At Play in the Fields of Book-Marketing

08. August 2007 · Comments Off on At Play in the Fields of Book-Marketing · Categories: Domestic, General, General Nonsense, Literary Good Stuff, Rant, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine...

After giving myself a year of trying to get published the old-fashioned way, which involved getting the notice of a literary agent who would be able to attract the notice of a traditional publisher, I finally said “the hell” and took “To Truckee’s Trail” to a POD firm. The truly mind-boggling thing was that everyone who had read the whole thing had two reactions: “Wow!” and “Why hadn’t I ever heard about these people before?” I’ll not delude myself by that into thinking it’s great lit-ra-chure on that account, though. It’s an agreeably well-written story about a minor historical event, and reasonably accurate.

There’s a ton of books like that down at the local Barnes & Noble, along with tons of other books of a suckage so total as to pull in asteroids and small moons. So one may rightfully wonder how on earth the writers of those latter managed to get agents and publishers. The judgment of the literary gatekeepers looks to be pretty iffy, all things considered. By the end of a year I could blow off receiving another rejection letter pretty well… especially those spotty fifth-generation photo-copied ones cut three or four from a sheet of copy paper. (Quelle classy, people. Really.)

After perusing a collection of blook-blogs, including this one, I am wondering if writer-driven publish-on-demand isn’t the wave of the future, or at least a jolly great shake-up to “the way things have always been done”. Sort of like how the news and comment blogs were a shake-up to the news media complex over the past five or six years, which gives cause to wonder if the literary-industrial complex isn’t on the same Titanic-vs-Iceberg track. Writers who have way more experience than I have also been wringing their hands in lamentation at sclerosis of the literary-industrial complex, and venturing all sorts of reasons. Like the torrents of manuscripts flowing upstream towards their traditional spawning grounds, at traditional publishing firms.

Once upon a time, they tell me… there weren’t quite so many people who thought they had a book in them somewhere. Traditional publishers could evaluate and accept submissions in a timely and sympathetic manner. If a manuscript had any sort of merit, it might knock around for a bit… but would eventually find a nice literary niche. Not so now; publishers are drowning in the floods of submissions. I am told that screening them is now farmed out to agents… who have pretty much the same problem. Unless a specific manuscript pushes all the right buttons of that one agent who has to be in just the right sort of mood… frankly, I was starting to think I’d have better luck playing the Texas Lottery. And like any other sane person, an agent would like to have the biggest pay-off for the smallest work possible, so ix-nay on something that doesn’t slot into an easy category, or be likened in one sentence to last week’s big block-buster. Just safe business, after all, but it has the result of narrowing the field and reducing the odds for the next out-of-category big literary wonder. (See above, suckage, and attraction to small celestial bodies.)

Lottery… which reminds me of something else; even getting an agent, and a traditional publishing deal isn’t any guarantee of happily-ever-after. I am told that most traditionally published books don’t make any sort of money. Like Hollywood, the literary-industrial complex really wants blockbusters, and the non-blockbusting writers tend to get treated pretty much like hired-help that can scribble… all the while being reminded that they are lucky to even have agency representation and a book deal to start with. So, a couple of more petty tyrants to appease, and to make the scribbler’s life even more miserable; yes, I think I’ll have another plate of that delicious filboid studge.

Oh, and it seems that the literary-industrial humongous publicity machine only gets into high gear for those few blockbusters anyway; the lesser scribblers have to do their own marketing anyway. May as well do POD, and have complete control, rather than be nibbled to death by the petty minions.

Progress report on “To Truckee’s Trail” to follow.

A Jolly Good Time Was Had by All: Pvt. Beauchamp

08. August 2007 · Comments Off on A Jolly Good Time Was Had by All: Pvt. Beauchamp · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, GWOT, Home Front, Iraq, Media Matters Not, Military, World

Well, that was fun; sort of what I imagine a fox-hunt to be, with a pack of hounds and a merry collection of red-coated hunters on swift steeds. The successful conclusion of the milblogosphere kerfuffle-du-jour, the beat-down of aspiring fabulist Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp was just like one of those exhilarating hunts beloved by viewers of the very high-quality BBC dramas that have been exported to the lonely outposts of Peoria, Tujunga and Boise for lo, these many years.

There was the wily fox; not as wily as he thought he was, obviously… spinning an oh-so-tempting yarn for the editor of TNR, who eagerly snapped it up. And over there is a hound, a hound with a very clever nose who thinks something stinks and begins to bay, and a huntsman with a horn blows “tally-ho”, as the hounds quarter the rough ground, yapping noisily as they discover more and more interesting little discrepancies. No wounded woman at FOB Falcon? A small graveyard and not a dumping ground for victims of an atrocity? And where are the officers and NCOs, and how the hell is it possible for a clumsy tracked vehicle to run over a nimble street-mutt anyway? And for someone to find himself jaded and degraded by war… before he even arrives in theater?

So the hunt went off, in full cry, hounds and horses pounding over the rolling field and between the trees, spilling through the gaps in the fences, in hot pursuit of the nimble fox… who runs and runs and runs, twisting and backtracking. But every time he looks over his shoulder, the pack and the hunters are closer behind. And when the fox looks ahead, suddenly there is another hunt… a hunt of grim-faced people in mottled green and brown cammies, with lots of stripes on their sleeves or dull-metal stuff on their collars.

And the fox runs to ground. But he is hauled out by the scruff of his neck by the grim-faced people, and held so that everyone in the milling crowd… the hounds, the hunters, a great crowd of spectators can take a good long look. The fox squeaks out a few words admitting that everything he wrote was not true, whereupon he is sentenced to clean latrines with his long bushy tail for the foreseeable future.

Oh, there was a hunt-saboteur who tried to run interference for the fox, insisting that everything the fox said was of a high degree of truthiness… most everything had been confirmed by other foxes and experts, but that he just couldn’t share their names just yet, and why was everyone being so mean?

Well, that’s what the hunt-saboteur was saying just as he got trampled by the hunt, so he went off on vacation, and is there still, nursing some bruises and wondering what he did to deserve this, no doubt.

I shouldn’t worry, though. There’ll be another fox and another hunt, any time now. Just listen for the hounds and the sound of a horn, ringing over the blogosphere. And it will be fun!

