The Fury of Aerial Bombardment 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 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
"The dictionary defines a pilgrim as one who travels in alien lands.
In a sense, we are all pilgrims, for all of life is a search -- for
security, for success, for love. For some of us, the journey is
a longer one than for others, and for the few it can seem all but
impossible: a confusion of desires exists within -- the desire for
recognition verses the desire for anonymity, and trust verses suspicion. If the confusion reaches too great an intensity, we run the risk of
losing our bearings altogether.
"It is said that there is at least one extraordinary event in the life of each of us, a moment so outstanding, so inexplicable that it stays with us forever, timeless, always present, and if this event is properly understood our lives can change radically. But if the meaning of the moment is lost on us we are doomed to wander, Cain like, forever."
The Pilgrim Soul, first broadcast over CBS radio on November 13, 1978.
White women of reproductive age constitute 2 percent of the world's population. White children under the age of 18 constitute 3 percent of the world's population. If whites were a species of bird or amphibian, they would be considered endangered and their habitat would be protected and invasive species removed.
Aircraft pilots have the second most dangerous occupation in the United States. First is loggers. Police officer is twenty-second. The most common causes of aircraft crashes are pilot error and maintenance error, in no order. The loss of an engine I experienced recently was a maintenance error, and a very minor one -- a bit of one-sided pressure when gapping a spark plug cracked an insulator that later broke off, causing pre-ignition. I was fortunate that the incident happened in fair weather during daytime near the airport in an empty airplane with plenty of altitude under me. But if I had had to deal with an engine shutdown while in heavy icing conditions or a severe thunderstorm, especially if I were near maximum gross weight with cargo or passengers and far from a landing strip, despite my best efforts, I very easily could have lost control of the airplane and crashed, the cause being put down to pilot error or perhaps listed as unknown.
The family owns ranchland from California to Colorado and with this recent series of discoveries of vast lodes of rare earth ores, some are thinking that our lands, too, may contained huge deposits. If so, I wouldn't be surprised if environmentalists sue to keep the stuff in the ground. I would kind of be on their side because the way the ores would be extracted would be through enormous open-pit mines. I'd rather we establish and maintain good relations with China and get the rare earth metals we need from them and let that country destroy its landscape, since they seem indifferent to it, while we preserve ours. We shouldn't leave our descendants a barren desolation but pass on to them intact the glory we inherited.
I found some more of the buttons my mother used to collect when she was young. She remembers that she got the "British Troops Out of Ireland" button from some guy who was giving a speech at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, London, in 1973. She still remembers the pure hatred in his face as he talked. She'd never seen the like before. She couldn't tell the difference between English people and Irish people. They looked the same to her.
I showed the buttons to my dad and he remarked that the green one was typical of shoddy British quality, noting how the American buttons were still like new. I pointed out the ribbon of the flag button had seen some rough times and dad said that showed just how much the button had been worn yet it was still in near pristine condition. Pop is hard on the poor Brits and their miserable manufactured products, but still he is a fan of classic British motorcycles -- Triumphs, BSAs, Nortons and others -- and at one time seems to have had a thing for MG sports cars. I think the last one he had was an MGB GT that he bought used in England and had shipped to Japan as part of his personal effects under SOFA. Since it was right-hand drive, it fit in well with Japanese traffic.
El jefe likes my hands. He says they are one of my most feminine features. I do try to take care of them, which is not always easy, but wearing gloves helps, as does religiously using assorted creams and lotions. My mother still has very nice hands so I think there is some genetic component to having and being able to keep good hands. Anyway, both el jefe and my dad abhor what they call "sausage fingers" on a woman. I've pointed out that such fingers may be the result of damaging manual labor -- washing pots and pans, scrubbing floors and that sort of thing. They shrug. It doesn't change what they like.
Reading Plato's Republic, in Book VI I came across this:
"Those who...have...seen enough of the madness of
the multitude know that no politician is honest, nor is there any champion of
justice at whose side they may fight. They may be compared
to a man who has fallen among wild beasts -- he will not join in the wickedness
of his fellows, but neither is he able singly to resist all their fierce
natures, and therefore seeing that he would be of no use to the state or
to his friends, and reflecting that he would throw away his life
without doing any good either to himself or others, he holds his peace
and goes his own way. He is like one who, in the storm of dust and sleet
which the driving wind hurries along, retires under the shelter of a wall;
and seeing the rest of mankind full of wickedness, he is content if only
he can live his own life."
