Villa Junque

27. February 2008 · Comments Off on Villa Junque · Categories: Ain't That America?, Critters, Domestic, General, Home Front

‘Villa Junque’ (pronounced in Spanish as Hoon-kay’) – sounds so much better than ‘garage full of junk’, which is what mine has descended to, what with Blondie enthusiastically collecting ‘stuff’ for her eventual first apartment/house/place of her own. A couple of years ago, I saw a tee-shirt/sweat shirt with “It isn’t an empty nest until all of their stuff is out of the garage” and truer words were never printed across the parental chest. All of her accumulated stuff from two hitches in the Marines came home with her – the large TV, the stereo system, a lot of Target and Walmart bought kitchenware, a microwave, and several boxes of shoes and bedding. And a strangely comfortable metal-framed armchair and footstool which was apparently the prize of the Cherry Point single barracks, as it gravitated from room to room until my daughter inherited it from a friend and shipped it home with her stuff. She pleaded with me to re-upholster it, which I did… and to give it houseroom in the den… which I also did. As I said, it is strangely comfortable. Her TV and stereo also were allowed in, with some reluctance on my part. They were newer than mine by about a quarter-century, so a bit more complicated… but worked a little better. The classical station still receives badly, but that’s an eccentricity of their transmitter.

Her dog and her two cats were also folded into the household, and it generally works out, although three of my cats hate the dogs and prefer Blondie’s end of the house to mine. It’s all her other stuff which has made my house into the Villa Junque, although I do admit that some of the stuff I moved into the garage was specifically dedicated for her first place – the dining table that was too big for the dining area, some bookshelves superfluous to my needs once I put up hanging shelves and some other small stuff. Really, it wasn’t a patch on what I notice in other people’s garages. I could actually get my car into it, still. (Well, I could until Blondie moved in her stuff.)

Besides being drawn to the 70%-off shelves at fine retail establishments (where we have snapped up plenty of Christmas ornaments and wrapping paper for next year) Blondie is also a dedicated yard-sale shopper. Walking the dogs early on Saturday morning is nothing more than a disguise. She is actually reconnoitering for yard sales. With luck and walking the dogs, we can beat the roving pros, descending with their battered step-vans and pickup trucks and snapping up the good stuff. I don’t know where these people go with their oddly assorted gleanings; they are usually Hispanic and go for the furniture and the used appliances, but do not distain the clothes, bedding and toys. Blondie now has a nice collection of glass and silver-plate knick-knacks, garden lanterns and ornaments, chairs and crockery. She hopes that some of it may be Antiques Road Show-worthy some day.

I think our neighborhood is moving up, socio-economically; there is a better grade of stuff at yard-sales than formerly. Even the stuff put out for the trash – especially when someone is moving and is sick to death of making decisions about stuff – is a better grade. We struck a bonanza this year with pots and plants, but the absolute prize was spotted Sunday afternoon by our equally bargain-fanatic neighbor Judy. She saw a love-seat placed by the curb with a lot of other trash and made a special visit to our house to tell us where.

It turned out to be upholstered in leather, only a little worn on the seat cushions and two tears in places, and so heavy that it probably is a good grade of furniture. Well and I know that because of the chore it was for the two of us to load it in the back of the Montero and then carry it into the house. Whatever it will be to reupholster a solid hunk o’ small sofa like that is still less than it will cost to buy new. And it is amazing the difference that some cleaning solution, and some carefully placed throws and pillows will accomplish.

The Weevil loves it, since it is large enough for her to sprawl in comfort; Spike and the cats love it because the back and arms are broad enough for them to stretch out in equal comfort and all of them together. And I have to admit – it is a very comfortable place for humans to lounge as well.

But – we are swearing to everyone that we actually scored it at a yard sale for $20.

Ever-Accelerating Waltz

21. January 2008 · Comments Off on Ever-Accelerating Waltz · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front, Veteran's Affairs, World

I’ve been lax in blogging the last couple of weeks – three reasons for this. One – slogging away at the epic known as Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms, for I have reached a Very Interesting Chapter, one that I had thought a lot about – so the narrative does not have to be yanked out of my consciousness, inch by reluctant inch, like pulling a large boa constrictor out of a tight-fitting drain. I have spent four or five chapters setting up all the characters in place on the literary chessboard, establishing motivations, dabbling on the foreshadowing and setting up the conditions for what happens now. It’s a lightening-fast raid by a Comanche war party, which results in death for two characters and the kidnapping of another characters’ children. I am not planning on being particularly politically correct in describing the aftermath of the raid. I imagine Mom’s English-professor friend who has been reading the story all along will be terribly freaked out by this development. There’s no getting around the fact that the Comanches treated adult captives with a brutality that can really only be described as psychotic.

Second reason: my various employers – Dave the Computer Guy, and The Worlds’ Tallest ADHD child have gotten their respective post-holiday business plans in order and for the past two or three weeks I have been working almost every day for one or the other. The Worlds’ Tallest finally got the last little scrap of his office organized. Heretofore, he had been in the habit of just scraping off the top of his desk whenever it reached an unbearable degree of clutter and dumping everything in a file box. When I first began working for him, more than a year ago, there were more than a dozen of such boxes piled up under the living room table… and naturally he would be in a tizzy because he could never find anything; a file, a post-it note reminder, a scribbled telephone number, last weeks farm and ranch property classifieds, a past-due bill from the utility company. You name it – he couldn’t find it. But over Christmas, he sorted out the last two boxes – mostly by throwing out the contents on the very fair assumption that if he hadn’t missed anything in them in a year, than there wasn’t much important therein. The file cabinets are purged, the desk-tops are clean, he found a whole case of copy paper buried in another closet, and I have almost trained him to put receipts into a manila envelope in the wire file-rack on my desk instead of leaving them crumpled up in the most unexpected places. So he is off to take pictures of various ranch properties, and on the morrow I will start making up nice little one-page write-ups for each. Which is what I was supposed to be doing, all along, but never mind.

Dave the Computer Guy is helping one of his friends launch a carpet-cleaning business, in addition to the computer-repair and website stuff, which he runs from his home. Yes, he is diversifying his vast corporate empire; and I am doing his market-mailing and general office support. He went all-out and set up a private office for me, in an attempt to untangle the office stuff from the computer-repair stuff and the carpet-cleaning stuff. They were formerly jumbled all together in the second bedroom of a double-wide in a trailer-park on O’Connor Road. Yes, I have achieved the dignity once more of a private office, but alas, no corner view – no window, for the office was formerly the walk-in closet. It has worked out rather well, actually – for it is just large enough to accommodate an L-shaped worktop, with shelves above and below, a single office chair and myself. The neat thing is that I can reach everything, just by scooting the chair about six inches one way or the other.

Third reason: Not much interested in the spectacle of Her Inevitableness and the Fresh Prince of Illinois slugging it out, other than relishing the irony. It’s gonna be a long political season, and I’d like to pace myself.

Another Fine Mess

17. January 2008 · Comments Off on Another Fine Mess · Categories: General, General Nonsense, GWOT, Home Front, Media Matters Not, Military, Rant, sarcasm, Veteran's Affairs, War

Oh, so it looks like the ever beloved New York Times has nobly volunteered itself to be the Piniata o’the Month for unleashing yet again – in the words of Maxwell Smart “the old Krazed Killer Veteran Story”. You know, the same old, same old pathetic round of stories that those of us over a certain age saw in the 1970s – and not just in the news but on every damn cop show; the freak who got a taste for killin’ and brought it home with him after the war. Honest to key-rist, NYTimes-people – what is your assignments editor these days smoking these days? I am a little late to joining the predictable pile-on from every quarter, which looks like it includes just about everyone short of the VFW.

At least it’s nice to know legacy media drones can do a google search these days and assemble a laundry list of whatever it was they were looking for in the intertubules. A step up from a couple of years ago, all things considered. But… and that is a big but there, almost as big as a Michael Moore butt…it is just that – a laundry list of incidents where someone who was a military veteran of a tour in Afghanistan or Iraq was subsequently involved in or thought to be involved in a murder. Or manslaughter, or something.

