Star bright?

 One time I was going to get reamed out by an 0-6 when he noticed my CAR, service bars and a couple of other pretty ribbons and badges and decided not to.  You'd be surprised how many lifers, despite two decades of Iraq-Afghanistan fun, have never been near a war zone, let alone actual combat, and how intimidated they are by those who have.  That is, if they are decent human beings.  Some are not.  Did I say some?

I know a girl who was stripped naked, held down and waterboarded with tequila by three rodeo clowns at the Rodeway Inn East in Cheyenne, Wyoming, during Frontier Days. Then they all three had their way with her.  When she called 911, the dispatcher laughed and hung up on her.  She called back and got the same dispatcher who was still laughing as he answered the phone.  He hung up again.

When I was a little kid, one of my dad's pastimes was to design his dream sailboat with which he planned to sail around the world after he retired.  He used various formulae to calculate hull speed, stability and what not, punching numbers into a scientific calculator.  One formula that he used a lot required determining cube roots. 
I used to hang around him, pestering him with questions.  Finally, he put me to work calculating those cube roots, but not using the calculator.   He gave me a pencil and paper, showed me how to manually determine cube roots and set me to work, telling me how important my results were to him and how they must be absolutely accurate. 
So I set to work with a will, puzzling out those cube roots, concentrating on the task too seriously to make a nuisance of myself. Pretty soon I began to see patterns and remember previous partial results and plugged them into current problems without bothering to go through all the raw  calculations. 
Then it got to where as soon as I saw a number I could envision its cube root, so when my dad said, tell me the cube root of 1,378, for example, I would immediately say 11.128.  He would raise an eyebrow and tell me not to guess, it was important that he know the correct figure.  I would insist it was.  He'd look at me with his patented don't-BS-me look and then reach for his calculator, feed in the numbers, get the answer, stare at it, then look at me and have me do several more cube roots.  When I did, he said, "God damn, kid!" 
My mother in the next room called out, "I heard that!  Don't swear in front of Wanda.  You know she mimics everything you do."  My dad muttered, "Maybe it's time I started mimicking you, squirt." 
Eventually, he had me giving him the results from entire formulae.  After some practice, I could do it practically instantaneously with no conscious thought.  Dad began calling me the CalTech Kid, sure I would become some sort of genius.  But when puberty hit, I completely lost the ability.  I became boy crazy and my mother had to step in to control my concupiscence.  It seemed as if as my body transformed itself into that of an adult female my brain lost interest in the abstract and focused on people.  My dad was baffled and disappointed but my mother seemed quite pleased.  She had worried I would never give her grandchildren but now she knew she didn't have to worry about that. 

An audio play about a very bright little girl, "Star Bright," first broadcast on the NBC radio series X Minus One, April 10, 1956:

 Star Bright

 

There are easier ways to get what you want, chief.

With the price of beef going up and up, we decided to open some marginal land to cattle grazing, but first we needed to drill a well, put in a water storage tank and a watering trough.  That was easily, if expensively, done by a hearty crew of white men and one white woman, none of whom wore masks as they drove trucks, operated heavy equipment, working steadily from around 7am to 4pm or later. After the work was completed a crew of Mexicans, also maskless, arrived to clean up the work site and haul away left over supplies and trash.
The crew boss was an American Indian married to a white woman.  The pair showed up the first day, looked around examining the ground and determining what needed to be done, then didn't appear again till the job was done, to ensure we were satisfied and to collect their fee.  They, in fact, owned the drilling company. 
America -- what a country! -- where a wild injun can drive a $100,000 custom four-wheel drive pickup, marry a good-looking white woman and boss around white men who treat him with cordial respect. 
Also what a country because the auxiliary generator we needed to ensure continuous operation of the well and storage tank pumps was not to be had anywhere, including from the manufacturer.  Shortages in critical parts and lack of available shipping and trucking had brought inventories to zero with no prediction of when existing orders could be filled. No one was accepting new orders. So we probably won't risk grazing cattle on that land and all the considerable expense of the well may end up being wasted.

Speaking of bow-and-arrow Indians, one Easter vacation when I was in high school I visited the reservation of the tribe I am affiliated with.  As with all rez Indians, the denizens were afflicted with an epidemic of obesity due to poor eating habits.  So a group of us went to teach them about the joys of chowing down on salads and soups and to help them plant their own gardens so they could grow their own fresh tomatoes and lettuce, carrots, beans, radishes, etc. 
It seemed a natural and surely successful way to ameliorate their health problems, especially since American Indians had been very successful farmers, providing the world with everything from potatoes, tomatoes and corn to squashes, all sorts of beans and chilies, and even cocoa and vanilla, not to mention  tobacco and cocaine.
Everyone was all smiles as we helped them stake out a garden, till the soil, plant seeds, water and fertilize.  We even made a scarecrow with spinning discs and twirlers made of old store bakery pie pans and ribbons. I looked forward to seeing the fruits of our labor when I returned during summer vacation. 
Alas, when I did so, to my surprise and dismay, the garden was dead.  No one had done anything to it since we left.  It hadn't been watered, weeded, hoed...nothing.  The seeds had sprouted, grown, then withered and died.  When I asked what had happened, why no one had taken care of the garden, I was met with shrugs and sheepish grins from fatties stuffing their faces with Doritos and Cheetos.  I didn't understand. 
When I told my mother about it she said God helps those who help themselves but even God can't help those who won't try. 
Last year, every graduating high school student at that rez who had a "B" average or higher joined the armed forces.  They'll learn job and managerial skills, self-discipline, discover their capabilities and limitations.  They'll see some of the world.  It's doubtful that they will ever go back to the rez except to visit.  They helped themselves.

