Trade tango

 A while back I flew the King Air down to SAZU, Pulches airfield, in La Pampa Province, Argentina.  It wasn't all that close to where I wanted to go but landing there I had access to a navigation aid -- the Choele Choel VOR-DME (OEL). Besides, I didn't have a lot of choices.

 I came in on runway 24, which was, um, unimproved, shall we say, allegedly grass, 915 meters long, the longest of the two choices I had.  There was a fourteen knot crosswind coming in from due east, the weather was clear, dry and warm but not too hot, so piece of cake.  But, to be honest, a grass runway that short had my attention. 

I came in steep with 40 degrees of flaps, power a bit high, cutting power to idle, propeller levers full forward, right before the threshhold, got the stall warning just as the tires touched the runway, hit the brakes and reversed prop thrust all the way back, flaps up, then props forward at 60 knots, (to avoid FOD damage) trying to prevent overloading the nose wheel, locking the brakes or bursting a tire, and came to a screeching halt with a good 100 meters to spare. I blew on my fingernails and buffed them on my sleeve.  But if I ever have to fly down there when that runway is wet, you can just forget it. Back to RSA.

The take-off?  Oh, yeah, the take-off.  Clears throat.  Well, I made it.  'Nuff said. It had been raining a bit. (A bit, she says.... Get her!) Oh, I knew at the gross weight we were at, good CG and comfortable density altitude, that I could get off.  It wasn't a cross my fingers deal.  I don't do those. I'm too chicken. But still....

Simple preflight, just CIGAR, gyros erected, avionics set.  Left engine started first to reduce the possibility of FOD damage. Began taxing by increasing propeller blade angle rather than with a burst of power, also to avoid possible FOD damage from increasing rpm; this way actually reduces rpm.  Kept moving, setting approach flaps at the end of the runway and off we went.

Aaanyways, the reason I mention this is that we have some investments in cattle ranching in Argentina and I was freighting some of our guys to an estancia, as they call cattle ranches down there. We've been reducing our herds stateside for various reasons, but expanding them in Argentina. (In both cases, thank you very much, President Trump.)

We used to sell a lot of our American beef to China but not so much recently, the Chinese having begun sourcing their beef buying to other countries...like Argentina. 

While I was at the estancia, I met their Chinese buyer, and, wouldn't you know it, he was the same guy who came to our ranch in el norte when the Chinese were buying American beef.  I'd had him up to the house for dinner, taken him for horseback rides and even flew him on sight-seeing jaunts in the Husky. And, of course, took him shooting. All Orientals want to shoot guns. He wanted to shoot a .44 magnum like Dirty Harry used. We didn't have one of those but he was happy with a Colt .45 revolver.  The joke was that the safest place to be when he fired was standing directly in front of him.

When I first met him at our Montana ranch, he wouldn't look directly at me but kind of off to the side or down at his shoes.  Then, when he thought I wasn't paying attention, he would stare at me, letting his eyes slide over me.  But after I talked to him enough and he got used to dealing with me he stopped doing that.  Chinese women can certainly be quite pretty, but as a rule tend to be somewhat flat both uptown and downtown. That, I am not. So I guess I unsettled him until he got acclimatized to the landscape.

We were both kind of surprised to see each other in La Pampa, but pleasantly so.  I was a bit set back because I couldn't remember his name, Sum Dum Ting or whatever it was, and I think he couldn't remember mine, either.  So we were all like, "Hey, it's, ah -- you!"  But we had a cordial reunion and also had a laugh about how ridiculous all this switching of import sourcing was.  The same big outfits, companies, corporations, run everything, regardless of nationality.  The only people who are hurt are the 25-dollar to 35-dollar an hour guys with families to support.  You know, the backbone of the country. But what can you do?

So if you wondered why, after China retaliated for Trump tariffs by switching its beef buying from the USA to Argentina, Trump gave the Argentine beef industry 200 billion dollars, now you know.

 

 ********

Some details of the trip down; the flight back kind of the same.  Let's just say my Avcard was groaning.  

Jet-A fuel costs at the pump, not including taxes and surcharges (Hi, Argentina!) =  $16,292.

Landing fees and FBO charges, customs processing, overflight permits, let's call it...hmm...rounding off...$8,000. Nine fuel stops. Most expensive fuel was at SLA ($7.50), cheapest at PAC ($2.88). Same go juice.

 Trucking along at 256 knots:

Total Air Miles: 6,233 nautical miles.
    Total Air Time: 25.5 hours.
    Total Fuel Burned: 3,162 gallons (21,185 lbs of Jet-A).
    Fuel Burn per Leg: 350 gallons per 3-hour leg (including taxi, climb, and 45-min IFR reserves). 

 Other expenses you can guess -- three squares and flops along the way.

You think that's expensive?  Call the total, let's say, $35,000.  With no particular advanced planning, seven peeps, let's go!  Travel in essentially first-class conditions with no worries about weirdos on board (well, except for you, Dave, heh). 

