Death and Survival

A flight of six F4F-4s.

I recently  got to take a look at my grandfather's flight log book from when he was a naval aviator during World War II.  I had known something of his life in those days from a memoir he started and made some entries in, but mostly left blank.  I've  quoted from that about his first air combats in 1942.

Deck crew unfolds F4F-4's wings.

But I did not know that later in that same year he was shot down, forced to parachute into the sea and was declared missing in action and his family notified but was rescued more than a month later.

An F4F-4 is waved into position for launch.

I had no idea about any of this and can't recall it ever being mentioned. It was just a part of his life that happened when he was a young man and it was nothing that would come up in conversation.  In any case, he wasn't much of a talker. 
One thing that struck me when I was looking into this episode is how tired he must have been the day he was shot down.  He flew six hours, six combat hours that day, guarding the carriers and transports. Three carrier launches and two carrier recoveries. 

Pilots man your planes!  An F4F-4 being scrambled.

The first launch was at 6 am, a combat patrol over his carrier, just at dawn.  So he had to have been up some considerable time before that, probably since 4 am to allow time enough to get dressed, have breakfast, meet in the ready room and get briefed, then the usual  hurry up and wait.
Then another combat patrol shortly after 10 am over the transport screen.  Some four hours flying just in the morning, with all the tension of watching and waiting for an enemy attack.  He was the flight leader each time, being the senior officer, a  Lt. (jg). 
Then on the final combat patrol, launched shortly after 1pm, leading five others, he encountered 33 enemy aircraft -- 15 bombers escorted by 18 fighters.  Outnumbered five-and-a-half to one, yet there was no choice but to fight.  Three of the fighters attacked the G4M bombers while the remaining three, including my grandfather, went after the escorting Zeros to try to keep them away from the three F4Fs going after the bombers

The life raft compartment behind the F4F-4 cockpit, and the life raft.

The three fighters that attacked the bombers all survived, although one landed badly shot up and another had to make an emergency landing on another carrier.  The third one didn't have any damage at all.
All three of the fighters that engaged the Zeros were shot down and their pilots declared missing and presumed dead.  Two are still missing, their fates unknown. 
The Navy credits my grandfather with shooting down two Zeros before going down

The F4F-4's uninflated life raft and its storage bay.

himself.  Another pilot shot down a Zero as well before he, too, was shot down. 
I had imagined that my grandfather, after being shot down, floated around in his life raft until he was rescued.  But that wasn't what happened.  Twenty-millimeter cannon shells struck the life raft compartment behind the cockpit of his F4F and the life raft was ripped out, inflating as it did so. But it clung flapping in the slipstream to the outside of the airplane, tethered to it by a line such as you can see in the photo above, seriously affecting control of the plane.  Other cannon shells ripped into one of the wing fuel tanks, setting it on fire.

A Zero in the gunsight of an F4F-4.

My grandfather bailed out at 3,000 feet.  He didn't open his parachute until he was very close to the water for fear of being machine-gunned by the many Zeros circling around.  As a result, when he hit the water, he injured his spine. 
To make matters worse, as he was struggling back to the surface and trying to get clear of his parachute shrouds, a Zero crashed into the water almost on top of him. He was knocked underwater by the wave surge of the impact and surfaced into a sea of flaming gasoline.

Pilot's ready room. A little tense.

He wrestled out of his parachute harness and swam away from the wreckage of the Zero, only to have two Zeros strafe him, possibly expending the last of their ammunition as they only made one pass and kept on going.

Mitsubishi G4M  bomber going down.