One of the differences between the lives of men and women is that men will not, I seriously doubt, ever have to contend with women surreptitiously ogling them and masturbating -- and sometimes not so surreptitiously!  Nor will they ever have a woman tell them they masturbate to their photographs.  Nor will a woman masturbate to the sound of their voice while they are talking on the telephone, or while they are on a job-related video call.  Nor will a woman upload photos of them to a website for other women to comment on and masturbate to. 
But men do all those things to women routinely. I have had every one of those things happen to me and so have my female friends.  I've even had a male acquaintance request photos of me so that he could masturbate to them. I wouldn't be surprised if he sent the same request to every female on his contact list, hoping to get lucky.  Once when I was an undergrad some guy, I don't know who, cut out a photo of me that was in a college-affiliated publication, ejaculated on it and mailed it to me.  You say how can such things happen in the world of "me too"?  Well, as far as I can tell, that's pretty much confined to certain social classes, ones I don't circulate in.
I used to be surprised, alarmed, flattered, frightened, baffled by male actions.  Now I don't care.  If I find out about it, I just shrug. Men.  That's just the way they are.  As long as they don't physically harass or attack you, what does it matter? 
I used to mention to my guy when this happened but he would just laugh.  I think sometimes he got turned on by knowing other guys were hot for me. 
Another sort of man might become jealous or angry, and not necessarily at the male involved but at the woman, accusing her of encouraging the men.  So I'm lucky that mine isn't the jealous type, not that he need be.  But I also accept that he doesn't take such things seriously. 
Maybe it's because he realizes that I don't either.  If I really did, knowing him, I know that he, being a forceful man of action not a talker, would take care of the problem swiftly and permanently.
I have been blatantly sexually harassed from time to time, and not always by men.  That's not because I am some exceptionally desirable piece of merchandise but just because I'm female and guys (and sometimes lesbians or bi's) are always trying their luck with possible sexual partners. 
Everyone knows the joke about the guy who goes up to every woman he sees, says something, gets slapped, but just keeps repeating the action.  When asked what's going on, he says that he's asking the women to have sex with him.  Ninety-nine times out of a hundred they turn him down, but oh, that hundredth time! 
My mother taught me that when a man comes on to you in a way that you don't appreciate or feel is inappropriate, let him know immediately and in no uncertain terms.  You don't have to be rude about it, just make it clear how you feel.  Don't leave him any possibility of thinking that you are okay with his actions. 
Of course, some men can't take "no" for an answer and some men actually enjoy pushing past the "no," enjoying your discomfort or embarrassment, even your fear.  In such cases, a high heel to his foot, a spilled drink or food should give you an opportunity to escape as well as provide a warning that his actions won't be cost-free.  It's best to make what you do appear accidental, especially if the masher, to use an old-fashioned word, is a co-worker, family friend (or relative!) or some other person you have to continue to interact with.  Only if the man persists in his actions, or escalates them, should you involve the authorities. Then do it immediately.  Don't wait. 
But don't expect much from involving them.  In fact, they could even cause you more problems.  The grim truth is that sometimes bad things will happen to you and there is nothing you can do about them except thank God you weren't injured or even killed.
You also may have to accept that the perpetrator will face no punishment and feel no remorse, in fact might happily recall the incident and, who knows, maybe even masturbate to the memory.

 

HB10?

After almost continual generational changes in what a desirable woman should look like, from bustles and wasp waists to busty, hippy Gibson Girls to flat-chested, boyish flappers to, finally, it seemed, the physically fit but normally proportioned Petty Girl, the appearance of the hot babe gelled.  The below pin-up sports proportions and attire that would seem normal and attractive to a college boy today, even though, were she real, she would be a hundred years old.

But now we are in the midst of a sea change, with sassy, thunder-thighed, floppy-boobed 300-pounders being pushed by the pop culture controllers as the sexiest of all females.  

So it seems that we have gone back to the stone age in our definition of feminine desirability to this --

 -- rather than this --

 

Yeah, well, excuse me for not buying it.  I know what boys like.  And so do you.

Summer of Love

 Hey guys, did you ever wonder why so often when you try to chat up a woman you encounter that she is stand-offish or hostile?

Well...

One time way back when when I was out walking I sat down on a park bench to take a break.  Pretty soon a man about the age of my father sat down on the same bench and we got to talking.  It turned out he was a native San Franciscan and had been around for the so-called summer of love in 1967, worked back stage at the Fillmore and had known a lot of the rock groups of that era, including a number I had never heard of -- The Balloon Farm, H.P. Lovecraft, The Cyrcle, etc., -- as well as ones I knew such as The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Doors, The Byrds, and so forth.

So we had a nice chat and became friends, meeting at the park several times after by chance, then going to have a cup of coffee, lunch, a dinner or two.  He invited me to his house to see his collection of photos, psychedelic posters, handbills and old free hippie newspapers and that sort of thing. For me, he was just an interesting guy who told me about the old days, a subject I've always had an interest in.  Not just history, but how it was to be alive in past times.  And here was a man who had lived through the events of a particular time and place that have become legendary.  

