold the half-consumed remnants of jelled salads, pouring the liquid into an even smaller mold, and presenting a neat appearance at a subsequent meal. Neither Mom nor Grannie Jessie ever had felt obliged to dress up leftovers as anything else than what they were, but Granny Clarke was a consummate professional.
Her early employers, so Mom related to me, were so enormously and touchingly grateful not to be abused, cheated and skinned economically, (or betrayed to the tabloids and gossip columnists) that no matter how personally uncomfortably they might have felt in the presence of someone who was the embodiment of sternly Calvinistic disapproval of their personal peccadilloes, Granny Clarke was fully and generously employed by a long sequence of âHollywood peopleâ for the subsequent half-century. Granny Clarke managed to achieve, I think, a certain ideal, of being able to tolerate in the larger arena, while disapproving personally, and being respected and valued in spite of it all. She was painfully honest about household accounts, and ran the kitchen on a shoestring, buying the least expensive cuts⊠and with magical skill, conjuring the most wonderful and richly flavored meals out of them.
She was for a time, employed by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks at the legendary Pickfair mansion, before moving on to her longest stretch of employment, as housekeeper and cook for the dancer and star, Eleanor Powell. According to Mom, she only and regretfully left service with Ms. Powell after the formersâ marriage to Glenn Ford. The impetus was that Granny Clarke collected stamps and so did Mr. Ford, and after the marriage of Mr. Ford and Miss Powell, Granny Clarke no longer had an uncontested pick of the many exotic stamps that came in attached to Miss Powellâs fan mail. She went to work for James Mason, instead. Presumably, he didnât grudge her the stamps from his fan mail.
In retirement, she lived with her daughter and son in law, and their four sons, which is when I knew her. We were all only aware in the vaguest way that she had been the housekeeper to the stars; that all paled besides the wonderful way she cooked, and the way she cosseted us smaller children. I wish I had thought to ask for more stories about Hollywood in her time, for she must have been a rich fund of them. One hot summer day, when we were at their house for dinner, Mom was not feeling very well, and when she confessed this, Granny Clarke said, sympathetically,
âOh, then Iâll fix you some poached eggs in cheese sauce.â
It sounded quite revolting to Mom— I think she may have been pregnant with Pippy— but when Granny Clarke set down a beautifully composed dish of perfectly poached eggs, bathed in a delicately flavored cheese sauce, Mom was able to eat every bite, and keep it down, too. She had never tasted anything quite so delicious, and when she said so, Granny Clarke allowed as how her poached eggs in cheese sauce had been a favorite among certain guests at Pickfair. Those movie moguls and directors and that, she said, all had ulcers and stomach upsets, through being so stressed⊠but they were all, to a man, very fond of her poached eggs and cheese sauce.
I rather think it must have been something rather like this cheese sauce, taken from Jan & Michael Sternsâ âSquare Mealsâ savory cheese sauce:
Melt 2 TBsp butter, adding 3 TBsp four, 1 Tsp salt, a dash of pepper, 1 Tsp prepared mustard and 1 Tsp Worchester sauce, and whisk until smooth. Stir in slowly;
2 Cups milk, and add 1 cup grated American or cheddar cheese. Simmer 5-10 minutes, stirring constantly until sauce is smooth and thick. Makes about 2 cups of sauce, enough to puddle generously around 4 poached eggs— two servings of 2 eggs each. Depends on how much you like cheese sauce, I guess, or how much you like eggs⊠or have toast fingers to dunk in the cheese sauce.
The trick to poached eggs is to break each egg into a small bowl, and to pour it into a pot of boiling water after you have taken a spoon and whisked the water to make a small whirlpool⊠or to use one of those patent egg-poacher saucepan inserts so beloved of outlets like Williams-Sonoma.
