One of the original military female “old breed”. Wish I had known her, but I didn’t. A Reservist. Exactly my age. A “first” in a lot of respects, according to this.
Link courtesy of “Rantburg“.
Well, watching the all-Islamic spazz-out as regards Pope Benedict’s recent suggestion that violent coercion had no place in leading the individual towards a particular religious belief has afforded me a number of opportunities for cynical amusement: the indignant demand that the Pope be fired for his disregard for Moslem sensibilities was one, and the demand from a group of Pakistani clerics (very obviously not the sharpest scimitars in the drawer) that the Pope Benedict formally debate a collection of Moslem scholars, and snappily upon being defeated by logic and reason, himself convert to Islam was just another item in a rich banquet of shadenfreude.
It’s almost as comic as President Ahmedinajad demanding that President Bush convert to Islam himself… in hopes probably, that the entire US would follow after. Ah, the frustration of those who are just bloody-mindedly sure that they are right, and it is only perversity and ignorance that prevents everyone else from seeing it… but enough about the far-left of the Democratic Party, I was talking about those representatives of the “Religion of Peace” who seem to be all over the headlines of late. (Enable extreme sarcasm mode) That 98% of whom it is said, give all the others a bad name. (End extreme sarcasm mode)
The sheer gall and towering ignorance combined and on display is such a dense confection that it probably pulls light into itself and wanders through the universe as a nascent black hole. One can easily understand how a barely literate imam from the wilds of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia can achieve such a such a monumental mass of misunderstanding about the West’s religious beliefs, or supposed lack thereof. But when Sayd Qtub, supposedly one of Islam’s great modern political thinkers managed to see every sort of licentiousness and depravity in a church sock-hop in teetotal Greeley, Colorado in the late 1940ies, one is not inclined to expect too much out of Qtub’s intellectual heirs or their powers of observation. Alas, large chunks of Western media and intellectuals, to include our own very dear bi-coastal types, also manage to comprehensively miss or misinterpret the religious mores of heartland America, so I don’t suppose I can expect much from the Seething Islamic Street ™.
So, here we go, one more time, for the benefit of those who have, perhaps supped too deeply of the BBC and it’s ilk: Yes, America is religious, to a greater extent than the cultured and secular types consider seemly. But please, please stop with the old game of picking out some congregation of freaks like Fred Phelps, or any other assortment of fundamentalist nutjobs, Elmer Gantry-ish televangelists begging for dollars from their mega-church’s cable TV station, or some credulous hick who sees the Virgin Mary’s face in an oil slick, or a pancake or some other bit of ephemera… and implying that they are just typical of all devout Americans. They are not… they are, in fact, atypical, and we have been pointing our fingers and snickering at them for decades.
By the way, just to demolish another sweaty intellectual fantasy, there is no way on earth that a single bread-and-butter fundamentalist sect could ever take over the US, a la “Handmaids’ Tale”, other than in Margaret Atwood’s feverish dreams. There are just too many other sects, synods, denominations, congregations, or whatever, most of whom rather cherish their own particular idiosyncrasies, and many of which have, in the past, fought like cats in a sack. Look, you can describe both the Amish and the Mormons as being rather conservative and old-fashioned, but aside from the fact that they both have large numbers of adherents living in the US, that’s about all they have in common. Even the Lutherans have two opposing synods, both of whom view each other with deep suspicion. Frankly, the only way that Americans would ever conform to a single, over-arching religious belief would be at gunpoint, and very possibly not even then. Most of us, though, are unostentatious in our beliefs, or lack of them, and are somewhat suspicious of those who are not. Our houses of worship will probably never attract the attention of a BBC producer… nothing to titillate or tut-tut.
A church community of some kind or other has been the mainstay of American life since before the beginning of the Republic. Most of them came to these shores as refugees from religious orthodoxy in the places they originated; and while some of them were not averse to imposing their own orthodoxy, most did not care for having orthodoxy imposed upon them by others. This may yet be the hard rock upon which the wave of Islam breaks, that Qutb and Bin Laden and their ilk do not see, because they were too busy looking at the flashy vulgarity of popular American or Western culture, and never saw the bedrock underneath.
So let them bluster, demand away, stamp their feet in Peshawar, or Mecca, or Qom, and expect the arrival of the 12th Imam, and demand submission; in the meantime, we are watching.
“Look well, O Wolves! What have the Free People to do with the orders of any save the Free People? Look well!”
It was two weeks ago today, give or take an hour, when I walked into the vet’s office with my little Jessie for one last visit.
I left the following Monday on a 10-day business trip, so this is the first weekend I’ve been back home since that sad day.
Last weekend, I dreamt that I was in a small house, visiting with friends (it reminded me of Sgt Mom’s house, but it wasn’t her in my dream). My little Jessie was sitting beside me on the sofa while we visited. Towards the end of the dream, one of my friends mentioned her, and I replied something along the lines of “Oh, this is my little dog, Jessie. But she’s not really here. She died last week, but I remember how she looked and how she felt, so I can have her with me whenever I want to.” My dream then faded into another dream, which meant it should have been forgotten, but as I was brushing my teeth the next morning, I remembered it. I’m glad I remembered it, because I fully believe its message was true.
As long as I remember my little girl, she’ll always be with me.
I’m house-sitting this weekend, for my dog-sitter (a wonderful lady who keeps my girls at the drop of a hat). So as I was driving in from the airport Thursday night, heading straight to my dog-sitter’s house, I started realizing that for the first time since she’s been my dog-sitter, there won’t be a little dog there, so happy to see me that she can’t stop quivering.
So I called one of my good friends and said “who am I gonna snuggle with tonight? My snuggler’s not here anymore.” She didn’t really have an answer for me (there’s not really an answer to a question like that). I got to the house, and let the dogs out to run in the backyard. But one of them wouldn’t run out.
Little Giorgio, and elderly italian greyhound, has appointed himself as my special friend this weekend. If I’m sitting in a chair, he wants to be on my lap. If it’s bedtime, he’s snuggled up beside me, keeping my back warm.
This intrigues me, because George was out in the van as we were helping Jessie to the Rainbow Bridge, and right about the time she was gone, he started barking. Doc suggested that maybe Jessie had stopped at the van to say goodbye to George. Usually, when I’m house-sitting, George hangs out in his little bed, covered up with his blanket, sleeping. This weekend, he’s the most sociable I’ve ever seen him. He’s not Jessie, but he helps. 🙂
Thanks, George.
Shrug.
I listened to a story on NPR this week, about the finding of the wreck of the Macon, one of the great navigatable dirigibles that for a time – or so the great minds of the early 20th century assumed – would give a run for their money to aircraft. For quite a long time, beginning with the Montgolfier brothers, it was assumed that various forms of lighter-than-air constructions were the wave of the future – not those fragile little mosquitoes that were the prototypical airplanes. From just before WWI, and for some time after, it looked like dirigibles would be the kings of commercial aviation, the seas patrolled, and the continents spanned commercially by luxuriously outfitted air-liners. Images of great silver airships are ubiquitous in commercial art, and futuristic visions throughout the 20ies and 30ies; the Empire State building, after all, was topped with a mast from which it was fondly hoped to moor dirigibles. (The thought of disembarking from a passenger liner moored there, and tripping merrily along some kind of walkway down to the observation deck is enough to give any acrophobic a case of the screaming willies, though, which may be why it never came to pass.)
The Germans had developed such rigid-framed airships late in the 19th century, and used them extensively during WWI, first as bombers, notably targeting London and Paris. They were huge lumbering craft, capable of traveling great distances and staying aloft for many hours. Alas, they were also slow and un- agile, which made them splendid targets in offensive operations – and they also burned spectacularly when struck, since they were usually filled with hydrogen gas. Although such aircraft with a variety of types of frames, or no frames at all went on being used throughout the war, they were more utilized for observation, or on ocean-going patrols. But when the war was over, it looked like the day for long-distance rigid-framed aircraft had dawned.
