… to send up prayers, warm thoughts, white light… whatever your preferred methodology… for a missing US Soldier, presumed kidnapped in Iraq.
The Army has not identified the soldier, who works as a translator.
So, our local public television station finally got around to airing the first episode of this Masterpiece Theater drama, and Blondie and I taped it, and saved to watch on a night when there is nothing, but nothing intelligent on.
Just as they were about to reveal the nature of the parsons’ unsavory adventure in the fo’c’sle, I burst out laughing and said to Blondie “Oh my gawd, it’s “Buggery on the Bounty”!
Fortunately, she does know who Cheech and Chong are… anyone else remember that skit?
And as long as I am into low humor, I have to re-post these re-makes of romance novel covers. You’re welcome, I live to serve.
I bought the low end MacBook Pro just because I wanted the extra pixel real estate and video card but with only 512 Megs of RAM. Why? Because I bought two 1 Gig sticks online and installed them myself, and I saved almost $300.00! I realize Mac techs think highly of themselves, but come ON. $300.00? It was simply a matter of removing the battery, unscrewing three of the the smallest phillips head screws I’ve seen outside of a pair of eyeglasses, which is a hint for those of you who are going to do this yourself. Take out the 512 stick…which will fit nicely…somewhere…and then install the 2 sticks. Hwalla! 300 bucks in my pocket.
Frequent commentor John may wonder why I didn’t wait for the Core 2 Duo vs the Duo Core. Simple. I can afford this now and I have no idea how much they’re going to raise prices on the new ones. This works, I’m good, beautiful wife isn’t upset about the cost of this toy.
Okay, first impressions. As always, the packaging for all things Mac rocks. A lot of thought goes into it. There’s an elegance to the packaging that says, “This is going to be cool.” Even at the Apple Retail Stores, have you seen the bags they put your stuff in? It’s a plastic backpack! Even their bags are functional! Okay, I’ll stop. On the flip side of the store, the checkout clerk is NOT a conceirge, okay? They’re checkout clerks!
Open the box, take out the computer. Figure out the power cord because…it’s a bit different but it’s very cool. Plug it in, open it up, turn it on. English please. My name. My address. Yes I do. No I don’t. Why yes, that is my home wireless network, please connect to it, enter password. Do I have a dot Mac account or did I purchase a dot Mac box? Why yes, yes I did. Authenticate. Coolness. New email. Your welcome.
It’s thinner and lighter than my Toshiba. It starts MUCH faster. It opens applications MUCH faster. Web pages seem to FLY open. Even kludgey graphic heavy ones. I’m smiling.
Now all I have to do is read the two books I bought at the Apple Store today to figure out what the hell I’m doing and how everything works. That should take all of…hmmm, two weeks?
UPDATE: ARGH!!!!!!
Oh well, that’s what I get for thinkin’.
Chuckle…giggle…snort…BWWAAAHHHAHHHHA!
I thought it was funny, but then I think Osbert Lancaster is funny, too.
Link courtesy of Daniel Drezner.
When I was a child, someone gave my sister a boxed book-set. I was the reader in the family, and I devoured them. They were hard-cover selections of Readers’ Digest articles. Each book had a theme (Courage, Endeavour, and two others that escape me, just now). In one of them, I read for the first time of the Hungarian Revolution. I don’t think that was ever covered in any history class I took throughout my 17 years of schooling (my history classes rarely made it to WWII by the end of the school year).
This morning, I opened up my link to the Opinion-Journal online, and the first title in their content list is The Hungarian Revolution: impotent, poignant, personal.
My generation had the Tiananmen Square Protest. But fifty years ago today, it was the Hungarian Revolution. And like Tiananmen Square, it was doomed.
Oh, it didn’t seem doomed, at first. The entire city of Budapest seemed to fill the streets, the public square. 8-12 hours they stood there, chanting, stamping their feet, clapping. They wanted the Russians to go home, the Soviet star on the parliament to be turned off. The star was darkened, but the Russians didn’t go home.
For 13 days, the Revolution progressed. The first Soviet tanks abandoned their orders, and joined the people. Imre Nagy, the Hungarian leader, said Hungary wanted to leave the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet Union announced in Pravda that it was considering entering into negotiations “…on the question of the presence of Soviet troops on the territory of Hungary.” (source) The same day the article was published, Oct 31, the Soviets decided the needed to respond more strongly, and moved more tank units into the region.
By Nov 7, it was over. The Soviets installed a new Prime Minister, and promised safe passage to Nagy, who had sought refuge in the Yugoslavian Embassy. When Nagy left the Embassy, he was arrested and taken to Romania, where he was eventually tried for treason.
Remember them today… those heroes of yesterday, whose blood ran in the streets of their hometown.
Remember them, and their courage, and honor their memory.
“October 23, 1956, is a day that will live forever in the annals of free men and nations. It was a day of courage, conscience and triumph. No other day since history began has shown more clearly the eternal unquenchability of man’s desire to be free, whatever the odds against success, whatever the sacrifice required.”
– John F. Kennedy, on the first anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution.
To: CNN News Director
From: Sgt. Mom
Re: Jihadi Sniper Video Broadcast
1. I am resisting the impulse to install viciously skeptical quote marks around the “Broadcast Standards” portion of the title to this post, mostly as it screws up the formatting and ability to post comments. So, consider them installed, as an indicator of my own viciously skeptical attitude towards your “broadcast standards” in airing selected portions of the snuff video provided to your news department through undeniably murky channels.
2. And good job on bringing jihadi death porn to a greater audience. Carrying the bag for propagandists is in the finest journalistic tradition of a Walter Duranty, and exactly what we have come to expect of an organization that kept quiet about Saddam Hussein’s regime rather than lose the CNN bureau in Baghdad.
3. Congratulations also on continuing in the fine “journalistic” tradition established by Peter Jennings and Mike Wallace in that long-ago broadcast of “Ethics in America” where in the immortal words of James Fallows: “Wallace seemed unembarrassed about feeling no connection to the soldiers in his country’s army or considering their deaths before his eyes “simply a story.”
4. Enlighten us: Is it more, less, or equally scummy to imbed one of your own reporters with the enemy and video American soldiers being ambushed and gunned down… or just to buy the video from the Al-Quaeda camera jockeys?
5. Realizing that CNN is engaged with the wider world audience, as opposed to merely and only us hopelessly tacky and déclassé Americans, I can only suppose whoever authorized airing the jihadi sniper video spent a whole three or four seconds considering the feelings of the families of those service personnel, and their comrades who are shown being targeted. That delicacy on your part is much appreciated. However, the next CNN crew to visit an US military base in pursuit of a story may receive a somewhat frosty reception.
Sincerely
Sgt Mom
My computer, upon which I am now depending upon more than practically every other non-living thing in my life besides air conditioning… inexplicably crashed on Thursday night.
It is fixed now, mostly because the local computer consultant/expert/wonder-worker who sold it to me originally, and to whom I have steered a lot of business, made a house call and sorted it all out, knowing how much depends upon this, now that I am trying to work the free-lance writing thing, and writing for this site and for Blogger News Network. Besides my (miniscule pension) and a pittance for working at the radio station on Saturdays, that is my only income.
He also fixed the wireless modem that allows Blondie to use her laptop, had a stab at sorting out what has been wrong with my printer, swapped over all my important files to the newer, faster computer with more memory that he had sold to the office which closed down last year and which my employer generously gave to me. (There were two other computers in the office, like how many others did my former employer really need?)
He took my old computer in swap for an hour of work, but I still will owe him for a good chunk of time, although he is in no hurry for payment… which is good, because I cannot afford it. The just-completed book sits on the agents’ desk, and a lot of other proposed work has been sent to various pubishers. I have a promise of income from it, someday…. but I need to pay the computer expert soon.
So, I am blegging for small donations to pay for this work and to keep my internet connection. We were doing OK, but this has us stretching our resources to the snapping point.
Paypal is fine… e-mail me for particulars… and my thanks.
Thanks to the new downsizing “Force Shaping” measures, it looks like I’m back to retiring from the Air Force next year, as originally planned.
I know I’ve made “jokes” about why I’m retiring but tonight I’m thinking more about the truth of the matter.
The truth ladies and gentlemen is that I’m in the way. No, I’m not sinking into some sort of dark place, I’m facing reality.
Reality: I joined the Air Force late and I’m 22 years into it and I’m 45 years old. I’m as old as most Colonels. I’m older than some Chiefs. My generation, my year group of folks is almost entirely retired. I’m feeling not alone, but lonely. There just aren’t that many folks my age in the Air Force anymore. I was at a symposium a couple of weeks ago with about 100 other Master Sergeants and I just didn’t feel like I fit in. That had a lot to do with age and the Class A type of folks who typically take this seminar.
