Flashes in the dark

"Existence is not something of which we can significantly say that it lacks or possesses meaning. If life is absurd because one can find no meaning in experience, what are the conditions, actual or imaginable, in which one could find meaning? What would life have to be like in order for us to declare that it is not absurd?" 
~ Sidney Hook

 A fire service OV-10 flew over the other day.  Two guys I was with both gushed that it was a P-38. I said nothing.  They were so pleased to have actually seen, as they believed, a P-38 in flight and it made no difference to me. Why be a buzzkill?

Garrison Keillor could have pinched my butt any time.  Harvey Weinstein would have rued the day he was born had he tried.  Not that there is any world where I would have encountered either one.

I don't like wine. To me, it tastes like somebody poured vinegar into perfectly good grape juice.  If you want to induce me to drink alcohol, you'll have to conceal its horrid taste in something sweet and flavorful.  And don't put in too much or I will start giggling and telling risque jokes, then get dizzy, barf chunks on you and pass out. 

Do black guys have hobbies? Aside from chatting up blondes, I mean. Okay, that was a joke.  I meant aside from shooting up gatherings of other blacks.  Okay, that was ... oh, never mind. Anyway, I don't know any to ask.  I used to, but I never thought about it then. They were solid guys, usually petty officers. Not like.... I know a Mexican guy who collects superhero and video game character dolls -- action figures! he corrects me.  Well, esskyooze me!  I know an English guy who builds working miniature steam locomotives.  From scratch. He also built his own hovercraft to zoom around on. I know a Japanese guy who collects and restores old Marusho motorcycles.  And every regular white guy American I know has some kind of hobby -- building sailboats, collecting old radios, training border collies...something.

As soon as I arrive on the rez I notice semi-feral dogs everywhere.  Gives the place a Third World feel.  No one seems to own them, but they form territorial attachments to certain houses and businesses.  I like dogs and have never had a problem with these. They approach me, sometimes snarling and barking, but stop before reaching me and approach cautiously, sniff, look up at me and wag their tails. Dogs are good people evaluators. If one bites you, it's because he's sensed your essential character and judged it bad.  I've never been bitten but have had my leg humped.  I hesitate to think what that says about my essential character.

Sometimes a big dog has even knocked me down and began humping.  If there is an owner -- perhaps better described as an acquaintance of the dog -- he always shouts out, don't worry, he won't bite you.  But I'm not worried about being bitten, I'm worried about being knotted.

During the shortages, such as they were, the only thing that I bought regularly that was not available was fukujinzuke (福神漬), which I bought from a local Japanese general store.  I love it with Japanese-style curry.  So I learned how to make my own. Dee-lish.  Much better than the store-bought stuff.  When I dropped by the store the other day, I noticed they had fukujinzuke back in stock.  But I didn't buy any and won't ever again.  I wonder how many folks learned during the shortages that making do is making better.

Whenever The Boss of Me and I squabble, it always ends with me getting the Iowa cornfield in spring treatment.  It's a bit awkward when it happens in Safeway.
Do I ever precipitate the squabble anticipating the, um, outcome?

“Lawyer, priest, doctor, politician, newspaperman—these are the quacks who have their fingers on the pulse of the world. A constant atmosphere of calamity. It's marvelous. It's as if the barometer never changes, as if the flag were always at half-mast.”
― Henry Miller 

I know the world's a mess and every day seems to bring ever worse malevolent craziness. I hesitate to even check out the day's news.  But around here you'd never know any of it was happening.  People are pleasant and cooperative with each other, easily striking up conversations with strangers.  We've had plenty of rain this spring and nature is bursting with voluptuous fecundity.  I've never seen so many flowers blooming all at once.  Just this week the rhodies began blooming in gorgeous colors and daisies and foxgloves are popping up everywhere.  The stores are full of goods and produce, I haven't seen anyone wearing a mask for ages, UPS and FedEx trucks trundle along even the remotest byways, loaded with goodies.  The smell of fresh-cut grass fills the lingering evenings, which are now often warm and invite sitting on the west-facing porch watching the lengthening shadows beckon on the night and listening to the lowing cattle.  Just before dinner time a couple of high-school girls ride by on their horses, chatting and laughing, their dogs trotting along beside them, sometimes pausing to sniff something interesting, then racing to catch up.