True to the Union: Part 2

06. August 2007 · Comments Off on True to the Union: Part 2 · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West, War, World

More new settlers than just the Germans were making their way into Texas, in the fifteen years before the Civil War. Once that the coastal lowlands below the Balcones Escarpment could be fairly said to be settled, Texas attracted more than just the land-hungry and restless. It drew ambitious and more prosperous settlers from across the south, settlers and entrepreneurs who brought their slaves with them. These men farmed sugar and rice and built fine plantation houses, gracefully adorned with neoclassical columns and ironwork balconies; in jarring contrast to the plainer log blockhouses and cabins built by the settlers on the western and northern borders of what passed for civilization. A fissure formed among communities in Texas that mimicked the split between North and South, between free-soil men and slave-owners. This split was exacerbated by the fact that the Germans, recent arrivals all, heartily disapproved of slavery, and retained strong cultural connections to other German communities in the north. Within a few months after passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which threw the question of permitting slavery in the Western territories on those who settled there, a fresh ruckus broke out in Texas. The Act kicked up considerable bad feeling on both sides, since it was seen as allowing the peculiar institution to spread into where it had theretofore been forbidden. Many were the barrels of ink consumed, and thousands of spleens quite thoroughly vented, as adherents of free-soil and abolition expressed their disgust and disapproval.

One of those expressions took the form of a rather mildly-worded resolution disapproving of slavery, which was put up at a state-wide meeting of the various German choral societies, or “sangerbund” late in 1854 in San Antonio. German-American political and social organizations in other states had approved similar resolutions, but the vote of the Texas Germans set off a firestorm, especially among nativists and “Know-Nothings”, who were suspicious of foreigners anyway. Questions were asked, in increasingly belligerent voices, about the loyalties of the German settlers to Texas; very soon the abolitionist editor of a popular German-language newspaper would have to depart San Antonio at speed, driven out by threats of violence. The question of slavery morphed into a states’ rights issue; exactly what could the states decide for themselves was a burning question amongst the philosophically inclined. How much authority did the federal government hold when it came to strictly local issues? These and related points were vociferously disputed, even as attitudes about abolitionists hardened into a blanket detestation of anyone whose enthusiasm for the “peculiar institution” was less then wholly enthusiastic, across the South and Texas.. By the time that Abraham Lincoln was elected to the presidency as a free-soil man, Texas was aflame, literally and figuratively; although one can wonder just how much of the eagerness for war can be chalked up to the natural temperament of the Scots-Irish borderers who had an affinity for any fight going and gravitated towards it like a salmon going upstream.

Just because Abraham Lincoln was heinously unpopular across the South as president-elect did not mean that every Texan, slave-owner or not, made a mad dash for the exit and the passionate embrace of the Confederacy. There were men such as Sam Houston, a slave-owner, who were also Unionists. And there were also those who detested the “peculiar institution”… but who were strong for the abstract principle of states’ rights, even if they held no particular affection for the concrete policy of chattel slavery. And finally, there were those bedrock Texan settlers, like The Fat Guys’ ancestral kin who felt that:

a) “Texas never should have joined the union, as we were managing just fine on our own, no matter what the politicians said
b) since we did, though, we should stick to it and
c) how about a little help with these Comancheros?”

When the fighting began in the spring of 1861, the states-rights, and the pro-Confederacy factions carried the day had carried the day. Texas departed the Union and cast its lot with the Confederacy, over the objections and misgivings of a substantial minority, which included most of the German settlers.

By the second year of the war, barely a handful of men had volunteered out of Gillespie County for the Confederate Army. There were recruits a-plenty for the Home Guard, and for the Frontier Battalion, and for locally-recruited ranging companies to defend against Indian raiders sweeping in from the west and from the Plains… but a year and a half of full-out fighting in the east had already burned through those eager volunteers who had the inclination to leave their fields and families and go to fight. Halfway through 1862, New Orleans fell to the Union. Anyone could look at a map and see that the Union now commanded both ends of the Mississippi River. Perhaps many of those Texans who had doubts about the wisdom of departing the Union and joining the Confederacy now felt completely justified. And many of those who had been so eager for it now must have felt a cold little trickle run down their spines.

The Confederacy’s reaction to the Union threat would unleash riots and vigilante mayhem across the Hill Country, and in the Northern Texas settlements.

(To be continued)

Please continue to educate me….

05. August 2007 · Comments Off on Please continue to educate me…. · Categories: General

My house-hunting continues apace, and I actually have 3 possibilities that I’ll be looking at more closely when my realtor gets back from her vacation. Two are very good possibilities, one just hit the market this weekend and I’ve not even seen it. I’ll be driving by its neighborhood today sometime, to decide if I want her to get us inside it when she gets back. I’m not in a major hurry – still a couple months left on my current lease. I firmly believe that if a house sells before I offer on it, it wasn’t supposed to be my house.

Here is my next set of questions.

One house has polybutylene pipes throughout. Is this good or bad? (I prefer copper). We’re in the Atlanta area, so not much concern about freezing pipes in the winter.

One house has a heat/cool system original to the home (27 years old). Is it acceptable to reduce my offer by the estimated 6K it will take to replace those (estimate based on what it cost to replace the one in San Antonio)?

One house has the washer/dryer in the hall bathroom. I’ve never encountered that before. It seems odd to me, but not a deal-breaker. Has anyone ever experienced that before? In that house, the water heater is in a room off the garage that is plenty large enough for a laundry room, and has a pipe that could be hooked into. Would it be feasible to move the washer/dryer to that room? If yes, how would I re-purpose the extra space in the hall bath?

One disclosure lists “some delaminating of siding on middle section of home.” What does that mean? The siding is pulling away from soemthing, or the veneer is pulling away from the siding? Is this something that should worry me? What causes delaminating?

I’ll likely be making an offer on one of these homes, the week after next (subject to inspections, etc)

Whoops – knew there was another question. One house has a room in the back corner of the garage that could easily be turned into a mudroom if we add an outside door to it. How much hassle is it to add an exterior door after the fact?

True to the Union – Part 1

03. August 2007 · Comments Off on True to the Union – Part 1 · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Local, Old West, World

Last week one of my occasional employers and I were talking about my current writing project, “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees – and a Lot of Sidearms”. This employer knows the Hill Country and Fredericksburg quite well, and he remarked at once upon how clannish many of the old German families are, and how difficult it was for him, as an outsider selling farm supplies, to do much business with them. They were, he said, very loyal to each other and to those few outsiders who had established relationships with them. I didn’t find this hard to believe at all, since the part of the chronicle I am writing now covers the bitter days of the Civil War in Gillespie County.