Compare that with booking seven people  on commercial flights, being only able to get to Buenos Aires. You couldn't just call up on the spur of the moment and even get reservations for that many people without paying, what $50,000...$75,000? Maybe even more.  And then the hassle of changing planes, hanging around at the airports and all the usual crap associated with commercial flying these days. And how would you get from Buenos Aires to Puelches?  You'd have to charter a plane.  What would that cost?  Not cheap, for sure.

So for way less than half of what we would have spent on commercial, maybe only a fourth, we got mission accomplished. In comfort.  That's no joke.  The guys I flew down had to get to work right away and it was important they be both physically and mentally rested.  Would you have been if you'd made that trip on commercial?  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bust a move

 

Today, I danced.  I haven't danced in months.  It was good.

Close my eyes and I'm next to you. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Um...

 Due to popular request -- no, seriously -- I'm thinking about reviving this blog and posting again. But I gotta think up something to write about first.  

 Well, honestly, I was pretty beat down by a lot of things back there a while ago, but I'm slowly climbing out of that hole, and maybe messing around with this old blog will help me get out of it all the way and move on with my life.  

Let me think about it.
 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was twenty years ago today...

 "Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by."
--Christina Georgina Rossetti

 One last post. It was 20 years ago today that I made my first blog post, so I thought I'd commemorate it with one final blog post.  

What was that first post about? Don Marquis and his alley cat Mehitabel, who thought she had been Cleopatra in a past life. Her adventures were chronicled by her friend the cockroach poet Archie. He typed her life story in lowercase because he couldn't hold down the shift key and reach a letter key at the same time. He didn't bother with punctuation, either, typing one letter at a time, jumping from key to key on a typewriter in an empty, after-hours newspaper office. Mehitabel's catch phrase was "toujours gai" and I adopted it as my own and tried to live by it in those days, oh, so long ago.

Mehitabel, by the way, is Hebrew for "God makes happy" and Mehitabel, the battered and abused alley cat, was always happy. 

 

The Song of Mehitabel

By Don Marquis


i have had my ups and downs
yesterday sceptres and crowns
fried oysters and velvet gowns
and today i herd with bums
but wotthehell wotthehell

i wake the world from sleep
as i caper and sing and leap
when i sing my wild free tune

under the blear eyed moon
i am pelted with cast off shoon
but wotthehell wotthehell

do you think that i would change
my present freedom to range
for a castle or moated grange

cage me and i d go frantic
my life is so romantic
capricious and corybantic

i know that i am bound
for a journey down the sound
in the midst of a refuse mound
but wotthehell wotthehell

oh i should worry and fret
death and i will coquette
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai

i once was an innocent kit
with a ribbon my neck to fit
and bells tied onto it
o wotthehell wotthehell

but a maltese cat came by
with a come hither look in his eye
and a song that soared to the sky
and wotthehell wotthehell

and i followed adown the street
the pad of his rhythmical feet
o permit me again to repeat
wotthehell wotthehell

my youth i shall never forget
but there s nothing i really regret
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai

the things that i had not ought to
i do because i ve got to
and i end with my favorite motto
toujours gai toujours gai

The first quote in the first entry on the first day of writing posts in my first blog:

 "We do not do what we want, and yet
we are responsible for who we are."
--Jean Paul Sartre

 

 

 

What he said from the bottom of his heart remains in my heart and is just for me.

  "The fairest things have fleetest end,
Their scent survives their close:
But the rose's scent is bitterness
To her that loved the rose."
--Francis Thompson 

 "Now therefore keep thy sorrow to thyself, and
bear with good courage that which hath befallen
thee."
--The Apocrypha 10:15

 

 

 

 

 

My last post

 

I'm thinking about wrapping up my blogging era and shutting down this, my last iteration of my first blog.  I began blogging in February of 2006 so next month will mark 20 years of jotting down my random thoughts and interests.  And my profile view count just hit 77,000, a figure that astonishes me: how could so many people have any interest in me?

I never meant to achieve anything by blogging, certainly not make money or become, as they say these days, an "influencer." It was just me writing this and that because I enjoy writing the same way I enjoy cooking or crocheting or playing the piano.

I see I've got over 100 unpublished -- and unfinished -- blog posts sitting in my draft file.  I guess there they will stay. Some I put a lot of work into but felt I needed to do more, other subjects became too depressing and I gave up on them, and a lot of them I got interrupted while writing and when I was able to get back to them I had lost my train of thought. 

Well, I want to thank you guys who have stuck with me all these years.  I know some of you have been here since the very beginning.  We've grown up and grown old together.  How could all this time have passed? Just like snapping your fingers it was all gone.  Some of you  have died.  Remember the Three Musketeers? Robby?  Ishtaria? Amar? Dear, dear Amar.

