Whip it good

26. June 2008 · Comments Off on Whip it good · Categories: General

District of Columbia v. Heller (pdf) is providing moments of hilarity: Dumbass journalist on why rifles are good and handguns bad.

A handgun can be concealed easily, and it can be tossed down a sewer drain without attracting much notice. The barrel can be used to break a snitch’s jaw. (There’s no such thing as “rifle whipping.”)

A butt stroke is part of bayonet drill.

1. You run up to the bad guy while screaming your ass off (presumably so the bad guy will think you are nuts) and carrying your rifle with, “fixed bayonet,” in front of you at a forty-five degree angle (the “on guard” position).

2. When you reach the bad guy, you swing your right foot towards him while simultaneously thrusting the butt of the rifle upward into the bottom of his chin (the goal being to knock his head off).

3. With the rifle now shoulder high (and if the bad guy is still standing), you cross your left leg in front of your right leg while thrusting the butt of the rifle horizontally and forward aiming at the bad guy’s face (this should definitely knock the bad guy down).

4. You now bring your right forward while slashing the bad guy with the bayonet aiming to cut a line from the right side of his throat to his left groin (by now, the bad guy had better be on his back).

5. You now bring your left leg forward while simultaneously thrusting the bayonet into the bad guy’s chest.

It’s a heckuva cardio workout.  I wonder if the folks at my gym would consider a class on Saturday involving bayonet dummies and M16s . . .

Dumbass then publishes a correction revealing he’s tone deaf with respect to his own sense of humor.

Update, 4 p.m. EDT: At the request of several readers, I should clarify that while there’s no such term as “rifle-whipping,” it’s fairly common to use rifle butts as a club. The term of art is the misleadingly pornographic phrase “butt stroking,” the butt in this instance referring to the flat end of a rifle.  It would be far preferable to call this activity “rifle-whipping,” but that term has virtually no currency.

Because ‘whip‘ has absolutely no sexual overtones whatsoever.  Nope, and you’re a perv if you think so.

Calling it ‘art’ is lame: smashing the butt end of a seven pound rifle into a fellow’s jaw and face is a violent act; the goal is to kill the guy.  Done right he’s on the ground with a fucking knife in his gut.  Done slightly wrong he’s got the knife stuck in his ribs. Then the attacker has to wiggle it around to get it out, which makes things really gross.  By this time the guy on the ground is also doing a lot of screaming and bleeding and so forth, which would add a really disturbing tone to the proceedings.

My instructor said it would be easier at that point to discharge a round in his chest.  Which would, yes, free the rifle.  It would also make an incredible mess.

Yes, we all wondered why, if we had a round in the chamber, we were screwing around with a bayonet.  I don’t recall that he had a good answer for that.

Where were we?  Oh yes – Energy Dome!

Also – Whip It!

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Via.

Just What You Have Been Breathlessly Awaiting

26. June 2008 · Comments Off on Just What You Have Been Breathlessly Awaiting · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West, Veteran's Affairs, World

Well, strictly speaking, you will still have to wait for it a couple of months longer – but the epic “Adelsverein Trilogy” will be available on December 10, 2008. All three volumes, covering nearly fifty years of eventful Texas history, starting with a bang at the massacre of American and Texian volunteers at the Presidio la Bahia at Goliad in 1836.

I mean, how suspenseful and exciting is that – something that starts with a hero’s hairsbreadth escape from a mass execution?

The excitement doesn’t stop – there’s a perilous journey to a new world, Comanche Indians at peace and at war, Texas Rangers (Republic of Texas edition), brave men and strong women, true love, tragedy, betrayal, adventure in the wilderness, stolen children, dire revenge, cattle rustling and cattle drives, a couple of wars… and just about every bit of it is based on things that really happened. Oh, and cows. Lots of cows.

I am taking pre-orders, here through my Celia Hayes website (where there are sample chapters! And the cover for Volume 1 – isn’t it gorgeous!) , for anyone who wants to put their dibs on an set of all three autographed volumes, to be put in the mail and delivered to you just before the release date, well in time for Christmas! I know this is a good few months out – but on the other hand, I am offering a discount for all three volumes bought together at once – I ask you, does J.K. Rowling offer a deal like this?

(edited per M. Simon’s suggestion!)

Une voix de l’homme un

26. June 2008 · Comments Off on Une voix de l’homme un · Categories: General

About the Irish no vote to the Lisbon Treaty …

“The fight for Europe is not over, Europe has powerful enemies with deep pockets, as we have seen during the Irish referendum. They come not from Europe, but from the other side of the Atlantic.”

“The role of the American neo-conservatives in the Irish referendum was very important,” he went on, to applause.

That pesky ‘one man, one vote’ thing is really chaffing Monsieur Jouyet, it seems.

Via.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Too Hot to Hold

24. June 2008 · Comments Off on Too Hot to Hold · Categories: General, History, Old West, War, World

It might be a bit overused as an axiom, that civil wars are the bloodiest… or maybe it just seems that way because it seems to be so terribly personal. This is not some outsider, some foreigner, some alien stranger invading our neighborhood, destroying our towns and slaughtering… but our own countrymen, who speak the same language and usually share a culture and background, if not the same blood.

Just so was our own Civil War. To read of the wanton brutality and the wholesale slaughter and destruction, and the enthusiasm and energy which went into the dismemberment of our own country, and to know that many of those who led the fight had been comrades and allies not fifteen years before is to realize what a monumental tragedy it was. No wonder Abraham Lincoln looks about twenty years older, comparing photographs of him taken in 1861 and 1865. He was a melancholy and sensitive man; one wonders how the weight of the responsibility and the events of those years in office did not crush him utterly. The war over which he was able to exercise control was ghastly enough – the war on the fringes, fought by partisans in Kansas and Missouri achieved abysmal depths of senseless brutality.

Kansas had been a particularly hot center of strife even before Southern artillery opened fire on Ft. Sumter. In an attempt to kick the can of ‘free state-slave’ state a little farther down the road, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 left the decision of whether those to states be enrolled as free or slave to those who settled there. And from that moment on, each side of the free-soil/slave-state debate enthusiastically aided and abetted the settling of Kansas with settlers who were adherents of one side or the other. The ‘Border Ruffians’, from slave-permitting Missouri, and the free-soil ‘Jayhawkers’ were already at each others’ throats from 1855 on. The first sack of Lawrence, the caning on the floor of the senate by Preston Brooks of South Carolina of Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, John Brown’s raid on Pottawatomie… the Civil War began to simmer in Kansas. Back east, they needed a while to get up to full speed, when it began to boil in earnest. In Kansas, partisan bands were all ready to ride – and to plunder and exterminate.

