I’m really not that squeamish…

02. August 2006 · Comments Off on I’m really not that squeamish… · Categories: General, Memoir, Pajama Game

But then again, I’ve always had a problem with rats. It probably stems from the early-mid 1970s, when we moved to our house in the country. Before we built the house on our land, it had been a soybean field. In fact, when they were digging the basement, there were still soybeans around the edge of the field, left over from harvest, available for anyone to glean, or for the wild critters to add them to their winter stockpiles.

We built a large house – I’m hazy on the square footage, as I was only 12-13 when we were first planning it, but thanks to the internet I can confidently declare that it was over 3900 sq ft (I’m sure that includes the full basement), with 8 rooms, 4 of which were bedrooms, and 2.5 bathrooms, with an attached 2-car garage. Our dream house, this was supposed to be, but it quickly became the nightmare instead. But that’s another story, full of unfulfilled dreams, broken health, and failing finances.

This story is about rats. BIG rats. Field rats, that looked to be 12 inches long BEFORE adding in the length of their tail. The soybean field was THEIR home, and we dared to intrude. Normally, in a well-built house (which ours was), that wouldn’t be a problem. Why be normal?

In October 1974, our house was still just a shell. In a stroke of brilliance, we had had the house company build the parts that had to be inspected, and planned to finish the rest of it ourselves, leisurely over the winter and early springtime, always sparing time to work in the half-acre garden that would provide us with delicious fruits and veggies over the summer and the coming winter. So when the shell was finished, with the roof shingled, and electric boxes peeking at us from the bare studs, and an extension ladder serving as the basement staircase, we gathered our friends and family and began finishing out the house. My dad was a truck-driver, and instead of working 70 hour weeks, he chose to only work 40-50, so we could spend as much time as possible working on the house.

In February, the shell looked more like a house, but was still without plumbing, electricity, or sheet-rock. We needed to wait for spring to drill the well, as I recall, once the dowser found the proper place for it. And the septic tank still needed to be installed, once we knew where the well would be. Even so, we knew it was coming together nicely, and we knew that older houses such as the one we were living in took longer to sell, so we put our 1930’s city home on the market.

Imagine my parents’ shock when a nice family viewed it during an open house, and made an offer on it within a matter of days. They offered us $100 over our asking price, and wanted to close on it by the end of Feb. Early March at the latest. More »

In the Season of Butterflies

01. August 2006 · Comments Off on In the Season of Butterflies · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Pajama Game

Funny old world, that… what with everything else going on in the world, this part of south Texas is being overrun with… butterflies, more of them than I have ever seen in any other year. First it was swarms of small, drab brownish and dark orange things, with wings about the size of a man’s thumbnail. They are called snout-tailed something or others, or so my neighbor Judy told me; not the least bit spectacular, but they are everywhere in perfect swarms. In the evenings, they cover certain trees and shrubs to the point where they make the tree look as if it is entirely covered in small, trembling leaves, and gather around shallow puddles where anyone has just watered. The dogs and I have run thru a perfect whirlwind of them during the morning for the last few weeks, but this last weekend we noticed more than the little drab things.

We walked by a bed of gerbera daisies in a neighbor’s front yard on Sunday, on our way to get the newspaper, and a perfect storm of sulfur-yellow and creamy white butterflies rose up from it. These new interlopers are several times the size of the snout-tailed something butterflies, and much more discriminating. They very much favor the flowering bushes like the gerberas, and the rosemary bushes in the front of my house, which are now covered in spikes of tiny blue flowers and fairs of butterflies. The firebush next door is orbited by a constant mob of yellow, like an animated flock of postit notes. At the DIY home warehouse store on Sunday, we spotted a gold and brown Monarch with wings a big as my hands, lazily orbiting over a table of flowering annuals, along with all the smaller brown, yellow and white sorts.

We have never seen so many, in the time we have lived here, and have no idea why: it’s been hot, but not as hot as some years, not as rainy as others, there are just about as many flowering plants in bloom this year as others… it is a mystery.

Another mystery: one of my neighbors, several blocks up the road have suddenly, and horrifically contracted the urge to decorate their garden with a huge variety of healthy flowering plants and shrubs in an array of containers which have absolutely nothing in common, aesthetically speaking. It is almost as if they hit every nursery and DIY store in town, impulsively buying hand over fist every plant and pot that caught their eye, without consideration of all the stuff they had bought previously. About the only thing to hold plants that they haven’t bought so far is that nadir of low-rent taste, the automobile tire turned inside out, laid on the side, and the top edge cut into zig-zag shapes and gaudily painted. No, the assortment of pots would be quite striking of itself, but the statuary puts it painfully over the top.

Not gnomes, but all those elaborate , sentimental cast-plaster, or concrete statues of Victorian children, sitting on benches, or under umbrellas, or playing with the bunnies and duckies… dozens of them, and Blondie swears there are more of them, mysteriously appearing every day, as if they were replicating themselves in some revolting and not-to-be-closely-considered-by-the-squeamish fashion, partaking in mysterious rituals performed during the darkest hours of the night…. No, the thought of all those statues of creepy children coming alive at night, and throwing off their pinafores and trousers and tormenting the bunnies and ducks with… no, no, no. I’ll bet that when they smile, though, they have needle-sharp teeth, like the little gnomes on that planet in “Galaxy Quest”. During the day, the serried ranks of statuary make it look like a monumental graveyard for hobbits. And that’s the front yard, we don’t like to think of what might already be in the backyard, because at some point, the statuary will overflow their yard entirely, and come marching down the road, and then where will we be?

On, the other hand, the horrible marching army of statues will have to come by the house with the tree full of wind chimes, the place where they have ripped out the lawn, and covered it all pavers, and raised beds full of native flowering shrubs, whirligigs, painted sheet- metal flowers and crystals on metal poles…all very pleasant on a mild day, but what it must be like during a wind-storm, I shudder to imagine. Probably no one can hear themselves think, for the clamor of wind chimes, let alone call City Code Compliance to complain:
“Hello (bonnn-ggg! Bo-nnnn-g!) Code (Bonnnnnnggggg!) Compliance, how may we (BOOOONNNNNNGGG!) help you? (BONNNNNNNNGGGG!)…. I’m so sorry, ma’am, (BOOOONNNNNNGGG!) but I can’t hear you (BBBBBOOOOONNNNNG!) over the wind chimes!” (BBBBBBOOOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGGGG!)

I love the look of the wind-chime place, but personally, I’m happy to be living a good distance away. I think it would drive my dogs and cats into nervous breakdowns. I blame global warming. Or global cooling. Or climate change, or Al Gore, or somebody. Maybe even Martha Stewart, whom I am happy to blame for anything.

More Stolen Kisses at the Skylark

20. July 2006 · Comments Off on More Stolen Kisses at the Skylark · Categories: Air Force, General, History, Iran, Pajama Game, Veteran's Affairs

Our TI, Sgt. Petre’s pre-liberty lecture as regards the possibly alien mores and amorous intentions of various foreign military members that we might encounter was all of a piece with other informative lectures, mostly tinged with a certain air of dark warning. The famous Dempsy-Dumpster story was featured prominently, presumably as a cautionary tale for those of use whose lusts were so uncontrollable and whose aesthetic senses were so un-fastidious as to pick exactly that venue for a tête-à-tête. The choice of venues for engaging in sexual congress were pretty slim, on Lackland AFB’s training side, where total privacy was by practice and edict impossible. For that substantial portion of the world who has not gone through USAF basic training during the last four decades, the Dempsy-Dumpster story involved a male and female trainee who chose one of those enormous metal industrial trash containers for their particular brief encounter, only to be brutally interrupted in coitus by one of those enormous trash trucks, mechanically picking up the dumpster, and dumping all contents into the back of the truck. Hilarity ensued, along with least one broken limb, a considerable amount of embarrassment and a folk-tale for the ages. It might even have really happened, sometime in the early 1970ies, but I myself would have to see the contemporary incident report to believe it.

Anyway, we were forewarned, and presumably forearmed about the dangers posed to our virtue… although I thought it was very amusing that we had the birth control lecture a couple of days before we had town liberty, by an NCO who frizbee’d a diaphragm the entire length of the classroom, by way of catching our attention. Which she certainly did for some of us; that was the first time in my life I had actually seen any such thing. It was probably lost on others, though; one of our number included the wife of an E-6 who had four children. Others women were married, or had been married, or hoped to become married, and had practiced a bit… but we didn’t have much in the way of illusion about some of the foreign troops, after what happened to four of us, one drear December day.

It was at the point in our training when we were allowed in pairs and fours to go to various places on base by ourselves, on formally sanction errands… after overcoming a certain amount of disorientation. Like: how the hell can you find your way back to a place when all you have ever seen of the way there, is the back of the neck of the girl in formation ahead of you? And what the hell do you do, when the four of you are marching along, two and two— as you have to, because your TI said so— when you are about to intersect with a full flight of fifty or so other trainees, with their TI and guidon and all the pomp and majesty of a flight of trainees marching on their way to somewhere or other? Why, of course, just has you have been told— stand at full attention, until they have marched by, and then you can go about your own business.

But this flight was a flight of Saudi tech school trainees, and I had the dubious honor of standing at rigid attention on the sidewalk, while an entire flight of them marched by, making every sort of vulgar comment, sotto voice out of the ranks; bird-whistles, crude suggestions, rude noises, low whistles… the entire armory of disgusting guy behavior, all in one fell blast, on four female Air Force trainees, who were under orders to stand there at attention, without responding, in obedience to military protocol, as we were verbally treated like whores in a particularly disreputable neighborhood. Sgt Petre looked particularly black, when we reported this to her, afterwards. We were distraught, and particularly outraged that this would happen to us, on a military base, and when we were constrained from showing any kind of reaction. It was a thoroughly nasty experience, and during twenty subsequent years in the military, nothing quite equaled it for the feeling that it gave me of slugs crawling over my bare flesh. We all agreed that if we were ever out and about again, and spotted a Saudi flight, we would turn around and go a couple of blocks out of the way. No one wanted to repeat the experience, although Airman Duncan— tall, gawky, plain and outspoken— was haunted for the rest of her base liberties by a short, squat and silent Saudi student who magically appeared in any place were Duncan was, and spent the time watching her yearningly from across the room. We couldn’t figure out how he always knew where she was. Efficient information pipeline among the male students, I suppose. I had developed my own admirer, but at least he could bring himself to make pleasant conversation.

On Christmas Day, we had liberty base liberty for all of that afternoon, but no better place to spend it than the bowling alley. The snack bar was open, and a half dozen or so of us were making the most of a couple of hours of freedom; free to drink soft drinks, to laugh with the usual constellation of male trainees. After a certain point, I noticed that one of the Iranian trainees had been drawn into the happy little group. We knew he was Iranian because his uniform was hung with a lot of ornament, and in two clashing shades of blue. Oddly enough, he reminded me of Kiet, my Vietnamese foster-brother; the same air of gentle diffidence, even shyness. He lingered on the edge of the group, not speaking very much at first, but eventually he began talking to me. His name turned out to be Nassir. He had a picture of the Shah in his wallet, and one of the Empress Farah, too. We pointed out Dunc’s admirer, watching her as per usual from across the room, and Nassir laughed and told us how the Iranian students looked down on the Saudis as uncouth and ignorant country bumpkins— hicks from the sticks, with no culture.

We met a couple of more times, after that, and spent some pleasant hours in the darker corners of the Skylark, holding hands and kissing shyly, while he paid me elaborately flowery compliments… which amused me no end. I had never met a man in real life who could unreel yards and yards of it, like Elizabethan love poetry. I never took this gallent compliments seriously, being fairly level-headed about my own attractions; knowing that my own citizenship probably featured rather highly among them. No, I took his attentions not the least bit seriously, but I liked him and wished him well. He wrote to me a couple of times, after I departed for tech school and that real world outside from those stolen hours of base liberty. I fell in love with someone else, and went on to Japan, and about four years later the whirlwind of Khomeini’s Islamic revolution swept away the Shah’s government. I’ve always hoped that Nassir was able to avoid being caught up in that, or the war with Iraq that followed; it would have been such a bad place for a gentle, courtly poet, who was so proud of being a Persian, and had a picture of the Shah in his wallet, and stole kisses from the girl I used to be, in the shadowy corners of the Skylark.

Natural Sympathies

17. July 2006 · Comments Off on Natural Sympathies · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Israel & Palestine, Pajama Game

I suppose a lot of midnight oil is being burned, in the Manchester Guardian editorial offices, at the UN and other various Euro-Transnational entities, the various offices of CAIR, and departments of Middle East Studies at universities everywhere, where the denizens thereof are trying to figure out and explain just why the general run of Americans— despite every inducement; intellectual, political and economic— continue in their stubborn, sentimental and persistent attachment to the State of Israel, and ensuring it’s continuing, if perilous existence. (Hey, wow! Totally complicated sentence— do I get any prize for this from the 19th Century literary appreciation wonks? No? OK, then, on with the explanation.).

I think there are a great many reasons for this; chief among them being that Jews have been part of the American scene, and more or less integrated into the great nation-building adventure since Colonial times. There has always been— depending on the time, place and social caste— a certain degree of social anti-Semitism, but generally achieving nothing like the degree of virulence it takes to achieve a pogrom, a Dreyfus Affair or a Holocaust. Congress making no law respecting a particular religion left us in the habit of seeing ones’ particular religious beliefs as a personal one, however outre they might be. Frankly, more political outrage and general suspicion was expended on Catholics— Popery! The Bishop of Rome! The Whore of Babylon! — at the time of the great Irish migrations in the mid-19th century. It was pretty difficult to work up much alarm about off-standard religious beliefs when Jews were compared against groups like the Shakers (no sex, communal living, workshops and free enterprise!) and the Mormons (plural marriages, communal living, free enterprise and separation!) and a whole other range of non-standard and extremely creative social and religious communes. All our base impulses leading towards rioting, lynching and intermittent attempts at genocide were pretty much focused during the 19th century on parties other than those of the Jewish persuasion; towards blacks, Hispanics, Mormons, and Native Americans, mostly. From reading various 19th century American writers, one gets the general impression that they knew of anti-Semitism, but didn’t quite grasp what all the fuss was about and relegated it to the intellectual back burner. Some time ago I had read of a famous American literary personality — I believe it was General Lew Wallace (the author of “Ben Hur”) who was asked what he felt about Jews, and he replied in all seriousness (IIRC) that Jesus had been born a Jew, and for him that pretty much settled the matter.
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Stolen Kisses at the Skylark

13. July 2006 · Comments Off on Stolen Kisses at the Skylark · Categories: Air Force, General, Memoir, Military, Pajama Game

There has always been this stereotype of the women’s services as a stronghold of lesbians; and there might, I say just might sometime in the distant past, have had some validity to this stereotype, depending on the times and in some places. There was a gay activist I recollect reading some years ago, who insisted that 100% of the women in the WWII services were lesbian, a dubious factoid that may come as a considerable surprise to male veterans of that era, especially those who romanced and/or married a pretty nurse, typist or vehicle driver whom they met whilst both were in uniform. I would tend to agree that during the long decades after WWII when female service members were forbidden to marry or have children, those women who decided to devote themselves to a military career may possibly have contained a slightly higher proportion of those whose amours were of the Sapphic variety… or possibly just unenthusiastically heterosexual.

