Women in Statuary Hall

30. December 2006 · Comments Off on Women in Statuary Hall · Categories: General

I don’t pay much attention to DC architecture, and was pretty much unaware that something called Statuary Hall existed in the Capitol Building. But I’m watching President Ford’s funeral, and as they were talking about taking his coffin to the Rotunda, they kept talking about Statuary Hall (apparently, his kids used to play there, when they were younger).

Barbara Walters said that among the 100 statues in Statuary Hall (2 from each state), only one was of a female. The male commentator said “Frances Willard,” and she was surprised he knew who it was. He said he went to Willard Elementary school, in Illinois.

So my curiosity was piqued, and I jumped online to learn about Frances Willard, to see who she was and what she had done. Then I got curious about Statuary Hall, and wondered who my home state had enshrined there.

As I was browsing the list, I found the name “Mother Joseph.” Now, I’ve been dense in my time, but it just seems to me that someone named “Mother” is most likely female. So I clicked on the name to learn more about that subject, and she was, indeed female. So that’s two women in Statuary Hall, not just one.

I continued perusing the list, noting with interest that Mississippi enshrined Jefferson Davis there, and Louisiana erected a statue of Huey Long, and then saw the name “Esther Hobart Morris” from Wyoming. Hmmm…. Three women in Statuary Hall.

Oh, my… only a few names further down the list is Montana’s Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to the House of Representatives (1916). Four women, now.

And only five or so names further down I find Florence R. Sabin, of Colorado, the first woman to graduate from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She’s number five on the list of women in Statuary Hall.

Directly below her is Sakakawea, a name I’m used to seeing spelled Sacajawea. Number six.

Sakakawea is immediately followed by Maria L. Sanford of Minnesota. Number seven.

Continuing down the list, I eventually find Frances Willard, of Illinois. Number eight.

And two names below her, Sarah Winnemucca, a Paiute woman from Nevada, whose autobiography Life among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims, was the first book written by a Native American woman. She’s the ninth woman in the list of statues.

Maybe I mis-heard Barbara Walters, or whomever the commentator was, but I’m confident that I heard her correctly, because she made a big deal of her male counterpart knowing the name of the only woman in Statuary Hall. So I thought maybe it was that only Frances is actually *in* Statuary Hall, and the others are scattered throughout the building, and I re-sorted the list, by location.

Some statues are in the crypt, some in the Hall of Columns, others in the Connecting corridors, but there are three statues of women in the actual National Statuary Hall, if one counts the vestibule as part of the hall. So that’s not it.

When I clicked on Frances Willard’s name, I found where my confusion arose. Frances was the FIRST woman to be placed in Statuary Hall, not the only one. I’ll grant you, “only” sounds better than “first,” but it’s just not accurate. And while two of the statues were placed fairly recently (Sakakawea in 2003, and Sarah Winnemucca in 2005), the others have been in place for decades.

Barbara Walters’ mis-statement bothers me. It probably doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but to whomever was listening to her tonight, the message she imparted was that fifty states placed a total of 100 statues in a national gallery, and only one of those statues was of a female. How symbolic of the male-dominated society some believe America to be. But the truth is, almost ten percent of the statues are of women. And two of the nine are of Native Americans.

This did not require a huge amount of research on my part. But how many of the folks watching the funeral will bother to do the research? After all, if Barbara Walters said it, it must be true. *sigh*

When There’s Nothing On the Real Tube

30. December 2006 · Comments Off on When There’s Nothing On the Real Tube · Categories: That's Entertainment!

There was crap on TV last night. Not a thing worth watching. Beautiful Wife gave up in complete disgust and went to kill trolls on the Big PC. Boyo came up from his playroom to watch cartoons on the Big TV. I plugged in my headphones and spent about two hours just surfing around YouTube.

I was surprised. I knew there were TV clips and funny commercials there. In the back of my mind I sort of knew that people put their own videos in there, but I didn’t know the extent of the community. Many of the videos are simply of people talking or singing to their webcams. What sort of took me back was that there are some seriously talented people marketing themselves via YouTube.  I just thought it was like, “Our family vacation videos.” or “Teenage skateboarders trashing their nuts.”
I’m not going to run out and become a Hill88 Fanboy (Although, I think Second City needs to grab up this gal, get her on stage for a couple years and then ship her off to SNL for boot camp. It’s rare and wonderful to find someone who takes silly to that level.) or wait with baited breath for Esme`e’s latest rendition of Alicia Keys, but it’s nice to know that when there’s nothing on TV you can pick up the trusty laptop and kill an hour or two just checking out what’s there. Hell, I killed half an hour getting caught up on the Letterman interviews I’ve missed.