To: Ms. Jill Edwards, Ms. Ashley Miller, Student Body Senate, University of Washington
From: Sgt Mom
Re: “The University of Washington’s student senate rejected a memorial for alumnus Gregory “Pappy” Boyington of “Black Sheep Squadron” fame amid concerns a military hero who shot down enemy planes was not the right kind of person to represent the school.â
1. How very, very precious, and I do not mean that in a complimentary way, Ms. Edwards & Ms. Miller. It does not reflect well on the education for which someone is presumably paying a great deal of money, to be so casually dismissive of the qualities of someone who of someone who— along with a great many of his contemporaries— risked his life decades ago in order to make it possible for you to sit in a quiet, well-appointed classroom and pass judgment⊠and a factually misplaced judgment, at that.
2. I really canât, at this distance, make out what you and your peers may have been taught or not taught in your comfortable, academic Eden, but it appears that history, ancient and modern, is most decidedly not on your personal study plan. If more than anything can be learned in a⊠ahem⊠a real history class, not the thinly disguised Marxist polemic so in fashion at certain establishments, it would be the truth of the old adage that âPeace is the dream of the wise, but wars are the history of men.â And by âmenâ of course, I mean humankind as a whole, not the gender in particular. So sic the Womenâs Studies Department on me for not using the approved PC phrase du jour⊠like I give a flying F**k anyway.
3. Since war is lamentably a certain constant, much as we might wish and hope and pray otherwise, warriors are also a constant. Let me break it to you gently, Ms Edwards, Ms Miller, the common experience of a lot of your fellow humans down the ages has been that of being hapless, inoffensive, hardworking and peace-and-quiet loving⊠prey. Yes, my dear, sweet innocent student body senators, they wound up having their peaceful happy little agrarian communities or states smashed and ravaged, burnt and sacked, and themselves and their families murdered, raped and/or enslaved by every robber gang, army or larger, more un-socially aware human organization⊠unless the community, state or kingdom which they happened to find themselves resident in had the ability and the will to prevent this from happening.
4. Yes, my dear innocent students, peace is not the natural happy state of humankind⊠it is a rare and dear-bought commodity, purchased in blood for, and sometimes by the citizens of the state or city in which they lived. The first, and most original obligation owed by the free citizens of ancient Greece and Rome was their duty to defend their polis, their city, their community and their fellows and families with arms, as soldiers, according to their means. This, alas, was a necessary duty, for people who just want to live in peace and quiet, with their families, communities and livelihoods all secure. If you donât believe me on this, just check any of the recent news stories about Darfur. Just because you are not interested in war, does not mean that war is uninterested in you.
5. Of late, in this age of specialization, we have tended to farm the job of military defense of the polis out to those who are truly interested in doing it, and who have a natural skill. There are, and have always been people who do not mind going into danger, and in fact rather enjoy blowing stuff up. They are good at it, for the most part. Warriors, like war, and the poor, are always with us; wishing it werenât so wonât make it all go away. The whole purpose of a military, as I have written before, is to kill those designated as our enemies. Think of our warriors as another blogosphere essayist did, as they are our sheepdogs, protection against the wolves, the wolves that always threaten any community.
6. Yes, I can see why Colonel Gregory âPappyâ Boyington would not exactly be the beau ideal of your pretty little campus: he was crude and rude, an unrepentant killer; a rowdy, undisciplined and brawling menace; a drinker and alleged wife-beater, cheerfully willing to go to China as a mercenary… not exactly anyoneâs notion of a model citizen. He lived fast and recklessly, and was probably the most surprised of all that he lived long enough to die within a breath of old age; No, Ms. Miller, he would not have been your setâs cup of tea at all. Very probably in some vast imaginary late 20th century dictionary, there is a picture of him, next to the entry for âPolitically Incorrect.â
7. And yet⊠there you go; he had a certain set of skills; as a pilot, a leader, and a warrior. For whatever his reasons, he served, in China and in the Pacific. He and his ilk kept the wolf of the moment from the door of the peaceful, the harmless and the inoffensive, in such security that they could begin to think their shelter owed everything to their own honest good will, and not the blood and dedication of those who secured such for them at such cost. For all his faults, and in company with his peers, âPappyâ Boyington might have done more to protect the defenseless than all the college senates and interest groups ever convened.
