(From the final chapter of Book 1 of “Adelsverein- The Gathering; how they celebrated the Fourth on the Texas frontier in the mid 1850s)

Letter from Christian Friedrich Steinmetz, of Fredericksburg, Texas to Simon Frankenthaler, goldsmith of the city of Ulm, written in the first week of July, 1853:

…This week we celebrated the 4th of July in a grand style. Son Hansi and his family and their neighbors from Live Oak Mill joined together and paraded into town on horseback and in many wagons, with a beautifully embroidered banner at their head. They were joined as they approached Fredericksburg by others from the outlaying district around, and rode in proper order to the Market Square, where they were greeted by the City Club members, with music and many cheers. A little later, the people from the northern settlements arrived, carrying a beautiful Texas flag! This had a large five-pointed star with the words “Club of the Backwoodsmen” embroidered all around. The flag bearer was dressed in a blue denim shirt and trousers, which all agreed was an excellent representation of a true backwoodsman, although Son Carl looked very amused. A welcoming speech was given and then the procession moved through our city. First the club presidents, then the musicians on a long wagon, then the flag-bearer with the flag of the Live Oak club leading their member, then the City Club flag and their members and the backwoodsmen. Everyone was mounted on horseback— or in wagons; a huge parade which made much dust—, before we proceeded to an open meadow some few miles away. Many other people had assembled there, for it had all been planned beforehand. We formed a great square, while the Declaration of Independence was read in English first, and then in German. We set up tents, more than thirty of them, where families served refreshments to their friends. The shooting club held a target-shooting match and there was an orchestra for the young people to dance. At odd times during the day there were more shooting matches, foot-races and jumping matches. The winners had to pay for wine, which was enjoyed very much by all. In the afternoon there were more speeches, and after that a grand polonaise. This happy revelry lasted until nearly sunrise the next morning, when we all drank hot coffee. It was a most congenial gathering; you may be sure, a meet and proper celebration of the anniversary of our new country. In the main and in spite of the tragedies that attended my journey here, I am glad and grateful to have been afforded the chance to see my children and grandchildren build a free and prosperous future.

Your old friend,
C.F. Steinmetz

This and the other books of the Adelsverein Trilogy will be available in December, 2008 - although I am taking pre-orders here, for autographed copies of all three books, to be delivered just before the official release date

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

You know you live in a small town when the lead item on ‘Channel 5 News at 10‘ is a live broadcast from the Fourth of July [1] fireworks show.

“And the fireworks keep getting bigger and better as the show goes on!  Now back to you, Jim.”

Why yes, yes they do.  In other news, the longer you stand in the rain, the wetter you get. [3]

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

[1] Only in the big city of Appleton would they do the Fourth of July show on the 3rd.  On a Thursday.  In the smaller [2] cities of Menasha and Neenah we’re doing our show on the 4th, as God and George Washington intended.

[3] On the other hand, it sure beats hearing about a triple-murder drive-by shooting, or the shenanigans of our Elected Officials.

Owing to a particular circumstance – that of Blondie’s boss having a pair of sons who were very into 4-H activities this past year, both of whom raised prize-winning pigs – our freezer is filled with the most delectable assortment of pork products. It seems that part of the whole scheme for students of the agricultural arts in raising such animals … is to partake of the resulting bounty. (Er… they are being raised to provide that sort of thing; ham, chops, bacon, the rest. The kids who do this are perfectly clear on the concept, as was my Granny Jessie, raised on a Pennsylvania farm at the beginning of the last century. Charlotte’s Web aside, farm pigs weren’t intended to be pets, as clever and endearing as they tend to be.)

Anyway, Blondie’s bosses’ family freezer quite overflowed with their share of two pigs, so a portion has been passed on to us, and oh, my! Chops, sausage, thick-cut cured bacon, ham slices, back ribs and a roast which we have already cooked in the slow cooker with two cans of Rotel tomatoes and green chilis for burritos. All of it delectable, succulent, flavorful… the sausage has very little fat in it and the ham? The ham is perfectly divine, unlike anything else I’ve ever eaten, although Honey-Baked does come close in hammy perfection. Believe me, all this will be portioned out and used in recipes which will show it all off to best effect. Should the house catch fire, mine and Blondie’s first thoughts will be for rescuing the pets, my computer, the Yoshida prints… and the contents of the freezer.