Don’t misunderstand…there’s as much crap on YouTube as there are video and web cams on the planet. I believe Paul refers to such things as, “teh suck.”  The further you drift away from the “most watched” and “favorites” etc. the more you get into things that Jerry Springer would disapprove of.  And though I’m as big a fan of boobies as the next guy…some of the younger gals kind of creep me out with the bumping and shaking etc..  It seems a bit desperate.

Glenn Beck. Exposed: The Extremist Agenda

29. December 2006 · Comments Off on Glenn Beck. Exposed: The Extremist Agenda · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Exposed: The Extremist Agenda.

If you get a chance to see this, watch it. It’s both scary as hell and truly hopeful as it shows the worst in extremist propaganda, including what lil kids “sing” for “fun.” It’s hopeful because there are more and more Islamic leaders speaking out against the crazies.

My First Sergeant turned me on to Glenn Beck. I guess I’m a sick twisted freak. I think he’s great. But I’m also in recovery so I get that kind of humor.

Alright Already…

29. December 2006 · Comments Off on Alright Already… · Categories: Media Matters Not, That's Entertainment!

We get it. Saddam’s gonna hang. Move along.

Jeez, the talking heads on Fox News are practically salivating.

I have no problem with him being executed, I’m kind of surprised, but I don’t have a problem with it.

I’m kind of creeped out by the whole Death Watch thing.

Caption This One (061229)

29. December 2006 · Comments Off on Caption This One (061229) · Categories: Fun and Games

(U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Garrett Hothan)
Winners on Monday…ish.

Wizbang goes to the Apollo.

OTB believes in the magic of the holidays.

Un-Civil War

28. December 2006 · Comments Off on Un-Civil War · Categories: General, History, Military, Old West, Pajama Game, War

“…From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean…”

In hot pursuit of my next “book”, I continue to plough through a great stack of readings, all about the German migration into Texas in the mid-19th century. Yes there is a great story there, of which practically no one outside Texas has ever heard, and given any sort of encouragement I will bore you rigid with all sorts of trivia. Like, for instance, the aristocratic patrons of the Society for the Protection of German Emigrants to Texas fell, hook, line, sinker and obscene amounts of cash to two of the biggest land swindles ever known. Three words “Fisher-Miller Grant”. That little fiasco was right on par with the sale of Manhattan Island, by a tribe that didn’t even own it. Ah, but it came out all right in the end… if the aristocratic members of the Society had possessed business acumen on par with their ambitions… well, let’s just say if that had been so, the second language of the state of Texas would not be Spanish. And it might not have joined the Union at all, but continued as an independent entity or quasi-German colony, which would have pleased a whole constellation of German princes and nobles, but really have annoyed the Confederate States, and deprived a great many Southern generals in the “late unpleasantness” circa 1861-65 of a great portion of their fire-eating, romping-stomping cavalry.

Texas joined the secession, to the heartbreak of Sam Houston, and enthusiastically entered into the whole spirit of the Confederacy… to be expected, since the Anglo (read American) settlers were mostly from southern states, and of that Scots-Irish breed of whom it has been oft-acknowledged that they were “born fighting”; Indians, British, the French or each other, whichever were most convenient at the moment. To read of the enthusiasm with which Texans volunteered to fight for the Confederacy is to wonder if it was just that they were spoiling for a fight, and the issues which impelled the secession were a minor bagatelle.

But this was not true of the considerable district around the German-settled areas around Fredericksburg and New Braunfels, all through the rolling lime-stone hills between San Antonio and Austin. This was the high country, the less-good land of hard-working farmers and small cattle ranches, solidly opposed to chattel slavery and who had opposed secession from the very beginning. They may have settled in Texas relatively recently, but they were a cohesive block, had put down deep roots, knew their rights and were prepared as stubborn and stiff-necked Americans to insist on them. If the Hill Country had been geographically contiguous with the Union at any point, doing a “West Virginia” and seceeding from the Secession would have met with solid approval.

