Category Archives: Pajama Game

Therapy Culture

Posted on by
8

Among one of the small stories that I remember hearing, or reading after the monster tsunami that struck South-East Asia on the day after Christmas several years ago was the one about the clouds of mental-health professionals, breathlessly hurrying in to offer grief and trauma counseling to the understandably traumatized survivors… only to discover that… well, most of them were getting along fine. And if not fine, at least reasonably OK; yes, they were grieving, they were traumatized by all sorts of losses, their lives and livelihoods, their communities and their families had been brutally ripped apart, but a large number of the survivors seemed inclined to be rather stoic about it all. They seemed to be more interested in pulling up their socks, metaphorically speaking, and getting on with it. It appeared that, according to the story, their culture and religion predisposed them to a mind-set that said: the incomprehensible does indeed happen, wheel of life, turn of fate and all that, and when it happens, pull up your socks and get on with it.

The peripatetic grief counselors seemed a little at a loss, that their services were in so little demand in the face of (to them) such obvious need. I was also left wondering if wall-to-wall counseling was somewhat akin to taking a ton of over-the-counter remedies for a case of the flu or a cold. In most cases, you’re gonna get over it, anyway.

When my parents lost their house, lock stock and contents in the Paradise Mountain/Valley Center fire in 2003, Blondie and I were monitoring the whole situation from a distance. This was the house that my parents had built together, after owning the land for nearly twenty-five years previously. It had everything in it that I remember growing up with, from the spiky Danish Moderne teak dining room set, to a complete run of American Heritage magazines, from the days when it was in hard-cover and without advertisements, and every shred of mementoes and furniture inherited from our grandparents and Great-Aunt Nan… everything that had not been diverted to my sister Pip, my brothers and I. My parents were left with two vehicles, the clothes they stood up in, their pets, and a small number of things my mother put into her pockets when she did a final sweep through the house as the fire roared up the hill, or that the firemen grabbed off the walls when the heat of it began exploding the windows inwards.

They were rocked… for about a day. And then they borrowed a camper, and moved right back onto their hill, and began planning to rebuild the house. As my mother philosophically explained many times to us, their friends, and those members of the disaster-relief community offering counseling and therapy, she and my father had gotten off rather lucky in comparison to others. They were retired, and did not have to rebuild a business, they had escaped the fire with their pets and themselves physically unscathed, and they were completely insured. All they had lost were things. And one more thing: they had lived in fire country for many years, and always in the back of their mind was this very possibility. They knew the risks and accepted them willingly. The odds caught up with them, at last but they pulled up their socks and got on with it. I own to being quite proud of my parents for being so stoical about the whole thing… really, it harks back to my current obsession, the 19th Century. I’ve been reading a lot of memoirs, and accounts of fairly shattering events, and yet the people writing them afterwards seem remarkably un-traumatized and quite grounded, following upon events that by twentieth-century mental health practice would have justified a life-time valium prescription and a couple of decades of survivor-support meetings. As I told Mom and Dad about one of the characters I am writing about , “Today, he’d be in therapy for post-traumatic stress… but he’s a Victorian, so he’s only a little haunted.”

I have to admit to a sneaking affection for the Victorians; at once terribly sentimental and operatic in their emotions, but at the same time fully aware that bad things could, and indeed happen fairly often. Husbands buried wives with depressing frequency, also wives burying husbands ditto, and parents buried small children ditto and vice versa; accidents of industry, transportation and war occurred with similarly discouraging frequency. Victorian death rituals are infamous for what we have thought, during the enlightened century just past, to be terribly over-wrought, indulgent and … well, just too morbid. But I do wonder, if maybe they might have been better able to cope, and emerge being able to function after catastrophic tragedies, knowing that the possibility of such experiences was always out there. Sure, there were people back then who were entirely shattered by various traumatic experiences, and self-medication with a variety of interesting substances was not something of recent invention— opiate addiction positively soared among injured Civil War veterans— but still and all, one does wonder.

Discuss among yourselves, if interested!

Movie Review: Amazing Grace

Posted on by
1

So we whiled away an overcast Friday afternoon by going to the movies. There were three reasons for this: I feel I am duty bound to boost the first-weekend attendance of any intelligent and interesting-looking bit of historical film going, Blondie will watch Ioan Gruffudd in anything; double points and drooling slightly especially if he is costumed in tight trousers, tall boots and a shirt romantically opened halfway down the front… and where was I? Oh, third reason. No car crashes, explosions and machine gun fire.

Be warned though: when it comes out on DVD, it will make an excellent drinking game. Every time you see a British actor you recognize from Masterpiece Theater, knock back a shot for every presentation he or she was in. I guarantee everyone at the party will be paralytic by the end of the first half-hour, forty-five minutes max. It does have the distinct vibe of those lush and lovingly produced British television epics of a certain sort: all it lacks is the genteel host, sitting in a leather armchair, turning the pages of a book and setting the scene in orotund tones. The settings and costumes, and period details were as immaculate as they always are in these efforts. Rooms didn’t look like sets; they looked like rooms; many of them crowded and cluttered, and sometimes rather dim.

The first few minutes seemed a little awkward, rather jarring in setting up the characters and premise, and I mentally rewrote some of the dialogue. Bad habit of mine, having been intensely steeped in period literature, but either I adjusted or the writing got better. I think the latter, for a lot of the later dialogue was on-point.

The story was of that of William Wilberforce; a name not terribly familiar to Americans, and his long and discouraging struggle to outlaw slavery in the British Isles and in the British Empire as it was at the end of the 18th Century. The accounts of the abolitionist movement taught in our schools is pretty much focused on the American abolitionists at a later date, many of them inspired and even encouraged by Wilberforce himself, so this story is not a terribly over-familiar one to most Americans. William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and John Brown, to give a couple of examples- them we have heard of. Often and at length.

The structure of the story might be a little hard to follow, initially: it hops back and forth, telling the story of Wilberforce, as a fairly well-born and well-connected young Member of Parliament, a forceful orator and able politician, and a good friend of William Pitt the Younger. He is young and dashing, beloved by his friends… even his household staff is fond of him, and accustomed to his eccentricities, among which is a fondness for all kinds of animals not normally considered as pets. He is also extremely and unashamedly devout, and in an effort by his good friend Pitt to find him a cause by which he might serve both God and Mammon (in the form of Pitt’s government) … he becomes devoted to the cause of abolishing chattel slavery, to the endangerment of his health and sanity.

Among Wilberforces’ first political allies in this effort who are not related to him by blood are the amazingly twisty Lord Charles Fox (Michael Gambon), political genius extraordinaire, and Thomas Clarkson (Rufus Sewell), a scholar with a bent for research and a passion for abolition. They are both given memorably amusing lines of dialogue: really, if I hadn’t seen “Cold Comfort Farm, I wouldn’t have thought Rufus Sewell had it in him to be a comic, and sometimes rather touching foil. (He usually gets the rather grim and earnest roles.)