This is what the farm-raised stuff must have tasted like, and what the expensive, organic specialty ordered meats must be like, the stuff that I cannot afford, at least until “Adelsverein” and “Truckee’s Trail” are way, way farther up in the Amazon sales ranking than they are at present. In the early 19th century, pork was the meat of American choice, rather than beef – and now I know why. Food of the gods, people, food of the gods!

So…when you’re working for an award winning customer service company, what’s one thing you don’t think you should do?  Well, you absolutely should not allow yourself to get frustrated and simply say, “I’m done.” and hang up on a customer.

Knew I blew it when I did it.  Copped to it right away.  Didn’t matter.  I’m now part of the unemployed.

I’m terrified but also relieved.  Which tells me a lot about how I really felt about the whole thing.  I’m good with people most of the time.  But I’m seriously not cut out  to be one of those people who can be “nice” 40 hours a week.  I tried.  Was even getting better at it.  Couldn’t keep it up.

For those of you who are the kind of folks who do the, “God doesn’t close one door without opening another.” thing.  I’m right there with you.  I know things are going to be okay, I’d just like a peek at the God’s plan every now and then.

And I seriously wish my sub-conscious would let my conscious head know when I’m done working someplace.  I would have been nice to have a new job lined up BEFORE I messed this one up.

He (Patton) rammed a submachine gun into the belly of a soldier collapsed from exhaustion on a North African beach, waking him suddenly to his explanation.

I know you’re tired. We’re all tired. That makes no difference. The next beach you land on will be defended by Germans. I don’t want one of them coming up behind you and hitting you over the head with a sockful of shit.

That “sockful of shit” brought reality home more certainly than any other weapon he could have mentioned.

From ‘The American Tradition‘ by John Greenway

From the always interesting Military Motivators.

District of Columbia v. Heller (pdf) is providing moments of hilarity: Dumbass journalist on why rifles are good and handguns bad.

A handgun can be concealed easily, and it can be tossed down a sewer drain without attracting much notice. The barrel can be used to break a snitch’s jaw. (There’s no such thing as “rifle whipping.”)

A butt stroke is part of bayonet drill.

1. You run up to the bad guy while screaming your ass off (presumably so the bad guy will think you are nuts) and carrying your rifle with, “fixed bayonet,” in front of you at a forty-five degree angle (the “on guard” position).

2. When you reach the bad guy, you swing your right foot towards him while simultaneously thrusting the butt of the rifle upward into the bottom of his chin (the goal being to knock his head off).

3. With the rifle now shoulder high (and if the bad guy is still standing), you cross your left leg in front of your right leg while thrusting the butt of the rifle horizontally and forward aiming at the bad guy’s face (this should definitely knock the bad guy down).

4. You now bring your right forward while slashing the bad guy with the bayonet aiming to cut a line from the right side of his throat to his left groin (by now, the bad guy had better be on his back).

5. You now bring your left leg forward while simultaneously thrusting the bayonet into the bad guy’s chest.

It’s a heckuva cardio workout.  I wonder if the folks at my gym would consider a class on Saturday involving bayonet dummies and M16s . . .

Dumbass then publishes a correction revealing he’s tone deaf with respect to his own sense of humor.

Update, 4 p.m. EDT: At the request of several readers, I should clarify that while there’s no such term as “rifle-whipping,” it’s fairly common to use rifle butts as a club. The term of art is the misleadingly pornographic phrase “butt stroking,” the butt in this instance referring to the flat end of a rifle.  It would be far preferable to call this activity “rifle-whipping,” but that term has virtually no currency.

Because ‘whip‘ has absolutely no sexual overtones whatsoever.  Nope, and you’re a perv if you think so.

Calling it ‘art’ is lame: smashing the butt end of a seven pound rifle into a fellow’s jaw and face is a violent act; the goal is to kill the guy.  Done right he’s on the ground with a fucking knife in his gut.  Done slightly wrong he’s got the knife stuck in his ribs. Then the attacker has to wiggle it around to get it out, which makes things really gross.  By this time the guy on the ground is also doing a lot of screaming and bleeding and so forth, which would add a really disturbing tone to the proceedings.

My instructor said it would be easier at that point to discharge a round in his chest.  Which would, yes, free the rifle.  It would also make an incredible mess.