As it was, the Hill Country Germans pretty much stood apart from the fray until a year into the war, in the spring of 1862, when the tide began to subtly shift against the Confederacy, to those who had the strategic sense to see the long picture. New Orleans was taken by the Union, whose forces began a slow progression up the Mississippi, slicing the Confederacy into two portions. Those who had been opposed to the whole secession thing were confirmed in their judgment, and those who had wavered began to wobble in the direction of loosing confidence… while the die-hard Confederates began to see the skull-grimace of death and defeat grinning at them from the corners.

Texas was put under martial law, and the supreme military commander was a foppish and overbearing little martinet named Hebert, who did much to make himself detestable to even supporters of the Confederacy. But what ignited resistance in the Hill Country, and farther north, around present-day Dallas, was the institution of conscription. Texas had poured 25,000 volunteers into the Confederate Army during the first year of the war. But volunteers were not enough, and in the spring of 1862 legislation passed which authorized the drafting of every Anglo (white) male between the age of 18 and 34… shortly thereafter, it was changed to 17 through 50. Resistance was instant and furious among Unionists. A party of 65 Unionist men from the Hill Country attempted to flee across the Rio Grande; they were ridden down by Confederate troops along the Nueces River, and half were killed outright or executed out of hand. In following weeks, another fifty men in Gillespie County, around Fredericksburg, were executed… many of them by Confederate vigilante gangs. It was said bitterly for decades afterwards, that more were killed in the Hill Country by such gangs during the Civil War than were ever killed by Indians, during the war or after it. A footnote in the history books, if even noted to begin with.

The experience of the Civil War had, I think, the effect of drawing the Texas German colonies into themselves, and emphasizing their distinct character, rather than diffusing amongst their neighbors as similar German enclaves did in the northern states. For they were long in forgetting what had been done to them, by their neighbors, and fellow Texans.

More about the German settlers, here and here, from the archives.

Questions of the Day (061228)

28. December 2006 · Comments Off on Questions of the Day (061228) · Categories: General Nonsense

Does anyone else find it weird that it’s almost 2007?  I mean, I KNOW time has gone by but it just feels somehow wrong that we’re well more than half way to the teens.  Where did this decade go?

While I’m thinking about it, has anyone figured out what the hell we’re calling this decade?  The “Oughts?”  The “Zeros?”  The “Ohs?”

 

More Freaking Snow

28. December 2006 · Comments Off on More Freaking Snow · Categories: Ain't That America?

My favorite take on this comes from the locals: “We used to have snow like this all the time, this is so weird.”

And that’s from the military folks, not the hippies.

I’ll keep you posted.

Our Dead, Good? Their Dead, Bad?

26. December 2006 · Comments Off on Our Dead, Good? Their Dead, Bad? · Categories: Media Matters Not

This is all over the place in one form or another:

The latest U.S. deaths brought the number of members of the U.S. military killed since the start of the Iraq war in March 2003 to at least 2,978 — five more than the number killed in the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

Emphasis mine. 

Mohammed on a moped, are we really going to start seeing this on a daily basis now?  “X amount more than were killed on 9/11?”  This is how we’re measuring things?

You know what pisses me off?  I know Viet Nam made the reporting of enemy casualties oh so uncouth, and that when it was tried back in 2003 the DoD took huge hits from the media for it.  So how come it’s okay for the media to report daily, almost hourly, on OUR dead?  What makes that okay?  How come their dead are sacred and ours are fodder?

I Don’t Feel Good

25. December 2006 · Comments Off on I Don’t Feel Good · Categories: That's Entertainment!

Rest in peace Godfather of Soul.

Singer James Brown, known as the “Godfather of Soul”, has died at the age of 73, his agent has said. He was admitted to hospital in Atlanta after being diagnosed with severe pneumonia but died at 0145 local time (0645 GMT), said Frank Copsidas.

The star was famous for hits including I Got You (I Feel Good), Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag and Living in America.

“He is such an influence, I learned so much from him,” Mr Copsidas told the BBC World Service.

He had his demons, but most of the great ones seem to need them.

Christmas Eve Surprise

24. December 2006 · Comments Off on Christmas Eve Surprise · Categories: Domestic, Eat, Drink and be Merry, General, Memoir, Pajama Game

Some few Christmases ago, when Blondie was still stationed at Camp Pendleton, and my personal economics allowed me to fly out to California to spend the holiday at Mom and Dads’ house, my daughter and youngest brother conceived a grand scheme to give them a large color TV for Christmas.