The British built a series of them, one of which was the first to make a trans-Atlantic round trip, in slightly less than 200 hours, in 1919. That craft, and its successor both crashed and burned spectacularly, as did an Italian-manufactured dirigible purchased at around that time by the US Navy. In 1923, the Navy built an entirely rigid-framed aircraft designed to be lifted by helium, the Shenandoah, the first such entirely built in the United States. Two years later, while on a publicity tour in the Midwest, the Shenandoah was caught in a violent thunderstorm and ripped into three pieces. The command cabin dropped like a rock, killing all in it, including the Shenandoah’s commander, but the stern and bow sections floated down more gently. Crewmen in the bow section called out to a farmer on the ground below to grab ropes trailing from the nose and tie them to a tree, and when everyone had slid to safety, brought shotguns for the survivors to use to puncture the helium cells.
Another dirigible manufactured in Germany and delivered to the US as part of war reparations was renamed the Los Angeles; fitted out as a passenger liner, with Pullman staterooms and bunks, it made over 200 uneventful trips, mostly to Puerto Rico and South America. An Italian semi-rigid airship called the Norge, fitted out by a scientific expedition flew from Spitsbergen, Norway to Teller Alaska by way of the North Pole in 1926: it would have been the very first aircraft to fly over the North Pole, but for Richard Byrd in an airplane, three days earlier. the Norge, and part of it’s crew was subsequently lost on another flight over the Pole, two years later.
But enthusiasm ran high during the mid-Twenties, regardless. Progress would always be a little bumpy, seemed to be the prevailing mood, and all these problems would be worked out, eventually. The American company Goodyear was granted certain patent rights related to dirigible construction, and began work on two more dirigibles for the US Navy, the Akron and Macon. They would be essentially flying aircraft carriers, capable of launching and retrieving four or five single-engine patrol airplanes from a hanger-bay equipped with a trapeze-like winch.
In the meantime, the British government launched a great project to build two enormous dirigibles, the R100 and the R101, which would be the largest in the world with accommodations for 100 passengers. The Germany Zeppelin firm had begun to recover enough to launch an enormous airship named after its founder. The Graf Zeppelin would be the first airship to circumnavigate the globe, and with it’s successors, partake in regular scheduled transatlantic passenger service. It was hoped that the British R 100 and R 101 would similarly expand passenger service: the R 100 flew to Canada and back, with no other event that being caught in a storm. On return, it was put into a hanger, pending return of the R 101 from it’s maiden voyage to India. But the R 101, plagued by technical problems and forced to fly too low in compensation, clipped a church steeple and crashed in flames near Beauvais, France early in 1930, with the loss of nearly all on board. The British government quietly pulled the plug on subsequent airship construction; so later did the US Congress. The Akron, launched with great hopes in 1931 was caught in a violent storm off New Jersey two years later, with the loss of all but a handful of its crew. The Macon, put into service at the same time was also caught in a storm, this one off the California coast near Monterey in 1935. Most of the Macon’s crew survived, and the wreckage of it and the patrol aircraft it carried, has just recently been located on the sea-bed.
The spectacular loss of the Hindenburg, two years after the crash of the Macon, only added to public misgivings, although the argument has been made that the great airships were doomed, by increasing competition from commercial airplane services and the coming of a new war, where conventional air craft would be of far more use. But the fairly constant series of spectacular airship disasters probably darkened the public and the political view, too. In the long run, airplanes may have been as much at a hazard, the development of air services just as rocky, and the cumulative casualties just as many. But there was enormous prestige placed in those few great dirigible projects, and great expectations by the public made the various disasters all the more public and crushing. It would have been as if over half the Mercury or Gemini flights launched by NASA had failed spectacularly in mid-flight. No matter what the prestige involved with dirigibles, or the lofty goals, a lot of people just quietly decided it just cost too much, even if it wasn’t a technological dead end in the first place. Now there are only a few places where you can stand, and imagine a great silver craft, hovering overhead, or being winched into a huge hanger: this great hanger at Moffit Field, near San Jose is one of them. And now the underwater wreck of the Macon may be the largest piece of interwar aviation history still identifiable on earth.
Reader Kaj added this comment, which was deleted in in my haste to clear out an accumulation of 30o auto-spam-comments this morning 9-29-06
“Admiral Byrds claims of being first to the pole by air are at best a bit
tenuous. The first undoubted crossing was by Norge, incidentally making Roald
Amundsen(and crew) the first, and the first to be on both poles.
I would have liked to refer to Wikipedia, but their page on admiral Byrd has
been used by hollow earth conspirazoids, claiming Byrd found the entrance to the
inner earth(!).
So much for Wikipedia credibility. ” – Sgt Mom
So, Pope Benedict’s apology for having the temerity to point out that Islam is kinda, sorta, just a tad bit on the violent and coercive side, and that such coercion is something that Christians do not find logically defensible is not acceptable?
Well, since it was one of those “I’m sorry you were offended by what I said” sort of apologies, yeah, I can see that you have the right to seeth and whine, and burn churches and shoot elderly nuns in the back. So, how about a real apology… (Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!)
I am so sorry that you lunkheads wouldn’t know a logical theological disputation if it up and bit you on the butt.
I am sorry that large numbers of you are so illiterate that you believe any old load of old shoes that the imam tells you in the Friday sermon.
I am sorry that most of you have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, and an underdeveloped sense of logic, technological skills, and smell.
I am sorry that a fair number of you want to turn Western Europe right back into the disease ridden, violence plagued, and autocratically ruled hellholes that you crawled out of.
I am sorry that your much-vaunted Caliphate was built, and maintained by a reliance on treachery, war, plunder, and the brutal oppression and economic skinning of various conquered peoples, and that when what had been conquered was squeezed dry, and the march of Islamic armies towards new sources of plunder was halted, it still took a couple of hundred years for it to rot from the inside.
I am sorry that your standing armies can’t fight their way out of a wet paper bag, and that a nation and people you despise hand your own asses to you on a silver platter, every damn time. That must be so depressing for you… try valium.
I am sorry that all you have is a lot of oil, and limitless reserves of resentment. Wait until the oil runs out, my little desert chickadees, and there is no more money to buy western technology, medical treatments, and all those pretty baubles that you can’t build yourself because the education of your best minds (such as they are) is focused on memorizing the Koran!
I am sorry that I have to open the internet pages and read about Australians being blown up in Bali, teachers in Thailand being beheaded, the rape of Scandinavian school girls, the burning of cars in Paris suburbs, Afghan and Iraqi children blown up by car bombs, Spanish and English commuters exploded by bombs in backpacks left on trains, ad nauseum.
I am sorry you can’t just stay in the 7th century and leave the rest of us the hell alone.
OK, is that better, as apologies go? You’re welcome. I live to serve.
(Ok, so I am betting on Timmer or Paul recognizing the inspiration for this rant within 3 seconds reading it….)
Also posted at Blogger News Network
(Re-posted and re-titled… something about the title wouldn’t allow comments)
My parents stoutly held out against the menace of television until the late 60ies, when they accepted the gift of a tiny black and white portable television from a good friend who was moving into a smaller place and had to shed possessions to make that transition. The television itself was about the size of a case of beer, and since Mom had very firm convictions regarding the trashiness, aesthetic and otherwise, of putting a television in the living room and angling all the chairs towards it, the television was banished to the bedroom that my sister and I shared.
The television, with its miniature 12″ screen sat on top of one of the long toy chests that Dad had built to maximize space in our room, and we generally piled onto the bottom bunk bed to watch, during those limited hours per week that Mom had decreed would do the least damage to our school work, family life and general social development. We also had to thrash out a compromise amongst ourselves about what to watch on Friday and Saturday evenings from 7:30 to 10:00 PM, and on Sunday from 7:30 to 9:00 PM. (School on Monday morning, you know.) Generally, if a program aired at any other time than that, we knew it not; or only during summer vacation when we caught up on other programs through re-runs, or visited my grandparents.
So we were television apostates: but I was secretly even more than an apostate. As far as one particular TV icon went, I was a perfect heretic. I wondered for ages what would happen to me, should I ever confess my deep and heartfelt loathing for a certain ground-breaking star of early network television. But I digress.
