Why Memorial Day Is

"I still don't understand why lookers-on of battle try to use words to tell what they've seen. Or why I do. You don't remember the things of war with the part of your being that forms and chooses words. It's not that the brain forgets. Mine remembers that during the daylight hours of [Iwo Jima's] D Day plus 6 and D Day plus 7, the U.S.S. Samaritan took aboard 551 critically wounded Marines, a hundred more than the ship had been built to carry.

"But it's my stomach that remembers how the ship smelled. It still could tell the difference between the orthopedic wards aboard where there always was plaster dust in the air from the fresh casts, and one of the wards for abdominal injuries, where the smell was of decomposing flesh.
And it's my ears that remember the ceaseless surge of small boat engines beside us as they delivered up their loads. They still know an Amtrac from an LCVP, the small Higgins boat with the ramp for a bow. They know the human noises masked by that sound, the curses and commands and breathing of the seamen carrying stretchers hour after hour. And how people sound when they are hurting terribly.
"It's my feet that remember the blood. A pool of blood was something a man left behind him on the deck like his gun and his pack. The important thing about the blood was that it was slippery under your feet, and you had to be careful if you were standing in it not to fall down when the ship rolled.

"None of these impressions, though, is as unfading as what the heart remembers...."

 ~ Written by a woman who was there.  And never forgot.

Changes

 

I invited a friend, a typical city/suburban type, to spend her vacation with us on our ranch and she's certainly enjoyed it.  She marvels at the silence, the ability to hear the wind rushing through the grass, a leaf falling making a great crashing sound, as it seems.  She'd never seen the moon rise or set directly on the horizon, unblocked by buildings.  She'd never seen a shooting star or a satellite crossing the night sky, never seen the Milky Way, the North Star or any of the constellations. She'd never heard the sound of a bird's wings in flight or the singing of field mice underground in their nests (you don't believe that, do you?).  She marvels at the sky and clouds, having never seen cloud shadows race across the ground, never seen a storm front approach, filling the whole sky,  never heard the sound of rain approaching, never seen a whole rainbow....  

But, still, when she wants to know what the weather will be, she consults her cell phone instead of looking out the window or going out on the porch and looking, smelling, feeling, letting her senses tell her what is and what is coming.  I can't really fault her.  Most of her days have been spent indoors, often in offices without windows, or shopping malls or big stores illuminated by artificial lighting, the only sounds those of human activity, piped-in muzak, ventilation equipment, the only smells those of plastics and chemicals, old carpet, stale coffee, restaurant or cafeteria food, deodorants, perfumes and flatulence.  Even when she has gone outside building surrounded her, blocking the horizon, and the sounds of humanity were everywhere, especially all variety of internal combustion engines.

When I explain to her that north winds are cold, south winds are warm, southwest winds  are warm and humid, southeast winds bring rain, she is amazed.  And which direction is which, she asks.  I explain the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and she asks which way are those directions.

Since she's been here, she's discovered that she likes animals and has enjoyed working with the large animal veterinarian, assisting her with extracting semen from stallions (it ain't erotic, trust me), helping with calf birthing, treating dogs with rattlesnake bites and otherwise tending to all the creatures' ills and ailments.  She also likes helping to train them, especially the border collies, who make good cow dogs.  

She's lost weight since she joined us although her appetite is ravenous and she chows down like a champ, vacuuming up grub she'd have turned her nose up before:  corn bread and slow-cooked pinto beans served with maple syrup, apple sauce and campfire coffee; potatoes and chili peppers with  eggs all fried in bacon grease and served on pancakes with blackberry jam and apple butter and sides of ham, sausage and bacon.  After a day working hard outdoors it's all burned off.  She has some kind of phone app that tells her how many calories she's used and it says she is expending about 6,000 calories a day.  I tell her the men work far harder than she or I do and they need all the energy-rich food they can get.  Watching them, she can believe it, and understands the need for high-calorie food.  I remind her that the same sorts of work they are doing in spring weather they will be doing come winter and they will burn even more calories just keeping warm.  

Of course, we do have plenty of fruits and vegetables, most grown ourselves or growing wild -- apples, of course, but also, in season, pears, peaches, persimmons, cherries, grapes, strawberries, boysenberries,  blueberries, blackberries....  And we have fresh grown veggies, everything from rhubarb to radishes, in season, otherwise frozen or preserved.  But what keeps people working is the high energy foods.  They can't get enough of those.   Meals that would give cubicle drones heart attacks make for robust health in a horse wrangler, jingler and fence rider.  Taking noon shade under an old cottonwood, he'll happily unwrap a lunch comprising a thick roast beef sandwich spread generously with butter, a couple of boiled eggs, some corn dodgers and an apple turnover.