 And then he was alone.  For days he treaded water in the vast sea.  Immersed in water though he was, he developed a raging thirst. He tried to drink sea water and vomited. He hallucinated.  Bizarre waking dreams that made him unable to distinguish the real from the unreal.  At some point, he washed up on a coral reef off a small island and the surf pounding him onto its sharp projections brought him to his senses.  He waded and swam to the island beach where he slept in the warm sand.  When he awoke, he found lots and lots of coconuts lying around but he couldn't get them open.  He built a fire using a jury-made bow and stick against tinder on a flat piece of wood, then burned the coconuts until the shells became thin enough that he could crack them open and finally slake his thirst and get some food in him.  He lived thereafter on coconuts and coconut crabs.  For the first day or two he only made a small fire and put it out and covered the remains after he had eaten, fearful of Japanese patrols.  But there were no Japanese, nor anyone else on the island.  He made an "SOS" out of driftwood on the beach, kept a smokey signal fire going, ate, slept and stared out to sea and up at the sky.
He was reported missing and his family notified. The dreaded telegram. Missing, presumed dead.  And then, 37 days after he was shot down, he was reported safe.  A passing flight of American bombers spotted his fire and signal and a PBY flew out and picked him up and within minutes he went from chewing on a crab claw to drinking strong Navy coffee and eating Vienna sausages and soda crackers. Three days later he was flown from Tulagi island to Espirito Santos island, a long flight in another PBY, which is noted in his log book.  After 10 days in the hospital there, he was returned to his ship.
In his log book he notes this PBY flight down on the August page.  There is no September page.  The next page is October, when he resumes normal flight activities with his fighter squadron.  So, to be clear, he was shot down on August 7, rescued and reported safe on September 15, as noted in his log book, flown to Espirito Santos on September 18 ('though at first glance it would seem August 18) with flight time noted in his logbook, then returned to his ship on September 28.
 As a summary, on the day my grandfather was shot down, a total of 18 F4F-4s battled attacking Japanese aircraft formations.  Nine were shot down and four pilots killed, two planes made it back to their carrier but were so badly damaged they were pushed over the side, and four others suffered battle damage.

In exchange, four Japanese bombers were shot out of the sky, one crashed on the return flight home and one made it back to base but crashed while trying to land.  Another 19 bombers suffered battle damage.  Three Zeros were shot down, five made forced landings on the way home, one crashing as it attempted to land, one made it home but crashed on landing, and 10 more suffered battle damage.  The Japanese bombers did not score even one hit on our ships.
It seems, in terms of destroyed aircraft, that the two sides came out even that day. But there were dozens and dozens of Japanese fighters and bombers and just 18 young American pilots, never more than six together, who had to drive them away from our ships.  In that they succeeded, despite the high cost to themselves.
And my grandfather survived, so I am here! 
I write that rather flippantly.  But the truth is that it was a near thing for me to come into existence.  Three young men went into combat against many times their number of enemy fighters and two of them were killed.  The one that led to me survived, just barely.  But who would have been born had those other two men lived?  Why were they not born and I was? There's a whole finger-fan of people born because my grandfather lived, and...nothing...because the two men who went into combat with him against the Zero fighters did not.

(Regarding the flight log, the letter "K" in the column, "Character of Flight," stands for "Tactical"; that is, an operational combat flight.  The number written in the "Passengers" column was the radio frequency the flight used. The ARA/ATA radio the F4F was equipped with operated voice communications on 1.5 to 3.0 MHz so "188 channel" would be 1.88 MHz.)

 

 

Cozy gloom

A Saturday night get-together that is not so exuberant.  Fall is in the air, the high was only 53 today, with the sun giving little warmth after the morning mist and overcast drifted away.  There's a fire in the fireplace and only one lamp burning.  No one wants to acknowledge, let alone talk about, anything outside this room and this moment.

We play some old slow tunes and dance.  Won't you join us?

 

Not me!

 I was browsing some website that hosts a variety of fringe stuff -- a lot of it is interesting to me as much for the way it reveals how people think and what they want to believe as for anything else.  Somebody leaned over my shoulder and browsed along with me for a few minutes before asking me if I was a white nationalist.  Hah!  As if! Those characters would drop-kick my butt out of their treehouse in a heartbeat.

But considering the way whites, especially white men, are savaged by society today, I can't help feeling sympathy for them.  But whenever I try to do so, I am viciously attacked and driven away.  Why?  Because they absolutely hate women, especially white women.  Oriental women are okay by them, but not white women.  

I know, crazy, right?  But there it is.  Where do these guys think white men come from anyway?  Apparently they believe they just materialize out of the ether or reproduce asexually, like some kind of human amoebas.