The most brutally effective of the pro-Confederate bands in Kansas was led by an Ohio-born former schoolteacher and teamster named William Clark Quantrill. He seems to have had an unsavory reputation even before the war, being associated with a number of unexplained murders and thefts in the Utah territory while working briefly there as a teamster and free-lance gambler. The eventual co-leader of his band, William “Bloody Bill” Anderson had a similar pre-war reputation for horse thievery and murder, and a penchant for scalping his victims. He was reputed to wear a necklace of Yankee scalps into action – and was most probably a psychopath. By 1862, Quantrill and his men were considered outlaws by the Union authorities in Kansas… and Confederate commanders in Texas didn’t have all that much higher an opinion, especially after the Sack of Lawrence. Say what you would about Texas Confederates like General Ben McCullough; he may have been a tough old Texas fighter – of Indians, Mexicans, bandits and whoever else was handy – but he was still a gentleman. Plundering a civilian town, burning it to the ground and executing civilian men and boys wholesale was not Ben McCullough’s cup of tea. Neither was executing soldiers who had surrendered, as Quantrill’s men did after a fight with Union solders at Baxter Springs – but here was Quantrill and his men, looking for a place to rest and recoup, to purchase horses and generally get a break after a hard year of partisan war-fighting in Kansas. They had made Kansas too hot to hold them, and McCullough was perennially short of men to guard the far Texas frontier against reoccurring Indian raids and to round up draft evaders and deserters. To the general commanding the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy forces, Quantrill’s appearance was a gift and McCullough was ordered to make use of him to the fullest.

Although Quantrill and Anderson’s men mostly confined their Texas activities to Grayson and Fannin Counties, they left some bloody fingerprints in the Hill Country, too. Elements of their group were participants in the ‘hangerbande’ or the ‘hanging-band’ – masked vigilantes who terrorized Gillespie and Kendall Counties by summarily lynching known and suspected pro-Unionists. It was often said bitterly after the war that the hangerbande killed more settlers there than the Indians ever did. Early in the spring of 1864, the hanging-band visited the Grape Creek settlement, a loose community of farms a few miles east of Fredericksburg. A man named Peter Burg, the owner of a fine herd of horses, was shot in the back and his horses confiscated. Three other men; William Feller, John Blank and Henry Kirchner were simply taken from their houses, taken as they sat with their families at the supper table. Kirchner’s house was searched and nearly $200 dollars in silver coin taken by Quantrill’s horse-buyer. It was rumored that Blank had recently received a letter from someone in Mexico. Feller lived on a tract of land adjoining Kirchners and both had been involved in a land dispute with pro-Confederate sympathizers. These and other atrocities outraged the Hill Country German settlers – more than that, similar depredations and robberies outraged Ben McCullough and other Texas military commanders. Still, they were fighting on the Confederate side; perhaps they could go and do so where there weren’t any civilians to plunder and murder? McCullough tried to send them to Corpus Christi, to stiffen the coastal defense. No luck with that, although McCullough did his best to be rid of these uncomfortable allies.

Quantrill and Anderson had a falling out, about the time of the Grape Creek murders, and when Anderson indicated to McCullough that he would testify against Quantrill as regards certain heinous crimes, the old Indian fighter hardly wasted time. He called for Quantrill to come to his HQ for a meeting, asked him to put his weapons on the table and informed him that he was under arrest. But as soon as McCullough’s back was turned, Quantrill grabbed his weapons, shouted to his friends that they were all liable to be under arrest and departed at speed and in a cloud of dust, heading north and back to Kansas. One imagines that Ben McCullough was glad to be rid of them one way or another. Certainly they were not pursued with much enthusiasm, although their savage reputation may have had quite a lot to do with that.

Quantrill came to a sticky end, shortly afterwards – in Kentucky, having added Missouri to the list of places which he had made too hot to hold him. Elements of his wartime band lingered on, in the form of the James gang. But they in turn came to a sticky end in Northfield, Minnesota – the last little drop of blood from Bleeding Kansas.

Food for Thought

23. June 2008 · Comments Off on Food for Thought · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Good God, sarcasm, World

(from another of those e-mails going the rounds – this one courtesy of the FEN Yahoo Group)

Regarding Flooding in the Midwest with comparison to New Orleans.

Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?

Where is all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn’t solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and trailers) are?

Why isn’t the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels in Chicago, houston, Dallas etc.?

When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?

Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?

Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen television sets?

When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a “vanilla” Iowa, because that’s the way God wants it?

Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of cannibalism?

Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural people?

How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever again?

Colonel Jack D. Ripper

22. June 2008 · Comments Off on Colonel Jack D. Ripper · Categories: General

So … we’ve got this guy.

He’s a Colonel in the Air Force. He’s the CO of an Air Force base. More than 2,000 hours in the F-15E and F-111D. He’s been The Man at a fighter squadron. Spent a year at the Naval War College. Been on a staff position for Southern Watch, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. And so on.

No one can know the mind of another. However, this is the biography of a man who has his stuff wired together. He’s about the last guy you’d expect to call – on a Sunday, no less – a guy who bosses a middlin’ important peace organization.

And if he’d call, you’d hardly expect him to launch into a Strangelovian Fit.

I tried explaining to him that I have a lifetime of experience listening to people in the military say that we should ramp up Pentagon spending. He was not in a mood to listen.

Instead the Colonel’s voice escalated, similar to his desire to see the military budget take ascendancy over social progress in America. “I can see that you are not one who should be involved in deciding on our nation’s priorities,” he yelled at me. Then he hung up.

Gen. Jack D. Ripper
“Damn peacenik Hippies ….”

Sounds like a bunch of horse apples to me. It’s so pat, so perfect, so exactly what a stereotypical war fighter is in all those cheesy Hollywood films. I suspect …

  • Colonel Suminsby has lost his mind – he’s probably mumbling about bodily essences in his office.
  • Bruce is making shit up.
  • Bruce has been prank called and doesn’t realize it.

That’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

I’ll bet it was a heckuva ride

21. June 2008 · Comments Off on I’ll bet it was a heckuva ride · Categories: General

Like Owen, I didn’t know a snowmobile could do that.

A 31-year-old Grafton man is angry about receiving $1,000 in fines for using his snowmobile like a Jet-Ski, speeding across the flooded Milwaukee River.

No video? Darn it.

A police incident report says Jay A. Seaver acknowledged speeding, saying he had to go about 75 mph to get across the river without sinking.

So he was really moving along.  I looked at Flickr and lo and behold .. pictures!

Channel Hopping

The combination of ‘snow mobile’ ‘open water’ and ‘crash helmet’ is a big hunk of awesome.

Via.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Selfish, Un-Patriotic, or Pursuing a Dream?

20. June 2008 · Comments Off on Selfish, Un-Patriotic, or Pursuing a Dream? · Categories: General

I don’t follow sports, so I hadn’t heard about this until a friend posted about it today on a message board.

Becky Hammon, a WNBA player for the San Antonio Silver Stars, has dreamed all her life of playing basketball in the Olympics. This year, that dream might come true. When the WNBA goes on their summer hiatus, she’ll be trying out for an Olympic spot on a national team, along with 2 other WNBA players.

Thing is, if she’s selected, she won’t be playing playing for the USA. She’ll be playing on the Russian team. Last year, when the USA Team released their list of prospects, Becky’s name wasn’t on it.

She subsequently signed a lucrative contract with club team CSKA Moscow.

Hammon has no ancestral ties to Russia, and under Russian league rules, she was eligible for a Russian passport and to become a naturalized citizen. She received her passport in March. As part of her CSKA contract, her agent Mike Cound says, she agreed to participate in the training camp for Russia’s Olympic team.

According to FIBA rules, “A national team participating in an international competition of FIBA may have only one player who has acquired the legal nationality of that country by naturalization or by any other means.” Hammon says that, barring injury, she has the lone spot all but wrapped up.