His father was an Irish dock worker and owned a house in the Richmond District.  He had a pretty normal life growing up in a era when ordinary people could afford to live and work in the City and could walk or ride the trolley buses, street cars and cable cars just about anywhere.  He quit high school when he was 16, not liking school very much.  The last straw for him was when he was sitting in some boring class with a teacher droning on and the sun burning through a window made him too hot, so he got up and opened it to get some fresh air.  The teacher chastised him for not raising his hand and asking permission to do so, then  ordered him to close it.  Instead, he walked out of the classroom and the school, ending his formal education.  

That was the spring of 1967 and he became a sort of hippie, or at least hung out with the swarms of young people descending on San Francisco that year.  He had a girlfriend, he had a really cool job at the Fillmore and began smoking marijuana and taking psychedelics.  He told stories of what we would call raves now, rock parties on old abandoned ferry boats along the bay where it was sex, drugs and rock-and-roll all night long, the party hearty, live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse lifestyle.  

He loved it until he found his girlfriend dead, hanged in an abandoned warehouse along the docks.  The cops dismissed it as a suicide and didn't bother to investigate, but he was sure she had been murdered.  He said he had a dream in which the murderer was revealed to him.  He went to the cops and told them about the dream, which he had had several nights in a row.  They told him to get lost. They didn't give a damn about some dirty, drugged-out hippy chick who offed herself.   And they half-insinuated that if she was murdered, he was the most likely suspect.  Would he like to spend some time in jail while they checked it out?  So he let the matter drop.

He also dropped out of the hippy scene.  His father got him a job on the docks.  He joined the union, the ILA, and began making good money.  He added to his income by pilfering cargo and taking bribes from smugglers and drug runners, a practice he said was commonplace among longshoremen in those days.  He told of huge shipments of heroin coming into Fort Mason from South Viet Nam on military transports that he was paid not to notice, as well as crates of stolen (he assumed) antiques made of gold, jade and ivory. He bought his own house in Richmond, a Pontiac GTO convertible, a Harley-Davidson Sportster and a cabin cruiser to go fishing on the bay with and take trips out to Angel Island and around the bay.  Not a bad life for a high-school dropout.

 Then he injured his back and got in a fight with his union boss over how it happened and who was responsible and was out of a job.  But he took a training course offered by the City and became a court reporter.  It didn't pay nearly as well as the longshoreman's job, but it was enough to support his lifestyle and then some.

Musically, as he grew older he became a fan of Kate Bush and joined her fan club, corresponded with her and wrote an article about her that was published in some magazine.  And that leads me back to the original point of this post.   You see, I had never heard of Kate Bush so I visited her on-line fan site and of course looked up my friend's posts there...and this is what I found:

 I want to tell you about my friend, Wanda…
I had been waiting and looking for someone. But I am VERY particular about whom I turn on to, as I want the person to be able to be receptive to the things I like in life. I lucked out. Somehow we found each other and ever since have become quite close. She is most everything I require in a woman; bright, educated, poetic, funny as hell, very well-read and musically aware; and more incidentally, mature, immature, a wonderful dancer, and very much aware, unafraid, and understanding of sexuality. Oh yeah, and she is drop dead GORGEOUS! (Think a blend of Christina Applegate, Nicole Kidman and Elizabeth Montgomery.) I was stunned!
Ever since I caught her quoting Martin Buber’s “I and Thou”, and other philosophers and poets, I knew I had something special.
I can’t express how much fun we have had. Around my diligent working, we have spent considerable time privately and learned about each other with much delight.
This isn’t about me finding the woman of my dreams. Well, not exactly. We meet each other for a purpose here and that goes for others as well. Besides this, she is only 20 or so, and I’m sure there would be issues related to age-differences, as I’ve learned through experience elsewhere. So I’ve been simply enjoying her good company. She’s been a great and unexpected friend.
Here is a little poem that she sent me. It is a fitting description of my little Wanda, and says so much about her:

"Freedom"
A passion to be free
Has always mastered me.
To none beneath the sun
Will I bow down--no one
May leash my liberty!
My life's my own. I rise
With freedom in my eyes.
And my concept of hell
Is to be forced to sell
Myself to one who buys.

Okay, that's a lame poem that a young person would think was "deep," but never mind that.  What gave me a surprise, and not a pleasant one, was that he considered me his little Wanda.  Say what?  No!  To me, he was just a nice old guy to chat with.  I'd had dinner with him a few times; okay, I guess he could have considered those dates. But, geez, he was my dad's age.  So, you know, I considered him "safe."  But, clearly, he was infatuated with me:  Me?  Drop dead gorgeous?  Who says something like that? And all that other stuff?  He had turned me in his mind into some fantasy of perfection.  But I was just some goober.  A dumb college girl.  And what was this "very much aware, unafraid, and understanding of sexuality" all about?  There were totally zero sexual aspects to our acquaintance.  The guy hadn't even made a move on me, and if he had I would have told him to back up the truck.

So, in his mind, I was...apparently almost his lover and we had "found each other."  Oh, no, please, get out of here! No, no.