One time Mark Twain was asked to give a talk on the theme, "What would men be without women?"  He gave a very short speech. Rising from his seat and striding to the speaker's podium, he surveyed his all-male audience.  "What would men be without women, you want to know," he said.  "Scarce, sirs, almighty scarce."  And then he went back to his seat and sat down.

White nationalists should inject the word "white" into Twain's first sentence and think  hard and long about the implications of what he said.  If you boys want to perpetuate the white race, you really should stop reviling white women.

I don't hold out much expectation of that happening.  The movement, such as it appears to be, seems made up of incels, hen-pecked weaklings, bitter divorced men, and assorted dweebs, dorks and nerds, as well as, of course, lots and lots of your standard woman haters.

It's kind of too bad, because I sense a lot of sympathy for the average white, man or woman, these days despite of, or more likely because of, the intense institutional and societal hatred directed at them.  A lot of that sympathy comes from non-whites with white friends and spouses, as well as those who just wish all this stupid race-baiting would go away.  They suspect it's some kind artificial distraction created for no good ends by the powers that be. 

Not being conspiracy-minded myself, I suspect it may be merely a crazy political fad, such as all those pre-school child-molesting scandals that erupted in the 1980s, like the McMartin PreSchool phony trial and all of that.  Insane stuff just blows up in society from time to time.  File it under the madness of crowds.  However, who knows for sure? 

But in the meantime, I dedicate this little video to all you white-women-hating white nationalists.  Suck on it!

 

No man left behind

I was visiting the Japanese lady I wrote about here just recently when the talked turned to the situation in Afghanistan.   She had some of her Japanese friends over, as well as her Chinese friend, and to a person they were appalled by what was happening, as who isn't, I guess.

But their take on it struck me as very interesting.  What shocked them was that Americans were left behind as we retreated.

What about the American ideal of "No man left behind"? they asked.  How could you betray that?  And to my surprise, they referenced the movies Saving Private Ryan, Blackhawk Down and, especially, Bat 21.

It never would have occurred to me in a million years that these old Oriental ladies, none younger than her early 70s, would have ever even seen such movies as these, let alone remember them and relate them to contemporary world events.  But they did.  While making passing references to the first two movies, it was Bat 21 that they really talked about.  I remember watching it on TV with my dad and brothers when I was a kid and my dad saying it was a good movie. The movie, as I recalled it, was gripping but routine -- a guy trapped behind enemy lines and the efforts made to rescue him.

But to these ladies who grew up in an East Asian culture with an entirely different attitude toward the individual in society, these were revolutionary films and Bat 21, I guess because of its focus on one individual, had made a special and lasting impression.  The Japanese women recalled the Pacific War and how the Japanese military had abandoned hundreds of thousands of Japanese troops, leaving them to starve to death, making no effort to rescue them, just turning away and leaving them to their fate, while the American military would spare no effort to rescue just one single person.  They marveled at that, and admired it.  Such a country that cared so much for the lives of each one of its citizens was extraordinary.

I knew during the Pacific War we as a matter of course rescued downed airmen, flying in search of them with sea planes and float planes.  My own grandfather was rescued by a PBY after he was shot down at sea during the Guadalcanal campaign.  But the Japanese made no effort to rescue a Japanese airman shot down at sea and surviving.  He was expected to die, one way or the other, for the Emperor.

So these women had expected the US military to do whatever it took, no matter the cost, to get every single American out of Afghanistan.  It did not occur to them that they would simply be abandoned.  Not by America!  So they were shocked, appalled, disbelieving, by what took place.  And then disgusted and angry.  Where were the US Marines?

Well, the Iwo Jima was offshore with elements of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, along with the Ronald Reagan, but the jarheads stayed aboard.  No rescue ordered.

I sensed that these old ladies, each of whom had emigrated to this country from her native land because they saw it as clearly better, not in material things -- after all, Japan and China are at least as advanced in material things as the United States -- but in moral stature, in possessing a superior civilization.

Watching those old movies had first made them aware that there was a country where the life of the individual person was truly important  and would be protected even at great cost to the nation.  They believed this was a fundamental part of what America was.  No man left behind.  To us, it's just a slogan, maybe mere boiler plate.  But to them it was a revolutionary assertion defying the great lords of the earth who trampled on "the masses" at will.