The ranch life seems to suit her.  She's tanned and fit and her rather depressed, withdrawn and cynical nature has turned sunny and outgoing and she smiles and laughs a lot.  She's up before dawn and in bed and sound asleep an hour or two after sunset.

Wherever there are deer there are pumas. They get thirsty too.

Since she's on vacation, she doesn't have to do any of those things she's been helping with and may do as she pleases.  And she does.  She likes riding her favorite horse, a mare we thought would be too much animal for her, but the horse gentles down at her touch.  She also enjoys going down to the creek or the ponds, which are stocked with trout, and skipping rocks, wading the shallows or swimming in the deep pools or in the ponds.  She'd never been skinny-dipping before and when I did it she was a bit surprised but was game to try it and soon discovered how delightful it is.  Now her clothes come off as soon as we spread a blanket.  There's no one around so what difference does it make?  Deer and other creatures often come down to drink, a sight that delights her.  We're into baby deer season and she is almost delirious with joy watching all the little ones trot behind their mothers, nurse and play.  The sight of a mountain lion coming down to the water astounded and frightened her, as well it should have, and suddenly she realized why and was glad that I always bring along a trusty Winchester .30-30 and have it handy at all times.  The old sailor saying that you may love the navy but the navy doesn't love you back applies to mother nature as well:  you may love the planet but the planet doesn't love you back.  To it you are just some other animal's food.

When we drive into the closest town, population 700, she marvels at how friendly people are.  Strangers say hello as you pass on the street and clerks, cashiers and wait staff chat with you.  In pleasant weather store doors are propped open so a breeze can waft through the aisles.  She was surprised to see a dog wander into the meat market and come out with a soup bone.  Of course, the county seat is bigger and not so cozy, but it offers plenty of shopping, dining and other entertainment.

Speaking of drives, she also marvels at the empty roads winding through delightful scenery.  She says it's like driving in a car commercial.  Her emotional drive also seems to have been changed.  She tells me that what she used to consider important now seems trivial, her daily life tedious and frustrating.  She doesn't want to go back.  She's been talking with our vet about becoming a veterinarian assistant and then a veterinarian technician.  The local community college offers an Associate of Science degree in registered veterinary technology. It takes a couple of years of study plus several hundred hours of internship with a veterinarian.  Our vet says she could use a good assistant, so maybe something will come of that.  Who would have thought that inviting someone to your home for a vacation would change the direction of their life?  I sure didn't.  I hope it turns out well.

“The blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, the animals, the wind and rain and stars are never strange to me; for I am in and of and am one with them; and my flesh and the soil are one, and the heat in my blood and in the sunshine are one, and the winds and the tempests and my passions are one. I feel strangeness only with regard to my fellow men, especially in towns, where they exist in conditions unnatural to me, but congenial to them.” 
― William Henry Hudson

 

 

The last of the Indian Scouts

Pawnee Scouts gather beside a Union Pacific train in 1866.

The last to retire were Apaches, but the first and most famous were the Pawnee.  Fully 800 joined the US Army in 1864 and were formed into their own battalion.  They protected the Union Pacific railroad as it was constructed from attack by the Sioux.  Perhaps the next most famous Indian Scouts were the northern Cheyenne who fought the Sioux at Wounded Knee.  

It's a shame that the Army's Indian allies are now forgotten and a false history, full of lies and distortions, is promoted -- if it is promoted at all.  Indians are the ignored minority.

Northern Cheyenne Scouts, Dec., 1890, during the Ghost Dance troubles.

 

 

The Pohjola's daughter legend is related in the eighth poem of the Kalevala. The old hero Väinämöinen is traveling south when he catches sight of the beautiful daughter of Pohjola (Northland) sitting at the edge of a rainbow. Smitten, he stops his horse and says, "Come, maid, into my sleigh, step down into my sledge!" Before she will agree to do that, the girl gives him three tasks to perform. Two of them he accomplishes. Then she says, "I'd marry one who could carve a boat out of bits of my spindle." Väinämöinen sets about carving a boat, but on the third day an accident happens.  The axe blade strikes a stone and the axe bounces off the rock and hits Väinämöinen, cutting him badly, and he had to abandon the third task and leave Pohjola's daughter.  There's a connection between this story and the Indian Scouts.  Can you guess what it is?