There is actually not much available in print or on line about that specific period; just barely enough to give tantalizing hints at what happened during those years. It’s a skeleton upon which to drape a story of split loyalties, of bewildering events and sudden hatreds, seemingly sprung fully-armored out of the ground, like dragons-teeth, much to the astonishment of recently arrived but cultured and hard-working German settlers. In the space of a decade and a half, they had turned Gillespie County from an all-but empty wilderness into their new homes. They established singing-societies, and newspapers, celebrated the Forth of July with parades and festivals, and participated in the great American experiment of democracy with passionate enthusiasm. The finest doctor practicing in San Antonio was a recent émigré from Germany. The German settlers also built stone houses and planted orchards, established mills, hotels and workshops. Their communities, even on the edge of the frontier, were prosperous and several degrees more attractive than similarly-situated Anglo-American settlements, and connected by regular stage lines and the US mail to the larger communities of Austin, San Antonio, Indianola and Galveston. But something happened, something that put a roadblock in the blending that usually happened with even the largest immigrant communities.

Those Hill Country towns are still very distinct, even a hundred and fifty years later. The same family names crop up over and over; Herff, Arleheger, Ransleben, Marschall, Keidel, among others. Other 19th century immigrant-founded towns diluted over the decades following their establishment but the Hill Country Germans did not. Up until WWI, German was the predominant language, almost exclusively, and I had read an account of a traveler passing through Fredericksburg in the 1880s, who insisted that he had only found one person in the place who spoke English, and that was the sheriff and he spoke it very badly at that. At first, I wrote this tendency off to the sheer numbers of German immigrants who poured in to Gillespie County, and the homogeneity of the communities they formed. They came all at once, relatively speaking, first through the auspices of the Mainzer Adelsverein in the mid 1840s, and then a second wave following upon the failure of the 1848 Revolution.

And then I read a little more, finding an interesting tid-bit in a translation/replica of a book put together for a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Fredericksburg, which covered practically aspect of the founding of the town, in great detail, and with detailed first-hand reminiscences by many early settlers; how they forded the Pedernales River, and passed by an encampment of Delaware Indians, and one of the Verein troopers escorting them killed a bear at the river ford. They held a great celebratory feast that evening, in a grove of post-oak trees near where the Verein had begun building a blockhouse and a fenced compound, around which the town of Fredericksburg had been surveyed and marked out. (The blockhouse was about where the Subway sandwich shop on Main Street is now, catty-cornered from the Nimitz hotel.) Such accounts were so thorough I hardly needed anything else for a good few chapters… but contrasted oddly with comparatively terse accounts of what had happened among Fredericksburg’s citizens during the Civil War. Essentially, the person who wrote that particular segment in the mid 1880s admitted that feelings were still so raw about the Civil War, that it was best to just not go any farther with such details.

Interesting, but not entirely unexpected, that tempers would still be pretty hot, and wartime grudges would still be held. But still, I wondered about that. Texas had been a pretty far-distant corner of the Confederacy. And someone who had fought as a soldier in that war would be middle-aged when that book was written. A veteran or survivor would have spent twenty years building a post-war life, repairing a farm or business that would have been interrupted by the storm of war, or the Reconstruction that followed upon it. Texas had not been fought over, marched over, occupied and reoccupied to the same degree that some of the eastern states had been. The economy had been wrecked… but that was more due to the Union blockade, and the diversion of able-bodied men into military service. Emancipating the slaves caused barely a hiccup; there weren’t that many in Texas, comparatively speaking… and the German immigrants were famously opposed to chattel slavery anyway.

And that turned out to be exactly why feelings had run so hot and so hard, you see. (To be continued)

It’s Here!!!

01. August 2007 · Comments Off on It’s Here!!! · Categories: General, Literary Good Stuff, Old West, Site News, World

Ta-Dah!

Roll of drums, please… the great unsung pioneer epic “To Truckee’s Trail” is now available, thanks to those lovely people, Angela and Richard at Booklocker.com… here, and in the sidebar ad… I think.

A great heaping pile of thanks also to reader B. Durbin for the lovely picture which was used for the cover, and the encourangement of reader KC and mobs of others… it would have never have happened at all, but for those fans of The Daily Brief who first read the essays about the Stephens-Townsend party a couple of years ago, and who said “Wow! What a terrific story… why hasn’t anyone ever heard of these people?”

If anyone would like an autographed copy, let me know by sending the cover price plus $2.50 postage to my Paypal account by next Thursday, when I will be ordering a box of copies of it from the printer.

Later: Whoo-whooo! As of 4 PM Thursday, three copies sold, through Booklocker! Another 1,999,997 to go, and then I can think about buying a castle next to J.K. Rowlings’ !!

Even Later: As of Sunday morning, it’s added to the Amazon.com catalogue, here

The Book – To Truckee’s Trail

01. August 2007 · Comments Off on The Book – To Truckee’s Trail · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Site News, World

It’s almost here… any minute now… just a little more time. Wait for it…

(looks at watch and wanders off, mumbling)

Jarhead

31. July 2007 · Comments Off on Jarhead · Categories: General

Know what the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story is? A fairy tale begines ‘Once upon a time’. A sea story begins ‘Listen up cause this is no sh**’.

Jarhead is a lotta things. It’s a great bit of writing. It humps along at a good clip, it’s got some things to say and it says them in an entertaining way. It moves along quickly enough that it was not until I sailed clean past the end that I realized it’s most glaring fault.

Jarhead is a sea story. I don’t know how accurate it is; I was an 0311 who never served in the FMF. I didn’t go the Desert; I spent the war learning how to be an 4000 at 3D FSSG. It’s chock full of stories that ‘everyone’ knows; here are the Jarheads playing football in the Desert in full MOPP gear. Here is the famous cuckold video a wife sent to her husband in the Desert. All the stories we heard, the lingo of the Marines in the early 90s. Some of the details are off but it was written a decade after the fact – we may chalk this up to memory or wishful thinking.

The problem with Jarhead is that civilians will read a memoir by a Marine turned academic and take it s Gospel. This would be wrong, wrong wrong. It’s a story about a callow young man who went to war, saw some things and came home. That’s all that it is.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

The Gift That Just Keeps On Giving

29. July 2007 · Comments Off on The Gift That Just Keeps On Giving · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Media Matters Not, World

TNR’s “Shock Troops” diarist is just the gift that keeps on giving. After reading this, and shaking my head, I sent the following email to “editors@cjr.org” offering this feedback:

I read with interest and considerable amusement Mr. McLeary’s comment, as regards the wanna-be Hemmingway, Pvt. Beauchamp and the kurfuffle-du-jour over his “Shock Troops” article in TNR:

“How dare a college grad and engaged citizen volunteer to join the Army to fight for his country! (Which is something that most of the brave souls who inhabit the milblog community prefers to leave to others.) ”

I doubt that I am the first, and probably won’t be the last to write to inform Mr. LcLeary that the term “milblog” is a contraction of “military blogger” and in current usage means “members of the military, their families, or veterans who blog”.