Reality: If I’m going to make Senior, I’ve got at least another year and a half of rehabbling my file to make a decent board score. Look, I’m having fun being part of the booster club and being part of a Top 3 that’s really involved with helping the younger folks, but I’m just not willing to suck certain Chief’s schwing-stick or kiss another Chief’s butt to make sure my file rises to the top. I would love to maintain the illusion that the Senior or Chief’s board is based completely on a stratified system of filling in the right events in the right order. I’d be lying to you and myself if I ignored the fact that Chief’s talk amoungst themselves.
Reality: I simply can’t hack the new PT Standard. Because of past abuses and some genetics, I’ve got a blood pressure problem and a cholesterol problem. My feet, ankles, knees and lower back, simply don’t tolerate high impact aerobics any more. All of this is in no small part to continuing to doing things I shouldn’t have done and not doing other things that I should have done. Bottom line, I should be doing Tai Chi, Yoga, vigorous walking or low impact Cross-Training, and not Tae Kwon Do and pounding pavement. I’m all for service before self. I’m done hurting myself though.
Reality: The Air Force is changing…again. When I came in, we didn’t think, we KNEW that we were going to one day go head to head with the Soviets. My generation was pretty darn sure that we’d have to pick up an M16 to protect a base long enough to get the planes off the groud and then figure out how the hell to get out of Dodge…or not. In the 90s we were mostly thinking we might have to spank the Chinese around a bit or eventually get around to Iraq or Iran, but all that would be done from a distance or a secure forward deployed location. They told us and told us and told us that they wanted our brains, they wanted our technical skills. Today we want smart jocks, not nerds. It’s not enough to be proficient at your job, once again we’re expected to be warriors. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point in the past few years, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m simply not a warrior. I don’t belong in a war zone. I would be a hinderance. I’m more worried about what my life means to my family and friends than I am about convoys or other NCOs or Airmen around me. Believe me, that hurts to admit, but on the other hand, I know it’s kind of normal. I also don’t have the nervous system I used to. Simple crap startles me. Boyo, my Ninja son, has managed to jump start my heart on more than one ocaission in the past few months. If my body follows the route of my Dad and sister, this is not going to get better in the next couple of years.
Reality: I’m becoming more jaded and cynical and I’m having a harder time keeping my mouth shut in front of the younger folks. I’m saying things out loud that I should keep to myself and other Senior NCOs. I’m close to becoming one of those old, cranky, bitter bastards that I can’t stand. I still have my sense of humor, so I haven’t crossed the line…yet…but I can see it coming.
Reality: I don’t see how the hell the Air Force is going to maintain it’s mission with the current round of personnel cuts. That’s a problem. I don’t see a solution. It’s time for me to get out of the way so folks who can see a way, can take my spot and get it done. I’ve managed to keep the dam plugged so far, but they’re temporary solutions to problems that are going to get worse instead of better.
And finally, I understand what the word weary means. I’m weary. I need to quit doing this before I turn into one of those guys that retires and has a heart attack six weeks after he walks out the door.
I’ve seen this one in a few places so I googled it and got this article. I’m sure you can find more.
Stanford study explores web of Internet addiction
Six to 14 percent of computer users may be afflicted, researchers sayBy Lisa M. Krieger, MEDIANEWS STAFF
Article Last Updated:10/20/2006 02:45:11 AM PDTLike a roll of dice or a sip of bourbon, the glow of the computer screen has an irresistible and dangerous allure to many people, according to a new nationwide study by Stanford University.
A random survey of 2,500 adults — the first-ever attempt to quantify “Internet addiction” in the general population — found 6 to 14 percent of computer users said they spent too many bleary-eyed hours checking e-mail, making blog entries or visiting Web sites or chat rooms, neglecting work, school, families, food and sleep.
The Stanford team, led by psychiatrist Elias Aboujaoude, isn’t worried about folks who spend their lunch hours cruising travel sites for a summer vacation in Tuscany.
Knowing a bit about addiction from both the counselor and addict perspective, I think we’re talking a different beast here. Are these people addicted to the internet or are they simply communicating using the technology available? Are people who stay up late at the diner having coffee with their friends addicted to diners? And yes, I recognize the “symptom” of neglecting other areas of their life, but still, I think there’s something different going on here.
How many folks are walking around with a perpetual blue-tooth attached to their head? How many folks do you see on their cell phone alllll the time?
We’re connected in ways we never dreamed of. Is that good? Is that bad? Is it healthy? We’re still dealing with the changes.
I’m getting to the point where I only check my email a couple of times a day at work. Why? I get a hell of a lot more done. I used to be one of those guys who reacted every time a new mail bing-bong went off. I turned off the new mail sound. Also, I don’t have my cell phone turned on when I’m at home or in my office. Why? I have phones there. If you need me and can’t get ahold of me at work or at home, THEN you should call my cell phone. This seems to annoy and baffle people. Why don’t you just use your cell all the time? I do, when I make calls. The phone book is just too convenient not to. But I don’t take calls on it all that often because…I have phones in my office and at home.
At some point, I have to understand that technology is for MY convenience. I’m not a slave to the machine, it’s a slave to me.
So, now that Blondie and I are supporting a houseful of critters… some of whom interact agreeably with each other, and some others of whom maintain a guarded distance and a policy of non-recognition, and one who spits and snarls in a most hostile manner… we have noticed a rather odd thing. And that is that the two dogs and the two most recent cats have definitely formed affectionate and loyal same-sex unions. (Although one of the gay cats will frequently enjoy a vigorous frolic with one of the lesbian dogs. Wow. That sentence alone should get any number of hits from perverts looking for bizarre porn… yes, I meant you. Zip up your fly and wash your hands.) Yep, and in Texas, too… which ought to completely wig out all those who only know of Texas as Redneckville Central.
OK, so I started back in the mists of time, with a cat, one single cat, way before I had even heard of blogging, although I was aware of that internet thingummy-jig. Said singular cat was the last survivor and the only consistent member of a constantly mutating herd that lived with us overseas. We brought Patchie and her oldest son back to the States with us, the son ran away from my parents’ house while I was in Korea, we came to Texas with Patchie (the queen Elizabeth of cats) where she died of old age and diabetes and I swore that it would be a while before I had another cat, as she had become very high-maintenance in her dotage.
That vow lasted approximately two days; I took in Henry VIII, his littermate Morgie and his little brother Little Arthur over the summer of 1998. Eventually, I began feeding a couple of neighbors’ cats who preferred my garden to their own yards, and tamed a shy little grey catling named Percival… OK, so that makes four cats of the First Degree, although poor little Percy was very much on the outs for a long while with the other three. They regarded him contemptuously, rather like the popular high school kids treat the little, nerdy kid. “Ugh… you lameoid… You’re still here?” He has overlapping teeth; Blondie calls him “the snaggle-toothed wampire-kitty”. But they all rather grumpily adjusted, and then Sammy, the white cat from across the road fell head over paws in love with Blondie, and insisted on staying at our place rather than theirs, and survived being sideswiped by a car whilst crossing the road to get back to our place… well, that was a mark of his devotion. When they moved, he stayed, and officially he became Blondie’s cat. She thinks he is a flame-point Siamese, as he looks like a white cat washed with insufficient bleach, or an orange cat washed with too much. Whatever, he has deeply crossed and near-sighted blue eyes, and hirples around on three legs, holding one front leg up close against his body. Nerve damage, said the veterinarian, although he manages quite nicely, and Blondie says she sometimes thinks she sees movement in that damaged paw.
Since the dogs arrived, the original trio of Henry, Morgie and Arthur prefers Blondie’s room. Sammy and Percival, perversely enough, don’t mind the Lesser Weevil and Spike very much, and spend the long hard hours of a cats’ day and night sleeping on my bed. Curled up together, occasionally waking to wash each others’ ears with attention and deep devotion… oh, yes, they are a matched pair. When Blondie has her own place for Sammy, Percy shall go with them, which I will regret, but I know deep and abiding affection when I see it.
Sammy and Percival like the dogs, and are the only two who play with them, although they tend to favor playing with Spike more than Weevil, since she is so large and intimidating, a sort of canine Xena-Warrior-Princess. Spike is more or less their own size, and Percival does not seem to have any objection to being pinned down by Spike to have his own ears vigorously laved, or to have a good interspecies wrestle. (Sammy only puts up with a little of this.) Percival gives a good account of himself on these occasions; it’s usually a draw.
