For Dad – The local semi-large newspaper guestimates a charge of $500 to run this in a print edition. Dad would be seriously pissed at that. So herewith… with some redactions
Page Hayden, long-time resident of Valley Center, died at Scripps Green Hospital after a brief illness, on December 26, 2010.
Mr. Hayden was born in Glendale, California, on January 3rd, 1930, the only son of Dorothy Simpson Hayden and Thomas Alfred Page Hayden, both of whom were immigrants from Great Britain in the early years of the 20th century. He graduated from Alhambra High School in 1948, and attended John Muir Junior College in Pasadena, before attending Occidental College, and pledging SAE fraternity. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology in 1952, and later earned a Masters in Zoology from UCLA. Upon graduation from Occidental, he served in the US Army, including a tour of duty in Korea at the end of the Korean War, rising to the rank of sergeant. (E-4). In 1953, he married fellow Occidental classmate, Kathryn Anne Menaul. He worked for UCLA’s Environmental Radiation Laboratory as a field biologist/ecologist specializing in desert mammals, participating in various projects for the DOD, NASA, BLM and the DOE. His last project was a life study of the California desert tortoise, for the BLM. He also completed required studies for a doctoral degree in Zoology at USC, but never obtained a PhD. Upon retirement in 1986, the Haydens retired to their property in Valley Center. There they commenced building a house, with a small orchard and xerioscaped grounds, doing the larger part of the work themselves. They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary there in 2003, shortly before that house burned in the catastrophic Paradise Mountain fire. Undeterred, they rebuilt.
Page Hayden was active in the Valley Center Chuckwagon, in the Promenaders’ square dancing group, and together with his wife — an artist and teacher in stained glass – were members of the Valley Center Art association.
He is survived by his wife, four children, and four grandchildren. A memorial service will be held at 2 PM, Saturday, January 8th at House of Prayer Lutheran Church in Escondido. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to Lutheran Social Services and specified for disaster relief efforts in Southern California.
So, coming down the home stretch on the next book – which had the working title of Gone to Texas, which Blondie didn’t much like because she found a couple of others, fiction and non- with the same title. So, when released, it will be titled Daughter of Texas, subtitled “The prelude to the Adelsverein Trilogy.” My clever and artistic younger brother, Sander, who is a freelance graphic artist, did the cover design for me, and Watercress Press, the tiny publishing bidness in which I am a junior partner will edit and publish . . . and print it as a POD book, since we have set up an account with Lightning Source. We had wanted to do something of the sort along the POD line for our clients, after a couple of decades of taking bids from various traditional litho printers. It’s the same old tradeoff – traditional litho, large quantities at a time = large initial up-front cost, but small price per single copy. POD/Lightning source means small print run = relatively small up-front costs and slightly higher cost per single copy. So, Daughter of Texas will be the test run for Watercress Press.
It’s the prelude to the Trilogy, as it follows the life of Margaret, Carl Becker’s older sister, who married twice, and became an influential political hostess in Republic-era Texas – after experiencing the trials of the Texas war for independence from Mexico, to include the ‘Come and Take it’ fight, the fall-out from the siege of the Alamo, and the terrifying ‘Runaway Scrape’ . . . all that, and she has just gotten up to her first husband. (Also explained why the Becker family got to be dysfunctional in a special way . . . )
Anyway, I was set on finishing it in time for release on the anniversary of San Jacinto Day, April 21 2011, because this spring will mark the 175th anniversary of the Texas War for Independence – which, while loaded down with bags of drama – was over and done in a flash, relatively speaking. (Can you picture a lot of people picking themselves up off the ground in early 1836 and saying ‘Whoa! – What was that which just went by? A war? The hell you say – anyone see who won?)
Small problem – I was just coming up to writing the post-war picking-up-and-moving-on part, and hit a couple of problems: the first being that I had already clocked 300+ pages, and if I wanted to do true justice to the Republic of Texas-era shenanigans,(the Pig War, the Mexican raid on San Antonio which captured the entire district court and every Anglo man in town, the Archives War, etc,) that would mean another couple of hundred pages . . . in the next month. Plus all the necessary research – that being one of my marketing points, that I have researched all this to the nth degree. And I was out of time for all that. Another problem: writing out Margaret’s first husband – who dies of consumption – and her romance, such as it is, with her second husband. I was struck out of the blue by solutions to both those situations, a solution which would let me wrap up the first part of her story very tidily while allowing an interesting plot twist in a book to be worked out at a later date – and to make a second book of Margaret’s life; widowhood in the town that would (intermittently) be the capitol of the Republic of Texas and later the state capitol, participation in or witness to a whole series of gripping and exciting events, plus a new romance with a male character which I would have to flesh out a little more. The second book about Margaret will be called Deep in the Heart . . . to be available by next Christmas, perhaps.
Anyway, I will begin taking orders for Daughter of Texas starting about mid-December, autographed and delivered in mid-April, just before the official release date. Links and pricing will be posted then.
So that’s what has been going on with the book-thingy. Any questions?