“The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.”
― Henry Miller

 I was browsing the blog of an American ex-pat living in the Ukraine who wants the US to intervene to drive out the Russians.  He writes: "If one allows Russia to engulf one country, Ukraine, which resolutely does not want to be Russian, the same logic could be applied to the Baltics, Moldova, Poland and everything west of there."  Oh, noes!  The domino effect!  Where was that used before to justify American intervention in a war that was none of our affair?  Why, Viet Nam!  And how did that work out?  And North Viet Nam didn't have nuclear weapons.  The guy wanting America to intervene is old enough to have served in Viet Nam and he did -- but as a civilian contractor.  He kept his own ass well clear of trouble.  But now he wants Americans, whom he otherwise insults and denigrates, to come and save his sorry ass.  No, damn it!  No!  You're the one who chose to abandon your own country and emigrate to what Yale historian Timothy D. Snyder called the "Bloodlands." He titled one of the most horrifying, depressing books I have ever read by the same name.  Read it and weep. 

To yield to the temptation to find other people inhuman is to take a step toward, not away from, the totalitarian position. To find other people incomprehensible is to abandon the search for understanding, and thus to abandon history.”
― Timothy Snyder

“When meaning is drawn from killing, the risk is that more killing would bring more meaning.”
― Timothy Snyder

The world is too grim to gaze at it for long.  And there is nothing you can do about any of the horror.  Go ahead, shout Stop! into the raging wind smelling of fire, dismembered bodies and explosives, bringing to your ears the sounds of gunfire and screams.  What good does it do?  Better to turn away, focus your gaze on your own life and the lives of those you love, and let the rest of the world go by.  This I know by direct personal experience.  You cannot save the world.  You probably can't even save yourself.  But that, at least, you can try to do with some hope of success.  

A Joke:

 Jack goes to his friend Mike and says "I'm having an affair with the minister's wife. Can you keep him back in church for an hour after service for me?"
Mike doesn't like it, but being a friend, he agrees.
After the service, Mike starts talking to the minister, asking him all sorts of stupid questions, just to keep him occupied. Finally the minister gets annoyed and asks Mike what he's really up to. Mike, feeling guilty, confesses to the minister, "My friend is having sex with your wife right now, so he asked me to keep you occupied."
The minister thinks for a minute, smiles, puts a brotherly hand on Mike's shoulder and says, "You’d better hurry home. I'm not married."

 “Life itself is an exile. The way home is not the way back.”
― Colin Wilson 

 

Piano Bar

 

The piano is my favorite instrument by far. It's so expressive.  Every human emotion can be evoked with a few finger caresses of the keys.  Wouldn't you like to join me and a few of my friends at the piano, drink in hand, while I play some of my sentimental favorites, starting with "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square," composed by Ray Noble and premiered in London in 1940 just as the Battle of Britain was beginning and the British Empire began fading into the past.

 

Don't forget!

 Dedicated to someone very important to me who is on the other side of the world
doing a very dangerous job.

The time comes

My mother's life-long friend has declined into dementia.  She was fine until she had hip replacement surgery.  Since that she has just faded away.  I always liked her.  She had such a fund of stories and lore, vivacious and always a pleasure to be around.  My mother has known her since they were children, both early boomers, and now.... When my mother called her the other day she thought she was her daughter.  It seemed like she did not remember my mother at all, but then suddenly she asked when she was coming to pick her up because they were late for some play that they had gone together to see at the Pasadena Playhouse in the 1970s.  Then she lapsed into mumbling and after a few  minutes my mother told her good-bye.  There was a certain finality in the way she said it.

After she hung up, my mother said that she always talked to her as much as she could whenever she could because she knew some day they would not be able to.  One or the other would have this happen to them, or simply pass away.  And this day was the day.  Her friend was gone.  Alive in body for some while longer, but gone.  Then she looked at me and said, "Always talk to me.  It doesn't matter about what, just let us be together.  One day, one day soon, will be the last time we ever do, and we don't know when that will be.  I will miss not talking to you so much when I am gone."  Tears welled up in my eyes and felt an overwhelming wave of sadness, yet I was at a loss for words. I wanted to talk, to say what I felt to her, but I could not.

 

 

Random musings

 An immigrant can live in America for decades and still not know very much about it.  I mentioned in an earlier post how a Japanese woman who has lived in this country for decades had never heard of malted milk and didn't know what it was.  She'd also never heard of a milk shake or a root beer float.  In fact, she'd never even drunk a root beer or eaten a bologna sandwich, did not even know what bologna was. 
One time I made some brownies and was sharing them with some friends and acquaintances.  I offered them to a Taiwanese woman who had gone to university here and had worked for a Taiwanese company in the states for some years.  She looked at them and said she didn't like black bread.