No context, no analysis – just OMFG, the Krazed Killer Veterans are Koming (and it’s all the military’s fault!) Look, NYTimes-people, coincidence is not co-f**king causality. Sometimes, it is just a co-incidence, and laying on a smarmy layer of sympathy and glycerin tears over the poor *sniff* innocent *sniff* widdle misdiagnosed *sob* veterans does not make your s**t-sandwich of a story any more palatable. Not to veterans and their families.

Not only can we remember this kind of story post-Vietnam, but the very senior among us can remember it post-WWII. I am reliably informed that there was even a certain amount of heartburn over an anticipated propensity for free-lance violence on the part of returning veterans from the Civil War – and no, I will be not sidetracked into a discussion of how the still-expanding western frontier managed to provide an outlet for all of those Billy Yanks and Johnny Rebs seeking post-war excitement.

My point would be that when this same-old-same-old went down post-hostilities every other damn time, the experience of military service was a bit more evenly spread among the general male population. The general reader had enough friends and relations in his immediate circle to take the whole Krazed Killer Veterans are Koming narrative with a large handful of salt. They knew enough veterans personally to not take what they read in the papers as necessarily the whole truth, and to put the sensational stories of post-war veteran crime into context. And they could blow them off as just another grab at the headlines.

But service in the military these days draws on a smaller sub-set of the population – and unfortunately that set does not include the media or cultural elite. Tripe like the NYT’s Krazed Killer Veteran – if it is not challenged and countered robustly- will soon solidify into conventional wisdom, just like it did with Vietnam veterans. And that, my little scribbling chickadees at the NY Times – is not going to happen again. Welcome to attitude adjustment, Times-folks. I can promise a real interesting and educational time for you over the next couple of days. Take notes. They will come in handy, especially for the next time you are assigned a story about military veterans.

Later: (Update from Iowahawk, too delicious to leave unlinked. Beware, NYTimes- this one is gonna leave a mark!)

Still later: And so will this blast from Col. Peters. My advice to the NYTimes writers is to load up on Midol, as well as taking notes.

All Apologies

06. November 2007 · Comments Off on All Apologies · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front, Literary Good Stuff, Site News, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Mmmm… I’m building a website. For a writer’s guild that I have joined. I’m on the board, actually. There’s this group of people I met in an Amazon.com discussion group who have decided that dammit, we need to really do something about the literary industrial complex. And holy c**p, about two dozen of us have gone and done something.

We’ve formed a non-profit writers’ guild, and plan to collaborate on marketing and publicity, and some other stuff, like a newsletter and making the scene at various book-fairs.

We have mad visions of doing for the literary industrial complex what blogging did for the legacy media. You know, storming the barricades, and all that.

Wish me luck, and keep that flaming torch handy. I may need it…

The Hollywood writers are on strike? Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit – how the hell can you tell? Blondie just discovered that we have BBC-America in our cable package. We’re set for the next few months, what with Torchwood, Doctor Who and the new Robin Hood.

Happening Here

09. October 2007 · Comments Off on Happening Here · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Home Front, Veteran's Affairs, World

Tuesdays and Thursdays are mornings when Blondie and I can take our time, letting the dogs drag us briskly through the neighborhood, especially those days when I am not needed at the ranch realty office. We talk about things we notice in the neighborhood, like who’s house is for sale, how the renovation work on the “burned” house three streets over is going, say hi to some of the neighbors and/or their dogs, note any interesting garage sales shaping up on the weekend, encourage Weevil and Spike to piss on the lawn of the neighbor who yelled after us last year because someone else had let their dog poop on her lawn… and us with our pockets bulging with plastic bags, I ask you! She has moved away, but we like to see our dogs carrying on with the tradition. It does get pretty dry around here: moisture is moisture, y’know.

This morning we were carrying out a practical exercise, brought about because last night we had been watching the DVD of Jericho- Season One. I’m doing a review, and had to catch the ones that I missed, early on. Chilling stuff, actually; how the world ends, in the middle of the morning with hardly anyone noticing, until static fills the broadcast channels. One thing and another reminded me of a story about a poor neighborhood in New Orleans, whose residents rode out Katrina and the aftermath comfortably tucked up in a local school. It was one of those small stories which didn’t get much play, probably because most of the reporters were drooling over what was supposed to have been happening at the Superdome and the Convention center. I did hear of it on NPR, and read a brief feature on-line, and of course recall nothing but the general outline of events. Basically some of the neighbors got together, led by a couple of local military veterans, and set up their own shelter on the upper floors of the school, which they assumed would be safe enough, as some of the older neighbors remembered taking refuge there during the last ginormous hurricane. They laid in plenty of supplies, bedding, cots, lamps, batteries, cooking equipment – everything they would need. And there they remained, setting up a soup kitchen for themselves, looking after elderly neighbors who refused to leave their flooded houses; tidy, efficient and comfortable. They had even thrown out a couple of thugs, who came looking for trouble… and when anyone came around asking if they wished to be evacuated, no one really wanted to, as they were doing quite well through their own efforts.

So Blondie and I were thinking out loud of how our neighborhood could be organized; we’re on high ground, so flooding wouldn’t be so much of a problem, but no electrical power and a breakdown of local law enforcement would present a bit of a sticky wicket. The neighborhood is thick with military retirees, and active duty; we agreed that the problem at first would be everyone trying to be in charge, before sorting out how everyone’s experience and training would best be applied.

In the interests of security, we’d have to cut off access into the neighborhood, first. There are four main entrances, and privacy fences along all four sides. So, block three of them with parked vehicles, and keep the gate nearest Stahl Road and Judson open, set up roving armed patrols of two or three each, along the outside fences, and guards at the entrances. Mark them with some kind of armband, nothing fancy, just a strip of cloth. This is Texas, god knows if you canvassed the neighborhood, there’s probably enough weapons to supply the army of a small European state, and their police force, too. Secure the perimeter, and begin canvassing every house. Who is home, who is in need of medical attention, who is gone, but has left pets or children alone? We’d have to assume that the active-duty military would be gone, and so would the reservists, leaving us with a lot of retirees in varying degrees of fitness, and a lot of family members of all ages. Who has a portable generator, a charcoal or bottled gas grill? A freezer full of food which will thaw, when the power has been off for a week? Who has large cooking pots, has managed a restaurant or a dining hall kitchen? Who is a doctor, a nurse, an electrician? Can we set up dining facility at the elementary school, and is there a generator there? What about the assisted living facility and the day-care just outside the entrance at the other end of the neighborhood? If we could secure them, we’d have a facility to care for the frail and elderly… even better, if they have generators. Canvas the neighborhood; collect batteries and over-the-counter drugs, medical supplies, bleach, pet food, lanterns and candles, blankets and bedding. Trees, Blondie pointed out. After a bit, we can start cutting down trees, and taking out wooden fences within the neighborhood. Most houses have functioning fireplaces – not terribly efficient when it comes to keeping a room warm, or to cook over, but better than nothing. Blondie also favored dividing the neighborhood into quadrants as far as security patrols went, and stockpiling food at one house within each quadrant.

We’d be good for at least a week, we agreed, but after that, we’d have to send out foraging parties for food supplies, gasoline and medicine. A slightly off-kilter way to spend a morning, but sometimes just having thought about things like this is a good way to begin coping with the situation, should it ever arise.

Vietnam Veterans Memorial Defaced

12. September 2007 · Comments Off on Vietnam Veterans Memorial Defaced · Categories: A Href, General, Home Front

Article

Volunteers and National Park Service rangers on Saturday discovered a “light, oily” substance on the memorial’s wall panels and the paving stones in front of it, Bill Line, a Park Service spokesman, said yesterday.