We were off to Fredericksburg on Monday; Fredericksburg, Texas – a medium-sized town large enough to contain two HEB supermarkets, a Walmart, four RV parks – and two museums, one of which – the National Museum of the Pacific War – draws considerable tourist interest – and a marvelous kitchenware shop which might very well be the best one in the state of Texas. (It certainly makes Williams – Sonoma look pretty feeble in comparison.) The town has begun to develop a little bit of suburban sprawl, but not excessively so. Most of the town is arranged along the original east-west axis of streets laid out by German immigrant surveyors in the mid-1840s, along a rise of land cradled between two creeks which fed into the Pedernales River. In a hundred and sixty years since then, houses and gardens spilled over Baron’s Creek and Town Creek. Log and fachwork houses were soon replaced by tall L-shaped houses of local stone, trimmed with modest amounts of Victorian fretwork lace, or frame and brick bungalows from every decade since. Main Street – which on either side of town turns into US Highway 290 – is still the main thoroughfare. A good few blocks of Main Street are lined with classic 19th century store-front buildings, or new construction built to match, storefronts with porches which overhang the sidewalk, and adorned with tubs of flowers and hanging baskets, with shops and restaurants and wine-tasting rooms catering to a substantial tourist trade. Fredericksburg is a lively place; and I have been visiting there frequently since I came to live in Texas.
I actually have a curious relationship with the place, having written a series of three historical novels about how it came to be founded and settled. Thanks to intensive research which involved reading practically every available scrap of nonfiction about the Hill Country and Fredericksburg written by historians and memoirists alike, I am in the curious position of knowing Fredericksburg at least as well as many long-time residents with a bent for local history do, and holding my own in discussions of such minutia as to how many people were killed in cold blood on Main Street. (Two, for those who count such things. It happened during the Civil War.) And for another, of having a mental map of 19th-century Fredericksburg laid over the present-day town, which makes for a slightly schizophrenic experience when I walk around the older parts. Eventually, I may have to do a sort of walking guide to significant locations, since so many readers have asked me exactly where did such-and-such an event take place, or where was Vati’s house on Market Square, and where in the valley of the Upper Guadalupe was the Becker ranch house?
Mike, the husband of one of Monday’s book-club members is a fan of the Trilogy, and although he couldn’t come to the meeting (being at work and all) he still wanted to meet me. He had actually contacted me through Facebook a couple of months ago, for a series of searching questions about where I had gotten some of the street names that I had used in the Trilogy; many of them are not the present-day names, but are what the original surveyors of Fredericksburg had laid out. I deduced that being stubborn and set in their ways, the old German residents would have gone on using those names, rather than the newer ones. After all – when I grew up in LA, there were still old-timers who insisted on referring to MacArthur Park as Westlake Park, even though the name had been changed decades ago. So, the book club organizer gave me Mike’s work number at the Nimitz Foundation (which runs the Museum of the Pacific War) and said we should call and his assistant would get us on the schedule for that afternoon. It was my understanding that this gentleman was a retired general – OK, I thought ‘eh, another general, met ‘em by the bag-full . . . matter of fact, there was a general even carried my B-4 bag, once,’ (long story) but anyway, we had a block of time to meet Mike at his office – and a lovely discussion we were having, too; he was full of questions over how much research I had done, and terribly complimentary on how well woven into the story.
Mike thought ever so highly about how I had made C.H. Nimitz, the grandfather of Admiral Chester Nimitz into such a strong and engaging character – although we had a discussion over how devoted a Confederate that C.H. Nimitz really was – probably not so much a Unionist as I made him seem to be, but I argued that C.H. was probably a lot more loyal to his local friends and community than he was to the Confederacy – so, nice discussion over that. It seems that the Mike was born and grew up in the area. He and his wife (who was German-born) had read the Trilogy, and loved it very much – they were even recommending it to everyone, and giving sets of it as presents. Well, that is way cool – I’m in regular touch with three or four fans doing just that; talking it up to friends, and giving copies as gifts. Local history buffs, or they know the Hill Country very well, they can’t wait to tell their friends about it; as Blondie says, I am building my fan base. So I had a question-packed half hour and a bit; me, answering the questions mostly, and Blondie backing me up. At the end of it as we were leaving, Blondie casually asked about a few relics on the sideboard, under an old photograph of C.H. Nimitz and Chester Nimitz as a very young junior officer; a very battered pair of glasses, and a covered Japanese rice bowl: they came from the tunnels on Iwo Jima. Blondie said ‘oh?’ and raised her eyebrows. Yes, Mike had been allowed into the old Japanese tunnels; Rank hath it’s privileges – and Iwo is a shrine to Marines, after all.
After the book-club meeting – two hours, of talk and questions, and hardly a chance to nibble any of the traditional German finger-foods, an hour-long drive home, which seemed much longer. I fired up the computer and did a google-search, and found out the very coolest part. (Blondie had a suspicion, of course – being a Marine herself.) Mike was not just any general, but a Marine general, and commandant of the Marine Corps. How cool is that? One of my biggest fans is the former commandant of Marines, General Michael Hagee.
I’m actually kind of glad I didn’t know that, going in – I think we both would have been at least a little bit intimidated.