And recently I read something by a Vietnamese immigrant, also in this country for decades, who was unaware of Garrison Keiller's much beloved fictional town of Lake Wobegon and the stories about it he told on his long-running radio series, A Prairie Home Companion. A paraphrase of the legendary closing line, "That's the news from Lake Wobegon, where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average," he did not recognize at all.

A British immigrant, likewise in this country for decades, was unaware there was an airport named for John Wayne in Orange County, Calif., and thought a reference to it was some kind of joke.  He also has that typical British superciliousness to all things Californian, even though a few questions elicit the fact that he knows nothing at all about the state, yet he still assumes he knows all there is to know. 

In contrast, I know several Mexicans who know absolutely everything about American pop culture, far more than I know, and absolutely adore it.  They love Whataburger and Lady Gaga.  They are crazy about Las Vegas and think the USMC is the greatest military organization in the world.  When people talk about northern Mexico eventually forming part of the United States, in fact if not in law, a sort of Tex-Mex political entity stretching far and wide, and the rest of Mexico drifting into the orbit of central America, I can believe it.

I was grumbling to my dad that although I had managed to jury-rig a repair to my time machine's transmorgrafier, now the darn discronificator had gone on the fritz and I couldn't find a replacement anywhere. 
He said, "Why don't you try Edmund Scientific?"
So I looked them up but they went out of business years ago.  There is some outfit using their name to import overpriced Chinese crap, but I wouldn't trust any of it to perform as advertised.  Dad said that when he was a kid he could get anything he needed to make anything he wanted by checking out the local Army-Navy surplus store, the Western Auto hardware store or ordering from Edmund Scientific. 
I said, "Yeah, but you are talking about making stink bombs to clear out the school auditorium during assemblies and making M80-powered rockets to launch Barbie Doll astronauts and I'm talking about a time machine." 
He said, "How do you know I didn't make a time machine?  How do you think I met your mother? I stopped off at Ur in 2,000 BC and there she was dancing in this temple...."
I said, "Dad, I'm not 10-years-old anymore.  You can't pull that stuff on me now."  He winked at me.  Boy, did he have me believing some weird stuff when I was a kid.  Like where my brothers came from. 

We needed some electrical work done on an old structure we are repairing and the earliest appointment we could get was in October!  So we snagged the date.  All those kinds of licensed and bonded service technicians around here are swamped with work.  It's funny how society is stratified to class lawyers and doctors higher than well drillers, farm machinery operators, HVAC specialists and so forth, but these latter seem to be in much greater demand and earn a lot more money.  And a lot of these guys don't even bother to go to trade schools.  They enlist in the service with high enough scores that they can pick their specialties and go for ones they know they can convert to a civilian career.  So they get paid to learn, get OJT, plus see a bit of the world.  That's using the old noggin.

I was solicited to join the VFW a while ago and did so because, among other reasons, one of my relatives or ancestors or whatever you'd call him was the architect who designed the building way back when, along with the local courthouse, the commercial hotel and the railroad station. 
The railroad station is still around but train passenger service is not even a distant memory for anyone alive today.  These days it houses a restaurant and some offices. 
The same is true of the commercial hotel, which is dedicated mostly to a local medical group and various legal services, plus apartments on the upper floors.  The downstairs restaurant is the same one that opened when the hotel did more than a hundred years ago. It specializes in prime rib and steak on the dinner menu and roast beef sandwiches and burgers on the lunch menu.  The breakfast menu serves steak and eggs, but the most popular order, I'm told, is sausages and buckwheat cakes with maple syrup, all locally sourced.

It has an adjacent bar that is very masculine, all dark mahogany and brass with a painting of a sensuous nude over the bar.  There is also a woman's face painted on the floor. No, really. Although it's not roped off, no one ever steps on it.
It's always cool and quiet in there, with subdued conversations at the booths in the back.  There is no TV or piped-in music.  There's a Steingraeber baby grand piano always kept in tune in one corner.  I like to play it when I stop by.  I'm always welcome to do so, with the caveat, "No boogie-woogie or any of that modern stuff!" So a little Chopin or Liszt.  One time while I was playing Chopin’s Prelude in D-flat Major, Op. 28: No. 15, a guy in a cashmere three-piece suit swung by on his way out and stuffed a hundred-dollar bill into my empty Shirley Temple glass.  "Use it to take a piano lesson," he said.  But he smiled as he said it. 
Oh, right, the VFW.  Well, the reason it came to mind is that while I was sitting on a bench waiting for el jefe to pick me up, a couple of men walked by and I heard one of them say to the other, "If I wanted to hear someone talking out of his ass, I'd have dinner at the VFW on chili night."

 

Happy Easter!