Other noted moments: Ciaran Hinds, as one of the principal opponents to abolishing the slave trade, Lord Tarleton. Recently come from battling those rebellious Americans, he is the representative for Liverpool, and shows off his damaged sword-hand, as a war wound. Most Americans would have dearly loved a very much larger piece out of Banastre Tarleton than that, so he makes a very suitable villain.

And there it is: the movie makes clear what a long and dedicated effort it took to bring this about. For it meant a lot of work; writing, and preaching and persuading, not just of the high and the mighty, but of the ordinary people. Of this are solid, and very real grass-roots movements made, or at least, those of them that last, one person at a time being convinced against their economic self-interests. It does not happen overnight: it takes a while, and if anyone should be seeing this as some sort of politically correct fable, expecting the righteous cause to effortlessly sweep all before it… well, this should give pause. People grow old, grow weary and blind, loose their health and their illusions, and die before the cause is won. But when victory comes, it is sweet and just… and one which all can take comfort in, having been brought around by reason and persuasion. And the occasional political sly maneuver.

Money and time well-spent, overall. Not quite as literary as “Shakespeare in Love”, but not as drearily PC as “Amistad”. (Blondie says that the male leads are majorly studly and straight, which knocks out a certain theory about actors who can swish about in cloaks and swords and all that.)

Doing That Thing You Do

Posted on by
2

So, yeah, my heart hasn’t really been in this blogging thing for a while… no, no nonono, I am not working up to pulling the plug, it’s just that I have been diverted by another mission. As I said in a post a couple of months ago, I’m just laying down to bleed a while, then up and fight again… but I know how Timmer feels. There’s a lot of stuff going on, which in days of yore I would have been perfectly at home, piling on with the rest of us. Some of it is just the usual blogger shit-fit: Marcotte who? At where? Ummm. OK… this is the blogger-face you want with your campaign? It’s always a bad sign when you piss off more than you make friends with. Didn’t anyone actually read hers and that other blog before taking them on board officially? Apparently not. Smooth move, Ex-Lax, as we used to say in junior high.

Anna Nicole Smith, news coverage of, 24-7. Umm, OK. Clear demonstration that the major legacy media are not serving us well, although the Princess Di-like coverage fairly well illustrates the adage about first time tragedy, second time farce. We’re kinda over served in the farce department here, although the astronaut Lisa whats-er-fern is probably grateful for it.

Britney Spears, bald. Sorry, I’m not stooping to the obvious here. (Although the remembrance of a cartoon entitled “Her First Masked Ball” keeps popping up in my mind. I think it was in National Lampoon in about 1979. You google for it, you pervert.) Girl, the trailer park is calling. It is your destiny!

Talk about flashbacks to the 1970s, though… watching our major political parties and politicians maneuver over the last couple of days. Tragedy and farce, tragedy and farce, people. Only this time it’s going to be a tragedy and a tragedy again. Those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it. It’s been like watching a blindfolded person walk over a cliff; for the purposes of scoring domestic political points, just go ahead and kiss off and abandon our allies (yes, we do have some, here and there, although you wouldn’t know it from your abject flunkies in the legacy media) and pull our forces out of Iraq in 90 days or whatever other timeline you have pulled out of your ass which will look good in the polls. Yeah. Sure. Whatever.

Sell out our national credibility and commitment to a long and difficult mission for a mess of pottage and polls. Do whatever it takes to keep you in that nice little office you have scored for yourself. Just keep thinking of your short-term interest. Just keep hoping that all that jihadist narsty stuff in the woodshed will all go away, when George Bush exits the White House. Yep, just keep hoping. Get your friends and mouthpieces in the legacy media to help you out with that. Everybody will love us once again, once the Bushhitlertyrant is gone, and our betters are in control. Take a nice long drink of the Koolaid, comrade, you will feel so much better.

Me, I am trying to take the long view. With luck the blogosphere will circumvent the “flee-all-is-lost-in Iraq” meme, as best we can. No more kindly and authoritative Uncle Walty declaring without opposition after the Tet Offensive , that “all is lost in Vietnam! Flee, flee for your lives!” And also there is a means of fighting the “our troops are bloodthirsty baby-killers and war-criminals” meme. Here’s hoping we can scotch that one, right at the starting post, although given that the so-called military expert for the Washington Post is singing that little ditty like his hope of heaven depends on it doesn’t necessary ensure that that particular meme will go down without a fight. It’s going to be a bumpy ride in the next two years: fasten your metaphorical seatbelt, and prepare to weather the shitstorm

Me… I have the feeling that bad stuff is going to happen. And that I can do my best part now by going back to our stories, or recollections of who we are, and what we had to overcome. We have had hard times, bad times, times when we might have given it all up. We have to remember these stories. Our past, those stories that some of us know, and that some of us have yet to be reminded of, we will need them, very soon. Things will start happening, in the next months or years. Events will overtake the best intentions of us all, and so we need to be reminded of our history, our stories and our heroes and heroines.

They are a talisman, our hope, our light in the dark when every other light has gone out.

IN SEARCH OF ROOT CAUSES…

Posted on by
1

I am not alone in obsessing what fuels the radical elements of Islam in their apparent desire to hasten the end of days. The various mechanisms that contribute to its propagation (indoctrination in the schools, grinding poverty, corrupt leadership and so forth) are nothing new, but this whole thing seems to be something of a different phenomenon. While I do not by any means consider myself to be a scholar of theology, anthropology or, for that matter, history, all of these topics provide insight into the pickle we find ourselves in. Nor is it my intent to write a scholarly paper on the things that I’ve been reading, but to rather tell a little about them and why they are interesting. Continue reading →

Comancheria: Part 3

Posted on by
Reply

What did a well-known naturalist, a daring mail-coach driver on the hazardous route through West Texas, a fiery newspaper editor, a tireless peacemaker and advocate for the Indians, and an amateur tinkerer/inventor all have in common, besides all being present in Texas in the 1840ies? Frederick Lindheimer, William “Big Foot” Wallace, John Salmon “Rip” Ford, Robert Neighbors and Samuel Walker all served at various times under the command of Jack Hays, the legendary Ranger Captain.

The Rangers of that time were nothing like their present-day iteration… an elite State law-enforcement body. And under Hays’ captaincy, they became more than just the local mounted volunteer militia, called up on a moments’ notice to respond to a lightening fast raid on their settlement or town by Indians or cross-border bandits. They took to patrolling the backcountry, looking specifically for a fight and hoping to forestall raids before they happened, or failing that, to track down raiding parties, recover loot and captives, and to administer payback. There was only one abortive attempt to have them wear uniforms. Ranger volunteers provided their own weapons and horses, and usually their own rations, although the State of Texas did supply ammunition. They were famously unscathed by anything resembling proper military discipline and polish, as the regular Army would discover to their horror during the Mexican War. A contemporary newspaper caricature of a typical ‘Texas Ranger” featured a hairy and ragged creature resembling “Cousin It”, slumped on a horse and wearing a belt stuffed all the way around with knives and pistols.