So, after a year and three-quarters of the existence of the political entity known as the Tea Party (only it isn’t really a party, just a sort of decentralized mass movement) said movement is getting a little respect. Fearful respect, to be sure – but ever such an improvement on crude and ignorant denigration! Oh, we’re still getting the denigration, but it has become a little more muted lately, and use of the epithet t******er is not as frequent as formerly, possibly because the media personalities who delighted in using it may have discovered that a good-sized subset of the viewing audience took exception and offense . . . which might have affected ratings, and audience share and the sales of advertising time. Myself, I can deal with fearful respect, and so – no doubt – can the rest of those scattered the length and breadth of the Land of the Free Home of the Brave who cherish Tea Party principles. Especially when the fearful respect comes from the likes of Dick Armey . . . or from RINO squishes who come to love the perks of office so much they will do anything, and say anything to stay there. Yes, it was most especially amusing – since I have not the slightest shred of a doubt that the senior GOP strategists and long-serving office holders were quite absolutely sure – right up until the last few weeks – that Tea Party principles would automatically translate into votes for Republican candidates. Booted, spurred and ready to ride, they seemed to think that all was necessary to do was to saddle that Tea Party mustang, and it would obey.
The Dems also assumed – and trumpeted it loudly and often – that the Tea Parties were nothing more than great swaths of GOP Astroturf; the GOP’s sudden horrid discovery vis-à-vis the biddability of Tea Partiers is presumably as much of a surprise to them as well. I can only assume they were goggle-eyed with horror, upon making this discovery, since you’d have thought a canny strategist would have known the words of Sun Tzu.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
Ah, yes – the dear old Donks, they may know themselves but, I am pretty sure they do not know Tea Party: they know only a caricature of the Tea Party. I derived some innocent merriment these last few months, visualizing the expressions on the faces of various political operatives in the current administration, the higher reaches of the Democrat Party and their water-carriers in the media, as they tried to counter the Tea Party – and discovered that none of their favored tactics worked. I swear it’s been like Wily Coyote, Super-Genius trying to catch the Road-Runner. The results were pretty much uniform; Wily Coyote scorched to a crisp, forming a neat crater at the bottom of a deep ravine, or augered in by a falling 5,000 lb weight – and meanwhile, the Tea Party elements pause for a brief moment, shout meep-meep and zip on, unfazed and . . . more to the point, un-distracted.
So, one more time, just to make everything clear: The Tea Party is a loosely organized, essentially leaderless and distributed political insurgency, holding these things as our highest values: fiscal responsibility, strict adherence to the Constitution, small government and free markets.
Everything else is secondary: believe me when I say this. Everything else is secondary. People who hold to those principles may also have strong convictions about illegal immigration, social issues, gun rights, home schooling or any number of other current rights-and-issues brangles; some of these Tea Party supporters may have had a long history of advocacy with regard to these issues, but they are not the Tea Party’s main motivating influence. And even though the Tea Party did not exist in anything like the currently accepted form, there were some of us whose concern with federal government excess – to include ill-advised regulations and ballooning deficits – predated the anointing of President Obama. It’s just that damn few in the media, or anywhere else outside the blogosphere gave a rat’s ass, and most of us were lone voices, crying in the wilderness. Just because it didn’t make the headlines doesn’t mean such concerns didn’t exist before 2008.
And just so that we can get that straight – when it comes to President Obama, it’s not the color of his skin, it’s the content of his character, and his admittedly thin resume. (And his weird Chicago friends, his effortless rise to the top unassisted by actual accomplishment, and of late, his propensity for vacations and golf days.) Which a scattering of us were pointing out in 2008, for all the good it did come Election Day. Curiously, in many of the admittedly libertarian/fiscally conservative/veteran circles in which I have been hanging out since 2002; a President and Commander in Chief of color was pretty well accepted – it’s just that we all thought then that Colin Powell or Condi Rice would have been a better bet, as well has having a much more reassuring resume and some, you know, real-world experience. Demanding that Tea Party leaders do, or denounce, or disavow something or other, just to prove something-or-other? Good luck with that. Leaderless, distributed political insurgency, strong emphasis on the leaderless, high value given to individual personal initiative and responsibility. Think D-Day, when everything on the beaches had gone to s**t, but individual NCOs and soldiers stepped out and did what they knew had to be done.
Some of the Tea Partiers I began to know over the last year came from a strong evangelical Christian background, which in this part of the world is hard to avoid. A casual observer might assume that the Tea Party is an evangelical Christian movement – and the casual observer would be wrong. Frankly, not too many of us had any heartburn over Bristol Palin’s baby, Scott Brown’s college pinups, or Christine O’Donnell’s flirtation with witchcraft. Seriously, the evangelical Tea Partiers were supposed to get all bent out of shape over all that? OK, I realize that a lot of people took their ideas about Evangelical Christians from Saturday Night Live’s Church Lady . . . but what did I say about Sun Tzu, again? One more time – the main thing is fiscal responsibility, small federal government, free market, strict adherence to the Constitution. Social issues – secondary importance. A good few other Tea Partiers were cranky and independent libertarian types, and not conventionally religious in any way. In fact, in our own quiet way, a lot of us are pretty worldly. Quite a few are military veterans, small and medium-sized business owners, a good few were bloggers, and well-versed in the ways of the internet as a means of informing and coordinating.
About Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Fox News? Not our leaders. Sarah Palin? Not our leader either. Personally, I never cared much for the first two, never watch the second unless there’s some local disaster – but I did think that picking the fourth for the VP slot on the GOP ticket for 2008 was a stroke of genius. So, mayor of a small town, effective governor of a pretty large state – and with high local approval ratings; nah – don’t believe the lady is an idiot, a fascist or an ignorant hillbilly, not for a moment. But if it satisfies something in the soul of those of the progressive persuasion to think so . . . well, Sun Tzu again. Or whoever it was that advised never interrupting your enemy in the process of making a complete douche of him or herself.
So, after a year and some of being constantly belittled as ignorant, closed-minded bitter clingers and racists – how do I feel? That holding to that line has probably bounced back and resoundingly. Because those of us who are Tea Partiers know it isn’t true. And those who are close to us – friends, co-workers, neighbors and kin; I think they have probably figured out by now that it isn’t true also. Those of us within the Tea Party movement – we can keep our cool, and be a bigger person about the mindless abuse and constant rain of accusations – but don’t for a moment think that we have forgotten, or will ever forget the names of the worst offenders.
So, everyone clear on the concept? Good. I can see November from my house. And until then, a musical interlude. Enjoy.
This five-day long celebration of books and music has been going on for a good few years; this is the second time that I made the five-hour long drive from San Antonio to participate in the Hall of Texas Authors. The Hall – that’s the main display room at the Abilene Convention Center, wherein local authors and a handful of publishers (some established and well known, some whom only hope to be established and well known at some future date) have a table-top display of their books on the last day of the festival. All during the week there are concerts, a medley of free and open events, readings and panel discussions. All of this has several stated intentions: to benefit the Abilene Public Library system and to support their programs, for one, to spotlight local and regional musical and authorial talent, for another, and for a third, to promote Abilene as a cultural Mecca and tourist destination. It isn’t New York or Las Vegas, by any stretch of the imagination yet, but that isn’t for lack of trying.
Abilene, you see, was established in the boom years of the Wild West: every element embedded in popular imagination about the Wild West was present there for one reason or another, from the classical wood-frame buildings, wooden-sidewalk and dusty streets visualization of a typical frontier town, the railways and occasional Indian warfare, to cattle drives and gunfights in the streets and saloons. (And the Butterfield Stage line, buffalo hunters, teamsters, traders and Army posts, too.) A lot of interesting stuff happened in and around Abilene, and a fair number of interesting people passed through town, or nearby. Many of these people are featured in a state-of the art museum called Frontier Texas, where there was a nice get-together for visiting authors, for volunteers and various members of the Abilene literary scene on Friday evening. I was especially interested in meeting one of the two big-name featured authors: Scott Zesch, whose book The Captured, was an account of white children kidnapped by Indians in raids on Hill Country settlements during and just after the Civil War. The story of his great-great-uncle, captured as a boy of ten or so, and eventually returned to his white family haunted me. Such a cruel thing, to loose a child, get the child back years later – and then to discover that the child has been lost to you for all time; I simply had to make that a plot twist in my own book. He’s from Mason, and from one of the old German families who settled the Hill Country. Anyway, interesting person to speak with, and listen to: he spoke briefly at that gathering and at the awards luncheon the following day. He is another of those completely convinced that a place like the frontier was so filled with interesting and heroic people, of fantastic events and things that seem too bizarre to be true (but are!) – and furthermore are almost unknown – that a writer can’t help but try and make a ripping good yarn out of them.
The second featured writer had done just that, with creating a novel about a relatively unknown hero: Paulette Jiles, whose book The Color of Lightning was about Britt Johnson – supposedly one of the inspirations for the storyline of the movie The Searchers. It looks like Britt Johnson may get a movie in his own right, according to what Ms. Jiles said at the awards luncheon. The script for a movie based on Color of Lightning is in the works – all about how he went looking for his wife and children, taken by Indian raiders in 1864, and went back again and again, looking for other captives. He was, as Ms. Jiles said in her own remarks, very proper classical hero material: on a quest for something of great value to him, against considerable odds, blessed with a companion animal (his horse), good friends, and lashings of pluck and luck, so it is only fair that he get to be better known than in just dry-as-dust local historical circles. (The Daughter Unit and I inadvertently toured the Frontier Texas exhibits with her; just three of us and a hovering volunteer/docent. I didn’t recognize her – not being good at remembering faces. That is, I recognize people that I have seen before, but not always remember who they are or where I know them from.)
I sold a few sets of the Trilogy in the Author’s Hall the next day, and passed out a lot of fliers about my own books – including the one that’s due out in April, 2011 – but it’s not about sales, it’s more about getting out there and connecting with readers and potential readers.
And some darned nice BBQ, too – but that came later, from the Riverside Market in Boerne, on the way home. Only in Texas!
I am, praise be to certain workaholic habits of mine (the one which goes into hyper-space warp-speed drive when faced with an impending deadline) actually able to come up for air today. One large chunk o’impending deadline all but finished but for the polishing and tweaking, and the other all but finished save for the author getting back to me to answer some questions about her MS. Life is good. And so is that 12-ounce bottle of Shiner Bohemian Black Lager that I have drunk about half of, as a reward to myself. Nice burnt-sugar overtones. I’m writing this Sunday evening at about 5:45 PM Sunday, so no need to go all interventionish on me.
Of course, I still have about three other big projects hanging over me – but the largest are out of the way, so I can come up for air and take note of some of the weirdness around me.