Yes, I know I quit once before and then came back after a while, and maybe that will happen again.  But I think not this time.  Life has beaten me down.  I've always fought back against fate, but I've finally surrendered, and with surrender comes ... shutting the mind down.  

From now on I will just focus on the days as they come and my children.  There is no one else and nothing else.  

So, I guess this is it.  Maybe I'll see you around.  Have a good one! 

 

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing. 

~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene V

. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good-bye

  “We are not living in eternity. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand―and melting like a snowflake.”
― Sir Francis Bacon 

 

And when life's sweet fable ends,
Soul and body part like friends;
No quarrels, murmurs, no delay;
A kiss, a sigh, and so away.  
--Richard Crashaw

 

Good-bye M, Good-bye.  It hurts so much.  I miss you so. I should have helped you.  I should have.  I should have. 

 

"Now that I have toiled and strayed so far over the world, am I to sleep, and let the earth cover my head forever? Let my eyes see the sun until they are dazzled with looking. Although I am no better than a dead man, still let me see the light of the sun."
~ Gilgamesh

"All living creatures born of the flesh shall sit at last in the boat of the West, and when it sinks, they are gone."
~ Gilgamesh

Wet in the windy counties of the dawn
The lone crow skirls his draggled passage home:
And God (whose sparrows fall aslant his gaze,
Like grace or confetti) blinks and he is gone.
~ Thomas McGrath

  I measure every grief I meet
With analytic eyes;
I wonder if it weighs like mine,
Or has an easier size.

I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether--could they choose between--
It would not be to die.
--Emily Dickinson 

  I am the chosen no hand saves
 --Louise Bogan

 Of course I prayed--
and did God care?
He cared as much as if in the air
a bird had cried 'Give me,'
and stamped her foot!
--Emily Dickinson

 

The good old days

 This is a repost from, oh, a long time ago. It originally  had a bunch of words accompanying the vid, but I didn't bother picking them up. Once enough time passes it all becomes just so much blah blah.

Guam to Afghanistan: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A gloomy time?

If things are not going well for you this Christmas, just remember that's what "they" want -- you and me depressed and demoralized. Phooey on that! They can't get us down! We're tougher than they think. Aren't we? Come on!

 

 

PS: I just realized that in a couple of weeks it will be 20 years since I began animating with Blender. There was a time when I could not have imagined being able to remember things that happened 20 years ago. Twenty years! The crust of the earth hadn't fully cooled yet then! Time flies when you're having fun and making money! And even when you're not. Oh, and, yes, I use myself as the motion capture model.

Merry Christmas! The reason for the season: The King of kings is born!

 

  

 

 

 

 

Encore

 

This is an encore post from November 7, 2021.

The Train Stops 

The bond between a father and daughter never breaks, but it can hurt each very much to maintain.  If you don't understand this story, you probably aren't the father of a daughter or a daughter.

 First broadcast over CBS Radio Mystery Theater on August 23, 1976:

 

This may be my favorite radio play by Elspeth Eric. One of two, I guess.  The other is Mirror, Mirror, previously posted.  This play also features two of my favorite radio actors, Norman Rose and Jada Rowland. They fit the roles here perfectly.  Aside from two supporting actors, they carry the play entirely with their voices.  Deep in the night, when I can't sleep, I listen intently to this play, catching every intonation, every emotion and I feel almost as if I have lived this story myself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What scares me

 Found on Tumblr some years ago and just rediscovered.  It was written by a girl identified only as Taylor: 

 "A lot of people ask me what my biggest
fear is, or what scares me most. And I know
they expect an answer like heights, or
closed spaces, or people dressed like
animals, but how do I tell them that when I
was 17 I took a class called 'Relationships
For Life' and I learned that most people fall
out of love for the same reasons they fell in
it. That their lover's once endearing
stubbornness has now become refusal to
compromise and their one-track mind is
now immaturity and their bad habits that
you once adored are now money down the
drain. Their spontaneity becomes recklessness
and irresponsibility and their feet up on your
dash is no longer sexy, but just annoying.
Nothing saddens and scares me like the
thought that I can become ugly to someone
who once thought all the stars were in my
eyes."

That thought scares me too, both that I might become that to him I love or that he might become that to me.  I don't want that to happen.  Dear Lord, I don't.