Anyway, the more I read over that post and others he had made about me, the more uneasy -- no, the more scared -- I became.  What if that summer of love girlfriend he had told me about had not really been his girlfriend, but he thought so and when she found out how he thought of her she tried to get away from him and ended up dead. It's not an uncommon thing. Could that happen to me?  I didn't know what to do, so I asked my mom, telling her the whole story, and she told my dad, and he and my brothers paid a visit to this guy and had a  come-to-Jesus meeting with him.  The upshot of that was that he moved to Washington state and I never saw or heard from him again.

 Did I over-react?  Did I do a harmless man harm?  I felt that maybe I did.  But my mother asked me if he had ever told me about any other women in his life besides that one from 1967.  No, he had not.  Did I think he never had any other women in his life?  I hadn't really thought about it, but I suppose not.  What was he doing in the park?  Why did he sit down next to me and begin talking to me?  I'd never thought about that either.  She drew me along through a series of questions I should have originally asked myself to consider that maybe I had been targeted and set up by this guy, who very well may have been a serial...predator.  I could have become his next victim, naive and trusting as I was.

 Well, I'll never know, but I did I learn a lesson:  Never, ever strike up conversations with random men you happen to encounter. 

But you know what?  I still remember that guy with fondness. I did like him.  I did find his stories fascinating, especially those about that summer of love and what it was like to be sixteen years old in San Francisco in 1967 enjoying a free concert by Jimi Hendrix in Golden Gate Park with the wind blowing crisp and clean off the bay, without a care and the whole wonderful world waiting to become yours.

 

God bless America

 It's easy to become dismayed, even angry, at the failures and mistakes our country has made during the course of its history, look at current events today and despair.  But others, most especially immigrants, look at this country through different, and much more favorable eyes.  Not all, of course.  There are always malcontents and failures, as well as those who simply don't fit in and would find some other country much more to their liking.  That applies to native-born Americans as well.  That's just the way it is.

Anyway, I got to thinking about this after talking to my father about why his father, my grandfather, a career naval aviator, didn't want him to join the Navy and wanted him to use his aeronautical engineering degree to obtain a job with an aerospace firm, maybe working on space probes, the Apollo project, or designing airliners.  We actually have a family friend who pursued that career path and is employed by UTC Aerospace Systems.  And one of my relatives worked for North American Aviation on the Apollo command module and the B-70.

Yes, the Japanese did this.

Dad said that gramps had had his understanding of how a war should be conducted formed by his experience in World War II.  We fought truly evil enemies.  I don't have a lot of interest in the European war, but I know a very great deal about the Greater East Asian War and Japanese behavior towards their neighbors.  They were truly monsters, committing unbelievable atrocities, things so shocking you would think even the most vile human being could not bring himself to commit them.  But the Japanese did.  And it was left to us to stop

Be glad you can't read Japanese.

them.  My grandfather was one of those who did that, operating under the simple hands-off orders of Washington to do what you have to do to win the war as thoroughly and quickly as you can.  Don't fool around.  Just smash the bastards.  And that's what we did.  And that's why the war only lasted three-and-a-half years, ending in total victory.  And that's how my grandfather understood that wars should be fought -- stay out of them or go in to win in a knockout.

An F8E hunting for legal targets in North Viet Nam.

Then came the Viet Nam War with its rules of engagement meant not only to avoid drawing in China as in the Korean War, but also, it was intended, to reduce civilian casualties. But these rules also hampered military effectiveness, often severely so.  In World War II, it was acceptable to bomb a city and kill thousands of civilians in order to ensure a ball-bearing factory was put out of action for six months.  But in the Viet Nam War it was forbidden to attack military installations in Hanoi or Haiphong for fear of inflicting civilian casualties.  Even when these rules were relaxed for the 1972 Christmas bombing, civilian deaths were only in the hundreds under the rain of bombs dropped by B-52s, each of which carried a bomb load ten times that of a B-17.  We chose to accept losses to our own air forces rather than inflict casualties on our enemy.  Had we bombed Hanoi the way we bombed Tokyo, there would have been deaths in the tens of thousands, the city would have been obliterated.

You can't win a war that way and my grandfather, along with everybody else at the pointed end of the spear as far back 1965 and probably before knew that.  He was also frustrated by the hands-on micro-management of the war by Washington.  Neither President Lyndon Johnson, a career politician, nor Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, a former Ford executive, knew anything about fighting a war, especially about the capabilities and limitations of air power.  But they selected every single target our aviators were assigned to attack.

Well, I don't want to get in to further detail about that war.  There are dozens of books discussing every aspect of it.  The point is that my grandfather did not want his son to waste his life in a war we were bound to lose.  

Huan Nguyen

So from this dad and I had a discussion about the role of America in the world, and whether, overall, and especially compared to the actions of other countries, it has been good or bad.  It was then that my father recalled a man he had met when he was serving on board the Kitty Hawk when it was forward deployed to Yokosuka, Huan Nguyen.  He was introduced to Huan, who was the ship facility testing officer, as a very remarkable man it would be an honor and a privilege to know.  And so he was.