OK, so it looks like America’s next top model . . . is six foot something and so impossibly thin that a man’s hands can span her waist: Which was a charmingly old-fashioned standard of feminine beauty in the 19th century, when it was achieved only by the use of a fierce whale-bone corset and a couple of strong maids, hauling away. Dear god, the girl looks like she is morphing into a praying mantis. So, if this is what the fashion designers want to hang their clothes on, just animate a wire hanger and be done with it, and leave the rest of us alone with our cellulite.
So, the same breed of statist limpd**ks that tried to launch the Coffee Party and are trying yet again, with yet an amazingly stupid tee shirt and mug with the logo ‘f*ck tea’. Apparently that’s all you have to do, to get a movement really going. Print up some tee shirts and get your friends in the juice-box mafia (aka whatever has taken the place of JournoList) to push the meme. Hey, boys and girls, we can put on a show ourselves, around in back in the barn!
Apparently, they insist they are trying to bring about a serious discussion of serious issues and
the something like 54% of citizens who approve and support Tea Party principles should just . . . I dunno, sit down and shut up and be ruled over unquestioningly by the new aristos. OK, one more time: strict interpretation of the Constitution, fiscally responsible, free markets. The Tea Party is a distributed, leaderless insurgency, based on a few core principles, not one person. I don’t know how I can make it any more plain than that. Aside from that, boys and girls, if it looks like bought n’paid for Astroturf, smells like Astroturf, feels like Astroturf and is being rolled out there by the same ol’ Astroturf purveyors . . . then it probably is indeed, Astroturf. Here’s hoping that not too many of the ‘f*ck tea’ ‘tards don’t get stuck with a garage full of un-sellable tee shirts . . . oh, f*ck that – I hope they do.
So, the Mighty O’s approval ratings continue to crater. Time to take another vacation. Look, Mr. Hopey-Changey, coming out with support of a mosque/community/center/arms bunker whatever in the neighborhood of New York’s Ground Zero on one day, then walking back the next – not a good idea. Indecisive, duplicitous, or just plain old telling-the-audience-what-they-wanna-hear? I don’t know, I’m not a licensed political professional, or a mind-reader, but you are getting bad advice from someone. Or if you are getting good advice . . . oh, f*ck it . . . take the bad advice. No one will ever notice. Really. November is a little more than a month and a half away. Kick back, you and the wife and kids take another vay-cay. It’s all on us, I insist.
Yes, freedom of religion in America technically would permit the mosque/whatever to be built wherever . . . good taste and a sense of tact would argue that Ground Zero is perhaps a good place. Sorta like a museum of the Confederacy would not be a good fit in downtown Harlem. (But it might give Cholly Rangel a case of the vapors, so it wouldn’t be a wasted effort to suggest it.)
Ah well – enough of a rant. Blondie and I went up to Boerne yesterday, and brought back some smoked ribs and BBQ sauce from (I kid you not) a Shell gas station quickie-mart on the corner of Main Street and SH-46, which has a meat counter and a BBQ stand which has the best BBQ around. It’s called the Riverside Market. We stopped in for some soft drinks, and it smelled so enticing that we stopped in on our way home from Boerne Market Days and bought some for take out. Remember – Boerne, Shell Station, on Main Street, and SH-46, just as you cross the river. The place was wall to wall with local people. And the BBQ smelt like the food of the gods.
The first day of August, in South Texas. It’s hot. I should probably not have to reiterate this; it should go without saying, like the North and South Poles are cold, Saudi Arabia has oil, Russians drink a lot of vodka and NY Rep. Charles Rangel is as corrupt as the day is long.
Speaking of good ol’ Chollie Rangel, I guess that he is the next one under the Obama-bus, he and Maxine Walters both. What brought that on that spot of Capitol Hill Cleanup, BTW – a bit of pre-emptive housecleaning against a turnover in November? Ah, well – enjoy the view of the axles and transmission. Heck, there are so many others under that bus it must be jacked up like one of those monster off-road vehicles that you need a 16-foot ladder to get into.
I see – mostly through noting the Yahoo News cliplets which come up whenever I access my email – that Chelsea Clinton got married this last weekend, in a lavish, celebrity-studded, ultra-high end round of festivities at some grand estate in scenic upstate New York. Two or three million is the price-tag . . . which I presume has stimulated some segment of the economy, at least the bridal-industrial complex portion of it. Oh, and air traffic over that part of NY was cut off – security concerns, of course, and between the guests, their entourages, the news crews and the rubberneckers, I presume the related traffic has been a nightmare for the ordinary residents. Three million. On a wedding. While the peasants watch from the sidewalk, tugging their forelocks in obeisance to their betters. Look, I don’t mind weddings, and even wish the presumably happy couple the best, and all that . . . but wasn’t this exercise a little . . . I don’t know – vulgar? Unnecessarily ostentatious, kind of Marie Antoinettish, in time of severe economic downturn? Again, the two or three million wasn’t flushed down the john, I am sure a lot of people got a nice few days or weeks of work out of it, from the waiters hired by the caterer, the flower-arrangers, the owners of local hotels and motels, the limo-drivers and the extra security . . . but still – it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth – it smacks of royalty putting on a show. Jenna Bush’s wedding, and John F. Kennedy’s wedding just seem comparatively more sensible, suitable and tasteful.