At Granny Jessie’s house, and at Granny Dodie and Grandpa Al’s, the television— generally a large console model— sat boldly and unashamed in the living room. Grandpa Al even ventured into exploring the wide world of color television, somewhat in advance of the neighborhood, but they drew the line about watching TV during the day; feeling as Mom did that really, one ought to have better things to do during the day.
Oddly enough, Grannie Jessie had no such compunctions, or perhaps thought that by putting no limits on our TV watching during our visits, that we would become surfeited. Generally, she kicked us outside when her soaps came on, and we would stumble outside, blinking at the daylight, dazzled by the real world. After spending hours focusing on the comparatively small, surreal and black and white one, we would be cast on our own inner resources for amusement, and always be at a bit of a loss for a while.
One of the classic television standbys at the time were re-runs of even older television shows – especially reruns of ancient episodes of I Love Lucy. This has always been fawningly described as ground-breaking, insanely popular, luminescently humorous and a veritable Mount Everest in broadcast television. Lucille Ball is similarly worshipped as a genius of comedy, a master of her own image, genius of physical comedy and a canny business-woman, blah, blah blah – and I didn’t accept a word of it – well, maybe the business-woman part. And she was still making movies and television shows well after I Love Lucy, so it appeared that people did, indeed, love Lucy.
But not me. From my earliest memory of watching that show, I was horrified, and embarrassed at the spectacle of ineptitude presented. It wasn’t funny, charming, or amusing – it was cringe-making,pointless – even a bit masochistic. Watching I Love Lucy meant observing a very pretty but spectacularly dim woman make a grandiose and impossible plan, screw it up in every way imaginable, and then bawl her head off in a totally unattractive manner, until her exasperated husband made everything better – in half-hour chunks. I usually felt like blowing chunks, two thirds into the episode. It wasn’t funny – it was a train wreck of ineptitude. Not only did I not find any of it in the least amusing, it made me embarrassed to be of the same sex.
Laughing at Lucy seemed to me like laughing at a retard; kind of cruel, when the decent thing should have been to look away and pretend that you hadn’t seen her embarrassing herself, her friends and her husband once again. And this was – what? Classic television? At any rate it set up in me a burning desire not to look stupid, never to be incompetent, to view situations with a coolly realistic eye, and never, never, ever cry noisily and expect anyone else to rescue you from the consequences of your own stupidity. Which as good a reason to have developed into a small ‘f’ feminist as any other available.
Not only did I not love Lucy, I couldn’t figure out why the hell anyone did, either.
I popped over to Sgt Hook’s today, for the first time in awhile, and he sent me to “A Storm in Afghanistan,” where one of our soldiers needs help. Seems his wife has cancer. It’s her second bout with breast cancer, and at this point:
she also has 11 metastatic tumors in her brain, and multiple tumors of the lung. Reid has returned from a tour over in Afghanistan…and the couple has children.
Full details are in this post, from last August.
They’re currently stationed in Germany, and apparently the Army doesn’t cover hospice care. His wife wants to spend her last days at home with her husband and her kids.
Please go visit and tell Sgt Reid you care. And if you have any spare change, feel free to share it with him.
Oh, dear, the fabled Islamic Street is seething ….Again
Considering the sort of venomous and spiteful abuse of Christians and Jews that mosques and the more spittle-flecked imams dish out every Friday, reactions from the Islamic world on Pope Benedict’s remarks are… I don’t know, a little unbalanced?
Talk about being able to dish it out, but not be the least able to take it… when it comes to disputation of theological issues, the Religion of Peace has the greatest glass jaw of all time.
The funniest thing about the Affair of the Danish Cartoons? Aside from the manner in which most of the western press retreated at speed and in Keystone Cops disorganization, from defending the sacred principle of the “Freedom of the Press” and “The People Have a Right to Know”… well, that would have been the mildness of the cartoons themselves. Swear to my wholly orthodox and Lutheran Church version of the Deity, I’ve seen stuff with more bite in last week’s “Family Circle” comic. We’re talking mild, folks. Skim milk mild.
So now, the Pontiff of the Catholic Church has some… well, considering some of the things they called Martin Luther, back in the day… rather mildly phrased criticism of Mohammed, and the Islamic street goes ballistic? It seems like everything, real or imagined makes the Islamic street go ballistic, but never mind. Grow some skin, guys. Seriously. Realize that this toleration thing is two-way. You want some serious respect for your beliefs? Try reciprocating a little. Maybe plant a synagogue in Saudi, and gag some of the really rabble-rousing Friday sermons from the Friendly Neighborhood Imam with the old Protocols of the Elders of Zion playbook. At the very least, knock off the shouts of “Islam is a religion of peace… and if you don’t agree with is, we’ll kill you!”
And you can knock off the “carbecues”, any time now. Think of what all those burning cars to for that global warming thingy…
(also posted at “Blogger News Network“)
…The one about the guy who was down in the dumps, and they told him…”Cheer up, things could get worse!” So, he cheered up, and sure enough, things got worse!
Well, it’s not that bad… actually it is, if not bad, at least semi-OK. I am coming down the home-stretch on the “book” first draft, which is the hardest part, I think. Just half a chapter and the present-day bookend-closer to go, explaining what happened to everyone. I think I will have it done by Friday… and then I will go back and polish vigorously. There are some people and sub-plots I want to flesh out a little more, and some characters who really started to come clear in the last half, so I must go back and fill out their terribly sketchy introductions, and make a more concerted effort to juggle a few more characters: there are eight or nine male characters who are extremely significant to the story, four female characters, ditto, and one child. Three, if you count the babies. And a cute bit with a dog. Then there are another dozen supporting characters, as it were, fleeting glimpses of certain historic places along the trail, and a lot business about wagons and ox-teams, though I don’t think I will need to include a recipe for fox, pot-roasted in a Dutch oven. (Excellent eating, by historical accounts, although that may have only been in comparison to coyote, which apparently was totally vile, no matter what the method of cooking employed.)
Everyone who has read a couple of chapters has said, “Omigawd, what a terrific story… and why did I never hear about these people, before?” This is a rather gratifying reaction. It means that it is not one of those things which as been done to death, and thus would have the charm of the unusual. Or, so I hope. So far, though, only Dad has read the entire manuscript to date, and has provided much useful feed back on the flora and fauna of the Great Basin, and the Sierra Nevada. (Note to self: write in some observations about pinon pines. And sage. Lots and lots of sage.) Dad also wants to know a bit more about the half-dozen or so hired men, who were working their way as drovers, or as teamsters. Since they didn’t have the wherewithal to buy a wagon, stock, and the necessary supplies, they worked for their food and board for those who did. Pre 1849 Gold Rush, emigration to California and Oregon was a fairly expensive enterprise; those who ventured it were usually pretty solid and stable citizens… in contrast to many other stereotypical frontier types. (Note #2 to self… put in a bit about the hired men.)
The last month, as I work away on the story have been the most terrific fun, and I am enormously grateful for having been let go from the last job… the one I had for all of seven months. I’ve temped a couple of days here and there, but came to realize that I… Well, I don’t hate it…I just don’t care for it any more. I want to be at home, sitting at the computer in the corner of the bedroom, immersed in the 19th century, with the Weevils sleeping on the floor and Sammie and Perce on the bed. I can only think my last employer perhaps was picking up on this attitude. Certainly, I was very close to snapping “The copier is over there, and you’re legs aren’t painted on!” whenever someone asked me to make a couple of copies of this and such.
I’ve still got the weekend shift at the radio station, and a couple of hours paid work three times weekly, writing for another blog-enterprise… plus the pension, and Blondie’s VA and GI Bill benefits. She started school at the beginning of the month, at a local community college which reportedly is a feeder into the veterinary medicine program she wants. So far, so good. Most of the professors seem to have high standards, and be fairly exacting; I have always entertained the suspicion that a junior college may be actually, the best place around to, I don’t know, maybe actually learn something? It does not have the cachet of the acclaimed institutes of higher so-called-learning, but it doesn’t have the price-tag, either, and Blondie is enormously happy to be in school, working toward the goal of being Dr. Blondie, DVM, at long last.