And now they saw all that they believed America to be betrayed.  They could not believe it.  And they were shaken.  Was America becoming just another despotic regime?  Why?  What happened?  They looked to me for answers.

I had none.

High School Daze

 I was digging through a bunch of old junk the other day and found my high school senior year book.  I lost an afternoon poring over that thing, remembering all kinds of stuff....  Where did the time go? Why is nothing the way I expected it would be? Oh, blah, huh? What-ev!
Anyways, one thing that gave me a smile and sometimes a laugh--sometimes a sigh, too, as suddenly I remembered something long forgotten--was all the goofy quotes and sayings that people wrote when they signed their names.
Here are some of them:


You're daddy's little girl! But not the girl that daddy knew--daddy never had a clue!

X-tReMe Is NoT a MoOd, It'S a LYFE-STYLE!!!!!! 

Money and looks aren't everything -- but they're all I've got!

Born with no soul
Lack of control
Cut from the mold
Of the anti-social!

tHeRe WeRe MoMeNTs We LauGHeD-n-CRiED
We aLWaYz STooD By eaCH oTHaZ SiDe
THoSe MaNY DaYs We sPeNT ToGeTHa
THeY WiLL STaY iN mY<3 4eva

There's a reason why people don't stay who they are--sometimes love just ain't enough

Some may call it XtC
Some may call it destiny
Some may call it meant 2B
But I Just call it u-n-me

Imagine a life without me -- miserable, huh?

Do u believe in love at first sight or should I walk by again?

Anyone can catch your eye but it takes someone special to catch your heart

Don't wish upon a star--reach for one!

I see you next to never,
how can we say forever?
Wherever you go,
whatever you do,
I will be right here waiting for you.
Whatever it takes,
or how my heart breaks,
I will be right here waiting for you.

God made Coke, God made Pepsi
God made you so hot N sexy!

I smile b-cuz I have no idea what is going on!

I taught you everything you know--but not everything I KNOW!

You're not weird, you're gifted! Just keep saying that!

Keep the pictures, they never change, only the people in them do

WiLl I eVeR fAlL iN luV aNd If I dO wILL iT bE wItH u??

Mystify people with your intelligence, and if u can't do that, mystify them with your BS!!!

Once Upon a Time
Something Happened To me
It was the Sweetest Thing
That ever could be
It was a Fantasy
A dream Come True
It was the Day I Met You

When me and you met the angels whispered "Run for your lives!"

Don't tell me how to pick my friends, I'm good at that -- remember, I picked you.

If you don't Stand for Something, You will Fall for Everything

Love can sometimes be magic, but magic is an ILLUSION!

I wrote your name on a paper but by an accident I threw it away
I wrote your name on my hand but i washed it the next day
I wrote your name in the sand but the waves washed it away
I wrote your name in my heart and forever it will stay

SMILE! It scares people.

Friends don't let friends dress like hoochies!

If you don't know where ur going, any road will take u there.

Where is the good in Good-Bye?

Be Sexy...Be True...Be Wild...Be You

It's ok to live on the edge, just don't fall off!

It's easier to say hello to the people we hate
then to say goodbye to the people we love

As you climb the ladder of success
Don't let boys look up your dress!

People say that when you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes.
Make it worth watching!

Meeting you was fate.
Becoming your friend was a choice.
But falling in love I had no control over.

The reason I cant think straight is cuz my bra is too tight!

Don't keep looking back. If you do, you'll trip over the present and fall into the future.


Ashes to Ashes
Dust to Dust
Life is short
So PARTY we must!!

Live free, die proud
Have fun, play loud!

Silly blonde,
Brains are for brunettes!

Read a book,
Pluck a guitar,
Run away,
Don't get hit by a car!

Life is too short so kiss slowly, forgive quickly,
forget the past, but remember what it taught you.

Here we go ahead with the mixed memories and second thoughts.

Peer pressure...it's what friends are for!

In the sundae of your life I'm the perfect cherry on top!