Blondie and Sander also wanted to surprise them, and a huge box under the Christmas tree, no matter how cunningly wrapped, just would not deliver the same element of surprise… no, my daughter and my little brother had worked out a cunning plan to remove the old television, which had been inherited from Granny Dodo’s estate, install the new one, and gift-wrap the remote in a little box which would be in Mom’s Christmas stocking. They could pull this off because the television normally resided on a shelf of its own in a wall of books and cupboards, with a pair of louvered shutters closed over the screen. It was one of Mom’s enduring standards about television; that it be out of sight when not actually being watched, if not out of the living room entirely.

Such was the plan, but for the maximum surprise to be achieved, several challenges had to be worked out: the installation would have to be done after we were all done watching television on Christmas Eve, and Mom and Dad would have to be out of the house. The old TV would need to be unhooked from the antenna and VCR, and the new one put into its place, and all the evidence removed. Blondie and Sander estimated they would need at least twenty minutes. The optimal time to perform this substitution would be while everyone was at midnight candle-light service, at a church in Escondido, about half an hours’ drive away. As soon as they were out of the way, Blondie and Sander would set it all up and follow the rest of us in his car; hopefully not missing too much of the service. After all, this was one of the two official times per year when Dad actually set foot in church.

On some pretext, Blondie and Sander would lag behind, while all the rest of us; Mom and Dad and I, Pippy and her husband and the children, and JP and I would head down the hill to church service in several cars. And Blondie had sworn me to secrecy; my part in the plot was to make sure that Mom and Dad left the house on time. The new television was outside in the back of Sanders’ car, having been hidden at a neighbors’ house… oh, yeah, everyone was in on this, except for Mom and Dad, and possibly the pastor and church council.

At about twenty to eleven, Mom began reminding us all to change into something suitable for the midnight service. Dad turned off the television and closed the shutter doors, an event we all noted with covert interest, before Blondie and I went to the guest room to change. Blondie was going to wear her dress uniform… this always went over well with Mom’s friends at church, who were heavily into competition on the grandchild front. And her excuse for lagging behind would be an inability to locate one of her dress pumps, which she had carefully hidden under the bed.

So, everyone was ready but Blondie, with one shoe in her hand and making a pretense of frazzlement as she looked for the other, Dad was looking at his watch, Pip and her husband had rounded up the children, and were herding them towards their vehicle out in the driveway. In accordance with the agreed-upon plan, I put on a bit of a frazzled look myself (really, I am a better actress than most people give me credit for) and announced that Blondie can’t find her shoe, and that we should leave now. Sander chimed in on cue: he would stay and help her look, and catch up with us in his car.
“Don’t you have another pair of shoes you can wear?” Mom asks.
“No, I only brought the one set of dress pumps,” Blondie answered. No one even suggested that she borrow a pair; for a start, she wears a size nine and a half.
“It must be in the guest room,” Dad said determinedly, “Five minutes, we’ll take everything apart and look for it.” He and Mom looked like they were about to drop everything and look for the damned shoe. It meant a lot to them to have Blondie show up in uniform.
“Give us another minute, we didn’t look under the bed.” Blondie and I retreated to the bedroom and close the door.
“You’re got to get them out of there!” Blondie hissed at me.
“Give me a minute… OK, got it.” Of course… how devious. Devious, but effective.” I put on my coat, and picked up my purse. Down the hall, Mom was fussing around with her own coat and scarf.
“Did Blondie find her shoe?” she asked, and I whispered, conspiratorially
“It’s not lost, it’s just an excuse for the two of them to stay behind and set up a surprise present for Dad. Forget about the shoe; just get Dad out of here.”
I found Dad pacing up and down in the solarium
“Did you find it?” he asked, and I lowered my voice again,
“It’s just a ruse, so Blondie and Sander can stay behind and bring in Mom’s surprise Christmas present… just get her out of here, so they can get to work.”
Dad looked amused; he has always liked this sort of intrigue and with a minimum of fuss, they both headed for the car, with me trailing after and congratulating myself on my efficiency and guile.

And so it went according to plan… all except for Sander and Blondie getting to church after service had started, not knowing that they had locked the door into the sanctuary because of the late hour, and having to pound on the doors until the ushers let them in. The next morning, Mom unwrapped her first gift, and looked at the new TV remote with great bewilderment. Under all our expectant eyes Sander opened the doors to the TV cabinet with a great flourish… and Mom and Dad were both very, very surprised.