8. Frankly, I am enjoying a mental image of a statue of Colonel Boyington coming to life and delivering a good old-fashioned and profane Marine Corps ass-chewing. Such might be a truly educational experience to a student body which, lamentably appears to be a collection of sheltered, spoiled, candy-ass yuppy puppies⊠and one which seems to exist in ignorance of the means by which they can continue to be sheltered, spoiled, etc cetera.
Sincerely,
Sgt Mom.
(Link courtesy of The Belmont Club.. BTW, Cpl/Sgt. Blondie points out that most USMC Medal of Honor awards were made postumously)
Uber-socialist Joseph Stalin is famous for saying: âThe death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions, merely a statistic.â Today, the Angry Left proves that any death is of meaning only in that it fulfills their political aspirations. This sad story from WSJ: Best of the Web Today:
Angry Left Death Wish
Posting on the Daily Kos, the Mos Eisley of the Angry Left, a reader called âredliefâ wonders how to feel about Harry Whittington, the victim in Vice President Dick Cheneyâs hunting accident (quoting verbatim):
am I suppose to be praying?
That Whittington dies and Cheney goes to jail for manslaughter or that Mr. Whittington recovers and lives a full and peaceful life?
Oh, thatâs right, were a progessive website.
âHang in there, Whitti, ol man, weâre a prayin for ya!â
A reader of this site, whose name we wonât mention in the interest of avoiding unrest in the readerâs office, writes:
I just had to vent regarding an overheard conversation at my office. The liberals across the cubicle from me were discussing the man Dick Cheney accidentally shot, and were joking about the fact that heâs apparently had a mild heart attack as a result of a pellet that entered his heart area. Laughing about it, one of them said he wished the gentleman would die so it would harm Mr. Cheney politically, to which everyone else laughed.
Normally I roll my eyes and go on with my work when I hear most of their discussions, but this one made my jaw drop. What kind of human beings are these people, that theyâd wish an elderly man would die so that it would somehow boost the Democrats politically (which is an extremely questionable presumption in the first place)?
Such morbid speculation has crept into the mainstream media as well. A writer for Time magazine offered this last night:
Heâs 78. He got hit in the face and body by a spray of tiny pellets. Heâs back in intensive care. Itâs not inconceivable that the vice-president may have accidentally killed someone. Letâs hope it doesnât come to that. I donât know Texas law; and Iâm not a lawyer. But wouldnât this be a case of something like negligent homicide?
This morningâs New York Times picks up the theme:
In Texas, Carlos Valdez, the district attorney in Kleberg County, said a fatality would immediately spur a new report from the local sheriff and, most likely, a grand jury investigation.
Reports of Whittingtonâs death are greatly exaggerated. A physician who reads this column writes:
Calling the pellet-induced arrhythmia a âheart attackâ is a little sensationalist. A âheart attackâ is not an official medical term, and is generally taken as meaning a blockage of a significant cardiac artery and resultant damage to the heart. Calling the pellet-induced heart damage a âheart attackâ is like calling a bruise a âtissue infarction.â The pellet presumably irritated a small area of heart tissue or obstructed a tiny blood vessel.
Caution is in order here: Our reader is not a cardiologist and has not examined Whittington. But the Corpus
Christi Caller-Times–the paper that scooped and humiliated the petulant layabouts of the Washington press corpsâquotes Whittingtonâs doctors and outside experts as saying the prognosis is good:
Barring further complications, the 78-year-old attorney shot by Vice President Dick Cheney is expected to recover after suffering a minor heart attack after a piece of birdshot migrated to his heart, medical specialists said Tuesday.
âItâll be left in there assuming everything goes well,â said Peter Banko, vice president and administrator of Christus Spohn Hospital Memorial. âHe could probably live the rest of his life with that in there.â . .
.Dr. Pat Whitlow, director of interventional cardiology at The Cleveland Clinic Heart Center, said Whittington shouldnât face any problems living with the small BB.
âIâve seen patients before that come in for other reasons, and we see birdshot that is still lodged in the vicinity of their heart, and theyâve never had a problem with it,â Whitlow said.