Meanwhile, J.R. Holden, a former Bucknell point guard who plays for CSKA Moscow, is expected to play for Russia’s Olympic men’s team.

Hammon has been called unpatriotic by Anne Donovan, who coaches the US team. The article I read didn’t say whether anyone has called J.R. Holden, Deanna Nolan (WNBA – Detroit) and Kelly Miller (WNBA – Phoenix) unpatriotic. If Becky’s unpatriotic, doesn’t it follow that the other 3 are, as well?

One of the folks on the message board said that Hammon was being selfish, that she should just understand that you don’t always get everything you want in life, and suck it up.

I’m curious as to what y’all think. Personally, I wouldn’t give up my citizenship for anything. But I’m ignorant about law – if Hammon is a naturalized Russian citizen, does that mean she surrendered her US citizenship?

Is she a selfish, unpatriotic person who puts her own desires above everything else, or is she a dedicated athlete relentlessly pursuing a childhood dream? Would there be such a fuss if she were playing for any country other than Russia?

Frontier Surgeon

19. June 2008 · Comments Off on Frontier Surgeon · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West

The practice of medicine in these United (and for the period 1861-1865, somewhat disunited) States was for most of the 19th century a pretty hit or miss proposition, both in practice and by training. That many sensible people possessed pretty extensive kits of medicines – the modern equivalents of which are administered as prescriptions or under the care of a licensed medical professional – might tend to indicate that the qualifications required to hang out a shingle and practice medicine were so sketchy as to be well within the grasp of any intelligent and well-read amateur, and that many a citizen was of the opinion that they couldn’t possibly do any worse with a D-I-Y approach. Such was the truly dreadful state of affairs generally when it came to medicine in most places and in all but the last quarter of the 19th century – they may have been better off having a go on their own at that.

Most doctors trained as apprentices to a doctor with a current practice. There were some formal schools of medicine in the United States, but their output did not exactly dazzle with brilliance. Scientific method – eh, what was that? Germ theory? A closed book. Anesthesia – a mystery. Successful surgeons possessed two basic skill sets at this time; speed and a couple of strong assistants to hold the patient down, until he was done cutting and stitching. Most of the truly skilled doctors and surgeons had their training somewhere else – like Europe.

But not in San Antonio, from 1850 on – for there was a doctor-surgeon in practice there, who ventured upon such daring medical remedies as to make him a legend. His patients traveled sometimes hundreds of miles to take advantage of his skill – Doctor Ferdinand Ludwig von Herff, soon to drop the aristocratic ‘von’ from his name, and to practice his considerable medical talents on behalf of anyone in need. For besides being supremely well-trained for the time, and exquisitely skilled – Doctor Herff was an idealist, one of those rare sorts who are prepared to live their lives in accordance with the principals they publicly espouse. He was a relation of John Muesebach’s, and came to Texas in 1847 as part of a circle of young idealists called the “Forty”, who had a plan to establish a utopian commune along the ideas espoused by social critics of the time. (Yes, there were all sorts of interesting and experimental communes sprouting like mushrooms all during the early 19th century, very few of which lasted longer than the 1960s variety)

Like the 1960s variety, most of Ferdinand Herff’s companions in the “Forty” were students of universities at Giessen or Heidelberg, or the industrial school at Darmstadt. Hermann Spiess had already toured through the United States and Texas before returing to Germany with all kinds of ambitious plans. Originally the plan was set up their community in Wisconsin, but when one Count Castell, who was an original member of the Mainzer Adelsverein heard of their intentions, he offered them funding and support if they would establish it Verein land-grant in Texas instead. The offer was accepted and in mid-summer of 1847 the “Forty” arrived in Texas, led by Herff, Spiess and Gustav Schleicher, a trained engineer who would eventually oversee building of the rail system throughout Texas. They had brought along a huge train of baggage, supplies and equipment, including seeds and grapevines, mill machinery, a small cannon, many dogs, one woman – a cook/housekeeper named Julie Herf (no relation), Doctor Herff’s complete collection of surgical impedimenta, and a good few barrels of whiskey. By late fall, they had moved all this (and a herd of cattle) to their town-site, on the north bank of the Llano River near present-day Castell. They set up tents, built a long building to use as a sort of barracks and common-room, planted crops and named their little town Bettina, after a leading star-intellectual of the day… and settled in to live their dream of communal living close to the land; think of it as Ferdinand and Hermann’s Excellent Frontier Adventure.
More »

Meet Jezzy

17. June 2008 · Comments Off on Meet Jezzy · Categories: Critters, Domestic, General

Short for Jezebel. About five inches tall at the shoulder. Eyes: muddy gray, will possibly turn green when mature. Overall color: mixed hues of black, several shades of brown, tan and pale orange. Weight: 2 lbs. Approximate age: 6 weeks. Temperament: carefree, affectionate and playful. Breed: Short haired American domestic feline. (I am guessing about the short-hair, though.)

Yes, after lamenting Meek, the adoring lap-cat with the beautiful celadon-green eyes, Blondie has acquired a kitten – or the kitten has acquired her. It’s kind of hard to tell with these things. There are those people who have “Incredible Sucker for Our Dumb Chums” written across their foreheads in invisible letters? Yes, Blondie is one of them, and the neighbors who originally provided us with Sammy (who with incredible fickleness fell madly, deeply, irrevocably in love with Blondie about three years ago) are another. A couple of weeks ago, they rescued a pair of infant felines from under the bushes at a neighborhood church, and took them both home to their menagerie of eight small and two large dogs and a number of adult cats. They found a home for one, and at a yard sale they were holding this last weekend, cunningly offered to show Blondie the other one.

Which, aside from being as endearing as kittens usually are, totally fearless with dogs, also is the spitting image of Patchie, the cat that I found as a kitten on a building site in Athens, and who accompanied us to Spain, Utah, California and Texas before succumbing at the age of 16 to complications from old age and feline diabetes. No, this was something ordained, although the other cats are probably objecting in no uncertain terms. Here is a kitten, a playful, adventurous infant being added to their staid and mature circle. Seeing that they were all neutered at an early age, and have lived indoors ever since, Jezzie is possibly the very first immature specimen of their kind that they have encountered in the last seven years.

Percival condescends to play with her, but Henry, Morgie and Arthur are all very much offended dignity. She gets a warmer and happier welcome from the dogs, oddly enough. They are both so very much larger – in the Lesser Weevil’s case, about forty times larger – that we must take care that their affections and playful urges do not put Jezzie in danger through accident. She, by the happy chance of being cared for in a household overrun with small dogs, appears to rather like dogs. She will play, pouncing on the end of Spike’s plumy tail, and will curl up between Weevil’s outstretched paws, on the floor of the den while we are watching TV of an evening. And whenever one of us picks her up – her purr-motor kicks into overdrive; all together a most endearing little catling.

Honestly, though – we are maxed out as far as the capacity for pets goes. No more. Really…

“The Greatest Scam In History”

17. June 2008 · Comments Off on “The Greatest Scam In History” · Categories: General

I still read Rachel Lucas. She found this over at Newsbusters:

John Coleman, founder of The Weather Channel:

It is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming; It is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create in [sic] allusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the “research” to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild “scientific” scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda. Now their ridiculous manipulated science has been accepted as fact and become a cornerstone issue for CNN, CBS, NBC, the Democratic Political Party, the Governor of California, school teachers and, in many cases, well informed but very gullible environmental conscientious citizens.