In my own service, I was acquainted with a bare handful of women who I would not have been surprised to learn that they were gay… frankly, I preferred not to know, and refrained from speculating, lest I ever be hauled up before the local AFOSI and asked point-blank and asked to choose between either lying outright, or narking out a friend. And the services did embark on those lesbian hunts, vigorously, thoroughly and with every evidence of keen enjoyment. A number of my female mid-rank and senior NCO friends all thoughtfully agreed during the early days of the Clinton administration, that “don’t ask-don’t tell” banished that particular nightmare for us. Frankly, I was surprised as hell that I was never accused of being a lesbian— there certainly were people that hated my guts and took note of my conspicuously unmarried state. I can only suppose I was saved by my notorious disinterest and demonstrated incompetence at any sort of organized team sports.

It would be my personal, scientific wild-ass-guess that the lesbian proportion among women serving in the US Armed Forces these days is no more than the representation in the general population— and that would be the 3% that is the small “c” conservative estimation. It may even be less than that, actually. I’d be basing this on the admittedly anecdotal experience of basic training, and a good few years of living in the barracks, where there are no secrets. Let me reiterate: thanks to thin walls, shared rooms and gang latrines, there are damn few secrets in a military barracks, least of all about ones’ sex life.

And for Air Force basic military training, about the only thing the women in my training flight had in common aside from XX chromosomes and a taste for adventure, was some kind of interest in the male of our species, ranging from the intense to the mildly intellectually curious. (Or as my daughter would put it; “strictly dickly”.) Guys, guys and only guys; and watching the other girls put on full-date makeup, carefully arranged hairstyles, and most perfectly arranged Class-A uniforms on the occasion we were allowed to go down to the training-side BX annex… on liberty… by ourselves (or in pairs, anyway) for the period of one hour to purchase such small personal items as toothpaste and deodorant was sufficient to convince me of that. Other girls in the flight became ostentatiously and suddenly religious… because we could go to services on Sunday, and at least sit in adjacent pews. As we advanced in training, we were permitted certain periods of base liberty, to frolic chastely and pursue and be pursued in such venues as the bowling alley, the library, the BX annex and snack bar, and the Skylark Recreation Center.

Prior to being allowed such dizzying freedoms, we were given a stern lecture about the guys… well, those that we would be encountering. Not the usual common or garden American guys, though. There would be foreigners… with strange and potentially alluring ways. Or maybe not, since there were some very, very different cultural differences involved.

Lackland AFB was, and still is a major military training center for more than just Air Force basic. The AF security police tech school, and the basic officer training course were there…. And there was some kind of tech school training course for foreign military enlistees, distinctive by their somewhat colorful uniforms and occasionally very crude behavior in formation and out of it. Our TI, Sgt. Petre, kept an admirable poker face when she gave us the lecture; no, some of the strange stories we would hear about the Saudi Arabian and Iranian students were absolutely not true. They were strangers in a strange land, and we should be polite, of course, but we should keep in mind that as far as cultural mores went, as military women we would be even stranger to them. And we should be careful about giving any encouragement, because the gentlemen trainees from Saudi and Iran had a tendency to assume a great deal from it. Sgt Petre told us about a female trainee who collected such a single-minded and persistent admirer that he was camped out on the sidewalk in front of the squadron training building waiting for her every time her flight had base liberty, which so rattled the poor girl that she stopped leaving the building at all.

(to be continued)

KoreaTown

07. July 2006 · Comments Off on KoreaTown · Categories: Fun and Games, General, N. Korea, Pajama Game, War

About the first thing I ever noticed about Korea— during the bus ride from Osan AB to the Yongsan Garrison bus terminal in Seoul— was that it didn’t look a thing in like M*A*S*H… even allowing for the whole show being unconvincingly filmed in the wilds of California, on a set built out in a valley between very obviously chaparral-covered hills … and hills that were dark sage-green, and gently rounded— not the steep and bright green hills, painstakingly terraced that I could see from the bus. And also nothing like the distant mountains visible all the way round Seoul on clear morning, chipped and jagged, like something cut from jade-green glass, just like the mountains in ancient oriental prints. Seoul, cut through by the wide silvered loops of the Han river did rather resemble Los Angeles, in that it went on seemingly forever, flowing around hills and tracts of parkland, a jumble of high, low and medium-rise buildings and which offered pretty much everything a reasonably cosmopolitan person could want. Myself, I loved the retail and wholesale fabric market, near to Tongdemun Stadium… not much harked back to what Korea had been half a century before, unless it was the porters who carried enormous burdens on their backs up and down the tall staircase of the fabric market building. No, South Korea had moved on, since the days of M*A*S*H.

So, NPR did an interview this week with the two apparatchiks who came out strongly in favor of blowing up the Nork’s Two-dong (or whatever name it has that is a natural fodder for more sophomoric jokes than mine) long-range missile on the launch-pad as some sort of crushing pre-emptive strike to send a serious message to the Norks about what happens when you threaten America. They were quite airily confident not only of our ability to do this, neatly and effectively (which is actually a rather comforting thought) but seemingly quite careless of the risks to South Korea if we had done so— which is not. And since the gentlemen in question are of the party that currently seems to be getting off 24-7 by condemning George Bush being pre-emptive, unilateral, careless of world opinion, and barging straight on to the main point of actually blowing up stuff, rather than sitting around and talking about it until everyone has gone mad with boredom, and issuing a strongly worded memorandum… well, it had the charm of the unusual. I wondered if somewhere, there is a Rovish political consultant, thinking agent provocateurish thoughts. (And if either of the gentlemen concerned were acquainted with the old saying about sending a message and using Western Union— probably not, since it has to be explained carefully to anyone over the age of 50-ish— none of this awareness showed in the interview.)

Well, never mind— they just struck me as being quite chipper about “doing something!” and quite horribly casual about possible Nork reprisals. No veteran who has ever served a tour in South Korea can be entirely insouciant about that— not with knowing how close Seoul is to the range of Nork artillery fire, how close to the DMZ, and how bat-shit insane the self-isolated regime to the immediate north has demonstrated itself to be, in all sorts of large and small ways. Well-meaning and intelligent people usually do not advise intentionally pissing off a deranged street-person holding a hand-grenade with the pin missing. I have probably just horribly maligned all deranged street-persons with access to personal explosives here… but what can you honestly say about a mini-nation who kidnapped Japanese citizens in order to force them to train spies, and South Korean movie actors to force them to make movies, confiscates the Chinese trains which are shipping them relief supplies, fields a diplomatic corps which deals in drugs and counterfeit money in order to make their budget, honors the family of the founding leader in a manner usually confused in the outside world by worship of a deity— and that would be the outside world of circa 1st century Rome.. except assume that someone with a Pythonesque turn of mind has made this all up.

Alas, North Korea is all too real; a small nation with delusions of adequacy about being a military power despite not having fought a serious, balls-out, all hands on deck war since the 1950ies… and them with the aid of the Chinese, who must seriously be having doubts about now. Yes, North Korea is their dog in this dispute; a small, hyper-active, bug-eyed, noisy and incontinent dog, of the kind that make people itch to kick into the next dimension, and I so wonder if the Chinese are getting pretty testy with their bad-tempered, and vicious little pet. When desperate refugee Nork citizens are taken pity upon by the stereotypically hard-off Chinese peasants along the China-Nork border, you really have to wonder about how things are, in the last rigidly Stalinist armpit of the world. Especially when young refugees from the North are clearly recognizable in the South, because (thanks to the juche and economic independence, all-around socialist superior spirit and the resulting endemic malnourishment) they are very obviously shorter, thinner, and weedier looking. And I do not forget for a moment, that these are still the same human stock— the same jolly, tough and resourceful people who on the south of the DMZ, worked themselves out of a Third World, war-torn, desperately poor UN-dependent basket-case that they were in the mid 1950ies. South Koreans built a shining and modern city out of the wreck that it was when my father passed through there at the end of the Korean War.

What their kin have built out of the North may be a country-sized concentration camp, and every dreadful story that has managed to leak out, against brutal control, will likely prove to both the gospel truth, and the least portion of the horrors. So, there you go. North Korean may have the Bomb, and more distressing still, be able and willing to sell it to anyone with the wherewithal. And the assumption has always been that Seoul is in range of whatever violently explosive munitions they have. So, what really can you do, knowing what is at risk? Do you openly provoke the violently insane, and one with a proven track record of being totally immune to shame, or wait until they melt down entirely? I read a comment last week (Can’t remember who— Angie at “Dark Blogules” maybe… who said that her enjoyment of old episodes of M*A*S*H had been forever ruined by the various characters’ blathering about how useless, pointless and aimless the “war” was… when it had been in retrospect a successful effort protect the South Korea— now a vibrant, successful and interesting place, from becoming the dysfunctional horror of North Korea.

Interesting times, people, interesting times. Discuss.

The Fine Old Art of Shark-Jumping

30. June 2006 · Comments Off on The Fine Old Art of Shark-Jumping · Categories: General, GWOT, Media Matters Not, Pajama Game

Seriously, I really think the NY Times has done it this time. The Times, and a fair number of other old-style media have been puttering around in the lagoon, testing the engine, measuring the angle, paying out the tow rope, contemplating the shark… and with this compromise of the Swift program…The good old Times has taken a dead set at that puppy, roared up the ramp and gone sailing into the air, to come down again who knows where, although I personally think they are still tumbling in free-fall. The last couple of days have reminded me rather of the dissection of the infamous 60 Minutes-Bush-AWOL-Memo story, only in slow-mo. People who knew about typefaces, and how Reserve units operated back then and what official documents look like took a long, hard look, and got angrier and angrier about how a clumsy and nakedly political hit piece was perpetrated by an ostensibly respectable, big-name media showboat.

And now, personnel who have worked with classified materiel and operations, who know anything about classified, who deeply care about classified are becoming angrier and angrier about the revelation of a legal, useful and productive effort was blown by the newspaper of record— another big-name media showboat, the so-called “newspaper of record”— for nothing more rewarding than affording the “newspaper of record” an opportunity to preen themselves ostentatiously on their wonderful “scoop”. The NY Times response to criticism for doing so appears to throw gasoline on a smoldering fire, for the sheer lordly arrogance of deciding extravagantly that the “public” just had to know all the details of a war-time effort to prevent terrorists from transferring funds… the funds that buy enormously loud explosions in a variety of public places, explosions that potentially turn an assortment of random human beings into so much bloody mush.

I can only assume that the editors of the NY Times are operating in the happy confidence that none of those potentially and so suddenly transformed will be those known personally to the grandees of the “newspaper of record”. It must be marvelous to live on such an elevated plane, to be totally removed from consequences. Now, I am not so far gone in brutal cynicism as this gentleman to assume that this whole thing was done out of a particularly ugly fit of pique— “You stupid red-state proles had better vote as we tell you to vote, or we’ll blow the gaff on every secret plan we can find until you do, and damn the consequences!”… but I am of a sick enough humor to think that spilling the details of the Swift project is a win-win for the NY Times, all the way around. It means Pulitzers for all, and the fawning adoration of the usual suspects for their courage in speaking truth to power, or at least biting it in the ankle. The odds are increased that they will be able to cover the next terrorist atrocity in really splendid, breathlessly late-breaking-development style, milk a couple of tears for the resultant obituaries, and get at least three or four hard-hitting exposes of the various government departments or persons who “allowed (insert meaningful date or place name here) to happen”… which will result in at least two more rounds of Pulitzers. Think of the New York Times as the gift that keeps on giving.

I try never to attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity… or at least, a horrible sort of tone-deafness on the part of the major media, first articulated by James Fallows in “Breaking the News” (And here I am again, plugging his ten-year old polemic… honestly, the man ought to be giving me a commission.) His point then, and one which I have come to see validated over the last four or five years, is that that the elite media seem to increasingly see themselves as some sort of aristocracy, floating serenely above the vulgar hurly-burly, and dispensing their magisterial pronouncements from on high, with little care for how they may affect— and sometimes they do affect, markedly and even horribly— and it matters not to our aristocracy of the media, for they float imperiously away, on to the next big story, the next big scoop, and the next breathlessly-detailed horror of the moment.

Mr. Fallows intuited that the discriminating news-consumers were on to the media grandees, and felt considerable contempt for them, based on how they were increasingly portrayed as buffoons on movies, and in television. Reporters were once portrayed as rough-hewn heroes, competent, well meaning, and worthy of respect— but even as Woodward and Bernstein were still respected as selfless heroes of the newspaper reporter profession, we were laughing at the chipmunk-brained Ted Baxter, on the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Over the next decade, the lake of contempt has deepened and broadened; perhaps television, books and movies have caught on to something, in advance of our so-sensitive news media. Reporters are more like to be portrayed as a Ron Burgundy clown than a hard-working and ethical Edward R. Murrow, or an Ernie Pyle type.
This is not to say that all major media reporters have sunk to such a sad state— those who hold to the old standards are perhaps as much distressed as I am about the spectacle of a major newspaper trading the security of their fellow citizens for a mess of Pulitzer pottage. But this whole Swift thing does not reflect well on the NY Times, and their pretensions of being the major American paper of record.

It does not, and they are richly deserving of all the contempt and cancelled subscriptions thrown in their way.

Goin’ to California (and back)

29. June 2006 · Comments Off on Goin’ to California (and back) · Categories: Ain't That America?, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, Pajama Game

Not being a regular visitor west of the Rockies (my last trek was to Pasadena on 9 Sep 01 – a whole other story), I always find California to be an experience worth commenting on. As I write this I realize that I may not be able to make the post until my return. I am staying at the Atrium Hotel in Irvine, which purports to have free high speed Internet in every room. Sounds good in theory, but I have spent 3 hrs. so far on the phone with the hotel’s Internet provider trying to get the “automatic” connection to work – with no luck so far. This is a pet peeve of mine because usually, in order to get connectivity away from home, I must go through a process of iterative setting changes that render my home and work connections inoperative on my return. And, of course, because the changes were iterative (and not recorded – my fault), reversing the process involves an equal dose of frustration. I see a Blackberry in my future.