Merry Christmas… May all your surprises be the nice ones!!

Hohoho From Iraq

24. December 2006 · Comments Off on Hohoho From Iraq · Categories: General

Caught this one in a WaPo Editorial that Blackfive linked to. Couldn’t resist re-posting it.

(US Army Photo by Master Sgt Winston Churchill)
 

Don’t Forget, NORAD Tracks Santa

24. December 2006 · Comments Off on Don’t Forget, NORAD Tracks Santa · Categories: Ain't That America?, Air Force

NORAD Tracks Santa 2006

One of our best Christmas Eve’s ever was the eve we spent manning the phones for NORAD. Boyo was only 6 and was interviewed by the local news while he and a bunch of other kids were in the corner of the Command Center watching Rudolph etc. while Beautiful Wife and I manned the phones. We must have had 40 phones in there and we just couldn’t keep up with the calls. A small kitchen was filled with all sorts of food from sliced cold cuts to every imaginable Christmas Goody. The “uniform” was Christmas Casual and it’s pretty darn weird to see a Four-Star walking around with antlers on his head and a glowing nose on his face. Almost made you think he was human.

My absolute favorite calls went something like this:

“HQ NORAD Tracks Santa. This is Sgt Timmer, may I help you?”

“Hi Sergeant, this is a Mom in Milwaukee and I’ve got you on the speaker phone with my five children who are too excited to go to bed.”

Sounds of giggling kids, one little voice “Where’s Santa Claus?” then another, “Yeah, where is he?!”

An excited Sgt Timmer: “Milwaukee?! Ma’am, we’ve got Santa and his sleigh inbound to your position within the next half an hour! NORAD recommends that all good children in Milwaukee go to bed immediately in preparation for Santa’s arrival.”

Sounds of children shreaking, laughing, and bolting down a hall…doors slamming.

A giggling Mom, “Oh, God bless you Sergeant, Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas Ma’am, NORAD out.”

Pretty soon our house is going to fill with the smells of tomorrow’s feast. We’re not going anywhere this year and I didn’t invite anyone over this time. This year it’s just the three of us and I’m okay with that. Next year it will be a houseful of folks back home. Maybe not our house, but a house and you can be sure it WILL be full. Beautiful Wife’s got a HUGE family. Their weird, but we love them.

Merry Christmas and God bless us…everyone.

Spam, Spam, Spam Spam

24. December 2006 · Comments Off on Spam, Spam, Spam Spam · Categories: Domestic, General, Rant, Site News

When Timmer upgraded the site to a newer version of Word Press, he also installed the Akismet spam-killing option, which keeps a running tally of spam comments intercepted and deleted. This is actually kind of amusing, because at current rates of accumulation, I believe we will have deleted 100,000 individual spam comments by New Years’ Day… none of which have actually posted.

I scroll through the pages of spam occasionally— like when there is only a hundred or so—just to make sure that there are no legitimate comments stranded there, and a depressing chore that is, too. Multiple identical, ungrammatical or just plain gibberish comments, with a link to a website embedded somewhere out the wilds of the internet.
Lots of kinky sexual practices, porn that to judge from the title line tends toward the disgusting side of the scale, boatloads of dubious drugs, a scattering of payday loan sites, insurance, and of late, a couple of sites that push ready-made term papers. A depressing collection of topics, and even more depressing is that it was probably less trouble for the originators to send it all out than it is for me to delete it all.

100,000 of these, all dumped on one site… none of which were actually posted. I presume there must be blogs somewhere out there with an unwary or careless administrator, where such comments do get posted and stay up, and presumably serve as free advertising, but probably not many. I suppose the spam-scum sending out this huge quantity of comments must get one or two links somewhere, and that must make it all worth while. But it’s kind of depressing… it’s the marketing equivalent of carpeting an entire town with spray-paint graffiti over every imaginable surface; walls, windows, other billboards, fences and retaining walls, all advertising some nasty sort of pawn-pornshop on the bad side of town. Even if all of it is swiftly and magically scrubbed away, a dozen times a day, I still resent the effort of having to do it. I loath everyone involved: the spammers who repeat this pointless exercise several hundred times daily, and doing it very badly, their disgusting clients with their rip-off business plan, and their schlubby loser clients. I hope they all get disgusting diseases, that their servers crash, and their pets all bite them. Bah, humbug, spam-scum… I wish a Merry Christmas for everyone else in the world but you.