Emphasis from Newsbusters…I think.

I had a long rant here but it turned into a diatribe about how we’ve had the Department of Energy for the past 31 years and how the hell do we not have cheap, efficient, clean energy by now…but it was too depressing. We put a man on the moon less than a decade after President Kennedy set that goal, but three decades after President Carter set up the Department of Energy, things are no better than they were, and in many ways they’re worse.

Tim Russert: RIP

13. June 2008 · Comments Off on Tim Russert: RIP · Categories: General

source

They’re saying it was a heart attack. I don’t watch the Sunday morning news shows, but I liked Tim Russert whenever I saw him. I’m sorry he’s gone.

Thoughts and prayers to his family and co-workers.

Big Brother IS Watching You

13. June 2008 · Comments Off on Big Brother IS Watching You · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Technology

I would have you know that google-maps and mapquest and all those other lately-developed methods of scoping out and locating a specific address is a god-send, especially for someone making a living marketing books, or in some kind out outdoor sales, or even just scratching a living doing temp-jobs here and there. How easy is it now to drive across country and locate the next gas, or rest-stop, with the aid of an add-on or built-in navigation system? How easy is it now to find the place where you have an interview or a sales call the next day, or to locate every independent bookstore in every town in Idaho or Iowa.

It was great when google-maps even added an aerial view version of their maps; you can zoom in and sort out where features are in relation to each other – and when they went even farther and generated a street-level view? Oh, fantastic! As someone with a propensity to get lost going to a place that I had never seen before – well, that would take care of that, wouldn’t it? I am a visual person, I operate by landmarks I would already know what a place looked like, before I even set out! I would recognize it when I got there! Is this technology stuff great, or what? It did occur to me that this would enable a new and higher degree of on-line snooping. How many of you could resist the temptation to check out the ex-boyfriends’ or that former spouses’ address? (“He lives there ?! OMG, Quelle dump! How could I ever have fallen for someone who lives in a tacky place like that?”) We certainly didn’t resist temptation at one of the places that I worked: we whiled away a small portion of the workday showing each other our own houses, discovered that we all lived in small, agreeably well-kept neighborhoods, in tidy bungalows of no particular distinction. None of us, on this showing, would ever have our domiciles featured in House Beautiful or Southern Living.

But I should have gone a couple of houses farther down the street, upon discovering this feature. Because, most jarringly, whoever did the street level photography in my neighborhood inadvertently captured more than just my house, my neighbors houses, and all of our cars.

They captured my daughter and I, with our dogs on leashes, standing in the driveway of mu neighbor Judy’s house; all three of us, perfectly recognizable to ourselves and our closest intimates, if fortunately just blurred enough to make us unrecognizable to a stranger. There we are, the three of us, with the smallest of the dogs clearly visible at my feet, my daughter in her gym things with the other dog half-hidden behind her. I have a sweat-jacket on, my daughter a pair of red sweatpants and a navy blue pullover – and there we stand, talking to our neighbor Judy. We were all mildly freaked to discover this; it was obviously shot months ago, for the lawns are late summer crispy-brown and there are no flowers in bloom, although most of the visible trees are in leaf. The skies are overcast, grayish with light clouds. My daughters’ new car, which she bought last year is parked in our driveway. We have coats on, so it is obviously cool – and most likely a Saturday or a Sunday morning, since those were the only days that we both went out with the dogs.

We find the creepiest part of this to be that our neighborhood is fairly small, although the street we live on does get a fair amount of traffic – and we thought surely we would have noticed someone driving along, filming through the windows. Surely we would have noticed Big Brother watching our street, especially on a Saturday.

(Cross-posted at Blogger News Network)

Discuss Amongst Yourselves…

12. June 2008 · Comments Off on Discuss Amongst Yourselves… · Categories: A Href, General, Politics

…Because I’m really curious to see some thoughts on this.

In Peggy Noonan’s column today (Friday), she compares the Old America and the New America. She’s talking about the election, of course, but I found her thoughts interesting.

… 2008 will also prove in part to be a decisive political contest between the Old America and the New America. Between the thing we were, and the thing we have been becoming for 40 years or so. (I’m not referring here to age. Some young Americans have Old America heads and souls; some old people are all for the New.)

Mr. McCain is the Old America, of course; Mr. Obama the New.

* * *

Roughly, broadly:

In the Old America, love of country was natural. You breathed it in. You either loved it or knew you should.

In the New America, love of country is a decision. It’s one you make after weighing the pros and cons. What you breathe in is skepticism and a heightened appreciation of the global view.

Old America: Tradition is a guide in human affairs. New America: Tradition is a challenge, a barrier, or a lovely antique.

The Old America had big families. You married and had children. Life happened to you. You didn’t decide, it decided. Now it’s all on you. Old America, when life didn’t work out: “Luck of the draw!” New America when life doesn’t work: “I made bad choices!” Old America: “I had faith, and trust.” New America: “You had limited autonomy!”

Old America: “We’ve been here three generations.” New America: “You’re still here?”

Old America: We have to have a government, but that doesn’t mean I have to love it. New America: We have to have a government and I am desperate to love it. Old America: Politics is a duty. New America: Politics is life.

The Old America: Religion is good. The New America: Religion is problematic. The Old: Smoke ’em if you got ’em. The New: I’ll sue.

Mr. McCain is the old world of concepts like “personal honor,” of a manliness that was a style of being, of an attachment to the fact of higher principles.

Mr. Obama is the new world, which is marked in part by doubt as to the excellence of the old. It prizes ambivalence as proof of thoughtfulness, as evidence of a textured seriousness.

Both Old and New America honor sacrifice, but in the Old America it was more essential, more needed for survival both personally (don’t buy today, save for tomorrow) and in larger ways.

The Old and New define sacrifice differently. An Old America opinion: Abjuring a life as a corporate lawyer and choosing instead community organizing, a job that does not pay you in money but will, if you have political ambitions, provide a base and help you win office, is not precisely a sacrifice. Political office will pay you in power and fame, which will be followed in time by money (see Clinton, Bill). This has more to do with timing than sacrifice. In fact, it’s less a sacrifice than a strategy.

A New America answer: He didn’t become a rich lawyer like everyone else—and that was a sacrifice! Old America: Five years in a cage—that’s a sacrifice!

In the Old America, high value was put on education, but character trumped it. That’s how Lincoln got elected: Honest Abe had no formal schooling. In Mr. McCain’s world, a Harvard Ph.D. is a very good thing, but it won’t help you endure five years in Vietnam. It may be a comfort or an inspiration, but it won’t see you through. Only character, and faith, can do that. And they are very Old America.

Old America: candidates for office wear ties. New America: Not if they’re women. Old America: There’s a place for formality, even the Beatles wore jackets!

What do y’all think?