Huan's father was an officer in the ARVN when the Viet Cong attacked Saigon during the Tet Offensive of 1968.  He was targeted by the communists for execution as an enemy of the people.  And to inflict maximum terror on those who opposed the Viet Cong, so was his family.  The Viet Cong broke into Huan's home and executed his father, mother, his five brothers, his sister and his grandmother.  Huan himself was shot three times, including in the head and left for dead.  His mother lived for two hours after the attack and Huan stayed by her side trying to stop the bleeding from her cut throat until she died.  For some reason, the guerillas shot the father and sons but cut the throats of the mother, grandmother and daughter.  The man who cut their throats was Nguyen Van Lem.  He was captured shortly afterward and summarily shot dead by Nguyen Ngoc Loan, the execution caught in a famous photo taken by AP photographer Eddie Adams.

Asan Beach Park on a recent Memorial Day.

Huan Nguyen, who was nine years old when he lost his family, lived with an uncle until the fall of Saigon when he was evacuated to Camp Asan, Guam.  (The site of the camp is now a beach park and I've picnicked there many times. It's also the site of Memorial Day ceremonies, as it was the site of savage fighting during the liberation of Guam in 1944, with the Japanese attacking the field hospital there, bayoneting the wounded in their beds as well as doctors and nurses before finally being driven out by our Marines.)

In an interview, Huan said, “The images that I remember vividly when I arrived at Camp Asan were of American sailors and Marines toiling in the hot sun, setting up tents and chow hall, distributing water and hot food, helping and caring for the people with dignity and respect. I thought to myself how lucky I am to be in a place like America. Those sailors inspired me to later serve in the United States Navy.” 

And that's what he did.  But first he went to university, earning masters' degrees in electrical and manufacturing engineering as well as information technology. He is an alumnus of  Carnegie Mellon.  He was commissioned as an officer in the Navy in 1993. Besides serving in Japan, he has also served in Iraq and Afghanistan while rising through the ranks to rear admiral, serving as deputy commander of cyber engineering at NAVSEA.

In an interview with MC1 Mark D. Faram Huan said, "Growing up in the war zone, it is literally a day-to-day mental attitude.
You never know what is going to happen next. The war is at your doorsteps. Images of gunships firing in the distance, the rumbling of B-52 bombings on the countryside, the nightly rocket attacks from the insurgents—it becomes a daily routine. There is so much ugliness in the war and living through a period of intense hatred, I didn't have any peace of mind.

War, war, always war.

It is not easy to get over the trauma of losing your entire family. It has been over fifty years, but it is something I will never forget. Every day I asked myself: 'Why me?'

I thought of myself as a curse. In my mind, bad news was always around the corner; it was just a matter of time. I was afraid of building relationships just to lose the people I love. I was afraid of losing everything.

Tet Offensive, 1968.

I have often thought of the actions of my father the day he died. Why did he make those decisions that ultimately led to not just his death but those of my mother and siblings? Would I have made the same choices?

The message I have come to understand from his example is that it is about service before self and doing what is right, with honor. What I experienced and learned from that event is about honor, courage, and commitment. The same ethos that the Navy I serve pledges today to uphold — honor, courage, and commitment."

The full interview is here.   It's well worth reading.

When he was promoted to admiral, Huan said, “It is a great honor to attain the rank of admiral. I am humbled to become the first Vietnamese American to wear the flag rank in the U.S. Navy. The honor actually belongs to the Vietnamese American community, which instilled in us a sense of patriotism, duty, honor, courage and commitment to our adopted country, the United States of America. This is our America, a country built on service, kindness and generosity as well as endless opportunity. These values are what inspired me to serve.  And what a great honor and privilege it is to serve our Navy, to serve our country.”

God bless America. You may not say it, but they do.

So....  What...?

I guess what I'm thinking, what I'm trying to convey is that, as screwed up as America may be, as many mistakes as we make, as many things wrong that we do, we are still a worthy country, a worthy people, trying our best.  We often do not realize that, or grow cynical in the face of rah-rah phony shows of patriotism by contemptible politicians and their hangers on, crooks and cowards that they are, but others who come to us from far different and far worse backgrounds see that it is true.  If we falter, feel the country is done for, they seize the flag before we let it touch the ground and run forward with it.

Oh, why did my dad decide to become a naval aviator, knowing by the time he joined up that the war was lost and that if he flew combat missions over North Viet Nam he had a good chance of being killed or ending up tortured at the Hanoi Hilton?  Simple:

"I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me."

 

 

PS:  Here's Douglas Pike's analysis of the Viet Cong's deliberate use of terror against civilians:

The Viet Cong Strategy of Terror

Oh, what a night

 So many things going on...

I've been working on editing my grandfather's journal of his 1965 Yankee station cruise, the last of his career, off and on for more than a year.  I always end up putting it aside because it is just too difficult for me to deal with on so many levels.  Reading it makes me angry, outraged, and very sad.  He was serving on an old World War II-era carrier that had been hit twice by kamikazes, killing hundreds of sailors, the ghosts of some of whom still seemed to inhabit it.  All the grease in the expansion joints had been burned out and it creaked and groaned like an old man with arthritis.  Their air strikes against North Viet Nam had destroyed all crucial targets, including 70 percent of the country's POL supplies, within two weeks and there was nothing of value left to bomb, yet still Washington insisted on air strikes against a country the economy of which was based on bicycles and water buffalo.  Robert McNamara personally harassed the CAG with calls refusing to accept the accuracy of the after-action reports he was reviewing and demanding they be altered to show better results. He even dictating the number of sorties each pilot should fly daily and what the bomb load of each aircraft should be.  And all the while they were losing more airplanes than they had during the Guadalcanal campaign. McNamara demanded that stop, that pilots should bring their battle-damaged planes back to the carrier to be repaired rather than ejecting to save their lives.  Well, you can guess what that led to, those planes that could make it back to the carrier crashed attempting to land and not only air crew but flight deck personnel became casualties.  My grandfather wrote passionately of how he did not want his son, my father, to become a naval aviator, but did not know how to dissuade him. And he didn't.  Seven years later my father was flying combat missions over North Viet Nam.