 

For the first time that I can remember, the Japanese cherry blossoms are blooming, the fruit cherries are blooming and the apple trees are blooming all at the same time. Oh, and the rose bushes and azaleas are bursting with bloom.  And there are wild flowers everywhere.  I especially like the little shy ones hiding in the shade.

There are bumble bees buzzing all over the flowers, and I even saw an earthworm after a shower!    Meadow larks are everywhere, as are song sparrows and the mornings are a delight of birdsong.  The humming birds are flitting and flashing among the blooms.  They even check out the red on my gloves and hat.  I've felt the breath of their wings on my face.  There is even an astonishingly beautiful stray cat who has decided to adopt our back porch and the dogs have decided he's okay, as have the other cats.

I mentioned the other day that we were thinking about getting out of the cattle business (after 150 years!), but I found out that that a Japanese firm, on hearing of this, invested a substantial sum to ensure that we don't.  Japan is our biggest export market for beef.  A few restaurants that serve our beef are Ikinari, Matsuzaka and Kurauzo in Tokyo.  Oh, and a place called the Meat Winery.  On Okinawa, O's Steakhouse serves our beef.  I'm sure there are others.  South Korea is our second largest export customer, followed by China.

I was reading some guy's blog where he was complaining that American beef was the worst in the world.  Oh, really?  Then he was lauding grass-fed beef, which I don't think he understood what was.  I don't know if you can actually get real grass-fed beef outside of the US and maybe Canada.  There's not much of a market for it.  It's very lean with no marbling.  The taste is very gamey.  And it's kind of tough.  Gonna need that steak knife.  Usually so-called grass-fed beef is only
sort of.  If you read the label, it typically says "grass fed, grain finished," meaning they trotted the cow brutes through a meadow then sent them on to a feed lot.  Our grass-fed beef is certified to be 100% grass fed.  Each individual creature is so proved to be by individual inspection.  And it's expensive, about three-times what grain-fed beef costs.  We're a member of the National Sustainable Agricultural Coalition and that helps us understand and comply with the USDA's AMS standards.  We're also a member of the American Grassfed Association, that certifies each one of our cattle to be genuinely grass fed.

Grass-fed beef on the hoof.

The very opposite of grass-fed beef is Kobe and Wagyu beef, very richly marbled and tender.  I doubt such cattle ever see a blade of grass.  Outside of Japan and...maybe...South Korea I would be leery of eating Oriental beef.  Besides the notorious cruelty towards animals those people display, especially the Chinese, God knows what they feed them.  And Europe is not much better.  After all, the outbreak of mad cow disease in Britain was caused by them feeding offal from slaughter houses, especially the brains of other cattle, to their livestock.  Gawd.  Here in Uncle Sam land we have PETA to raise hell if we stray from the straight and narrow.  A lot of righties don't like PETA but I am a member and think they do good work.  We've also worked with Mary Temple Grandin, the autistic lady who helps improve the emotional lives (yes!) of livestock.  I've read her writing and find her a valuable and interesting resource.  In Asia, outside of Japan, most livestock is treated the way East Asians treat PoWs.   It's shameful and sad.

Iwo Jima

Mt Suribachi

There is a connection between this post and the previous one.  Can you guess what it is?

 “The ultimate factor in the fall of Iwo Jima can be attributed only to the character and courage of the United States marines. In war there comes a time when power alone has reached its limits, when planes no longer can be called upon to deliver bombs effectively, when ships have no more shells to fire, when defenses will no longer yield before fire power, however heavy. That is the time when men on foot must pay for yardage with their lives. That is when they call on the marines."
~ Robert Sherrod, who was there.

Have you ever even set foot on Iwo Jima? I have as part of FCLP (Fleet Carrier Landing Practice) exercises. My grandfather was an aviator aboard Lexington (CV-16) when she was part of TG58.2 providing close air support for the 1945 landings. My grandmother was a Navy nurse aboard Solace (AH-5) evacuating and treating wounded at Iwo. She actually went ashore during the fighting, along with other nurses, to carry out triage.   

What a god-forsaken place to have war, a barren volcanic island, the beaches composed of and hemmed in by steep terraces of constantly shifting black sand, volcanic cinders, and ash some 15 feet high, impossible to properly dig in to for protection from the Japanese fires.

Wounded placed on deck waiting for treatment.

 Some 25,000 Americans and Japanese were killed in the space of five weeks on that  island.  That works out to about one human being every two minutes, hour after hour, day after day, week after week.  Plus some 20,000 wounded, so call it an individual person brutally killed or maimed every minute.

Iwo Jima.  No place in the middle of no where.