And while you’re at it, what do you think about the classified documents that were found on a British commuter train? (oops)

Adventures in Old Lamps

11. June 2008 · Comments Off on Adventures in Old Lamps · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Technology, World

I can’t remember exactly when I discovered that it was not actually very hard, to re-wire table lamps, and do things like replace plugs and swap out one-way sockets for three-way, so that an ordinary lamp could be transformed into a reading lamp. At a guess, I had watched Dad take stuff apart and put things back together… and well, really, it didn’t seem to be anything very complicated. Stripping half an inch of insulation off the ends of the wires, threading them through the lamp-base and securing the bare wires around the little screws in the socket base – this is not rocket science. It’s about as challenging as replacing a light-bulb.

At some point – about the time that we returned from Europe – I discovered that all the little bits that hold a lamp together and attach a shade are pretty much a standard thread. We’ve bought lamps at the thrift-shop or at yard-sales because they have a pretty base – and it’s very pleasing, how much better they will look, immediately upon installing new hardware and a nicer shade. And never mind the wiring – last month, Blondie bought a pair of inexpensive 1930’s era decorative lamps that you wouldn’t dare plug in. The wiring was that crumbly – I swear it looked like one of those pictures of a dangerous example of faulty wiring in a brochure handed out by the fire department. New hardware, new wiring, new sockets, all the way around; amazing how much nicer they looked, almost at once.

I have a whole basket full of those essential lamp pieces, most of them scrounged from various broken lamps. Never know when you will need an essential bit, you see. Some of my favorite lamps have bit the dust, since I took up the carpets and painted the concrete floors in the house. Two weeks ago, the dogs got rowdy and knocked over a pretty little bedside lamp, a blue and white vase-type that I bought in Greece, and in the same week, Blondie sat back suddenly in the rocking chair, and there went a lamp that I had bought in Korea, a blue and white bowl that I saw in a shop in Itaewon and had converted. Not to fear, though – for we salvaged all the parts, the wooden base and top, and the metal rod that ran up through the middle, the shade and the socket.

Last weekend, Blondie, the Queen of All Yard Sales, spied three lamps for sale in a neighbor’s garage – all blue and white painted china bases, all vaguely Oriental in design, in good shape and all three for a mere pittance. One of them most particularly resembled the Korean bowl, and as it was approximately the same dimensions, I thought I would be able to remove the brass base and top to it, and replace them with the wooden base and fittings from the Korean lamp – and I would have something that came very close in looks to it.

Only the hex-nut that held the whole thing together at the bottom was apparently tightened on at the factory by Godzilla himself. Not even with a crescent-wrench could we get it to budge – and Blondie and I tried separately and together, and with a spritz of liquid wrench, that is supposed to make it easy to unscrew anything.

There was only one thing to do. And that was to take it to Pep Boys. Really, any garage would have done, but Pep-Boys was open on Sunday. Where else do you find the strength and the technology to separate metal bolts from the threads they are apparently frozen onto, than at an auto mechanics?

But the manager did look at me and ask, warily, “This is at your own risk of course. It’s not a priceless Ming vase, is it?”

“Five-dollar yard-sale special,” I said, “Have at it.” It took one of the mechanics about two minutes and all the other mechanics came to look, shaking their heads.

The manager did say afterwards that it was the weirdest request that anyone has ever come to Pep-Boys with. That is my home craft advice for the week – bet you never heard this from Martha Stewart. Also, you can, in some places, take cast-iron pots to a body shop to have the rust sand-blasted off them – and I wish I could remember how I came by these two little bits of wisdom.

The New Broom Sweeping Clean

08. June 2008 · Comments Off on The New Broom Sweeping Clean · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Media Matters Not, Working In A Salt Mine...

Being let go as a part-time announcer from the public radio station where I worked since… umm, how many years ago? Thirteen, I think – maybe fourteen. It was a bit of a shock, being told over the telephone that there would be no need for my services after the 14th, thank you very much. Still a better way to be told than just ordered to lump all of your personal stuff into a cardboard box and being escorted off the premises by a large security man; TPR doesn’t have a security guy at present anyway, even though that might be another one of those things that are changing. As it turns out – it wasn’t just me. It was all the part-timers who worked one or two regular shifts a week; weekends and evenings mostly, and additional if needed because someone else was sick, or going on vacation or had a temporary conflict with their regular work schedule. We were all given the word, by letter, email or phone. Almost without exception, each of us initially assumed that we were the only one being let go.

A little background might be in order: I started work there under a general manager who was the original GM, since the classical station began broadcasting in 1982. Both the classical station, KPAC and the news/information station KSTX operated from the adjacent studios in the same location, shared the same management staff and production facility and even occasionally swapped announcers back and forth. The announcers, full and part-time were an amusingly assorted lot – so were those who produced various pre-recorded programs. Over the last fifteen years there have been a couple of retired Air Force broadcasters besides myself, including one who had been the commander of Air Force Broadcasting. Another producer was a lady was an accomplished poet. There was a retired diplomat who wrote a weekly opera lecture program that I produced, who was the single most cultured human being that I never knew personally – we worked together every Saturday afternoon that the Metropolitan didn’t broadcast an opera for about a decade. Musicians – there is a horn-player for the local symphony, and a teacher who builds exquisite bespoke harpsichords, and a young man who played piano in a restaurant on the Riverwalk.

There was a genial Irishman who was a retired railway executive – his wife owned a white Rolls-Royce. (We have – or had – four Irish people on staff, an amusingly high ratio for South Texas.) There were a couple of actors, both of whom had pretty recognizable names in local theater circles, a freelance video producer, a writer for a small glossy magazine, and a woman who teaches at the local community college and helps run a local animal shelter and the spay and neuter program. Add in an assortment of ‘ladies who lunch’ who did it for amusement and broadcast students who did it for exposure and experience, amateurs and enthusiasts of every stripe – and when I say amateurs, I do not mean it in the pejorative sense. Just about all of us were quite skilled, enormously experienced – having done this sort of thing for years. This wide assortment among the staff conferred upon TPR a considerable degree of connection and inter-connection to the community. I used to joke that you could connect anyone in San Antonio to anyone else in about three degrees, if you routed the connection through TPR.
Unlike the local PBS TV station – which seemed to have a revolving door for their staff, turnover in at TPR was pretty minimal. Hardly anyone was fired or quit – people left because they died, or a spouse relocated out of the area. Otherwise, people stayed for decades. This was SOP until the old general manager retired a couple of years ago. The new GM had ambitious plans to expand the local news mission.

I think the station came into some serious grant money – for the studios were all rehabbed and updated, this last year, with all sorts of jazzy new equipment and computer razzle-dazzle. The old sat-net room was also rehabbed, and turned into a cubicle farm for the news staff. They hired a guy to be news director, and just last week a new full-time announcer, who had an impressive resume from another classical station.

The thing about the new computer technology is that long segments of programming can be pre-arranged to play – the music, the announcements, spots and IDs all. Automated radio, in other words – other stations have done this for years, and the means of doing it has become less and less complicated and easier and easier to facilitate. Some of the more far-sighted of us joked about this possibility over the last couple of months. But the thing about TPR was that we weren’t like other stations – we had real human beings in the studio, after hours and on weekends. Our listeners expected to talk to a real human being – and as I said, many of us had been there for years. Surely management couldn’t seriously be thinking about throwing all that community good-will and staff experience over the side, just to turn TPR into a clone of Sirius radio, or a classy version of Clear Channel …

Alas, they could, and did. I don’t even think we are getting any sort of severance pay, not that we would have expected anything, being that we were part-timers with no benefits at all. I don’t even think we will get a certificate or anything like a letter of referral. New broom, in the hands of new management – we agreed that if this is what TPR is being transformed into – than it is just as well that we have been swept out the door.