Doesn't it scare you, too?  How many marriages have foundered on the rocks of tiresomeness? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bridge of Time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Wedding Vow

by Sharon Olds

I did not stand at the altar, I stood
at the foot of the chancel steps, with my beloved, and the minister stood on the top step
holding the open Bible. The church
was wood, painted ivory inside, no people—God's
stable perfectly cleaned. It was night,
spring—outside, a moat of mud,
and inside, from the rafters, flies
fell onto the open Bible, and the minister
tilted it and brushed them off. We stood
beside each other, crying slightly
with fear and awe. In truth, we had married
that first night, in bed, we had been
married by our bodies, but now we stood
in history—what our bodies had said,
mouth to mouth, we now said publicly,
gathered together, death. We stood
holding each other by the hand, yet I also
stood as if alone, for a moment,
just before the vow, though taken
years before, took. It was a vow
of the present and the future, and yet I felt it
to have some touch on the distant past
or the distant past on it, I felt
the silent, dry, crying ghost of my
parents' marriage there, somewhere
in the bright space—perhaps one of the
plummeting flies, bouncing slightly
as it hit forsaking all others, then was brushed
away. I felt as if I had come
to claim a promise—the sweetness I'd inferred
from their sourness; and at the same time that I had
come, congenitally unworthy, to beg.
And yet, I had been working toward this hour
all my life. And then it was time
to speak—he was offering me, no matter
what, his life. That is all I had to
do, that evening, to accept the gift
I had longed for—to say I had accepted it,
as if being asked if I breathe. Do I take?
I do. I take as he takes—we have been
practicing this. Do you bear this pleasure? I do.

Thinking About War on Veteran's Day

 

War is something every man I have ever known was deeply interested in.
Why?




 

 

 

Calm and full the ocean under the cool dark sky; quiet rocks and the
birds fishing; the night-herons
Have flown home to their wood...while east and west in Europe and
Asia and the islands unimaginable agonies

Consume mankind. Not a few thousand but uncounted millions, not a day
but years, pain, horror, sick hatred;
Famine that dries the children to little bones and huge eyes; high-explosive
that fountains dirt, flesh and bone-splinters.

Sane and intact the seasons pursue their course, autumn slopes to
December, the rains will fall
And the grass flourish, with flowers in it: as if man's world were perfectly
separate from nature's, private and mad.

But that's not true; even the P-38s and the Flying Fortresses are as natural
as horse-flies;
it is only that man, his griefs and rages, are not what they seem to man, not
great and shattering, but really

Too small to produce any disturbance. This is good. This is the sanity, the
mercy. It is true that the murdered
Cities leave marks in the earth for a certain time, like fossil rain-prints in
shale, equally beautiful.

~ Robinson Jeffers



In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, "Our casualties were low."
~ Randall Jarrell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is not bad. Let them play.
Let the guns bark and the bombing-plane
Speak his prodigious blasphemies.
It is not bad, it is high time,
Stark violence is still the sire of all the world's values.
 

What but the wolf's tooth whittled so fine
the fleet limbs of the antelope?
What but fear winged the birds, and hunger
Jewelled with such eyes the great goshawk's head?
Violence has been the sire of all the world's values.
 

 

Who would remember Helen's face
Lacking the terrible halo of spears?
Who formed Christ but Herod and Caesar,
The cruel and bloody victories of Caesar?
Violence, the bloody sire of all the world's values.
~ Robinson Jeffers

You would think the fury of aerial bombardment
Would rouse God to relent; the infinite spaces
Are still silent. He looks on shock-pried faces.
History, even, does not know what is meant.

You would feel that after so many centuries
God would give man to repent; yet he can still kill
As Cain could, but with multitudinous will,
No farther advanced than in his ancient furies.

Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?
~ Richard Eberhart

 

 Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly
lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash
again, and ever again, this soiled world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin--I drawn near,
Bend down, and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
~ Walt Whitman

 

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

 

I am the grass.
Let me work.
~ Carl Sandburg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes you play the game and lose, and that's just how it goes.

 

"I've got 5 contacts in my phone that will never call me again. Friends, colleagues, associates that have all lost their lives in airplanes. I was notified of two of those accidents, including the one that has hit me the hardest, literally as I was getting into an airplane to go fly. It can feel helpless sometimes when you see an accident that was entirely unpreventable. Sometimes you play the game and lose, and that's just how it goes."
~ Some guy

I don't have five contacts on my phone, but I have one.  I still keep it.  I even transfer it when I get a new phone. I'll always have it.  

******

When you wake up in the morning you really don't know what the day will bring. While I was running errands in Gotham City, Jr., the other day, having flown over in the King Air and aced the landing, the wheels chirping on the runway just as the stall warning sounded, and still feeling quite proud of myself about it, I ran into el jefe's friend Jason, and since it was around noon he invited me to lunch and we got seats at the counter of a nearby diner, the only ones available during the lunch rush. 

We both ordered the blue plate special, sliced roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy with a side of peas and a dinner roll. I had coffee black, he had coffee with cream, no sugar. We chatted about this and that as we ate. How're your kids?  They do grow up fast, don't they? How's your mom? That's good.  What's Jeff been up to? Giving you any grief is he? My eldest is working down at Rayfield's. You know the place. He's making some good money. Oh, the wife is fine, she's working on a new quilt with material from some kimonos she found at that thrift store down on -- and so on.

But as we finished up our coffees and waited for the check, the conversation veered. Definitely veered.

"Say," Jason said out of the blue, "I was was scrolling through some amateur rape porn looking for something good --"

I looked at him with an expression a cross between 'excuse me?' and 'say what now?' 