All that Hays asked of his Rangers was that they follow him… and fight. And so they did, for Texas attracted young and restless males with a taste for adventure, a bit of ambition and no small propensity for administering violence when called upon. They came like moths to a flame, before, during and after the Texas War for Independence; many of them gravitating like a trout going upstream into an enlistment as a Ranger or service in the local militia. During the early 1840s Hays commanded a company of fluctuating size, operating out of San Antonio, which turned out to be extraordinarily effective, and made his name a legend in Texas. Many who had only heard of him were utterly flummoxed upon meeting him in person for the first time. He was slight and short, quiet-spoken and almost shy, appearing to be (and a contemporary sketch and various descriptions conform this) about fourteen years old. In between forays and patrols he drilled his company tirelessly in shooting and horsemanship, copying many of the tricks of fighting from horseback used by the Comanche and other Plains warriors. Meeting the Comanche on anything like equal terms in a fight at short distance had to wait on a single technological innovation, and Hays was the first to put it to effective use.

Until 1844, the Rangers fought primarily with the same kind of weapons that Americans had always used: single-shot flintlock or percussion rifles of various type and design, augmented by single-shot pistols. While such rifles in well-trained hands were punishingly accurate, they were awkward and slow to reload, and nearly impossible to use from horseback in a running fight. Even single-shot pistols took time to reload, time during which an opponent with a bow and arrow could get off any number of accurate shots. But in 1839, motivated by some mad, god-only-knows, pie-in-the-sky, by-god-it’s-crazy-but-just-might-work impulse, the State of Texas ordered a quantity of 180 patent .36 caliber 5-shot revolvers from Samuel Colt’s factory in Paterson, New Jersey. A portion of them were actually issued to certain Texas Navy fighting ships, where they served about as well as expected, but they began to be largely used by the Texas Army… and increasingly by Ranger units, to astonishing effect.

The early Paterson Colts were delicate, and needed constant care and maintenance: loading the cylinder and reattaching it to the barrel was a finicky and careful business. To modern eyes they are over-long in the barrel, heavy and clumsy in appearance. In 1843, they were expensive… but worth every penny to the men who carried them into a fight with mounted Comanche warriors. Being able to fire five shots before needing to reload evened the odds considerably; and Hays’s Rangers usually carried two; it was also possible to purchase extra cylinders, have them loaded and change them out quickly. Colt’s reputation in Texas was made, especially after Hays and a party of fourteen Rangers armed with Paterson Colts charged and routed a party of eighty Comanche, in a running fight along the Pedernales River.

A subsequent design improvement for military use in the Mexican War saw Ranger Samuel Walker working with Samuel Colt on improving the original design. This new design, a six-shot .44 revolver which weighed a whopping four and a half pounds made Colt’s reputation and his economic future secure. Subsequent iterations of the Colt revolver proved enduringly popular in Texas to this day. Traveling there in the early 1850s, Frederick Law Olmsted wrote “There are probably in Texas about as many revolvers as male adults, and I doubt if there are one hundred in the state of any other make.”

For all it’s various shortcomings, the Paterson Colt, and its descendents filled a very particular need— the need of a horse- mounted fighter for a repeat-fire weapon that was relatively accurate at short range, rugged, easy to use, and capable of evening the chances of survival against a hard-fighting, and similarly mounted enemy. In the hands of Rangers, soldiers, lawmen and citizens, a Colt revolver was all that.

Except on occasions where a shotgun was called for, but that’s another story.
(Next: An unexpected peace treaty with the Comanche)

Comancheria: Part 2

Posted on by
1

(Part 1 is here)

It was not as if the Texans were entirely defenseless against a surprise attack like the Great Linnville Raid. Poor in cash, poor in practically everything but land, the conditions of the frontier had attracted large numbers of the restless and adventurous, who were not inclined to accept any sort of insult lying down. With no meaningful standing army, defense of local communities depended on their militia… usually composed of every able-bodied male. The sheer size of Texas and the nature of war waged by the horse-lords of the Southern Plains made it imperative that at least a portion of the militia be mounted. Over the twenty years after the founding of Stephen Austin’s colony the practice evolved for a mounted militia, ready to ride in pursuit of raiders within fifteen minutes after an alarm being sounded. Sometimes they were able to catch up and retrieve captives, or stolen horses. More often, the raiding Indians split up and melted like smoke into the wilderness, leaving their pursuers frustrated and fuming, their horses exhausted. It became quite clear, as more Anglo settlers poured into Texas, that the best defense was in the offense, to field a mounted patrol out ranging the back-country, looking to forestall Indian raids.

Such a Corps of Rangers was formally established on the eve of Texan rebellion against Mexico. Distinct from the militia and the regular army, the mounted ranging companies continued to serve after the war, in various forms and degrees of effectiveness, most of them locally supported. The citizen-rangers of the local companies assembled for short periods of time in response to specific dangers, their numbers ever-flexible. They supplied their own arms, horses and equipment. By the time of the Linnville Raid, most of them were veterans of the War for Independence, and had years of experience in the field otherwise; men like Mathew “Old Paint” Caldwell of Gonzalez, and the McCullough brothers, who had handled Sam Houston’s two artillery pieces at the Battle of San Jacinto. Ben McCullough had even been trained in outdoor skills by no less than Davy Crockett himself. Companies from settlements along the Colorado assembled under Edward Burleson, including Chief Placido and twelve Tonkawa Indians, who had their own score with the Comanche to settle, and twenty-one volunteers from Port Lavaca. Other volunteers gathered from Bastrop, Cuero, Victoria and other towns scattered along the river valleys between the coast and the start of the limestone hills.

Barely a week after the burning of Linnville, companies of volunteer Texans were closing in inexorably on the withdrawing Comanche raiding party, at an open plain by Plum Creek, a tributary of the San Marcos River near present-day Lockhart. Burdened by loot, captives and a slow-moving herd of stolen horses and mules, the raiders, a huge party of Penateka Comanche, led by a war chief called Buffalo Hump, had not split up and scattered as was their usual custom. Unknowing, Buffalo Hump’s war party were closely pursued by part of McCullough’s Gonzales company, who began seeing exhausted pack animals shot and left by the wayside. Caldwell and the other leaders had deduced the route by which they were returning, and had arranged their forces accordingly. They let the Comanche column pass, under a great cloud of dust and ash, for the prairie had recently been burned over.

Not until the Texans rode out from cover in two parallel lines converging on them, did the Comanche warriors even know they had been followed. Some of their gaudily adorned chiefs rode out to put on a show, intending to cover the withdrawal, taunting the waiting Texans, riding back and forth. A Texan sharp-shooter brought down the most flamboyant of the chiefs, and when several warriors rode out to carry his body away, the order for a charge was given. The Texans smashed through the line of Comanche fighters from both sides, and into the loot-laden horse and mule herd. As the herd stampeded, the whole raid dissolved into a rout, a hundred bloody running fights, with the Comanche fighters penned in and ridden down. The battle ran for fifteen miles, with some of the survivors chased as far as Austin. It was later estimated that the tribe lost about a quarter of their effective fighters. They never raided so far into the settled regions of Texas again, in such numbers… and after the Plum Creek fight learned to give a wide berth to volunteer Ranger companies.