Now, with Spike and Weevil matches, it would be Weevil all day and all the time, if she didn’t choose to pull her punches. She is a sixty-pound boxer/whatever mix, and at her best and dripping wet, Spike is about ten pounds of dwarf shih-Tzu. On the occasion of their first encounter, Weevil planted one of her great boxer paws squarely on Spike, who yelped heartrendingly… she was only a baby. It hadn’t worked out with the original owner who had taken her home from the kennel from which she was bred, and when Blondie brought her to my house, she was as clingy as an abandoned toddler, and ready to attach. And so she did, to me and to the Weevil, who after that first rather rocky evening, has fondly indulged Spike as if she were a puppy, and allowed her to scramble all over her, and chew on her ears and jowls, without offering any more than token resistance. Funny as hell to watch Spike climb on top of Weevil, and try and rough her up, knowing that Weevil could, if she wanted to, snap Spike’s neck without breaking a sweat. Oh, yeah, they are such a pair. Should anyone ever break into my house in the middle of the night, I will be so protected. I think.
My initial reaction upon reading Timmer’s post in re. switching to Apple was to discount the post and what I assumed would be numerous polarized comments. The axiom was established in my mind years ago that I am a Wintel guy (starting with an IBM 5150 PC in 1984 – two floppies and no hard drive). It was even more firmly established when my sister got an Apple several years ago and I made a derisive comment regarding the one button mouse, which resulted in what I believed to be a completely asymmetric response on her part – my first exposure to the passion of Apple users (she was equally defensive during her period as a Mormon – interestingly, she is no longer a Mormon and now owns an HP laptop).
But it did get me to thinking. The business world will always, at least in my lifetime, be Wintel – too many legacy programs and files along with an inherent mistrust of Mac Guy and his ilk on the part of management. At home though, the whole raison d’être of owning a computer is changing – and no matter how much Microsoft tries, they are not making it any easier. I now download lots of music both from download sites and from streaming on-line content, and I expect to do the same with video going forward. Is it going to really get that much easier with Vista? Maybe, but Apple seems to have a considerable head start in the intuitive ease-of-use department (although I still don’t get the single button mouse thing).
And then there are my home IT manager responsibilities. Real Wife has a pretty good handle on how not to make my life miserable (don’t change ANY settings, don’t install ANY software without my approval, etc.). Then there’s Red Haired Girl, whose ministrations would kill – not crash, but kill – PC Guy within seconds. Despite the best efforts of Norton Internet Security and my constant chiding about don’t do this and don’t do that, her computer has become a completely unstable virus ridden wreck. Moreover, she is fascinated with constantly changing display and other settings, resulting in entire range of other problems.
For the past six months her computer is unable to maintain a wireless connection for more than two or three minutes at a time. It isn’t the adapter because I’ve swapped it with real Wife’s and the problem stays. It isn’t location because a) the location and surrounding environment hasn’t changed in the two years I’ve had a wireless network, and b) it is actually much closer to the router than Real Wife’s, which works great. Compounding the problem is that she and her friends have discovered Instant Messaging, so now she is a squatter on Real Wife’s computer – bringing all of her Typhoid Mary tendencies with her. Last night she asked if she could install some other messaging software on her mom’s computer. I said no, she said too late. I checked said computer and lo and behold there was a warning screen for the Norton software informing me that a program was attempting to change the home page.
While uninstalling everything that looked suspicious (and listening to wife and daughter complaining – from different points of view), my mind wandered back to Timmer’s post.
Next stop – the Apple web site. I was kind of blown away by the newest Apple Mac Mini. It looks like it could do everything that RHG would want to do, and the size is awesome (6.5″x6.5″x2″). My sense is that I could turn her loose on one of those and not lose so much sleep over trying to figure out if the latest debilitating problem is a) a virus/Trojan horse/worm, b) something she did to Windows, or c) a genuine malfunction caused by i) a Windows bug, or ii) hardware. Yes, life would be good.
At $599 it seems reasonably priced (for an Apple) and it has a real high “cool” coefficient (important at her age – she is still dinging at me because the mp3 player she got last Christmas is clunky compared to an iPod), but I am concerned about all of her existing software. Does anyone out there know anything about Windows emulation software? In particular, she has an extensive collection of Sims software (a whole other thing I don’t get, although from what she tells me it is a great way to vicariously f*** with people). Also, is the included iworks at all useful for word processing and can the files be read and edited in a Windows environment? And what about freeware/shareware? Any other comments would be helpful. I don’t have to make an immediate decision – the plan all along was a new computer for her for Christmas.
If I go that route and it works out, I might even consider phasing in Apple replacements as the other computers are retired. I’ll likely keep a Wintel machine on the home net for running software that I cannot/will not replace and for work related stuff.
I can’t believe I am even considering this. On the other hand, I bought Apple shares two years ago at $22 and lost my nerve and sold at $25 (despite the chart, could I really trust a computer company that only built on-button mice). Had I taken a chill pill and hung on, I would be sitting on a gain of about 360% and a little closer to retirement. So, I’m gonna go home, don some jeans and a T-shirt (not tucked in) and just mellow out. I’ll probably pass on the O’Reilly factor tonight as well.
(Part 2 of an intermidable series about the 19th Century emigrant trail to California and Oregon. I have finished revisions to my initial draft of the book in which an agent is interested. I am filling in the time until I hear what he thinks of it all with this sort of thing. I’ll try and force myself to write something vicious and cogent about Korean Nukes or the upcoming election silly season, but I’m afraid my heart is really with this. Deal.)
There is a single photograph of the interior of a covered wagon in one of my reference books; but from the jumble of items within, I would guess it to be an emigrant wagon from a period rather later than the 1840ies. It seems to contain rather a jumble of furniture: an upholstered wing chair, a spinning wheel, a very elaborate trunk fitted out with a number of smaller drawers for silverware: the trunk is open, displaying a fine mid-Victorian assembly of knives and silverware. There are a couple of inlaid boxes— portable desks or sewing tables, what appears to be the head and footboard to a Jenny Lind bed, a butter churn and a lighted kerosene lantern hanging from the center, mid-peak of the inside. The series of hoops holding up the canvas cover is reinforced with a pair of horizontal lathes along the sides of the wagon, from which hang an number of articles of clothing; some dresses, a shirt, a baby’s dress and a couple of sunbonnets. This may be a wagon in which a family lived during their journey, late in the days of the emigrant trail. In this wagon interior, there is very little glimpse of what a typical emigrant wagon would have had to have carried in the opening days of the trails to Oregon and California, when the only possible means of re-supply along the way, other than hunting and gathering, were at Ft. Laramie and Ft. Hall.
The greatest part of the goods carried in a typical emigrant wagon was food. Assuming a six-month long journey, an early guidebook writer advised 200 lbs of flour, 150 pounds of bacon, 10 pounds of coffee, 20 of sugar and 10 of salt per each adult, at a minimum; a schedule providing a monotonous diet on variants of bread, bacon and coffee, three meals a day. More elaborate checklists afforded a little more variety, not to mention edibility, suggesting such things as dried, chipped beef, rice, tea, dried beans, molasses, dried codfish, dried fruit, baking soda, vinegar, cheese, cream of tarter, pickles, mustard, ginger, corn-meal, hard-tack, and well-smoked hams. Common sense suggests that all sorts of light-weight preserved foods and epicurian luxuries would have been included also, to ward off the boredom of bread/bacon/coffee. Canned food was a science still in the experimental stage then… and such things were expensive and heavy, and seldom included. A number of resourceful families brought along milk cows, and thus had milk and butter for at least the first half of the trail. Recommended kitchen gear included an iron cooking kettle, fry-pan, coffee pot, and tin camp plates, cups, spoons and forks, and considering that coffee featured a s a major food group, a coffee grinder. Small stoves were sometimes brought along, but more usually discarded as an unnecessary weight.
Prior to the great Gold Rush stampede over the trail in 1849, it was possible for those parties which included some experienced frontier hands to eke out their foodstuffs with hunting alongside the trail; buffalo, antelope, sage hen, and from gathering various berries and plums from thickets along the rivers, wild peas, wild onions, and various sorts of greens. Nutritional science may have been only dimly understood, but most emigrants (or at least their wives) had a good grasp on the prevention of scurvy, dysentery and other food related ailments.
Other necessary gear for the wagon itself: water barrels, chains, 100 feet of heavy rope, and spare parts to replace that which was most readily broken, such as tongues, kingbolts, axels and wheel spokes, although such added to the weight, and some emigrants preferred to take a chance on being able to find suitable wood to make a replacement along the trail. The wagon itself was too small for more than two adults or a couple of children to sleep comfortably in, so the overflow would need to be accommodated by a tent, and blankets spread out within them.
Since they would be on their own, as far as repairs of anything at all would be concerned, a veritable tool shop was advised: knives, a whetstone, ax, hammer, hatchet, shoves, saw, gimlet, scissors and sewing supplies to repair canvas and clothing, nails, tacks, thread, beeswax and tallow, twine, washbasins and water buckets. Some comforts were not omitted; candles and lanterns, patent medicines, extra clothing; most emigrants wore the same work clothes they would have worn for a day of work on the farm, or a day out hunting, and perhaps, tucked away in a small corner, some small cherished luxury, a favorite book or a bit of china. Men with a trade took the tools necessary to practice it. Every party also took arms and ammunition, although as it would turn out, most had much less use for them than they had expected.