So, taking bets on when we will get the magic 100,000; when will we cross the magic threshold?

The Best Part…

23. December 2006 · Comments Off on The Best Part… · Categories: General

…about sitting for a couple hours in the Kansas City airport yesterday was that I had the opportunity to help the server in the tavern play Santa’s Elf.

Some soldiers came in, so I called Chris over, handed her some cash, and told her the soldiers’ drinks were free, from a grateful citizen. And I asked her to tell them “Merry Christmas!” for me.

It was supposed to be anonymous, but one of them saw her getting the $$ from me, and came over to thank me. I told him it was my privilege to thank him, instead.

There have been so many times I’ve *wanted* to buy a soldier a drink. I’m glad I had the pennies to spare, yesterday.

It really made my day.

Good To See

23. December 2006 · Comments Off on Good To See · Categories: General

I’ve been hard on the moderate Muslim community for not speaking out louder. So it was good to see this over at the Headmistress’ place from the Washington Post:

Local Muslim leaders lit candles yesterday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to commemorate Jewish suffering under the Nazis, in a ceremony held just days after Iran had a conference denying the genocide.

American Muslims “believe we have to learn the lessons of history and commit ourselves: Never again,” said Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, standing before the eternal flame flickering from a black marble base that holds dirt from Nazi concentration camps.

A heartfelt salute to the Muslims who broke ranks with the fuck-tards who try to re-write history for their own profit and power.  It’s things like this that give me some hope that we won’t be fighting forever.

What Do You Call 4 Days of Nancy?

23. December 2006 · Comments Off on What Do You Call 4 Days of Nancy? · Categories: Politics

Kim over at Wizbang calls Nancy Pelosi out for her four days of celebrating…Pelosi.

So what should we call this?

LalaPelosi?

NancyFest?

PelosiPalooza?

NancyFair?

Of course, your own are welcome in the comments.

The Difference Between Military Friends and Civilian Friends

22. December 2006 · Comments Off on The Difference Between Military Friends and Civilian Friends · Categories: General

I normally don’t pass on “Friend Spam” but I haven’t seen this one before and it just rings true. Add your own in the comments.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Get upset if you’re too busy to talk to them for a week. MILITARY FRIENDS: Are glad to see you after years, and will happily carry
on the same conversation you were having last time you met.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Never ask for food.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Are the reason you have no food.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Call your parents Mr. And Mrs.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Call your parents mom and dad.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Bail you out of jail and tell you what you did was wrong.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Would be sitting next to you saying, “Damn…we screwed
up…but man that was fun!”

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Have never seen you cry.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Cry with you.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Borrow your stuff for a few days then give it back.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Keep your stuff so long they forget it’s yours.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Know a few things about you.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Could write a book with direct quotes from you.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will leave you behind if that’s what the crowd is doing.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Will kick the whole crowdsââ,¬(tm) ass that left you
behind.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Would knock on your door.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Walk right in and say, “I’m home!”

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Are for a while.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Are for life.

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Have shared a few experiences…
MILITARY FRIENDS: Have shared a lifetime of experiences no Civilian could
ever dream of…

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will take your drink away when they think you’ve had
enough.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Will look at you stumbling all over the place and say,
“You better drink the rest of that, you know we don’t waste…that’s
alcohol abuse!!” Then carry you home safely and put you to bed…

CIVILIAN FRIENDS: Will talk crap to the person who talks crap about you.
MILITARY FRIENDS: Will knock them the hell out for using your name in vain.

Holiday Travel Travails

22. December 2006 · Comments Off on Holiday Travel Travails · Categories: General, Memoir, Pajama Game

When I was a child, our holiday travels were limited to the 80 mile drive to Grandma’s house. It wasn’t “over the river and through the woods,” though, just “out of the city and onto the not-quite-expressway and eventually onto the back-country roads through the Ohio coal-mining country.” Usually in the dark, usually with cranky kids in the back seat, and cranky parents in the front.

Our departure date and time hinged on various factors – what day Christmas fell on, what time we got out of school, what time Dad got home, etc. Mom had us working for the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, making hand-crafted gifts to give to all the relatives. She got her ideas from an old craft magazine, “Pack-o-Fun,” which was all about re-using stuff that would normally be tossed. And this was long before Earth Day was established.