The substance, which has not been identified, was spread over an area of about 50 to 60 feet, mostly on the paving stones, Mr. Line said.

The article states that they’re not sure if the substance was intentionally spread, but when I look at the photos taken by Rob Bluey, it’s hard to imagine it being accidental.

h/t: Baldilocks, who got it from Red State

Why Writers Turn to Drink

14. August 2007 · Comments Off on Why Writers Turn to Drink · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front, Rant, Veteran's Affairs

(deteted and re-posted to allow comments. Punctuation in the title messes up the comments. Don’t know why, just one of the laws of the universe)

Or this one would, if it weren’t a weekday. Besides the slow corrosive frustration of dealing with the various submissions processes of the big literary-industrial complex over the past year with very little to show for it but a tall pile of incompetently Xeroxed rejection slips with totally lame apologias and indecipherable signatures, there is one enormous frustration coming to a boil.

This frustration has been sitting in my metaphorical in-box like a pile of cat poop for a while. It’s as if someone is trying to send me a message; the cats do this when the litter box gets a little rancid. They usually do it on the rug in front of the TV stand, though. This is more of a psychic pile of poop, with a long history attached.

That is, if this last March can be said to be history. This is when a friend of mine at the ratio station where I part-time referred me to his own week-day place of employment, a local monthly magazine of stupendous glossiness and cachet. He told me that they were always looking for good free-lance writing, and what with one thing and another, the editor liked one of my story pitches, and so I wound up with an assignment for a not inconsiderable payment – well, it was about as much as I make as part-time office help in a week of workdays. All clear so far: got the assignment in March, did the work in April (including a re-write) for a deadline in early June and publication in the July issue, with payment to follow publication. So – not getting paid when the article was accepted (as does one of the other enterprises that I do work for occasionally) but the following month. Hokay, so another four weeks.

The exact timing of payment for the article became a little iffy, when we actually got to July. When I asked, my friend allowed casually that he usually got paid for his stuff during the first week of the month. The editor, when pressed by e-mail, responded casually “oh, sometime this month“. And the invoice they sent to me to fill out and fax back to them so they could process the check said (in smallish print at the bottom) to expect payment up to six weeks after the issue in which the invoiced story was on the newsstand. Which bumped the whole thing back to August; especially if there is some quibbling about what actually constitutes the meaning of the phrase and the precise date of “hitting the newsstand”.

So, picture this: I am going down to the mailbox and hovering over our kindly postal-worker every day that I am working at home for the last two weeks, expecting a check, planning a quick trip to the bank just in case. My plans for that check include buying some blogads advertising space, a box of printed postcards to send out to market it directly, and a good few extra copies of the book to send out for reviews. I’ve lined up a good few promises of reviews from an assortment of bloggers and friends. The next step of my strategy depends on this and the fact that I have not been able to move ahead – because I am waiting on this payment – is sending me absolutely spare with frustration.

So, yesterday, still no check. It’s the 14th of August and halfway through the month. That six weeks is pretty much up, by a strict definition. Polite e-mail to the editor, asking where is my payment for the story I did in July.

Reply, which can be rephrased thusly: “Oh dear, so very sorry. Thought you had been paid ages ago – but our office manager is off today. I’ll ask her tomorrow, when she is in.” It is not a good sign when it looks like a situation is setting up to drag on forever and ever – especially when I’ve been to this getting-paid-for-freelance rodeo before.

I was stiffed on payment for another writing assignment recently – this was text for a website and the end client apparently stiffed the web-designer after promising a check in full for months – and I was gaffed off for months, re-sending invoices and reminders about the measly $30 that I was owed, before the designer finally threw in the towel and admitted that he had never been paid either. I can write off a piddling amount like that, but the payment from the glossy monthly is a little more substantial.

Not enough to take them to small-claims over, but too much to just walk away from. And the most frustrating, drive-your-fist-through-a-sheet of drywall part is that I can’t really make as much fuss over this as I would like. I can’t go off on my friend, after all, and I can’t really go off on the editor if I want future writing assignments from her – which is looking less and less appealing, actually, as this whole thing drags on. Is this a game they do with the other free-lance writers? They could probably go on for years, burning one or two an issue. It’s all about renewable resources, I guess.

There is still the faint hope that I might actually be paid, or be paid for other work in future. Writers like me are disposable; we can’t be prima donnas throwing spectacular temper tantrums all over the office, not if it sinks the chance of getting writing work with another local magazine, another editor. I do not write for validation – I already have that. Or for exposure – ditto. I write for money – and in this case, it was money I wanted in my hot little hand two weeks ago. Now I know how illegal aliens feel when their employer is dicking around with paying them for work already done.

It’s half-past nine here, and still no response from yesterday’s e-mail.

Update: Eleven forty-five, no email response all morning, so called the offices and spoke to the office manager. Apparently my payment is on a list which has to be approved by someone or other. I may have a check by Friday at the earliest. Or maybe Monday.

I am so not happy.

Further Update: Oh, well… not until Monday. The guy who signs off on all the checks is just this very week in surgury. How very convienient! And I am not any happier BTW!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interesting Thought

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

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

If we have time, of course.

Donate ACs to Troops in 140 Degree Heat

22. June 2007 · Comments Off on Donate ACs to Troops in 140 Degree Heat · Categories: General, Home Front, Iraq: The Good

Go here.

Slightly Accelerating Waltz

08. June 2007 · Comments Off on Slightly Accelerating Waltz · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Home Front, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Kind of a scrambled week, overall: Saw William off to California after his long visit. T’was ever thus, just as I get accustomed to him being here, he is off again. Blondie started her summer term of classes, and my part-time employer is off and away most days showing properties… so I spent most of this week chained to a hot computer, metaphorically speaking, writing away. I’m well launched into the second book of the “Adelsverein” saga, or “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees”. Four chapters drafted, covering the lead-up to the Civil War, which here in Texas turned out to be more than usually interesting. Especially as not everyone bought enthusiastically into the noble gallantry of the Confederacy. I had a notion to stage a family wedding at the same time as the secession crisis came to a head in Texas, which will allow me to do a sort of “Duchess of Richmond’s Ball on the Eve of Waterloo” set-piece, all swirling crinoline and gallant men being called away to rejoin their militia units, while the women bravely wave their lacy handkerchiefs… oh, yeah. 19th century drama by the cart-load. Margaret Mitchell, eat your heart out!

The anticipation of writing this almost makes up for receiving another regretful rejection letter; this from the agency that wanted to review the first fifty pages of volume one , a detailed synopsis, a copy of my original query letter, a copy of their reply, etc…(and I think they wanted a small sample of belly-button lint. That would have been in the very small print at the bottom.). Their letter thanks me for sharing, and says that the story just doesn’t send them into the transports of excitement and enthusiasm that are necessary for them to take it on, blah-blah-blah, wishing me luck with another agent blah-blah-blah. I have enough of these letters in the last year to see the pattern forming; it’s one of the polite ways to say ‘no, thanks and while your book may or may not suck the paint off a Buick fender there’s a hundred like it on my desk every day and I can only pick one by some whimsical and mysterious process of personal taste and cross my fingers that you don’t get a deal somewhere else and I’ll look like a chump for having given a pass on a best-seller in case you save the damn letter’.

As you can see, I’ve gone lurking among some of the book publishing blogs lately… reconnoitering the territory, so to speak. What is really amusing is that the publishing and lit-agent bloggers insist that while there are piles of dreadful slush for them to wade through, in search of the potential pearls… those pearls do stand out! They gleam with a holy light, and the publishing world is just aching to discover them, and it’s not that hard to do! (Blow loud raspberry here.) I’d put more credence into that… if the so-called pearls thus discovered didn’t actually suck so badly themselves. If that’s the immediately obvious good stuff in the slush pile, the bad stuff must be so bad it’s toxic. Like Love Canal, Chernobyl or Michael Bay movie toxic.