And as it also turned out, even with all the preparations and supplies, a fair number of the early emigrants arrived in California or Oregon on foot, with little more than what they stood up in, thanks to the difficulties of the trail. Having eaten just about all of their food supplies, jettisoned the non-essential gear, lost their oxen and animals to bad water and the cruelties of the desert, and abandoned their wagons in the desert or high in the Sierras, or along the Snake River… they arrived in the place where they wished to be, carrying their children… and thought it had all been a fair exchange.
Later comment added from B. D. who’s comment kept being eaten:
“1) The way to make butter on the trail is to fasten a churn on the side of a wagon, just above a wheel. The jitters and jolts of an unsprung wagon churn butter admirably well.
Not surprisingly, many emigrants walked as they could.
2) Gunshot deaths on the trail were a side effect of hunting, because one never knew when an antelope would appear. Emigrants would load the rifle and hang it up within easy reach, and in regards to the above jolting… well, gunshot deaths on the trail were pretty common, and most of them were accidents.
The End of the Oregon Trail Center in Oregon City is a neat little place that is designed to look like three huge wagons— they can even take the canvas-like covers off in the winter. (Real roofs are below.) The opening presentation is quite nice, thouogh of a type that raised more questions than it answered (“Bullet wounds were the third most common type of death on the trail.” Yeah? What are #1 and #2?) The second bit is a multimedia presentation that my mother liked and I found exceptionally silly, as it read more like a propaganda film than, say, Ken Burns’ Civil War series. I highly recommend the place regardless, because its virtues overcome its faults, and I wish that other parts of the Trail had similar centers, each dealing with the specifics of life at that point. “
The average so-called “western” movie or television series only very rarely gives a true idea of what it must have been like to take to the emigrant trail in the 1840ies and 50ies. Most westerns are set in a time-period from the end of the Civil war to about 1885, an overwhelming proportion have a cattle-ranch setting, sometimes a setting in the wild and woolly mining camps. The popular culture vision of the “old west” tends to warp our imagining of the 19th century in general, in that it puts in place people and technologies that were just not there until well after the Civil War. The latter part of that century was already looking forward to what would become the twentieth, and to extend what we commonly accept as a given about the late 19th century backwards to previous decades is give a short shift to the vision and sheer stubborn courage of the 1840ies wagon train emigrants, and to underestimate considerably the challenges they would have faced.
In 1840, there is no telegraph system in the West, and would not be for a decade or so, for the system itself was still under development. Ocean-going vessels are powered by the force of wind in their sails. News and the mail travels at the speed of a horse, a canal boat, or maybe a steam boat on the navigable rivers, although there have been some limited rail beds built, and serviced by steam locomotives for about ten years. But all those are back east. There are factories, of course… most of them powered by watermills. Other than that, power is supplied by animals, or the backs of humans. The first half of the century for most Americans is more like the century before, than the century afterwards.
There are no vast cattle ranches in that West. Gold will not be discovered until the end of the decade. What wealth came out of the West in the early decades of that century came in the form of beaver pelts… but the fashions have changed, and by 1840 there is no demand for them. There is no mail service; messages travel erratically. There is hardly anything representing the Federal government west of the Mississippi, only the occasional Army-authorized exploring party, and an American consul in such outposts as Yerba Buena. It is a six-month long sea-voyage around the Horn to reach the western coast of the continent. There are a scattering of trading posts and Mexican pueblos between the Mississippi-Missouri and the Sierra Nevada, served by enterprising merchants and fur-trading combines. Great caravans leave every year, but they are commercial enterprises, and their trail lies across mostly open and mostly level country. Little that they know and practice can be made use of by an emigrant outfitting a wagon to follow the trail towards the Oregon settlements or to fabled California.
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I’m just curious. When I was a sophomore in college, I heard for the first time: “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
That’s always worked for me, and I’ve had some fascinating conversations over the past 25 years due to my willingness to let others share their differing points of view, without trying to convert them to mine. I’m curious as to what y’all think, or how you define it.
My curiosity stems from the Left’s constant assertions that the Right is strangling free speech (crushing dissent, etc), and the Right’s assertions of the same actions on the part of the Left.
For me, it was coming to my friend’s house where I’m house-sitting, after an afternoon working out of my own house, and as I’m pushing my way through the throng of dogs eager to welcome me home, looking down and seeing blood and skin on the face of one dog, instead of fur.
Greyhounds have notoriously thin skin, easily damaged. Somehow, Princess has a 3-cornered tear on the side of her nose, directly in front of her eye. Stitching isn’t really an option, becasue of its location. I’m confident it was inflicted by another of the hounds, but no idea which one, so they’re all muzzled now. I know which 3 it was *not,* because they were in the basement all afternoon. They’re muzzled too, though, just in case.
Princess is in the kitchen with me – her own little isolation ward. She’s had antibiotics, and a peroxide cleansing of the wound (she didn’t really care for that), and lots of treats. This is one of Dee’s dogs, not one of mine (Dee is my dog-sitter extraordinaire), and is probably 14 years old, if she’s a day. I’ll leave her in here tonight, safely away from the other hounds, with a soft bed, and lots of towels on the floor in case nature calls.
In the morning, she’ll be dropped at our wonderful vet’s on my way to my house to work (wonderful vet had been closed for half an hour already when I finally got back to Dee’s house after battling rush-hour traffic). Telephone consultation with Dee (she’s in CA visiting relatives) determined that the e-vet would do nothing for us except accrue a horrendous bill. Dee has lots of experience with doing first-aid on dogs – combination of a lifetime of owning dogs, and running an adoption kennel for almost 20 years. Dee also told me not to feel bad – these things happen, and she’s always expecting to see blood when she comes home from being gone for awhile. In her opinion, it happens when the pups are all going crazy waiting for her to come in the house after they hear the garage door open. They get excited, and bump into each other, and sometimes they’ll hit teeth or claws in their bumping. I’m thinking this was caused by a bite, and I have my suspicions about which dog did it, but there’s no way of knowing for sure.
Princess seems to be more or less content, lying on her bed with her head on the cool floor, looking for a way to lie that’s comfortable without hitting that side of her face.
Me? I’m thinking a beer sounds really really good, but I have a personal philosophy about *not* drinking when I think I “need” a drink, or I’ve “earned” a drink. Too many alcoholics in my family. So I’m sucking down bottled water instead. I’ll save the Blue Moon for tomorrow night.
Once upon a time in the west, there was a pleasant piece of land, of open meadows broken by stands of trees on the headwaters of the North Platte River by the foot of a range of dark hills, in the present state of Wyoming. A creek flowed into the North Platte, just there, where in the very early days of the North American fur trade a French-Canadian trapper named Jaques La Ramee was supposed to have been killed by hostile natives and his body thrown into it. So the little stream and the place where it joined the Platte became known as the Laramie River, and the confluence as the Laramie Fork, or in the alternate spelling of the era “Laremais’ Point”.
Those streams drained a rich and profitable area for trappers, and many of the mountain men, as the hunters and trappers of beaver pelts were called in the early 19th century were issued licenses to trap in the uplands and to trade their takings there. In 1834 a stockade fort built of logs was established there, by William Sublette… he and two other men in the founding party had the first name of William, and so the place was dubbed “Fort William”. It had not escaped Sublette’s attention that not only was the location on the route into the rich fur-trapping lands in the western mountains, but also on the trail south to Taos. A year later the interest in the newly-established trading post passed into the hands of the American Fur Company, later Pierre Chouteau & Co. Ft. William was described several years later as a quadrangle with block houses at diagonal corners, where Indians camped in great numbers, bringing animal skins to trade for cloth, tobacco, beads and alcohol… and where the whole enterprise came under the sniffy disapproval of various missionaries, even as what sketchy hospitality available was welcomed, somewhat grudgingly, I fancy.
Early in the 1840ies a rival trading establishment, Ft. Platte was constructed close by, and the competition in combination with the rotting of Ft. William’s stockade walls inspired Chouteau’s company to build a new adobe fort on higher ground, which the explorer John Fremont described as having more the air of a military construction: it was whitewashed adobe brick, with fifteen-foot tall walls, which formed a quadrangle entirely lined with houses. There were two entrances, the main one guarded by square towers loop-holed with firing positions. Most of the residents of the fort were described as French traders and their Sioux wives, for the Sioux tribes came to Laramie to trade and socialize. It was originally called Ft. John, but became known as Ft Laramie. Ft. Platte was described by Francis Parkman as being deserted in 1846, for by then the glory days of the fur brigades were over, and the days of the emigrant trains had begun with the Bidwell-Bartleson Party five years previous.