Such veterans and currently serving military members took the lead in reviewing and debunking Pvt. Beauchamps’ extremely dubious stories, offering an expertise in military culture and current events in Iraq which seems to sadly lacking at TNR. And to judge by Mr. McLeary’s off-hand comment, it appears to be also lacking at the CJR.

BTW, all military officers are required to have a college degree, as a prerequisite for recieving a commission. These days, it is not uncommon for enlisted members to also have degrees, either before enlisting, or to work towards one while in service.

I myself came into the service with a college degree, but while I flatter myself that I am a much better writer than Pvt. Beauchamp,…so are most of the milbloggers out there. TNR would have been better-served with practically any of them.

Sgt. Mom, TSgt, USAF (Ret)
The Daily Brief

This tempest is far outgrowing it’s teapot; is anyone making more popcorn? If I get any reply, I’ll post it.

Note, as of 9:45 CST: recieved the following reply from Paul McLeary, at CJR:

“I’m getting slammed with emails about this, but I want to answer
every one, because I think that it’s important. Here’s the email
that I sent to the Mudville Gazette milblog, who posted part of it
Sunday afternoon.

————-
I really walked into this one.

I actually spend a lot of time on milblogs. I was careless in my
choice of wording when I wrote the piece. What I meant was the
whole community of blogs that have sprung up in the same universe
as milblogs — Hugh Hewitt, etc., who act tough about the war, but
have never served, and have never left the comforts of their
air-conditioned offices to see what might be going on in Iraq or
Afghanistan.

I’ve written a lot about milblogs, actually: Interviewed Matthew
Currier Burden for CJR, as well as a couple soldiers who were
blogging for the New York Times. I’ve also spoken to, and exchanged
emails with Yon and Bill Roggio and such, and I blogged the whole
time I was in Iraq back in ’06, which doesn’t make me a milblogger,
but hey, it’s something, I guess.

Like I said, I really stepped in it because I didn’t take the time
to clearly define what I was talking about.”

OK, so honor is served. Says something that he is replying to emails on a Sunday evening, and admitting to not paying proper attention to detail. On that account, I’ll give him a pass from being the milblogosphere’s chew-toy du-jour. Go ye therefore and sin no more, but what any other milblogger does is up to them, of course.

Pause Between Dances

29. July 2007 · Comments Off on Pause Between Dances · Categories: Domestic, General, History, Old West, World

This weekend is a pause in the mad waltz of the writers’ life marathon; between the kerfuffle-du-jour of Pvt. Beauchamp, the milblogs’ rebel without a clue, and me spending a couple of days at an assortment part-time jobs… and next week when proofs of The Book will be finalized, and I have to start marketing it. Yes!!! It’s nearly here, “To Truckee’s Trail”! Any day now… please buy a copy, when I post the link to Booklocker’s catalogue! I need to buy the software to update my literary website, a decent new printer to generate my own marketing material and letters, and to buy the advertising on websites where they just can’t afford to give it to me out of the goodness of their own hearts and appreciation for my talents as a fairly OK genre fiction writer!

My friend, Dave the Computer Genius has referred me to a handful of his clients who have need of admin-secretarial help a couple of times a week. They are most often small entrepreneurs and hobbyists, who maybe have taught themselves a little with the computer that they bought from Dave to use for their home business, don’t quite understand how to generate what they need and want out of it, and are willing to pay me to come and do it. Or for me to show them how to cut and paste in pictures, pretty up excel spread-sheets, enter useful contact data in their personal scheduling software, and to perform heavy-lifting… like do Google searches. Eh… it’s part-time, pays enough to make going to their workplaces (usually a home office) and leaves me the afternoons to write.

Yeah, writing… still have time to do that. By my calculations, I’m about halfway through “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees – and a Lot of Sidearms”. That is the epic about the German settlements in the Texas Hill Country. Right now, I am plunging into rather interesting territory, with an account of the storms of the Civil War, as they were weathered in Gillespie County. When I talked to my parents on Friday, I was reminded of how interesting, in the sense of the old Chinese saying, that completing this volume is likely to become. One of their circle who they let read all my manuscripts as they are written, is a retired professor of English. She’s a very experienced teacher and editor, and I particularly value her critical feedback. Mom let me know that she has just finished reading the first volume, and has made many, many notes… but that one was a long critique about settler-Indian relations, as I had written about them.

Which… since I am trying to write as accurately as I can about the Texas frontier, circa 1845-1885 means that the opinions and beliefs of the characters that I am writing about are not particularly socially correct by today’s lights. I will not commit the literary sin of “presentism”; that is, putting the attitudes and opinions of a late 20th century person into a 19th century character and either imputing that this person is very brave and non-conformist to be so advanced, or implying that 19th century people were just like us but dressed up in funny costumes and with horses instead of automobiles. Most 19th century Texans hated and feared the Indians; it’s an anachronism to pretend otherwise. There were curious exceptions to this, and all sorts of interesting shadings. Sam Houston and Robert Neighbors were distinguished in their lifetimes for their friendships among various tribes, and for their effective consideration of Indian interests. Members of the Lipan Apache and Tonkawa bands fought alongside Jack Hays’ Ranger companies, and the German settlements negotiated and kept to a peace agreement with the Southern Comanches that was never broken, even though other Indian tribes eventually began raiding at will in the Hill Country. It’s all a great deal more nuanced than someone looking backwards from the late 20th century might give credit for… and I haven’t even gotten to slavery and racial relations, yet. About all I can promise to do is to clean up some of the intemperate language. Which puts me up to the same challenge as Robert Lewis Stephenson, of writing about obscenity-spouting people… without actually using obscenities.

That’s going to be fun, since I am running into all kinds of interesting people and situations, in my first quick pass through Civil War period memoirs and histories. Texas was on the far fringe of the Confederate South. According to one of my notes, the biggest slave owner in the state on the eve of the Civil War owned 300 slaves. The second and third biggest owned far fewer than that… which meant … Off on another track here, which will be reserved for another post.

Bottom line, I am having fun with this. Especially since I have always hated Gone With the Wind, and that romantic lost cause and noble Confederate cavalier crap.