One such company was based in San Antonio, composed of local volunteers and funded by local businessmen, many of whom also participated in the patrols. The captain of that company was a surveyor by profession, born in Tennessee and raised in Mississippi, who would live to a ripe old age as a politician and lawman in California. Quiet, modest, self-effacing, Jack Hays became the very beau ideal of a captain of Rangers. He had been among the volunteers at Plum Creek, but made his name in the decade afterwards, astounding people who knew only his reputation upon meeting him for the first time. He was slight, short and refined in appearance, and looked about fourteen years old. But he was a also gifted leader of irregular fighters, possessed an iron constitution, and procured for his men an innovation which allowed them to carry the fight against the Comanche Indians on something like equal terms… the Colt Revolver.

(to be continued)

How I Became a Veteran

Posted on by
Reply

I didn’t grow up in a military family, at least not active-duty military. But we were replete with veterans. Dad fought in Korea with the Marines, his dad was with the Army in WWI. Dad’s older brother was in the Merchant Marines. Both of Dad’s younger brothers served at least one tour with the Marines, and Mom’s great-grandpa served with the Ohio Infantry in the 1860s. Come to think of it, Mom’s baby sister joined the Air Force after she graduated high school, in the early 1950s. My brother joined the Marines in 1973 to avoid being drafted, but got a medical discharge before ever completing boot camp. The military was seen as a valid career option, a respectable choice, as well as a place to grow up. We saw it as a rung on the ladder of success, a starting point from which one could reach the moon, if one so desired.

I enlisted in the military twice – the Army National Guard while I was in college, and the Air Force after I graduated. Total time in service was just shy of 12 years, I think. Both times I joined for basically the same reasons – I didn’t see any other clear options for my life, and I wanted to serve my country. And both times, I would say the former reason carried more weight than the latter, but that doesn’t negate the desire to serve. And my time in the military, and the experiences I had there, crystallized and solidified my love of country, and strengthened my belief that while the U.S. isn’t perfect, it’s a damn good country.
Continue reading →

Comancheria

Posted on by
Reply

In his one-volume history of Texas “Lone Star”, T.R.. Fehrenbach cites one particular reason for Texas having such a distinctive culture relative to the other states. And there is a distinctly different “feel” to living here; of all the places in the States where I have lived or visited; only Utah and Hawaii came even close to it, for similar reasons. Hawaii is an island, and was once itself an independent kingdom. So was Utah, metaphorically speaking: an island of Mormon separatists in empty vastness of the Great Basin. They are still generic American places, although one has frangipani and fabulous beaches, and the other has spectacular mountains and religious conformity.

Texas is more of a reduced and concentrated American essence; a demi-glace as it were. Like Utah and Hawaii, Texas started as independent political entity and did experience a certain degree of isolation, especially in the early years of settlement by Spanish, Mexican and American arrivals, but Fehrenbach cites one more reason; that Texas was at war for a good fifty years.

This war was fought mainly on one front (occasionally varying the program with other hostile factions), and a bitter and protracted fight it was too, beginning with the early days of Stephen Austin’s colony in the 1820ies. It had something of inevitability about it, for it was fought mostly against the Comanche Indian tribes; only in the early days of the American colonies east of the Appalachians s had there been a war as prolonged and vicious. In most of the other territories later become states, either the Indians were not particularly warlike, settlements were sparse and easily defended— leaving the resident Indians to withdraw to the back country— or such conflict between settlers and tribes was briskly concluded within a few years and to the settler’s decided advantage. But in Texas, war with the Indians lasted until the last ragged band surrendered to the reservation life in 1875; a period of fifty years during which no settler ever felt entirely secure, even in the center of what were larger towns at the time.

There was a dreadful inevitability in the collision of restless Anglo-American borderers, many of them that contentious Scots-Irish breed of whom it is usually said that they were born fighting, with the Comanche. But the Anglo-Texan borderers occasionally took a break from fighting; to farm, or ranch, to plant cotton or practice some more peaceful trade; the Comanche never did. For the Comanche lived entirely by war, by ransom and plunder—especially for horses, which they valued over practically anything else. They were restless and ever-moving, accustomed to hardship, feared by other tribes, whom they pushed out of the way, taking what they wanted, when they wanted it. There was no other occupation; no other means of advancement save by being a fearless warrior and raider. Such a harsh life eliminated the unfit brutally, as brutally as they eliminated their own enemies. At the high noon-time of their peak, they were the lords of the harsh and beautiful country of the southern plains, from the Arkansas River, to the Balcones Escarpment. They ranged and raided as far as they pleased, occasionally interrupted by a fragile peace treaty.

One of these treaties came to a spectacularly violent end, in the middle of San Antonio in the spring of 1840, during the course of what had been intended as a peace conference. In token of their good faith, a contingent of Penateka Comanche chiefs were supposed to surrender a number of captives, and sign a treaty. They turned over only a few, one of them a teenaged girl who had been savagely abused during a year of captivity. She told the Texan officials that the Comanche held more than a dozen other captives, but intended to extort a large ransom for each, one by one. When the chiefs and the peace commissioners met in a large building known as the Council House, the commissioners asked after the other captives who whose release had been promised. The leader of the chiefs — who had promised to bring in all the captives— answered that they had brought in the only one they had. The others were with other tribes. And then he added, insolently, “How do you like that answer?”

The short answer was the Texans did not. There were already soldiers standing by: they were ordered to surround the Council House, and the chiefs informed that they would be held hostage until their warriors returned to their camps and brought back the rest of the hostages. Almost as one, the chiefs drew knives and rushed the soldiers guarding the doors. The fat was then in the fire, as the warriors who were waiting outside in the yard entered the fray, and a short and vicious running fight erupted in the street leading down to the San Antonio River. The Council House fight vigorously re-ignited the war between Comanche and Texan, when a huge Comanche war party came down from the hills in the fall, sweeping down the empty country between the Guadalupe and Lavaca Rivers. They terrorized the town of Victoria and burned Linnville on Lavaca Bay. The citizens of Linnville watched from the refuge of boats offshore, as the Indians looted the warehouses and homes. They departed, with two hundred horses all laden with plunder, but what happened on the return from that spectacular raid set in motion a gathering of forces and personalities who would eventually reduce the proud lords of the Southern Plains to a handful of desperate, starving beggars.

(to be continued)

The Writers Life Waltz

Posted on by
2

It’s been kind of a frenetic waltz this week… which is a round-about way of explaining why I didn’t write much original stuff this week. I just got obsessed with the new book; yeah, this one has taken hold, and when I’m on a roll, I’m on a roll, and nothing else seems quite real, or very important.

See, the first book… well, it was actually the second book, if you count the memoir which you really can’t because that was all basically little scraps of reminiscence stitched together… the first book was pretty easy to write. I sat down and wrote the first draft in a pell-mell rush, all over the space of about two months. The plot was pretty much already there, from start to finish; being based upon real people and real events has the effect of handing me the hardest part on a silver platter already. All I had to do was flesh them out a little, do a little guessing as to how they might have related to each other, come up with some amusing conversation, and a lot of description… hey presto, there you go. 120,000 well-polished and carefully chosen words. As a celebrated wit whose name I can’t remember at the moment was supposed to have said, “It’s easy, just open a vein, and let it flow.”