Where in the world is Shirley Sherrod, the Mouth from the South – and are her fifteen minutes of fame over? Is she still planning to sue Andrew Breitbart – and on what grounds? You know, PBS could make a kid’s show out of this, a la Carmen Sandiego, with Shirley zipping around to racial hotspots, and dropping clues to the audience. Hey, they could even do an international edition. If any producers want to discuss this concept with me, drop me a private message.
And speaking of the NAACP – how come their president, Ben Jealous looks about as white as my brother JP? No kidding, he looks a lot like my brother – dark hair and eyes, gets a decent tan in the summer.
And finally – JournoList. So I wasn’t having a tin-foil hat moment, wondering why suddenly some news stories, such as that about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the Fred Phelps of the Chicago area mega-church scene – just seemed to suddenly vanish down the memory hole during that 2008 campaign season. Here I was thinking that having listened to that nutcase in the pulpit for twenty years would surely have been the kiss of death for a candidate for any office, let alone the highest in the land. My bad – here came the JournoListers to save the day for their guy! Note to self – memorize the lists of members, and consider with a handful of fleur de sel anything they write which I happen to come across. Give them a ration of &$#@! in any comments permitted about having aided in the corruption of the newsgathering process – and the political process.
Posting’s been light, because . . . I have a platter full of work right in front of me. And three-quarters of it will be for pay. The remaining quarter is split between providing good a few spoonfuls of good bloggy ice cream, and trying to finish the next book. I was alternating between two – one set during the early days of Anglo settlement in Texas, and up through the Republic of Texas days, tentatively entitled Gone to Texas, and another set fifty years later, in the cattle boom and barbed wire days. Write a chapter or two on one, set it aside, write a chapter or two on the other. Kept from getting bored or blocked, y’see.
But – and that is a Michael Moore sized butt, right there – I had to pull full steam ahead on the Gone to Texas – which may wind up being called Daughter of Texas, having made a decision to have the official launch/release date on the anniversary of the Battle of San Jacinto, April 21. The senior partner in the Tiny Publishing Bidness loves my stuff and we are setting up an account with the printer “Lightning Source” so we can do POD books, as an alternative to litho print. So – my book will be the test run for us. With luck I can scrape some local media interest, since that will be the start of Fiesta. A release date late in April means I have to start sending out advance review copies in late September. Working backwards from that deadline means I have to finish the five or six chapters in the next month, so . . . yes, the personal work schedule is full. I’ll set up to take orders in December, though – for copies to be delivered in early April.
With all this going on, I had to step back from certain other activities, including volunteering for the local Tea Party – but there are so many people getting into it all, I don’t think my absence will be missed. And I certainly will continue blogging about Tea Party matters, and perhaps even a little more freely, since what I now say will reflect only on myself, not the local org. Hey, I might even get to go to a rally or two, and not have to stay afterwards for hours, cleaning up!
I’d write something about the ongoing revelations about the JournoList . . . except that what I’d have to say boils down to two statements: “Yeah, I thought there was something strange about how some stories had legs from here to there and back again, and others vanished into a black hole,” and “Oh, boy – bring on the popcorn! This is gonna be fun!”
To: Various Re: Current Situation in the Gulf of Mexico From: Sgt Mom
1. To our various house-broken major-media news-hounds: So, here we have a situation, producing an oil leak from a busted oil well in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, of such a copious quantities that it has been described as the equivalent of the cargo of the Exxon Valdez every four days, and this has been going on for . . . . 60 days and counting? Yes, I know the crisis has come on a little slowly, not nearly as fast as Hurricane Katrina – after which then-President Bush had about two days grace before being raked viciously over the coals for not swinging into the federal government into action instanter than instant and fixing everything immediately! Exacting standards for performance in coping with the results of man-made and natural disasters should most certainly be applied for other than Republican administrations – and we are looking forward to see you apply them. Not holding my breath on it – but definitely looking forward to it.
2. Gratifyingly, there are definite signs of this dawning on those who have an ambition of being more than Baghdad Bob Gibbs press pool lap-dog. Perhaps this new awareness may have come in time to save y’all from the general impression that you are as partisan a collection of hacks who ever lightly edited a government/corporate press release and knocked off early for an expenses-paid luncheon. Or maybe not. And speaking of Robert Gibbs, doesn’t he just remind you of the fat, smug authority-figure suck-up from high school, whom hardly anyone could stand except for a handful of other authority-ass-kissing sycophants? The one who was beneath contemptuous notice by the athletes – but that the bad kids once ganged up on, pantsed, painted a rude, rude word on his pallid buttocks in indelible ink, administered a swirly in the nastiest toilet on campus and then chained him to the flag-pole? With his trou around his knees so that everyone could appreciate their lack of spelling skills?
3. So, don’t tell me that y’all in the White House Press Corps haven’t had that fantasy float through your heads. I have my ways of knowing these things. When you do, get footage of it, even if only on cell-phone cameras, please, please post on YouTube anonymously. You know the drill.