Way To Much Time On His Hands

27. July 2007 · Comments Off on Way To Much Time On His Hands · Categories: Ain't That America?, Air Navy, Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Good God, Technology, World

A model of an aircraft carrier… made entirely out of Legos.

(link courtesy of Rantburg, the source for all things civil and well reasoned.)

Fallout

27. July 2007 · Comments Off on Fallout · Categories: General, GWOT, Iraq, Media Matters Not, Stupidity, War, World

Well, it took about a day longer than I estimated for the Beauchamp-TNR kerfuffle-du-jour to expand to the size of the Hindenburg, metaphorically speaking, and then explode like a couple of wads of dubble-bubble chewing gum once the upper expansion limits had been reached.

Wow, look at all that sticky pink stuff all over the place… some of that is stuck in places and on people who will probably never be able to peel it off of themselves and go about their business as usual. Having written and published the “Shock Troops” pieces is a richly deserved embarrassment, but I don’t think the two most responsible parties will ever acknowledge that their own actions had a part in bringing on the landslide-quantities of fall-out. I imagine they will find some handy other party to blame it all on.

But I can almost bring myself to feel kind of sorry for young Pvt. Beauchamp, and Franklin Foer; it’s all a jolly good game, until someone gets hurt. And no one ever starts out intending to put themselves under the million-eyed, coldly analytical publicly-wielded CAT-scan that is the blogosphere. The inexperienced editor of stalwart and once-respected legacy media magazine probably had no idea of the firestorm that would erupt, once milbloggers and veterans began looking carefully into “Scott Thomas’s” curious accounts of vehicular canine-icide, trash-talking in the dining facility, and games with dead things.

If all one knows of the military life is the movies… especially Vietnam-War movies, such an account must have seemed quite credible. Sad to know that of all the staff at a mag like TNR, there was no one on hand with any sort of experience in the military in the last twenty years or so, who could take a look and say, “Look, there’s something not quite right about this.” Or even to do as Cpl. Blondie did, when she read about running over dogs with a Bradley. Which was to fall about laughing, and then to say, “Whatta pile of bull-s**t!”

And as for Private Beauchamp; I don’t think even the most relentless narcissist really would enjoy having their Myspace page fisked down to the sub-atomic level, and their own person, and every shred of their writings relentlessly and coldly analyzed by thousands of strangers. But then again… he put it all out there, on Myspace and in the TNR. . Made no real secret of wanting to be the next Wilfred Owen/Ernest Hemmingway, but comes off as a haphazardly educated, very bright, self-centered young idiot with an elevated sense of his own talent and not a shred of sense. He is still young enough to grow out of it; honestly a lot of people his age are idiots, but most of them improve over time, and exposure to real world of consequences.

And he sucks as a writer, too, which is even sadder. He doesn’t have that certain gift; that way of “seeing” that a writer has to have. Oh, you can have the vocabulary, you can sling together the sentences, and it all will parse on the page, but unless you can “see into” other people, and sense how they think, and deal with their foibles and take on their voices, your words all fall rather flat. Intuition, empathy, whatever you call it; if you have it, you can create people on a page, you can write about a place or an event and make it so other people can see and feel it also. Good writers, good story-tellers have that, but narcissists can only fake it for a little bit, about as far as Pvt. Beauchamp did. What a waste of time and tuition, and TNR’s reputation, just to mince up and re-hash outtakes from “Full Metal Jacket” and “Platoon”, for the titillation of the readers. And what a waste for the magazine. Of all the milbloggers on active-duty tours in Iraq, Mr. Foer had to select this unconvincing, unobservant fabulist, and throw his magazine’s authority behind him… because his wife/significant other worked there. How lame. What a smack in the face to the hundreds or even the thousands of better writers among currently serving milbloggers.

Carnival of Space – Week 13

26. July 2007 · Comments Off on Carnival of Space – Week 13 · Categories: General

Carnival of Space Week 13 is up on the LiftPort blog.

Fortune and Mens Eyes

24. July 2007 · Comments Off on Fortune and Mens Eyes · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, GWOT, Iraq, Rant, Veteran's Affairs, War, World

It is a curious coincidence that just as the milblogosphere is reveling in the righteous joys of thumping another credulous editor of a formerly-pretty-reputable legacy media venue… here we are dished up another heaping helping of military bashing from a couple of personalities that I have never heard of. Allegedly, this doofus is claimed to be a regular on Saturday Night Live. The hell you say… is that show still on? Wow.

Whatever A Whitney Brown’s problem is, I’ll bet it’s damned hard to pronounce. And this guy at least had a few remaining shreds of decency left to him… enough that he pulled his post about how the modern military was creating mass murderers and serial killers…

Ops, scuse me, while I go outside, and flag down that idiot with the car speakers which go whoop-whoomp-whoomp at such a deafening level that his car actually sounds like it’s farting. I’m going to chop up his inconsiderate ass into quarters with a chain-saw and Fed-Ex each quarter and his head to five different places…

No, just kidding. But not about the car stereo… it really does sound like the car is farting.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes… military = killers. Got it. Kind of the point actually, in an official, just-doing-our-job, ma’am sense. Yes, we kill those who have been designated as our enemies; neatly, efficiently, and without particular prejudice. Unsanctioned, off the books free-lancing is still frowned upon, however. Just so we’re all on the same page, here.

Still, to note all this is to wonder… why all this perfectly rotten press now? And without the obligatory “Of course we support the troops!” in this round of being pissed-on… guess they’ve noticed we’re not buying the claims of the stuff just being rain.

I do wonder what has brought the usual suspects to a fine frothing boil; I haven’t seen such hysterical insistence on the brutality and licentiousness of the soldiery since the putrid days of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Makes a bit of a change from painting them as poor widdle disadvantaged and victimized cheeeldren who had no other way to get ahead than to listen to the siren allure of the recruiter, which is the alternate method of denigration to date At least the “brutal and licentious” bit will give the troops credit for being grownups. Sort of.

But no credit for anything else, and credibility is where this whole thing is going… oh, not by any deep-laid strategic plan. More like some kind of subconscious hive-instinct, an irrational passionate urge to make the Iraq war and the whole WOT thingy just go away. And to go away without any blame attaching to the usual suspects, win or loose. Loose is always in the cards, of course. The middle east has been a veritable snake-pit for decades. If it reverts to type… no skin off ours, as long as we’re safely out of the middle, and a repeat of Saigon, 1975 can all be safely blamed on the Bush cabal. With appropriate tisk-tiskings, of course.