Oh, well, hope still for me, anyway: another agent asked for the whole manuscript of “Adelsverein”. I am assured that the secret is to grab them in the first chapter; what could be more grabbing than a leading character escaping a massacre, I ask you?

In the meantime, while I await word from that agent, and any of the other agencies and publishers I have applied to, I am doing reviews for Blogger News Network… for the exposure (and to score free books and CDs!) and for a local monthly magazine of quite stupendous glossiness: also for the exposure and for what they pay, which is a tidy little sum. Not a fortune, but an amount well worth the time. I have proposed a handful of other article ideas for upcoming issues to the editor. I’ll hear which ones she would like me to pursue for publication towards the end of the month. I seem to be viewed with favor though being totally professional and ego-free as regards editing and rewriting on request. The essay on Hot Wells that I posted this week was the stuff that didn’t make it into the final draft. Blog material is not magazine materiel, but nothing goes to waste, as far as I am concerned. And one of my book reviews is actually now posted on the author’s website, along with a couple of reviews from the major media outlets; something to feel a little flattered about, even if it is for a book that is not yet published in the US.

Stay tuned… I am still taking donations, towards doing “Truckee’s Trail” in the fall, as a POD, and marketing it myself.

The Writer’s Life Waltz: Accelerando

19. May 2007 · Comments Off on The Writer’s Life Waltz: Accelerando · Categories: Critters, Domestic, General, Home Front, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

Blogging at a minimum this week due to a confluence of other literary demands, and just no enthusiasm for writing about something suitable for here. The WOT is the same old mouthful of well-chewed gristle, ditto for the prelim-presidential-campaign… jeeze, if I feel that way about it now, I’m going to be hiding in a bunker by next year. People, can we give it a rest? Ditto for American Idol (who?) And as regards Paris Hilton; this may be the only time I shall ever mention her.

Over the last month, we have had a very demented bird, a female cardinal who has taken to perching on a branch of the almond verbena, just outside the window to the living room, and flying repeatedly into the glass window. She will do this for fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch; regularly thumping against the window, as if she is either fighting another female cardinal reflected there, or trying to land on a non-existent branch. We have named her after the stupidest celebrity we know: Paris Hilton.

The pictures of Hot Wells came out very much as I hoped, so finish polishing the article to a high glossy shine, and edit the pictures suitably. I have a thick book to read and a review to write for BNN, ditto a DVD to watch and review… and there is another book on the way. Just when I worked out how to lead into events around the election of 1860 and the secession crisis in Texas, as they affected the characters in part two of Adelsverein; or as a reader described it “Barsetshire with Cyprus Trees”. So I am getting ready to plunge into the operatic drama of the Civil War; murder, lynch mobs, treachery brother-against-brother and all that.

I did get a response from the agent who wanted a look at the first 100 pages; a regretful pass. The first four chapters just did not send her into the transports of enthusiasm necessary to take on representing it, and a paragraph of the usual blah blah blah saying that it was a terribly subjective business, wishing me luck in getting representation elsewhere blah blah blah.

I have sent out fifty query letters for “Adelsverein” including a SASE for response over the last two months, but only gotten back twenty or so letters which usually begin “Dear Author/Writer” and apologizing for the form response. Which leave me wondering where the other queries are, and if they are peeling off my stamps and using them for something else!

Back to work, on Chapter Three, Volume 2. (First chapter posted here)

The Writers Life Waltz: Lento

12. April 2007 · Comments Off on The Writers Life Waltz: Lento · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front, Site News, Working In A Salt Mine...

A little slow this week; working on revisions and rewrites to “Adelsverein Part One”, or as one of the regular readers calls it “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees”. I have begun sending out query letters on it, reasoning that by the time I hear from an agent who wants to hear more, I will have finished the revisions and polished it all to a high gleaming shine.

I also put together all the materiel necessary— basically, the first fifty pages and an expanded outline— for “Adelsverein” and “To Truckee’s Trail” both, and submitted them to Tor Books, which is just about the only one of the big publishers who condescend to review un-agented submissions. They take four to six months to make any sort of decision, by which time I’ll be well along in finishing “Adelsverein Part Two”. Part Three, maybe… depends on how fast I can research and write. (links here, here, here, and here, for those who are new to the site.)

At this point, three separate agencies have looked at “Truckee” and have turned it down. They all liked it, said nice things about it, but… and this is the Big But… sorry, no. Either it is too hard a sell, defies easy categorization, or there is no place for it in their current collection of offerings . But they all wished me luck in getting it published, and threw in some blah-blah-blah about it being a subjective business and perhaps another agency blah-blah-blah.

This is the book that just about every who has read it in full has loved, and at least three-quarters of those people are not related to me at all. Sooo… the fallback position is that if Tor turns it down, I’ll do POD, and hire my friend Dave The Marketing & Computer Genius to set up a website specifically for my books, AND do some serious marketing. Even if Tor does think it worthy (and you’ll be able to hear my jaw hit the floor all the way across several time zones if they do) or I do manage to get an agent, I will still do a book website of my own.

Hence, the Paypal donate button, over on the left, just under the link to my first book. The PJ ads support the site, donations will help me get the best book about the most incredible wagon-train story you have never heard about get out there in the mad world of books.

Rites of Spring

12. April 2007 · Comments Off on Rites of Spring · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front, World

We are having a very pleasant spring here in South Texas…of course, being that it is South Texas, where is saying is “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes…” These conditions are apt to change with practically the speed of light. But this spring, all the climate u-turns have been favorable. Well, all but the overnight freeze over Easter Weekend which has probably trashed the Hill Country peach harvest for this year, as it hit when all the trees were blossoming. (As far as I know, Al Gore was not in town that weekend.) The next spectacular thunderstorm may yet favor us with golf-ball-sized hail… but so far all that has resulted is to make everything spectacularly green. Richly and lushly emerald green, as green as Ireland ever was, all the fields and the trees and the hedges that people have planted along the roads. And the flowers this year are splendid, not just the bluebonnets, but this year there are fields of purple wild verbena, and bright yellow daisies, drifts of pink primrose, more of them than I have ever seen before. And butterflies… we have had butterflies all this winter, for some strange reason. They are supposed to be especially sensitive to environmental pollution; guess we are not getting as much of it these days.

In my own garden, all the things that were blasted back to ground level by winter frost are practically exploding out of the ground. In a fit of boredom last fall, I had poured out some patented fertilizer goop on the ground under the rosebushes, and over the winter another fit of boredom led me to prune them all. Oddly enough, they have responded to this abuse by covering themselves entirely with bloom; red, white, pink and apricot. The sage and lavender plants that I scored from the severely-marked-down-get-em-outta-here-before-they-croak shelves at Lowe’s last fall are also blooming madly. The front garden actually looks, if you squint a little and back off to view it from a certain angle, like one of those spectacular pictures of a border at some stately English home; a mass of red, lavender and sulfur-yellow, on grey-green foliage.

Round in back, the wisteria came and went as it always does, in a week flat, but the jasmine is going strong, and the various potted limes and lemon, and the sweet-olive held out bravely… well, they did, once we banished the faint odor of dog-poop. The next rain shower took care of the lingering bits, and we finally moved around one of our junking finds to the back yard.

The last time the city came around for the bulk-trash pickup, where they will take everything but building debris and wrecked automobiles, Blondie and I spotted a wooden chaise-lounge put out in a pile of other trash. It was one of those sturdy home-made things, made out of 2x4s… very well made, actually, with metal slats on springs to support the cushions. The only thing the matter with it was one of the legs was a little rotted at the bottom, where it must have been sitting on wet ground for a while. And there were no cushions, of course. Until I made a set a couple of weeks ago, out of oilcloth, and we put it out where we have paved a large space with ornamental pavers set in gravel.

It is now nearly our favorite place to sit outdoors. I sat there for an hour yesterday evening, reading “The Worst Hard Time”… which seemed a terribly incongruous choice, given the garden and green trees all around me.