If I could be anything I would be your tear so I could be born in your eye, live down your cheek and die on your lips

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened

 

 

Be cheerful and merry

What's happening in the outside world is just too grim these days. Heartbreaking.  I have someone very close to me flying missions off the Ronald Reagan and patrolling the skies over Kabul and maybe doing other stuff not bandied about.  That's a six-hour run up and back, plus loiter time, with at least three mid-air refuelings, two of them at night, then a night carrier trap. 

I know Marines deployed.  I have Marine friends who served multiple combat tours in the 'stan and who are, seeing what is happening, furious.

Anyway, another Saturday night and another gathering of close friends, to snack and chat and listen to some tunes and dance.  A lot of the guys don't like to dance, and some physically can't anymore.  But they love to watch a girl dance.  It takes their mind off of things and cheers them up. Gets something up anyway.

So, for my  boys, here's a little dance video to remind you of the fun we have. You really don't want me to try peach schnapps for the first time  and decide it really tastes good and yes, please, I'll have some more.  It goes right to my head and disables all higher cognitive functions.  Heh.

Or maybe you do want me drink it down!  ◦°˚\(*❛‿❛)/˚°◦  ( •◡ુ•)

Look, I know it's frivolous, but sometimes you just have to turn away from what's happening, otherwise it just overwhelms you. 

"A merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance:
but by sorrow of the heart the spirit is broken."
--Proverbs 15:13

"Be cheerful while you are alive."
--Ptahhotpe, recorded in the Prisse Papyrus, c. 2350 b.c.

 

Dark Thoughts

“Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on
And turns no more his head
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.”

― Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

Don't you want to be 19 again?

 "I've grown up and I don't like it."

A story about an unforgettable memory from July 30, 1939, about the pull of the past, lost youth, a wish to fix the mistakes of your life and refusal to recognize the disappointing present: 

 Come  Back With Me, first broadcast July 2, 1975.

 

 

Western Pioneers

 

 Come give me your attention and see the right and wrong,
It is a simple story and it won't detain you long;
I'll try to tell the reason why we are bound to roam,
And why we are so friendless and never have a home.
My home is in the saddle, upon a pony's back,
I am a roving cowboy and find the hostile track;
They say I am a sure shot, and danger I always knew;
Now I often heard a story, which I'll relate to you.
In Eighteen-hundred and Sixty-three a little emigrant band
Was massacred by Indians, bound West by overland;
They scalped our noble soldiers, and the emigrants had to die,
And the only living captives were two small girls and I.
We were rescued from the Indians by a brave and noble man,
Who trailed the thieving Indians and fought them hand to hand;
He was noted for his bravery while on an enemy's track;
He had a noble history, his name is Texas Jack.
Old Jack could tell a story, if he were only here.
Of the trouble and the hardships of the Western pioneer;
He would tell you how our fathers and mothers lost their lives,
And how our aged parents were scalped before our eyes.
I am a roving cowboy, I've worked upon the trail,
I've shot the shaggy buffalo and heard the coyote's wail;
I have slept upon my saddle, all covered by the moon;
I expect to keep it up my friends, until I meet my doom.
I am a roving cowboy, my saddle is my home,
I'll always be a cowboy, no difference where I roam;
And like our noble heroes my help I'll volunteer,
And try to be of service to the Western pioneer.
  ~ Ezra Barheight, who lived it as it happened 

 

The life that was

These photos were taken in 1909 in Montana, the same year the Great Northern Railroad came through and ended this still-existing remnant of a life of open-range cattle ranches and the cowboy life of saddle horse, lariat, and branding iron.

One branch of my European ancestral family has been in Montana since beaver trapper and Indian trader days, more than 200 years.  But they really didn't settle down there till the cattle business got going after the Civil War, mainly to supply the gold-mining towns, the army and the Indian reservations.  To sell to markets farther afield, they had to run a trail drive down to Abilene, Kansas, and the Union Pacific railhead there, a mighty long trek.  Once there, they often clashed with the Texas drovers and their tick-infested, disease-ridden longhorns.  The Montanans didn't want the Texicans or their cowbrutes anywhere near their own healthy Angus and Herefords.  