It actually was easy, because I was able to think about them for a long time, before I actually buckled down and did the writing…. For me, that’s what I need to do about half the time; to work out in my head what needs to happen, and how to go about making it happen. Sometimes I need to bounce ideas off other people: believe me, that kind of feedback is above price. It’s were the best ideas develop. And sometimes the magic is happening. I sit down at the computer and stuff just happens. I cope up for air, and there’s half a chapter written, and it’s pure gold, and it’s already four in the afternoon, and where the hell did the time go?
Anyway, the last book was something I lived with for a long time, before I actually buckled down and put it all on paper.

(It’s still in front of a publisher, by the way … and there are two more I will submit it to, in case of rejection. (Have to wait and do it sequentially, these people are anal about simultaneous submissions!) As my writer friend on the West Coast says, trying to find a publisher for a novel is kind of like trying to find adoptive parents for a minority Down ’s syndrome child: they are out there, but it takes a bit of looking.)

The new book; now, the one about the German colonies in the Texas Hill Country? I have built the scaffolding of plot and character for that from scratch… although there are some real people in it, some of who are very interesting people in their own right and who will take over, if I don’t keep a firm grip on them… (You… sit down, and behave, this story is not about you!)
What is really curious to me is how many of the fictional people, and the plot events just seemed to spring up from something I read in the course of doing research. A sentence here, a paragraph there, even just a single name… and a whole character is launched, obstreperous, amusing, and fully alive to me. There were incidents and events that I just kept circling back around towards, without knowing quite why: I just had the sense that they would have something important to do with the story. I had to set them aside like pieces for a mosaic, and figure out how to fit them all together later. There are also some characters who start out in the plot as a sort of extra, with one or two lines, but one way and another they turn out to be a little more important and before you know it, there is a fully functional and almost essential sub-plot… when all I had really needed was… you know, like two lines! It may take a lot longer to work through the first draft, then sit down and expand, edit and polish to a high shine. I’m guessing six months, at least, especially if I have to take (bleah) more paid outside work!

At this rate of proliferation, there just might be two books in this epic: the first one to cover the immigration, the building of the settlements, and the peace treaty with the Comanche, and the second to cover the Civil War and aftermath. There is no end of incident to cover, not to mention operatic levels of drama, murder, revenge, stolen children, madness, true love, sudden death… all this and civil war, too. And maybe a cattle stampede, just to vary the program. Just by way of a tease, I think I shall post a sample chapter…. (Suggestions and feedback are welcome, always. And any introductions to a literary agent will be extremely welcome, being that the big publishers are closed to me, unless I have one… and they are even harder to find!)

Later: Entry deleted and re-entered, in order to allow comments. Something about punctuation in the title often screws these things us. Don’t know why – Sgt. Mom)

Just a Wee Morsel

Posted on by
5

(Just for fun, this is one of the stories that I bashed out just after I retired, a sort of update of Kiplings’ Sergeants Three, and a way of explaining what women in the military were really like. Enjoy!)

One very slow news day at the tail end of the buildup to the first Gulf War, I decided to hunt up my three friends: Sergeants Leroy and Maculhaney, who were attached to the mobile AFRTS station, and Orvis who was attached to Combat Camera, where she was stubbornly campaigning to adopt the motto “You Kill Them, We’ll Capture The Moment.”
“You lookin’ for Deege?” At the station, Ty Reese, Maculhaney’s friend and cohort on assorted broadcasting crimes waved to me from the studio trailer door. He had
kicked it open with his foot, and kept it in place by hooking his
toe around the edge of it. He also had a fistful of
plain CD jewelbox cases in one hand, a coffee mug in the other hand, and a three-day old copy of the “Stars & Stripes” tucked between his elbow and side,. Altogether it was an impressive display of organizational juggling.
” Just missed her… she’s off shift, probably heading back to her hooch. It’s two down, three over from here….Hey, that anything more current?” He eyed the newspaper I had brought out from my hotel downtown with positive hunger, and I answered regretfully,
“I bought it for Mackie, but I’ll ask her to pass it on to you when she’s done…its yesterdays’ Washington Post, though.”
“Ma’am, at this rate, I’m about to subscribe to the West Podunk Gazette Recorder, if’n they’d promise delivery to our hooch, and four pages of funnies on Sunday!”
“I can spare you a week-old copy of Time.” I fished it out of my bag, and Ty deftly snapped it under his elbow with the newspaper, saying
“Inquiring minds want to know… whaddy they say at the press briefings
that they don’t show on CNN?”
“That the doughnuts are stale, and the coffee is cold,” I said, wryly, and Ty grinned like the genial maniac that he was,
“Life is just full of these little tragedies, ain’t it?” and withdrew into the studio. I had met several more of the broadcasters, since I got to know Maculhaney and Leroy. While military radio broadcasters did not vary quite so much as the civilian variety, being more or less the same age, and displaying about the same amount of experience, education and physical fitness, they were a little outside the other military professionals I had met so far. The military broadcasters were intelligently verbal, aggressively impatient with the slow on the uptake, and needled each other on air and off with wit and creativity. Hanging out with them frequently sounded like an endless improvisational skit created by an off-the-wall comedy troop with a taste for lavatorial humor and an encyclopedic memory of twenty years of popular music.
I followed Ty’s vague directions. Although I had visited many times, the tent city lamentably looked all alike. Halfway there, I caught up to Maculhaney, just as a large tan vehicle rumbled past, missing her by inches.
“You ought to be more careful!” I said, “I’d hate to be deprived of one of my deep background sources.”
“Ehh, they wouldn’t dare run me over… the paperwork would never end,” Maculhaney was casually dismissive.
“So you like living dangerously?” I asked and she answered
“Well, statistically, the only things I have to worry about are an airplane crashing on top of me, and the Viet Cong overrunning the compound. Drunk drivers and colonels who hate rock and roll are a much more significant hazard… stick with us, and you’ll just have to worry about falling aircraft, and substance abuse.”
“Thanks. I think,” I said, as the door to the female NCO hooch fell closed behind us. I knew by then, others lived there besides Maculhaney, Leroy and Orvis, but those others came and went, as the military mission required. Since they had been there nearly the longest, they had done the most toward making it, if not precisely homelike, a little less bleakly comfortless. The latest innovation occupied the center of Maculhaney’s bed, nestled in her upturned helmet on what looked like an old terrycloth towel, a tiny piebald puddle of fur.
“Do you know there’s a cat in your hat?” I asked, and Maculhaney replied
“Yes, but I’ve always more favored green eggs and ham better…. I forgot, you hadn’t met the Wee Morsel.” She gently slid her fingers under the sleeping kitten, and lifted it out. It barely filled the palm of one hand. Sleep disturbed, the tiny thing mewed a nearly silent, feeble, protest, and I said,
“Good lord, its eyes aren’t even open! Where did you get it? Doesn’t it have a mother, someplace?”
“It did… she was a stray that some of the Army guys were feeding. They had her sort of tamed, but something went wrong, after she littered. The guys found her dead, and they went looking for the kittens. This one was the only one still alive. D’you know we have a veterinary detachment here, for the bomb dogs? Well, they took the kitten to the vet, and one of the Army guys is an old buddy of Leroy’s husband. He is such a softie for our dumb chums, he begged Lee and I to take over, and we’re such softies ourselves that we said we would.”
All the while, Maculhaney was cuddling the kitten in one hand, and taking out a bottle of
some thick, yellowish fluid out of the refrigerator with the other. Setting the bottle on the table, she took an eyedropper from some mysterious store in her battledress pockets, and began dribbling the fluid into the Wee Morsel’s tiny pink mouth. “He… I know it’s a he, got itsy, bitsy teensy balls…is about a week and a half old. We’ve been feeding him like this for about four days, and I think it’s working. This stuff is condensed milk and water, with an egg yolk and
some corn syrup mixed in.”
The Wee Morsel sucked avidly on the eyedropper, wrapping his paws, fringed with translucent little claws, around it. It’s ears lay close against the skull like delicate new leaves and the black and white fur was still so thin and short that the pink skin underneath could still be seen.
“Whatever are you going to do with it?” I asked, fascinated. I already had an idea for a
human-interest essay taking form.
“Don’t know,” Maculhaney refilled the dropper, deftly easing it into the tiny mouth, “Depends on if it lives… poor little thing! I’ve hand-raised kittens before, but they were older than this.”
I noticed, however, that she stroked the Wee Morsel’s head delicately, and as tiny as it was, it rose to meet the caress.