Why I Write, Continued

03. April 2007 · Comments Off on Why I Write, Continued · Categories: General, History, Home Front, Working In A Salt Mine...

Over these last five years, people who blogged on the side, or got bitten by some other bug have moved on, in various forms and manifestations. Some have even decided that they had said all they wanted to say and moved on to some other enthusiasm. One of my very favorite early bloggers, Stephen Den Beste, packed it on over health issues, and three others (Cathy Seipp, Acidman, and Mother Bear) died in harness, as it were.

Others are focusing on things that just do not pull my interest as much; only fair, because I have gone wandering off on a tangent of my own, back into the 19th century. It is the pursuit of literary creation that drags me there, at least as much indulging my own interest. And it’s a damned fascinating century for all that: it made America, in all it’s contradictory glory, over the span of a single person’s lifetime. The beginning of that century of marvels and wonders saw a just barely post-Colonial nation, clinging to the land between the Atlantic coast and the spine of the Appalachians, a rural nation, where necessary things were manufactured by craftsmen working by hand, cooking was most likely done over an open fire, and heavy cargo moved by horsepower, or the wind caught in the sails of ships. It took two months to cross the Atlantic, six months or a year to get a letter from halfway around the world. Water turned the wheels of mills, garbage was thrown into the streets of cities, and two states away was practically a foreign country. The early part of that century looked much like the century before, and the century before that, at least in the way that people commonly lived.

Yet, within a bare hundred years, electricity lighted the cities, telegraphs sent the news instantly from halfway around the world, factories churned out a constant stream of goods and materials and it might take a week or so to cross the Atlantic on a luxurious steam liner… and another week to cross the United States from one ocean to another. In a theoretical single lifetime, over that bare handful of decades, the United States spilled over the mountain barrier, rushed headlong across the plains and the desert to the Pacific, while new intakes of hopeful immigrants filled up the spaces between, built and filled up cities where nothing but woods and clearings had been before. The States fractured, nearly fatally and fought a desperate Civil War, reunified and kept on building, inventing, innovating.

Again, it was a century of marvels, and made us in many ways what we still are… but we need to keep the memory of it green, but not in that self-flagellating, politically correct wank-fest sort of way so beloved by the modern academic bean-counters, so busy with finding fault that they miss the grandeur of the whole creation entirely. More than the grandeur that needs to be brought to mind, also the optimism, the hard work and the sheer stubborn courage. My first book was about a pioneer wagon train, the first to bring wagons all the way over the Sierra Nevada, and I am sure there is some snotty academic historian somewhere (probably whole departments of them, actually) who will whine nasally that my pioneers were grasping, land-hungry and bigoted, careless of the pristine environment, unsympathetic to other cultures, and embarrassingly unrepresentative of our multicultural society that… et cetera, et cetera.

So what? They were 19th century Americans, some of then native-born and some recent immigrants. Some of them were barely literate, others not even that. They chewed tobacco and spat in the street, didn’t care much for Indians, barely tolerated Catholics, and didn’t give a toss what Europeans thought of them. Most women of the time wanted to be married to a good provider, and thought going to church on Sunday was a good thing. They probably had pretty rank BO, and ate crackers in bed, too. But held against all those 21st century high-culture misdemeanors… on a day in 1844, they stood on the back of the Missouri river, and looked clear-eyed at two thousand miles of trackless nothing. With no one but themselves to rely upon, they took their families and everything they owned… and walked out into the wilderness.

This is where we came from, what we need to remember, even if most of our forebears came a little too late for that part of the American adventure. So this is what I do: reclaim our saga and our heroes, against the day when we will need them again. And I am afraid we will need them again, and sooner rather than later.

AARGH

17. March 2007 · Comments Off on AARGH · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, Home Front

Red Haired Girl competed in the regional Scripps Spelling Bee this week – a victory there would have taken her to Washington for the national competition. She’s a very good speller, but these things tend to be luck-of-the-draw (I never heard of a cruller, or for that matter, a muumuu). She did well until the second from the last (p-e-n-u-l-t-i-m-a-t-e) round when she got the word fuselage. When asked to repeat the word, the pronouncer – consistent with her performance the entire evening – gave it a somewhat British flavor. RHG, who reads a lot but not the things that boys read, spelled it the way it was pronounced that night – fusilage. Another girl was eliminated for spelling angst as ongst, and yet another for spelling chronology as chrinology – in both cases they spelled it as it was pronounced to them.

I have always considered my time in the USAF in the early seventies to be a defining point in my life, and have an on-going fascination with airplanes, so this particular defeat was somewhat crushing. RHG took it in stride though, looking forward to next year. On the way home we went through some words that she might encounter in the future, like empennage.

ALMOST SPRING

10. March 2007 · Comments Off on ALMOST SPRING · Categories: General, Home Front

The temperature here in central Illinois reached 60 degrees today with a forecast of seventy next week. I have the smoker ready for that first brisket, the tires on all of the bicylcles aired up, and the oil changed in the riding mower. Tomorrow I need to fire up the chain saw to make firewood of all the tree limbs that I lost during the ice storm just 3 1/2 weeks ago. Oh, and the robins are back in full force and the bald eagles which, owing to their fish diet, are not all that tasty :-), are heading back north.

My favorite time of year.

This Sucks

04. March 2007 · Comments Off on This Sucks · Categories: General, Home Front

When Real Wife and I set up housekeeping 15 years ago, one of the needed items was a vacuum cleaner. By happenstance, we received some sort of free promotional offer, contingent on sitting through a sales pitch for a Majestic Filter Queen. For those not in the know, this was considered at that time to be the epitome of suck. Real Wife (then Real Fiancée ) simply had to have one. Having a few beers during the presentation, the only thing that stood out about the ordeal was that the motor spun at 10,000 RPM – impressive in its own right (if true) and clearly deserving of a Tim’s Tool Time Binford Tool endorsement. That is, the only thing that jumped out until he told us the price. Fifteen hundred dollars – 1992 dollars. Real Wife (Fiancée) gave me The Look, and we were the proud owners of a vacuum that cost a mere $700 less than my first brand new car (although said car, a ’72 Plymouth Cricket aka Hillman Avenger, had a redline of only about 5,000 RPM).

Well, it died last week (the Filter Queen – the Cricket died in 1977, victim of Lucas electricals and a Stromberg carb), or at least the motor did (teardown analysis found a loose nut and flat washer – catastrophic at aforesaid 10,000 RPM). Real Wife was ready to move on anyway; tank-type machines are not compatible with two story homes. We compared a number of models at epinion.com, and thought that one of the Bissell models, at around $150, seemed a reasonable blend of price vs. performance, so RW headed to the local Sears. On schedule, The Call came. You know the one – when he/she tell you that this really credible (in this case a former schoolteacher) sales person has these magic beans… In this case the magic beans were … a Dyson DC17 Animal. Triple cyclonic action, no need for HEPA filters or bags, etc. And only a third the cost of the Majestic. I quickly calculated that the price of having a negative opinion about this would be required active participation in future vacuuming activities, so I told her that it was her decision.

A couple of hours later she returned home, albeit with a somewhat disappointed look. It turns out that The Animal was not in stock. The old bait and switch – they sold her a DC14 telescopic instead. One of the ugliest damn things I’ve ever seen. Yellow and gray, with a faux business-end-of-a-NASA-air-tunnel look to it. But can it ever suck. We ran it over carpet that was vacuumed with the Filter Queen just prior to its demise and, unless the cats and dogs lost most of their fur since then (they look OK) the old Filter Queen wasn’t cutting it. I was so impressed that I almost asked to take it for a spin, but caught myself with the sudden thought that this could set an unfavorable precedent. Regarding the latter statement and before the hoards show up on the comment board with the digital version of pitchforks and a rope, I offer the following. RW has never come within even a passing consideration of reading a manual for a phone, computer, or other similar device. Same dynamic – once you start you own it. One of the dynamics that establishes the balance required for lasting marriages. My other defense for seeming to be a, well yes, chauvinist pig is that (except for flowers), if its outside its mine. Mowing, downed trees, snow removal, dead animal removal (the need has arisen), pest insurgencies, and landscape improvements – all are mine.