Every year after 1841, the wagons of emigrants on the Oregon Trail, and those who chose to take the turn-off to California at Fort. Hall, roughly three hundred miles or so farther west passed by the frontier trading station, coming thicker and faster. Every year there were more and more white-topped wagons splashing through the North Platte on the road from Council Bluffs which ran north of the Platte, or coming up the road that followed the south bank of the Platte from Ft. Kearny, from St. Joe, from Independence and Westport and the other “jumping-off” places along the Missouri River, until the tide of 49ers, seeking gold in the placer mines of California swept all the remnants of the sleepy-nine-months-of-the-year fur-trading station. It was bought by the Army in 1849. The adobe trader post, called “The Old Fort” formed the south edge of the fort parade ground, until demolition and replacement by officers’ quarters in 1870.
But until the deluge of the Gold Rush, it was a welcome outpost, marking one-third of the journey to the golden lands of California, or the rich farm country of Oregon, the gateway between the easy travel along the Platte, to the harsher challenge over the backbone of the Rockies, and the South Pass. Given the timetable of the seasons and the trail, an emigrant company should have reached the confluence of South Platte and Laramie Creek in late June, and might have, in earlier years camped among the skin lodges of the Sioux tribes among the cottonwoods and willow thickets below the whitewashed walls of Old Laramie, in uneasy amity with the Tribes. They might have expected to trade there, for pemmican and dried buffalo meat, for baskets and moccasins and Indian ponies, to look with expressions of pious horror, or genuine intellectual curiosity on Indian graves, air-buried on scaffolds in the trees, to meet and trade with the “Other” and then to continue on their own way, with a lot of mutual incomprehension; two wildly different tribes sliding past each other on the grease of commerce.
(The party that I have written a book about passed through Ft. Laramie in 1844. This is the first of a continuing series of meditations about the emigrant trails and the pre-Civil War Old West… a territory which is familiar to us is some ways, and yet totally unfamiliar.) BTW, I am still looking for an interested publisher. Yeah, there is one interested, but what’s the old saying about all one’s eggs in a single basket? Yeah, that one
A summer has passed with nary a blog from yours truly. And a busy one it has been. Although I have not had the time to actually sit and compose, I have taken in The Daily Brief on a, well, daily basis – or at least to the extent that I have been able to gain access to the Internet. Why is it that at Holiday Inn Express, you can get reliable wireless access at no additional charge, but at a Hilton (for $300 / night) you must pay an additional $9.95 per day for a connection that drops in and out like an old crystal radio tuned in to some far away station? My company recently equipped me with a Blackberry, which enables me to follow the blogs more easily (as long as there is Cingular service), however, I have not had any success to date using it to actually post anything – besides, they are a major pain in the a** to type on because, in the case of my particular model, most keys represent multiple characters
Anyway, my job has of late required more than normal travel, often with short notice. In the midst of that, Real wife, Red Haired Girl, and yours truly set off for north central New York to attend a family reunion. Although we usually take a plane or train, we decided this time to do a road trip. Loyal readers may recall that I bought Real Wife a new Jeep Grand Cherokee Ltd. (yes, with a Hemi) for our wedding anniversary. It is quite the ultimate highway cruiser, and we actually achieved 21 mpg on a couple of interstate stints, with the engine mostly cruising on just 4 cylinders. Put the pedal down though and it is Katie bar the door. Most inter-city driving is pretty calm – everyone getting into a groove and generally staying out of each other’s way. In the cut and thrust of beltway driving though, particularly around Indianapolis, 340+ horsepower (I installed a K&N reduced restriction air filter) is a useful thing to have. Mileage does take a hit – we saw 16.5 mpg in one stint. What the hell though, it was fun.
I mapped our trip to follow the old route 17 (now I-86) through the southern part of New York. It is normally one of the most scenic routes in the country – not this time though. We drove through nearly 200 miles of the worst rain I have seen in years, often at elevations of over 2000 feet where we were literally in the clouds. It finally stopped north of Elmira, but the rest of the week brought several new storms and near 100-degree temperatures.
Our reunion, held at my cousin’s house near Oswego, was interrupted by a brief but intense six-inch rainfall and winds high enough to knock out power to 30,000 people. The sky did clear and the party continued. There are twelve siblings in my mother’s family, close to fifty offspring in my generation, with well over a hundred of their kids of childbearing age – you get the message – a lot of people. I saw some relatives that I had not seen since probably 1970, and many others who I did not even recognize. The male members of the family can generally be identified by a) baldness and b) a neck size of at least 16 inches. Although a few of the female members can also be so-identified, the general tip off is red hair.
We did enjoy the local foods that I grew up on – salt potatoes, clams, Italian sausage and coneys. The term coney has different meanings depending on where you are. In central New York they are a white spicy hot dog, traditionally served at 117 year-old Heid’s in Liverpool (just north of Syracuse). We bought and froze 15 pounds of them to bring back to enjoy and share with deprived midwestern friends.
On our return trip we stopped at Niagara Falls and walked to Canada to get Hard Rock Café souvenirs. Red Haired Girl was in a particularly bad mood (generally because she is a teenager travelling with parents and specifically because she was – well, I don’t remember now). After lunch, we crossed back over to resume the trip. You actually have to pay twenty-five cents (Canadian, but they will take American) to leave their country. We did not have a birth certificate or picture ID for Red Haired Girl, which caused a problem at the border. Real Wife helpfully offered a Social Security card, with the agent responding that every illegal he has seen carries a Social Security card. Owing to RHG’s above noted foul mood, I was somewhat inclined to simply leave her in Canada, however, that would have been bad fathering (not to mention the serious implications to relations between the two countries). I then asked the agent to look at her (sulking with an expression that confirmed to any bystanders that she had the dumbest parents in the world) and tell me that she could be anyone’s daughter but mine. He ceded the point and allowed us to go on our way. I should note in fairness that by the time we traversed six hundred miles, and found a motel with a pool and a nearby Appleby’s, that had perked up some.
Real Wife, who had never previously taken a road trip of that length, is now fired up and anxious to head out again once school ends in the spring. I’m thinking maybe Kentucky or North Carolina for some golfing…
….About the trans-Mississippi West, and the emigrant trails generally
In the interests of my latest �book� I have spent a couple of weeks immersed in a number of books about the American West, and the California and Oregon emigrant trails. The first draft has been completed, actually, and revised, copyrights applied for, and it sits even now on the desk of an agent who is going to read it over and decide if he wants to represent me. Yes, I am chewing my fingernails down to my knuckles, why do you ask?
A couple of friends are reading it also, with an eye towards giving me critical and helpful feedback, so I�ll be able to sit down in another week or so and revise again, add in some more details, descriptions and fill out some of the various characters; hence the heavy reading and research schedule (and light blogging of late).
I have encountered all sorts of amusing things that either I didn�t know, or knew vaguely of, or that are not generally known, except by local historians and enthusiasts. Some of these may come as a great surprise to those who know only of the 19th Century American West through TV shows and movies. Such as:
A flock of sheep was taken along the Oregon Trail in the early 1840ies. And in 1847 a large wagon of nursery stock: approximately 700 live young plants, of various types of fruit and nut trees, and vines. This at a time when it still generally took at least five months to cross two thirds of the North American continent.
Up until the time of the �49 Gold Rush, emigrants to California and Oregon were� well, generally rather bourgeois. The cost of a wagon, stock animals and six months of food supplies tended to sieve out those who couldn�t afford such, unless they chose to work their passage as a teamster or drover.
They also tended to be teetotalers and fairly law-abiding, although one early party to California (Bidwell-Bartleson, 1841) did include an embezzler, escaping attention of the law in New York. His comrades did wonder a bit about the heavy lump of metal that he was at such pains to carry along with him. One did not need quite that much lead shot.
Other than disease… most emigrant deaths were caused by accidents with loaded firearms… and drownding.
There was hardly any trouble with the Indians, until well after the Gold Rush. A bit of petty thievery here and there, which was more of an annoyance than anything else. There is only one instance of a wagon train being attacked directly by Indians on the Oregon-California trail before about 1860. There was quite a lot of Indian-emigrant commerce going on during the 1840ies and 50ies and several tribes actually ran river ferries, at either end of the trails.
The emigrant wagons were pulled mostly by teams of oxen. Not horses. Sometimes mules, but mules cost three times as much as an ox ; and you could always eat the ox, if you got desperate. Three to four pair of oxen per wagon, usually� and the wagon usually carried about 3/4th of a ton to one ton of supplies and gear. Think on this the next time you watch a so-called emigrant wagon in a TV western bounce along, hitched to a single pair of horses.
The Mormon emigrants to the Utah settlements pushed handcarts; small, two-wheeled handcarts. And walked from Council Bluffs to the Salt Lake Valley. But they were organized, and had a lot of assistance and supply channels set up by the LDS church� the only group of emigrants who did.