Yes, we all wondered why, if we had a round in the chamber, we were screwing around with a bayonet.  I don’t recall that he had a good answer for that.

Where were we?  Oh yes - Energy Dome!

Also - Whip It!

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Via.

Well, strictly speaking, you will still have to wait for it a couple of months longer – but the epic “Adelsverein Trilogy” will be available on December 10, 2008. All three volumes, covering nearly fifty years of eventful Texas history, starting with a bang at the massacre of American and Texian volunteers at the Presidio la Bahia at Goliad in 1836.

I mean, how suspenseful and exciting is that – something that starts with a hero’s hairsbreadth escape from a mass execution?

The excitement doesn’t stop – there’s a perilous journey to a new world, Comanche Indians at peace and at war, Texas Rangers (Republic of Texas edition), brave men and strong women, true love, tragedy, betrayal, adventure in the wilderness, stolen children, dire revenge, cattle rustling and cattle drives, a couple of wars… and just about every bit of it is based on things that really happened. Oh, and cows. Lots of cows.

I am taking pre-orders, here through my Celia Hayes website (where there are sample chapters! And the cover for Volume 1 – isn’t it gorgeous!) , for anyone who wants to put their dibs on an set of all three autographed volumes, to be put in the mail and delivered to you just before the release date, well in time for Christmas! I know this is a good few months out – but on the other hand, I am offering a discount for all three volumes bought together at once - I ask you, does J.K. Rowling offer a deal like this?

(edited per M. Simon’s suggestion!)

No kidding, yesterday, at a local Jack-In-The-Box?  The kid at the window actually WIPED OFF THE SIDES OF MY SODA BEFORE he handed it to me!!!!!

How cool is that?

And how sad is it that I’m so delightfully surprised about that?

About the Irish no vote to the Lisbon Treaty …

“The fight for Europe is not over, Europe has powerful enemies with deep pockets, as we have seen during the Irish referendum. They come not from Europe, but from the other side of the Atlantic.”

“The role of the American neo-conservatives in the Irish referendum was very important,” he went on, to applause.

That pesky ‘one man, one vote’ thing is really chaffing Monsieur Jouyet, it seems.

Via.
Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

There are people who come into our lives when we least expect them. People who have no business being there, actually, but thanks to a serendipitous moment in time, they are. A chance encounter when walking across a college campus over 25 years ago led to my friendship with one of the most wonderful women I have ever known.

Marge Robertson taught Social Work at my University. I was a social work major, so you’d think we’d meet. But the classes I took weren’t the ones she was teaching, and so she was never my instructor. But our paths crossed outside the library one day, and she stopped and listened to whatever was on my heart at that time.

She became a sort of mentor for me. I would go to her with my confusions about life and college and whatever, and she would listen, calmly and caringly, and when I left, nothing seemed as insurmountable as when I had arrived.

Life took me far away from my college town, but I always knew she was there, in the house where she and her husband raised their children. I tried to visit her on the times I went back to college town. It didn’t always work out, but those visits merged with our occasional phone calls and annual christmas/hannukah letters to help us keep in touch with each other’s lives.

I had the opportunity about 10 years ago, to tell Marge, face to face, exactly how much her friendship and encouragement had helped me over the years. She believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, and she gave me a role model of how to be a human being, alive and caring in a world that often seems bent on destroying those who care.

That wasn’t our last visit, thank goodness. It’s just one that swam to the surface of my consciousness last Saturday, when I read the email I had hoped to never receive. I’ll have no more visits with Marge.

Marjorie Serby Robertson, 77 of Valparaiso, passed away Tuesday June 17, 2008 at the VNA Hospice Center. She was born November 15, 1930 in Chicago, the daughter of Abraham and Geraldine (Herzog) Serby. Marjorie was a Psychiatric Social Worker and Professor of Social Work at Valparaiso University and a member of Temples Beth El and Israel. Her other involvements included League of Women Voters, Planned Parenthood, Adult Learning Center board of directors, Whispering Pines board of directors, Porter County Mental Health Association, Chemical People Task Force, Juvenile Justice Advisory Board, and president of Moraine House board of directors. She was instrumental in the establishment of the school social worker program in Porter County and of the state-wide association of Juvenile Justice Task Forces.