September has been a sort of holding month for us, a time for me to work away on the completed first draft, which the interested (and legitimate) literary agent has indicated would be sufficient proof of my commitment as a first-timer to actually producing a finished manuscript. It seems that August is the silly season in publishing. The publishers come back from their summer holidays in the Hampshires, or Nantucket or the Cape, or wherever during September, and look to have something brilliant on their desks, so the literary agents are working like dogs throughout August, polishing their best efforts like big shiny apples. He loved the sample chapter, though. And I feel good, about the whole project. I am just a long way down on his pile of stuff “to do”.
Oh, and the “things got worse” bit. Some idiot took my bank card information, and tried to charge $10,000.00 worth of merchandise to some on-line enterprise I have never heard of, much less done business with. Being fairly sharpish and observant when uncharacteristic charges are made… my bank very swiftly put a stop on my card. I can only wish that I could be in the bracket where this kind of thing would pass unnoticed, but I am not. It was damned embarrassing, at Huge Enormous Big-Ass Grocery, when my card wouldn’t go through for $20 bucks worth of dog-food, when I was fairly sure I had more than enough in the household account to cover. It will take a week or so to sort it all out, and not only restore the funds that I had, and send me a new card, but restore my access to the household account funds. In the meanwhile, another reason to stay at home and work away on “The Book”.
On Sept 13, 2001, oen of my best friends from college underwent surgery to remove cancerous cells from her body.
Today marks five years cancer-free for her. (hooray!)
Congratulations, Barb! Here’s to many more milestones like this one.
It has been a beautiful day, here in South Texas, fair and a little warmer than most people favor for autumn days, but there you are. We do things differently here. Five years, half a decade, hardly any time at all in one sense – but a child born just after that shattering day is now old enough to go to school this fall, and a child old enough to be aware of what had happened is well into middle school or junior high school, and to them it is something that happened a long, long time ago.
The towers have never really been, for them, and for the rest of us, five years is long enough to grow accustomed to living in that other country. We are reminded of the WTC towers thought, almost ritually this time of year – and even when the reminders cease, they will continue to haunt September for many of us, most likely for the rest of our lives, unless superseded by some greater horror. Every once in a while, the towers appear unexpectedly, serendipitiously , and we can look back over the great gash across our days, and marvel at the time when they were just a part of the cityscape, the backdrop to hundreds of movies: the final scene of the animated feature Antz, and again and again in Men in Black, and Sleepless in Seattle – to mention just a few.
There was a great to-do in some circles, about removing them electronically from movies in which they featured, which were released or re-released after 9/11, which I think is kind of foolish. They were there once, and so were the lives of those people lost in them, and at the Pentagon, and on the four aircraft, and now they are gone. Might we have reached the point where we are better served by those little, fleeting glimpses and private memories, rather than a great clunky over-developed monument of bureaucratic taste genuflecting to political expediency and the whims of trendy architects? Not up to me, fortunately. But I wrote this, two years ago, and think it even more relevant now�
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I won’t spend my days
waiting for an angel to descend.
Searching for a rainbow with an end
Now that I’ve found you,
I’ll call off the search.
And I won’t spend my life
gazing at the stars up in the sky
Wondering if love will pass me by
Now that I’ve found you,
I’ll call off the search.
Out on my own
I would never have known
This world that I see today
And I’ve got a feeling
it won’t fade away.
And I won’t end my days
wishing that love would come along
‘Cause you are in my life
where you belong
Now that I’ve found you,
I’ll call off the search.
-Mike Batt (sung by Katie Melua)-
I was looking for a lapdog; she was looking for a lap. We found each other, so call off the search. Her little stubby body held an over-sized heart. Her opaque eyes shone with love for her human. She was the perfect size for a lapdog, and knew exactly how to keep my back warm at night.
The turbo-tail never stopped, and the retractable tongue didn’t fully retract anymore, but these added to her charm. A companionable nuisance at first, her annoyances quickly became endearments.
I’m sitting here thinking about her, and the memories are flooding in…
That restless first night in April 2004, when she didn’t really know who I was or where she was. She jumped over a babygate that night, surprising me with her agility and her grace.
The struggle to get her weight down while continuing the maintenance dosage of prednisone for her “liver abnormality.”
Her sheer enjoyment of almost any food. If it was edible, she was pretty much all over it. I learned early on to push in the chairs around the kitchen table. I didn’t have to do that with my big dog, and one day after lunch I looked up and saw her front paws on the table, her back feet on my chair. She was polishing off the rest of my lunch, that I had intended to have for dinner.
After she learned not to eat from the table, she would lie in wait while I ate, her cloudy eyes alert for any dropped crumbs. I never had to vacuum under my table after she moved in. As her eyes deteriorated, her nose took over, sniffing out every bit of dropped food.
She was not a young dog when she joined my family 2 1/2 years ago. She had spent 9 years devoted to a little old lady in Alabama, but the new husband didn’t appreciate the value of an IG’s love, so she needed a new home. I needed a lapdog and a companion for my greyhound, so it seemed like a good match.
And once we got past the adjustment period, it was.
Well, except for the time she wasn’t looking, and jumped off the sofa onto the sleeping greyhound. (oops)
There’s a reason someone coined the expression “Let sleeping dogs lie.” We did a “peace of mind” visit to the vet after that incident. I think that was our first peace of mind visit. There were many more after that.
Not only was she an older dog when she moved in with me, but she came with her own set of health issues. A “liver abnormality” that required prednisone to control it, cataracts (that are exacerbated by the pred), and a heart murmur. She got enalapril every day for that. The adoption lady was afraid no one would want an elderly dog with health issues, but my only concern was whether I could afford her meds. Thank goodness for the Costco pharmacy.
I was unemployed, so she came to me as a “permanent foster.” She would live with me, but the adoption group would pay the vet bills. Then I got a job. To celebrate her “gotcha day,” I adopted her.
My vet told me the “liver abnormality” was hepatitis, and the pred dose was probably too high, and could lead to Cushings Disease. We jiggered the dosage until we found one she could live with. Then one day she wouldn’t eat. I got her into see Doc the next day, and we discovered a severely abcessed canine tooth. She wouldn’t eat cause it hurt too much. She lost 5 teeth in that dental, including the abcessed canine, and was back to her sassy self again. That was last summer.
As the summer faded into fall, I realized she was losing her hearing, and her eyesight. It seemed an unfair blow to a little dog that had already dealt with so much, but we worked around it. She slept more, and would often be sleeping soundly when I arrived home from work, because she didn’t hear me come in. She would walk down the hallway like those robot toys that bounce off the walls, adjusting their path each time they hit an obstacle. We joked about getting her a bicycle helmet with curb-feelers on it so she would know when she was getting close to a wall.
This summer, it seems that every month brought some type of concern. She wouldn’t eat for a day or so, and then would be back to normal. On August 8, I dropped her off for her routine dental, at 8am. Doc called me at 915. Her bloodwork didn’t look good – kidney values were up, which is a side-effect of the enalapril. I’d never worried about her kidneys – my concern had always been the liver, because of the hepatitis. We postponed the dental, and put her on a kidney diet. I went out of town on a business trip.
My dog-sitter called me Wed night after I’d left. Jessie hadn’t eaten for 2 days, and didn’t want to come out of her crate. “Take her to Doc,” I said. “Drop her off in the morning when you take Angie for her dental.”
She did. Doc called me that next evening. UTI. Fixable.
Strong anti-biotics and life will be good again, we hoped. But she was apathetic about food still, and it took her over a week to get back to anything like her usual self.
I was still on the road, and found myself dreaming about my dogs. In my dreams they had gotten loose, and I was looking for Jessie. One night as I was falling asleep, I saw her in my mind. She was standing next to a hedge at the edge of a busy street. There was a gap in the hedge, and on the other side it was green grass and blue skies and sunshine. On my side of the hedge it was speeding cars, drizzling rain, and grey shadows. She looked around at me, and looked through the gap, trying to decide which one to choose.
“It’s ok, honey,” I whispered through my tears. “It’s ok if you want to go on. I can’t come with you right now, but I’ll be along later. I promise.”