Non sense

I was chatting with a Japanese acquaintance about current affairs and she mentioned that there were so many Ukrainian refugees in Japan now.  She kept exclaiming on how many there were, so finally I asked her how many, expecting a figure in the several thousands.  She said nine-hundred.  I started to mention that the US had taken in more than 15,000 and planned to accept 100,000 but then stopped.  She would just nod.  After all, as she had told me often before, America belongs to everyone.  I used to consider that something to be proud of.  But now I kind of resent it.  No it doesn't.  At least, it shouldn't.  It should only belong to Americans.  Does Japan belong to everybody?  Does Mexico?  How about Guatemala?

This same Japanese also remarked that the affluent Los Angeles suburb of San Marino, which has become heavily Chinese, is called Chan Marino by her friends.  That reminded me that I once overheard a conversation among Chinese students who referred to Japanese as "the Js."  And one time when I was sitting on the sand at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro with a Mexican friend some Orientals walked by.  My fence-jumping, bean-eating friend referred to them as pie-faced squinties.  His friend, sitting with us, called them Chingchongs.  Later we stopped by a Korean market and bought some delicious hot roasted peanuts in their shells.  The cashier did not smile at us nor speak.  I said hello to her but she did not respond, ignoring me and staring with open hostility at the Mexicans. She scooped up the peanuts and bagged them with a sour look on her face. Ignoring an outstretched hand, she put the change down on the counter, then took a step back. I wondered what I, a native-born, pioneer-stock American ofay, was doing in this place with these people. A hundred and fifty years ago any ancestor of mine would have shot and probably scalped the bunch of them.  Had he spotted me, he would have ordered, "Daughter, hie thee hence!"

La Tuna Canyon CCC/PoW camp.

San Pedro used to be a Japanese-American fishing town.  There are still remains of salt water baths they built down below the cliffs.  After Pearl Harbor, they were expelled and interned at the behest of governor Earl Warren and, according to Gus Russo in Supermob,  Jewish gangsters, who ended up acquiring most of the interned Japanese' property for pennies on the dollar.  A lot of the expelled San Pedro Japanese were initially housed in a former CCC camp in La Tuna canyon just south of Tujunga before being moved to Manzanar.  After they were gone, the camp became a PoW facility housing captured Japanese combatants -- they didn't all fight to the last banzai charge.  One of these PoWs so enjoyed his incarceration that after the war he returned to Tujunga, entered the construction trades and eventually built his own house on the hills north of the canyon. During the torrential rains and massive flooding that hit the area during the winter of 1969, his house was one of the few to remain standing.  The flooding washed out a nearby cemetery and his yard ended up littered with coffins, some of which broke open and spilled their contents.  The camp later became a golf course and I think now it's a housing development.

I have a northern Cheyenne ancestor who attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. One of his grandfathers was a  blood enemy of the US Army.  He was described by Isaac Coates, General Winfield S. Hancock's surgeon, who encountered him at Fort Larned, Kansas, in the 1860s, thusly: "He is quite six feet in height, finely formed with a large body and muscular limbs. His appearance, decidedly military. A seven-shooting Spencer carbine hung at the side of his saddle, four large Navy revolvers were stuck in his belt, and a bow, already strung with arrows, were grasped in his left hand. Thus armed and mounted on a fine horse, he was a good representative of the God of War; and his manner showed plainly that he did not care whether we talked or fought."  Yet his grandson was sent off to learn the white man's ways by his parents who wanted him to have a future as part of the American story.  After graduation, he joined the army and served as a mounted scout with the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry, out of Fort Keogh, Montana. He fought at Wounded Knee -- against the Sioux.  One of his sons joined the navy and became a naval aviator flying a Martin T4M-1 off the USS Langley (CV-1).  He eventually became a member of Adm. Joseph Reeves' staff.  One of his sons also became a naval aviator as did one of his grandsons.  They all married hot blonde babes (like me!) and had lots of rug rats and house apes, all of whom grew up to consider themselves simply Americans.  The Indian part of their ancestry was just one part, but one they considered fully American.  After all, an American Indian helped found the Boy Scouts and the Campfire Girls (Charles Eastland, a Santee Sioux), Jim Thorpe (a Sac and Fox) was one of America's first sports heroes, Will Rogers, at one time America's most beloved humorist and social commenter, was a Cherokee, Charles Curtis, a Kaw, became Senate majority leader and later Herbert Hoover's vice president; had the Depression not happened he might well have become president, Capt. Ernest Evans, who became one of the navy's  greatest heroes in the Battle Off Samar, fighting his ship with such bravery that even the Japanese who sank her saluted the  survivors as they sailed past, was a Cherokee, as was BM1 James E. Williams, the most decorated enlisted man in the history of the US Navy, earning the Navy Cross, Silver Star and Medal of Honor as a patrol boat commander on the Mekong River in Viet Nam.  I could go on...and on...and on.  Americans all, and proud contributors to American history and heritage.  So what is going on now and why?  You tell me, because I don't see the point to it or who profits.