Her funeral was today, 700 miles north of me. I couldn’t take a moment of silence at the appointed time, because I was in the middle of a conference call. But as soon as the call ended, I took time to reflect on my friend, and to thank God for our friendship.

I am a better person because she was in my life. The world is a better place because she lived. And I will miss her, in ways that I have not yet begun to realize. She was a constant in my life, always available, always caring. She will still be a constant, but it will be in my heart. But that’s ok - it’s where she’s always been, for as long as I’ve known her.

Shalom, Marge. Thank you for sharing yourself with the world around you, and with me.

It might be a bit overused as an axiom, that civil wars are the bloodiest… or maybe it just seems that way because it seems to be so terribly personal. This is not some outsider, some foreigner, some alien stranger invading our neighborhood, destroying our towns and slaughtering… but our own countrymen, who speak the same language and usually share a culture and background, if not the same blood.

Just so was our own Civil War. To read of the wanton brutality and the wholesale slaughter and destruction, and the enthusiasm and energy which went into the dismemberment of our own country, and to know that many of those who led the fight had been comrades and allies not fifteen years before is to realize what a monumental tragedy it was. No wonder Abraham Lincoln looks about twenty years older, comparing photographs of him taken in 1861 and 1865. He was a melancholy and sensitive man; one wonders how the weight of the responsibility and the events of those years in office did not crush him utterly. The war over which he was able to exercise control was ghastly enough – the war on the fringes, fought by partisans in Kansas and Missouri achieved abysmal depths of senseless brutality.

Kansas had been a particularly hot center of strife even before Southern artillery opened fire on Ft. Sumter. In an attempt to kick the can of ‘free state-slave’ state a little farther down the road, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 left the decision of whether those to states be enrolled as free or slave to those who settled there. And from that moment on, each side of the free-soil/slave-state debate enthusiastically aided and abetted the settling of Kansas with settlers who were adherents of one side or the other. The ‘Border Ruffians’, from slave-permitting Missouri, and the free-soil ‘Jayhawkers’ were already at each others’ throats from 1855 on. The first sack of Lawrence, the caning on the floor of the senate by Preston Brooks of South Carolina of Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, John Brown’s raid on Pottawatomie… the Civil War began to simmer in Kansas. Back east, they needed a while to get up to full speed, when it began to boil in earnest. In Kansas, partisan bands were all ready to ride – and to plunder and exterminate.

The most brutally effective of the pro-Confederate bands in Kansas was led by an Ohio-born former schoolteacher and teamster named William Clark Quantrill. He seems to have had an unsavory reputation even before the war, being associated with a number of unexplained murders and thefts in the Utah territory while working briefly there as a teamster and free-lance gambler. The eventual co-leader of his band, William “Bloody Bill” Anderson had a similar pre-war reputation for horse thievery and murder, and a penchant for scalping his victims. He was reputed to wear a necklace of Yankee scalps into action – and was most probably a psychopath. By 1862, Quantrill and his men were considered outlaws by the Union authorities in Kansas… and Confederate commanders in Texas didn’t have all that much higher an opinion, especially after the Sack of Lawrence. Say what you would about Texas Confederates like General Ben McCullough; he may have been a tough old Texas fighter – of Indians, Mexicans, bandits and whoever else was handy – but he was still a gentleman. Plundering a civilian town, burning it to the ground and executing civilian men and boys wholesale was not Ben McCullough’s cup of tea. Neither was executing soldiers who had surrendered, as Quantrill’s men did after a fight with Union solders at Baxter Springs - but here was Quantrill and his men, looking for a place to rest and recoup, to purchase horses and generally get a break after a hard year of partisan war-fighting in Kansas. They had made Kansas too hot to hold them, and McCullough was perennially short of men to guard the far Texas frontier against reoccurring Indian raids and to round up draft evaders and deserters. To the general commanding the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy forces, Quantrill’s appearance was a gift and McCullough was ordered to make use of him to the fullest.