When you're all cried out, you might as well laugh.

A dear friend, who completed five deployments to Iraq and three to Afghanistan, suffering for years from brutal PTSD as well as pain from injuries -- he had been blown up and shot so many times that he couldn't remember them all. Really.  He would have been killed long ago if it were not for his PPE.  But that doesn't prevent all injuries, to the extremities, of course, but also and especially internal organ damage and brain trauma --; well, he decided he had had enough of this world, the final bug-out of the 'stan was really the last straw, and went on ahead, leaving his wife, who had stood by him all these years, no matter what, utterly bereft, and his children lost.  I once asked him why he didn't get out of the service and let it all go.  But he said he couldn't do that.  If he didn't go someone else would have to, and it was better he did it.  And besides, he couldn't abandon the guys in his unit.  They needed his combat savvy to make it safely through their deployments.  I understand that. 

I was talking with my mom about how we remember or imagine the past to have been.  We always recall or envision it to be better than it was for those living it at the time.  All the distressing details have vanished and there is only left a golden glow of good times.  Well, what's wrong with that?  We're not actually ever going to go back in time, so why not imagine it the way we want it to be?

We also talked about music and how men and women differ in their tastes. Guys love music that when they listen to it in their cars they end up driving 100 miles an hour.  Girls prefer music that makes them wistful and if it makes them cry, so much the better.  Guys will wonder why on earth would you want to listen to music that makes you cry, but, you know, sometimes you just need a good cry for no reason at all.  It's a female thing.  Males wouldn't understand.

Anyway, this tune combines both my affection for times gone by that I never lived through and my need to sob into my spiked sarsaparilla.  Oh, and I like to dance to it, too.  And it's nice to know lots of other people do like the old songs and songs composed and performed in the old way. 

Kids say the darndest things

 

I used to watch TV

And I enjoyed it!  What's that?  PBS?  British snooty pants melodramas and Charlie Rose?  Oh, naw.... 

Take me back to before

 I thought I'd check out what the top songs of 2021 were and my eye caught something called "Thot Shit," a very popular production (more than 40 million YouTube views in six months), 'though I'd never heard of it.  So out of curiosity I clicked on it.  

Mistake.

Hands on my knees, shakin' ass, on my thot shit
Post me a pic, finna make me a profit
When the liquor hit, then a bitch get toxic
(Why the fuck you in the club with niggas wildin'?)
I've been lit since brunch, thot shit...

 And on and on, getting worse as it goes along.  Maybe a third of the lyrics I didn't even understand at all.  But what the lyrics seemed to be was essentially an id howl shouting I am great, I am better than anyone else, but exulting in a life of utter pointlessness depicted in the crudest way possible.

 I don't get it. Who listens to this?  Why?  The song may baffle and repel me, but obviously I am an outlier, merely a weirdo freak with oddball tastes.  The rest of the modern world enjoys and understands this type of entertainment.

I mentally staggered back and regretted my peek into the present. Whatever this...this...civilization -- if it deserves that name -- is, it's got nothing to do with what came before, the grand civilization, sweet and decent in its pop culture and magnificent and awe-inspiring in its high culture that existed just a few decades ago.  Gone.  All gone.  And as likely to come back as Periclean Athens or Florence of the Renaissance.

Well, to hell with it all.  I will go back in reverie to that world that was and ignore today.  You may well say that I can choose to ignore the present but the present won't ignore me.  I suppose. But for as long as I can, to the extent that I can, I will ignore it.  Life is short and soon over.  Maybe I can make it across the river before the tidal wave of horror overwhelms me.  But what of the next generation?  Our children?  All I can think to do is rescue and pass on to them as much of our ancient cultural heritage, high and low, as I can, so that they can know there was once a world of beauty, happiness, love and sincere emotions, a world worth living in.

 On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand,
And cast a wishful eye
To Canaan’s fair and happy land,

 Near the cross I’ll watch and wait
Hoping, trusting ever,
Till I reach the golden strand,
Just beyond the river.

 PS:  Looky what I found.  Seems like I'm not alone in loathing the new after all.  But, you know, it's a bad sign when your culture can no longer generate art and entertainment that your own people have any interest in.  A really bad sign.

Old Music is Killing New Music 

"Old songs now represent 70 percent of the U.S. music market, according to the latest numbers from MRC Data, a music-analytics firm. ... The new-music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs.

The 200 most popular new tracks now regularly account for less than 5 percent of total streams. That rate was twice as high just three years ago. The mix of songs actually purchased by consumers is even more tilted toward older music.

I encountered this phenomenon myself recently at a retail store, where the youngster at the cash register was singing along with Sting on 'Message in a Bottle'(a hit from 1979) as it blasted on the radio. A few days earlier, I had a similar experience at a local diner, where the entire staff was under 30 but every song was more than 40 years old. I asked my server: 'Why are you playing this old music?' She looked at me in surprise before answering: 'Oh, I like these songs.'