Anyway, my mission is to evaluate a new technology in which my employer is considering an investment. The entrepreneurial community here always amazes me, along with what its interaction with “old industry” is like (when it goes well). Not in a bad way, but rather in the sense that we old liners are impressed with their vision, and they are impressed with our ability to point out the obvious legal/market/reality checks. We spent about 14 hrs. brainstorming at their Santa Ana office, located in one of many complexes with small office spaces arranged not unlike large self storage facilities – relatively cheap rent, undoubtedly high turnover. The mind is boggled by the amount of venture capital discussed within each “unit”, and the dreams and disappointments that accompany each change in tenancy. I long ago resigned myself to a life of servitude, albeit fairly compensated, but not these people. Dot com bust – what was that? A fourteen-hour day in my business usually equals mind numbing grind, but not when I do these meetings. Not a stupid person in the room, with the possible exception of yours truly, and get this – no bringing in Subway sandwiches! Lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and a (very) late dinner at some great seafood joint – I think McCormick Schmidt (although I could have done without the karaoke).

I arrived yesterday afternoon and decided to chill at the Atrium. It’s a pretty cool hotel that I can heartily recommend (as long as Internet connectivity is not a priority) at $139/night. It has been around for a while and the blush is somewhat off the rose, but it seems to capture the essence of this part of California. At only three stories, it is a rambling place that surrounds a rather nice courtyard with palm trees aplenty and a nice pool. I love the lizards too. Navigating the complex can be a challenge, but once getting the feel for the place it seemed that the meandering is one of its charms. After spending the three hours trying to achieve connectivity, I wandered to the bar and grill for a double scotch and a steak sandwich – both of which, by the way, were excellent. I struck up a conversation with the barkeep and some locals, who told me that it was unseasonably hot and humid – at 83 deg. and not-so-bad humidity! Having lived in west central Illinois for so many years, where 95 – 100 deg. and 90% humidity is not unusual, I was a little (lot) surprised. After all, L.A. always seemed like a hellhole to me -–much like Phoenix. It turns out that their proximity to the ocean results in a normal high of around 80 deg., but with little humidity. One of my new friends, an Irvine native, BEGGED me to not tell anyone about the true state of the climate – he says there are too many transplants as it is. Sorry Carl – this is newsworthy and the American public has the right to know. You should appreciate this based on your vocal support of the NY (and LA) Times of their exposure of the insidious terrorist wiretapping and financial record tracking. Anyway, I expect Carl will still greet me as an old friend the next time because I doubt that he is a regular reader of this august blog.

I was in Washington DC three weeks ago, and did write a piece called “Foggy Bottom” that I intended to post, but it seemed too cynical upon further reflection. The memorials and monuments were great, but the landscaping sucked and the people were either tourists or overflow from K street lobbyists. At least the SoCal people freely admit that its about the money. Funny though, once they get it a lot of them decide that money (but not theirs) is the root of all evil

Anyway, later that night I was sitting in my room’s balcony watching the flight attendants arriving, and casually eavesdropping on their conversations as they came through the parking lot. The content was not memorable, but the tone, and the manner in which they made their way to the check-in area, reminded be so very much of TDY’sThe and overnight trips this young airman took so many years ago, when the world was not a place to be wary of, but rather a kingdom to be conquered. It is good, I think, to sense a glimpse of that, from however far ago, while in a tropical climate.

Trouble brewed on the home front with both Red Haired Girl and Real Wife when I mentioned that I was about 10 – 20 minutes from Disneyland (God as my witness – I did not know this when I planned the trip). I am searching for a t-shirt with the legend “My Dad Went To Disneyland And All I Got Was This Crappy T-Shirt” Links would be appreciated.

UPDATE – I am now home, and have at least reintroduced the IBM X41 to the home wlan. I feel younger, helped a bit perhaps by being in the aisle seat as a self-appointed guardian of two young ladies aged 11 and 9, travelling alone by plane for the first time to visit their grandparents. With their necklace-displayed credentials and travel papers, and the question “Mister, have you done this before?”, I knew it would be a good plane ride, and it was. The noise and sensation of landing gear and flap motion etc. gave me an opportunity to explain engineering principals (including the Bernoulli principal); topics long since banished from our normal family discourse for reasons unknown to me (Real Wife and Red Haired Girl don’t want to hear about entropy anymore either – go figure) I even got free snacks and headphones from the flight attendant (now $4 and $2 respectively on AA). That whole experience was a not-so-small serendipitous gift that, although reminding me of my grandfatherly age, also reminded me of how the world looks to the young.

As I write this, I am back in Illinois; on the patio with a cold beer and Springsteen on the box. Grilled cheese sandwich for supper. Life is good. I don’t see myself ever living anywhere with palm trees, but visits to such places, and often the transit to and from thereof, makes life worthwhile.

With regard to Disneyland, Red Haired Girl on the way home from the airport lamented that she once again missed a ride on a “real” rollercoaster, to which I argued I didn’t like the odds of 1-2 fatalities per year on said rollercoasters. Got home – another twelve year old killed today at Disneyworld. Am I missing something here?

Lastly, 13 June marked fourteen years of wedded bliss with Real Wife. For our anniversary, I traded her Barbie Jeep on a new Grand Cherokee – red – with a Hemi. Of course, the main selling points were back up sensors, extended warranty, etc. Did I mention that it has a Hemi?

By the way, for any computer whizzes out there, during my California Internet hell, I was able to connect, but if it took longer than a few short seconds to bring up a web site, everything timed out and the connection went dead – any ideas on why?

Radar

Pax Romana

25. June 2006 · Comments Off on Pax Romana · Categories: General, History, Military, Pajama Game, War

The stone ruins of Imperial Rome underlie Western Europe and the Mediterranean like the bones of a body, partially buried, yet here and there still visible and grandly manifest above ground, all but complete. From Leptis Magna in North Africa, to Hadrian’s Wall in the contentious border between Scotland and England proper, from Split in the Former Yugoslavia, to the 81 perfectly preserved arches of the ancient bridge over the Guadiana River, in Merida – that part of the empire called Hispania –and in thousands of lesser or greater remnants, the presence of Rome is everywhere and inescapable. The same sort of cast- concrete walls, faced with pebbles, or stone or tile, the same sort of curved roof-tiles, the same temples to Vesta, and Jupiter, to Claudius, Mars and Mithras; the same baths and fora, market-places, villas and apartment buildings, all tied together by a network of commerce and administration. Goods both luxury and otherwise, adventurous tourists, soldiers and civil administrators— the very blood of an empire, all moved along the veins and arteries of well-maintained roads and way-stations, of which the very beating heart was Rome itself. Carrying that image a little farther than absolutely necessary, I can visualize that heart as being a human, four-chambered one; of which two— the political/imperial establishment, and the flamboyantly military Rome of battles and conquest— have always rather overshadowed the other two in popular imagination. Commerce and civil administration just do not fire the blood and imagination – unless one is wonkishly fascinated by these things, and it would take a gifted writer to make them as interesting as imperial intrigues and soldiering adventures.

But close to the Palatine Hill, where the sprawling palace of the emperors looked out over the linked fora, law courts and temples in one direction, and the Circus Maximus in another— Trajan’s concrete and brick central market rambled over three or four levels, from the great hall of the Corn Exchange down to the open plaza of the meat market at the level of the forum below . Here was the embodiment of the great hearts’ economic chamber. Every sort of imaginable commodity moved from one end of the empire to another and from parts outside the Roman hegemony: corn from the Egyptian breadbasket, silk from faraway China, spices from India, African ivory and gold, olive oil, oranges and wine from the Mediterranean to everywhere else. And that trade was enabled by law and technology. Roman roads, waterworks, and civic infrastructure like harbors, lighthouses and bridges would in some cases, not be equaled or bettered until the 19th century. While emperors and soldiers came and went, sometimes with messy and protracted splatters of blood, the unspectacular and dull work of the empire went tirelessly on and on, little changing from day to day, decade to decade, until Rome itself seemed eternal, fixed forever, immutable like the stars in the sky.
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Asymmetrical Weevils

17. June 2006 · Comments Off on Asymmetrical Weevils · Categories: Domestic, General, Pajama Game

The Lesser Weevil – who I dearly wish had not come already named and accustomed to it so I could have named her Fluffy- and Spike the pocket-puppy , dwarf Shi-Tzu, have most amusingly become the best of friends. Weevil being now about a year and a half, and a large breed ( certain knowledgeable neighbors have speculated that the non-boxer half is Rhodesian ridgeback) and Spike being about 8 months old, they are both essentially puppies together. The only thing that Weevil refuses to share is food out of her very own personal food dish; the growl out of her when Spike tries to snatch a mouthful or two just as a tease, is quite blood-chilling. But Weevil casually empties out Spike’s dish without a moments’ hesitation, and both of them vacuum up any and all contents of the cats dishes’ without a moment’s hesitation, unless carefully watched. They share everything else in the best communal tradition, though — the chew-toys, the crate and the various comfortable spots around the house. They would like to move in on the cats, and share more toys, dishes and comfortable places, but the cats unsportingly refuse any of this.

The original trio of Arthur, Morgie and Henry do not care for the dogs and ignore them as much as possible. Sammy and Percival tolerate the Weevil— who is huge in relation to them, and plays too rough, but freely romp and wrestle with Spike. Spike will never grow any larger than she is, at about five pounds and change, which must be much less intimidating to Percival, at eight pounds, and Sammy, at fifteen or so. Nothing at all intimidates Spike. Of all the real and imagined faults of little dogs, she really has only one— that of yipping frantically, when over-excited during an energetic romp with the cats or Weevil. Well, that, and the whole house-breaking concept, which is still a little unclear… and the chewing thing… but hopefully these are temporary failings.

There was one of our wonderfully noisy and productive thunderstorms this morning, rumbling in around sunrise and dropping generous quantities of rain, just when I had about despaired and set out the sprinklers. It seemed to actually be cool, afterwards, when I leashed up Weevil to her heavy choke-chain and leash, and put Spike into her harness and light-weight cord leash, and they were so happy to be out and about. Usually Weevil begins to wilt after four or five blocks, and begins to wheeze dramatically and look at me with huge, tragic eyes as if asking me “why are you torturing me this way?!” when she was the one dragging me all over the sidewalk until that point. Spike bounced energetically along, tail and nose up, fur flapping all the way. I usually have to pick her up and carry her, when she begins to wilt, but today she trotted along all the way, neck and neck with Weevil. Spike may be small, but all heart.

I think she is good for Weevil, who desperately needed another dog for companionship. She was nearly uncontrollable whenever we encountered another dog, until now— even just going past a house where there was another dog in the yard meant a prolonged wrestling match, and me practically strangling her with the choke-chain, but she behaves herself now… well, mostly. I have also nearly gotten her trained to sit down when she meets someone; although this meant me telling people NOT to pet her, until she did sit down. She had a bad way of jumping up on people— not good, when she is sixty pounds of hard muscle. She still tugs at the leash when she sees a cat, though. The cats may not know that she really, really just wants to see if they will play with her, but the cleverer cats, the ones that we see every morning hanging out in their accustomed places, have figured out that she is under restraint, and no real danger to them. They watch her with wary eyes, but they do not move an inch. Most mornings, there is a tiny Russian Blue who looks enough like Percival to be from the same litter, lurking behind a large ornamental rock, right by the sidewalk. A month or so ago, Weevil lunged at him, and he scrammed at top speed, but she has behaved herself since. The young Blue favors that place, because whoever lives in that house scatters bits of dried-out toast for the birds, out in the street… and he watches the birds from behind that rock, in the morning. Everyone needs a hobby, I guess, even the cats and dogs.

The neighborhood was pretty quiet this morning, because of the rain, and eight thirty is pretty early as Saturday morning goes. I did notice the same battered pickup truck two or three times, with some odd junk piled into the back, and only realized after the second time that they were out junking. Next week is bulk-trash pickup, when we can put out anything and everything (except concrete waste, topsoil and dangerous chemicals) and the pickings have lately become pretty good. A better class of homeowner must have moved in— they’re throwing away some very good and useable things. Last month I picked up a nice glazed plant-pot, and a small wooden box that looks as if it were a presentation case for a set of silverware. (Look, I can paint and decoupage it— Blondie wants it as a writing case.) Last week it was a good-quality brass lamp stand, with a broken shade— do people not know how to re-wire lamps these days? Or replace lampshades. Day before yesterday, a perfectly good and originally expensive bird feeder. One of the unsung benefits of running in the very early morning— first crack at the excellent stuff put out for the trash. I have four or five chairs in my house that I picked up in Spain, and repaired and refinished, after beating the junkers and the trash men to them. I’d be embarrassed about this, but not after we caught an episode of Antiques Roadshow, where a gentleman showed up with a 18th century sideboard what he bought from some neighbor kids who were going to break it up and burn it in a Guy Fawkes’ Day bonfire. Recycling … it’s a good thing….

Trans-Dimensional Poop

05. June 2006 · Comments Off on Trans-Dimensional Poop · Categories: Domestic, General, Pajama Game

Blondie and I are convinced that there is something very strange going on at my house, where the Lesser Weevil, and Spike, the Weevil I Know Nothing Of, are getting along famously with each other, and on terms of moderate familiarity with at least two of the cats, Sammy and Percival.