 Well, to hell with it.  It will all come crashing down by and by, either of itself or because we ordinary people give it a kick in the keister.

 In the meantime, Ima laugh at the world, party with my pals and just enjoy myself. Why not?  What's the point of being a gloomy Gus going around muttering we're doomed, doomed, I tell you!  Nah.  We're not.  Just put upon.  So forget it and jump up and dance with me!

“A woman must be a woman and cannot be a man.”
― Martin Luther

The last cherry blossoms of spring

 

 

And so another spring passes.  It was a rainy one.  We had hail rattling down on cold north winds, followed by warm southwesterlies bringing thunder and lightning and bursts of torrential rain.  Gully washers and frog chokers as my dad calls them.  We're going to have a bumper crop of strawberries, fat sweet ones.  That means lots of strawberry preserves and strawberry ice cream, made with fresh cream from our own cows.  And of course strawberry shortcake till it comes out our ears.  I do love strawberry shortcake.  And I make the best shortcake you ever ate.  Ditto sponge cake.  So you can have your choice to go with your strawberries and fresh whipped cream.

I've gotten so used to eating fresh-laid eggs that when I had some at a restaurant the other day I almost couldn't eat them.  Very tiny yolks and splayed out whites, obviously old, maybe weeks old, and kept refrigerated.

On the increasing sunny days the skies are often filled with towering cumulus clouds among which the barn swallows dive and tumble, and far above them the hawks and vultures circle silently.  On such days we often eat outside, either on porch or patio, or take a picnic basket out to an old pine or fir.  We have a grove of deodar cedars and afghan pines planted some 20 years ago that have grown into giants.  The deodars remind me of Kipling and the pre-machinegun-era British imperial armies aromatic of horse sweat and saddle leather, gunpowder and tobacco, cholera, gin and adultery.  How ya doin' Mrs. Vansuythen?

 

 

 

 

Spurious correlations

 Spurious correlations are everywhere these days, especially regarding Covid-19, particularly its postulated origin and the alleged side-affects attributed to various vaccines claimed to counter it, but also all sorts of other things, from the wickedness of whites and their pernicious influence on blacks in all manner of things to the existence and causes of so-called climate change to...well, the list is practically endless.  

Here are some examples of obviously absurd correlations, but often the absurdity of a correlation is not apparent without solid knowledge of the subject or careful research and reflection.   I do suspect, however, that some who are quite aware that the correlations they are promoting are spurious do so assuming those they wish to influence will not realize it.  Then there are many cases where the correlation may or may not be spurious, as in the relationship between the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming, but the voices of those who suspect it may be so are suppressed.

Graphs are from the book Spurious Correlations by Tyler Vigen. He's got 30,000 of them!

 

 

Vagabonds

Not everybody fits in -- or wants to.  Civilization:  what a drag.  I'm not being sarcastic.  I'm thinking of guys like Christopher McCandless of recent times, or, further into the past, men like Johnny Appleseed or the mountain men who walked off into the wilderness with nothing but a Hawken rifle and a possibles bag.  Lots of these joined Indian tribes, marrying into them and living happy lives far from the settled life of the East.  One of my ancestors was such, lighting out from Pennsylvania after the Revolution and living the rest of his life west of the 100th meridian.

We've always had hobos, tramps, drifters, vagrants and vagabonds passing through, but not part of, the workaday life. I've read that after the Civil War the country was full of them, most veterans of the war, many suffering from what we would now call PTSD, who just couldn't go back to the farm or the shop.  So they hit the road.