She just sat there, staring through the gap in the hedge. That was the night before doc diagnosed the UTI.
After the UTI was cleared up, I dreamt again that she was missing. I wasn’t looking for her this time – in my dream I was accepting that she wasn’t there. This dream confused me, because she was better. Or at least, the UTI was cleared up. That meant she was better, to me.
She wasn’t better.
Doc called me last Thurs evening, and I pulled off the highway to talk to her, so I could give her my full attention. Jessie had been in for follow-up bloodwork, and it didn’t look good. The UTI cleared up, but the bloodwork didn’t. The kidney values had declined in the last month, and she had lost 2 pounds since Aug 8.
Doc said she was on a slow decline, and it wouldn’t improve. It would just get worse. She had told me last week that renal failure is NOT peaceful. That euthanasia is a generous decision. I asked her Thursday “what’s our next step?” She said “let her go.”
Earlier this summer, on one of my many “peace of mind” visits with Jessie, Doc & I made an agreement. She would tell me when she thought it was time to let Jessie go, and when she told me that, I would let her go, whether I was in town or not. I wasn’t going to make Jessie wait until I was back home if she needed to go sooner.
I was 400 miles from home when Doc called me, figuring to get home either very late that night, or sometime mid-morning Friday. Doc had a 40 minute spot open at 220pm on Saturday afternoon.We booked it. That would give me some alone time with my sweetie, and a chance to pamper her overnight, and to say goodbye to her and whisper into her deaf ears how much I love her, and how much she’s meant to me.
I picked her up Friday when I got into town, and kept her with me with me the rest of the day. I blew off my Friday night commitment, and we hung out together, watching tv and eating popcorn. She wolfed down some raw hamburger, eating like she’d not seen food in days. A couple hours later, she regurgitated undigested hamburger meat. Saturday morning, I took her out to breakfast. Some strangers at the next table collected their bacon and offered it to her. She ate it with obvious enjoyment. A couple hours later, I found undigested bacon on my livingroom floor. If I had any doubts about Doc’s call on the timing, these incidents cleared it up.
She’s a very lucky dog – she’s been deeply loved by several people in her life. Her first momma loved her for 9 years, and her vacation-mom and I have loved her for the last 2 1/2. Eleven years of love for a sweet little dog. It’s never enough, but it’s a damn sight more than some pups get.
At 205pm, we pulled into the vet’s parking lot. I had tried to time it so that we’d get there right on time, but for once the traffic was light, and we were early. My dog-sitter (her vacation-mom) wanted to be there with us, to say goodbye. I know that she loved Jessie as much as I did, so I couldn’t say no to her, even though I’d have preferred to be alone.
I sat on the floor in the exam room, holding my little one, snuggling with her, and telling her how much I loved her. Doc & Dee came in, and Doc gave her a sedative while i continued to hold her. Then Doc suggested we move her to the exam table, and we laid her on a towel-covered pad. That way we could all love on her. She fought the sedative, trying to stay awake and be with us. Finally she was asleep. Doc looked at me, and asked if I was ready. There was no way I’d have said “no” – it was the last gift I could give this sweet friend who has given so much to me over the last 30 months.
All 3 of us were petting on Jessie at the end. Doc gave her that last injection, and she almost immediately stopped breathing, but that oversized heart of hers didn’t want to give up, and kept beating, albeit weakly.
We just kept petting her and telling her what a good girl she was. I kissed her on her forehead and told her to run free, where she could see and hear and chase the bunnies, and that i’d meet up with her again someday.
It wasn’t too long after that when Doc said it was over. Then we sat there and told Jessie stories for awhile. Doc & Dee go WAY back – over 10 years, now. So it was like 3 old friends talking about another old friend.
I love the fact that she can see and hear now, and run and play without pain. But I kept looking over at the empty car seat on the way home, where her collar was lying, and every time I did, my eyes would leak. When I was cooking supper Saturday night, and dropped some fish on the floor, I instinctively looked towards where she would have been lying, to point it out to her so she could clean it up for me. That’s when it became real to me.
She knows that we loved her. That’s what matters most.
She’s seeing clearly now, and hearing the birds singing around her. The sky is blue where she is, and the grass is green. A brilliantly vivid rainbow is arching across her sky, and there’s a whole passel of greyhounds looking out for her, to keep her company and show her the sights around her new home.
I’ll see her again someday. The God who loves me created my little girl just as surely as He created me, and He doesn’t forsake his creations. Until then, I have my pictures of her, and my memories. I’d rather have my little girl, snuggling up against me at night, whining and scratching at me in the morning for her breakfast.
There will probably be more lapdogs in my life, at some point, but there will never be another Jessie.
I know that I am leaping into this very late – after all, it was so like whatever – last weeks’ tempest du blog, the kerfuffle as regards the two journalists kidnapped at gunpoint in Gaza, and forced to win their release by being videoed avowing their conversion to the Islamic faith – at gunpoint. But I have been spending this week, buried in the 19th Century, in a snow camp in the Sierras, writing about imminent starvation, and perils that – well, to me this week, were a little more present in my mind. I’m focused on the next book, ‘kay? Being that I grew up in a world that was more than half convinced that Omigawd! the dirty Commies would rain down nuclear annihilation on us all , and now residing in one where even less-well-adjusted parties are freely brandishing a nuclear threat – well being stuck in the Sierra Nevada with dwindling food supplies and no rescue in sight seemed to have the charm of the unusual, as well as being – well, somewhat more manageable. In the 19th Century, one seems mostly to have had a little more time to consider the news cycle, as it were, and to proceed thoughtfully and deliberately down whatever paths of thought were presented to one. I am still buried in a mind-set which took a written letter a whole year to move from Monterey or Los Angeles, to the Middle West. I assure you, the 19th Century has certain discreet charms, once you adjust to a slower pace.
The resulting kerfuffle with representative opposing parties sounding forth, here (David Warren) and here (Captain Ed) seems to devolve around not so much the actual conversion, but the reluctance of the parties involved, to make clear they had been under duress, and/or denounce their treatment. Depending on whom you take sides with, it was either an understandable ruse to gain their freedom and lives – or the most horrible of capitulations, with serious of ramifications imaginable in the much-storied Seething Moslem Street – and then there are people like me, in the middle of the road, like the storied yellow stripes and dead armadillos, saying “But yes, to save their lives – but on the other hand, doesn’t that send some sort of signal – do you think? And what happens, next time – and what about -? –
Because, you see, it’s all about what you’ll give up, when someone points a gun at you. And as to what you’ll do in that circumstance, the truth of it is no one really knows what they would do. All we know is that other people have done, in some analogous situation. And some of those people have been most amazingly brave, have exhibited a degree of heroism and moral clarity that approaches – well something beyond what we have come to think of as merely human. And some people have been craven, and most of the rest of us have muddled through, and the great unifying principal of this kind of moral score-keeping is that one really never knows for sure, until one has actually faced the experience.
A story, from the Warsaw Ghetto, c1942-43: a party of German soldiers, SS or Gestapo, or whatever, amuse themselves by going into the Ghetto and make sport with the Jewish prisoners in it (and they were prisoners by the time of this story) by going to a coffee-shop next to a synagogue, rounding up the patrons and holding them at gun-point, while they ransack the synagogue and bring out the Torah. One by one and at gunpoint, they order each of the coffee-shop patrons to desecrate the Torah. One by one, each of them does: old-fashioned devout Jew, or modern and secular intellectual, young or old, each of the coffee-shop patrons does what they are bidden to do by the men who are holding guns at their heads, who have given every indication that they will shoot any Jew who refuses. Shamed, unthinking, embarrassed or otherwise, the coffee shop patrons do as they are bidden by the men who hold guns at their heads. Until they get to the one man, who is neither devout, nor intellectual – but he is modern, in that he is a notorious gangster, and has been for most of his life. A bad hat, a criminal, a dissolute menace, a frequent and enthusiastic violator of the laws of man and God – and when in his turn he is ordered to desecrate the Torah, he looks at them calmly and says, “I’ve done many things in my life – but I won’t do that.” He is immediately executed, at point-blank range. Alone of all the cafe patrons, he had an idea of what he wouldn’t do – and something innate led him to refuse, absolutely.