Never before in history have new tracks attained hit status while generating so little cultural impact. In fact, the audience seems to be embracing the hits of decades past instead. New songs that become bona fide hits can pass unnoticed by much of the population."

Johnny Reb, then and now

 Click to enlarge the images, or open the image in a new tab and enlarge.  I hope you can read the text.  It tells so much about what a thoughtful, understanding, magnanimous  people we once were.  We honored our fallen foes and allowed them dignity in defeat.  We tore down no statues. 

Why did that change?  What advantage has accrued to us by changing?  Did we voluntarily change, or were we manipulated or forced into changing?  Or have we not changed but are simply no longer in control of our own country?  If we are not, who is?

Published in January, 1960.

 

The Wearing of the Gray

Diligent doo wop

I dropped by a local mom and pop general store the other day to pick up something.  Alas, and to my surprise, they were out of stock.  I got to talking with the cashier/proprietor and she said that they were out of 35 percent of the items they normally carry.  Looking around the store, the shelves seemed full.  But, as she pointed out and phrased it, there were "a lot of some things and a lot of no things."

“The government is merely a servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't.”
~ Mark Twain

An acquaintance operates a recruiting agency that he founded after he graduated from business school almost 20 years ago. He survived the 2008 economic crash but isn't sure he will make it this time.  Hardly anyone is hiring in the fields he services, and when they are, no one is applying.  I asked how badly he had been hit. He said he only billed about a million dollars last year.  I had no idea employment agencies were so lucrative, not that I'd ever thought about it.  I said so you are still making pretty good money anyway.  But he shook his head.  In 2019 he had billed over eight million dollars.

 “The present facts are that the world is insane.”
― Martin Luther

I stopped by a local diner to have their grilled cheese-and-jalapeño sandwich and garlic fries dusted with chili powder and began chatting with an old guy (he said he was 85) who had been sitting a few stools away but moved over next to me with his coffee and pie.  He said he hoped I didn't mind but he hated to eat a alone. He offered to buy me a slice of key lime pie but I passed but did accept his offer of a cup of coffee.  He began talking about the swell times he had back in the horse-and-buggy days, a subject I never tire of hearing about.  One thing he said struck me.  He said that as a child he was taught that the road to success in life was to be diligent, humble and sincere.  People would notice and you would be rewarded.  He said that had been true when he was young but that at some point it changed and the brash, bungling boasters had taken over.  It's all crap now, he said.  The counterman, who had been half listening, came over then and asked the old guy if there was something wrong with his pie.  

“He did not give a damn for the world or the universe or heaven or hell. But he liked women.”
― John Fante

Does the "wop" in doo-wop refer to Italians? Just kidding.  But there sure were a lot of Italian singing groups and solo artists back when -- Bobby Rydell, Fabian, Frankie Avalon, Bobby Darin, Connie Francis, Freddy Cannon, Frankie Valli, Connie Stevens, Santo and Johnny, Dion....  They practically owned pop music. I got to thinking about Italian-Americans after I read something about them being denigrated as nothing but gangsters and thugs that our country would have been better off without.  I put down my pizza slice and set aside my glass of Chianti, turned off the Frank Sinatra recording and pondered.

A few years ago I participated in an oral history project to record the memories of World War II vets before they passed from the scene.  My assignment was a retired insurance salesman who had flown P-40s with the 325th Fighter Group, the Checkertails, in North Africa and Italy.  One of the stories he told was about the time he was shot down by ground fire during the invasion of Sicily.  He was fished out of the water near a small village by some fishermen who brought him to shore where he was met by a delegation that included the mayor, the village school teacher and the local Fascist party official.  The mayor's wife took his soaking wet and tattered uniform to be washed and mended.  Then he had lunch with the mayor's family and the others. The Fascist party official wanted to know why Americans -- Americans!

-- were attacking them.  They all loved America.  And, as it turned out, the school teacher had been born in New York City and only came to Sicily to visit his grandparents, then got stuck there when the US entered the European war.  The mayor had worked for 25 years in construction in St. Louis and retired to his native village.  His children and grandchildren were scattered throughout the States. The Fascist had never been to America but his brother lived in New Jersey.  So they all had a jolly meal, deciding not to discuss the war or politics but baseball.  How was Joe DiMaggio doing?  Later some British paras arrived in the town and the Fascist made himself scarce.  My P-40 pilot greeted the Brits in company with the mayor and school teacher, welcoming them and informing them there were no soldiers in the town nor anything of military value. The paras were suspicious of the trio, especially the pilot, who, when they asked for ID, could not provide any because  his credentials were with his uniform, which was off being mended.  The Brits decided all three were spies and planned to shoot them, then roust the inhabitants of the town and detain all males.  But before they could carry out their plans a patrol of Americans commanded by an Italian-American arrived and things got straightened out over a few bottles of wine and a nice dinner. 

 

Cowboys

 The cowboy is a man who possesses resilience, patience, and an instinct for survival. Cowboys get climbed on, rained on, snowed on, kicked, battered by the wind, burned by the sun. The cowboy's job is just to take it.  It doesn't require courage as it's commonly thought of to do that. It demands stoicism.