I agree with that sentiment and hope to convey it to my children so that they do not throw their lives away on some political crusade or trumped up war, revolution or riot. Stay out of the way of the thundering herd and keep your own council. Think what you will but express little of what you think or, better yet, nothing at all.
Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian, the 18th century French poet, was of a similar mind. He is most remembered today for averring that, as it is usually phrased in English, "to live well, live hidden"; that is, out of the way of events. Alas, it did him no good, for he was deemed an enemy of the Revolution and imprisoned, only spared from the guillotine by Robespierre's death, instead, still imprisoned, dying of tuberculosis in 1794.
The fable in which the famous line is the moral:
LE GRILLON
Un pauvre petit grillon Caché dans l’herbe fleurie Regardoit un papillon Voltigeant dans la prairie L’insecte ailé brilloit des plus vives couleurs L’azur, le pourpre & l’or éclatoient sur ses ailes. Jeune, beau, petit-maître, il court de fleur en fleur, Prenant & quittant les plus belles. Ah ! disoit le grillon, que son sort & le mien Sont différents ! dame Nature Pour lui fit tout, & pour moi rien. Je n’ai point de talent, encor moins de figure ; Nul ne prend garde à moi, l’on m’ignore ici bas ! Autant voudroit n’exister pas. Comme il parloit, dans la prairie Arrive une troupe d’enfants. Aussitôt les voilà courans Après le papillon dont ils ont tous envie : Chapeau, mouchoirs bonnets, servent à l’attraper. L’insecte cherche vainement à leur échapper, Il devient bientôt leur conquête. L’un le saisit par l’aile, un autre par le corps ; Un troisième survient, & le prend par la tête : Il ne falloit pas tant d’efforts Pour déchirer la pauvre bête. Oh ! oh ! dit le grillon, je ne suis pas fâché ; Il en coûte trop cher pour briller dans le monde. Combien je vais aimer ma retraite profonde ! Pour vivre heureux, vivons cachés.
These days I have trouble breaking out of melancholy and self-doubt. Unable to engage in much physical activity, I stare out the window at the gray sky and snow flurries. A raven caws. He flaps up from a tree branch and rows across the sky. At night the wind, moaning and whistling around the eaves, seems to be talking to me, but what it says I can't make out. It's all vowels and no consonants.
If I sit down at the piano to while away the time, I find myself playing Ravel's Pavane Pour Une Infante Défunte or Elgar's Sospiri. I worry and wonder about things I need not and I know that I need not, but I do. I also know that all this will pass and brighter days and brighter thoughts will come. But still.... At this moment, this eternal now, that seems like a comforting lie.
When I got back from Europe, one of the first things I did was go down and see our horses, breathe in their scent, along with the smell of sunshine on straw, and all the aromas of the out of doors carried on a gentle breeze. I've lived a lot of places in my life but this has become the only one I truly feel is home.
The first meal I made for el jefe when he came home was good old-fashion cheese runzas, at his request. I hadn't made any in a long time, but they were a big hit with everybody. I made two dozen, figuring that I would freeze most of them, but they all got gobbled down in double time, with requests I make more. Well, maybe next week. I served them with homemade French fries and a French bistro salad. Dessert was nutmeg apple pie with vanilla ice cream, both homemade, of course, the ice cream made with cream from our own cows. All the greens as well as the potatoes, cabbage and apples came from our own garden, garden greenhouse and root cellar, the cheese from a nearby cheese factory that is supplied by a local creamery.
The two most requested desserts I make are applesauce cake and banana bread. My mother and I, with my mini-me helping, make lots of applesauce from our apple trees, preserving it in mason jars, but the bananas come from the grocery store. They make the best banana bread when the skins are turning black. The next in popularity are pies of all varieties, then donuts. Donuts take a lot of work and are hard to fry just right. Cookies are only popular, it seems, around Christmastime. I don't know why. But in that season I also make plum pudding and my own fruitcake, which actually tastes good, as well as fudge. People seem to prefer peanut butter fudge to chocolate fudge. Throughout the year, I always make sure to have some variety of cake available, usually carrot or spice cake. When the spirit moves me, I make angel food cake or Japanese castella sponge cake. Chocolate cake seems just for birthdays, one of my boys likes it with chocolate icing decorated with walnuts and the other likes it with gooey coconut icing decorated with maraschino cherries. My mini-me likes it with butterscotch icing decorated with pecans. Last year she said she wanted an oatmeal cake. I think it's because oatmeal is her favorite breakfast. I didn't know how to make that but found a recipe in my grandmother's 1942 cookbook for such a cake with coconut-almond frosting. It was really good.