I remember using gallon bleach jugs to make piggy banks for my cousins. Or felt to make a holder for a yardstick, so you could hang your yardstick on the wall and always know where to find it (side note: my cousins called it “Mr Yardstick” and he figured prominently in their punishments when they misbehaved). One year, we taped tomato-juice cans together, stuck an orange juice can inside one of them, and created “yule log planters” by covering the whole thing with plaster of paris and brown paint.

When it was time to head “down home,” we’d gather all the stuff into the trunk of the car, bundle ourselves into our good clothes and winter coats, and head out.

The only travails these travels held for me were the cramming of 4 kids into the back seat of a 1966 Chevy Impala 2-door coupe, and the fact that there was absolutely *nothing* to do at Grandma’s, especially if the weather kept us indoors.

More »

Caption This One (061222) Dah Winnah

22. December 2006 · Comments Off on Caption This One (061222) Dah Winnah · Categories: Fun and Games

(US Army Photo by Tech Szu-Moy Ruiz)
APV:  “This red blip only occurs once a year, a few days after the winter solstice. It almost looks like a flying reindeer, but that’s impossible.”

I’ve Been Elfing People All Day

21. December 2006 · Comments Off on I’ve Been Elfing People All Day · Categories: General

In penance.  I’ve Elfed Myself.

My iPod’s ill :(

20. December 2006 · Comments Off on My iPod’s ill :( · Categories: General

It started on the way to my hotel from the airport Monday (yes, I’m on a business trip this week – whoo hoo). It would think it was playing, but no sound. Or it would skip around on a song.

Then on Tuesday, it just flat-out stopped. I thought maybe the battery was flat, but after it was fully charged, still nothing.

It has the “folder with an exclamation point” icon on it. Windows won’t recognize it, iTunes tells me it needs to be restored, but then won’t let me do it (gives me an alert msg, but when I click “ok” it takes me back to my music library screen, and won’t let me hit the “restore” button – doesn’t stay on the screen long enough).

I spent my lunch hour today at the client site, reading the Apple support forum/knowledgebase. I’d rather NOT buy a new one, as the 60gb are no longer easily available, and cost as much as the 80gb. I’d get the 30gb, but I had 27gb on this one. So if I need to replace it, I’ll wind up with the 80gb video iPod (which sounds cool, actually, since I can get it in black), but I’d rather not spend those $$ right now.

But I’d also rather not spend 2+ hours on a plane without my iPod.

I’ve owned it for 13 months now, and didn’t buy a product replacement plan when I got it, so to my knowledge there’s no warranty on it anywhere.

Any ideas?

Question about this link…

20. December 2006 · Comments Off on Question about this link… · Categories: General

Can someone please tell me who sings this version of White Christmas?

I want to own it, but have no idea who sings it.

Bad, Bad Toys

20. December 2006 · Comments Off on Bad, Bad Toys · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, Fun and Games, General, Pajama Game

Ran across this little account of the Very Worst Toys Ever, and began to chortle…. Not so much at the toys themselves, although JP, and Pippy and I were actually given at least one of the deadly worst and a couple of the others mentioned in the comments.

We, of course, emerged un-maimed, although Dad probably regrets to this day that he didn’t give either one of us the atomic energy lab. Probably couldn’t afford it, as he was only a poor graduate student on the GI bill, round and about then. We did have loving and generous grandparents, though; how we didn’t ever get BB rifles like all the other neighborhood kids is a mystery. Mom probably put her foot down about that, believing that yes, you could put out an eye with them. Well, so could you with a “wrist rocket”. We had a pair of them, a sort of bent-metal sling-shot with a bottom end that braced against your wrist so that you could sling a bit of gravel at practically ballistic speed. But they weren’t toys- we had them to chase the blue jays away from the house where they tormented the cats and dogs unmercifully. As far as I know, Dad was the only one of us who ever actually hit a blue-jay with a wrist-rocket impelled missile. Square in the butt, actually. It let out an enormous squawk and vacated the premises henceforth and forthwith and at a good speed.

We did have a variant of the creepy-crawler toy, with the heater that heated up a pair of metal moulds that (IIRC) made little GI Joe figures and their various little accoutrements. Just open the little bottles of black and brown and OD green rubber compound goop, pour into the molds, and bake until done. It did heat up quite hot, and the baking rubber smelt pretty vile. Still, no dangerous adventures to report, no animals ever ingested the little marble-super-balls… but the “clackers” rather lost their charm after some painful bruises. Picture a pair of billiard-sized balls, on either end of a length of cord, with a finger-hold in the middle. The object was to get them going, “clacking” them against each other while hanging from your hand, and then get them going so fast that they would rebound and “clack” against each other above your hand. Eh… it was the novelty toy in about 1966… for as long as it took for kids to figure out that the damned things hurt.