Then there are those who simply feel alienated.  From what?  Maybe they don't know themselves, but they just can't fit in.  They want to escape.  Escape what?  Who cares?  Just escape!

I have some sense of how the outsider feels, having been a service brat growing up on a series of navy bases, most overseas, never really having a hometown of my own, even a school.  A semester or two in Guam, three in Japan (broken up between Yokosuka and Sasebo), one in Sicily then Naples, another in San Diego, then Whidbey Island, thence to South Korea and back to Japan....  Year after year.  So when I finally settled in the States to finish out high school and go on to college, the country I found myself in was not at all like the America I envisioned growing up.  I was like a dodo bird, not realizing that all these people swirling around me had not grown up in a "straighten up and fly right, good order and disciple, all ship-shape and Bristol fashion" world, and lots of them were dangerous.  I almost lost my life twice before I wised up.  Well, I've written about all that before.  No need to go back over it.  But the thing is, I get it.  I get it about feeling like -- being -- an outside observer, of not quite understanding what's going on, missing cultural references that everybody else implicitly understands and often not even realizing that you are missing something.

I'm not just talking about living in the States.  I lived so long in Japan that it feels or felt, I should say, more like home in many ways than did the USA.  There were times when I felt almost like I was Japanese, but then something would happen that would jolt me out of my illusion.  To Japanese I was always a foreigner, an alien.  I might forget that, but they never did, and once in a while something they said or did made that clear to me.  Often I was hurt by it, by the rejection, the dismissal, the insult.  Finally, I got it through my head that my home, my native land, was America and only America and I had to make it so, even if I didn't really know how. 

Fortunately for me I did have relatives, including those I had spent vacations with as a child, my parents wanting me to get to know them and also, as I realize now, to not become too isolated from the country of my forefathers.  So I had someplace to call home, settle into, travel the byways, walk the paths and streets that generations of my forebears had done.  I could stop by a local store and casually chat with the cashier who, it would turn out, was my second cousin.  I could have lunch in a diner where my grandmother, as a teenager, had worked as a waitress during summer vacations.  So I could ease into being at home in this far land in a way that I never could in Japan or anywhere else in the world but here.

But there are many people for which such a solution to their alienation doesn't exist.  Or if it does exist, for various reasons they don't like it or want it.  In my case, although I have lived in cities, I am a country girl at heart. I need to see trees and grass and animals and far vistas, open sky, the sun and the wind.  So to find this home that I can make my own to also be in such a place makes me happy and content. I don't ever want to leave or go anywhere else.  I am where I want to be.

But I'm lucky.  Were this place some city, especially one back in the horrid East, I couldn't stand it. I would flee.  But to where?  I would have no place to flee to.  If I were a man, I could become a vagabond, wandering hither and yon, maybe join the merchant marine and sail from port to port. Or maybe even become an ESL teacher drifting from Seoul to Dubai, defensively sneering at the "straights" with serious jobs, becoming ever more alienated and resentful with each passing year of all those with houses and cars, investments and money in the bank living their boring lives.  They don't know, I would tell myself reassuringly.  Know what?  Why what's behind the curtain.  But as a woman, that's really not an option.  Plus, I just don't have that kind of personality:  I'm not sure there is a "curtain," and if there is, I don't want to know what's behind it.  So I don't know what I would do. I don't care to think about it.

Well, I started this post wanting to say something, but I see I've just rambled.  So I'll shut up.  Wait --  I did want to say that I "get" outsiders and I think that society needs such people, those who don't buy the "received" view of the world, don't give a damn about status or career or wealth and would rather sit on a park bench than drive a Mercedes.  We can't all be that way, but sometimes don't you wish you could just chuck it all and thumb a ride on a big rig or swing aboard a freight train and just go? Just go.  Not me.  Not any more anyway.  But how about you?

* * *

 "The Vagabond's House," a poem by Don Blanding first published in a limited edition of 2,000 imprints in 1928, it went on to sell 150,000 copies.  It is here read by Franklyn MacCormack in the middle of the night over WGN radio in 1965. WGN was a clear-channel station broadcasting a 50,000-watt signal that covered most of the Midwest.  Long-distance truckers and train crews, all-night workers in gas stations and diners tuned in to listen to MacCormack read poems by such poets as Edgar Guest, Robert Service and Don Blanding, dreamers and drifters, folksy and familiar, all once wildly popular, now forgotten.

 

"There is a difference between an ideal that cannot be attained and one that is senseless."
~Sidney Hook