Although Quantrill and Anderson’s men mostly confined their Texas activities to Grayson and Fannin Counties, they left some bloody fingerprints in the Hill Country, too. Elements of their group were participants in the ‘hangerbande’ or the ‘hanging-band’ - masked vigilantes who terrorized Gillespie and Kendall Counties by summarily lynching known and suspected pro-Unionists. It was often said bitterly after the war that the hangerbande killed more settlers there than the Indians ever did. Early in the spring of 1864, the hanging-band visited the Grape Creek settlement, a loose community of farms a few miles east of Fredericksburg. A man named Peter Burg, the owner of a fine herd of horses, was shot in the back and his horses confiscated. Three other men; William Feller, John Blank and Henry Kirchner were simply taken from their houses, taken as they sat with their families at the supper table. Kirchner’s house was searched and nearly $200 dollars in silver coin taken by Quantrill’s horse-buyer. It was rumored that Blank had recently received a letter from someone in Mexico. Feller lived on a tract of land adjoining Kirchners and both had been involved in a land dispute with pro-Confederate sympathizers. These and other atrocities outraged the Hill Country German settlers – more than that, similar depredations and robberies outraged Ben McCullough and other Texas military commanders. Still, they were fighting on the Confederate side; perhaps they could go and do so where there weren’t any civilians to plunder and murder? McCullough tried to send them to Corpus Christi, to stiffen the coastal defense. No luck with that, although McCullough did his best to be rid of these uncomfortable allies.

Quantrill and Anderson had a falling out, about the time of the Grape Creek murders, and when Anderson indicated to McCullough that he would testify against Quantrill as regards certain heinous crimes, the old Indian fighter hardly wasted time. He called for Quantrill to come to his HQ for a meeting, asked him to put his weapons on the table and informed him that he was under arrest. But as soon as McCullough’s back was turned, Quantrill grabbed his weapons, shouted to his friends that they were all liable to be under arrest and departed at speed and in a cloud of dust, heading north and back to Kansas. One imagines that Ben McCullough was glad to be rid of them one way or another. Certainly they were not pursued with much enthusiasm, although their savage reputation may have had quite a lot to do with that.

Quantrill came to a sticky end, shortly afterwards – in Kentucky, having added Missouri to the list of places which he had made too hot to hold him. Elements of his wartime band lingered on, in the form of the James gang. But they in turn came to a sticky end in Northfield, Minnesota – the last little drop of blood from Bleeding Kansas.

(from another of those e-mails going the rounds - this one courtesy of the FEN Yahoo Group)

Regarding Flooding in the Midwest with comparison to New Orleans.

Where are all of the Hollywood celebrities holding telethons asking for help in restoring Iowa and helping the folks affected by the floods?

Where is all the media asking the tough questions about why the federal government hasn’t solved the problem? Asking where the FEMA trucks (and trailers) are?

Why isn’t the Federal Government relocating Iowa people to free hotels in Chicago, houston, Dallas etc.?

When will Spike Lee say that the Federal Government blew up the levees that failed in Des Moines?

Where are Sean Penn and the Dixie Chicks?

Where are all the looters stealing high-end tennis shoes and big screen television sets?

When will we hear Governor Chet Culver say that he wants to rebuild a “vanilla” Iowa, because that’s the way God wants it?

Where is the hysterical 24/7 media coverage complete with reports of cannibalism?

Where are the people declaring that George Bush hates white, rural people?

How come in 2 weeks, you will never hear about the Iowa flooding ever again?

Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker, and Tits.

I apologize for having offended any of you, but I just found out that George Carlin died tonight and I know of no better way to honor the man than to rattle off the words that got him arrested on more than one occasion…which quite frankly, simply proved his point.

There was not a single person in my group of high school friends who couldn’t recite those words from memory.  Many of us had most of the routine down pat.  (For obvious reasons YouTube doesn’t have the original version, the first link is to an updated version from a cable performance.)

He played with words like Tiger plays golf.  Naturally.

At some point in the 90s I watched one of his HBO specials and he just sounded like a bitter old man, but even then, he had some routines that would catch me off-guard and get me laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe.  I’m not sure if I outgrew him or he just never grew up.  I’m sure he couldn’t care less.

So rest in peace you cocksucking motherfucker.  I hope for your sake that you were wrong about God being just an imaginary friend…and that He has the sense of humor that He gave you…otherwise…well…you’re fucked.

So … we’ve got this guy.

He’s a Colonel in the Air Force. He’s the CO of an Air Force base. More than 2,000 hours in the F-15E and F-111D. He’s been The Man at a fighter squadron. Spent a year at the Naval War College. Been on a staff position for Southern Watch, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. And so on.