 

 

 

Then and now merged.

 

 

 

Rah, Rah, Roosevelt!

Roosevelt and family.

 Back in his day, President Franklin Roosevelt called Europe an incubator of wars.  I wonder if, looking at the latest European war, occurring so many decades after he said that, would he be dismayed that it was still so, or would he merely make a face and nod. 

And when Europeans have wars with each other, boy do they war, slaughtering and killing combatants and civilians however they may, smashing cities, destroying crops, livestock and farms to induce famine in the survivors.  When they finally exhaust themselves and quit, they hold grudges and can't wait to raise another generation to hurl at each other, renewing the butchery with sword and pistol, no quarter ask or given.

It's interesting to study FDR's evolving views on Europe and its role in promoting perpetual warfare.  Shortly after he was inaugurated in 1933, he had some kind words to say about Hitler, apparently thinking him a new, progressive type of politician.  Also that year, when Dwight Eisenhower approached him to provide funds to modernize the army, especially its armor, noting that the US Army only had 12 modern tanks, Roosevelt told him there was no need; in fact, he was considering abolishing the army entirely, turning over homeland defense to National Guard units.  After all, there certainly would never be a major war again.  The Europeans had finally learned their lesson in the Great War and would never be so foolish as to turn to war to solve their problems ever again.  So why have an army?

Eisenhower told him, in polite terms, that he was being naive.  The Europeans had not and never would change and there would be another great war in Europe by 1940.  What Eisenhower  told him dovetailed with what Henry Stimson, Taft's Secretary of War and Hoover's Secretary of State, told him in a private meeting, that it was time, even past time, for the United States to seize the world cockpit from the Europeans, telling them to settle down and behave, play fair, share their toys and no hitting! Don't make us come over there!  That's kind of a flip way of saying that Roosevelt was beginning to realize what a mistake had been made at the end of what was not yet called World War I, that as historian Edward H. Carr would write a few years later, "in 1918 world leadership was offered, almost by universal consent, to the United States and was declined." (The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1919-1939)  It was time to rectify that mistake.  But how to do it when the American people wanted no part of foreign slaughterhouses?  Foreign entanglements?  Get real.  Foreign abattoirs, charnel houses, foreign cemeteries filled with American youth? No.  No!

How the international interventionism of Henry Stimson and his confreres not only won over Roosevelt (who gets praised -- or blamed -- for the policy) is a long and fascinating story but by 1937 Roosevelt was warning of the danger of Nazi Germany in his famous Chicago speech and calling out British and French complacency.  It's actually quite amazing that he actually did get America to become not merely an interventionist power, but the enforcer (emphasis on force) of an Americanized planet, with mighty Europe being a sullen, resentful has-been.  An example of what a stunning change FDR engineered is that at the beginning of 1935, when Roosevelt proposed that the United States join the World Court, basically a symbolic gesture of solidarity with European efforts to prevent another war among themselves by creating an adjudicating body to resolve disputes, the senate revolted, epitomized by Minnesota senator Thomas Schall's literal shout during debate over the issue, "To hell with Europe and the rest of those nations!"  I found that quote in Time magazine's contemporary coverage of the senate debate.  Schall represented the vast majority of the American electorate's thinking.  When Italy invaded Ethiopia later that year, the League of Nations tried to impose an economic embargo but Roosevelt, understanding how hostile the American voter was to any foreign entanglement, would not commit the United States to participating.  In fact, US oil exports to Italy tripled and the League's efforts to punish Italy collapsed, the League powers blaming America.  But in December, 1937, it was discovered that Sir Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval, the British and French foreign ministers, had signed an agreement to partition Ethiopia between their two countries. The America public reaction was profound cynicism and disgust for the European so-called democracies, which were really nothing more than gangster nations, their statesmen nothing but snooty-accented, tuxedo-clad Al Capones, Lucky Lucianos and Dutch Schultzes, their flag-waving, drum-beating patriotic wars nothing but fights between mobsters for control of the rackets. 

When the Japanese bombed the US gunboat Panay as it patrolled the Yangtze River near Nanking, along with three Standard Oil tankers, the same month as the Ethiopia revelation, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, echoing widespread Roosevelt Administration feeling, said, "War with Japan is inevitable and if we have to fight her, isn't now the best possible time?"  I don't know why he thought December, 1937, was the best possible time, but the American public and a press which then followed closely that opinion, did not agree.  "The gunboat Panay is not the battleship Maine," editorialized The Christian Science Monitor, and Minnesota Senator Henrik Shipstead demanded, "What are they doing there?" of American naval vessels on Chinese inland waterways, echoing the questioning of the majority of Americans who did not want to fight Japan but to get our sailors out of China.