4. To the innocent citizens of the locality formerly known as Great Britain; I am sorry, sorrier than I can ever say . . . especially as this affects pensioners and ordinary investors – of both our countries who had investments in BP. Me, I thought we still had a rule of law, which applied equally to individuals and entities. The so-called ‘Chicago Way’ I had thought was confined to . . . well, Chicago. And gangster movies. I know very well that many of you indeed are not fat-cat capitalists, in frock-coats and top-hats, lighting your cigars with $50 bills, or the current Euro equivalent. The remarks of the current resident of the White House, and those of certain of our own citizens, and our own national media with regard to dreadful matter are, to put it kindly, unhelpful. I apologize again for them. I will note, for the record, that I did not vote for him. Believe it or not, quite a good few of us did not, so if you would be so kind, don’t lump us in with those Americans who were too starry-eyed over Mr. Hope’n’change to think straight.
5. I do wonder, however – if the situation were reversed, and a wholly American-owned drilling company experienced a disaster of the same magnitude in, say, the North Sea, and the resulting oil plume threatened your coastline – what the tenor of public and media comment in your sphere would be, then. Just wondering – I’m deeply cynical, that way. BTW, from the tone of British and European media coverage of Obama in the 2008 election season, I was left with the distinct impression that his victory being welcomed with hosannas of happy joy by one and all. How’s that hope’n’change working out for y’all? Miss GWB yet?
6. You know, seeing how the offer of efficient Dutch skimmer ships was turned down, how an exemption for the Jones Act to permit foreign ships to assist with the clean-up wasn’t obtained in a timely fashion, and how permits for the construction of sand berms to shelter fragile Louisiana coastal wetlands were delayed, and then the deployment of barges equipped to suck up oil were sidelined while the Coast Guard ascertained that they had sufficient safety gear on board, and how the well is still gushing . . . well, one might wonder if the continuance of this crisis is an advantage to the Obama administration. After all, Rahm Emmanuel famously urged that a good crisis shouldn’t be wasted. Shut down drilling for oil in the Gulf – which is a body blow for that industry – allow by inaction the fouling of the coastline, which affects tourism and local commercial fishing . . . My mother often cautioned me never to attribute to malice which could be easily explained by simple ineptitude, but in this case I might be persuaded to make an exception.
7. Finally, I would suggest that readers pick up some extra bags of frozen Gulf shrimp, the next time they are at Sam’s or Costco – the price is gonna go up, if it hasn’t already. But don’t forget – we can see November from our house.
One of the most exasperating elements WRT to tracking the fortunes of the Tea Party movement is going into comment threads here and there and running slap into the constant insistence from commenters of a certain persuasion that Tea Partiers are stupid! Stupid, I say, dumber than dirt! Drooling morons, apparently barely able to find their way to the latrine, the voting booth or to tune their radios to whatever channel is carrying Rush Limbaugh!
They bang on and on about the stupidity and reckless lack of clue among the Tea Party set constantly, seemingly impervious to any contrary evidence – such as that of my own lying eyes. Of the activists who launched my local tea party, included among them was a corporate lawyer – an A & M grad (so of course the jokes about that are endless), a professor at a local and notoriously expensive and upscale private university, a madly creative and seriously eccentric video producer, a IP techie of proven skills and a very hot temper, a military contractor specializing in very high-end specialist software, a good few scrappy real estate agents, an academic doctor . . . and then myself, the historical novelist. There was also the married lady of irreproachable virtue and deeply Christian principles who had at one point in her now-distant youth been a Playboy Bunny, a guy with a long career in print media sales who now runs a tiny construction bidness of his own, and we have since added another two lawyers, an insurance-firm executive and others of the same professional ilk. In other words, lots of professionals, managers, and graduate degrees The picture ought to be fairly clear, I would think – not too terribly many mouth-breathers among the cadre of the seriously involved, but bless their hearts, the leftoid commenters everywhere have only a few horses to flog when it comes to the Tea Party, so they flog it relentlessly. (The other equine targets being ‘you’re all raaaaacist!’ and ‘you’re all tools of the GOP/Fox News’ being the main ones, although “where were you when Booooosh maneuvered us into two illegal wars/put us into a deficit first!” is being brought around from the stable.)
It’s pathetic – this is all they have, when anyone who has ever attended, or had anything to do with a Tea Party knows that the dumb/racist/GOP tool is not only false, but completely lame. Seriously, pukes – do you want to have any credibility left as a sentient being, after November, 2010? And then I think – perhaps that is all they have. No real and workable ideas, no energy, no stamina for the dull and boring labor of actually doing political activism, the kind that takes years, the kind which consumes your life, the kind of work done by William Wilberforce and Tom Paine, by Abraham Lincoln and Lucy Stone. For a while, I did battle in comment threads, regarding the derisive epithet “tea-bagger” – I said (over and over) that using it in a discussion of the Tea Party was like using the word “n****r” in a discussion of civil rights. Eh, I think my point has been made. Of late I don’t much waste time objecting to the use of it, since it has become a time-saver. Someone using it has already marked themselves as so bigoted and essentially closed-minded that they are hardly worth wasting time and pixels over. I have to save my energy for the long fight. I can’t waste time over correcting fools.
Oh, and yeah – I have to save enough energy to earn a living, and to write some more books; currently have drafted six chapters for “The Quivera Trail” and five and a half for “Gone to Texas.”
In the meantime, it looks like my suspicions from last week about the so-called Coffee Party being nothing more than a fresh roll of Axelrod Astroturf? Oh, yeah – big time. The blogosphere is on the hunt. I deduce that fresh scalps will soon be joining those on the drying-rack next to those lifted from the heads of the global-warming crowd. Good times, people, good times.