No one can know the mind of another. However, this is the biography of a man who has his stuff wired together. He’s about the last guy you’d expect to call - on a Sunday, no less - a guy who bosses a middlin’ important peace organization.

And if he’d call, you’d hardly expect him to launch into a Strangelovian Fit.

I tried explaining to him that I have a lifetime of experience listening to people in the military say that we should ramp up Pentagon spending. He was not in a mood to listen.

Instead the Colonel’s voice escalated, similar to his desire to see the military budget take ascendancy over social progress in America. “I can see that you are not one who should be involved in deciding on our nation’s priorities,” he yelled at me. Then he hung up.

“Damn peacenik Hippies ….”

Sounds like a bunch of horse apples to me. It’s so pat, so perfect, so exactly what a stereotypical war fighter is in all those cheesy Hollywood films. I suspect …

• Colonel Suminsby has lost his mind - he’s probably mumbling about bodily essences in his office.
• Bruce is making shit up.
• Bruce has been prank called and doesn’t realize it.

That’s just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

Like Owen, I didn’t know a snowmobile could do that.

A 31-year-old Grafton man is angry about receiving $1,000 in fines for using his snowmobile like a Jet-Ski, speeding across the flooded Milwaukee River.

No video? Darn it.

A police incident report says Jay A. Seaver acknowledged speeding, saying he had to go about 75 mph to get across the river without sinking.

So he was really moving along.  I looked at Flickr and lo and behold .. pictures!

The combination of ’snow mobile’ ‘open water’ and ‘crash helmet’ is a big hunk of awesome.

Via.

Cross posted to Space For Commerce.

I don’t follow sports, so I hadn’t heard about this until a friend posted about it today on a message board.

Becky Hammon, a WNBA player for the San Antonio Silver Stars, has dreamed all her life of playing basketball in the Olympics. This year, that dream might come true. When the WNBA goes on their summer hiatus, she’ll be trying out for an Olympic spot on a national team, along with 2 other WNBA players.

Thing is, if she’s selected, she won’t be playing playing for the USA. She’ll be playing on the Russian team. Last year, when the USA Team released their list of prospects, Becky’s name wasn’t on it.

She subsequently signed a lucrative contract with club team CSKA Moscow.

Hammon has no ancestral ties to Russia, and under Russian league rules, she was eligible for a Russian passport and to become a naturalized citizen. She received her passport in March. As part of her CSKA contract, her agent Mike Cound says, she agreed to participate in the training camp for Russia’s Olympic team.

According to FIBA rules, “A national team participating in an international competition of FIBA may have only one player who has acquired the legal nationality of that country by naturalization or by any other means.” Hammon says that, barring injury, she has the lone spot all but wrapped up.

Meanwhile, J.R. Holden, a former Bucknell point guard who plays for CSKA Moscow, is expected to play for Russia’s Olympic men’s team.

Hammon has been called unpatriotic by Anne Donovan, who coaches the US team. The article I read didn’t say whether anyone has called J.R. Holden, Deanna Nolan (WNBA - Detroit) and Kelly Miller (WNBA - Phoenix) unpatriotic. If Becky’s unpatriotic, doesn’t it follow that the other 3 are, as well?

One of the folks on the message board said that Hammon was being selfish, that she should just understand that you don’t always get everything you want in life, and suck it up.

I’m curious as to what y’all think. Personally, I wouldn’t give up my citizenship for anything. But I’m ignorant about law - if Hammon is a naturalized Russian citizen, does that mean she surrendered her US citizenship?

Is she a selfish, unpatriotic person who puts her own desires above everything else, or is she a dedicated athlete relentlessly pursuing a childhood dream? Would there be such a fuss if she were playing for any country other than Russia?

The practice of medicine in these United (and for the period 1861-1865, somewhat disunited) States was for most of the 19th century a pretty hit or miss proposition, both in practice and by training. That many sensible people possessed pretty extensive kits of medicines – the modern equivalents of which are administered as prescriptions or under the care of a licensed medical professional – might tend to indicate that the qualifications required to hang out a shingle and practice medicine were so sketchy as to be well within the grasp of any intelligent and well-read amateur, and that many a citizen was of the opinion that they couldn’t possibly do any worse with a D-I-Y approach. Such was the truly dreadful state of affairs generally when it came to medicine in most places and in all but the last quarter of the 19th century - they may have been better off having a go on their own at that.