The events of the next week or so pretty well drove the existence of the Wee Morsel out of mind. Leroy told me later that she managed to buy a wicker travel basket on the local economy, when it became apparent that the Wee Morsel was going to live, and needed a more suitable home than Maculhaney’s helmet. I presume that he shared the subsequent hours and days in the shelter during Scud alerts, since Maculhaney and Leroy were conscientious mother-substitutes. I honestly did not become aware of his existence again until several weeks afterwards, during another one of my visits to what Orvis described as “Mi dump, su dump.”
The black and white kitten drifted silently across the floor, after I had poured myself another cup of Leroy’s ever-present herb tea, and regarded me solemnly.
“Good heavens, he has grown,” I said, and Leroy laughed, and picked him up by the scruff of his neck and dropped him in my lap.
“He sure has, he’s eating solid grown-up cat food now, and sleeping all through
the night!”
Orvis, scowling at the letter pad propped against her knees, remarked
“Amen fo’ that!”
“Wait till you have kids,” Leroy said knowingly, and Orvis replied
“They the trouble that lil’ thang has been, then I won’t ever… waking’ up all nights, all hours, jus’ cause that thang let out a peep!”
The “lil’ thang” regarded me with ancient yellow-green eyes, and licked my wrist with a raspy pink tongue, before swarming up to table-top level, and crouching down, brief tail wrapped around haunches, to watch Leroy cleaning and reassembling a videotape recorder.
“The Prophet Mohammed is reported to have cut the sleeve off his robe, “I
said seditiously, “Rather than disturb his pet cat, asleep on his arm,”
Orvis retorted unprintably, and Leroy scratched the Wee Morsel between his tiny ears,
“Aww, don’ say that, Sunny… you just mad ’cause he put a dead scorpion on your pillow. That means he likes you.”
“A mighty hunter before the Lord,” Maculhaney remarked from her cot, where she was reading the latest “Atlantic”, “He is looking for your affection and approval. Be a sport and play along, or we shall never be able to place him with a suitable human.”
“I thought one of you would be taking him,” I said, and Maculhaney said,
“I have two already, and they don’t either of them takes kindly to interlopers. They are both elderly and cranky… it just wouldn’t be fair.”
“Mitch is allergic to cat dander,” Leroy said, “He can’t even stand to be in a room where a cat has been. I’ll have to wash everything that this lil’ fellow has touched, else Mitch ‘l be sneezing an’ coughing ’til next Christmas.”