I'm always baking bread and rolls. That's something we never buy. I make all varieties, from good old standard white bread to whole wheat, sourdough, English muffins, potato bread, baguettes, Italian, French and rye, to pumpernickel. Hot rolls and assorted muffins, as well.
A typical hearty dinner I serve is a garden salad, soup -- something like French onion -- roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy, steamed peas and corn topped with butter or green beans mixed with bits of fried bacon, steamed carrots and broccoli topped with mayonnaise, or maybe honey-baked carrots, yellow squash fried crispy in butter, and plenty of fresh-baked hot rolls. If the spirit moves me, I may make Yorkshire pudding, too. Dessert could be anything from flan to pecan pie. The drink during the meal is usually lemon water. Nobody really cares for wine and those who like beer don't enjoy it as a dinner drink. But if a guest wanted wine, for this meal I think I'd serve a syrah; if he preferred applejack, I'd serve him that. After dinner is coffee. I've saved a chair for you, come sit down and dig in -- and you'll enjoy the conversation as much as the meal!
One of the things I've done since leaving the Navy is let my hair grow. I intend to just let it grow and grow. Before I joined up I had long hair. I was very proud of it and it pained me to have it cut. Now, with pregnancy, my hair is thick and shiny and seems to grow longer by the hour. My mother brushes it for me, one-hundred strokes every day. Looking at me, she says my face is more relaxed than it has been in a long time. She noticed me becoming less rigid in bearing and less emotionally self-contained in the days after I left the Navy and came to live on the ranch. Now she says I am getting back to the way I used to be, a girly-girl. I hope so. I always thought I was a girly-girl, but I guess to others I was not. El Jefe said much the same thing when we got together last summer. He noticed a distinctly more feminine me than I was before and he very much approved. He called me his golden-haired beauty. That was sweet of him. I hope I can always be that for him.
I'm still subject to bouts of melancholy. I guess it's just part of my nature. And the emotional ups and downs of pregnancy, to say nothing of the physical disorders, hasn't helped. Lately, I worry about losing el jefe. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night from a dream in which he was gone from me. It's strange, but now that he's here beside me I imagine it more than I did when he was overseas and at risk every day. I sleep with my head resting against him and don't ever again want to only feel a cold pillow and sheets on the other side of the bed.
I lost my high school sweetheart, as I've written, and I don't think I could take losing my husband. I want to grow old with him just as my parents have grown old together and my grandparents did. Should I lose him, I would never re-marry or enter into any kind of relationship with a new man. I like to banter, flirt with and tease guys, but that's as far as it goes. I don't even do that as much as I used to. It seems kind of silly at this point in my life, especially since it furthers nothing I want to happen.
When I say to friends that I would never remarry, one thing they often ask is what about my boys, don't they need a male role model and don't you need help raising them? Well, there is that. I don't know. But the thought of turning my face to the man in my bed and it's not el jefe but some stranger I cannot countenance. I have and always will have only one husband. I used to think that my father could be a role model for and an aid in raising my boys should something happen to el jefe, but now I realize that he won't always be with us, and the same is true of my uncles. My brothers are not available, both far away except for occasional visits, one being a career naval officer and the other a forest ranger. Besides, they have their own families. So there would be no men to help me raise my boys. I guess I would have to rely on God for help. Is that a vain hope?
Now I've gone and depressed myself. Why do I think these thoughts? I usually break out of my gloomy moods by dancing. My brain shuts down then and I'm just an animal living in the moment. But now I don't dare do that. Maybe I could shuffle a few steps, but that's about it. So I will just think back in my mind's eye to when I could and did dance.
And this sweet old love song (from 1873) is how I wish that my days and my husband's play out:
Darling, I am growing old, Silver threads among the gold Shine upon my brow today; Life is fading fast away. But, my darling, you will be Always young and fair to me.
When your hair is silver white And your cheeks no longer bright With the roses of the May, I will kiss your lips and say, Oh! My darling, mine alone, You have never older grown!
Love can never more grow old, Locks may lose their brown and gold; Cheeks may fade and hollow grow, But the hearts that love will know Never, never winter’s frost and chill; Summer warmth is in them still.
Do you think there is a disconnect between the two videos? Perhaps, but each is part of life and the stages we travel through it to the inevitable end.
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