Most doctors trained as apprentices to a doctor with a current practice. There were some formal schools of medicine in the United States, but their output did not exactly dazzle with brilliance. Scientific method – eh, what was that? Germ theory? A closed book. Anesthesia – a mystery. Successful surgeons possessed two basic skill sets at this time; speed and a couple of strong assistants to hold the patient down, until he was done cutting and stitching. Most of the truly skilled doctors and surgeons had their training somewhere else – like Europe.

But not in San Antonio, from 1850 on – for there was a doctor-surgeon in practice there, who ventured upon such daring medical remedies as to make him a legend. His patients traveled sometimes hundreds of miles to take advantage of his skill – Doctor Ferdinand Ludwig von Herff, soon to drop the aristocratic ‘von’ from his name, and to practice his considerable medical talents on behalf of anyone in need. For besides being supremely well-trained for the time, and exquisitely skilled – Doctor Herff was an idealist, one of those rare sorts who are prepared to live their lives in accordance with the principals they publicly espouse. He was a relation of John Muesebach’s, and came to Texas in 1847 as part of a circle of young idealists called the “Forty”, who had a plan to establish a utopian commune along the ideas espoused by social critics of the time. (Yes, there were all sorts of interesting and experimental communes sprouting like mushrooms all during the early 19th century, very few of which lasted longer than the 1960s variety)

Like the 1960s variety, most of Ferdinand Herff’s companions in the “Forty” were students of universities at Giessen or Heidelberg, or the industrial school at Darmstadt. Hermann Spiess had already toured through the United States and Texas before returing to Germany with all kinds of ambitious plans. Originally the plan was set up their community in Wisconsin, but when one Count Castell, who was an original member of the Mainzer Adelsverein heard of their intentions, he offered them funding and support if they would establish it Verein land-grant in Texas instead. The offer was accepted and in mid-summer of 1847 the “Forty” arrived in Texas, led by Herff, Spiess and Gustav Schleicher, a trained engineer who would eventually oversee building of the rail system throughout Texas. They had brought along a huge train of baggage, supplies and equipment, including seeds and grapevines, mill machinery, a small cannon, many dogs, one woman - a cook/housekeeper named Julie Herf (no relation), Doctor Herff’s complete collection of surgical impedimenta, and a good few barrels of whiskey. By late fall, they had moved all this (and a herd of cattle) to their town-site, on the north bank of the Llano River near present-day Castell. They set up tents, built a long building to use as a sort of barracks and common-room, planted crops and named their little town Bettina, after a leading star-intellectual of the day… and settled in to live their dream of communal living close to the land; think of it as Ferdinand and Hermann’s Excellent Frontier Adventure.
(more…)

I got this HILARIOUS e-mail from a friend, it was too good and too funny to pass up putting it here:

Dear Diary:
June 10th:
Just moved to Texas ! Now this is a state that knows how to live!! Beautiful sunny days and warm balmy evenings. What a place! It is beautiful. I’ve finally found my home. I love it here.

June 14th:
Really heating up. Got to 100 today. Not a problem. Live in an air-conditioned home, drive an air-conditioned car. What a pleasure to see the sun everyday like this. I’m turning into a sun worshipper.

June 30th:
Had the backyard landscaped with western plants today. Lots of cactus and rocks. What a breeze to maintain. No more mowing the lawn for me. Another scorcher today, but I love it here.

July 10th:
The temperature hasn’t been below 100 all week. How do people get used to this kind of heat? At least, it’s kind of windy though. But getting used to the heat is taking longer than I expected.

July 15th:
Fell asleep by the community pool. (Got 3rd degree burns over 60% of my body). Missed 3 days of work. What a dumb thing to do. I learned my lesson though. Got to respect the ol’ sun in a climate like this.

July 20th:
I missed Lomita (my cat) sneaking into the car when I left this morning. By the time I got to the hot car at noon, Lomita had died and swollen up to the size of a shopping bag, then popped like a water balloon. The car now smells like Kibbles and $hits. I learned my lesson though. No more pets in this heat. Good ol’ Mr. Sun strikes again.