Emigrant companies formed up and then elected their leaders. Another leader could always be elected, if the first one didn�t work out. Companies often split apart, once on the trail, too.
Quite early on, organized rescue parties began going out from the established communities in Oregon and California in the late fall and early winter bringing water, food, and assistance to emigrants who had broken down, or run out of food on the worst parts of the trail, in the Humboldt Sink, or along the Snake River.
In the 19th century popular wisdom had it that the high plains and the Rocky Mountains were extremely healthy locations: clean, dry air, pure water, and there were a fair number of invalids who came West for reasons of their health. Francis Parkman was only the most famous of them. A large portion of a party in the early 1840ies were in fact, invalids hoping to recover their health in this particularly strenuous fashion.
A teenaged boy, stranded in the Sierras at present-day Donner Lake over the winter of 1844-45 diverted himself with the contents of his brother-in-law�s small library of books, finding particular consolation in a volume of Lord Byron�s poetry, and Lord Chesterfield�s �Letters�. : – o
In California as of 1845, there were 850 foreign males registered as residents, an increase from 150 in 1830: emigrants, deserters from sailing ships, merchants and traders. They seem to have all known each other, or known of each other.
The Russians had an official presence and a small trading post, north of San Francisco, until they pulled up stakes and sold the lot, and a brass cannon too, to John Sutter. They may still be a little sore about this. I remember seeing a Soviet-era English textbook which claimed that they had found gold�. And the perfidious Yankees had stolen it all from them.
There was gold found in California well before 1849. The family of the man who pulled up a wild onion to have with his luncheon tortillas, and found a gold nugget in the roots of it did very well out of this discovery, but had the sense to keep it quiet.
Well, are you amused?
(Comments fixed 10-10: add any other curious and little known facts you may know of in comments
Sgt. Mom)
There is a program in the Army called the 09L Translator Aide Program. The point of 09L is to address a critical shortage of people who can speak Middle Eastern languages in the Army. If an applicant can speak one of about two dozen Middle Eastern languages they’re able to enlist for 09L regardless of their qualifications in several other areas such as education level and aptitude. It’s a wonderful program for the Army since it attracts people who posses a critical skill and who would otherwise be unable to serve in the military. And it’s also a valuable program for the first generation immigrants from the Middle East in that it allows them to serve their new home, possibly earn their citizenship while serving, and basically allowing those who pursue the program to become a bit more integrated into the nation. In a time when many immigrants from that part of the world refuse to assimilate into their new homes such integration may prove important years down the road. Or it may not.
This year I managed to find myself a member of the Afghan refugee community here in Phoenix who was interested in serving as a translator. He actually wanted to be a clerk but he didn’t qualify for that job so we went with the program for which he qualified. Because of my occasionally useful recruiting skills I was able to use my original applicant as a source for several of his friend who would later join. I’m currently working with one such indiviual.
This applicant is actually from Iraq, he knew my Afghan enlistee through school, and he bears some scars of his time in Iraq. I’ve been working with him for a while now, he’s a big guy and has been making slow progress in losing the excess weight. I enjoy working with him because, well, he’s someone who’s history makes me in getting him into the service. One day after having him run some stairs at the local stadium we talked and what he said was the sort of thing gets a recruiter’s heart motivated.
I’ll admit to cross posting this from my normal stomping grounds, but it was the sort of thing that never gets mention in the stories about people joining the military. I edited what he wrote for me to remove identifying info. Where I editted is marked with (DR:).
You asked me why I wanted to join the Army. It is simple. I want to join because it is the right thing to do. This country (DR: America) has taken my family in and did everything it could for us. We live in a nice house in a safe neighborhood. We have jobs and money and cars and we don’t worry about what we do. Me joining the Army is not a popular choice for some people in the refugees. They tell me I’m going to be harming my own country (DR: Iraq). They are wrong. I’ll be a translator. Americans are very smart, but they don’t understand our language like they do Spanish. They (DR: Soldiers in Iraq) are getting attacked and attacking because they don’t know who to talk to or how to talk to them. I can do that. I will be helping America and helping Iraq.
My father was a wanted man in Iraq. It’s why we left. He said things about Saddam and he was wanted. We came here with nothing and we were taken care of. My father has gone back to Iraq and has said things are 100% better. (DR: The town they’re from) is very safe and the people are happy now. Things work. There is electricity and markets and my father even bought a house for us for when we can go back. The only people who made this happen were America. Saddam was taken out by America when no one else would do it.
People in my community tell me I should not be in the Army because I will get killed. I tell them “So what?” (DR: Punctuation added) if I do. I will have died doing something good and my family will understand and they will thank me and know I was doing something I wanted to do. But I don’t think I will be killed. I will be with the Army and not just someone who isn’t in the Army. I don’t know if I will want to go back to Iraq if my family does. I like it in America. I want to get my citizenship and go to school. But I think I should be in the Army because if I don’t I will get all this without earning it.
This applicant is someone who I very much want to have in uniform. Not just because it’s my job as a recruiter to do so, but because he’s one of that percentage of recruits who really wants it. With luck he’ll be swearing in shortly and serving as a Soldier soon. Sooner the better.
The one thing that does rather upset me about Rep. Foley and his apparent inability to keep his hands, metaphorically speaking, off the junior help is how it messes up mentor relationships between teenagers on one hand, and their chances of having a good relationship with an older person not their parental unit. We’ve always known there was an occasional unhealthy or potentially exploitative relationship… and sometimes it was not the older person bringing that to the table, too. Lately it seems like any cross-generational friendship is being looked at with suspicious eyes, and that is not an especially good thing.
Bur it’s good to have boundaries, and it is good that (as it would seem from news reports) that Rep. Foley’s reputation was quietly known amongst the Capitol Hill pages. My high school drama teacher had a quiet reputation like that, too, back in the dawn of time. Snappy dresser, lived with his mother, middle-aged bachelor, flamed a bit obviously. A little worldly wisdom is a good thing; the pages themselves seem to have been sharp enough, and efficient enough to have protected themselves… just as the boys in my high school drama class made sure that if they stayed after school to work on a drama project that there would always be at least three or more of them.
But it does worry me that now we are to the point of viewing every apparently friendly overture from an older person as potentially the first move of a chickenhawk. This just has to poison the pool just that much more, and add one more smidgeon of crappiness to a teenager’s lot. It’s an awkward age, for a variety of reasons; being physically nearly an adult but emotionally nearer to being a child, craving respect and responsibility but not given much of a chance for earning either, the utter pointlessness of much that is taught in school… and then add to it the fact that you are stuck with your peers, for much of each day. Stuck with inane conversations, pointless rivalries, bitter feuds, bullying and mind-games. Feeling ill and over-grown, flushed with too many hormones, and no outlet, and even if you get along with your parents… they are, after all, your parents.
For a lot of teenagers, a friendship with an adult not their parent is a lifeline, and an anchor to sanity, a connection to a real world outside the confines of high school and their peer-group, a reassurance that they can connect with the real world. I remember very clearly thinking that most of my teen-aged peers were total idiots. Many of Blondie’s teen-aged friends also appeared to be idiots. Therefore I conclude that idiocy is rampant between the ages of 13 and 18, and if one doesn’t want to drown in idiocy at that age and go so far over the edge as to see a Columbine episode as a viable alternative , one has to have friends outside one’s immediate age group.
I have always had a conviction that teenagers, in order to get through the worst of it, need more than anything else, friends who are not teenagers themselves, but who have common interests and enthusiasms. It tends to take them out of an insular round of strictly teen-approved interests, encourages them to connect and to get away from that sour view expressed in my youth of “not trusting anyone over thirty.” One of our joint enthusiasms when my daughter and I lived in Utah was a regular meeting of the Salt Lake City Dr. Who Fan Club. About thirty or forty “Whovians” met socially once a month at a member’s house to watch an episode of Dr. Who on video and chat about their mutual liking for the series. I rather liked the “Whovians” by the way; they were much more cerebral and grounded than the Trekfans. One felt that they had fairly successful and interesting lives, and their appreciation for The Doctor was merely an amiable eccentricity, not an overwhelming obsession. Anyway, it gratified me as a parent to notice my daughter’s social assurance, as well as that of some of the other younger “Whovians”. At fourteen, she was much the youngest; I think the next youngest was sixteen, and the ages ranged well up into the seventies. But everyone always had a wonderful time at meetings, interacting as equals and friends, and I thought it was marvelous for the youngest fans, being reassured that there was a way over the walls of the teenage ghetto, and interesting friends on the other side. And at the very least, that one wouldn’t be stuck there forever.