Whitlow said birdshot in the pericardium, or the lining sack around the heart, would cause an irregular heartbeat.
âThat has caused an inflammatory response that is associated with irregular heartbeats,â Whitlow said. â(Irregular heartbeats) are a nuisance but are not life-threatening.â
It sounds, then, as though Whittington has a good heartâwhich is more than one can say for many in the press and the Angry Left.
Update: Developments today lead me to believe that this might just be another Rovian Mousetrap.
By this time tomorrow, I suspect we might see public opinion taking what the chattering classes might consider an “ugly” turn. Time will tell.
Ghosts of the personals columns:
A few years ago, I was doing the internet personals gig, And one of the sites I got on to was something of a California phenom, Hot or Not – something of a photo rating site combined with cyber-introduction service.
And it has much to be said for it: It’s quite inexpensive, for paid subscribers; it’s user moderated, and quite modest on what pics or text are allowed; and, truth be told, despite its rather crude matching regime, I had more success with it than any of the other internet dating sites I was involved with. (While we were only talking two or three months here. So the sample size is pretty small.).
Anyway, I never took my pic/profile off the site, and never gave it much thought, until about two/three months ago, when they started an “email your matches” service. And, save for that these people are presumably “in your area,” it is more likely than not that you have NOTHING in common with those whose profile you’ve received.
And for me, that is more likely true than not, as I have little in common with the typical Southern California woman person. Here’s a typical case-in-point:
More »
Amusingly, that lugubrious old talking prune, NPR’s Daniel Shorr was coming out on the side of being all sensitive and being responsible about “using the power of the press” as regards the Matter of the Danish Cartoons. (Doesn’t that sound like a very dull Sherlock Holmes adventure, or the worst name for a war since the “War of Jenkins’ Ear”?) Just like the pet professor of international relations whom my local paper keeps on hand to drivel on about the Moslem world and international relations, and how the US must…must…zzzzz… oh, sorry. Dozed off there for a moment. I do that when reading the gentleman’s editorials, but so do probably most of his students.
Anyway, predictable, dull, predictable… oops, did I say that already? Anyway, both these prize examples of overpaid old media had pretty much the same take… the cartoons were horrible! Vile! Insulting! And the major media had done a Good Thing by not putting them out in front of us proles so we could make up our own mind… which is that they are only a little more tame than a Dick and Jane grade school reader. Poor, innocent and clueless Mr. Shorr also alledged that said cartoons were very difficult to find and view… at which statement I can only shake my head in pity and hope that someone in the NPR studio will either enlighten him about this internet and search engine thingy, or hand him a box of Kleenex to wipe off the senile drool.
And besides, if the Danish Cartoons were the far end in vile insult to Islam in general, then a great many parties are in for a most awful shock. Oh, yes, in accordance with my call to comic arms of several years ago, we have just begun to take the piss, point the finger, and laugh, laugh, laugh.
(The Dutch website would, of course be far more amusing to those who actually can speak Dutch, but some of the entries are in English… and some of them are quite understandible, as well as being not work-safe, in the strict meaning of the word. I really have to admire the mad Photoshop skilz, though. Thanks to Rantburg and Silent Running, and the Instapundit, whose thunderous tread shakes the whole blog-world.)
Hook’s been cranking out episodes of his Jackie O’Shea story. You should check it out.
Updated the link to Jackie O’Shea. Hook’s put the links in order.
…it shortened a horrific American Idol by an hour.
And yes, I’m saying this BEFORE the speech.
Update: Okay, not a bad speech all in all. Beautiful Wife loved Laura looking at him mouthing, “Thanks Babe.”
The weird turn pro, and apparently write a memoir about it, which is all very nice when it sells a LOT of copies, and the writer becomes FAMOUS and sells a mega-jiga-million copies, and everyone remembers that they knew you when⊠maybe. Journalistic fabrication is so last year (Stephen Glass, Janet Cooke, whatsisface at the NYT), the current flave of the moment must be the memoirâŠ. Oneâs own life, but with with improvements.