There were longhorns in Montana and some ranchers interbred them with Herefords to try to improve their hardiness, especially to withstand the harsh winter weather.  But my people preferred to concentrate on selectively breeding the hardiest of the Herefords and Angus.  The terrific blizzards in the winter of 1886 wiped out almost all the cattle in the territory and bankrupted many ranchers, but enough of our home-bred cattle survived to keep the ranch not only solvent, but when they sold at premium prices due to the dearth of cattle brought to market, allowed us to buy out a number of distressed ranchers.

When the Great Northern came through it was granted by the federal government great swaths of land on either side of the railroad right-of-way, which it sold to some local Montanans, who built towns to serve the railroad -- water and coaling stations, repair shops and the accompanying hotels, stores, saloons and brothels.  But the railroad also sold land plots to eastern greenhorn farmers, locals called them "honeyockers," who brought their families with them and tried to farm the short-grass prairie and semi-arid land only to fail when the inevitable drought hit.  So we were able to buy up more land for a song.  

Then came World War I and a massive demand from Europe for beef to feed their armies, and also mules and horses to transport them.  Suddenly, cowpokes who had become tough-minded ranchers who feared God and his elements and knew they were always just a bit of bad luck away from disaster became rich.  Rich enough to withstand the price crash and droughts after the war that saw some 60,000 honeyockers abandon their farms and leave the state. Rich enough and careful enough and smart enough to avoid disaster during the long harsh drought of the 1930s that saw dust bowls develop where farming had predominated over ranching.  Then came another world war and the cash avalanched on them again.  But by that time they were using trucks and tractors and short-line railroad spurs, enclosed pastures and feedlots, and the open range had long been split up by barbed-wire fences and the old cowboying days had receded far into the past, already nothing but garbled legends.

Not everybody liked liked the changes.  One old cowhand wrote to one of his old pals in 1913, "You wouldent know the country anymore it's all grass side down now. Wher once you rode circle and I night wrangled, a gopher couldn't graze now. The boosters say it's a better country than it ever was but it looks like hell to me I liked it better when it belonged to God it sure was his country when we knew it."

He would probably cry if he saw it now.  There's a little bit of the old way left, but not much.

How well I do remember, how well I do recall
How we used to round them up, and brand them one and all.
Right on that same old spot where we used to brand the steers,
They're growing big potatoes and them little roasting ears.
I rode up on a pinnacle and pulled off my slouch hat,
Then all that I could see was farm shacks on the flat.
Said the Indian to the cowboy, "You'd better look around,"
"For you're liable to be camping on some other feller's ground."
Now the Indians and the cowboys, they used to live in peace,
Till the damned old dryland farmers came a-creeping from the East.
So we'll ride no more fat horses, and we'll have to sell our twine,
Go and eat that old sow belly cut so close to the rind.
~ Ken Atwood, an old cowpoke long gone roping in the sky

 

Just for the heck of it:

Some of what once was does still exist:

 

True love

This life lives in memory forever.

“It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.”
~ Benito Mussolini  

 "Those who live by the sword die by the sword, and those who don't live by the sword die by smelly diseases."
~ George Orwell

 

Family Trees and nationality

 Isn't it curious that we speak of our family tree, but also of finding our roots, not our leaves or branches?  I think the roots comparison is better, especially if you think of yourself as the apex or convergence of a vast tangled skein of roots disappearing below you down and down into the ever-distant past.  Which individual skein you choose to follow leads you to one identity, but if you choose a different skein, you are led to another.

In my case, of those ancestors I am aware of, depending on which skein I trace, I could claim to be English, German, Dutch, Welsh, Swiss, Norman, Cheyenne or...-- well, who knows what?  Like a typical old stock American, I just identify as American.  If I want to get more specific than that, I name my home state.  It is quite as natural for an American to say he is a New Yorker or a Minnesotan or a Texan (or, using nicknames, a Hoosier, Tarheel or Okie) as it is for a European to say he is Czech or Italian.  Incidentally, I bristle if someone refers to me as a European-American.  I am American!  Period. 