The Lesser Weevil is crated at night, and let out into the yard during the day, and seems to both rather like the shelter of the crate, and to have grasped the whole concept about the proper disposition of body wastes— that is, outside the house. After all, Mom and Dad’s dogs always caught on, without a great deal of fuss and hyperventilating. Alas, the tiny Shi-tzu Spike (or Spike-ette, or Spike-arella) is innocent of the whole concept, in spite of our best efforts at monitoring and control. For a very small dog, about 5 pounds when dripping wet, she generates an amazing number of small piles of poop on an erratic and wholly mysterious basis.Said small piles suddenly and magically appear in areas where she has not recently been for twenty minutes or half an hour. It is most completely mystifying to have a small, well crusted (and therefore aged) pile suddenly appear in the middle of a stretch of carpet, which was pristine five minutes previously… and when Spike has been curled up blamelessly on a folded towel in the other room, dead asleep for the past half hour. Blondie and I are neither blind, nor unobservant, or that indifferent to housekeeping, but we have yet to account for this phenomena. I postulate the existence of a small, erratic wormhole in the local space-time continuum, with one end fixed on Spike’s nether regions, and the other opening erratically at various points around the house, depositing poop which has spent any number of minutes or hours in limbo in trans-dimensional space, before emerging into the here and now… usually just when we are within a hairs-breadth of stepping in it. Blondie is convinced the cats are plotting a feline coup de pussy-tat, conniving to undermine Spike and pay her back for snorkeling through their litterbox in search of unspeakably canine gourmet delights. Little Arthur, Henry and Morgie therefore must be concealing Spikes’ output, and then placing it strategically, as some disgusting sort of poop-mine. So far, there is no evidence either way, although our neighbor Judy has pointed out that she has observed Spike doing her business on top of the magazines and newspapers piled on the lower deck of the coffee table… and the feline element might be doing their bit to move it on to a location slightly more noticeable. The jury is still out… as are the paper towels, disinfectant and the carpet-scrubber.

Aside from this, she is quite an endearing little dog, feisty and fearless, in spite of her small size, and— aside from the housebreaking issue— outgoing, affectionate and not the least bit neurotic or snappish. Blondie insisted on us getting away from the house and yard and all that on Memorial Day, so we drove up to Fredericksburg, and took the Spikelette with us. The toy breeds are supposed to be the ultimate porta-puppies, who live for nothing else than to be Velcroed to their chosen human 24-7. Spike’s notion of absolute nirvana seems to involve being draped across either one of our laps, or tucked into our elbows like a fat, furry little football. We put her in a harness and under leash and walked up one side of Main Street and down the other, and went to the Herb Farm, and enjoyed the day immensely. We had to carry her after a block or so; she was at a hazard of being stepped on, or leash-entangled in someone’s legs, and of course we carried her into the shops we were interested in. I thought sure we would be kindly asked to leave with our dog from some of the very high-toned places, but it looks like the fashion for tiny pocket-puppies is well established in Texas; I’d not be surprised to hear that Shi-tzus as a fashion are so very much last year, since everyone— especially those inclined to coo over Spike— seemed to have one, or know someone who had one. A lady from Austin who gave us her card and was especially admiring, runs the local breed rescue chapter. There is a horrible fate in store, we are certain, for people who get pure-bred dogs because the breed is the latest craze, and then decide it just doesn’t work for them, although the lady from Austin said, comfortingly, that it was a good thing that Spike’s original owners took only two weeks to decide that she wasn’t working for them, and pass her on to someplace where she had a chance for a happy and affectionate life, full of play with other animals. Spike was so happily drained by this adventure that from Monday evening, she slept motionless and exhausted, like a scrap of limp black and white fur on the folded towel that is her bed for most of that night. Yes, she is a happy little dog, and will have a wholly happy life.

It is the funniest thing, to watch the Lesser Weevil walk through the living room, with Spike’s jaws firmly clamped to her jowl or ear, like some furry body-piercing. The two of them are tussling under the bed as I write this, and the Lesser Weevil is as indulgent and long-suffering as if Spike were one of her very own puppies. Now, if she would only grasp that whole eliminating-out-side concept… but I am suspecting there may be a very real reason for the breed name being commonly pronounced as “shit-su”!

Changes

03. June 2006 · Comments Off on Changes · Categories: Air Force, General, History, Pajama Game, World

In the air, in the water… oh, sorry, flashback to last weeks’ post. Changes, they come thicker and faster. There was an article posted about the six most important strategic overseas bases last week, and none of them any that I had ever served a tour at— and I think I clocked duty time at about every major overseas base there was, even if it were only to pass through long enough to get a soda from the machine and admire the gooney birds.

1. Andersen Air Force Base & Apra Harbor, Guam;
2. Balad Air Base/Camp Anaconda, Iraq;
3. Bezmer Air Base, Bulgaria;
4. Diego Garcia, British Indian Ocean Territory;
5. Guantánamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba;
6. Manas Air Base, Kirgizstan

Three old, three new, and none of them the old, stalwart long-established bases, the very anchor of service in the Far East, or in Europe— Clark AB, in the PI is long-closed and buried in volcanic ash. Yongsan Garrison in Seoul is for the chop also; transferring all functions to the Hump may turn out to be more of a hassle than it’s worth.

If the Cold War is over, South Korea might have nothing more urgent to deal with than their starved and retarded cousins to the North, and much joy of that may they have of that. No mention of Okinawa on the list… and none in Western Europe. The Cold War is truly over, there. The chain of kasernes and camps in Germany is much reduced—one senses only little removed from having the last floor swept and the last light turned off, and generations of American military and dependent family members who rotated in and out, and raised their children, and developed a fondness for German beer and gemutlichiet, volks-marching and sightseeing among the castles of the Rheinland – all will soon be only a ghostly memory.

Harry’s in K-Town, the Kino in Landstuhl, the McDonalds on the 40-Mark Strasse, and a thousand other retail establishments who counted very much on the GI dollar may look back ruefully on what will seem a golden age in retail sails and services. Hellenikon and Nea Makri in Greece are long closed: some years after I drove away down the road towards Patras and the car-ferry that would take us to Italy and points west, my next door neighbor sent me a clip from one of the English-language papers that catered to the ex-pat community: a story about taxi drivers and owners of bars in Sourmena and Glyphada, lamenting their personal economic woes after Hellinikon AB closed. The final paragraph of the story was the kicker; across the apse end of a church that faced (across an barren lot) the front gate on Vouliagmeni, which had long born a bright red spray-painted memo “Americans Go Home!” someone had spray-painted an addenda: “And Take Us With You!”

Zaragoza reverted to the Spanish Air Force Air Tranport Service; even while I was there, I escourted a party of Spanish officers on a property survey through the EBS buildings, pointing out the equipment that was ours, and would be going with us, and what we would be leaving to their use with our best wishes. Not a whole lot, actually, three ancient Quonset-huts, only one with indifferent plumbing, but all of them with electrical conduits up the wazoo, and they were welcome to it. It was already evident that the Cold War was over, and the Soviet Menace had crumbled, and what we were still doing there was still a matter of debate. Anderson and Guantanamo are long-established, with a permanent infrastructure and corporate memory and all those habits that this implies, all the employees, all the structures… but the other four are new and raw, and where the action is, in this new war. The military moves on, as we are not mired in old habits and the practices of the war before the last war, clinging on to them like a child with a well-worn security object. I do wonder what the ville outside the gates of Bezmer and Manas are like, though… but I would advise everyone not to get to used to it all.

One of the saddest conversations I ever had was sometime before I left Spain, when Zaragoza was already scheduled to be closed down. There were a scattering of retired Air Force men who lived in my neighborhood, or worked at EBS, who had married Spanish women , and made their homes in Spain, for decades in most cases. They had raised their children in Spain, had jobs on base, had boxes at the post office, and/or BX privilidges, health care through the base hospital and by extension to the major military hospitals and specialists in Germany, they had NCO club memberships, they managed to reconcile two different worlds, and the imminent closing of the base meant that they had to live entirely in one world without any of the accustomed support systems… or uproot their lives, and live in the other.

Nineteen, Thirty-Eight

25. May 2006 · Comments Off on Nineteen, Thirty-Eight · Categories: General, History, Iran, Mordor, Pajama Game, War

“The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air…”

From “The Fellowship of the Ring”

There is a change in our world, and in the world of the blogosphere, that most sensitive of organisms, like a jellyfish that flinches at the slightest change in the water, the temperature or the flow of it, curling in upon itself, tensing in readiness against something harsh and horrible. I thought it was just me, for the last six months or so, feeling a jangling unease, thinking it was just me that found it hard to write, finding it all sad and wearying and depressing, finding it all too horrible, words and ideas not flowing easily, thoughts all incoherent, un-climbable mountains of trollage and spam piling up, of editorial issues and looking for a new job, of temp wage slavery at the Enormous Corporate Behemoth… all of that, and thinking it was just me and my personal issues, not finding blogging to be fun any more, just another grim job to be dealt with, until I read this, and thought with no little relief; “Oh, it just isn’t me, after all.”

I have really enjoyed blogging over the last four years— it is a lifeline and outlet, a useful purpose and a voice, my connection to others of like mind… and if not of like, at least of interesting and stimulating minds. And sometimes I am touched by fire, and write something interesting and cogent and relevant, and someone on the other side of the world or in the next city reads it, and is touched by the fire also, and lets me know about how I have made it possible to understand something, or feel something, or be able to see an event with someone elses’ eyes. Blogging here is an opportunity to educate about the many-splendored weirdness of the military world and I would hate to think I was at the point of giving it up, after the fun of the coaster-ride over the last four years… and since it only this last week the NY Times, the magisterial paper of record, had to publish a correction about muddling a Purple Heart and a Gold Star in a story about the funeral of a serving military member, it would seem that there is still a heck of a lot of educating to do. (Sheesh! Three years of war, and they’re as bone ignorant today as they were then, another reason to be slightly depressed… ok, breath deeply, and repeat the mantra…. It is not my job to reform the NY Times, it is not my job to reform the NY Times, it is not my job to reform the NY Times… better be someone’s job soon, otherwise they will just be a local fish-wrap with an amusingly elevated sense of its’ own importance, and about thirty readers, who all live in expensive condos in a very small part of town. See the LA Times, which used to be a fine and respected newspaper.)

I can suppose this is only cosmic payback for a lifetime spent entranced in history, of the times before… of the times before things changed, of the times just out of reach of my own memory, the times of my grandparents’ and my parents’ formative years, of the worlds that they remembered, but which irretrievably slipped away. Grandpa Jim, Grandpa Al, Grannie Jessie and Grannie Dodie all were born into a world of horse-drawn conveyances, of gaslights and steamships, where the monarchies of Russia and Austria and Germany were seemingly set-in-stone eternal, and the sun never set on the British Empire… and then, hey presto by the time they were all teenagers or in their early twenties, three of those verities were gone and the fourth moved into twilight. But my grandparents moved on, did their jobs and made their homes, raised their families into that new world, and then there was that other seismic shift, the next war that shattered and reformed their established world, the one that I most particularly studied, almost to the extent of sometimes thinking I was re-living it.

In a curious way, I think that it is 1938 again, the very last year that it was possible for the well-meaning and well-intentioned to believe with a whole heart that total war was not inevitable, the year of the annexation of Austria, of Neville Chamberlain’s attempt to buy peace—followed promptly by the German annexation of the Sudetenland, and the Night of Broken Glass— the year that it became obvious to more than just the extremely far-sighted that no peaceful and well-meant actions on the part of the British and French administrations could swerve Hitler from his appointed path, that there was nothing to be expected from the League of Nations, that however much they wished otherwise, bad stuff would be happening. It might be soon, it might be later, but it would be happening, however much one wished and prayed for, otherwise… war would come. And there was nothing to be done that would stop it happening

Events and portents appear, flashing like lightning in one of our summer Texas thunderstorms, finally occurring so frequently that the sky is continuously lit with an eerie blue-white light…riots in Paris and in Australia, murders of Thai teachers, the Affair of the Danish Cartoons. The abject truckling in to threats and violence by western main-stream media, and now threats by Iran’s president to destroy Israel, twinned with Iran’s nuclear ambitions… and such threats reported not in fringy little foreign-affairs journals and blogs, but over and over again, on the front pages and in the headlines. Are they credible threats? Whose lives do we bet that they are not?

I wonder now, if some of the contemporary venom, and malice directed towards FDR, and to a lesser extent, Churchill— both of whom quite clear-eyed about the menace that Hitler posed from a fairly early date— might be a sort of displacement of their fears. There are terrible, lurking dangers, awful people that you can, in the long run, essentially do nothing about— more comfortable to be able to displace your fear and anger, aim it all towards someone that you can do something about, not some fanatic in a cave, or in Berlin, far, far away. Best to focus all your fears and apprehensions, and aim that at the closer and more comprehensible target, and comfort yourself that you have done what you could, that you are blameless and above reproach, sincere in not wanting any of that nasty war and violence. If it falls on someone else, then it must be all their fault then, it was something they did, or didn’t do, that caused war to be interested in them and their children, their houses and cities, and tall shining buildings on a lovely September morning.

What could our grandparents and great-grandparents do, in 1938, but wait for the inevitable to fall, knowing that all their safe and peaceful world would not be eternal and everlasting, but would be finite, and of short duration; that there would soon be an end to all the lovely, predictable joys of a settled existence. What better encouragement to enjoy them with bitter-sweet gusto, knowing that the ship was definitively and slowly sinking, that the ordinary pleasures of life would be at an end?

I am going to finish the touch-ups to the house this weekend, painstakingly climbing up and down a tall ladder borrowed from a neighbor, who most definitely will be wanting it back soon, since I have had it since early this month, carrying a small brush and a paint-can, my pockets filled with nails and tools. I have a notion to pave the center part of the back yard with concrete pavers of my own creation, set with black river pebbles set on end, to make flowers and geometric patterns, like the stairs and terraces I saw in Spain and have never seen again…. I want to set a small fountain in the middle of it, to hear the sound of running water in the afternoons of these brutally hot summer days, which is work that will take months to accomplish and about the same to pay for. And all the time I am doing it, I will have the radio on. And all these days to come, I’ll know that someday, some time, I’ll hear a news bulletin about a mushroom cloud someplace in the Middle East, or Europe, or maybe over an American city… and that these days of peace will be ended for once and all.

Frodo: “I wish none of this had happened. ”
Gandalf: “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
From “The Fellowship of the Ring”

The Dead Hand

18. May 2006 · Comments Off on The Dead Hand · Categories: General, History, Media Matters Not, Pajama Game, That's Entertainment!

Once upon a dark and distant time in military broadcasting overseas, the only thing there was in the weekly television broadcast package that resembled daytime talk shows as we now know them was Phil Donahue, which we used to rather enjoy in a mild sort of way. It was occasionally intelligent, mostly interesting, and the host seemed to treat the guests and audience with friendly interest and respect. As such, it was easy to take— the give and take, the various viewpoints and inputs— especially in the small bites dished up on the AFRTS program schedule. How little we knew, that out of this innocent, and fairly innocuous chrysalis would blunder the ilk of Jerry Springer, the king of trailer-trash cat-fights, and the omnipotent Oprah, amongst others to horrible to mention. A mere decade later, we would be channel-surfing the wilderness of mid-day talk shows on the break-room television, looking for the trans-gendered/transvestite hookers which would inevitably be featured on one or another of them during the week – usually by Wednesday, Monday during sweeps week.