So, I’ve got a ’92 Filter Queen, all it needs is a motor. Any offers?

AN Art Linkletter Interlude

04. March 2007 · Comments Off on AN Art Linkletter Interlude · Categories: Fun and Games, General, Home Front, The Funny

I received an email from an aunt whom I’ve not seen since my Dad’s funeral in 1978, but who recently discovered email and the viral distribution of jokes and stories. The most recent message was titled “Funny Things Kids Say to Their Grandparents”. Having brought Red Haired Girl home at nearly forty years of age, I can personally attest that it is not always the grandparents who get the good zingers about age. Anyway, here are some of the choice ones.

A little girl was diligently pounding away on her grandfather’s word
processor. She told him she was writing a story. “What’s it about?” he
asked.

“I don’t know,” she replied. “I can’t read.”

——————————————————————–

My young grandson called the other day to wish me Happy Birthday He
asked me how old I was, and I told him, “62.”

He was quiet for a moment, and then he asked, “Did you start at 1?”

More »

Dump Sweet Dump

02. March 2007 · Comments Off on Dump Sweet Dump · Categories: Air Force, Domestic, General, Home Front, Military, Pajama Game

Some heartburn noted this week in some quarters about the Washington Post story about the treatment and the living conditions of outpatients at Walter Reed Army Hospital, and why the milblogosphere is not having a conniption-fit over that, with many dark hints about how we would be screeching like a cage of howler-monkeys if it had happened under another administration.

Not having a background in medical administration, or any particular knowledge of the set-up at Walter Reed, or even personal knowledge of anyone undergoing treatment there, I’d have to defer involvement in this fracas… except for a comment on the reported decrepitude of the building where many of the out-patients were living. From the description it sounds like, and most probably is, a dump.

All of these might come as a surprise to the dear little civilian writers of the WaPo and it’s ilk, who see the nice, shiny public side of the gold-plated bases, and assume that the rest of the base, post or fort is similarly bright and shiny and new. Au contraire, as they say in France, and ‘twas ever thus: George Washington lived in a house at Valley Forge, but everyone else lived in something considerably less commodious.

The reason that no one in the mil-blogosphere is hyperventilating over that aspect of the story is that most of us have lived in, or did business in worse, during our time in service. Peeling paint, leaking plumbing, sagging floors, corroding pipes, herds of rampant vermin wandering untrammeled in cheap and badly-maintained structures that are two or three decades (or more) past their best-if-used-by date? Been there, done that, got a raft of horror stories of my own.

Let’s see, there was the old high school on Misawa AB, back in the days when it was a sleepy little Security Service base; it was housed in three long sheds which had been stables when Misawa AB was a Japanese Army cavalry post in the late 1930ies. On a hot summer day the place still smelled distinctly of horses. It was slated to be replaced during the Carter Administration, except that Jimmeh passed on the defense spending bill which would have paid for it; another good reason to despise him even before bungling the Iran Embassy hostage crisis. Even the relatively newer facilities on MAB then were no prize: famously the hospital barracks was in such bad shape that a guy once walked into the upstairs shower room and crashed straight through the floor into the downstairs shower room. This was the place where I developed my life-to-date habit of storing all non-refrigerated foodstuffs in sealed jars, since the barracks I lived in then had roaches. Lots and lots of roaches.

The infrastructure on Zaragoza AB wasn’t too awful— this was an Air Force Base, where we do cling to some standards— but the water pipes were so corroded that tap-water on base came out colored orange, about the color and consistency of Tang. People living in base housing spent a lot of money on bottled water.

The infrastructure at the Yongsan Garrison, ROK was not that much better. A couple of decades of living with the expectation of relocating the mission elsewere had left the electrical grid in such shakey condition as to make power-outages a part of the expected routine. The water pipes were so corroded that I earned fame everlasting on the day I walked into the Air Force female dorm bathroom and noticed that the shower-heads emitted a bare trickle. I took out my trusty Swiss-Army knife, unscrewed the shower-head-plate and emptied about a quarter of a cup of crud out of each. This was also the place where some of the Army troops were domiciled in Korean War-era Quonset huts. In the fall, CE had to hold training classes for the dorm managers to teach them how to run the antique kerosene heaters that warmed them… the heaters were so old that the average soldier would never in his or her life laid eyes on artifacts of such antiquity.

The AFRTS station building in Greenland had mice so tame that one of the board operaters tried to train them to sit up and beg for food. A broadcaster friend of mine who was stationed at a Pacific Island Navy base was warming a pan of canned chili in a saucepan, when a huge rat jumped into the hot chili… and jumped out again, and skittered down the hallway of the dorm, leaving little rat-footprints of chili con carne.

Maintenance of facilities; it’s one of those dull, dull issues that hardly anyone ever pays attention to except those who have to deal directly with it on a daily basis. It’s not one of those sexy military spending issues; it is more of enduring headache, for there is never quite enough money approved for a tenth of local needs. What there is, winds up being spread as thin as a pat of butter on an acre of toast.

Overseas bases, and facilities that are on the verge of being closed generally get last call; and I’d note that politicians and investagative reporters are usually among the first to make a lot of hay when there is money spent on an aging military facility about to be closed.

So call me grimly amused, when they are making hay about money not being spent on an aging military facility.

Just for the heck of it though, the next time I have an appointment at BAMC, here in San Antonio, I’ll snoop around and take a look at what the outpatient troop quarters look like… but the last time I looked, six months ago, they all looked pretty good.

Any recollections of infamously awful troop billets are invited, of course. Misery loves company.

More Than a River in Egypt

21. February 2007 · Comments Off on More Than a River in Egypt · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, GWOT, Home Front, Politics

Ordinarily I don’t link to stuff that Instapundit links to, as I suspect that is redundant… but in the case of this particular “shrinkish” essay, I make an exception. The good doctor touches on some very salient points… and kind of explains why the level of discourse on certain topics has sunk to the vitriolic level that it has. Read and follow the links, for extra credit.

The Writer’s Life Waltz Again

12. February 2007 · Comments Off on The Writer’s Life Waltz Again · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Home Front, The Funny

Oh, the blogging has been light this last week, since I was trapped in the snares of literary endeavor. That is, pounding out chapter 12 of the new book. Some of the chapters come easily, as if they were already written down in my head, and some of them are hauled out inch by inch and word by word. Last week was one of the �hauled out inch by inch� weeks, but the week before I knocked out three chapters. Eh� go figure. I also had a couple of hours to work on Friday at the part-time secretarial-admin job, that between a weekly shift at the radio station, my retiree pension, and the very-slightly-more than paltry income from blogging allows me to stay at home and slave over a hot computer writing this century�s answer to �Gone With the Wind�.

So I am completely uninterested in the hot-news-item do jour, the pitiful life and sad demise of whats-er-fern (Ok, so her and Princess Di- first time tragedy, second time farce, and all that? Are we sure that the late and extravagantly mourned Ms A.N. Smith was not actually some animatronic creation devised by the tabloid industrial complex in order to generate the maximum quantity of tawdry headlines? I mean, inerrantly choosing the maximum tackiest of life choices at every possible opportunity� that goes beyond a gift: that argues a fiendish degree of forethought and planning. Oh, well, at least there is no breath of a whisper that she got it off with anyone really, really important in politics. Yet, anyway. Where was I� oh, yes� creation of semi-competent pop literature. Back on track, sorry for the diversion.)