(So please, I bleg of you, hit the book link and boost my sales stats for “Truckee” – and next month I will begin taking advance orders for the “Adelsverein Trilogy” – with luck, the royalties will soar well above what I earned at the radio station!)

6 June 44

06. June 2008 · Comments Off on 6 June 44 · Categories: General, History, Military, War, World

So this is one of those historic dates that seems to be slipping faster and faster out of sight, receding into a past at such a rate that we who were born afterwards, or long afterwards, can just barely see. But it was such an enormous, monumental enterprise – so longed looked for, so carefully planned and involved so many soldiers, sailors and airmen – of course the memory would linger long afterwards.

Think of looking down from the air, at that great metal armada, spilling out from every harbor, every estuary along England’s coast. Think of the sound of marching footsteps in a thousand encampments, and the silence left as the men marched away, counted out by squad, company and battalion, think of those great parks of tanks and vehicles, slowly emptying out, loaded into the holds of ships and onto the open decks of LSTs. Think of the roar of a thousand airplane engines, the sound of it rattling the china on the shelf, of white contrails scratching straight furrows across the moonless sky.

Think of the planners and architects of this enormous undertaking, the briefers and the specialists in all sorts of arcane specialties, most of whom would never set foot on Gold, Juno, Sword, Omaha or Utah Beach. Many of those in the know would spend the last few days or hours before D-day in guarded lock-down, to preserve security. Think of them pacing up and down, looking out of windows or at blank walls, wondering if there might be one more thing they might have done, or considered, knowing that lives depended upon every tiny minutiae, hoping that they had accounted for everything possible.

Think of the people in country villages, and port towns, seeing the marching soldiers, the grey ships sliding away from quays and wharves, hearing the airplanes, with their wings boldly striped with black and white paint – and knowing that something was up – But only knowing for a certainty that those men, those ships and those planes were heading towards France, and also knowing just as surely that many of them would not return.

Think of the commanders, of Eisenhower and his subordinates, as the minutes ticked slowly down to H-Hour, considering all that was at stake, all the lives that they were putting into this grand effort, this gamble that Europe could be liberated through a force landing from the West. Think of all the diversions and practices, the secrecy and the responsibility, the burden of lives which they carried along with the rank on their shoulders. Eisenhower had in his pocket the draft of an announcement, just in case the invasion failed and he had to break off the grand enterprise; a soldier and commander hoping for the best, but already prepared for the worst.

Think on this day, and how the might of the Nazi Reich was cast down. June 6th was for Hitler the crack of doom, although he would not know for sure for many more months. After this day, his armies only advanced once – everywhere else and at every other time, they fell back upon a Reich in ruins. Think on this while there are still those alive who remember it at first hand.

Later, courtesy of Belmont Club – Another war, another June 6th, another battlefield in France –

Yet another view, cortest of Da Blogfaddah – the real ‘Greatest Generation’, and why we should pay some attention.

Moving Ahead

05. June 2008 · Comments Off on Moving Ahead · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

I am trying to see this as a sign – that I am plunging in considerably more than shin deep in the waters of ‘making it as a writer’. Thanks to all the copies of “Truckee’s Trail” which sold in January thanks to a nice review from Eric at Classical Values, which was Instalanched, I will receive a fairly substantial royalty check this month. Royalties for sales other than through Booklocker are on a 4-month delay, then another month for Booklocker to forward them on to writers. I am fairly sure there will be another good check next month, for sales in February also carried on fairly steadily.

This is all to the good, making a living at writing, because it seems that all three of my part-time jobs have melted away in the last month or so. The real-estate guy is having a rough month and can’t afford office help and the work that I did for a client of my computer-genius friend Dave was only a temporary assignment. They were quite pleased with my work, and would recommend me to any other clients, but it was still a long drive to get there and a lot of telephone-calling his potential clients. And just yesterday, the ops manager at the public radio station called to say regretfully that one of their full-time employees was taking over my Saturday afternoon shift, as he was more of an opera guy. I will no longer have a regular shift there. I think I was nearly the last of the one-shift a week part-timers. They have just hired a new full-time announcer, and apparently were extensively revamping the shift schedules.

That was a bit of a surprise, as I had worked there for longer than I have practically anywhere else than the Air Force. I had originally hoped to transition into a full-time position there, which never came about. I think I just kept on working Saturdays out of habit more than anything. Still, when all is said and done, I am not sure that I mind very much. Just about all the announcers that I worked with closely over the years are all gone; moved on to other things. I see this as a hint for myself to move on, to let go of something that I stopped being really interested in a couple of years ago – and being pushed just as I was making up my mind to jump.

So now, I have my Saturdays back, I no longer have to make that 40 minute drive across town, and with the cost of gas, that is some consideration. I will be able to do more book events at a prime time and day, and at least a little bit more family stuff, since Blondie works or goes to school during the week. And I have to go full time at this writing and marketing my books now, with no distractions from any other job, none of this working for other people stuff. It’s time to work for myself.

One big consideration is that I am planning on releasing the Adelsverein Trilogy, or Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms (thank you, Andrew!) in mid December. Yep, all three volumes at once – and believe me, I am snowed under with revising, editing, and sorting out the publicity angle for them. I have been offered an opportunity to work with another IAG author and publicize them through his own publishing website. He does westerns as well, and has all sorts of ins with that market and a lot more experience in book publicity than I do. The Adelsverein Trilogy will sell like hotcakes, locally. I’ve already been told so by no less than three local bookstores.

While the official release for the Trilogy won’t be until December, I will begin accepting pre-orders for the trilogy next month – all three volumes, at a discounted price of what they would be separately, and delivered in November, in advance of the official launch – and autographed, too. I’ll post links as soon as I get the pricing figured out.

So, how was your week? Better than Hillary Clinton’s week, I am sure.

Things that make me go “Hmmmm…..”

05. June 2008 · Comments Off on Things that make me go “Hmmmm…..” · Categories: General

I ran across this on a message board I frequent. The original topic was whether Hillary would concede and it evolved from there into one of those “beating a dead horse” kind of conversations where everyone wanted to list their own views but no one wanted to listen to anyone else’s views.

As commonly happens when politics come up in conversation, it didn’t take long before one side was accusing the other side of only dealing with emotions, not with facts.

Someone finally said: You guys are entitled to your opinion, I’m entitled to mine. (At least for now).
That’s what makes this country great.

To which one of those who had stated that the other side needed to deal with facts, replied: Agreed. Viva l’opinion! I just wish fellow Americans would do their research and all would be as it should be.

Ummm…. was this person really saying that if we all did our research we’d have the same opinion that she does? Cause that’s certainly what it sounded like to me.

I just wish that folks could respect the reality that even if we all examine the same facts, we can come up with different opinions. That doesn’t mean we’re crazy or evil or wrong, it means we’re human.

Something To Think About

02. June 2008 · Comments Off on Something To Think About · Categories: General, Good God, Iraq, Media Matters Not, sarcasm

A story you probably won’t see in the New York Times…or any other major media. Yeah, thanks guys – for keeping us in the loop.