The upshot of the Panay incident was that the Ludlow Amendment introduced by Indiana congressman Louis Ludlow, stating that except in case of direct invasion of American soil, the United States could only engage in war if a majority of the voters agreed in a national referendum, which had been bottled up in the House Judiciary Committee, got all the signatures needed for a discharge petition and the amendment was brought to the house floor for a vote.  President Roosevelt strongly fought the amendment, noting that in 1898 the public, propagandized by the Hearst newspapers and other media, would have voted for war, "in all probability an unnecessary war," (!) "one which a strong, unencumbered president could have prevented."  The amendment was defeated 209-188, a pretty narrow margin, considering how radical the amendment was.

It was around this time FDR began thinking of why Europe was so warfare prone, deciding their empires were a major cause of friction, even compelling Japan to adopt their ways to avoid becoming colonized itself, and concluding that they all had to be dismantled, along with the European armies and navies, and a new world order (that phrase), a one-world system, had to be instituted to suppress European aggression, liberate the peoples exploited by their imperial policies and ensure peace.  Thus, while anti-interventionist Americans thought that Roosevelt was in league with the British Empire and Jewish foreign interests, selling out America for unfathomable reasons other than that he was in league with Satan as Woodrow Wilson, the president blamed for getting us into the Great War, is depicted to have been in John Dos Passos' novel 1919, part of the USA trilogy, in which Wilson is described as having, " a terrifying face, I swear it's a reptile's face, not warm-blooded...,"  he actually had his own agenda, one of vast ambition: to end war, destroy all empires, free colonial peoples, bring prosperity and peace to the whole world.  And to do that he would use the economic and  military power of the United States.  Of course, even if Roosevelt could accomplish this, he was committing America and its people to being what would later be termed the world's policeman, essentially forever, without asking Americans if they agreed with his agenda or wanted such a role.  He was just going to do it, even if he had to lie to the America people to do so.  In 1940, campaigning in Boston for an unprecedented third term, he told a crowd, "While I am talking to you mothers and fathers I give you my assurance once more -- I have said this before but I shall say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."  Well, how was he going to achieve his dream for a remade world without American involvement in wars overseas?

In any case, despite dying only about two months into his fourth term, with much of his plan for the new world he envisioned still unaccomplished, the postwar world did, in fact, resemble fairly closely what Roosevelt envisioned.  The European empires dissolved, the  colonial peoples became independent and world peace, more or less, was enforced by the might of the United States.  Of course, some things FDR did not imagine, most especially the Cold War, developed to produce a world Roosevelt would not have wanted.  Two allies of convenience, Stalin and Churchill, largely brought the Cold War about, Stalin because he had his own world agenda and Churchill because he saw that a world divided between the USSR and the USA had no room for the British Empire, so he set about fomenting dissension between the two, not that Stalin needed much help with that.  But I do wonder if Roosevelt had lived and been of sound mind if he could have managed the postwar world much better than Truman did -- not to bad mouth Truman, who achieved a lot, all things considered.  And the efforts of the colonial powers to hang on to their empires, most especially the French, led to wars that never should have been, and American involvement that never should have happened.  And the freed colonial peoples have not prospered as much as Roosevelt imagined they would.  And this...and that....  Still, Roosevelt did a lot to change the world for the better. We've had no wars between great powers, as was routine when Europe ran the world, and however much we can attribute that to FDR, he is to be thanked.  And, although I haven't mentioned it, with his domestic policies he radically changed America itself, I personally think in ways that were necessary and helpful.  I'll let the following documentary review the domestic scene under Roosevelt.

Life in the Thirties, produced by NBC Television's Project XX, first broadcast October 16, 1959.  It's a look back at that decade by those who lived through it.  America was one sort of country when the decade began, and another altogether when it ended. It was a terrible decade and it led to a world war, and on into the world we inhabit today. The one-hour documentary is here divided into two parts. Narrated by the wonderful Alexander Scourby, it focuses on Roosevelt's first two terms and how he changed the American domestic scene, not his foreign policy.  It's a good reminder that for Americans America is what's really important, and what a president does to improve America and solve its problems is what really counts.

RHIP

 When I tell people I was a Navy brat growing up, if they are civilians and always have been, they react either with incomprehension or  the "oh, you poor dear" type of condescension.  But if the person was a service brat him- or herself, or is in the service or has been, they ask, among other questions, what rank my parent was.  When I say my dad retired as an 0-7, they grow quiet.  I grew up on officers' row on bases throughout the Pacific and west coast.  In fact, I was born overseas and never set foot in CONUS for some years.  