But one of the guests featured in the dear, long-gone innocent early days of Phil Donohue, was a veteran teacher who had garnered a small bit of fame by establishing a college-prep academy in the heart of one of the nastier big-city ghettoes. By all accounts, she was a gifted, hard-driving teacher, as demanding as any military TI – and like the TI, had hit upon success by working her charges hard, and keeping them too busy to be any more than exhausted – too exhausted to even think about getting up to counter-productive mischief. By all the print media accounts, she was a miracle worker, transforming academically floundering African-American ghetto kids into well-educated college-intake bound citizens, well-suited to join any freshman class at the more exacting institutes of higher education. To the best of our knowledge, reading the advance Teletips, this was the first time she had appeared on any of the limited television venues available to us overseas, and those of us who had even heard of her were at least a little intrigued.

The miracle-working teacher turned out to be a middle-aged black woman, very thin, very intense, and with very scary, piercing eyes; the eyes of a fanatic, I thought. She seemed to quiver with suppressed emotion; an emotion held on a very tight leash. She was accompanied onto the talk show set by her lawyer, which should have been some kind of clue to her expectations of the whole interview, but somewhat – well, overdrawn, given that the audience was cordial, curious and quite interested in her experience and insights, to judge from the initial questions from the moderator and the audience. It started off well, what with her explaining her goals, methods and intentions; I thought she was being a little more confrontational than the audience merited, what with the lawyer and all, though. I really don’t recall with any precision the actual racial mix of the audience, probably something around the average for this sort of thing, at that point in time, and in that place (Chicago, if memory and Google serve) but again, interested, respectful, polite, and her answers reasonable and well-considered, right up until she fielded a question from a middle-aged white guy about why she had picked Milton’s Paradise Lost as part of the English syllabus; what could that particular work have to say to the average black, inner-city ghetto kid, and how did she go about making it relevant— (that dearly beloved buzzword of the time.)
I thought it was a fair question— Paradise Lost is one of those difficult, old-fashioned classical English-lit texts. I didn’t encounter it myself in any depth at all until college and then only wading in to about shin-deep. There are any number of thoughtful, honest answers to be had to that question: Personally, I thought she may have been trying to best the best of the old-fashioned, beating those rigorous and retro prep-academies at their own game, throwing down an academic challenge, going toe to toe in teaching the classics that are the foundation of Western thought and literary tradition. She would have made points by explaining how she wanted to graduate pupils who were erudite, the equal of anything the well-endowed and exclusive— and expensive—academies could turn out, to prove that her disadvantaged sow’s ears of inner-city materials were capable of being woven into silk purses. She might also have expounded, as did another teacher of the classics that I read of a couple of decades later, who wrote about how he went about teaching the classical core texts to dead-enders and no-hopers, thinking that it would give his students a way to cope with human experience, by giving a means to touch the divine, and thereby becoming fully-realized, thoughtful human beings. Or pointed out (as did another teacher of the classics, possibly the same one, since I have near-perfect recall of the ideas I read about, but not the personnel responsible for them, or the venue that I read of them) that things like the Iliad and the Mort d’Arthur and Beowulf actually spoke with a more resounding voice to inner-city gangster youth than it did to middle-class preppies, what with it’s world of violence, ritual and touchy personal honor. But it appeared that the emotion on a short leash was anger, and the leash was readily snapped.

No, the genius woman teacher, with the fanatic eyes, and the lawyer in tow, took off after the poor, unwary white guy that had asked a seemingly reasonable question. She chewed him up one side, and lectured him down the other, calling him a racist, and several other sorts of horrible, nasty human being for even daring, even presuming to ask that question; having her lawyer along for the ride might have been a good idea, all the way around. The chill on any additional questioning was perceptible; the notion of any more easy and honest and collegiate give-and-take exchange was pretty well killed from that moment on. No one in the audience wanted to hurt anyone’s feelings, or to be screamed at, and called a racist. And so, any number of pertinent or interesting questions were strangled before they were even asked, because no one dared to ask them for fear of being thought rude, or a racist, or whatever, even if the answers to the unspoken questions might be interesting, or relevant. It does no one any favors to not even to dare ask the questions, and open them up for air, and discussion and disputation� never mind answering them -even if the answer is ambiguous.

Plundered

11. May 2006 · Comments Off on Plundered · Categories: General, History, Memoir, Pajama Game

A number of summers ago, when I was still stationed in Spain, I packed up my daughter, and a tent and all the necessary gear, and did a long looping camping tour of the southern part of Spain, down through the Extremadura, and to the rock of Gib al Tarik, and a long leisurely drive along the Golden Coast� I had driven from Sevilla, past the sherry-manufacturies around Jerez La Frontera (on a Sunday, so they were closed, although the Harvey�s people should have given me a freebie on general principals, I had sipped enough of their stuff, over the years), made a pit stop at the Rota naval base for laundry and groceries. I had driven into Gibraltar, done a tour of the historic gun galleries, seen the famous Gibraltar apes, and then waited in the long customs line to come back into Spain. We had even stopped at the Most Disgusting Public Loo on the face of the earth, at a gas station outside of San Roque, before following the road signs along the coastal road towards Malaga and Motril, and our turn-off, the road that climbed steadily higher into the mountains, the tall mountains that guarded the fortress city of Granada, and the fragile fairy-tale pavilions of the Alhambra.

The road followed the coastline, for the most part, sweeping through towns like Estepona and Marbella as the main thoroughfare, always the dark blue Mediterranean on the right, running wide of the open beaches, hugging the headlands, with new condos and little towns shaded by palm and olive trees, splashed with the brilliant colors of bougainvillea, interspersed with the sage-green scrublands. The traffic was light enough along the coastal road, and I began to notice a certain trend in place names; Torre de Calahonda� Torremolinos, Torre del Mar, Torrenueva� and to notice that most of the tall headlands, rearing up to the left of the road, were topped by a (usually) ruinous stone watchtower. Forever and brokenly looking out to the sea, and a danger that might come from there, a danger of such permanence as to justify the building of many strong towers, to guard the little towns, and the inlets where fisher-folk would beach their boats and mend their nets.

This rich and lovely coast was scourged for centuries by corsairs who swept in from the sea, peacetime and wartime all alike, savage raiders with swords and torches and chains, who came to burn and pillage� not just the portable riches of gold, or silver, but those human folk who had a cold, hard cash value along the Barbary Coast, in the slave markets of Algiers and Sale. It was a scourge of such magnitude that came close to emptying out the coastal districts all along the Spanish, French and Italian coasts, and even reached insolently into Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and Iceland. The raiders from the port of Sale (present-day Morocco) grew fabulously wealthy form their expertise in capturing and trafficking in captured Christians from all across coastal villages in Western Europe, and from ships� crews taken in the Mediterranean and the coastal Atlantic waters. This desperate state of affairs lasted into the early 19th century, until the power and reach of the Barbary slave-raiders was decisively broken. For three hundred years, though, families all along this coast and elsewhere must have risen up from bed every morning knowing that by the end of the day they and or their loved ones might very well be in chains, on their way to the slave markets across the water, free no longer, but a market commodity.

This kind of life-knowledge is out of living memory along that golden Spanish coast, but it is within nearly touchable distance in Texas and other parts of the American West, where my own parent�s generation, as children in the Twenties and Thirties would have known elderly men and women who remembered the frontier� not out of movies, or from television, but as children themselves, first-hand and with that particular vividness of sight that children have, all that adventure, and danger, privation and beauty, the triumph of building a successful life and community out of nothing more than homesteaded land and hard work.

There was no chain of watchtowers in the harsh and open borderlands, watching over far-scattered settlements and little towns, and lonely ranches in a country never entirely at peace, but not absolutely at war. The southwestern tribes, Comanche, Apache and their allies roamed as they wished, a wild and free life, hunting what they wanted, raiding when they felt like it, and could get away with it. Sometimes, it was just a coarse game, to frighten the settlers, to watch a settler family run for the shelter of their rickety cabin, fumbling for a weapon with shaking hands, children sheltering behind their parents like chicks�. But all too often, for all too many homesteading and ranching families, it ended with the cabin looted and burned, the adults and small children butchered in the cruelest fashion, stripped and scalped.

And the cruelest cut of all, to survivors of such raids in Texas and the borderlands, was that children of a certain age— not too young to be a burden, not too old to be un-malleable (aged about seven to twelve, usually) were carried away, and adopted into the tribes. Over months and years, such children adapted to that life so completely that even when they were ransomed back, and brought home, they never entirely fitted in to a life that seemed like a cage. They had been taken as children, returned as teenagers or adults, to an alien life, to parents and family they could no longer see as theirs. Some of them pined away after their return, like the most famous of them, Cynthia Ann Parker, others returned to their Indian families. For parents of these lost children, that must have been so cruel, to lose a much-loved child not just once, but to finally get them back, and then to discover that they were no longer yours, they had not been a slave, in captivity, but that they longed to be away, roving the open lands as free as a bird.

(The connection between these two topics is that I was reading Giles Milton�s �White Gold�, and Scott Zesch�s �Captured� at more or less the same time.)

Memo: Royal Families

07. May 2006 · Comments Off on Memo: Royal Families · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, History, Media Matters Not, Pajama Game, Politics, Rant

To: The Usual Media
From: Sgt.Mom
Re: Use of a Particular Cliché

1. I refer, of course, to the lazy habit of more than a few of you to refer to the Kennedy family, of Hyannisport, late of the White House, and Camelot, as “royalty”, without use of the appropriate viciously skeptical quote marks. Please cease doing this immediately, lest I snap my mental moorings entirely, track down the most current offender, and beat him/her bloody with a rolled-up copy of the Constitution. This is the US of A, for god’s sake. We do not have royalty.

2. We did, once, as an agreeable and moderately loyal colony of His Majesty, Geo. III, before becoming first rather testy and then quite unreasonable about the taxation and representation thingy, but we put paid to the whole notion of hereditary monarchy for ourselves some two centuries and change ago. There is a certain amount of respect and affection for certain of Geo. III’s descendents, including the current incumbent; a lady of certain age with the curious and old-fashioned habit of always wearing distinctive hats, and carrying a handbag with no discernable reason for doing so. (What does Queen E. II have in her handbag, anyway? Not her house-key to all the residences; not her car keys; not a checkbook and credit cards, not a pocket calendar or business card case, not a spare pair of stockings— I understand the lady-in-waiting takes care of that— handkerchief, maybe? In the case of her late mother, a flask of gin? William once had the chance to ask that question, I harassed him unmercifully for not having the nerve ). Oh, anyway, back to the subject: royalty, or why we, a free people, should feel any need to grovel before the descendents of particularly successful freebooters, mercenary businessmen, and social climbing whores of both sexes.

3. We do still have all of the above, BTW, but locally grown. Sort of like the Kennedys, come to think on it, but without coronets and courts. Considered in that sense, perhaps they could be construed “royalty”; descendents of an energetic and ambitious and wildly successful (and not too scrupulous) progenitor, given to hubris, excess, degradation and (with luck) an eventual downfall, usually a drama that takes place over centuries. But around here, unless the descendents are competent and careful, and wily, or failing that, in posession of an enormous trust fund that they can be kept from frittering away, without the aid of a political structure that enforces the power of an hereditary aristocracy and monarchy , our native versions tend to fade away after three or four generations, sort of like we hope Paris Hilton eventually will.

4. We do have, however, in many places and professions, certain old and established families. There are business and banking families, show business families, military families, even newspaper families. Over generations, they produce more of the same; entrepreneurs, bankers, actors, generals and newspaper magnates, some better known than others. There are also regional “old families”, those associated with certain towns or counties, prominent in a quiet local way, sometimes wealthy, most often not. Describing any such as “royalty” ought to be punished by something painful, as a grim offense against small “d” democratic ideals.

5. There have also been from the very beginning of this nation, political families: Adamses and Rooseveldts, continuing to this present with Bushes, Gores… and of course, the Kennedys, who were pungently described by humorist PJ O’Rourke some years ago as “ sewer trout (who) managed to swim upstream into our body politic”. How they ever got to where they did is as mysterious as Joseph Kennedy, Seniors’ business dealings. We can be sure of it involving brutal ambition, lots unsavory back-room dealing, and a lot of money, though. If the whole Kennedy saga were one of those operatic, generational tele-novelas, what we have seen working out ever since is the result of an implacable curse old Joe earned on himself for wronging some old gypsy witch in the 1920ies.

6. I do not care for the Kennedys, the whole Camelot thing, the whole lot of manufactured glamour and I mean glamour in the old, fairy-tale way; an elaborate fraud practiced on the American people, with the aid of journalists and intellectuals who should have known better. Just about everything about JFK was a pretense and fraud, from the state of his health to the state of his marriage. He was a handsome showboat, with a court of paid lickspittles, whose’ political ascension was stage-managed by his father. The rest of the clan has been coasting on that bought reputation, and shreds of illusion ever since.

7. They are not royalty; they are only a rich, recklessly self-indulgent political family, with a predisposition to think that consequences are just something that happens to other, lesser people. Get up off your knees, and shake off that old Camelot spell. You’ll feel all the better for it.

Thank you for your attention to this matter
Sgt Mom

(Slightly edited at 5:3o PM to make some sentances a little clearer.)

What Fresh Weevil Is This?

04. May 2006 · Comments Off on What Fresh Weevil Is This? · Categories: Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Pajama Game

A very much older one than originally reported, it appears. The Weevil I Know Nothing Of is not “five weeks old”, but five months old. Blondie and I worked this out last week, after a close look at her “papers”, and a bit of searching conversation with the co-worker who acquired her at great expense over Easter, and then despairingly decided that an infant dog was just too demanding of his and his wife’s admittedly newly-wed time. After two weeks… God help these people when they actually have children. They handed her over to Blondie with an assortment of toys, a comb and brush, two prescription meds (she had a case of kennel cough) 3/4ths of a 10-lb sack of puppy chow, a packet of baby wipes, and a large parcel of puppy-piddle-training pads… and a long length of grosgrain ribbon striped in Easter-egg pastels. I suppose it was to tie a bow around her neck, on festive occasions. I set aside the ribbon, and Blondie bought her a tiny, black-pleather collar with miniscule silver-metal studs and spikes, and attached a bell to it, so we could hear her coming.