There’s the mentoring aspect, too, which is just as important: How the heck… and from whom are you going to work out what being an adult really is, if all you have is your teenaged idiot peers, and the crazy-house hall of mirrors that is the media? Who can you pattern yourself after? What if your parents are dysfunctional and you do not get along with them? I had friends in the military that were able to find another mentor to pattern themselves upon; I have mentored a friend of Blondie’s whose parents were perfect studies in rotten parenting skills, and any number of young female airmen along the way. Such friends are the fallback position, the rescue, and the second chance at becoming a well-adjusted and functioning adult. That predators can inject themselves into this situation, can extend a pretend hand of friendship and respect and all the while be looking for their own sexual interests… ugh.
That might explain some of the fury about Foley and his ilk; not over what actually happened, but at what he seemed to be trying to do, in exploiting the general interests of the community in the welfare of prospective members of it, and those who might have had very real needs (or not), just for his own personal jollies. In this instance, the sort of teenager who gets to be a Congressional page may be just that more worldly, socially confident, and slightly more adept at recognizing that particular sort of predator. Other teenagers are not so lucky, and consequently, less able to evade that kind of exploitation.
Just as we were fixing dinner on Sunday (pot-roasted chicken with lemon, garlic and rosemary, should anyone be interested) I ran the disposal so it wouldn’t backwash into the dishwasher when I did a load of dishes, but the water kept filling the sink and emptying very slowly. Vigorous action with the plumbers’ friend did not help at all… in fact, it got rather worse. The usual sort of caustic chemical goo emptied down the sink did not help either, although the metal parts of the drain looked amazingly clean following application of the goo. The water would back up, and then drain veeerrrrrryyyy slowly, which was not good. It was good, however, that water or sewage was not emerging anywhere else in the house… like the master bathroom sink, which is what happened last time there was a clog in the main outfall drain a short way downhill of the master bathroom sink. All the other sinks, toilets and bathtubs drained normally.
I am, alas, no stranger to my household plumbing system (said she, laughing hollowly!) I have replaced all three faucet sets in the house, as well as the disposal and the kitchen sink. The last time I had a clog in the main outfall; when several gallons of waste sent down the kitchen sink disposal geysered disgustingly up in the master bathroom sink a few minutes later, it cost me roughly $100, and an afternoon off work to sort it out. But I considered that it was money well spent; not just for the work done, all twenty minutes or so of it, but for the educational value.
Yes, I stood over the roto-rooter man like a deranged stalker girlfriend, watching every move and asking heaps of questions. It did not look like brain surgery or rocket science, and I was damned if I would pay that much money again for something I could jolly well do myself, with the aid of the kindly neighborhood rental equipment place. Oh, yes, they know me almost as well as the hardware store people… it’s where I rented the nailer and compressor when I replaced the fence, a tall ladder to do something or other, the long-handled arbor saw and all those other things one only needs for an hour or so every two or three years. (Northeast Rental Center, on Nacogdoches… ask for Dan. He’ll ask questions to sort out what you need, and then tell you exactly how to operate it.)
The manual snake rented at $15 for three hours. I had it sorted in twenty minutes flat, but I wanted to run a load of dishes through the dishwasher just to make absolutely sure the clog was dislodged. Twenty minutes, fifteen bucks, plus another ten minutes either way to the rental place, plus a morning not spent waiting for a plumber to grace your household with his presence. Works for me, people, works for me.
So, what is it with Islam, these days; Is it really thriving like the green bay tree? Or might the Islamic faith militant, exemplified by Bin Laden and his merry chums, sympathizers and apologists be ridden by a secret terror of their own – that Islam is not growing, powerful, and omnipotent, but flawed at the root, and dying by degrees – a dangerous-looking but essentially hollow show, like the pufferfish? Is it a hollow faith, crumbling by insidious degrees, as it’s commonly assumed tenents are being examined in the spirit of skeptical scholarship? The ferocious reaction to any departure from orthodoxy suggests that the most fanatical believers may fear so, very deeply. Even the scholar of linguistics, Christoph Luxemberg, in his study of influences of the Aramaic language on the Koran must publish under a pseudonym – for his suggestion that translations of the Koran must consider the Aramaic in teasing out exact meanings is as explosive as what devotees of the Prophet strap about themselves, or pack into automobiles as their response to the insults of another extant belief system. And again, the violent response suggests that something more is going on here, something deep and dangerous – but the very violence of the response is enough to make a curious person wonder why? Why so touchy?
Last week on NPR they ran another one of those poor-mouthing stories about the sad plight of Hispanic female converts to Islam and how they must cope with family disapproval, and—horrors! How people look at them funny when they wear a headscarf! NPR seems to love this sort of story, they bang on (and on, and on and on!) about the Poor Muslim having to Cope In Heartlessly Hostile America about as often as they do about the Poor Palestinians Having to Cope with the Brutal Israeli Occupation, demanding our sympathies as if their listening audience were some sort of psychic ATM; swipe the story-card through the slot, here’s another twenty bucks worth of Sympathy for the Chosen Victim Class. I’d love to hear a story, for once, about Amish or Mennonite women having to cope with people giving them the eye-brow lifted look because of their somewhat distinctive and defiantly old-fashioned dress-sense, but that’s just me. And I am also left to wonder – what about converts from Islam? I googled that, this weekend “Islam+converts+from” and got a couple of stories and a query “Do you mean ‘Converts to Islam?'”
Well, no, I meant exactly what I typed in – but considering that conversion from Islam means a death sentence as an apostate – talk about a story that most major news media don’t want to touch with a ten foot pole, and a subject which converts would also prefer to remain untouched. Since exposure as a convert means the death penalty for apostasy, one can hardly blame converts from Islam for being extremely circumspect. Missionaries and ministers to converts also must feel the same need for a similarly subterranean profile but there are still a trickle of accounts and witnesses, mostly from religious organizations. One story which intrigued me when I first read it some years ago was about conversions to Christianity among the Berbers of Algeria – that very quietly, many local Berbers were rejecting Islam as a horrific death cult; in fact, reclaiming their heritage as Christians, which they had been up until the Muslim conquests of the 8th century. (St. Augustine’s mother, St. Monica was a Berber Christian.)
There was the briefly famous Afghan convert, and a handful of others, leaving one to wonder how many other converts there are in the shadows, seeking no notice of themselves for fear of being murdered. One also wonders how many outwardly conforming Muslims have quietly declared apostasy in their hearts, going through the outward motions for the sake of their families and a bit of peace and quiet, or have moved to another city, or country and just let the whole thing lapse. There’s probably no way to work out the numbers, but it is food for thought.
Especially since life under a strict Wahabi Islamic rule seems desperately unappealing: Afghanistan under the rule of the Taliban and Iran under the Ayatollah Khomeini and his successors looked more like sort of religious concentration camp, with every pleasure in life, small and large being banned, constrained and forced underground. No wonder that only those who are allowed to exercise power over their fellows seem to look on it with any affection.
This is only a speculation, a working out of various themes and memes in my own mind. But it is different way to look at the whole structure of Islam, and a way to account for the hostility on display every time the followers of the Prophet feel disregarded and to have been offended. It could be that the disproportionate reactions are those of frightened men who feel power trickling out of their fingers, like grains of a handful of sand.
(part 1 of 2)
The pufferfish is an odd little creature with mostly poisonous flesh, which has developed as a primary defense, the ability to inflate itself in order to appear larger to predators. In addition, the spiny pufferfish is covered all over it’s body with short bony barbs. In full defense mode, it looks like nothing so much as a small spiky ball, a sort of aquatic porcupine, attempting to look larger and more combative, more dangerous than it actually is. I was reminded of these qualities this week when I read something apropos of the latest Muslim hissy-fit over Pope Benedicts’ mildly stated observation as regards violence and Islam. I am not quite sure where I read it, or anything but the general thrust of the suggestion, which was in a way, revolutionary.
What if Islam is not a strong, vibrant and attractive faith, growing like some sort of theological kudzu, sweeping all before it? What if it is actually a hollow construct, under stress from a number of directions, seeming strong but in reality fragile, riven throughout with tiny cracks, and teetering on the edge of implosion? What if the frequent explosions of violence at the slightest of critical voices were not a demonstration of power and strength, but of tamped-down fear – fear that if the orthodoxy is questioned or defied, then the whole construct will come crashing down in ruins? What if the whole structure of Islam is actually shivering on its foundations, and the whole bloody-handed constellation of imams and ayatollahs, of shaheeds and jihadists know and fear that, down in the pit of their souls? That the whole thing is a sham, based on the maunderings of a desert bandit, pulled from bits of this or that, for his own aggrandizement? What if the whole jihad against the West is the last spectacular lashing out of those who know in their hearts that if the roots of Islam are ever questioned, then doubt will set in, and the whole edifice come crashing down – and that quietly, here and there, the faithful are slipping away, and ever more would join them but for the threat of death for apostasy.