It's a pet peeve of mine to dislike naturalized U.S. citizens who claim to be Americans and refer to "our" country.  No!  You are not an American; a citizen, yes, but your ethnicity is Foreignese or whatever.  Those who insist they are as American as me and you are really saying that there is no such thing as an American nationality, let alone an American ethnicity.  Anybody who shows up here, takes a test a lobotomized rhesus monkey could pass and hangs around for a few years is an "American."  Phooey kablooey!   They can't tell me they like moon pies and RC Cola just as much as you do.  Or that they like to eat charcoal seared chili cheese dogs, baked beans and potato salad while sitting at a picnic table under a maple tree swatting away mosquitos just as much as I do. Or as a kid having your favorite lunch be a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich with Fritos and a glass of chocolate milk. I bet!  Nor can they believably tell me that they love the smell of a freshly mown lawn on long-lingering summer evening as much as we do.  Or going to the Dairy Queen to get banana splits and hot fudge sundaes.  And they sure can't say that they really like root beer.  Hah!

A thing I've noticed is that green-carders or naturalized citizens who don't insist that they are Americans -- at least the East Asian ones I am most familiar with -- when they say "American" really mean Whites.  Blacks are blacks and various assorted others are identified by original nationality:  Mexican, (dot) Indian, Chinese. etc.  But if in some far foreign land, an infantry squad of white, black and hispanc soldiers of the US Army was interacting with the locals, those locals would identify every one of those soldiers as Americans and nothing but Americans. No qualifiers; well, other than the expletive-deleted type.

Apropos of nothing, I've always gotten a chuckle out of this old meme:

The most popular American song ever written, and if you are an American you have sung this song since you were a little kid and know the words, well, most of them, and doubtless have made up lyrics of your own to the tune:

 I bet you know all the words to this little ditty, my fellow American, and sing it in the shower:

A salute to the old America that is dying away before our eyes and will be most deeply and profoundly missed by those of us with roots in this land going back centuries, but I suppose only by us, as the newcomers will have never had any acquaintance with it and, if they know of it at all, regard it with with indifference, if not disdain.

 

 

Just for fun!

 A Saturday night dance party always cheers me up.  Invite some good friends -- no political junkies or religious nuts; no nerds, spergs or dweebs.  Serve some yummy finger food and happy juice for those who indulge and play a bunch of goofy old tunes, especially the ones with a good beat that you can dance to, and then cut loose and dance, fool, DANCE!

The book of life

“For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened -- then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.”
~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

 "Night kept coming and there was nothing I could do."
~ Charles Bukowski

 My head is so crowded with ghosts I sometimes think it will burst.
My dreams flame with horror.
My memories are gray with ash.
I am a survivor.
~ Jack Eisner

 "Reason writes on the wall the appalling judgements that there is no God; that the universe is only matter in spontaneous motion; and, most grievous word of all, that what men call their souls die with the death of the body, as music dies when the strings are broken."
~ Diderot

"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

 

 

Sunlight in the Forest

Deep in the gloom of a northern rain forest
a shaft of sunlight illuminates a moss-covered tree trunk and ferns.

I need to go on a vision quest...

In the very earliest time
when both people and animals lived together on earth,
a person could become an animal if she wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen--
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That was the way it was.
--Nalungiaq

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object she looked upon, that object she became...
--Walt Whitman

the Light in the Grass,
the Wind on the Hill,
are in my head,
the world cannot be heard
Leaves obliterate
my heart...
--Adrienne Riche

There in the middle of the forest is the cave
And there, curled up inside it, is the fox.
She stands looking at it.
Around her the fields are sleeping: the fields dream.
At night there are no more farmers, no more farms.
At night the fields dream they are the long-gone forest.
The girl stands looking at the fox
As if, if she looked long enough...
She looks at it--
Or is it the fox looking at the girl?
The trees can't tell the two of them apart.
--Randall Jarrell

A vague mist hanging 'round half the pages:
Sometimes how strange and clear to the soul,
That all these solid things are indeed but apparitions, concepts,
non-realities.

--Walt Whitman

 

We should only care about our own

Looking out at an alien world of murder and horror that has nothing to do with me.