"-- to whack off to and --" 

He caught my expression.

"Sorry to be so blunt, Wanda, but I wanted to explain the circumstances and think it's best to just be direct and to the point."

"Uh...maybe I should get going."

"No, wait.  Hang on a sec. The thing is," and he pulled out his phone and fiddled with it, "I came across this video.  It's really a rocker and I definitely got hard when I saw it.  Here, look --" and he slid his phone over to me with a video playing.

"See what I seen?  You see?  That's you, isn't it?  That's you!"

Not quite comprehending what was going on and what he was babbling about and thinking I sure should have turned down this lunch, and wait till I tell el jefe about this, I looked at the video.

And froze. It was me.  Being gang raped. July 19 of Year One. For real.  Everything rushed back in to my mind. Every detail of every second.  But my expression didn't change. I pushed the phone back to him. "That's not me."

"Yeah, it is, Wanda.  I know you and I know what I seen."

"No.  It's not.  I don't even see a resemblance.  It's just some blonde, and it's probably fake or staged anyway."

"Oh, no, it's real.  This site specializes in videos of real rapes that people send in." 

"I see. Well, it's not me."

Jason scrutinized my face, then looked down at his phone, where the video was still playing, not even on mute, then looked back at me.

"Yeah.  It's you. I don't care what you say. It's you.  What happened anyway? Does Jeff know? Boy, if he doesn't --"

"God damn it, Jase, I told you it wasn't me.  It is not me!  I've had enough of this.  I'm getting out of here."

"Okay, Wanda.  I'm sorry I brought it up but you know I just had to know and you know what, it's really a great video, boner heaven.  I mash one out every time I watch it."

Every time, I thought, as I got off the counter stool. Oh, that's great. Jesus Christ.

"I'll mash another one out thinking about how I showed it to you and you watched it with me."

"I did not watch it with you, damn your soul!"

Other people in the diner had stopped eating to watch us.  The counter server, bill pad in hand, was staring.  "Thanks for the lunch, Jason Bowfield," I said loudly, saying his full name.* "Be sure to leave a big tip!"

And I left, not looking back. I heard him say, "Wait up, Wanda! Don't be --" before the door closed behind me.

When I got outside the air was fresh and crisp and I took a deep breath. I wasn't in the mood to do any more shopping and went directly back to the airport and got in my plane. I sat in the cockpit and realized I was shaking.  I was in no condition to fly.  I got out and walked up and down the ramp, then out past hangers and the FBO office to the parking lot and back to the ramp, then back to the parking lot again, thinking a lot of things. Such a lot of things. After about an hour I was calm enough to get back in the plane and go home.

Once there, I said nothing about the incident to el jefe, Jeff, my husband, other than to say I had run into Jason and had lunch with him and Jeff asked how the old reprobate was doing and I said okay I guess. When we went to bed, Jeff fucked me and I just stared up at the ceiling. When he finished, he asked me if I was okay, I didn't really seem to be into it, and I said that I was just tired and sorry to be a buzzkill. He said, no, no, he should have realized I'd be tired and not bothered me and I said he was never a bother and I always enjoyed his weight on me.

He kissed me, rolled over and went to sleep.  I lay awake staring into the darkness.

So.  You want to know was it really me, don't you?  Yes, it was me.  I was gang raped, the men coming back for seconds, even thirds. Yes, everybody videoed it with their cell phones. My surprise at what was happening, my shock, my fighting back, kicking, being slammed down and held immobile by arms far stronger than mine, wrists and elbows twisted so hard the pain was unbearable, the left wrist broken in a colles intra-articular fracture, the thumb carpometacarpal joint dislocated, complex dislocation of the elbow, other injuries...my clothes ripped off, torn and tossed aside, breasts bitten, legs pinned wide, cocks slammed into ever orifice, men laughing, kibitzing, and grunting as they came, saying things to me and about me, urging themselves on.  

Okay, I know you want to know did I, at some level, enjoy it?  The men jizzed two or three times each.  How about me, did I orgasm? Yes, I did. More than once.  But I did not enjoy it.  I was shamed and humiliated, angered, that that happened.  I did not expect and certainly did not want that to happen.  But my body...I don't know.... It did. Being hurt, in pain, fearing you are going to be murdered, that the last minutes of your life are this horror...and you orgasm.... Maybe it's your body distracting you.

 If you are a man reading this, think if you were grabbed by a bunch of homo creeps, say gym bro types much stronger than you, and they overpowered you and violently sodomized you repeatedly, face-fucked you, and during the course of the ordeal -- and yes, it's an ordeal -- you got an erection and ejaculated, not because you were aroused but simply through the...I don't know, friction...some part of your brain reacting.... And the men raping you saw that and laughed at you -- hey, look, the little punk likes it!  How would you feel about that? Would you be turned on? Or would you be utterly humiliated and hate your body for betraying you?