But…. What if the “surge” is working? What if the Iraqis are stepping up to the plate, and taking real control of their lives and their country? What if all those nice hardworking reservists and those high school graduates from Nowheresville, and those Marines from flyover country have managed to pull of a shaky miracle, and in another fifteen or twenty years, Iraq looks like South Korea, only with palm trees and more sand?

Wow, wouldn’t that be a facer for people like Senators Kerry and Murtha, for the Kos Kidz and the staff of the Guardian, among a long list of others… like A. Whitney Brown? Their advice has been spurned, and they are in peril of being shown up by the people that they secretly, or in some cases, not so secretly, hold in contempt. Makes it kind of hard to maintain that effortless air of superiority over lesser mortals, so of course, something must be done!

When old-time autocrats didn’t like the message, proverbially, they shot the messenger. The new autocrats in the legacy media, the nutroots, or in the higher ivory-towers wouldn’t be so crude. They’d rather denigrate the messenger; the troops and the leaders alike. Taint them by association; paint them as sociopath degenerates, brutal and vengeful and incompetent. Shame them into silence, make them shrink back into the little Nowheresvilles they crawled out of, put away their uniforms and their medals, and hide their associations away in the corners.

Really, it makes it so much easier to betray allies and friends, when these pathetic little people and their stupid “duty, honor and country” just forget all of that and do as their betters like A. Whitney Brown tell them.

And that’s what I think is going on here. Your mileage may vary, of course

Question(s) of the Day (070721)

21. July 2007 · Comments Off on Question(s) of the Day (070721) · Categories: Ain't That America?, General

Why do I know so much about the Atlanta Falcons? Don’t they suck? Would we care so much about the dog fighting thing if it wasn’t an overpaid NFL “gangstah” being indicted?

Did we really need to know the President was getting a colonoscopy?

A friend of mine insists that I need to see “Sicko.” I said sure, if you promise to watch a couple of night’s worth of Glenn Beck with me. Any guess on how that went?

Back to inappropriate coverage of political body parts…Why in God’s name is the press paying attention to Hillary’s cleavage?

Happy Fricking Moon Day, People

21. July 2007 · Comments Off on Happy Fricking Moon Day, People · Categories: General

What he said

38 damn years, people. There ought to be a Starbucks up on the moon by now, and a bunch of tourists experiencing the challenge of sipping a vente latte in one sixth G.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Rocketeers

20. July 2007 · Comments Off on Rocketeers · Categories: General

Little Monkey found a package left by the mailman between our screen and front door.

What was inside?

Awesome he said with seven-year old enthusiasm. He was impressed that those are picture of ‘for real’ rocket planes that guys are really flying in races. Then he looked at the pictures inside, reading the captions .. literacy is cool. So is this book. I’ll post more after I’ve read the last half of it.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Crescendo for the Writers Life Waltz

20. July 2007 · Comments Off on Crescendo for the Writers Life Waltz · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Site News, That's Entertainment!, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Just a quick update on the current book, scribbled between slaving over a hot computer, a couple of job assignments, and mundane things like… oh, I don’t know, cooking meals? Taking the dogs out for a walk. (Er, drag-around-the-block. They. Drag. Me. Just to make that point absolutely clear.)

The text is uploaded to the printers, and the cover is finished and approved… it has all taken nearly two weeks to accomplish this; much longer than I expected. I hope this might be some kind of indication that business is absolutely booming with the POD houses. I was clawing the walls with impatience all this week, but the cover is well worth the wait, thanks to B. Durbin’s very generous offer to let me use one of her photos of the Truckee River. (Appropriate credit is given, natch!)

So, once I have a hard copy in my hot little hands, and approve the whole thing, “To Truckee’s Trail” will be in the booklocker.com catalogue, all 272 pages and eighteen long chapters (with notes!) of it; a gripping read of adventure and discovery along the 19th century emigrant trail to California. I’ll be doing some more marketing, and scrounging for reviews and ad space here and there, and generally trying to sell a good few copies of it. At the very least, I can claim to write fewer clunky sentences per chapter than Dan Brown, of “The DaVinci Code” fame! (That blasted book was unreadable, to me… I kept tripping and falling headlong over sentences that sounded like entries in the current Bulwer-Lytton Bad Writing Contest!)

And I’ll be scribbling away on the Adelsverein saga, or “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms”. Going by my latest chapter outline revision I’m about halfway through volume two, although as complications and side-stories develop, this is guaranteed to expand to epic proportions, so to say. There are just so many interesting people, and fascinating scenes, dramatic and historic events; a kid in a candy store has nothing on me! Of course, I can’t help writing about them, I tell stories, it’s what I am driven to do. I just completed a tension-filled account of the local Confederate provost-marshal’s men searching a house for a draft-evader… on Christmas Eve… the searchers being unaware that the man they are looking for is dressed as Father Christmas. (In the parlor, with his family… and everyone who knows what is going on is frantically pretending that nothing is the least bit out of place.)

But three volumes of about twenty chapters each… and my chapters seem to clock in at 6,500 to 7,000 words each… that will mean 400,000 words.

So, back to slaving over the hot computer keyboard…

Later: Just realized upon consulting the archives, that today is exactly one year to the date that I was fired from (Boring Corporate Entity Inserted Here) and decided to try for that “best-selling writer brass-ring-thingy”! With the very book that is about to be launched upon a hopefully breathlessly-anticipating world. So, I have way to go to beat out that Harry Potter book… still, funny old world, innt it?

I Love the Smell of Bovine Excreta in the Morning

20. July 2007 · Comments Off on I Love the Smell of Bovine Excreta in the Morning · Categories: Cry Wolf, General, GWOT, Iraq, Rant, sarcasm, War

I am following the latest milblog kerfuffle-du-jour with mild and expectant interest, and with absolute confidence that Mr. Foer of the New Republic was sold a bill of tainted goods as regards the charming reminiscences of one “Scott Thomas” and his service in Iraq. There is such a whiff of improbability about elements in the “Shock Troops” story, as if they were all proceeded by the statement, “No s**t, this really happened to this dude that this other guy told me about”!

But… severely burned and maimed woman survivor of an IED explosion being driven out of the dining facility by crude mockery? (And no one remembers this woman, or the incident, or stepped in to stop it?) Never mind about what she was still doing at a forward base… or who she was. Nine out of ten, any woman tough enough to hang with the military long-time, as a service member or contractor is tough enough to not only kick ass but to serve said ass up on a silver salver with a tasteful sliver of carved tomato and a spring of parsley.