“But what are you going to do when him, when you rotate home?” I said, and
Maculhaney answered,
“Oh, don’t worry about it, we’ll sort out something,”
I let the matter rest, for the moment. I knew as sure as the sun rose in the morning, Leroy and Maculhaney between them would see the piebald kitten to a loving home, with a commodious litter box and tuna on demand.
Away in the desert towards Iraq, Desert Storm broke and fell, and in a matter of weeks, Kuwait was liberated. I threw in my lot with a couple of old reporter friends who had plotted a lighting trip in a rented Range Rover— another story I have told elsewhere. By the time I visited Leroy and Maculhaney again, the kitten was a gangly adolescent cat, wearing a bright red harness and leash, and riding Maculhaney’s shoulder, as she walked along the main road through
tent city. I had the driver let me off, and the first thing I said was,
“Wasn’t there a popular song about taking the cat for a walk?”
“Norma Tanega, “Maculhaney answered instantly. Of course, she would know that.
“‘Walking My Cat Named Dog’… 1967ish, I believe.”
She set the Wee Morsel down at her feet, and he scampered obediently at the end of his leash as we walked together. Nearly as many people stopped to pet him as spoke to Maculhaney. I had never seen a cat take very well to a leash before, and when I remarked on it she answered,
“I don’t think he knows he’s a cat. I’m not at all sure what he thinks he is, but he definitely thinks he’s something more than a cat. He doesn’t meow, for one. He tries, but all that comes out is a tiny squeak. And he’s very much an inside cat. He won’t go outside, unless one of us takes him. Since he has been handled constantly since birth, he has bonded very well to humans… we are pretty close to finding him a good home.”
Inside the female NCO hooch, she unsnapped the leash, and the Wee Morsel made a beeline for Orvis’ area,
“Long time, no see, Reporter Lady,” said Orvis, in pleased surprise, “Dammit, cat, get outta there!” She scooped Wee Morsel out of an opened portabrace bag, “Go catch a rat, ‘r somthin’! So where’ve you been keeping yourself? ”
“Here and there,” I said, “I got a ride into Kuwait, stopped on the way back to liberate a cup of Leroy’s Red Zinger.”
“How did you find it all?” Maculhaney asked, and looked at the canvas ceiling
when I said,
“Basically, by following the road signs… actually? Looted to a faretheewell. They even ripped the sinks and toilets out of restrooms. I talked to some guys on the road out of town, they insisted there was a wrecked Iraqi truck full of sanitary napkins further up the road… do you know why a group of guys would rip off a truckload of sanitary napkins?”
“I haven’t got an earthly idea,” answered Maculhaney
“It sounds like a setup to a joke,” Orvis said, and Leroy suggested.
“Maybe they were trying to corner the market… looking to be the kings of the sanitary napkin black market.” She capped that with a suggestion based on a crude slang expression and an ethnic slur, which was as apt as it was not repeatable in polite company. Maculhaney looked pained when the rest of us snickered guiltily, and I said,
“That’s a headline that will never see the light of day. I actually thought about doing a story about your furry friend, here. I talked to my editor last night, and he’s already drooling. Sort of human-interest thing. Resourceful American military women rescue and nurture a helpless little kitten, and seek good home for it. Played right, it would have people lined up to adopt the Wee Morsel, and get him a ride back to the States in royal comfort. It could put your names in the headlines,”
“And our asses in slings, “Orvis said, bluntly, “Cat, get yo’ furry butt outta that bag!” She lifted Wee Morsel out of the portabrace again, and plunked him on her cot, where he licked his paws and pretended it had never happened. I looked at Leroy and Maculhaney, and they looked equally unenthused.
“It’s a good idea, “Maculhaney finally allowed, with a diplomatic touch of polite enthusiasm. “It could work, too. But it only has about an eighty per-cent chance of working the way you wanted it to.”
“Not even that good. I say sixty to seventy-per cent, “Leroy said, “Which means a twenty to forty per-cent chance of rebounding on us. It’s a great idea… but I’d rather do this our way.”
“But why?” I said, “A story would make you all look great. It would make the military look great… it’s a win-win situation. Explain to me why it wouldn’t work, as you see it.”
“‘Cause you don’t know diddly ’bout how the military really works,” Orvis said bluntly, “Fo’ all you been hangin’ with us, you still ain’t got a clue.”
“Explain it to me,” I said, exasperated. “How could it make trouble for you?”
“Because this whole thing with the Wee Morsel has been… well, definitely against the rules,” Maculhaney explained with her usual air of cynical detachment. “We have been keeping a pet in the barracks. Diverting Air Force time, energy and resources towards a questionable end. What if someone living here in the last four months had been allergic? That Army veterinarian wasn’t over here to look after sick kittens. Those egg-yolks I got from the guys in the mess
certainly weren’t suppose to be fed to them, either.”
“We got away with it because no one here complained,” Leroy added, “But I guaran-damn-tee, if you write your story, someone would raise a stink, no matter how cute other people think it ‘ud be, no matter how many other people think it plays “abide with me” on the heartstrings! And it would just take one… some damnfool congressman, or some bastard of a retired colonel with his shorts in a twist about what women are doing in his military. Trust me, someone would see it their duty to see us nailed to the wall. And we’d be screwed, even if we weren’t just ordered to dump him back where we found him.”
“Which we wouldn’t do, to start with,” Maculhaney said, “‘Excuse us for caring, but
we’re rather fond of the Wee Morsel.”
“People over here now are pretty cool with it,” Orvis chimes in. I was interested to notice that she was ticking Wee Morsel’s whiskers, “Hey, nothing’s too good for our boys and girls in a war zone, we entitled to whatever keeps us outta the rubber room at Malcom Gow. But the war’s about over, and the regular rules are gonna apply here. An’ the biggest of the
rules is, “thou shalt not draw unfavorable attention”. ”
“Making a gesture might work, in the short term. It would get Wee Morsel back to the States and some cute pictures in the Sunday supplements, but when it all dies down, those that make the rules will be remembering that we rocked the boat. Like Leroy said, they’d see us nailed to the wall. Quiet honestly, I don’t think my career can stand it.” Maculhaney said, gravely and Leroy said,
“Mine for damn sure can’t!”
“But it’s a sure-fire story, “I protested, “Isn’t there some way I can write it… maybe without mentioning names?”
“Lose our names, change some of the details,” Maculhaney considered it soberly, “If you can wait a bit… once everyone rotates home, and starts to loose track of who was where, and did what with whom. It would still be a cute story…”
“And as cold as a plate of vichyssoise, “I conceded, “Well, if that’s the only way it will fly… at least get me a picture of the Morsel to go with it.”

“Deal,” Leroy said, “As soon as you get a picture of him, then you can publish your story.”
We shook hands on it, and I passed the rest of the afternoon in the manner of most of my other visits. I had intended to visit sooner, and have no one to blame but myself that several more weeks passed, and by that time, the tent city was in the process of being struck. The tents were empty, and half of them were down: I only recognized my friend’s hooch because of the shelves that Leroy and Orvis had built, forlorn and abandoned outside, with a pile of some other trash
and a stack of Maculhaney’s old magazines. With a pang of disappointment, I walked toward the radio trailer, dreading to find that gone as well, but it was still there, although the contents were rapidly being disassembled and packed into a series of bulky square anvil cases, under Leroy’s stern eye.
“At least you’re still here,” I said, and she looked at her watch, and answered
“For another forty-six hours, and approximately twenty-two minutes… but who’s counting?”
“I didn’t know you were so short,” I said, and Leroy cackled with laughter,
“Sugar, I am so short, I can’t even carry on a long conversation! Maculhaney left yesterday, matter of fact. Sunny’s been gone for, oh, nearly three weeks now. She sent me this…” Leroy fished out a scrap of paper from her breast pocket. “It’s her parent’s address, an’ that picture we promised you.”
I looked at the Polaroid, and recognized Orvis, skimpily and unfamiliarly clad in shorts and a tube top, sitting on the edge of a verandah, somewhere in the South by the look of the lush garden just visible beyond. The Wee Morsel himself lay adoringly in her lap, and I could think of nothing to say but
“I didn’t even think she liked cats… Orvis is the person you were trying to place him with? I can’t even think of a time she wasn’t shooing him out of her area, or complaining about him leaving dead scorpions on her pillow! Whatever made you think she would take him?”
“Well, the way he kept making up to her! Sunny, now, she never had a pet, growing up, with her father in the Army and all, so she had to get used to the idea…. There was this night when she was all upset about not hearing from her husband, and that cat just crawled up on her bunk, and began licking the tears off her face, and purring and pushing his face into hers. I never seen a cat get so upset because someone was upset, before. Maculhaney didn’t, neither. That
baby cat just decided it was Sunny that he wanted for his human.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, then?”
“We couldn’t, “Leroy answered, “She hadn’t really said yes, at that point and we was still trying to work out the logistics. It was her Daddy helped the most, though. He was flying home commercial, and took him along as live cargo on his flight. It all went as easy as pie… you didn’t need to write no sob-story stuff about him. We got it all scoped out.”
“It certainly sounds like it,” I said, “Since I have the picture, can I
write my story, now?”
“Be our guest,” Leroy laughed, and added, “You ain’t gonna use our real names, though? I’d hate people to know what a softie I am…jeeze!” her attention snapped to one of her sweating young troops, two of whom had just contrived to drop a large square case onto the ground, and she snarled “Be careful with that amp Airman, it cost more than you’ll make in your next two
promotions!”
“They’ll never guess,” I said. “Never in the world.”

Musings On A Winter Day

Posted on by
1

What with the day job (which lately has stretched into evenings and weekends) my blogging time has been nil. While I have a few topics in my head that are deserving of in-depth consideration, today I am inclined to touch on various and sundry observations.