Did what happened to me affect my life?  In those days, yes. And  I still have a somewhat weak left wrist and elbow.  They ache sometimes, as does my left hip joint. My right knee can be twitchy. But it's my personality to refuse to let the bastards get me down -- they may be able to do it to me physically, but they can't do it to my mind -- That's it? That's the worst you can do to me? Pfft! Can't touch me! I refuse to let you. That was the thrill of a lifetime for you, wasn't it? But it was nothing, less than nothing, for me. You think you have power over me? Not in this world or the next. I am the captain of my soul. Not you. Never you.

The next morning, Jeff asked if I was feeling better than last night and I said yes, and I was, and he fucked me again and I enjoyed him enjoying me.  While we were at, it my mini me came unnoticed into the bedroom and sat down. When we were through she said, "Mom, can I make breakfast this morning? I want to make French toast with cinnamon."

So a normal day was starting and I thought the whole episode was passed.  The sun was shining on a fresh morning and I had things to do.  But, of course, it wasn't over. Jason sent Jeff a copy of the video, with a text saying, "Hey, I found this video of your wife Wanda being gang raped.  I showed it to her yesterday and she says it's not her but I am sure it is. What say you?" 

Jason sent the video in the morning but it wasn't till after supper that Jeff mentioned it. I asked if he had watched it.  He said a few seconds of it.  

"I don't think it's you," he said.  "It sort of looks like you, but I don't think it is. It's not, is it?" He looked closely at me.

"No, it's not," I said.

"I didn't think so. I knew it couldn't be you."

___________________________

*Not his real name, of course. 

 

A thought or two...or three

The other day I bad-mouthed my stateside magnet high school and, thinking about it, one reason I was not fond of it was that it didn't have a football team.  Can you imagine a high school without a football team? I mean, really.

My DoDEA high school had a football team and I was a cheerleader and loved it. Oh, boy, did I.  I had a boyfriend on the team.  Classic Americana, huh?  

So what's the deal with football, anyway?  Well, I think, for one thing, among all the team sports it is the most blatantly an id roar.  Sex and violence.  Crush your enemy (the other team) and get the hot babes (the cheerleaders).  Right out there in the open with everybody watching, knowing deep down what it is, and cheering it on. And, in high school, throw in all the fresh hot hormones of teen time raging through the bodies of those perfect human specimens.  And it's in the fall, echoes of harvest festivals in the homecoming bacchanal with that big bonfire and the couples pairing off in the shadows to, um ... you know ... their ecstatic writhings only half-concealed by the flickering flames, all overseen and approved by the homecoming king and queen, harvest gods straight out of the Golden Bough.

This is my curse: I should be a self-centered bastard out for myself.

  El jefe keeps telling me that I should think about myself rather than always thinking about others first.  He's right, but I can't help it.  It's just the way I am.  It does stress me out, though.  That's why I need to get away and be by myself from time to time.  That helps a lot. I'm not as bad as I used to be. Not even close. Time and experience toughen one up. Especially when you are trying to be accommodating and helpful to someone and you discover they just consider you a pushover. Okay, buster, lesson learned. Over and over again. Now when dealing with outsiders I wear emotional ceramic-plate armor, my mental firearm at Condition One, cocked and locked.  Well, sometimes I do forget.
 

 Ain't she a pretty one?

 I finally got my familiarization training completed for my jolly new King Air 260.  It's got some swell aftermarket upgrades, that, among other things, really enhance its short-field capabilities, climb rate and cruising speed. I would like to take the family to Europe in it next summer -- assuming there still is a Europe then, or at least one that anyone would want to visit. If not there, Alaska, flying above the weather for a change.  Oh, so nice. Will be keeping my eye out for power lever migration.

 

A thought that I have had is that we human beings are the nerve endings of God, the way that He connects with the material world.  That's why He created us, created life in all its splendor and horror.  Pain and boredom, tension, anticipation, hope, disappointment, despair, rage, joy, happiness, sadness, exuberance, lust, envy, jealousy, hatred, love...all of it, all our emotions, the feelings that mean everything to us and that make us who we are...all these are how God senses the physical reality of the universe that He created.

So it's our duty, our obligation to God, to experience everything that we can, all our body is capable of, all the emotions this life lays before us, embrace our physicality and everything it means to be alive.  

Thinking about this, I believe that I have done my share to give God his money's worth, so to speak, when he created me. I was commenting the other day that all that I have done has in the end resulted in nothing.  But I don't think I can really say that, don't think I have a right to say that; saying that is forgetting what it was like at the time I was doing those things, what I thought, how I felt -- in the instant of that then eternal now.

I used my brain and my body to the maximum. I helped unlock secrets of the mind, I have held brutally wounded men in my arms, I have flown faster than the speed of sound a hundred feet off the ground, I have enjoyed the passions of the flesh, I have fallen desperately in love, I have faced bitter disappointment and despair, I have --  

I have had my moment.