You know, the funniest thing about being active in a local Tea Party – aside from some of the soap opera antics resulting when people involved have different ideas about where we should go and what we should do – comes from going back and reading, over and over, in comment threads, editorials/commentary and news stories, those unsupported and wildly asserted claims about what we are and what we want. Strict Constitutionalists, limited federal government, free markets . . . nothing more radical than that, actually. No, seriously, nothing more than that. Really, cross my heart, et cetera – it’s nothing more than that, as a handful of the media anointed who have come down from their lofty heights and actually did their jobs have discovered. Much to their own mild surprise, I might add. However, sometimes it seems that the larger portion – or at least the noisier portion of academia, the media, the political elite and dumbasses commenting on blog and news threads are still convinced otherwise. According to this particular assortment of gits, such beliefs in the strict interpretation of the Constitution, and a small federal government with limited powers are horrifically radical and dangerously un-American notions. This would suggest that in general, public education has reached astonishing new lows in total incompetence, when it comes to education in basic civics and history – Especially, it would seem, among those in the leadership cadre among certain unions.
No kidding, looking around at all that is said of us in various fora – it’s an absolute hoot. I am following one comment thread now where it’s being asserted, over and over again that the Tea Partiers are the tools of big corporations. No actual proof of the assertion are posted, mind you – such as details about which corporations, and how they are supposed to be commanding us Tea Party sheeple. If anything, and to go by my personal knowledge of Tea Partiers – more of them are owners of small, and even micro-small businesses. There’s a fair number of retirees, lots of military veterans, heaps of fairly observant churchgoers; all of this makes one particular assertion fairly risible – that we were all stupid dope-smokers in high school who couldn’t into college or get real jobs and don’t pay taxes. Have to admit, I was shaking my head over that one. If anything, most of us were probably totally earnest, clean-cut parent-respecting nerds, back in the day – and were roundly laughed at by the dope-smoking crowd.
Seems to me also, that the level of disparagement aimed at the Tea Partiers is rising, of late – and so is the ugly slant taken by some popular culture outlets. At least those responsible for the latest kerfuffle, which has a plotline of Captain America meeting what appears to be a Tea Party protest, have had the grace – or at least the economic good sense to back down and render an apology. Even if it does seem more along the lines of “I’m sorry you were offended/I’m sorry we got caught” sort of weasel-apologies.
Oh, and for the umpteenth time – Sarah Palin is not our leader. Glenn Beck isn’t either, and Rush Limbaugh certainly isn’t. And most of us are at least as angry at the Republicans as any else, so please spare me the insistence that the Grand Old Party is our puppetmaster. If fact, most of us wouldn’t bother pissing on the traditional Republican leadership cadre if they were on fire.We have no leader. The whole thing is a distributed insurgency – and for what it is worth, some of the loosely-associated groups are going and doing their own thing. With greater or lesser degrees of success. Personally, I think those groups who are depending on a handful of funding sources with deep pockets and paying for services rendered, rather than the dedication of volunteers and many small donations are on the wrong track. That runs the danger of becoming what made us angry in the first place. But as I said before: a herd of cats, all moving more or less in the same direction.
Ah well –interesting times. And on the anniversary of the start of the whole Tea Party movement (February 21, which strangely enough is also my birthday) they may get even more interesting yet.
(Recieved this request from a reader of my Open Salon Blog
I am an officially middle-aged, female, Canadian civilian from the Toronto area in Canada. You can find the first of several weekly Sunday night posts at my Open Salon blog, here.
Sgt Mom, I am hoping you may be willing to help me with a writing project I am developing. The project is about the stories of the fans, or fanatics as he likes to call us, of Henry Rollins. I am going to take time this next year researching, and compiling the personal stories of a significant number of ‘fanatics’ who have been inspired, influenced, helped, and otherwise impacted, by Henry. While the personal stories will not be specific to those in the military, it is absolutely critical that as many of those stories are captured as possible. During the first week of this project I have received some great personal stories, both military and civilian, through my preliminary post at opensalon.com.
If you would be willing to put this request for stories from Henry Rollins fans out to your online community at The Daily Brief, and any other blogs or networks you might be connected to, I would be so grateful.
Any personal stories, will not be published without the consent of the writers, prior to final publication. At this early stage I am thinking it will be an electronic publication, with a completion date of December 2010. I will stay in touch with all contributors as the project evolves to answer any questions, and keep people up to speed on how it’s unfolding. I would like to send the final work to Henry Rollins for his 50th birthday in February of 2011. None of the information I receive will be published elsewhere without the consent of the authors prior to publication. I will keep people posted on the project as it starts to roll out. I expect it to take most of 2010 as I will be working on this around my paid gig and teenagers, responsibilities I am grateful to have, yet leave little time for life’s other passions like writing.
Questions, stories and comments can be emailed to me at bennettangela@rogers.com, or through my Open Salon Blog.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about posting this to your online community. I sincerely appreciate anything you might be able to do to help. I’m just another Rollins fanatic, trying to give back a little something to someone who has had a significant impact on me, and many others in our global neighbourhood.
Sincerely,
Angela.
(All right then – got any good stories for Angela?)