I did briefly slip the shackles of duty yesterday: my sister Pippy had sent my daughter and I both gift cards for Borders Books, and so we popped down to spend a semi-blissful afternoon picking out the books that we wanted. Blondie went for an illustrated Terry Pratchett, but I had resolved to spend the gift card on some books that I could use for �the book�� ones that I didn�t have to keep returning to the library! I already possessed a good number of books that I needed for the writing of �Truckee�s Trail�, but in writing �Adelsverein� I am starting from scratch, and discovering that there exists a ton of excellent and thoroughly researched non-fiction about the German settlements. Either I can check it out from the library and keep it for about a month and a half at a stretch with renewals, or buy the stuff that I know I will need for longer.

And this book is going to be longer. I�ve already mapped out thirty chapters, and they have a wicked way of expanding, as interesting happenings and characters beg for more attention. Forty years worth of events in the Texas Hill country has an insidious way of becoming totally fascinating. Not to mention the people, of course. I write sometimes with a book open on my lap, to refresh my memory about places, descriptions, events and people. This is our history, and those who came before us; I need to get it all right. How it looked, tasted, smelled, what people in that time would have thought and felt and seen. Details count. I put myself in that place, with a book in my lap, and it all comes clear.

Oh, yes, the people: both the real ones, and the ones that I have totally just� you know� like made up? They take on life of their own, which is exhilarating and kind of scary at the same time. It�s easy and at the same time hard to write about them. For instance: in the next couple of weeks I will have to write about the deaths of three very appealing characters� one of whom is a fairly major hero. Sorry, it just has to be, for such sad events drive the plot, and it has always been so, from the instant that I conceived the whole story arc. (And it really was in an instant. I read something in one of the books� and just knew instantly that that was something which had to be a part of it story. This has happened, over and over. Really.) But still, it will be hard to write about. I was in tears for one whole afternoon, writing about a character in an early chapter who was fairly dispensable and barely seen anyway.

About the only harder thing to do will be about half a chapter on the heroine�s wedding night; something tender and erotic and a bit funny. Knowing that most women of the era were kept in a total state of ignorance about what the marriage bed involved, and that most men had a fairly detailed idea� and that a lot of married women of the era adored their husbands with desperate and operatic devotion (Queen Victoria herself, exhibit 1)� well, really, that argues that a fair number of Victorian-era bridegrooms must have done some fairly effective sex-education, at speed and on the fly, as it were. Otherwise, I presume their wives would have been (a) traumatized incredibly, and (b) loathed their so-called helpmates to really unparalleled degree. I am fairly sure that good properly married Victorians really had about as much fun in bed as any of the rest of us� they just didn�t go on about all the details as much. This proper reticence just makes it harder for the rest of us. I don�t mind, really.

Blondie says she will loan me some of her bodice-ripping romances, in order that I should get into the proper spirit. Yeough; if they dictate that I should have to write a sentence like �she grasped his throbbing man-root and guided it into her turgid flesh� I am so going to put my head in the oven. (For about 15 minutes)

It is an electric oven anyway, but you get the general idea.

Memo: When at the Bottom of a Hole

07. February 2007 · Comments Off on Memo: When at the Bottom of a Hole · Categories: General, GWOT, Home Front, Media Matters Not, Military, Rant, sarcasm

To: Wm. Arkin, “Military Expert”*
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Stop Digging

1. I take pen in hand, metaphorically speaking after reading your latest apologetic non-apology, to offer some kindly advice: Put down the shovel, step away from the hole and for the love of mike, stop digging. Possibly your editor or kindly-intentioned friends have already told you this. I encourage you to listen to them, as they presumably have your better interests at heart.

2. It is not clear in my mind why you pull down a substantial paycheck and are bylined as a “military expert” *. A single term of enlistment in the early 1970ies is pretty thin qualification, unless there is something more substantial to account for this miracle, since to put it kindly, nothing you have written ever since would lead anyone to confuse you with Ernie Pyle. Or Austin Bay. Or David Hackworth.

3. Try and wrap your mind around this basic contradiction: ever since the war in Afghanistan and Iraq began, those who have generally thought it a good idea and said so have been slammed with the chicken-hawk argument by those who do not see it as a good idea. That is to say “You have no right to support the war unless you are wearing a uniform and/or stationed in the war zone”. So a couple of young troops who are unmistakably wearing a uniform and verifiably serving in Iraq speak up and support the war effort there and you are (as teenagers say) all about saying “Shut up! We pay your salary so we own you, and you don’t have any rights to speak out about the war!” The contradiction is, to say the least, rather amusing, since it suggests that you don’t wish to hear their opinions unless they happen to agree with yours. This can be somewhat of a handicap for a reporter, actually.

4. I am also amused by the air of hurt astonishment which you display upon being confronted by the anger and outrage of those who have taken offense at your deeply insulting terms used to disparage the serving military. A so-called “military expert”* should expect a certain amount of flack in response to using such words as “mercenary”, and telling members of the service that they are lucky they to not treated like war criminals by the public at large. Do you recollect the phrase “Suck it up, hard charger” from your time of service? Apparently not. How about the one about people who can dish it out, but can’t take it?

5. Finally, I think you should take up another by-line, other than “military expert”. You remind me at this point of a veterinarian who despises animals and can’t quite figure out why they keep chomping great chunks of flesh out of him.

6. As always, the * denotes viciously skeptical quote marks.

Sincerely
Sgt Mom

PS – Can I byline myself as a military expert? I’ve been retired for a bit, but at least I can write about the military without pissing them off, and I’ll work for less, also. Think about it. Have your people call my people, or something.

(Cross-posted at Blogger News Network)

Yet Another Tiny Taste of the Good Stuff

14. November 2006 · Comments Off on Yet Another Tiny Taste of the Good Stuff · Categories: General, Home Front, Old West

 (More from my so far unpublished epic of the emigrant trail)

Some weeks later, when the Montgomery and Townsend wagons were still a little short of Kanesville, the Ugly Grey threw a shoe, and lost it in the deep mud. It had rained all morning, but now the clouds were breaking up into innocent fluffy white clumps scattered across a clear and pale sky. The two wagons had been much inconvenienced by rain, since it made the road a swampy, muddy morass, and brought the river far enough up to cover the trunks of trees on the riverbank. Francis and Allen Montgomery waded knee-deep in churned muck, and they were forced to the expedient of keeping dry firewood in the wagon, so that it would burn well enough in the evenings for Elizabeth and Sarah to cook a meal over it.John dismounted immediately, almost the minute that Ugly Grey began to favor his left rear leg, but there was no finding the missing shoe in the mud, not with the way other wagon wheels and other hoofed draft animals had turned it over and over again. Allen and Francis halted the wagons, while he did a quick search. The driver of a heavy horse-team dray wagon coming the other way saw them by the side of the road, and called out.

“What kind of trouble are you having, friend?”

“My horse lost a shoe… How far are we from Kanesville? Can you recommend us to a blacksmith there?” On the clear horizon ahead of them hung a hazy smear of wood smoke, too large for a single farmstead.

“Not far… three, four miles…  That where you’re bound?”

“For today… we mean to join an emigrant company there, for California. Did you just come from there? Do you know where they are camped?”

“Out west of town, in a grove of trees by the river, waiting for the river to go down,” Replied the drayman, slapping his reins, “And there’s a good few blacksmiths there… but there’s a man with a little forge set up half-a-mile back, if you ain’t keen on walking all the way to Kanesville.”

“Thank you, for your good words,” John tipped his hat, and told Allen and Francis, “Heard that? I’ll stop at this roadside forge, and catch up with you at the campsite.”

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For The Veterans of This Day

11. November 2006 · Comments Off on For The Veterans of This Day · Categories: General, GWOT, Home Front, Military, War

Arizona Flag

Eternal Father, strong to save,
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,
Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep,
Its own appointed limits keep.

Oh hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea!

Eternal Father, lend Thy grace To
those with wings who fly thro’ space,
Thro wind and storm, thro’ sun and rain,
Oh bring them safely home again.

Oh Father, hear an humble prayer,
For those in peril in the air!

Oh Trinity of love and pow’r,
Our brethren shield in danger’s hour,
From rock and tempest, fire and foe,
Protect them where so e’er they go.