Does all this sound like egocentric boasting?  It might be if I were addressing an audience, but I am only talking to myself, reflecting on my life as it once was and now is not.  Today, I have a different role, bestowed on me by God, if you like, or bestowed on myself by my own free will.  That role is to prepare the next generation of life to embrace this world, to be worthy nerve endings of God. I'm thinking, of course, of my children.  I am subordinate to their lives now. My sole purpose is to ready them for their moment in the sun.

“What is this thing called life? I believe
That the earth and the stars too, and the whole glittering universe, and rocks on the mountains have life,
Only we do not call it so--I speak of the life
That oxidizes fats and proteins and carbo-
Hydrates to live on, and from that chemical energy
Makes pleasure and pain, wonder, love, adoration, hatred and terror: how do these things grow
From a chemical reaction?
I think they were here already, I think the rocks
And the earth and the other planets, and the stars and the galaxies
have their various consciousness, all things are conscious;
But the nerves of an animal, the nerves and brain
Bring it to focus; the nerves and brain are like a burning-glass
To concentrate the heat and make it catch fire:
It seems to us martyrs hotter than the blazing hearth
From which it came. So we scream and laugh, clamorous animals
Born howling to die groaning: the old stones in the dooryard
Prefer silence; but those and all things have their own awareness,
As the cells of a man have; they feel and feed and influence each other, each unto all,
Like the cells of a man's body making one being,
They make one being, one consciousness, one life, one God.”
― Robinson Jeffers 

On a lighter note: 

Blondes, A religious poem

Blondes are tempting me day and night.
Blondes in dreams trouble my restless sight.

With silken heads they rampage through my thoughts,
Full-bosomed in their sweaters and their shorts.

Or lie sunbathing on an impossible beach
Naked, aloof, continually out of reach.

 

 On the mind's promenade, above the rocks,
Blondes go sauntering by in gauzy cotton frocks

Or flatter cameras with their negligent poses
While the sunlight all their buxom charms exposes.

While I am eating, smoking, working, talking
Through long romantic gardens they are walking.

Protect me, Lord, from these desires of flesh,
Keep me from evil, in Thy pastures fresh,

So that I may not fall, by lakes or ponds,
Into such sinful thoughts about hot blondes!

~ Gavin Ewart

I sure gave God what he paid for.  My mother, the hot disco babe, did the same and so did my grandmother back in her day when the swing bands were laying down the hot licks and the soldier boys had their pay burning a hole in their pockets. Hey, big spender! But we all settled down to be good wives and mothers, just as our husbands, after sowing their wild oats, became the best of husbands and fathers. And so the generations proceed.

 

 

 

 

 

Almost Heaven

The Cheat River in Preston County in the Allegheny Highlands.

I got an invitation to join a gathering of descendants of William Hebb.  I'll quote here from an earlier blog post I made about him:

 Among my ancestors was one William Hebb.  Born in England in 1755, he came to America in 1776 as an officer in the British Army to fight the revolutionary colonists.  But he had no love for the King and felt sympathy for the Americans' cause and deserted.  He then joined  the Third Continental Light Dragoons, aka Lady Washington's Dragoons, which formed the life guard of George Washington, serving under Lt. Col. George Baylor.  

He fought at Germantown,  Brandywine, and survived the so-called Baylor Massacre at Tappan, New Jersey, in 1778.  This latter was a night ambush in which 67 of the regiment's 116 men were killed or wounded and Baylor was captured. Hebb was seriously wounded in this action and he was discharged and returned to Virginia to recuperate.  While there, he married a cousin of George Washington, the widow Jemima Washington Jenkins.    

The regiment was reformed under Lt. Col. William Washington and sent to the Carolinas where, after recovering from his wounds, Hebb rejoined his regiment, which had amalgamated with the First Continental Light Dragoons due to the heavy casualties it had sustained, and fought at Cowpens, Santee River and Eutaw Springs. Hebb was wounded at Gilford Court House and returned to Virginia, but recovered in time to participate in the siege of Yorktown.   

After the Revolutionary War, he became an active abolitionist and was forced to leave Virginia and settle along a tributary of the  Ohio River.  For his service during the war, he received a pension of $8 a month.  He died in 1833 at the age of 78.  His son, Thomas Hebb, fought in the war of 1812, serving in the Virginia militia. Five of William's grandsons fought for the Union in the Civil War.  

Dunkard's Bottom is in the center of the map.

The tributary of the Ohio River he settled on was the Cheat River in what is now West Virginia, so the meeting will be held in that area, Monongahela County or thereabouts. While I'm in the area, I want to visit Dunkard's Bottom along the Cheat in Preston County.  The Germanic Dunkards were the first whites to settle west of the Allegheny Mountains. I have a lot of Dunkards in my ancestry and I've been engrossed in learning about them lately.  Among the things I've learned is that there was a settlement of about three dozen Dunkards, men, women and children, established in 1756 at this spot -- it's where Camp Dawson is today.  They bought their land from the local Lenni Lenape Indians, who were mostly farmers working the river bottom lands, with whom they traded horses, and converted to Christianity. 