The puppy has been formally christened “Spike”, which is our sort of humor, and my sister Pippy, who also inherited a shih-tzu puppy from a co-worker, under similar circumstances, is probably still laughing. (Pippy’s shih-tzu is named “Scarlett O’Hairy”, by the way.) She tells us that the breed are endearing, appealing little dogs, bold and fearless, in their own hearts they are lions… but kind of high-maintenance. A look at some of the websites dedicated to the breed makes that very clear. Holy Hair-Goo, a look at some of the pictures of breed champions is enough to convince me that this is the breed for people who would otherwise have a My Little Pony fixation, but that they can’t stand plastic.

And after a little research, I am also in line to agree that yes, they are high-maintenance, with a potentially expensive assortment of possible chronic health issues, that as my sister says, they really are just a sort of barking cat, and that like poodles and Chihuahuas, their cuteness can be exaggerated to the point of inducing a diabetic coma. And there is the size factor, a la Crocodile Dundee: “You call that a dog? (brandishing a hellhound like my parent’s Great Dane, or Toby the half-lab, half mastiff) Now, this is a dog!” No, even considering This Fresh Weevil as any sort of personal protection— which is why Blondie saddled me with a dog in the first place— this is to risk falling into a catatonic state from laughing, as Spike would seem to be not just a shih-tzu…. But a teacup shih-tzu, at that.

Which means, she will never get any larger than she is at the moment, a whole five pounds and small change. She will never be able to hop up onto the sofa or the bed without help— she can, with a great deal of effort, make the step up onto the back porch, an altitude of about 12 inches. But on the other hand, once she has achieved the mighty heights, she is sensibly prone to stay there. Like the Lesser Weevil, she is not a stupid dog, but a pretty clever piece of work.

Dogs, I have read and know from observation are mission-oriented. That is to say, all the various breeds there are, all of them were developed for a certain, usually practical purpose, and the very best of them have internalized that to such a great extent that they are not happy unless they are actually fulfilling that purpose. Border-collies, and other herding dogs have to herd, it’s innate to them, and the urge to do so is so commanding that they are unhappy and neurotic unless they are able to. Close to my parents’ house in Valley Center was an establishment that kept a small herd of sheep, and functioned as sort of a gymnasium for the herding breeds; people would book an hour or so, for their border collie to run around and herd the sheep. It was their workout, and outlet, and so their owners said, the dogs were happy and well-adjusted for days afterwards. Dogs bred to be hunters have to hunt, greyhounds have to run, those bred to be guard-dogs or war-dogs, or to pull a sled through miles of icy wilderness have to do what they were bred to do. They just have to, it’s a need from the bottom of their doggy souls. The happiest and most fulfilled dogs I ever met were either the dogs who belonged to the shepherds who had grazing rights at Zaragoza AB (yes, there were a couple of shepherds who had grazing rights on the base, rights to everything except the lawns in the housing areas) and Spotty the SP detachments’ drug-sniffing dog, a lively little terrier whose greatest joy in all the world was to chase around the Girl Scout Hut (and any other venue) looking for the drug lure. (Yeah, I got to know Spotty fairly well, it was a small base and all the various educational venues were pretty well trodden. Ask Blondie how many times she went to see the local Coca-Cola factory. In one academic year she showed up in a tour group at the AFRTS station three times: school tour, summer camp tour, Girl Scout tour.)
The purpose of shih-tzus was, apparently, to be companion dogs to us humans; nothing more taxing than that. They love us, want to be with us (sitting in our laps, or next to us, sleeping on our beds and craving our attention), adoring, and worshipping, wanting nothing more than to bask in the sunshine of our regard, and to be pampered and adored in return.

But I’m not a total fool: Spike will have a short summer clip, none of this business of a tuft on the top of her head, tied up with a ribbon. Really.

How to Control Your Drinking 0013

04. May 2006 · Comments Off on How to Control Your Drinking 0013 · Categories: Air Force, Pajama Game

In the military culture there’s nothing quite as brain-sucking as the “death by PowerPoint” day known as inprocessing, or as the Air Force has chosen to call it, “Right Start.” This is a full day of sitting in the club’s ballroom while a parade of briefers, who may or may not know the material they’re briefing, comes before you and explains in full detail what they do for a living and what to do if you need them. These used to end with, “If you have any further questions, call us at ext: ####.” These days they tend to end with “If you have any further questions, check out our FAQ at www.####.mil.” Some functions don’t even bother coming to fill you in on their function any more; they simply have a sys admin guy come in to tell you where to find their website. This is for our convenience. Okay, this is because they need to cut even more of our folks so the big boys can pay for their new toys. I know the fleet is old. I know some of the bombers are older than I am. But even my Airman Basic has been heard to mutter, “Haven’t they heard of a scheduled refresh?” Indeed. But now I’m way off the point and truly funny stuff is coming.
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Rites, Rituals and Legends #18: The Club

03. May 2006 · Comments Off on Rites, Rituals and Legends #18: The Club · Categories: Air Force, Fun and Games, General, History, Military, Pajama Game

A well-established military base, being that it has to be all things to all residents therein, contains all or most of the elements contained in any well-run established community, over and above the bare requirements of troop housing and mission fulfillment. Some of these I have written about before— the post or base exchange retail stores, the commissary or grocery store, dependents’ schools, family housing. Others I have not: things like base troop clinics and hospitals, and recreation venues like gyms and swimming pools, bowling alleys, riding stables and swimming pools, movie theaters, snack bars, package (or liqueur stores), and the economic engine that drives many of a bases’ recreational venues— the clubs. A long-established location like the Yongsan Garrison, the major American Army garrison in Seoul, ROK, will have all of these, plus refinements like thrift stores, a little theatre venue, odd little gift concessions and snack bars, being accumulated by accretion like one of those odd shellfish, adding a little bit of this or that to it’s shell. (Yongsan had a couple of bespoke tailor concessions and a bicycle-repair shop, to my great interest and mystification.)

The Clubs are official and traditional: classically broken down (with variations according to service, location and era) into Officer, NCO and EM (enlisted men) Clubs. Once upon a military time, (probably during the century before the last) one would be safe in assuming that the officer’s club would be the plushest, not to mention the liveliest, but actually that would all depend— depend upon sufficient numbers of officers to keep the O’Club in the style to which it was once and would like again to become accustomed. In practice, at most Air Force bases of my experience, the NCO and lower ranks clubs were where the numbers and the free-spenders were, not to mention the women.

Lately, the trend in the Air Force seems to have been toward just one large consolidated club facility, with a central kitchen and various lounges, dining rooms and bars designated for officers, enlisted, or both. The Air Force, it would appear, has dealt with the potential indignity of a colonel’s lady, an NCO’s wife, and an airman’s girlfriend, all dealing with separate but similar over-indulgences and barfing up in adjacent lavatory stalls by deciding that everyone is an adult (well, mostly) and can just suck it up and move on. It’s not likely that anyone will remember on Monday morning anyway.

Again, in my experience— which was predominantly overseas— the clubs were a very mixed bag. The clubs in Greenland, for example were lively places, and the food was great. They packed them in, all the nights of the week that they were open… because, of course, there was absolutely bloody nothing out there beyond the base gates (not even any base gate, come to think on it, only the billboard outside the MAC terminal that said “Welcome to Sondrestrom, the Miami of the North!!), just thousands of square miles of rocky, ice-glazed tundra. What little competition there was came in the form of the SAS hotel cafeteria, and private and unofficial bar clubs focused around the lounges in the barracks buildings… very popular on those occasions when one wanted to party hearty and not run the risk of having to crawl outside on your way back to your barracks room.

Conversely, the Air Force NCO club at Zaragoza AB— what with all that lovely downtown competition— was lackluster and the food there thoroughly explored the narrow range of territory between the totally vile and the completely disgusting. I postulated the existence of a warehouse on base, completely filled with #10 cans of sludgy, salty brown gravy, as nearly every dish on the menu arrived from the NCO and O’Club kitchen swimming in a puddle of the disgusting stuff. The only time the Zaragoza clubs made any sort of profit at all was during the run-up to Gulf War I. All the troops passing through on their way to Saudi Arabia (otherwise referred to as “down-range”) were confined to base while laid-over… and the clubs had the best damn two or three months they ever had.

In Japan, the NCO/Enlisted Club was a lively and happening venue, the O’Club a gloomy and over-decorated establishment with wallpaper that would have disgraced a Tunisian cat-house, and appalling dining-room service: some friends of my friend Cheryl (who had a thing for guys in flight-suits) regaled us with an account of how they had gone in for dinner, one evening, placed an order… and then ordered take-out from the NCO club’s delivery service, to be delivered to room so and so, building so and such. Everyone was enormously amused at their description of the delivery-service driver, walking into the O’s dining room, laden with paper bags. The Club in Greece eventually was located in a rented tourist hotel high-rise in Glyphada, all of it and the swimming pool, transient quarters and barber shop, under one roof, guarded by armed, and flack-vest wearing Security Police. I was never able to decide if the sight of the SPS passing in front of the plate-glass dining room window was an unsettling or a reassuring sight.

It gets interesting when there are different services located close by, which affords an opportunity to comparison-shop, as it were, and for the Army and Marines to turn green-eyed envious at the comparative luxury of the Air Force enlisted clubs, and for the Air Force enlisted to appreciate the appallingly Spartan lifestyle lived by those who just couldn’t connect with an Air Force recruiter. The Marines on Okinawa took out their resentments by starting fights in the Air Force NCO club at Kadena AB and trashing the place, from which they were frequently banned. Sgt. Blondie tells me that the Marines do still have a go at the Air Force club now and again, but it’s become more of token bow to tradition, an occasional ritual for old-times sake. And rumor had it around Lackland AB, just before I retired, that the EM club at Ft. Sam was on the verge of being declared off-limits to Air Force personnel, due to the number of unsavory characters that congregated there… most of said unsavories being civilians, not Army troops, since Ft. Sam was an open post, pre 9/11. Only the thought of how this would look to civilians — imagine the horselaughs, an Army club being off-limits!— kept the command from actually doing it. (Or so the rumor had it.)

Your own recollections of clubs, fond or otherwise are invited in the comments.

How Americans Die: United 93

28. April 2006 · Comments Off on How Americans Die: United 93 · Categories: General, GWOT, Pajama Game, That's Entertainment!

Several years ago, I lamented on this very blog, how no movies had come out of Hollywood post-9/11 that told our stories of heroism in the ongoing war against the forces of militantly jihadist Islam. I can’t find that particular entry among four years worth of tri-weekly posts, since I can’t remember what I called it, but I remember pointing out that the dust was barely settled on our WWII defeats at Bataan, and Wake Island, before Hollywood had rushed out stories focusing on the heroic resistance, and our national resolve.

Where were our stories in this new war, where was Hollywood— did our current entertainment moguls feel above the vulgar business of telling our stories, and processing our heartbreaking experiences, defining who we are, and what we are fighting against? Of course, pace the Danish Cartoons experience, it might very well be that our movie moguls and stars are as fearful as anyone else of a car-bomb at Wolfgang Pucks’, or the oh-so-subtle gentlemen from CAIR parked in the outer office, and just as prone as the national big-media to surrender pre-emptively, and refrain from producing anything that would piss them off… or encourage the great unwashed American public to embrace their inner Jacksonian.

I felt obliged to go and see United 93, since it was exactly the sort of movie that Hollywood ought to have been producing; they should have done about thirty to fifty of this sort (well, counting TV movies and film releases together), and started at it three or four years ago. Well, it’s nice that someone in Hollywood finally gets it… a couple of years late, but better than not at all. I did not go to it, expecting to have a good time: the ticket-taker said automatically as he tore my ticket in half.
“Enjoy your movie,” and I replied
“Well that wasn’t exactly my plan.” Poor man, there is probably a picture of him next to the definition of “prematurely aged, hopelessly out-of-touch, fashion-challenged movie geek” in some vast cosmic dictionary.

The theater where I watched it was eventually half-filled. It was the mid-afternoon showing, on a day when most people in San Antonio have had a half day, or maybe the whole day off because of the Battle of Flowers Parade (explanation of this in another post— it’s just a local holiday, ‘kay?) No idea of it would have been a typical or atypical crowd, but I did notice that everyone was fairly quiet before the movie began, and near to silent when it ended. It’s not a movie you go to for laughs, jollies and temporary forgetting of your current problems.
It opens to the sound of Muslim prayers, in the darkness before dawn on an ordinary day. Only the unsettling image of the hijackers shaving and dressing themselves, and being extraordinarily diligent about their early prayers strikes any sort of ominous note— that and the image of four weedy, dark-haired men, sitting uneasily amongst the people they intended to murder— gives a hint of what happens next.

It’s all one of those prosaic, ordinary working days, people going to work, doing what they do every day of their working life, everything routine, banal, swapping the ordinary sort of work-related remarks, small stuff, chit-chat, all about work and what is expected during the course of an ordinary working day. The Air Force has got an exercise on, that’s the only out-of-routine thing happening. And everything is so ordinary about taking an early morning flight to the west coast, all those plain, unglamorous, lumpish people on the same flight. I had begun to think that Hollywood was incapable of making a movie with ordinary-looking people in it, but on this occasion, the temptation to cast the blindingly-attractive actor sorts was resisted, with the result that United 93 has a very documentary feel about it, with no one in it that you remember having seen in another role, and another show. (The air traffic control staff played themselves— which lent enormously to the documentary feel.) No one is really named, aside from the pilots, and some of the air control staff, and some of the Air Force people— there is no distracting back-story for any of the characters… it is all just the story of the morning of 9/11, quick and brutal and to the point.

It all happens in something very much like real time; all the ordinary stuff on an ordinary morning; sitting around in the gate area, until called to be seated, the cabin staff going by, towing their bags and laughing amongst themselves. If you’ve traveled by air in the last thirty years, it’s all familiar, down to being dragged to pay attention to the safety briefing, although it’s something you have heard a hundred times before, and that is the gripping part— we’ve all been there, we can see it happening, and to people very much like us.

It’s a very claustrophobic movie; there are very few outdoor shots, aside from some establishing views of airport runways, and a couple of long exterior shots of the New York skyline, taken from inside a flight control facility. Otherwise, it’s all interiors, very tight and very close, almost painfully intimate, as 9/11 starts to get very weird and very un-ordinary. The jolting moment when the air controllers watch the second aircraft slice into the WTC tower is shattering… just as shattering as it was—or so I have been told— as it was to people watching on that awful, shattering day. (I wasn’t one of them, I came late to the party, and was listening on radio.)