So, what would any of us give up at the point of a gun? Wallet, or handbag – absolutely. PIN? For sure. We’ve been told over and over, those are only things. You notify the bank and put a stop on the cards, get a replacement drivers’ license. All that stuff, sure, they can be replaced. Car keys? Jewelry ? Yeah, those too. That’s what insurance is for.
Slightly tougher question: They point a gun at you and say – “Give us the kid.” Or maybe “I’m taking the woman.” Or maybe, if you are a women, the person with the gun ties your hands and says “Don’t make a fuss.” Do you give them the kid, or the woman, or come along without making a fuss?
Now, the big question: what intangibles would you give up, under threat of violence, civil, nuclear or whatever?
We’ve already seen how swiftly most of our legacy media, newspapers and television stations quickly redefined intellectual freedom, in the wake of the Affair of the Danish Cartoons. The swiftness with which they capitulated to threats of violence if the cartoons were published , after decades of posing as fearless champions of the public’s right to know at any price was revealing. And cause for some dismay, for we are left to wonder what other concessions might be extorted in future by a nuclear threat – and that some of our most cherished traditions, principals, laws and allies would be yielded up with dispiriting speed by those whom we had expected to show a little more spine.
One of the last things that you can actually do with your computer in government service is to set your own wallpaper. Folks are always asking me where I get mine when they see what I’ve got under all my work icons and folders. “That’s very cool, where’d you get it?”
Independant artists sharing their work with the world. Over 25 Million images and growing.
Free registration and you can search by subject or style etc..
So, was there any particular reason to watch Katie Couric’s anchor debut on See-BS News?
I didn’t have one, but if you did, share with the class. Be informative, amusing and vicious…all three, if possible.
Being that I am now engrossed in writing a story about the early California emigrant trail… (Yes, PV, I am working on Chapter 13…. But I have to do a post for today, ‘kay?) I have been going back through my books and recollections about California, at a time when it was for all intents and purposes, a sleepy little backwater at the far end of the known world, a six-month to a year-long journey from practically anywhere else on the planet loosely defined as “civilization”.
Growing up there meant a bit of an advantage in that one could be aware of all the other layers behind the glitzy modern TV and Hollywood, West Coast/Left Coast, surfing safari/Haight-Ashbury layer that everyone with an awareness level above that of a mollusk knows. But peel that layer back, and there is another layer; the pre-World-War II layer, of Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles, of sleepy little towns buried in orange groves, Hollywood Boulevard a dirt track and Beverley Hills a wilderness… go back another couple of layers, and you arrive at a place that always seems to have had a dreaming, evanescent feel about it to me; California in the first half of the 19th century.
In many ways, that California marked the high tide-line of the Spanish empire in the New World: when the great tide of the conquistadores washed out of the Iberian peninsula in the fifteenth century looking for gold, honor, glory and land, and roared across the Atlantic Ocean, sweeping Mexico and most of South America in consecutive mighty tides , seeping into the trackless wastes of what is now the American Southwest, and eventually lapping gently at the far northern coast, where that tide, cresting in the 18th century, dropped a linked chain of twenty-one missions, four presidios or military garrisons* and three small pueblos**, one of which failed almost immediately. Mostly on the coast, or near to it, this was the framework on which hung the charming, but ultimately fragile society of Spanish (later Mexican) colonial society in what was called Alta, or Upper California.
It was a rural society, of enormous holdings, or ranchos, presided over by an aristocracy of landowners who had been granted their vast holdings by the king, or the civil government, who ran cattle or sheep on their holdings which were worked at by native Indians. The great holdings produced hides, wool and tallow, and their owners lived lives of comfort, if no very great luxury, and from all accounts were openhandedly generous, amazingly hospitable, devout…perhaps a little touchy about personal insult and apt to fight duels over it, but that could said of most men of the 18th and early 19th centuries. The climate was a temperate and kindly one, especially in comparison with much of the rest of that continent, winters being mild, and summers fair. The missions, which in addition to the care of souls had an eye towards self-sufficiency, did a little more in the way of farming than the rancheros; with great orchards of olives and citrus, and vineyards.
Far from the eye and control of central authority, they managed a fair degree of self-sufficiency; the scattering of structures from that era which survived to the 20th century set a kind of architectural tone to the whole area. Stucco and tile, courtyards, miradors and balconies, which looked back to cathedrals in Spain and Moorish castles in Grenada were adapted in adobe and brick, copied in stucco, and hung with church bells brought with great effort from the Old Country. Richard Henry Dana’s classic “Two Years Before the Mast” is an eye-witness account of the trade in hides with the rancheros, in the 1830ies, and this novel offers an accessible description of what it looked like, in the 1840ies, as well as the difficulties involved in even traveling to such a distant fringe of the world. The immortal “Zorro” movies and TV show is set in this milieu, which is probably where most people know of this little, long gone world.
But the Spanish empire slowly lost it’s grip, and independent Mexico fought a rear-guard action for a while. I think they succeeded for a fair number of years, keeping their pleasant and gracious outpost, because of it’s very isolation, but other national powers waxed as Spain waned. The British had Canada to the north, and trade interests in the Pacific Northwest, the Russians had Alaska, and even a tiny foot-hold at Ft. Ross, on the coast of present-day Sonoma county, north of San Francisco. There was even a vaguely Swiss interest in Alta California, due to the presence of John Augustus Sutter, who founded an agricultural establishment where Sacramento is now… which inadvertently brought and end to the gracious life of the rancheros. The Spanish who ransacked Mexico and South America looking for gold, even sending a fruitless expedition far into the present-day American Southwest, eventually gave up looking for gold on the fringes of their empire… and it’s the purest sort of irony that gold in greater quantities than they had ever dreamed of was found, initially discovered during construction of a millrace for a saw-mill that Sutter had contracted to build at Coloma in the foothills, as he needed lumber for his various entrepreneurial projects.
*San Jose, El Puebla Nuestra Senora Reina de Los Angeles sobre El Rio Porcinuncula, and Branciforte
**San Diego, Monterray, San Francisco, Santa Barbara
Sgt Mom and Cpl/Sgt/Student Blondie ROCK! I’m in San Antonio this weekend, and last night they treated me and a friend to a delightful evening of wine, dinner, great conversation and lots of attention from the two Weevils (both of whom are totally sweet).
AND I got to read part of “The Book.” All I can say is – “What are you doing reading this post, Julia? Get back to writing!”
What I’ve read so far is well-written and interesting (my friend thought so, too). But I have to admit, I was torn between reading more chapters and talking with Blondie & Sgt Mom. Making me choose between reading and talking could be considered a mild form of torture.
Seriously, we had a great time, and it was wonderful to get to know these 2 ladies better (and the weevils, too).
Memo: To Big Mainstream Media
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Can you hear me now?
In order of no special importance, I offer the following observations, with no special expectation of having them acted upon whatsoever, but more as a memo for the record, should any of you begin wondering at your crashing readership and/or media share.
1. A glamour-shot of a six-year old child, decked out in a teensy evening gown, sultry eye make-up and glistening lipstick is disturbing on a lot of mostly icky levels. Halloween is the only day of the year that a pre-pubertal person ought to be caught dead in lipstick. That such pictures of the late J. Ramsey are now plastered all over more than the supermarket tabs, and an insane amount of attention being paid to a ten year old murder case and a bizarre false confession indicates that a lot of media people share Mr. Karr’s unhealthy fascination with same. Ick, people, really. Ick.
2. Have any of your editors and bureau chiefs realized that practically every word and picture coming from local stringers and photogs in so-called Palestine, and Hezbollah-Land is either a lie— including “and” and “the”— or badly photoshopped? Or, what is even scarier for your credibility—- expertly photoshopped?
3. Are any of your reporters, dispatched at great expense and personal inconvenience to those areas aware of a subspecies of news event called a “dog and pony show”, and are they willing to entertain the suspicion that other bodies than the Bush administration may, in fact, be producing them? That thing in the corner, over there, with the spikes in the blunt end? It’s called a clue bat. Please thwack yourselves on the head with it a couple of times. Thank you.