Courtesy of Rantburg, my source for all stuff that is beyond the usual media fringe.

Popcorn

02. June 2008 · Comments Off on Popcorn · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Politics, sarcasm, World

Oh, but to have the popcorn concession, as we observe the latest developments in this 2008 political season, as the elementals of ebony and ovary collide. Really, it’s like the clash between the gingham cat and the calico dog – they’ll be nothing but little shreds left. Or might it be like matter and anti-matter – nothing left but a little smoking hole in the ground. How the various partisan factions of the Democrat party will ever be able to work together after all the free-flowing animus is beyond me. And I’ll have my popcorn with a teensy bit of salt, please.

What to say about Her Perhaps Not Quite So Inevitableness? Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. There will be a female President of this US of A in the near future, but I never invested any of my faith that she would be the one. It has annoyed me no end over the last couple of years, the blanket assumption that because she is a woman of certain age, as I am, that of course I would vote for her, strike a blow against the patriarchy, and for equal rights and anyway aren’t we entitled to have one of our own elected to the highest office in the land? Er… no.

I might have, once. Say, if she had divorced that two-timer she was married to, as soon as they moved out of the White House, and build a political career on her own, and on her own accomplishments. And if I had a lobotomy, or spent the last thirty years in a patchouli scented haze, re-living the glory days of the 60s. But I didn’t. I don’t do entitlement politics. I do accomplishments; Real accomplishments, not something jiggered up in an attempt to meet some vague ideological component or for a crowd to cheer at.

About the one positive thing you can say about Her Perhaps Maybe Inevitableness is that just about all the dirt ever on her has been out there for decades, and pretty carefully sifted through. If she is to be the Democratic nominee, AKA The Last One Standing after the convention, we can be pretty certain of there being no startling new developments. All the existing well-known dirt would be pretty well sifted again over the next five months, but I can’t visualize anything new and startling emerging.

This cannot be said of The Fresh Prince of Illinois. B. Obama, he of the middle name which can’t be mentioned, he of the thin resume and even thinner skin, nourished and groomed by the Chicago political machine and led before us, the Chosen One himself, hailed by the hosannas of the elite, the trendy, the daring… and also the Europeans. (Note to Euro political thinkers – umm, many of us have ancestors who left Europe to get away from people like you. Your recommendation in this respect is kind of a kiss of death. It’s like that letter-writing campaign during the last election, where Guardian readers were encouraged to write personal letters to American voters encouraging them to vote for John Kerry. )

As of this weekend, Sen. Obama has done a U-turn and departed his church of twenty years; that very trendy, large Chicago church with the charismatic and very popular black liberation theologist pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright… whose fulminations from the pulpit (handily recorded and originally distributed by the church itself !) did not strike quite the same note with the larger public. Observers of the current election scene had wondered for weeks if Obama really believed various of the Reverend Wrights’s racist fantasies – in which case he is belying his own words about racial healing – or did he just go along with it all because it was politically useful – in which case he is just another cynical, grubby politician, whoring after votes and influence. Guess that question has been answered.

Considering all the people who have now been thrown under the bus by the Obama campaign – the Fresh Prince’s white grandmother, various staff members, the Reverend Wright and now his church – one hopes that sucker has wheels on it like a monster truck. I am sure there will be more, even without the rumored recording of Mrs. Obama saying quite unfortunate and impolitic things. I have the impression that the Obamas and their circle live very circumscribed lives, an echo chamber of their own making. They appear to have no notion of how appalling, ham-fisted or just dim-witted some of their off-the-cuff remarks sound to the larger world outside their little bubble.

I rather miss Teresa Kerry, as the campaign season gets into full swing! I despised her husband, but at least she seemed to be a quirky, intelligent, interesting woman and a fairly experienced political wife. Michelle Obama just appears as a seething pit of resentment in spite of two high-end degrees, a large income and a mansion; a BAP with a limitless sense of entitlement. I can imagine her behaving appallingly and when called on it, blaming it all on teh racism! Straw-person argument, I know. But I have run into women like that in real life. In interviews and speeches she comes off as just that sort of woman.

Oh, yeah – interesting convention coming up. Interesting election season too. Pass the popcorn.

(Later – Additional thoughts from Cassandra at Villanous Company)

Horatio The Puppy-Cat

29. May 2008 · Comments Off on Horatio The Puppy-Cat · Categories: Critters, Domestic, General

My pet-loving neighbor, Judy, claims that the very best cats have something of the qualities of dogs in them; they are friendly, curious and open to all kinds of adventurous interaction with other species. Sometimes such cats as these like water, are perfectly agreeable to walking on a leash and display a fondness for dog-like amusements such as playing fetch, and eagerly eating anything that takes their fancy. In childhood, my family had a Siamese cat who had a peculiar fondness for popcorn, cookie dough, canned peaches and cornflakes – but then Siamese are notoriously eccentric. In any case, perhaps we can consider a name for these special cats. They are not kitty-cats – they are puppy-cats.

The most determined puppy-cat we know is a black cat named Horatio Caine, who lives just up the road – obviously his people are CSI fans. He has a collar with his name-tag hung on it, and the usual sort of animal license tags. I know nothing about his owners, save for what I can deduce from their garden: neat and ornamented with about the average number of garden tchochkas – fancy pots, banners, chimes and sculptures, and their car – slightly more than the usual number of in-your-face bumper-stickers. But they have a really cool cat.

Horatio lives in the garage, which he seems to prefer. They leave the garage door cracked about six inches, so he can come and go as he pleases, and does he please! He is almost always somewhere close by, when we come past with the dogs, and often comes trotting down the sidewalk to meet us. He has become perfectly amiable with Spike and with the Lesser Weevil. He will throw himself down on the warm concrete and bat at Spike with his paws, in an attempt to get her to tussle with him. One day, he even ran out from behind the car and batted Spike on the hindquarters to get her attention. He twines himself around the Weevil’s legs, walks underneath her and rubs the side of his face against both of them. This action may be taken as affectionate, but I am also told it is how cats mark objects for their own. This sometimes happens twice in a day, as we go out and as we return; it really seems that Horatio is glad to see us. When we depart, he runs after us the length of several houses, before trotting back to his garage.

It didn’t happen overnight, of course – he wouldn’t come very close to Weevil, at first. Spike was much closer in size, and not nearly so intimidating. Gradually, he put aside a certain wariness about the Weevil, coming closer and closer, or allowing her to come closer to him, as they sniff at each other in a companionable way. For the last month or so, they have been easy and comfortable with each other. Horatio walks below her chin, and she drools on him. I think the Weevil would like to be better friends with cats, but of ours, only Percy and Sam allow any such familiarity.

It is really quite marvelous, to have a cat be so friendly with dogs that are not part of their household. I shouldn’t be surprised to know that Horatio has other dog-friends, but it must make a curious sight for anyone driving through our neighborhood: a black cat, so utterly friendly and affectionate towards a pair of dogs, out for their daily walkies. He is obviously very fond of his people, and they of him – otherwise, we’d add him to our menagerie, or at least see if he wanted to put on a leash and go on walkies with us.

Phoenix – what’s the point?

27. May 2008 · Comments Off on Phoenix – what’s the point? · Categories: General

“What’s the point of sending that to Mars, it’s a waste of money. We should give that money to the poor.”