The fun begins when everyone who knew you when— the people next door, brothers and sisters, employers, co-workers, ex-spouses, friends and former friends score a copy and begin to realize that there is a whole ânother reality reflected there, one with which they were completely unacquainted. So having the Oprah Winfrey/James Frey imbroglio all this week— hell, even Cpl./Sgt. Blondie has heard of it, and she is more of an HGTV fan than anything. The lesson ought to be for memoirists to linger meaningfully in the general vicinity of verifiable facts, either that or wait to write it all when everyone else is dead and canât argue the point with you. If you really canât wait that long, perhaps it would be less embarrassing to just call it fiction, loosely based on your own lifeâŠ. Even if the stuff that really happens is sometimes stranger than you can ever make up.
Then, of course, on the second page of the paper this morning, there is a story about another writer— somewhat less well known since Oprah didn’t personally have to rip him a new one on national television— who wasnât a Native American at all. What is it with wanting to be a Native American, all that mysticism and wilderness wisdom? And Timothy Barris wasnât the first, (Grey Owl, anyone?) only being a porn writer may have been a little less embarrassing than the resume and club membership of this best-selling but unfortunately fraudulent Indian. And Carlos Castenada and Rigoberta Menchu still have passionate defenders willing to deny or discount certain uncomfortable findings.
Really, I feel quite sorry for people who begin with a little fib, a touch of exaggeration and eventually wind up believing it⊠some of them do not take contradiction well, and it is way too late in the game to get a writer and memoirist like Lillian Hellman a little painful cross-examination (But Mary McCarthy tried, anyway.)
Fraudulent memoirists like Frey and Barris may be a passing evil, best selling or not. Grey Owl and Asa Carter, although not as advertised, were possessed of a lovely and sympathetic writing style and may even have done good with their output, in the long run. But Menchu and Hellman, with the deeply politicized aspect to their writings and public personas probably have not. After contemplating how their books inflamed or warped the perceptions of certain public issues, it is a positive relieve to contemplate Ern Malley and Penelope Ashe, two last literary frauds which were done for no more reason than to make a point, and for their perpetrators to have a little fun putting one over; A self-consciously literary magazine called âAngry Penguinsâ is just begging to be sent up, and as for âNaked Came the Strangerâ⊠it was proved in 1969, and for a hundred years before and ever since, that trash with a naked woman on the front cover will sell.
(PS My own memoir is still for sale, with the following corrections noted: Mom says the Toby-dog got stuck on the fence in the morning, not evening… and Pippy says that her rabbits’ name was Bernadette Bunny. Not just Bunny.
Please buy a copy! I had a small fenderbender with the VEV, which broke the front grille and both headlights, and the insurance company probably won’t pay for anything but junking the VEV entirely, so I am having to pay for all the purely cosmetic repairs out of pocket! Thanks!)
Cheshire (pop. 3500) is a sleepy little town in the Berkshires, which doesn’t even have their own website. Now, by orders from on high, their elections are being rocketed into the information age:
Cheshire, Massachusetts is getting a new electronic voting machine much to the chagrin of local leaders. Last week, the Selectmen said that they would not buy a machine, which the state has mandated through the federal Help American Vote Act (HAVA).
The state has decided that it will provide the new machine, and the town will have to use it. The machine will come with programming for state and federal elections, but not local elections. Programming for local elections will cost the town $1,000 each election.
The town has not hesitated in expressing its anger over the action of the state. Selectman Paul F. Astorino said, “We don’t want it!”
The action is part of Secretary of State William F. Galvin’s plan to have the state comply with HAVA. This new machine, and others like it arriving in surrounding small towns, will replace paper ballots and provide better voting access to the handicap.
Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr comments on Cingular’s attempt to patent smilies on cellphones (application number US 2006/0015812 A1):
Abstract A method and system for generating a displayable icon or emoticon form that indicates the mood or emotion of a user of the mobile station. A user of a device, such as a mobile phone, is provided with a dedicated key or shared dedicated key option that the user may select to insert an emoticon onto a display or other medium. The selection of the key or shared dedicated key may result in the insertion of the emoticon, or may also result in the display of a collection of emoticons that the user may then select from using, for example, a key mapping or navigation technique.