July 25th:
The wind sucks. It feels like a giant freaking blow dryer!! And it’s hot as hell. The home air-conditioner is on the fritz and the AC repairman charged $200 just to drive by and tell me he needed to order parts.

July 30th:
Been sleeping outside on the patio for 3 nights now. $225,000 house and I can’t even go inside. Lomita is the lucky one. Why did I ever come here?

Aug. 4th:
It’s 115 degrees. Finally got the air-conditioner fixed today. It cost $500 and gets the temperature down to 85. I hate this stupid state.

Aug. 8th:
If another wise a$$ cracks, ‘Hot enough for you today?’ I’m going to strangle him… D@mn heat. By the time I get to work, the radiator is boiling over, my clothes are soaking wet, and I smell like baked cat!!

Aug. 9th:
Tried to run some errands after work. Wore shorts, and when I sat on the seats in the car, I thought my a$$ was on fire. My skin melted to the seat. I lost 2 layers of flesh and all the hair on the back of my legs and a$$ . . . Now my car smells like burnt hair, fried a$$, and baked cat.

Aug 10th:
The weather report might as well be a d@mn recording. Hot and sunny…Hot and sunny…Hot and sunny…It’s been too hot to do $hit for 2 d@mn months and the weatherman says it might really warm up next week. Doesn’t it ever rain in this d@mn state? Water rationing will be next, so my $1700 worth of cactus will just dry up and blow over. Even the cactus can’t live in this d@mn heat.

Aug.14th:
Welcome to HELL! Temperature got to 115 today. Cactus are dead. Forgot to crack the window and blew the d@mn windshield out of the car. The installer came to fix it and guess what he asked me??? ‘Hot enough for you today?’ My sister had to spend $1,500 to bail me out of jail. Freaking Texas ..What kind of a sick demented idiot would want to live here?? Will write later to let you know how the trial goes…

Short for Jezebel. About five inches tall at the shoulder. Eyes: muddy gray, will possibly turn green when mature. Overall color: mixed hues of black, several shades of brown, tan and pale orange. Weight: 2 lbs. Approximate age: 6 weeks. Temperament: carefree, affectionate and playful. Breed: Short haired American domestic feline. (I am guessing about the short-hair, though.)

Yes, after lamenting Meek, the adoring lap-cat with the beautiful celadon-green eyes, Blondie has acquired a kitten – or the kitten has acquired her. It’s kind of hard to tell with these things. There are those people who have “Incredible Sucker for Our Dumb Chums” written across their foreheads in invisible letters? Yes, Blondie is one of them, and the neighbors who originally provided us with Sammy (who with incredible fickleness fell madly, deeply, irrevocably in love with Blondie about three years ago) are another. A couple of weeks ago, they rescued a pair of infant felines from under the bushes at a neighborhood church, and took them both home to their menagerie of eight small and two large dogs and a number of adult cats. They found a home for one, and at a yard sale they were holding this last weekend, cunningly offered to show Blondie the other one.

Which, aside from being as endearing as kittens usually are, totally fearless with dogs, also is the spitting image of Patchie, the cat that I found as a kitten on a building site in Athens, and who accompanied us to Spain, Utah, California and Texas before succumbing at the age of 16 to complications from old age and feline diabetes. No, this was something ordained, although the other cats are probably objecting in no uncertain terms. Here is a kitten, a playful, adventurous infant being added to their staid and mature circle. Seeing that they were all neutered at an early age, and have lived indoors ever since, Jezzie is possibly the very first immature specimen of their kind that they have encountered in the last seven years.

Percival condescends to play with her, but Henry, Morgie and Arthur are all very much offended dignity. She gets a warmer and happier welcome from the dogs, oddly enough. They are both so very much larger – in the Lesser Weevil’s case, about forty times larger – that we must take care that their affections and playful urges do not put Jezzie in danger through accident. She, by the happy chance of being cared for in a household overrun with small dogs, appears to rather like dogs. She will play, pouncing on the end of Spike’s plumy tail, and will curl up between Weevil’s outstretched paws, on the floor of the den while we are watching TV of an evening. And whenever one of us picks her up – her purr-motor kicks into overdrive; all together a most endearing little catling.

Honestly, though – we are maxed out as far as the capacity for pets goes. No more. Really…