I finally got Red Haired Girl’s Mac Mini to run Windows – a project done in starts and stops since last month. Having already invested a small bundle on the computer and various accessories, I could not bring myself to buy yet another Windows package in order for her to run the dozens of Windows games she has. I decided to try using a Windows XP Pro disk that came with a since decommissioned Gateway, however, Apple Boot Camp software requires a disk with SP2 already integrated. In the course of working around this, I discovered a handy little program called nLite which combines all of the required updates onto a single disk. Also of possible interest to Loyal Readers is that it allows you to go into the basic Windows installation disk and eliminate all the crap that you don’t need (Transylvanian keyboard support anyone?). This not only saves hard drive space but speeds up the boot process as well. Windows seems to be functioning, except that the Mac drivers for the Airport 802.11 connection don’t work while in Windows mode (probably a godsend). Sometime in the next thirty day grace period I will have to go through the BS of activating Windows. More on that later.

In addition to Radioparadise, a very cool Internet radio station suggested by Kevin Connors some time back, I was recently turned on to Pandora. This free site allows you to set up personalized radio stations by choosing artists or songs that you like. As similar material is played, the user is able to provide feedback that apparently fine-tunes the algorithm to improve automatic selections. The only downside is that there doesn’t seem to be any way of ripping the music to a file.

My day job has recently brought me back into frequent interface with the ops side of the house; I’ve spent the past few years in the relatively parochial world of patents. For the most part, my recent project has been a stimulating experience, with opportunities to work with some very bright and motivated people. However, there seems to be a certain genre of manager that I call Dilbert II, The New Generation. They can usually be identified by such phrases as “I’ve been working on a PowerPoint presentation all morning” (as a non sequitur opening statement in a meeting of at least a dozen people who could not care less), or “That’s an excellent question” (in response to an obvious question asked in frustration because another Dilbert II type has repeatedly ignored it). Dilbert II person usually then proceeds to ask (what he thinks is) a very good question which, more often than not, confirms to everyone present that he is completely lacking in any clue as to what the issues really are. As a footnote to this particular rant, Timmer’s recent post “What Is An Airman?” indicated that this is not a purely civilian phenomenon. I mean, an Airman’s creed of not pencil-whipping training reports?

The last rant reminds me of a question I have been meaning to ask. Does anyone remember a hilarious USAF training film on ejection seat development that was shown at least into the early seventies? All of the tests for each development phase were conducted with a different holiday theme, i.e., present were the Easter bunny, Santa, etc. In the first, the test “pilot” struts to the device with total and complete confidence – after which the test is a complete failure and he gets fairly well banged up. Subsequent tests, although showing improvement in the technology, are equally brutal on the pilot. Toward the end, the technicians have to drag him to the test stand, covered in bandages, smoking cigarettes, and, as I recall, swigging from a bottle of hootch. That film defined for me what it means to be an Airman, and if anyone has it I would love to buy a copy

A couple of recent news items caught my attention (and raised the hairs on the back of my neck). First was the unidentified stench that pervaded New York city and which was first thought to be a natural gas leak. Subsequent investigation ruled that possibility (and the general accusation that New Jersey stinks) out, but no cause was ever identified. Then there was the individual who was captured on an LA subway surveillance video (who knew they had subways in LA?) pouring six ounces of mercury onto the ground. He then apparently called 911 which led to the dispatch of a HazMat team – eight hours later. The authorities claimed that there was no indication that either incident was terror related. Maybe they don’t have hard evidence to that effect, but the former sounds like the LA response team performance was being probed, and the latter sounds like a dry run for a dirty bomb/poison gas/biological agent attack. Remember kids, we are not being paranoid if they really are out to get us.

I have decided to go back and read several of the Federalist Papers to remind me why it is important to pay attention to the ’08 campaign season. I’m with Timmer on this one; I really don’t want to “chat” with Hillary. And the notion of her executing Article II Section 2. constitutional powers positively makes my skin crawl.

Why I joined the Air Force

Posted on by
Reply

I originally posted this on DragonLady’s World, but have updated it some for readability, and a thing or two I just left out of the original.

I can’t write about why I got out without first talking about why I joined. There were many reasons for both. During my last undergrad course (the internship), I was looking for a post graduation job. The box factory was fine for summer work, but I didn’t spend 6 ˝ years getting a 4 year degree to stack and pack boxes. My professor put me in touch with a former student who worked at the Frigidaire factory. The company was looking to fill a position working with her, as she was a single point of failure type of job. By that, I mean she was the only one who could do what she did, and if something were to happen to her, they would be hosed. I was called back for a second interview as they had narrowed the applicants down to me and one other person. Then the company decided not to fill the position.

I was bummed. I started hitting the temporary agencies to get something while I started a new search. By this time, I had my B.S., and was not looking forward to more factory work. (My degree is in Industrial Technology with a Manufacturing concentration.) This was the point that every recruiting commercial I had ever seen flashed through my head. I decided to join the Guard. I talked to Army vet hubby first. He told me that I would be happier with active duty than Guard, and to join the Air Force, not the Army because “the Air Force will take care of you.” So, I called the recruiter, and he processed me both as enlisted and officer. I was joining no matter what, and as it turned out, OTS board results would not come out until after I was scheduled for basic training. My enlisted job was guaranteed, and rather than risk losing my guaranteed job (which I methodically picked primarily because it looked fun and easy and “combat” wasn’t in the title or description), I chose to enlist rather than wait for OTS board results.

I had thought about joining the Guard in high school. My parents always spoke about the military with great respect, and built up this honorable entity for me regarding the US military. Now, of my mom’s six brothers, five were in the military: two Marines, one regular Army (he was drafted during Vietnam), and two National Guard. Of my dad and his three brothers, only two were in the military that I know of. Uncle Lawrence tried to enlist in the Army, but they didn’t want him because he didn’t finish high school. He was drafted after Pearl Harbor, and volunteered for the Army Air Corps, mainly because he thought the LT who told them about it was full of it. He said by the end of the day, he was on a train headed for FL for Air Corps training. My dad volunteered after Pearl Harbor, but the Army wouldn’t take him because he was missing two fingers on his left hand, and they considered him handicapped. Then they tried drafting him four or 5 times. He said he almost made it through the physical exam once without anyone noticing his hand. He was at the last station, and was a signature away from making it when the doc noticed. He finally moved to Alabama and joined the state militia there (which eventually became the National Guard) for the rest of the war. I also had several cousins on both sides of the family who served in the military. Anyway, I mentioned joining the Guard in front of a friend’s dad back in high school. By the time he got finished describing his experience at Ft Polk, I had changed my mind, which was his intention.

Now, that all makes it sound like I joined just to have a job, but with patriotic or family history leanings. Both are true, but not the only reasons. The hubby and I were not in a very good place in our lives, and really needed to get away. Also, neither of us had any kind of health insurance, and I knew we would eventually want to have kids. Both kids were born during my first assignment. I got to “see the world,” though Kuwait was not on my list of places I wanted to see. I got the GI Bill that is helping pay for graduate school. Most importantly, I finally got some much needed self-discipline.