I don’t think this patent will happen. the most obvious reason, as I see it, is that there is no clear differentiation here between cellphones and laptops (where they have been used for years). Indeed, technologically, there is very little difference between a contemporary cellphone and a laptop.
Update: Ok, you’ve got to read the comments. I’m sure a lot of people here will find this patent (5,443,036) for a method of exercising a cat particularly “interesting”. đ
… But, in Fullerton, CA, they want every elementary school kid to have an Apple iBook:
The Fullerton, CA public school system is aggressive in its push to educate children in the ways of silicon. The school district is aiming to give laptops to select elementary and middle school kids, and they are developing a curriculum centered around students having access to their laptops. So why are some parents putting up a fuss? The plan requires parents to pony up almost US$1,500 for the privilege, and if you can’t afford it, you don’t get to participate in the program. Participating parents would pay about $500 each year for three years, and their children would receive an Apple iBook G4 laptop and entrance into the special program.
Well, some things have changed since this story was written about three weeks ago: The school district will loan some computers out, if the parents pay a $70/yr. “insurance” fee, and some charities have stepped up to the plate, for the truly needy.
And I realize laptops have become just about as ubiquitous as yellow Pee-Chee folders were in my day. But a $1500 iBook? Leaving aside the matter of the G4 being virtually obsolete, unless I was rolling in dough, I wouldn’t be spending $1500 on junior’s first computer. I repeat we need these.
So, is this Mr. Stein, of the LA Times the designated piñata of the month, for the blogosphere to freely thwack, belittle and otherwise abuse? Now that the joys of flogging âProfessorâ* Ward Churchill are a thing of the past, we have all apparently moved on. I as usual, am late to the all-blog pile on, since the by now the egregious Mr. Stein has been filleted, sliced and diced by sharper minds and more accomplished writers than myself. I just did not receive the Dark Lord Roveâs latest memo, âkay?
*** pouting prettily***
I just must not be on His Darknessesâ primary AIG distribution list. (Quick, can anyone tell me, are we an army of digital brownshirts this month, or just an electronic lynch mob? I hate to be inappropriately outfitted; my jackboots are this very week out being new-soled, but the pitchfork and torch are ready and waitingâŠ. Oh, thanks. Lynch mob it is then⊠right. Thanks for the light. Non-smokers are always short of a light, have you ever noticed?)
Frankly, Mr. Stein is pitiful meat, after the never-ending buffet that was the many-talented Professor Churchill. The only thing to marvel at is that what used to be a reputable newspaper paid him (presumably a lot of money) for these vapid dribblings. I would rather advise everyone to stand well back, point a finger at him and laugh, long and heartily. Please, for the love of heaven, donât stuff his email inbox with any more flaming communications. Weâre just setting ourselves up to listen to him whine, with lip all a tremble, about those horrid hostile hate-mongers, when all he did was innocently mosey down the lane, excercising his rights of free speech, man!
And donât, please donât write a righteously wrathful letter to the Times, threatening to cancel your subscription — even if you are really one of those rapidly diminishing number who actually have a subscription. For the love of all dead fish and bottoms of parrot-cages in the world, something has to serve as wrap and liner! A newspaper is supposed to be representative of the community it serves, after all, and the management just might realize that the whiney, insular yuppie twat demographic is way over- represented in their newsroom/editorial staff, and fire his clueless ass. Thereupon, he would slink off to work for Pacifica Radio, or the sort of extremely judgmental lefty local alternative free paper almost entirely supported by ad revenue from gentlemanâs clubs, alternative lifestyle bars and pathetically awful personals⊠but before he did, we would be treated to Mr. Stein wobbling all over NPR and others as a martyr to free speech. I have a low nausea threshold, and I would far rather keep him where we can point to him and giggle, heartlessly.