One day, two of the men traveled to Fort Pleasant for supplies.  They were arrested there by the British, who thought the Dunkards were spies for and in the pay of the French.  They were forced to lead a contingent of British soldiers back to their settlement, where the Brits planned to hang the leaders and arrest the others.  

Dunkards were Schwarzenau  Brethren.

But when they arrived at the settlement they found it burned to the ground and no soul alive. What had happened was that the French thought the Dunkards were spies and in the pay of the British and had sent a force of Ottawa Indians to seize the leaders and bring them back to Montreal.  What the French intended the Indians to do with the rest of the Dunkards is not clear, but what the Indians did was kill them all, men, women and children, steal all their horses, then burn the settlement to the ground.  

While I'm in the area, I'd also like to visit the site of the Battle of Rowleburg. That was what has been described as a "pivotal engagement" in April, 1863, in which a small force of Union troops defended the strategic B&O Railroad bridges crossing the Cheat River, called Lincoln's lifeline, from a larger Confederate force. After fierce fighting, the Confederates, led by General W.E. Jones, were repelled. General Robert E. Lee, in sending General Jones to destroy the bridges, told him their destruction would be worth an army to him.

I would like to walk the ground, see what the land looks like, think about all the history, much of it quite terrible, that our people went through to create this country.  That these United States would come to exist was never a sure thing, never guaranteed.  

Plus I'd like to eat some buckwheat cakes and country sausage for breakfast.  Wouldn't you?

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Les jours s'en vont, je demeure

A lot has happened to me in the last 17 years, but I'm still me and in the deep core of me I still think and feel and believe just as I did then.  I hope that I always will.

 

From those bygone days:

  

 

My philosophy of life

 "All we know is that life is sweet and that it does not last long. Why should people be envious of each other? Why do we hate each other? Why can't we live in peace in a world that is so beautiful and so wide?" 
~ William March, Company K

 That's it.  Sgt. March said it as well as I, or anyone, could say it.  I ask the questions he did. He got no answers.  Neither have I.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fate? Luck?

 

I was thinking about bad marriages, reminding myself how lucky I am to be in a good one and not to screw it up, when I remembered a woman I used to know when I was stationed on Guam some years ago.  She was an Electrician's Mate PO-1 on the Frank Cable (AS-40) that I met at the old submariner's bar the Horse & Cow in Tamuning, which has been closed now for almost exactly a year after being in business for more than 70 years. The much tamer one in Bremerton is gone, too, I think (see the short video below for a taste of it, then imagine a crazier version; that would be Guam's).  Man, nothing lasts, does it? She and I had some fun times there.  That's where I found out I could not hold my liquor.  Lordy, lordy. Heh. (No, I didn't dance naked on the bar, I hurled. Chunks. Totes awk.)

Where was I?  Oh, yeah. 

Um, well, this woman was married to a man who became very abusive to her, both verbally and physically. For a long time, she thought that she was the one at fault and tried not to do things to set him off and to make home life as pleasant as possible. But nothing she did was good enough for him. 

What ended it all was one evening when she had spent some considerable time making a special meal for his birthday, potato gnocchi, which she remembered his mother telling her was his favorite meal. He got home, surly and uncommunicative as usual, and sat down at the dinner table. When she served him, he took one look at what was on his plate and said, "Is this to eat or has it already been eaten?" 

That broke her. She got her coat and purse and walked out of the house, leaving everything else behind, and never went back.  She walked all night, not knowing where she was going, just away, just away. The next morning she found herself at a strip mall and bought something to eat.  While eating, she saw a recruiting office a few doors down, went in and signed up. She'd never thought about joining the service before that minute. Why the navy?  That was the only recruiter not already talking to somebody.

The Frank Cable in the distance. 

When I met her, she had been in the navy nine years, which, considering her rank, says she was pretty darn good at her job.  So all's well that ends well, right?  She had found a home in the navy and the story had a happy ending.

Well...no.  See, one day riding her motorbike home from work, a guy who had just gotten out of jail after serving a sentence for drunk driving celebrated by getting drunk at a bar, climbed into his car and careened into traffic just as she passed by. He slammed into her and dragged her body under his car for almost a mile before another driver who had seen the accident was able to force him to stop.  She was taken to Naval Hospital Guam where I saw her brought in. 

She was pronounced dead without any need to examine what remained of her body. 

 What's the moral of this story? That life sucks?  Expect the worst to  happen to you sooner or later?  That if your life is okay now, if you are in a decent marriage, if you have a good job, fall to your knees thanking God and praying that your good luck continues because it very well may not...probably will not? 

I don't know. 

 

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Now I've gone and depressed myself.  Wanda....  

Well, what I do when I'm feeling down is play a happy tune and dance.  Fixes me up every time.  Try it!