Other bad, bad toys? Definitely the water-rocket. I clearly remember watching Dad and JP launch them from the back yard of the White Cottage, which would put it squarely in the early 60ies, the Golden Age of Really, Really Dangerous Toys. It was bulbous blue plastic rocket; there may have been a pair of them. They flew on an interesting combination of (I think!) baking soda, vinegar, water from a garden hose screwed into the launcher mechanism, and some kind of pressure pump-thingus. It was a wet and messy business, preparing for flight, but they zoomed up to a thrilling height from the ground when released from the launcher with considerable force.

Who needed lawn darts to maim each other with, when you had rocket power? Although to be fair, I don’t think we had nearly as much thrilling fun with them, as we did when Dad was overseeing the launching. And Dad brought us enough in the way of dangerous toys; it was his notion to snake-proof us at an early age, by having us handle the not-so-dangerous sorts. And Dad was the one who gave us an enormous magnifying glass and showed us how to focus the suns’ rays with it, so that we could set stuff on fire. And he brought home dry ice from the lab; heaps of fun, throwing a great lump of it into the baby’s wading pool, and enjoying the bubbling, and the billows of white vapor. That was nearly as much good clean fun as the insulated flask of liquid hydrogen, and dipping leaves and rose petals into it for a moment… then dropping them on the tile kitchen counter where they would shatter like glass.

Grannie Jessie was notoriously blasé about toy hazards, but even Grannie Dodie, who wasn’t, still let us play with Dad’s classic old Erector set, which included enough small nuts and screws to provide a choking hazard to an entire elementary school… and the crown jewel, a small electric motor. Said motor was a good three or four decades old when we played with it, and even to my eyes looked a little… I don’t know… frayed? Insulation cracked… connections not quite up to par? We never managed to spindle, shock, or mutilate with it, so perhaps it wasn’t quite so child-unsafe as I remember it. Oh, yeah dangerous toys – bicycles without helmets, large horses, and go-carts on steep hillside trails, rope swings in tall trees.
Oddly enough, we survived. Even without the toy nuclear lab. Add your own accounts of Bad, Bad Toys. Especially if they were received as Christmas presents.

(Don’t drool, people… Dad’s old Erector set survived our childhood, still in the original case, but it was in their garage when the house burned to the ground, four years ago.)

It’s a Blizzard

20. December 2006 · Comments Off on It’s a Blizzard · Categories: General

…and right now I can JUST see across the street. One of those days where you wondered why you went to work in the first place because we knew this was blowing in and everyone was just waiting to see how bad it was going to have to get before leadership sent us home. I would say they did okay. You could still see almost a block when we left.

I’m thinkin’ we’re not workin’ tomorrow either. Nine to eighteen inches of snow today and tonight propelled by up to 45 MPH winds. I think I’m going to be very happy I bought this thing for our little bit of sidewalk and driveway.

Update: Due to sideways snow, our windows are completely covered on ALL sides of the house. We haven’t got a lot of snow, there are still bare spots on the lawn, but the drifts are climbing to interesting heights.

You Know it’s Time to Retire When (061219)

19. December 2006 · Comments Off on You Know it’s Time to Retire When (061219) · Categories: Air Force, Rant

The TSgt (E6) you’re talking to not only doesn’t know the prescribing directive for the form the two of you are discussing, a form that her office fills out and works with every day, but seems offended that you would even think that she should. Got downright pissy with me. Hey, I gave her the benefit of the doubt, I told her I didn’t think it was her fault but a severe lack of training. That didn’t seem to make her feel better.

When I was coming up, I was expected to know the AFRs, AFMs, AFPs and AFIs for the paperwork that I was completing every day. Is that unheard of these days?

The 40 Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2006

18. December 2006 · Comments Off on The 40 Most Obnoxious Quotes of 2006 · Categories: Domestic, Politics, Rant

By John Hawkins at Right Wing News.

Heinlein was right, when simple civility begins to break down, we’re in for a long dark age.  I’m going to make sure Boyo can fight well and shoot straight before he leaves my house.

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