Thus evermore shall rise to Thee
Glad hymns of praise from land and sea!

Friends Helping Friends

05. November 2006 · Comments Off on Friends Helping Friends · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, Home Front, Pajama Game

I learned a couple of months ago that a close colleague had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer that apparently is somewhat advanced. He has been undergoing chemo and radiation therapy in the hopes of reducing the tumor to an operable size. He is a fairly young man in his thirties, and recently married to a wonderful woman with two children. She was previously married and involved, respectively, with two men not particularly stable spousal material.

In order to help with the expenses and reduced disability income, several people at work organized a benefit that RHG, Real wife and I attended last night. The festivities began with a Midwestern hog roast. Loyal Readers may recall that I am a great fan of New England clambakes, but a hog roast comes close (a real Texas barbecue is on my list of things to do). How can you beat a locally slaughtered whole hog cooked over an open fire served with homemade potato salad and baked beans? We then had about an hours worth of live music by a local band composed of forty and fifty something year old rockers. Other musicians of local notoriety shared the stage throughout the night – all very good. Yours truly demurred (all I can really play well is the opening riff of Over the Hills and Far Away). The band then took a break for a couple of hours and hundreds of donated items were auctioned. Loyal Readers may also recall that I am a sucker for auctions, having furnished much of my home at local antique sales. A silent auction was held throughout the evening for numerous other items. Then the band played on until about one a.m.

The person for whom the benefit was held, in cahoots with another colleague, started Hawaiian Shirt Friday a couple of years ago. I think that the original reason was to give our then-clueless management something to be paranoid about, although I cannot confirm that to have been the motivation. In any case, a dedicated group of us wear the most outrageously hideous Hawaiian shirts every Friday, winter included. I have a nice supply of Havana Jack silk shirts purchased at a Kohl’s clearance sale, although many of the guys have found that ebay offers the ugliest. In any case, Hawaiian shirts and leis were the attire of choice for the evening.

Attendance was, in a word, unbelievable. Fire department occupancy regulations were broken. Former colleagues came from as far as San Diego and North Carolina. Real Wife and I were fortunate in finding a table early with another couple, and there were plenty of other early and pre-teens for RHG to hang out with (thereby precluding the agony of hanging out with Mom and Dad). Real Wife was a little stressed about not being able to have a cigarette given the presence of her students, until I pointed out that the parking lot was a side door away. Given the upcoming auction, we limited our intake to two bottles each of Old Milwaukee Light (the beer of the gods); RHG had sufficient ID to drink Shirley Temples. As is usually the case, the auction brought some outrageous bidding, with a strawberry pie and can of Cool-Whip going for $500. The buyer, a former irreverent (I mean Monty Python irreverent) engineer now working in San Diego, then auctioned it again – offering his face as a target for said pie. Two hundred dollars later the offer was accepted and consummated. For my part, I bought a beautiful set of red-oak mission style end tables crafted by one of our more woodworking-gifted engineers. My friend who has cancer comes from a family of Midwestern dirt track racers (You may be familiar with the Outlaw genre – open cockpit with huge V-8s and lots of wing), so the organizers requested auction items from various NASCAR teams. Almost without exception they responded with t-shirts and hats which, in these parts, are considered uniform of the day. The number 8 is huge in these parts, and it brought the biggest money.

My friend was having a good day as far as the effects of the various therapies, and was therefore able to attend. You will never find a more self-effacing, kind, and true-hearted individual. His wife, when recently asked how she was holding up, replied that he saved her life, and now it was her duty to save his. Before I left, I caught a glimpse of him standing alone, worn and tired, but yet watching lovingly at the hundreds of people who had gathered to help him and his family. It was a moment of indescribable sadness for me, knowing that the odds do not favor him. Nonetheless, I admired him for the fact that he has led his life in such a manner that so many people would come from all over the country to support him. How many of us can lay claim to that?

What have I learned from my friend? Drink milk, be an optimist, listen to what others have to say, be anxious to learn what others would teach you, and finally, be an optimist.

Apple Update

29. October 2006 · Comments Off on Apple Update · Categories: General, Home Front, Pajama Game, Rant, Technology

Well, the 250 GB external hard drive has arrived, and the Mac Mini should be here on Halloween. Last weekend I made a Herculean effort to get RHG’s computer (Gateway P4 2.0 – GHz) to a) work and b) access the Internet. I had partial success with a., but the Internet access was more challenging. I finally resorted to downloading IE7 to a thumb drive and installing it. No luck. The best course of action at that point was to reinstall Windows XP Pro, the unintended result being that I reformatted the hard drive, lost everything not Windows-connected, and was still Internet challenged.

Plan B. was to replace the whole box with Real Wife’s old machine (Gateway Celeron – a real piece of crap) which since new has been afflicted with the silicon version of Alzheimer’s disease. It could, however slowly, access the Internet, but her games simply would not run. I virus-checked it with no results. After being driven crazy with RHG’s boredom, I told her to use Real Wife’s computer when otherwise not in use. Understand that RW’s computer has Norton Internet Security, is update automatically every night, and is virus scanned weekly. To make a long story short, I spent the better part of last night rebuilding the Windows registry. Something caused a Norton error that read “TCP/IP Not Installed”, meaning that incoming email was not being scanned. This came after RHG reported that Lemony Snicket’s A series of Unfortunate Events kept locking up with some sort of email screen. I suspect this was somehow related to her Hotmail account, although Instant Messaging may also be a culprit. I got everything back up to speed (including getting rid of programs that were mysteriously self-installed such as Weatherbug and MyWebSearch), and promised Real Wife that RHG would be forever banned from that computer.

Plan C was to tell RHG that she was getting her birthday present early. I realized today that I do not have a USB keyboard, so I had Real Wife pick one up during her weekly 20 mile track to Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, it has bells and whistles that require that it be used in a Windows machine. I will therefore try to borrow a keyboard from work until next week or, failing that, buy one from our local Dell “Superstore” (yes, in a town of 2,500 people we have a Dell Superstore). I don’t particularly care for the proprietor (or Dell for that matter), but it will work out because I can tell him that I only need the keyboard – I bought the computer elsewhere.

Which brings me to the point of this post. It should be apparent that there is a common thread to this and related posts by yours truly. RHG is a pox upon every computer she uses. I love her dearly, but there you have it. I’ve looked at the history of her usage, and all I see are typical web sites that an early teen would be drawn to like a moth to a flame. I suspect that malware practitioners using human engineering have targeted her demographic. Hence the Mac choice. In addition to a different OS, I am now pondering what other safeguards are appropriate. I know that Norton offers security software for Macs, but is it necessary? I realize that the threat will increase as Macs become more popular, but I would rather not pay for another subscription until I have to. Nothing on her machine is mission critical, so I suppose I can afford to be a beta test for the first widespread Mac virus outbreak (RHG may disagree, but it’s my AMEX card). The real question is whether that threat is a) already present, or b) imminent. I’ll spend the money if it is well spent, but it is just one more thing to keep track of. I am taking other precautions as well, such as migrating RHG from Hotmail to Gmail and looking for alternatives to IM (I am guessing that a mass migration amongst RHG’s circle will please many other parents, and perhaps significantly reduce the revenues of our local computer superstore (many of which are derived from near terminal malware infections).

On a related topic, I’ve spent the remainder of the weekend doing work-related patent due diligence. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve downloaded IE7 and installed it on all of the machines in my domain. I know, I know, IE is considered to inferior to Firefox et al., and many of you will probably tell me that its use is probably the root of my problems. Nonetheless, I like IE7. Patent due diligence requires simultaneous access to several on-line databases, as well as a word processor and spreadsheet, and everything worked smoothly. I particularly like the tab system, where you can have multiple web pages open without clogging up the bar at the bottom that shows what programs are running.

Tomorrow after work I have to patch the tube on RHG’s bike. Finally, a project that is a more traditional “Dad Project”.

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