The last twenty minutes or so are very intense, extra-claustrophobic, in the confines of an aircraft cabin. (I may very possibly never fly commercially again. ) The passengers and surviving cabin staff huddle in the back of the aircraft, stealthily make phone calls, work out what has happened, deduce what will probably happen to them, decide to resist, cobble out a desperate plan; the last few minutes are a mad, disjointed frenzy, filmed on a shaky hand-held camera. A few grace moments: a middle-aged woman making a last tearful call to her family on her cell phone cuts it short, and hands the cell phone to the very much younger woman in the seat next to her, saying “Call your people”. An elderly woman on another cell phone calmly gives the location and combination of the home safe with her will in it, a married couple clinging to each other as the aircraft pitches violently— whatever happens at the last, they will be together.
And so it ends, as everyone who was paying attention that awful day would know, in rural green and golden fields— seen from the cockpit, growing horrifyingly more distinct, and a handful of passengers battering down the cockpit door with a catering cart. United 93 ends in a black screen and sudden silence, and then I realized how the tension had been ratcheted up to an almost unbearable degree. My heartbeat was hammering as if I had just done a 5 mile run with the Weevil, and the theater was entirely silent. No, this is not a movie you could be said to enjoy… but it is a movie with something to say… which is that when Americans die, and they are given sufficient warning, a fair percentage of them will choose to go down fighting.

(Which is, I hope, the message that Osama Bin Laden will take, when someone sends him a DVD of United 93, to whatever his current hiding place is. We’ve got your message, Wierdy-Beardy-Boy, and the answer is—no sale.)

An Acute Shortage of Care

25. April 2006 · Comments Off on An Acute Shortage of Care · Categories: General, History, Israel & Palestine, Pajama Game, Rant

So, one of NPR’s news shows had another story, banging on (yet again) about the plight of the poor, pitiful, persecuted Palestinians, now that the money tap looks to be severely constricted; no money, no jobs, no mama no papa no Uncle Sam, yadda, yadda yadda. (It’s sort of like an insistent parent insisting that a stubborn child eat a helping of fried liver and onions, with a lovely side helping of filboid sludge. You will feel sorry for these people, the international press, a certain segment of the intellectual and political elite insist— you must! You simply must! It’s good for you!) I briefly felt a pang, but upon brief consideration, I wrote it off to the effect of the green salsa on a breakfast taco from a divey little place along the Austin Highway. (Lovely tacos, by the way, and the green salsa is nuclear fission in a plastic cup. Name of Divey Little Place available upon request, but really, you can’t miss it. It’s painted two shades of orange, with navy blue trim.)

It may have been a pang of regret, barely perceptible, for the nice, sympathetic person I used to be. I used to feel sorry for the Palestinians, in a distant sort of way, the same way I feel about the Tibetans, and the Armenians, and the Kurds, and the Chechens (well, once upon a time, say before the Beslan school atrocity) and the poor starving Biafrans and Somalis, and whoever the international press was holding the current pity party for. Really, I used to be a nice person. I really did feel kindly, and well-disposed to those parties, and I wished them well, since all of them (and more) being victims of historical misfortune.

My appreciation of Palestinian misfortune didn’t diminish the way I felt about the state of Israel, particularly— like I should jettison my preferential feelings for the only state in the middle east with more than a cosmetic resemblance to a fully functioning democracy, the only one with a free press, the one hacked out and fought for by survivors of the 20th century’s most horrific genocide? Oh please. Yes, there are things to criticize Israel but it exists, it has a right to exist, don’t google-bomb me with comments to the contrary, I’ll delete them without a second thought. The right to ride a bus or cross a street or go to a grocery store or a pizza restaurant without running an excellent chance of being perforated by bits of scrap metal and nails coated with rat poison is one of those non-negotiable things.

And no, that really is one of those non-negotiable and bottom-line demands; right up there with being able to go to work on a sunny September morning, without having to make an unenviable choice between jumping from the 102nd floor or burning to death. Or being able to take your kid to school on the first day of the new term without being taken hostage, and having to watch your kid drinking their own pee in 100 degree temperatures. After a certain point has been reached, I really don’t give a rodent’s patoot about the righteousness and worthiness of your cause, or how much you have been persecuted and for how many centuries, blah, blah, blah. And no, I don’t want to argue about American hegemony, sponsored terrorism, or responsibility for x deaths in fill-in-the-blank-here because of our nasty/bad/counterproductive/policies here, there or wherever. Pay attention; the topic is me, my personal feelings and I, and that charming little body of international residents upon the world stage who describe themselves as “Palestinian”.
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Bibliothek

19. April 2006 · Comments Off on Bibliothek · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Pajama Game, World

Of all the American towns and small cities I have ever had much to do with, two stand out as interesting hybrids of America and the European homeland… well, three if you count Savannah, the other two being Santa Fe, and Fredericksburg. All three are, to be honest, a little self-consciously touristic with the charms, a touch too dressy for the occasion and location… but charming.

Fredericksburg is the smallest and the least-known of these three, and of course it is the one I am the most familiar with, although there are other Hill Country towns just as pleasant— Comfort, Wimberley, Kerrville— tucked into the limestone hills and steep valleys braided with that dear commodity in South Texas— clear, cold streams of water. William and I sat in a small courtyard this last weekend, sharing a bakery cinnamon roll, and marveling at how it had a definitely European feel— a sort of cloisterish ambiance, sheltering buildings along four sides, well and fountain in the middle, nice comfortable benches, stone paths and all… but three of the sheltering buildings around this small courtyard were the generic Texas clapboard and metal-roofed structures, only the fourth building had any claim to stone and mortar permanence.

My mother always said, after visiting the Hill Country, that it looked more like Pennsylvania… not just geographically, all rolling hills and oak treks… but because it was settled by the same sort of people; stolid Anglo-Saxon or Germanic farmers, devoted to hard work but the higher things as well…learning, free-thinking and libraries being amongst them.

The public library in the town of Fredericksburg is on Main Street, right next to the Gillespie County Courthouse, on an open green square— the Marketplatz that is the heart of town. The police and fire departments have a building along one side, most of the old, major churches are not far away, the Pioneer Museum and the Pacific War museum are in walking distance, and one can happily while away an afternoon just walking around and looking at lovely old houses, and shops and sampling local foods and wines. I have done so many times, since I moved to this area ten years ago; William is very fond of the place, and it is only an hour or so drive from my house; we drive up in the springtime, enjoying the fields of wildflowers on the hillsides and highway verge, and a nice meal and meander through some of the shops. (William also takes the opportunity to check out any interesting developments at the War Museum. He is a docent and man of all trades at an air museum on the West Coast— and it is always good to see what is going on in the field.)

The library presents a most arresting appearance— pure and lavish late 19th Century Beaux Arts style, all porches and tall windows, steep-domed towers, ornate iron lacework along the roof ridges and balconies— the whole effect being something that one can imagine would be the Addams’ Family local public library branch. It is all the more amusing, since the courthouse next door is one of those severely 1930ies Moderne efforts, like a table radio of the era, made large. I’ve never been inside either building, but I just know that the courthouse has WPA murals and industrial linoleum floors, and both of the buildings must and should have those heavy, blond oak tables and chairs that used to be an institutional staple before Bauhaus-style clubbed us all over the head and left us all aesthetically the poorer for it. But the library… ah, the library must have something more special.

It must have shelves, and shelves of books, and not on those nasty modern industrial metal-grade bookshelves that dent as soon as you look at them, with shoddy adjustable shelves. No, the Fredericksburg Public Library should have heavy, bespoke built-in shelves, as solid and permanent as the building itself, none of those laminate moveable shelves that will begin to sag after a decade or two under the weight of books and books, and books, and more books. This library should have odd little nooks and corners, with window seats and carrels built into them, where a child could curl up with a book and become lost in another world for hours, given access to a place where every volume is a doorway and a passport to that magic land of imagination. Such a perfect place to read, and read and read, all those wonderful worlds accessed through books.

I told William that the Fredericksburg Public Library would be the perfect venue for a kids’ adventure book. It looks from the outside as if it could contain every one of those elements for a perfectly ripping yarn, juvenile division. A secret room, or hidden passageway, a benevolent ghost, a hidden treasure, a mystery… a story that should encompass friendship and adventure and a sense of the wonderful things that lurk just beyond this all too prosaic world… things that are just barely imaginable just beyond the doorway of a place like the Fredericksburg Public Library… or any other public library, any other town in this seemingly unimpressive but potentially magical world of ours.

Thoughts of Summer

14. April 2006 · Comments Off on Thoughts of Summer · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Pajama Game

This posting is brought to you live from The Patio, my second home during the warmer months. Some 20 by twenty-five feet, screened on all but the side that adjoins the house, and with a view of the south end of my dominion, it is indeed a nice summer hangout – topped off with wireless internet and a stereo. Just to the east is a fifteen-foot square concrete pad for the smoker and grill, with an adjacent smallish shed that houses the freezer, golf clubs, etc. The previous occupant kept a hot tub in the shed, which she offered to sell to us at a reasonable price when we bought the house in ‘94. I am not a hot tub person, but Real Wife thought it would be splendid indulgence. That was until said previous occupant, a dowager well into her seventies, confided to us with a sly grin that she and a few of her friends from the local dowager club enjoyed spending time with hot toddies in the hot tub together – nude. Real Wife and I agreed that we simply could never bring ourselves to use it with those images in our mind. I still have nightmares. More »

PCS(ing)

12. April 2006 · Comments Off on PCS(ing) · Categories: Air Force, General Nonsense, Pajama Game, The Funny

We’re literally in the middle of a PCS (Permanent Change of Station) move. We’re a bit more than halfway between where we were and where we’re going. This is my ninth move in 22 years. I hate moving.

Watching all your stuff being packed away and put on a van is distressing. Especially if any of the good stuff you’ve collected over the years have survived previous moves. You wonder if it’s going to make it this time. You wonder if the recliners you finally found that fit your body are going to be crushed out of shape. You wonder if that great cat tree you picked up with your last adopted furball is going to still have all its limbs. You wonder if they understand how much you really like your sound system.

Then there’s the military silliness that goes with a military move. For instance: The quarters we were living in are going to be completely renovated now that we’re out of them. Yet we still had to clean them as if someone was moving in tomorrow. When I say completely renovated I mean they’re going to tear out the guts; they’re going to rip out the plumbing, completely rewire the shorty electricity, trash the cupboards, and put in new floors and/or carpet. Yet still, we had to clean as if Sgt Snuffy was going to move in right after we vacated. It was hard. There’s something about doing pointless labor that kills a part of your soul. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve always left a place better than we found it. We pride ourselves in that. It’s just cleaning that well after sticking our heads into the house next door that’s in the process of being renovated, had us talking to ourselves. I don’t understand why I’m fine cleaning cupboards that are going to wind up in a dumpster as soon as the contractors get to them. A good wipe should have been sufficient.

I’ve been lucky in my career. I’ve always had bosses that gave me a week or two to get all the various and sundry paperwork done. This involves a treasure hunt of appointments around various offices on base that you may or may not have had anything to do with during your stay there. I have no problem outprocessing the library, I use the library. I had a bit of a problem with outprocessing the COMSEC (Communications Security) office. I didn’t have an account. I wasn’t responsible (for once) for any crypto gear. Yet I still had to stop by and have them look in their computer and say, “Yep, you’re right, you have nothing on file.” I asked why that couldn’t have been taken care of with a phone call. Airman Snuffy sort of scratched his head and shrugged his shoulders the way Airmen have been doing for generations. I just nodded. I’ve been through the same ol’ too many times to get my blood pressure up for that one.

Dog tags! Do you know that in the year 2006 you have to have a set of dog tags on your person when you PCS? I don’t think anyone’s asked for my dog tags since 1990 when I went to Saudi. Luckily, to my thinking, not Beautiful Wife’s, I don’t throw anything away. I still have my dog tags from 1990 tucked away in a thick card-stock 6-tabbed mobility folder with ziplock pockets. They’re right next to my last 522 from 1998 when I shot expert again on the M16 using the NATO course of fire (that’s the hard one in case you were wondering, and yes I’m proud of the fact I can shoot straight). Someone tried to tell me where to go to find the office that makes dogtags, somewhere near the flightline, just past and around Wing Safety…what? Why doesn’t personnel make them anymore? “Oh, we contracted that out.” Blink-blink. Because stamping someone’s name, branch of service, social, blood type and religious affiliation into aluminum requires a level of skill beyond the average personnel specialist’s comprehension?!!! Breath, blood pressure, breath. Hell I used to make them in my Orderly Room when I was a brand new two-striper because our unit was so damn big.

Training records. Yeah, those of you who have been paying attention and are in the Air Force know that Master Sergeants don’t need no stinking training records. That’s no longer true…at least not for my career field. Our functional manager decided we were special. (Let the little school-bus jokes fly, I have.) He decided that we needed to maintain our training records until we achieved our nine skill level. I don’t know why. I think he thinks he’s doing us a favor.

All of that got done though and now we’re on the road. I love and hate being on the road. The fact that we’re running I-80 Westbound makes me very happy. Tomorrow we’ll see mountains and buttes and prarie. The fact that Nebraska seems like the widest state in the union makes me crazy. I feel like I’m in a scene from Twister. “Cow.” “Another cow.” “Wait, I think that’s the same cow.” Every town in Nebraska along I-80 seems to be exactly the same as the other. Three exits surrounded by silos. All the silos look the same to me. Mom and Dad would either be proud or disappointed, hard to say.

But there’s an excitement to being in the middle of a PCS. New challenges. New things to do. New people to meet. New weirdness to overcome. New beginnings. This is the part of moving that makes the rest of it bearable. The anticipation.

Yeah, I know it’s going to be the same as any other place, only different, but leave me my delusions, ‘k?

Cavalleria Rusticana

10. April 2006 · Comments Off on Cavalleria Rusticana · Categories: Domestic, General, Pajama Game

On Friday, I had a sort of minor shake-up experience…pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, but it started me thinking about a number of things… masculinity, pretty-boy actors, Lucille Ball, Women’s Liberation and the science of automobile maintenance, which is pretty weighty stuff to spin from a flat on the I-35, but bear with me, I do have a point and I will eventually get to it.

It started in the most prosaic errand— I went over to the local everything-you want-we have got local grocery store on my lunch hour, to load up on the usual sort of stuff, most of which would stay in the trunk, but the bags of perishables— milk, eggs, an assortment of meats and veg. (less my luncheon deli sandwich) would be stashed in the break-room refrigerator until the end of the day. Hey, lunch hour— too precious to actually spend all that time to eat your lunch—in my world, you do errands or a brisk workout walk for 45 to 50 minutes, and eat a sandwich, salad or cup-o-noodles at your desk in the remaining 10 to 15 minutes.