It's common for civilians to put down those in our armed forces, and to hold the most negative views of them, commonly thinking they all come from "the lower classes," whatever those are. This despite the fact that, much to the dismay of the armed forces themselves, 75 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24, the most likely time to join, are not qualified to serve.  Only A and B high school students have a chance of being accepted providing they also possess a whole series of requirements most can't meet.  The requirements have risen over the years,  and many who were accepted into the service in the 1980s, even the 1990s, would never get in today.  And studies have shown repeatedly that those who join up are middle class or higher in social rank, well educated, physically fit, emotionally stable, drug- and alcohol-free.  In other words, among the best the country produces. 

So why so much denigration of such people?  An easy answer would include the words envy, jealousy, resentment, unwelcome realization that they couldn't do what our service members do every day, that they're simply not good enough.  

But I'm not convinced that's more than a partial answer applying to some.  A different reason is people getting sick of the forced "patriotism" of military displays at sporting events and the like, as well as the "thank you for your service" fake gratitude that is pushed.  Personally, I think it's good that society not worship the military or war heroes.  After all, you only have war heroes if you have wars, and I'd prefer we not have those.  And about the resistance to "thank you for your service," I think it's pretty well understood that most jobs in the armed forces are non-combat support-side stuff -- maintenance, supply, administrative, and so forth.  Why thank people for having a routine, albeit necessary, job? Then, of course, for what I think may be the majority of people, they are just not interested in the military life and can't understand why anyone would be. They hear about homeless vets and vet suicides (the numbers of both wildly exaggerated or misrepresented). They assume those who join up can't find any other work.  Not true, of course, and easily proven to be untrue because almost all who join do one hitch and then go on to a typical civilian life, except with a lot of cool stories about that time on liberty in Marseilles or this one time that...

Unfortunately, despite the high standards of recruitment, there are still those who were not doing well in life before they enlisted, performed adequately, but no more, in some routine support job, then after discharge went back to not doing well in civilian life.  Whatever troubles and failures they have are not the result of their military service, they are the result of their own personalities, decisions and actions.  It's just like anything else involving people, some are failures even if they come from privileged backgrounds and some are successes even though they come from the most miserable circumstances. I know immigrants with no particular job skills, talents or education who, through perseverance and hard work have become very successful and they love America.  I also have some slight acquaintance (I avoid losers as soon as I recognize them) with immigrants who have utterly failed, ending up as bums and barflies, working menial jobs for years with no effort to advance in life. They blame America for their failures and are bitter and resentful.  That's the way life is. It's no brilliant insight to point it out.  "Root hog, or die," used to be a popular expression.  It's still true.

The Reagan sailing past Iwo Jima

Although I come from a service family and understand and  can navigate the life, even be successful at it, I don't think it is for everyone, by any means.  It's a great trade school for high-school graduates, one that pays you to learn, then provides benefits to help you extend your education if you so choose.  But lots of people just can't stand all the rules and regulations and the deprivations and disruptions to normal life that civilians will never encounter.  I can't speak for the other services, but, for example, in the Navy at sea there are no days off, and a work day can easily last 13 hours, then for the enlisted, even on a big ship like an aircraft carrier, you sleep in what is little more than an open coffin, jammed in with many, many others.  You have no privacy, and no way to get away from anyone you dislike or can't get along with.  You have to endure.  Of course, on a smaller ship, conditions are worse.

Despite all this, our armed forces get some of the very best of our young people to serve. Very often these days, they come from families with a tradition of service and so it is a natural thing for them to do.  They are smart and dedicated and very capable.  I have no doubt that our armed forces are staffed by better people than in any other country's military.  That's not boasting. The British may have the best of the European  armed forces, but in Iraq and Afghanistan they performed miserably, having to be rescued in Basra by the Iraqi army, they were so incapable, and saved by the US Marines in Afghanistan, a place the Brits asked to be sent to make up for their humiliation in Iraq to prove they could at least handle goat fuckers.  But they couldn't.  They ended up trapped in their outposts, unable to do anything.  And we are talking about British elite units like 40 Commando.  When the US Marines came, the Brits were close to being overrun and annihilated, but the 3/7 attacked within 24 hours of arriving and drove out the Taliban.  There was some very heavy fighting, but the outcome was never in doubt.  Some time later, in what was, under the watchful eye of our Marines, a pacified and peaceful area, a combat outpost was turned over to a company of volunteering Estonian soldiers, Estonia being a new member of NATO that wanted to carry its weight.  Alas, as soon as the Marines left, the Taliban, always lurking, always watching, attacked and overran the outpost, killing and wounding some 22 Estonian soldiers.  The Marines had to return and repacify the area. The Estonians never again volunteered to do anything.