This is an interesting train of thought; as Eric Hoffer pointed out decades ago in his study of fanatical belief, The True Believer – a certain sort of fanatic is driven by secret doubts of his or her own abilities or qualities. The most violently inclined towards homosexuals, for example, may be someone who may in their deepest and most private part of the mind feel homosexual urges, and is then shamed and horrified by them. The most virulent advocate of racial superiority, for example, may be the one who at heart has doubts about himself – and reacts with special brutality against a member of what is supposed to view as a lesser race who yet exemplifies more superior qualities than himself. For myself, I have always observed that someone who was entirely comfortable in themselves and in their deeply-held beliefs was not threatened by someone who did not share them – and certainly not threatened enough to erupt in threats and violence.
Ages ago, I read Bernard Lewis – The Roots of Muslim Rage, when it first was published in Atlantic Magazine. I made a total pest of myself to my friends, because I ran around with my tattered copy (this was at about the start of the first Gulf War) saying “See! this is what makes them so angry with us!!!” It seemed only the sensible, empathetic way of looking at it then, and still does now: that the Islamic world, once so powerful, glorious, famed for tolerance, scholarship and culture, was diminished and shattered. That men who had been told all their lives that they were the righteous and blessed, should look around and see that their world was diminished, powerless and ridden by disease and ignorance, and should at once seek for a reason that this should be the way of things, that there should be a reason for this. And of course, it is always easier to find a reason – that the rich and powerful should be so because they had cheated, or were empowered by Satan. There could not possibly be any fault in Islam or in those who followed the faith most perfectly for they were chosen and favored by God, in being submissive to him. It was entirely understandable to me, with a great deal of sympathy and regret, that of course, those who thought themselves so chosen must be looking around and observing that most of the lands where Islam ruled were plagued with poverty, disease, ignorance and autocrats. Even those in the Middle East who sat on a lot of oil reserves were not in all that much better a shape. Only so much can be imported and paid for with oil money.
Being carefully raised in the Lutheran tradition and somewhat of a history nut as well, I had been schooled in the history of the Protestant Reformation. I knew very well how the great unified fortress of the medieval Catholic Church began fracturing once the Bible began to be translated from Latin into the various vernaculars spoken across Europe. It was revolutionary not just because ordinary people could read it for themselves, without the intercession of a priestly authority – but because a great many clever people had to sit down and work out for themselves exactly what each word, each phrase, each sentence actually meant. Ambiguities had to be resolved, alternate versions of varying antiquity had to be consulted – there’s nothing like a translation for thrashing out meaning from a text. The authority and power of one holy, catholic and apostolic church shattered on the rock of textual analysis – something that is just now beginning to happen with the Koran. Again in The Atlantic, I found a fascinating article about the work of various scholars, just beginning to analyze the Koran with the same attention and care long given to the Old and New Testaments. (link to article here)
But the Koran may not be translated, examined, analyzed – merely accepted whole and entire, memorized and recited. For what dangerous heresies and doubts might emerge then?
(to be continued)
*Original Atlantic link is for subscribers only
PJ Media interview with Sen. Joseph Lieberman here.
(Gee, does this mean PJ Media is close to the big time? Is there any reflected glory for us to bask in?)
Sgt Hook has done it again. This time, he shares a message from Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai. He visited our troops at Walter Reed, and visited the Pentagon. While at the Pentagon, someone asked him if he had a message for our soldiers.
A brief taste:
“So my message for the American soldiers in Afghanistan is that they have liberated us from tyranny, from terrorism, from oppression, from occupation into a country that is now moving towards prosperity, that is once again the home of all Afghans. I don’t know if it resonates with you. It’s a very important thing for Afghanistan. Afghanistan was not the home of all Afghans. Today it is. Everybody’s back in that country with a parliament, with a constitution, with a market economy, with a free press, with all that.
I don’t know what brought it on, remembering green stamps and blue stamps, and those thin little books that you glued them in to… possibly emptying all those receipts from the grocery store out of my purse, especially those wadded up ones that accumulate down at the bottom. Heck, is that one from the hair-cut place where if you bring in the last receipt again they give you a dollar off? Maybe I had been reading one of Lilek’s little musings about paper ephemera, and it all came together; the memory of Granny Jessie folding her receipts and a long perforated block of green S & H stamps neatly into her purse, and all those times when we were considered slightly older and more responsible, and dispatched to Don’s Market on Rosemead (about a block south of the intersection of Rosemead and Colorado Boulevard) which had had Granny Jessie’s grocery-buying custom for the best part of three decades, with a couple of dollars for some small item, and strict orders to bring back the change and the stamps.
When was the last time I ever saw a block or a string of trading stamps? Mom didn’t patronize grocery stores that offered them, but Granny Jessie did, and most likely Granny Dodie did also. It must have been sometime in the early seventies; by the time I came back to the States to live for good, trading stamps had gone the way of home milk delivery and those wire baskets with glass milk bottles that used to sit on front porches across the last. Which is to say, along with the dodo and passenger pigeon, except in certain very rare neighborhoods. They were a customer rebate scheme dreamed up early in the century just now over, intended to build customer loyalty, and keep the regular customers coming back, again and again and again. That description fit Granny Jessie to a tee. She patronized the same grocery and department store, the same shoe store, the same church and the same doctor for most of her long adult life, from the time she and Grandpa Jim married in the early twenties, until she went to live in Long Beach, in the Gold Star Mother’s home, fifty years later. According to this entry, they were given out mostly by grocery stores, department stores and gas stations. There were several different kinds, and colors of them. I remember S & H Green, and another sort which was blue; both were about an inch long, half an inch wide, perfed and gummed, and given out at the rate of a single stamp for every ten cents spent.
I do remember Granny Jessie sometimes had great long sheets of them, which must have come from Hertels’ on Colorado, where she had an account for as many years as she was a customer of Don’s Market. And Grandpa Jim must have gotten strings and blocks of them when he bought gas for the ancient Plymouth sedan which he had to sell after being rumbled by the local traffic cop when he made a left-hand turn from Colorado Boulevard onto South Lotus Avenue… from the right-hand lane of Colorado Boulevard. Grandpa Jim’s indignantly voiced plea that he had performed the turn in that manner every day for nearly thirty years cut no ice with the Pasadena constabulary, especially when they discovered that his license was several years expired and he was nearly blind, anyway.
Back to the trading stamps…. They had to be dampened and pasted into the pages of thin little books, so many a page, which was nice and easy when it meant the long sheets, earned when Granny Jessie had spent a lot on groceries and Christmas presents, but was not so easy when you had to paste the little strings and small blocks of stamps gleaned from many small purchases. This was rather finicky and tedious work, which may be why Grannie Jessie saved it all up for JP and I to do, when we came for a visit. She had a great lot of empty stamp books and a bundle of stamps in a drawer in the kitchen hutch. It would be our job, to sit down at the kitchen table with a damp sponge set onto an old china saucer, and fit stamps onto the pages of the blank book. This meant working in several months worth of stamps, tearing off the large blocks at the perfs, and fitting together the smaller quantities in order to completely fill in the page.
And this was entirely worthwhile from Grannie Jessie’s point of view, because the filled books could be taken around to the S & H Green Stamp store…. Which was, I think, on Rosemead, close to Don’s Market, and redeem the filled books for various bits of consumer merchandise; plates and saucepans, serving dishes, appliances large and small, furniture large and small. I have a distinct memory of Granny Jessie saving up her filled Green Stamp books for some rather substantial piece of household fittings, a television even. Probably much of what passed for luxury goods in the tiny white house on South Lotus, with the enormous oak tree in the front yard, came from Granny Jessie’s careful collection of stamps.
Mom had no truck with them at all, though; she was of the opinion that the stores that offered them were more expensive than those which didn’t, and Mom shopped on a strictly lowest-price-available agenda, no fancy fripperies like Green Stamps need apply for Mom’s household dollar. And furthermore, she had no time to fiddle around with pasting stamps into a book… and that is probably what led to the decline and fall of the whole scheme, although it does linger in several different and less cumbersome formats.
We have been deluged with another tidal flood of automated spam, all of it offering a number of semi-legal, quasi-legal and possibly-barely-legal services, commodites, and experiences.
I have had to add a number of new words to the totally banned/instantly nuked list, and another number of words to the held-f0r-review list.
There have been comments held over, and not appearing for a while, and some which may have been nuked. Sorry. Repost. And if your comment included some questionable language, or references to insurance, prescription drugs, or assorted possibly x-rated personal services… maybe do the old-fashioned thing, first and last letters and dashes for all the letters in between?
Or something.
My life is busy enough, I don’t need to turn on the computer at 5:00 AM and begin bailing out 150 spam comments, at least two thirds of which have references to beastility, shaved nether regions and drugs of dubious provenance.