4. Well, after having covered yourselves with glory over Hurricane Katrina, by repeating the most horrible of unverified and unverifiable rumors, over and over and over again, allowing the most ignorant and unsubstantiated statements to go unchallenged, and allowing a lot of absolutely heroic efforts and stories to pass practically unremarked… the reason we should continue paying attention to you at all would be? BTW, my own parents were burned out of their house in the Valley Center fire. Exactly one year later, they had managed to get the concrete pad cleaned off, and new exterior conblock walls put up. They were fully insured, and had lots of help, but it’s going on three years now, and even though they are moved in and the house is complete, there is still a lot of work left to do. Please keep this in mind, when you lament the slow pace of rebuilding in New Orleans and in the Gulf Coast. Just because they can rebuild a house in a week on one of those home renovation shows, doesn’t mean it happens that way in the real world. And blaming the federal government for everything about the damned hurricane starting to wear really, really thin.
5. So it was Dick Armitage who blew Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA employee to wossname, Novak! Well, (Gomer Pyle voice here) sur-prise, sur-prise, surprise! I’ve always thought it was an open secret on inside-the-beltway cocktail party gossip anyway, but thanks for sharing it with us peons outside Washington. I do want back every day of those three years of my life that I had to hear about Plamegate, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Yellowcake and Niger (pronounced Knee-gere, of course) Fitzmas, and the whole pack of nothing, though.
6. Dan Rather’s TANG memos, Katie Courics’ hips… a connection, you think?
Sincerely
Sgt. Mom
10. Tired of our fine young men and women dying in boring countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s so beginning of the decade.
9. We KNOW they’re developing nukes, that’s more than we knew about Iraq.
8. Ahmadinejad just pisses me off with his cheap suits and half a beard. Either grow a real beard and dress like the Mullah you are, or get some Armani for Allah’s sake.
7. At least there have been student demonstrations in the past decade calling for democracy, they may actually be ready for it.
6. We can’t let Israel have all the fun.
5. They keep telling me we invaded Iraq for the oil and yet I’m paying more at the pump than I was before the invasion. Obviously we need more oil.
4. It would annoy the living shit out of France, Russia and China. I love when that happens.
3. Bush hasn’t been compared to Hitler all week.
2. I’m tired of paying two bucks a pound for pistachios at the commissary.
1. The way things are goin’, we’re not going to see another right wing warmonger of a President until at least 2017. Two years people, the clock’s ticking.
Add your own in the comments, it’s amazing how many you can think of without really trying.
As I watch the detailed coverage regarding Hurricane Katrina, I have to ask myself:
How is it that the news shows can’t bring themselves to re-broadcast images from 9-11 because it’s too distressing for the survivors, but they have no problem re-broadcasting images from the storm and aftermath of Katrina?
Just makes me wonder, ya know?
Let loose “The Blog of War.”
From Booklist:
Burden, a blogger himself, has selected observations of ordinary men and women written and sent in real time as they endure the cauldron of war. Some of the writings are mundane, but there are also chilling descriptions of surviving a mortar attack and attempting to save the life of a severely wounded Iraqi. This collection is an excellent introduction to an emerging form of war reporting.
h/t Capt Ed
Last week at the customer site, I told them I planned to visit Biloxi, and see what the gulf coast looks like now, a year after Katrina. I explained that I’d been at Keesler on occasion with the Air Force, and Biloxi held fond memories for me. They told me I’d cry. I said they were probably right, but that I needed to do it.
I left Mobile on Saturday evening, and travelled west on IH-10 to Ocean Springs, just east of Biloxi. Once upon a time, I could have jumped down to US90 at any point along that route and driven along the beach all the way to Biloxi. But the bridge is out across the bay, so you can’t do that now.
My motel was just off IH-10, so that was cool with me. I hooked up with a cyberfriend for dinner, and we had a grand time getting to know each other. By this time it was dark, so there wasn’t really anything to see.
I spent today visiting with my friend, but tonight’s hotel is the Hampton Inn on Beach Blvd. My friend lives north of IH-10, off Route 49. The last time I was in Gulfport, which I’m thinking was 1998, there wasn’t anything north of Route 49. Now there’s a good two miles of commercialization up that way. Just about every chain restaurant you could hope to find, and a good supply of stores, as well.
That was odd enough. But then I left my friend’s place and headed south on 49, towards the coast. Back in ’98, I was here as a civilian contractor, and we stayed at the Hampton Inn there on 49 & IH-10, in Gulfport. I left here that time just a day or so ahead of Hurricane Georges.
And now I’m back, a year after Katrina.
The dog that Sgt/Cpl. Blondie presented me with at Christmas when she came home from serving in the Marines, after telling me that I would have either a dog or a gun in the house— my choice — now appears to have grown to her full adult size of about fifty-five or sixty pounds. She is a densely muscled, fawn-colored dog, with a black mask on her face, and a white chest and toes; almost everyone who sees her recognizes her immediately as being part-boxer. She displays much of the boxer temperament as well; friendly, intelligent and companionable, quiet as dogs go, but capable of being quite willful and stubborn.
The Weevil is much admired by the general public, as an attractive, and appealing dog, whatever the mix is. She has pretty well grasped the obedience thing at this point, also. She’ll sit, stay, come when called, knows that she cannot go beyond the garden gate, or into the kitchen, go into her crate with all speed, and these days, only pees in the house if I have frightened her. I yelled at her once, in a scary, Mercedes McCambridge-exorcist voice, one evening, after she swiped some food off the kitchen counter, and she was freaked for hours afterwards. I have even included her in the book I am currently writing, as a minor character, albeit with an intelligence transplant and a little more size to her.
It’s always been a bit of a mystery as to what the other, non-boxer half was, though. Something large, was the general consensus… Doberman, Great Dane, even Rhodesian ridgeback featured among most of the guesses. Blondie originally acquired her from a friend, who had her from a friend of a friend, who was reported to breed pit bulldogs, and I had always ruled that option out, as I assumed that pit bulldogs were generally smaller than Weevil, and her size had to have come from someplace. Working at home on the next book leaves me to run with her slightly later in the day, and last week, I made the acquaintance of a neighbor who took one look at Weevil and pronounced her to be, yes, about half pit bull. But I thought they were smaller dogs, I said, and the neighbor said, no, some of them were of a good-size… and Weevil’s head was just the right shape. She used to have pit bulls, and to her, it was as clear as anything.
I went home and looked up the characteristics of the breed on a couple of websites, and oh, my— some of them fit Weevil to a T. Like being an absolutely rotten watchdog. She loves people, any and all people, and has no inkling in that little doggie brain that she ought to be barking at any of them. William visited this spring, several months after Weevil came to stay. He has a key, and let himself into the house at four in the morning, and never the slightest “woof” out of the Weevil. She wandered up to him with her tail wagging, as a matter of fact, all friendly curiosity. In the event of a crazed, knife-wielding terrorist breaking into the house, I am almost sure the Weevil would be cowering behind me. The destructive chewing, when bored… yep, that’s the Weevil, all right. And the athleticism; she twirls like a dervish when she is excited, leaping and pirouetting in the air. First thing she does when I let her out in the morning, she leaps and spins three or four times in the air.
But the most convincing characteristic of pit bulls that she displays, would be how she reacts to strange dogs… and that is with extreme hostility.. But over the last few months, meeting another dog-walker with a dog on a leash has usually turned into an upper-body workout for me, and a couple of houses with barking dogs in the back yards send her so wild with hostility that I have to use both hands on the leash to pull her away, if I have not already crossed over to the other side of the road. Once or twice, we have encountered loose dogs, on our walk, and the Weevil turns absolutely rigid with tension. I’ve had to wrap the chain leash several times around my hand, hold her close to my knee and talk to her, as we walked by the loose dog.