In this article, writer Linh Dinh is interviewed about, among other things, how Americans' views of the Viet Nam War are shaped by movies that show Vietnamese as merely "faceless ciphers."  I'd go beyond that and say that Americans, the few who ever think about the Viet Nam War anymore -- after all, it ended almost half a century ago -- view the Vietnamese as NPCs in modern parlance:  Non-Player Characters without will or agency, merely fulfilling a programed role.

Do you care, really?

But then, I think that for the Vietnamese, we were the faceless ciphers, the NPCs, inexplicably thundering into their world with fire and fury, wealth and power, and then, just as inexplicably, leaving.

 In each case, why should the one care about the other?  And what would caring consist of?  Stopping the war?  That would be best, but certainly we ordinary people can't

He's lucky.  He got to a hospital.

do that.  The politicians couldn't, even if they started it.  My mother cared by returning to Viet Nam after her Army nurse service ended and volunteering to help war-injured  children with the burn unit of Children's Medical Relief International, but against the overwhelming flood of wounded children any effort she made, any effort CMRI made, was all but useless.  Her caring for foreigners, people unrelated to her and with no connection to her, was pointless.  More than pointless because it left her with unresolvable emotional

Two lucky saved.  Thousands unsaved.

trauma that has haunted her all of her life.  The little good she may have accomplished for those strangers is no compensation for the anguish she has suffered.  She would have been better off to have forgotten all about Viet Nam once her tour was over.  And so would her husband and children, who had to experience, at least to some degree, and at second hand, that anguish themselves in a thousand little episodes that baffled, confused, and sometimes frightened us.  If you know about real PTSD then you know what I'm talking about.  If you don't; well, I'm not talking to you.  Sorry about that.

These are my guys. I care about them.

Afghanistan is dying and I suppose I should have some emotional reaction.  All those years of effort, all the deaths, all the horrific injuries...all for nothing.

My father was furious when the North Vietnamese conquered South Viet Nam in a massive conventional land invasion.  Had US air power been unleashed, the destruction wrought on the NVA would have been orders of magnitude greater than that inflicted on the Germans in the Falaise Pocket.  He paced the deck of his carrier waiting for orders to attack that never came.  "Pilots, man your planes!"  All right!  Smash those mother-fuckers once and for all!  It was not to be.  He's still upset about it.  He doesn't say so.  But I can tell.

These guys I don't care about at all,  nor they me.

My mother...I think she was just relieved it was finally all over and what difference did it make who "won"?  Just end it. End it!

I guess I am with my mother when it comes to what's happening in Afghanistan.  Just end it.  Let whatever is to happen there happen.  They are not us.  None of them are.  They never liked us or wanted us there.  Those that pretended they did may have hoped for a better homeland to come from our intervention, but I think most simply endured our presence, being courteous to the foreigners with guns and bombs.  Others merely glomed on to the money machine we represented.  And still others, many others, did not bother to hide their hatred for we alien infidels who had inexplicably invaded their homeland.  

Well, I'm rambling.  I have a lot of half-formed thoughts that I'm not going to bother writing down.  Maybe I will in 30 or 40 years.  But probably not.  I guess all I really want to say is that we, as a country, should stick to our knitting, mind our own business, not go abroad seeking monsters to slay.  Just take care of our own and let the rest of the world do the same.

I know.  Dream on.

What's that?  Do I have PTSD?  Um....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The New American Man of 1954

Sixty-seven years ago, according to this article in Life magazine, a 22-year-old could afford to buy a house, so he must have had a decent job that he didn't need to have a college degree (and accompanying student debt) to get.  He also got married and by age 25 had two children.  Something was going right with the world back then that sure is not happening today.  Oh, and they had that thing called a baby boom.  Second Oh, and the population of the country, according to the Census Bureau, was 89.3 percent White.  No connection, of course.  Just noting it as a data point.

Most popular fast foods of 1954. Yum!

 

 

The No.1 song on the 1954 hit parade. How terribly sexist it is -- I like it!

Just throwing this in; another example of how we used to be as a country. Do you think you could find something like this on the wall of a post office or school today? You could 67 years ago!

Lagniappe