A soldier wearing a decaying child’s skull on top of his head… presumably under his cover or Kevlar for a considerable period? Taken from a mass grave that no one else ever heard about? And no one else notices… let alone comments on the smell? I’ve been out in the hills and encountered dead animals enough to know that decomposing flesh has a particularly memorable and piercing reek. No mention is made in “Scott Thomas” story of other soldiers barfing up their socks at encountering it full-strength and at length..

And a Bradley driver making a sport of running down dogs. Wary, fast-running street dogs. With a very noisy, slow-moving tracked vehicle, which affords limited driver vision and not much maneuverability. In an environment were anything off the side of the road might be a hidden IED. Yep, sure… pull the other leg, sport, that one has bells on it.

Mind you, I am not insisting that soldiers are incapable of being crude, cruel or immune to the allure of gallows humor. I have quite good recall, as does my daughter, of many incidents in our own service, that if repeated, bald and unadorned would not reflect particularly well on anyone involved. But such stories would be congruent in details and with technical authenticity, and in a psychologically realistic fashion… and we both would be able to supply names, approximate dates, locations, units… all that stuff. Nothing happens in a vacuum in the military, as I have noted before. There are always other eyes. Perhaps the editors of NR are still unconscious of this… and a little too apt to throw themselves on a narrative which confirms their basic beliefs about the military and/or the war in Iraq. It’s not like this hasn’t happened before, (Jesse McBeth, anyone?) and no less a journalistic luminary like Sy Hersh has been cleaning up on the lecture circuit for years on material as revolting as it is thoroughly sanitized of confirmable detail. Winter Soldier, Redoux, indeed.

So… just another fabulist encountering a credulous reporter or publisher? Perhaps. Or, maybe a soldier playing the old game of “gross out the civilian”, or even “Let’s see how much incredible s**t we can get this poor sap to believe” for his own amusement… which would be my guess. There is a sucker born every minute, as the saying goes. Unfortunately too damn many of them are now working for the legacy media.

Once more into the breech, my milblogger friends; putting this kind of story under a microscope is a necessary, if unpleasant chore. Sort of like taking out the garbage to the curb. Has to be done, regularly, otherwise the house becomes unbearable. Allowing narratives like this to go unchallenged is to let our friends, our children, or our comrades to be depicted falsely in the legacy media hive-mind… as falsely as Vietnam veterans were painted for years as drug-abusing, baby-murdering, unstable misfits and freaks.

And if you give a miss to this one, don’t worry. I am sure that there’ll be another one, bubbling up to the top of the media hive-mind; just as thinly sourced, just as revolting, and just as debunkable.

Another thread here, with nice graphic!

Carnival of Space #12: Galactic Extra Edition

18. July 2007 · Comments Off on Carnival of Space #12: Galactic Extra Edition · Categories: General

Flying Singer is hosting Carnival of Space #12: Galactic Extra Edition.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Committee of Vigilance

18. July 2007 · Comments Off on Committee of Vigilance · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West

California in the Gold Rush era was by all accounts a wild and woolly place for a good few years after discovery of gold, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Until that moment in 1848 when John Marshall found gold in a mill-race under construction at Coloma, California had dreamed away the decades as first a Spanish and then a Mexican colony, remote from practically everything, lightly settled, and with a small economy based on cattle ranching… not for beef, in those days before refrigeration and the railway, but rather for their hides. Yerba Buena , which would soon be renamed San Francisco was a sleepy little village of at most about 800 residents.

But in the blink of an eye, historically speaking, everything changed. The world rushed in, both in a matter of speaking, and literally. By 1851 some estimates put 25,000 people in and around San Francisco; those seeking gold and those seeking to make a living in various ways from those seeking gold. For a few mad months and years, even otherwise respectable and responsible citizens were more interested in gold than in attending to civic affairs. This was not at first much of a problem. Most gold-seekers, or Argonauts as they were called, were basically inclined to be law-abiding… even in the absence of heavy law-enforcing authorities.

But there was a minority amongst them who were not so inclined. In the absence of enthusiastic law enforcement, or even any law enforcement at all, they settled down to enjoy that happy (to them) situation to the fullest, forming a loosely-knit gang called the “Hounds”, which mainly targeted the non-Anglo, Hispanic miners and merchants, principally Mexicans and Chileans for bullying and general extortion. When a riot by the Hounds resulted in the destruction a part of town called “Chiletown” on the slopes of Telegraph Hill, a coalition of businessmen headed by long-time resident Sam Brannon concluded that up with this situation they would not put. They established a tribunal to housebreak the “Hounds”, arresting and punishing or exiling the gang leaders. Almost as an afterthought they also established a police department, charging a recently arrived Argonaut named Malachi Fallon with establishing a police department. Fallon had some tenuous connection with police business in New York City, in that he had been a prison-keep at the Toombs. On the strength of that sketchy resume, he went to work, establishing a force of about thirty constables operating from a single flimsy building.

Thirty police officers pitted against a shifting population of over 25,000 did about what could have been expected; at best, well-intentioned but ineffectual. Given that most of those 25,000 were young males, from a hundred different nations, hungry for adventure, riches and strong drink, touchy about personal honor and mostly well-armed… Malachi Fallon’s little band would have had as much luck emptying the Bay with a teacup as they did of keeping order. When crime eventually began to surge again, it was whispered that the police force was in cahoots with the criminal elements. Whether it was corruption or incompetence, the solid and law-abiding citizens were long out of patience by 1856 and not feeling inclined to debate the difference. Another committee of vigilance was formed, and when all the shouting was done, San Francisco had a reputation for being a place where lawbreaking was not tolerated. For long, anyway. And so it was, all across the West, especially in the mining towns, in the early years, when towns sprang up like mushrooms, practically overnight.

The people who lived in them would have law, and security of their homes, their persons and their possessions. They would demand it of the governments they instituted for themselves. And if those governments could, or would not deliver it, for whatever reason, the citizens would go and deliver it for themselves, however ham-fistedly.

Pass on the desert, but thanks

18. July 2007 · Comments Off on Pass on the desert, but thanks · Categories: General

Dava Newman and Jeff Hoffman from MIT are working on an old concept – using mechanical counter-pressure to maintain integrity in a pressure suit.