In the height of the morning rush hour there had been the most awful accident on the I-35 South, the sort of accident that closes two lanes on a seriously major interstate. Attention had been paid, I took a couple of alternate routes, and went by the accident site on the access road next to the highway, after everything was over except the shouting, cleanup and the lawsuits. When I finished my grocery shopping, I came back on the highway— and as soon as I drove by where the accident had been in the morning, I started to feel something very strange in the VEV’s steering, a curious and wobbly feel to the wheel, and an odd noise and vibration that grew steadily more intense. I had already begun to slow down and pull off onto the verge, as soon as I noticed it. That the sound, the feel, and the vibration were getting worse every second, so with visions of having something awful happening to the… oh, what is it, the thingus that controls the… umm, thingummy… those whatsis that have something to do with the steering, those… ummm, boot thingummys that you have to make sure are intact and lubricated always, lest they break off suddenly and you find yourself and your car sliding down the highway at 70 MPH with the off-side wheel broken away and underneath the car… well, Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers on Car Talk have very dispiriting things to say about this kind of scenario, so I held my breath, and pulled off to the side, and set the brake and the hazard lights, and went for a quick superficial check around the VEV, just short of the exit by my workplace.

Oh, thank god, it was immediately obvious and uncomplicated— the left rear tire— in shreds and tatters of rubber and steel mesh. I was amazed I had managed to go a couple of hundred yards on it, in that condition. I had been warned about that tire— both of the rear tires, when I bought the front tires last year. They were next to bald, good for only a couple of months, so said the tire place salesman when I had to replace the front tires. At that point, with my steady employer only good for about the same time limit… well, I could only afford to see to the immediate and urgent, and pray for the rest. I was just seeing to the immediate (still shaking slightly); opening the trunk and fishing out the jack, and the lug-nut wrench thingy, when a late model SUV pulled into verge head of me… which marvelously, contained my immediate supervisor, and the president of the company I work for these days. They immediately assessed the situation, bundled me and the groceries into the SUV, telephoned ahead to the office and sorted out which of the guys there would bring me back and change the tire. Chivalry may be on the rocks in a lot of places, but not here in Texas.

I’ve never been stranded by the side of the road with car trouble for longer than about three to five minutes. Another female NCO, a supremely competent and organized sort— but quite uninterested in automobile mechanics—- once remarked to me that all you had to do was pop up the hood and look helpless, and guys would be hitting the brakes, dropping out of trees, and rushing up breathlessly with their toolboxes at hand, begging to be of assistance. It’s a rather endearing feature of the male of our species, this urge to fix things. In point of fact, both of us knew very well how to change tires, and oil, and stuff like that…but guys seemed to get such an ego boost out of doing it, you might as well just let them.

Ages ago, I wrote in a comment on another blog, where the concept of masculinity was under discussion, “Real men take responsibility for what matters in their lives. And fix things. Everything else is quibbling over habits and hobbies.” The proprietor of that blog was quite taken with that statement, and emailed me, asking permission to use it as a tagline, which he did, for quite a bit; it seemed like I did hit on something very deep, very resonant in a pretty off-the-cuff statement. Real men fix things; they are capable and confident when it comes to those skills they value. It would only be logical that competence should have been attractive to a potential mate, over and above the physical stuff. Real men are competent and reliable… they fix things…

…and of course so do women, and I wonder how it ever got to be thought that helplessness and haplessness was attractive, endearing, and even sexy. A lot of TV viewers did love Lucy, after all, even if watching the classic show of that name did (and still does) drive me to paroxysms of exasperation— desperate incompetence was just not funny. It was not endearing, not even amusing to me (even when I was a child, watching the reruns at Granny Jessie’s house); seeing Lucy and Ethel bollix up some grand plan beyond all human experience was more an exercise in masochism, than amusement. And watching a male as a butt of that kind of comedy is hardly any more amusing.

My daughter has a screen-saver on her computer, of one of the current heartthrob movie idols; he is quite devastatingly handsome, as these matters are judged… but he is a boy .He is pleasing to look at… but alas, as I judge them, he is a boy, an ornamental boy. He does not exude that air of reliable, solid and adaptable competence. He plays that sort of person in whatever drama offers him a salary… but I cannot imagine him swapping out a blown tire on the verge of the I-35 south, without a lot of drama about how it would adversely affect his fingernails.

Real men— they are there when you really need them, they fix things, and they are good at it.

Art Appreciation

06. April 2006 · Comments Off on Art Appreciation · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Pajama Game

No, I can’t say I appreciate modern contemporary art all that much, even though I work in two places that are full of stuffed full of it. Most of it leaves me… ummm, completely under-whelmed. Especially the three panel job in the hallway at the radio station, which looks like the worlds’ most incompetent dry-wall specialist had been allowed to cut loose with a 5-gallon bucket of auto-body filler and a dozen spray cans of silver paint.

Mind you, it is an interesting effect, and it would be very striking as a wall-covering; say, large panels of it interspersed with dark, stark modern Neo-Classical columns, and a plain ceiling and dark marble floor. As a wall-treatment, it might be quite impressive, in such a room as that, but as three large unframed canvasses covered in Bondo and silver paint, hanging in a corridor, it lacks a certain something. Like appeal, to someone who doesn’t have to pretend to see a deep meaning in it. The station had an art benefit auction a while back, of donated objects d’art, and we speculate viciously that the place is decorated in items that didn’t sell and that the artist refused to take back.

My parents had one of those framed oil modernistic things on the dining room wall, for years and years, mostly because it was done in very nice shades of blue (which matched Mom’s décor of the time) and a good friend had given it to them… no, not the artist. It was a bit of set property— the friend worked for one of the Hollywood studios; a lot of times, props were given away to the crews, rather than take up storage space. We were inexpressibly thrilled sometime in the late 1960ies to have spotted this picture, on a repeat of an absolutely ancient Perry Mason show… on the wall of the studio of an artist, supposedly the corpse du jour. It was actually a horrible pastiche, of a moonlight ocean, and some shoreline rocks and pier, with half of it being vaguely Impressionist, and half irresolutely Cubist. Cruelly, Mom and Dad used it to gage the artistic judgment and flattery-administering capabilities of anyone who remarked on it. Anyone lavishing compliments was instantly condemned — married couples have such a way of exchanging knowing glances. Another person, who would become a very dear friend, earned credit immeasurable from Mom and Dad, for finally asking if he couldn’t sit on the other side of the dining room table, just so he wouldn’t have to look at the horrible thing.

No, modern art doesn’t grab me at all, and if it tried, I’d slap it’s face and prefer charges of ungentlemanly behavior. The stuff that gets written up, and displayed everywhere just looks more and more like an over-the-top joke. It’s as if they are trying to top each other, on what they can get the so-called aficionados to swallow and come back for more, and somehow missing the whole point of art. That is, it should fill up a blank space of wall, intrigue or interest your friends and neighbors, and be something that you yourself can stand to look at every morning for a couple of decades. Or even, look at every morning for a couple of decades with a hangover. (Or make your dinner guests look at it, over the course of a fine meal.) Bonus, if the colors in it match something else in the room. Oh, and if possible, it should be something that appeals to you, and to you personally. Frankly, the average Jackson Pollock makes me think of nothing so much as the unspeakably disgusting sidewalk underneath trees where grackles have been roosting.

Say, that’s an idea!! I could get a grant from the NEA, and park huge canvases under the trees, and feed the flock something different every night that would turn their poop different colors! At the end of the week… it wouldn’t be enormous canvases covered with multicolored grackle poop, it would be Art with a capital “A”! Hey, if half a cow in formaldehyde can wow the art world, this has a better than even chance, especially if I can wrap it in layers and layers of vaguely progressive explanations, and slip in a couple of stiletto-slices at the bourgeoisie.

It is to giggle at, though, that the bourgeoisie— well, that part of it who has money to spend on art that they like and are past being dragooned into subsidizing something that they really don’t care for at all—- are buying Thomas Kinkade The Painter ™ of Light.

I don’t know if acres of cozy ginger-bready cottages sagging under the weight of sun-set colored icing are much of an artistic improvement over half a dead cow, or a an acre of multicolored paint splatters, but it must be easier to contemplate over a meal, unless you are diabetic. And at least, Kinkade has made a bundle selling what people actually, you know, really want… not begging for grants and sucking up to people with more money than confidence in their own taste, just to stick us all wish something that we don’t really care for. I predict that he will be this era’s version of a Rogers’s group; enormously popular, than drop out of fashion as something embarrassing and old-fashioned (you’ll be able to buy prints at yard sales for nickels) and then there will be a revival of interest in about 100 years.

They’ll last longer than grackle poop, anyway.

Bordertown

03. April 2006 · Comments Off on Bordertown · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Home Front, Pajama Game

It’s part of the tourist attraction to San Antonio, besides the Riverwalk and the Alamo. Even though this part of South Texas is still a good few hours drive from the actual physical border between Mexico and the United States, the River City is still closer to it than most of the rest of the continental states. It falls well within that ambiguous and fluid zone where people on both sides of it have shifted back and forth so many times that it would be hard to pin down a consistent attitude about it all. This is a place where a fourth or fifth-generation descendent of German Hill-Country immigrants may speak perfectly colloquial Spanish and collect Diego Riviera paintings…. And the grandson of a semi-literate Mexican handyman who came here in the early 1920ies looking for a bit of a break from the unrest south of the border, may have a doctoral degree and a fine series of fine academic initials after his name. And the fact that the original settlers were from the Canary Islands, and all non-Hispanic whites are usually referred to as “Anglos”, no matter what their ethnic origin might be, just adds a certain surreality to the whole place.

San Antonio is in fact, about half Hispanic: surnames like Garcia, Martinez. and Gonzales with an s or Gonzalez with a z being so common they fade into ordinariness. In this bordertown, Garcia and Gonzalez are your next-door neighbors, or your co-workers, everyone knows what a quincianera is, and loves breakfast tacos, and faijitas, and believes with the faith of holy writ that the hotter the salsa is, the better, and knows a smattering of Spanish. Quite often, in fact, it’s the kids named Garcia or Martinez who have to learn it as a second language in high school… just another surreality of life in a city where at least one place on every block of every main avenue serves up takeaway breakfast tacos… and some of them feature drive up service.

The cross-border flow is neither one-way or steerage class, either. Mexican and American shoppers and entrepreneurs criss-cross every day… it’s pharmacy visits and surgical care in both directions, bargains on clothes and garden pottery, and high-end gadgets. North Star Mall, close by the airport has been for years a shopping destination for wealthy Mexicans. During Santa Semana, the Holy Week between Palm Sunday and Easter, you could walk the main floor from one end to the other, and not overhear a word of English in conversation among the throngs. The wealthy Mexicans who come and go sometimes mesh uncomfortably with the local middle and working class Hispanics; the mother of a friend of mine grumbled about how they were so rude, and left the sales tables in such a mess, and left rejected clothes crumpled all over the floor in the dressing rooms at Talbots. Local people most always made a stab at putting them back on the hanger, instead of assuming that someone would come along and straighten out the mess after they were quite finished.

There was a small protest, this week, by mostly high school students— just old enough to be aware of of the problem, but not old enough to grasp the very real ambiguities. We are all immigrants, one way or another: many of us can name the ancestor, and the country he or she came from, and make some intelligent guesses as to why they climbed out of the ancestral rut and lit out for the new territories, the new world, the frontier, the north . Most of us suspect that those ancestors improved their lot; if not immediately for themselves, then for their descendents. I know that my own immigrant grandparents certainly found much nicer weather and better plumbing than what they variously left behind in Three Mile Town, Reading and the Merseyside, and I can’t grudge some dirt-farmer or shade tree mechanic in Jalisco having a chance at something a little better in their turn. I can’t, I really can’t. What a country this must be, when they are willing to risk their lives in the desert, or in the packed back of an 18-wheeler after paying money to a coyote–a people-smuggler— all for a chance to work in the fields, or packing plant or stapling asphalt tile in the hot sun of late afternoon in a Texas summer… and how crappy is the situation they are leaving. Even if all they want is a couple of seasons to work in the North, and send money back home, why do they have to come north in the first place?

What is with Mexico, that they must bleed off their most ambitious and hardworking, but frustrated citizens to the North, that part with paved roads and factories? Why is there nothing for them, back where they came from in some dirt scrabble- village? Why do the “activists” at Aztlan demand that the Southwest be turned back to Mexico, when it was Mexico setting the conditions that made their parents or grandparents head north in the first place?

Tejanos, Chicanos, Mexican-Americans, citizens of the borderlands, call them whatever; they have pulled their weight always: a good proportion of the Alamo defenders were actually native Tejanos, and Juan Seguin might have been their commander, instead of William Travis. (It was an item of crushing historical stupidity and Anglo arrogance that the Alamo Tejanos and Seguin were never given proper credit and attention during their 19th century lifetimes.) They enlist in large numbers generation after generation; machismo is untrammeled, and makes for a large proportion of soldiers who are admiringly described as “crazy-brave”. Citations for battlefield heroism run well above the norm for other ethnicities. Mexico ought to be a military powerhouse, with all that raw soldiering talent, but somehow, that never works out. They did beat the French once, but then hasn’t everyone? The Garcias and the Gonzalezs come north, as they always have; the suspicion on this side of it, is that the Border is Mexico’s safety valve, bleeding off the potentially politically restless and/or economically ambitious.

And the fear has become, this, this year along the borderlands, and in other places, is that the situation is out of hand. Ranch owners along the border, who had heretofore dealt with the illegal transients by sympathetically looking the other way, are fed to the teeth with aggressive trespass, with gates being left open, taps left running and fences cut, with not being able to go about their properties after dark without being armed. Law enforcement along the border are similarly fed to the teeth with well-armed gangs operating across the border, apparently with the connivance of Mexican authorities, whether authorized officially or not, with finding dying border crossers in the back of trucks, and alone, dead of thirst and exposure in the desert. Hospitals in border towns are being driven close to bankruptcy by medical care which they must give to the illegal, and for which they are not reimbursed. And legal immigrants everywhere, who have gone through the hassle and expense of doing the proper paperwork, and waiting patiently in line, are apoplectic at seeing that not playing by established rules may be rewarded.

And so, that is where people of good intent are stranded. De Nile is the river that runs through Egypt… but Ambivalence is the other name of the river that runs through the Borderlands.

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