Otherwise, the Weevil is very fond of Spike, and she was playful and affectionate with my parents’ and sisters’ dogs at Christmas, as well as a lot of other dogs that she met here and there, but I don’t think I will ever be able to take her to a dog park and let her off the leash , and I am not sure I could even take her into Petco, now, not unless I shot her full of tranquilizers, first. And as long as I live in this neighborhood, I shall keep rather quiet about it in any case.
So, Sgt/Cpl Blondie (as of this Monday to be College Freshman Blondie, hopefully over the next seven years to metamorphose into Dr. Blondie, DVM) and I were in the main post office this week to return unopened, some book club selections that I swear, I swear I had gone on line and said I declined but which turned up in the mail anyway and I only hope if I return enough of them refused they’ll cancel my membership anyway because I only signed up to get the four books at 50 cents or a dollar, or whatever, and I’ll sign up again next decade to get some cheap books….oh where was I? Got it. Post office.
There was a young man in line behind us with two small children at their most totally charming stage of life… which is at about 4 or 5. Old enough to be over the terrible twos, and damn grateful are we for all of that, and not old enough to begin laughing at your lamentable taste in oldies on the radio. The two children, a boy and a girl, were teasing their Fond Papa, trying to make him turn around and look out through the plate glass window-wall of the area where everyone lines up for stamps. Someone in the parking lot, they insisted to their Fond Papa, was trying to steal their car! And of course, he was teasing them in return, by not looking… which reminded me very much of what an awful tease my own father was.
I imagine it was because Dad was an only child; not only that, the only adored child of Granny Dodie, who could give the proverbial over-protective Jewish mother many valuable, and guilt-inducing lessons. Perhaps if Dad had been able to tease younger siblings… at least, it would have watered down Granny Dodie’s motherly instincts to a degree somewhat less overwhelming. I am fairly certain many of her own friends must have gotten damned tired of hearing her talk about Dad. On the other hand, Mom said that the one of the most wonderful things about marrying Dad was the fact that Granny Dodie and Grandpa Al instantly and unquestioningly accepted her as a daughter; she was theirs by virtue of marrying their son, the focus of unstinting adoration and approval— heady brew after her own parents’ difficult marriage, and the death of their own oldest child during WWII.
But Dad still was an awful tease. The little scene in the post office reminded me of the time at Redwood house when my little brother Sander was a toddler, on one of those evenings when we sat out on the terrace under the grape pergola and watched the reflected sunset fading off the mountains opposite. My younger brother JP and my sister Pippy sat on the shallow stairs that led up to the terrace, while Sander played on the lawn below, and Dad relaxed on one of the chairs on the terrace… maybe the canvas butterfly chair. We had one of those huge, canvas butterfly chairs, then. He looked out over our heads, at Sander on the lawn with his toys and remarked casually,
“You know, there is a very large tarantula, crawling across the lawn towards the baby.”
This had all the hallmarks of one of Dad’s teases. Of course, he was trying to make us look, so of course we didn’t.
“There is a large tarantula on the lawn, and it is crawling straight at the baby,” Dad insisted, with a perfectly straight face. “Really.”
Umm. Yeah. Sure, Daddy.
But eventually we broke, and looked over our shoulders, and oh, my god, there was a huge tarantula, all hairy legs and science-fiction googly segmented eyes, about four feet away and crawling straight at our baby brother. I flew off the steps and snatched him up, and JP flew straight into the kitchen for a mason jar and a tight-fitting lid.
As I was relating this to Blondie, the postal clerk begged me to please stop talking about nasty things like this, spiders and small children, she was deathly afraid to step out of her own house on most days, thanks to tales like this… although the children and their father did seem vastly amused.
I think it may have been a good and charitable thing that I waited to tell Blondie about the other spider story and Dad, until we were out in the parking lot. That would have been the time when he was in the midst of a craze for skin-diving, and used to go with certain of his friends to shallow-water dive, and had a rubbery black skin-diving suit, with a breathing mask, and long black flippers and all the accoutrements… and we often visited some of his friends’ houses, and watch our fathers melt lead to cast diving weights … why did they have to do this themselves, I wonder now? This would have been in about 1960 or so, when we were living in the White Cottage, in an era when anyone wishing to indulge in odd hobbies had perforce to resort to D-I-Y, I suppose.
Anyway, he came back from one of those diving excursions, driving the Plymouth station-wagon that was our main car then, with a great salt-water scented heap of sea gleanings in the back, covered with a couple of wet burlap sacks. He always brought back interesting things from these trips; abalone shells, and cork floats adorned with shell encrustations, this, that and the other.
“I have something to show you!” he said, enthusiastically, to JP and I. I would have been about six, JP about four… just the totally gullible age, and we followed him eagerly to the back of the Plymouth, while he undid the window and the gate, reached under the burlap… and brought out a huge black, many-clawed, many-limbed spidery-looking thing. It was a spider crab, of course, but it looked like the world hugest, most menacing spider imaginable.
He chased us with it, twice around the White-Cottage’s half-acre backyard, JP and I screaming every step of the way. Amazing stamina, when you think on it, really. I still do not care for spiders, although I can cope with them as long as they are smaller than a quarter… which might have been Dad’s inadvertent point.
The postal clerk would be screaming still, I think
I always hesitate to publish my travel plans – not becuase I think they should remain private, but because in my job, they are always subject to change.
For example: at the beginning of this week, my travel schedule was as follows:
This week in Mobile, all week.
Next week near Lafayette, LA, for 2 days (with 1 travel day on each side of that)
Labor Day week in Austin, TX for 2 days (with 1 travel day on each side).
Week of 9/11 in Clifton, NJ, all week.
Since I used to live in San Antonio (one of the best places I’ve ever lived), and since I still have good friends there (as well as blog compatriots), I decided to drive from Atlanta to Mobile (5 hours), Mobile to Lafayette (5 hours), and then Lafayette to San Antonio (5-6 hours), spend Labor Day weekend visiting my friends, and head up to Austin Monday night so I could be at the client site Tues a.m.
So Monday in Mobile, when I check my email at lunchtime, I find that the Lafayette trip has been postponed, for now, and they’re not sure they have anywhere for me to go next week.
I thought about that, in light of my desire to be with my friends Labor Day weekend, and how I was trying to figure out how to grab more time with them, and how I had been looking forward to driving across MS and seeing how Biloxi has changed in the last year. I know they were hit hard by Katrina, and are rebuilding, and it’s the first chance I ‘ve had to go that way in a while. The last time I remember being in Biloxi was 1998, on a business trip.
So I’ve put in a vacation request for next week, and I’m going to head west from Mobile this weekend, going where my fancy takes me, stopping when I take the notion, and eventually winding up in San Antonio. I’ll either use hilton points to stay free at hotels, or I’ll buy a blanket and towel somewhere, and camp in the car. Had I thought about camping, I’d have brought my tent, but I wasn’t expecting to have that much time for my travel.
I”ve not thought much about my route yet, other than being determined to avoid one particular bridge on IH-10 that passes from LA into TX. My heights phobia doesn’t mix well with that bridge. I’ve got an internet friend in Beaumont I want to meet, so I’m hoping that will work out, and another in Gulfport. Other than that, my itinerary is open.
So… who wants to come along? Or to put it a different way, those of you scattered around the world, is there some part of the Gulf Coast that you’re wondering about, since Katrina? I can meander with the best of them, taking back roads to get from one place to another, and will be happy to go off the beaten track and take pics for you. My only caveat is don’t ask me to go into New Orleans. Cities don’t usually interest me, and I’m more interested in seeing the small towns and the invisible survivors – the ones who didn’t make the headlines, or quickly faded from them. Pascagoula, Pass Christian, other towns farther inland that still got hit by the surge – that’s where my personal interest lies. I’ll drive into Biloxi and see how Beauvoir looks – it’s not reopened yet, and I’m not sure when it will, but I need to see it. It’s one of my favorite memories of Biloxi. That and their beach.
I’m also planning to be a typical tourist, stopping at attractions when they pique my interest. So does anyone have any suggestions for must-see things? Swamp tours in LA, Cajun history, etc?
Yawn!
Well, I’m going to bed now. If the apocolypse comes, don’t wake me. I’ve got a Wing Fun Run in the morning.