By the way, in case you didn't know it, the Marines are part of the Navy. "Marine" stands for "My Ass Rides In Navy Equipment," don't you know.

These days I read a lot of uniformed but highly opinionated comments about how the Chinese Navy will destroy the US Navy.  Apparently, even at least some high-ranking Chinese believe this. Maybe so.  Hopefully, we will never find out. But history being what it has been, and humans being what they are, I suppose the time will come when we do.  But having seen something of how the British and Australian navies operate, and more how the Japanese and South Korean navies perform -- more than adequate but without the top-notch personnel we have --  I can't imagine the Chinese will be better than they are, let alone us. And, yes, I know about the disasters and fiascos our navy has experienced.  Operating a world-wide blue-water navy 24/7/365 year after year, is not easy. (And you don't think other navies have suffered serious troubles as well?  Really?)  

The Chinese navy doesn't attract the best of Chinese youth by any means, and the service itself is riddled top to bottom with corruption, both in equipment procurement and maintenance, but also in personnel advancement, with the officer corps paying bribes to get promotions.  And, of course, the Chinese
Navy has never participated in any form of combat  at all.  Even before the communist revolution, the Chinese had no naval tradition to speak of.  As unimpressive as the Europeans and Japanese navies may be compared to ours -- and they are not bad, far from it, especially the Japanese Maritime forces shine, but we are just better -- the Chinese are much worse. And all the America-allied countries have strong naval traditions and have fought and won  major sea battles.  The Japanese alone could wad the Chinese navy up, from what I have observed.  If the Chinese want a no-ROE fight with the USN, believe me, they will face a  crew of the best there is ready to rock and roll.

Oh, right.  The Russians.  No comment.  None need be expressed.

Of course, in war contingency and luck play enormous roles,  so who can say what the outcome of any naval war  might be.  But if it comes to it, I'll not only put my money on the United States Navy, but also my life.  Actually, I already have.  More than once. If I have to, I'll do it again.  How about you?

 

Go and Catch a Falling Star

Go and catch a falling star,

    Get with child a mandrake root,

Tell me where all past years are,

    Or who cleft the devil's foot,

Teach me to hear mermaids singing,

Or to keep off envy's stinging,

            And find

            What wind

Serves to advance an honest mind.

If thou be'st born to strange sights,

    Things invisible to see,

Ride ten thousand days and nights,

    Till age snow white hairs on thee,

Thou, when thou return'st, wilt tell me,

All strange wonders that befell thee,

            And swear,

            No where

Lives a man true, and fair.

If thou find'st one, let me know,

    Such a pilgrimage were sweet;

Yet do not, I would not go,

    Though at next door we might meet;

Though he were true, when you met him,

And last, till you write your letter,

            Yet he

            Will be

False, ere I come, to two, or three.

     ~  John Donne

 

American Women...

... of yesteryear.

It's interesting to see what people believed made American girls different from those elsewhere 80 years ago.  It was a time when Americans were going overseas to serve in the war and the GIs were observing foreign women and comparing them to the American girls back home.  It came through clearly to them that there was a distinct "something" that made Americans different, we were as separate a people as French and Germans, English and Italians.  Just what was that?

By the way, in those days people spoke of race when nowadays we would speak of nationality.  Thus Norwegians and Irishmen were said to be different races.  Click the pages to enlarge them.

It's hard to believe, looking at the photos, how normal life was in the before times.  Who could have imagined then what a decadent, crime-ridden freak show life in these United States would turn in to.

I Can't Smile Without You

 Things keep getting crazier and I don't understand why. None of it makes any sense to me.  Who is profiting from this raving nonsense?  Is it, as Theodore Dalrymple says, merely a way to humiliate people by forcing them to accept and parrot lies that they know to be lies?  If so, why?  What is gained?

But...what is it that "they" want to control?  And why?  I can't figure it out.

Well, since my time machine is still in the experimental stage and the transmorgrafier cam wheel flange has flooglelated again and Amazon is out of stock, I'll just have to hang around in the present for a while longer.  Rats.  

But what I can do is just ignore it all, focus on what's real and important to me, and especially those who mean so much to me.  What else can I do -- and, when you get right down to it, what else do I really want to do, now or at any time under any circumstances?  All things come to an end.  This, too, shall pass.  In the meantime, I'll never forget what is always most important to me in my life.  I hope you can do the same.