This will do wonders to promote good eating habits in space. Hard to hide a middle-age seat spread in that rig.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Trial by Media

18. July 2007 · Comments Off on Trial by Media · Categories: General

Sometimes it’s hard for me to remember the fundamental premise of American law – that we are innocent until proven guilty. Oh, I remember it well enough when it’s someone I like being accused of something, but if it’s someone I don’t like, then as soon as I hear of an indictment, I want to jump on the bandwagon, yelling “Crucify him/her!”

Sometimes the crime is so disgusting that even if I have no opinion of the person involved, I start dreaming up punishment before the trial has even begun.

The newest example of that, for me, is Michael Vick. Apparently, he plays for the Atlanta Falcons (I don’t follow sports, so he means nothing to me), and has a large home in Virginia. Earlier this year, a relative of his was arrested for holding dog-fights on the VA property. Vick swore up and down he was not involved, that his relative lived on the property, not him, etc.

Well, last night on the news, one of the big stories was that Michael Vick has been indicted for dog-fighting. The indictment is more detailed than that – conspiracy, illegal gambling, taking fighting dogs across state lines, etc.

On the news, they showed the dog pens with the pit-bull-looking dogs, and they talked about the methods used when the dogs who weren’t good enough to fight were put down.

Let’s just say they were NOT humanely euthanised.

I had to change the channel – what I heard described in the news story was every bit as offensive to me as the reports of Saddam Hussein’s human shredders. I’m certain you can find the details online if you want.

I was SO angry last night – all I wanted to do was treat Vick the same way those dogs were treated.

But you know what? Technically, he’s innocent, no matter what I might think, no matter how disgusted I am by what has happened, until there is a trial and he’s convicted (if he is), he’s innocent.

But to watch the news story last night, he might as well have already been convicted. Why is that?

Welcome to the Future, Mr. Andreessen

16. July 2007 · Comments Off on Welcome to the Future, Mr. Andreessen · Categories: General

Andreessen is a bright guy and I’m happy he’s paying attention to press releases from the Air Force

I’m very happy for the Air Force pilots who will no longer have to risk their lives, and can go home every night to their families.

I’m very concerned that we will be able to declare air war without any concern for consequences other than loss of military hardware.

but he’s never read Fehrenbach’s This Kind of War

“You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life, But if you desire to defend it, protect it, and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men into the mud.”

Drones don’t allow us the comfort of push-button warfare – nothing will. It ain’t about sleeping at home with the wife and kids, it’s about being a more effective fighting force.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

YouTube Activism

15. July 2007 · Comments Off on YouTube Activism · Categories: General

It bothers me that YouTube hosts trash like this (warning – graphic content).

I identify with the guys on the receiving end, I can easily picture my step-son there and .. damnit I may not like the campaign in Iraq very much but those are our guys over there.

I know what I don’t want. I don’t want the State to reach out and tell YouTube to stop it. Censorship worked in 1943 – but this ain’t 1943 and this isn’t that war – censorship isn’t the optimal path. But the appropriate verbage 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.

Looks like it’s down to an informed private citizenry. And hey look here is a guy with an idea ..

1. Log into YouTube and run a search. Any of the following key words will land you in the right spot: IED, Jihad, Death to Israel, Islamic Republic of Iraq, etc. You won’t have any trouble finding them; they are legion.
2. Open the jihadist video, then click the icon that says “Flag as inappropriate.” Use the drop down menu and click on “hate speech.”
3. This last step is going to take a great deal of self-control. You’re going to see a lot of comments cheering on the terrorists as they blow up American and allied soldiers. Don’t answer these comments directly. We want your comment directed at YouTube management. Something like: “This video aids and abets our enemies in time of war and should be deleted” will be sufficient.

I like it because the approach echoes Flight 93 – the only thing that worked on 9/11 was an informed citizenry.

Waiting around for the government to save you is to be a bystander in your own life.

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

Via.

Interesting Thought

15. July 2007 · Comments Off on Interesting Thought · Categories: General, Home Front, Politics, World

Found at random, though Chicago Boyz…
All we need is time.

If we have time, of course.

Hearts and Minds

15. July 2007 · Comments Off on Hearts and Minds · Categories: General

By chance happened across this YouTube post called ‘Afghan: Other War LAV3Strykers Ruin Effort 1, which is a clip from a PBS special.

The poster obviously has a thing against wheeled fighting vehicles but apart from that what struck me was that the guy in charge of the overall NATO effort in Afghanistan, General David Richards, made no effort to speak the local language during an opening of a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT).

He’s speaking at a crowd of local notables. Some of whom can mutter a bit of English, others might or might not understand it – that’s not the point. The point is that the guy in charge is doing a speaking thing, being nuanced and all as if he’s talking to the Rotary and is making no effort at all to speak to the locals, and is instead speaking at them.

I have no doubt he had an interpretor. I have no doubt that when the head cheese makes an effort to speak the local language can have a positive, nay, electrifying effect.

…

I had a very minor and completely non-essential role with JTF Sea Angel. My job was to rush as quickly as possible to the CP from Okinawa and explain to the S1/G1 team how to read the manuals and build a personal database. Once I got THAT out of the way I stood radio watch (as messenger because I wasn’t qualified to  touch the radio), and fixed a few computer problems. It was like being on vacation except I could not go anywhere, the bugs were huge and plentiful, the food ‘meh’ and I wasn’t on vacation. Oh and the water in the shower would kill you if you ingested any.

At any rate the day before flew home* we were all treated to dinner at the Bangladeshi Army Officer’s Club. Speeches were given, by some Bangli flag officers and civilians, in English and Bengali. The American ambassador gave a speech, duly translated into Bengali by a translator. Then LGen Stackpole** stood to give the last speech of the evening.

Now – we liked the guy well enough. He cruised through the CP once a day or so, was the thoughtful boss and not at all a screamer. His Bengali Army MP*** detachment that followed him around seemed impressed by him as well.

Stackpole opened his mouth to speak .. and gave a twenty-minute oration. In Bengali. Which was spoke well enough that the Bengalis gave him a standing ovation at the end. I doubt any of them present have forgotten, I have no doubt if there is any good will generated from JTF Sea Angel it was improved by that single speech.

That is how the head cheese wins hearts and minds in a strange land far from home.

Cross Posted to The Daily Brief.

* The mood the week we were packing up and flying out was summed up nicely by a banner hung in the Operations Office: “We’re done, Sir. Can we go home now?”

** Semper Fi!

*** They called themselves MPs but their demeanor reminded me of Colonel Hammer’s ‘White Mice’. Nice guys for all that – they let us fondle their AK-47s and were openly envious over our foot gear. I paid, out of pocket, more for my jungle boots than they made per month.

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