Krep. Nothing pushes my buttons like reading stuff like that. [1]

I’ve got nothing against charity. We all need a hand sometimes. But let’s put this in perspective.

This article says there are 37 million poor in the United States. Go with that figure. [2]

Government figures are hard to nail down – Nasawatch claims $420 million for the Phoenix lander.


briandunbar_natasha_~:irb
>> 420000000/37000000
=> 11

If we smeared the cost of the Phoenix Lander into a thin paste and divided it up even-steven we could buy all the poor people in the US a nice lunch at Applebees.

In the meantime we’ve lost whatever science data the mission will yield. We don’t know the economic benefit of this but in the past such returns have been huge – the way of life that enables me to type and you to read comes from unexpected riches derived from scientific research.

If we buy every poor schmo in America a single meal at a cheap restaurant .. jobs have been lost because we’re not paying tens of thousands of people to build the rocket, the probe, to monitor and direct the mission. They’re not all rocket scientists – no small percentage of the people involved with the mission – NASA, JPL, contractors, sub-contractors – are just people. Some of them are officially poor persons who sweep floors and clean out toilets.

Now they’re really poor because they don’t have a job.

They have lunch, so that’s something. If they’re canny they’ll save back part of their meal for take-home so they can eat it for dinner.

[1] Outlanders disrespecting the Green Machine, will do it as well.
[2] We can ignore the snide ‘holier than thou’ tone of the article.

Memorial Day, Afganistan May 2005

26. May 2008 · Comments Off on Memorial Day, Afganistan May 2005 · Categories: General

Memorial Day, Afganistan – May 2005

Thank You Too

26. May 2008 · Comments Off on Thank You Too · Categories: General

In case you missed it, it’s Memorial Day.

If you look around the web you’ll find some awesome tributes to our Vets. I think the gang here has done a wonderful job as always.

I just wanted to add my thanks to the families of those who serve. The wives, husbands, sons and daughters who were left behind because their loved ones paid the ultimate price.

On behalf of the entire Timmer family, Beautiful Wife, Gorgeous Daughter, Dashing Son in Law, Boyo and myself, consider yourself hugged and thanked.

Reflections on “the Wall”

26. May 2008 · Comments Off on Reflections on “the Wall” · Categories: General

castellano

This granite wall may startle you
with its listing of our dead,
but if you’ll let your heart respond,
the wall speaks life, instead.
Unlike our walls that keep things out,
this wall serves as a bridge
linking hearts and memories
from the dead to we who live.

While memory may fade with time,
our pain somehow stays new.
Yet we leave our heartaches at the wall,
no longer torn in two
by sorrow that cuts like a knife,
leaving festering regret.
Instead, our healing has begun,
and we find our faces wet

with tears for loved ones gone ahead,
while we somehow still live.
And we marvel at the message
this black wall has to give,
that Love stops not for death nor time,
but is guaranteed to last,
and healing is within our reach
once we accept our past.
–mvy 1991 —

Another Country and Another War

26. May 2008 · Comments Off on Another Country and Another War · Categories: General, GWOT, History, Iraq, N. Korea, War

Once there was a country, a foreign country which hardly anyone in the US save for a handful of scholars and specialists had ever heard of, and certainly cared little about. It wasn’t a country that had contributed many immigrants to the United States – not like England, or Ireland, Germany or Italy. It couldn’t be described as a Christian country, although there was a substantial Christian element. It was just one of those faraway foreign places that Americans really didn’t give a rip about until a shooting war started there, and American boys died in quantities in locations with strange-sounding names.

So, there was a war, and American troops were in the middle of it, along with some stout allies, a war that looked uncomfortably like a civil war, with saboteurs and insurrectionists and foreign sympathizers to the side the Americans were fighting against, sneaking over the borders – there were even other nations giving substantial aid and comfort to the side that the Americans were fighting!

This country was a wrecked and traumatized place – once it had boasted a proud and independent culture, but it had been occupied and broken to the will of the conqueror, a brutal dictator that had imposed alien concepts and practices upon it, and used their young men to fight in regional wars. But the conqueror did not think much of the fighting qualities of those soldiers – and neither did the Americans, at first. Here they were, spending their lives, their blood and treasure in defense of a people who seemed hapless in their own defense. Bit by slow and painstaking bit, progress was made: soldiers were created out of seeming unpromising materiel. Sometimes it seemed that every one of these solders had to have an American soldier at his elbow, giving patient instruction… and yet, and yet, when the war ended – the country thus painfully established was still there.

And of course, being a bloody and seemingly unpopular war, with a full schedule of blunders, incompetence and atrocities – both actual and alleged – there was the usual sort of newspaper headlines. Never mind about the successes, the space and time that was bought in American blood for the inhabitants of that country to recover, to find their own feet, tend their gardens and begin to build again. Never mind all that – good news doesn’t sell. Some of this country’s home-grown politicians turned out to be of an unsavory sort, more authoritarian than truly democratic, so there was another black eye for Americans, in propping up what appeared to be hardly an improvement on what this country had before. There is always a market for bad news, the ‘gotcha’ headline and so-called important people being cut down to size.

Seeming to be such a pointless and futile effort, wasteful of American lives and treasure made that war into an entertainment staple, after all the newsy goodness had been absorbed. American soldiers were portrayed as luckless dupes or malignant martinets, the American military was incompetent, wasteful, foolish, there was no point to the war, all these sacrifices of lives, of limbs, health and happiness was for nothing. There was no point, it was all useless, and destructive… the inhabitants of that country didn’t want or need our military to be there anyway, so what was the point of fighting? Everything would be better off as soon as we departed and left them to themselves.

Except that we didn’t. The war did end – with an armistice. American troops still serve tours there in that country, on the off-chance that the fighting might resume – although after fifty years, it just doesn’t seem very likely. South Korea is prosperous, modern, bustling with industry – as different as can be from the picture it presented fifty years ago, as different as it can be from the communist-ruled North. What would the whole Korean peninsula look like, if we had chosen to leave Koreans to their own devices, fifty years ago? Starving, poor and xenophobic, at the very least, living in darkness and want, a country-sized concentration camp.

What will Iraq look like after the passing of another fifty Memorial Days? Will it be anything like Korea; a regional powerhouse of industry, cultured, prosperous and politically stable? Will Saddam’s reign of terror be something relegated to the history books, will their present war be something barely recalled by the elders, a matter of monuments to be decorated with flowers and ceremony on certain days, while two or three generations have grown up knowing nothing but peace, security and plenty? Will there have been two or three generations of American military who have served tours at a few long-established bases and garrisons, stuck in out of the way corners of the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates. Will there be American soldiers and airmen who have come away with pleasant memories and a taste for local food and some pictures of ancient ruins and modern buildings looming over them, who made friends there? Fifty years is a blink in time – but it was long enough for South Korea to pull together in the space that Americans and their allies made for them. It may yet be time enough for Iraq, too, but its not as if we’ll be able to tell until long afterwards.

For Dad, who served in Korea and came back, for Wil who served in the 8th Air Force and came back, and Blondie who served in Kuwait and Iraq and came back – but for all those who served and didn’t come back, and who made the sacrifice without even being sure of what it was about or what it was all for, even – thank you, on this Memorial Day.

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