After all, he didnât want to advise spitting on military personnel returning from a war zone. Which, I guess, is progress of a sort.
PS: Cpl/Sgt. Blondie finds it awesomely incredible that he knows no military people first hand. It sort of reminds her, says she, of the kids in her 6th grade class in Ogden, UT, the ones who had never, ever been beyond the state line, or even out of the city limits, and were absolutely boggled to discover that she had been born in Japan, and lived in Greece and Spain for most of her life after that. She advises that Mr. Stein get in his car, and drive south for a little bit, to Oceanside, or San Diego. He will meet a lot of military people there, just by hanging around.
* As always, viciously skeptical quote marks
Later: Problem preventing comments from being posted is fixed. Comment away! – Sgt. Mom
So I went to see my Mom in Chicagoland this weekend, driving out Friday Morning and back today. I thought I’d share some of the random flotsam that goes through my brain when I’m running I-80 through the “scenic” Iowa and Illinos farmlands.
Attention Flatbed Drivers. For the love of GOD, please make sure that your load of empy 50 gallon drums are ALL secure before you head out on the hiway. I’m still pulling pieces of upolstery out of my ass. But ya know, thanks for the fact that it was empty, all that bouncing helped me miss it…I think…I’m still unsure of HOW I missed it.
Why is it every package of beef jerkey you can purchase in a truck stop is stale?
I have no idea why so many RVs were on the road. Isn’t it January? Who RVs in January?
Attention Country Radio. Bless the Broken Road by Rascal Flats IS a killer song, but perhaps you should consider toning down how many times an hour your play it.
Attention all drivers on the hiway: 1) PICK. A. SPEED. 2) Slower drivers to the left, faster drivers to the right is NOT the recommended practice. 3) Merge does not mean I need to get the hell out of your way, it means you need to adjust your happy self into the flow of traffic. 4) 18-Wheelers are bigger than we are. That in itself deserves some respect. Considering the taxes that truckers pay compared to us, yes in fact they DO own the road, a couple times over I might add. Give them a freakin’ break. 5) PICK. A. SPEED. Yeah, one and five are the same, some folks need to be told twice.
Iowa rest stops are quite clean and well-kept, good on Iowa.
People in Iowa are very very very friendly to an old fart in an Air Force hoody. People in rural Illinois are also very friendly. This friendliness begins to fade as you get closer to Chicago.
Family members and friends who have lived in Chicagoland all their lives or most of their adult lives have NO idea what the hell is going on in the world other than Bush sucks and all our troops need to come home and lock down our borders.
…only after he loses out on a multi-million dollar deal.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) â Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has sent a letter apologizing for suggesting that Ariel Sharon’s massive stroke was divine punishment for pulling Israel out of the Gaza Strip.
Robertson’s comments drew widespread condemnation from other Christian leaders, President Bush and Israeli officials, who canceled plans to include the American evangelist in the construction of a Christian tourist center in northern Israel.
In a letter dated Wednesday and marked for hand delivery to Sharon’s son Omri, Robertson called the Israeli prime minister a “kind, gracious and gentle man” who was “carrying an almost insurmountable burden of making decisions for his nation.”
“My concern for the future safety of your nation led me to make remarks which I can now view in retrospect as inappropriate and insensitive in light of a national grief experienced because of your father’s illness,” the letter said.
“I ask your forgiveness and the forgiveness of the people of Israel,” Robertson wrote.
Emphasis mine.
I’m not sure what’s worse, the original comments or the fact that he only apologized after taking a hit to the pocketbook. You have to wonder who’s handling his image? Why not just come out and say, “I’m so sorry I lost all that money?”
Perhaps word of the President signing a bill last week that makes it illegal to be annoying without using your real name on the internet caused some of you to go hmmmmmmmmmm, I wonder what jail looks like?
Not to worry. As long as what you’re saying is protected under the First Amendment, you’re okay, but you wouldn’t have known it from all the scurrying and hyperventilating I saw over the weekend.
Luckily some folks wait before they comment on a story.
Via Ravenwood.