To be tough on a ranch has nothing to do with combativeness or macho strutting.  It's about dealing with what you have to deal with and can't turn away from.  That's what a cowboy does, handle situations that are trying to overwhelm him.  He routinely faces such things as the horse he’s riding miles from anywhere breaking a leg or a sudden rock fall knocking him senseless, blocking the trail and trapping him in a coulee. When he comes to, his head is bleeding and hurts like hell, and his horse has wandered off and is nuzzling a clump of jimson weed.

In a rancher’s world, courage has less to do with facing danger than with acting quickly, correctly and without regard to  injury to oneself to help an animal in your charge or another rider. If a cow is stuck in a bog hole, the cowpoke throws a loop around her neck, takes his dally and pulls her out with horsepower. If a calf is born sick, he takes it home, warms it in front of the kitchen fire, and massages its legs till dawn.

One cowhand, whose horse was trying to swim a lake with hobbles on, dove under water and cut its legs free, then swam it to shore, his arm around its neck lifeguard-style, and saved it from drowning.  Another, working on foot with border collies to herd some cow brutes, carried one of the dogs more than two miles in his arms over rough ground when it stepped in a bear trap and had its paw nearly severed.  He tourniqueted the leg, calmed the hysterical dog as it struggled and bit at him in its pain and fear, then trudged for an hour up and down dry washes to his truck, drove to the line shack, sewed up the wound and settled the dog, then drove and hiked back to where he was working and finished getting the cattle out of the mess they had gotten themselves into.

Because these incidents are usually linked to someone or something outside himself, the cowboy’s courage is selfless, a form of compassion, of empathy.  He becomes used to thinking  about the welfare of others, animal and man and land, and not about himself.  If he doesn't, he doesn't make it as a cowboy.  He probably heads for the swarming, foul, me-me mobs of the city with their self-centered hedonistic ethos.

The physical punishment that goes with cowboying is brutal. When I asked one cowboy if he was sick as he struggled to his feet at the bunkhouse one morning, he replied, "No'm, just bent." Cowboys do not complain. They laugh at their failures and injuries and at what fools they are for doing the job.  They are the kind of men who, if they accidentally cut off their foot in a chain saw accident would say they were okay, they'd walk it off.  That's only partly a joke.  I knew one cowboy whose foot was crushed when a tractor rolled back on him.  His boot filled with blood as he kept working for the rest of the day.  Only that night, when, his foot swollen and purple, he couldn't get his boot off did he causally mention the accident.

Although a cowboy is a man’s man—laconic, reliable, hard-working—there’s no person in which the balancing act between male and female, manliness and femininity, can be more natural. If he’s gruff, handsome and physically fit on the outside, he’s compassionate at the core. Ranchers are midwives, nurturers, providers. The toughness, the weathered skin, calloused hands, squint in the eye and growl in the voice only mask the tenderness inside.

Around women, cowhands are stand-offish but chivalrous. A cowboy tips his hat to a woman and calls her miss or ma’am, tolerates no disrespect to her character or person, whoever she may be.  Urban males would deride them as white knights. If one of these called a woman a "bitch" or "'ho'" in the presence of a cowboy, he would get a quick and forceful explanation of the lay of the land and his position in it, and probably a broken jaw as well.

But the geographical vastness and the social isolation of the West make emotional involvement with the women a cowboy interacts with difficult. Caution colliding with  passion gives a cowboy a wide-eyed but drawn and wary look.  He wishes he had someone to care for him the way he cares for a lost dogie, but doesn't expect he ever will and doesn't look for someone who might.  She has to find him.

At heart, cowboys are fragile. Women are, too. But for all the women who use frailness to avoid work or as a sexual ploy, there are just as many cowboys who try to hide their emotional vulnerability, even as they cling to an almost childlike dependency on the women in their lives.  Urban males, sophisticated in the ways and wiles of man- and womankind, have developed a callousness that  insulates them from the pain of failed relationships. Cowboys have no such internal armor and often misunderstand a woman's words and can be deeply hurt.  They can grow bitter and prefer to be away from all people, working far out on the prairie where there is just God and his country and his creatures.

Because cowboys work mostly with animals not machines; because they live outside in landscapes of overwhelming beauty; because they are confined to a place and a routine rife with violent variables; because calves die in the arms that pulled others into life; because they go to the mountains as if on a pilgrimage, their strength is also a vulnerability, their toughness a kindness.


The moon rides high in the cloudless sky,
And the stars are shining bright.
The dark pines show on the hills below,
The mountains are capped with white.
My spurs they ring and the song I sing
Is set to my horse's stride.
We gallop along to an old-time song
As out on the trail we ride.
My horse is pulling the bridle reins,
I'm hitting the trail tonight.
You can hear the sound as he strikes the ground
On the frozen trail below.
His hoof beats hit and he fights the bit,
He's slinging his head to and fro.
We'll ride the trail till the stars turn pale
And camp at the break of dawn.
Nobody will know which way I go,
They'll only know I've gone.
~ Bruce Kiskaddon


"It's beefsteak when I'm hungry,
Corn whiskey when I'm dry,
Pretty girls when I'm lonesome,
Sweet heaven when I die."
~ Dick Duval 

 

He loved his country as no other

A story from the days of the America that used to be and that still lives in the hearts of her native children.  Who punishes treason now?  Is there even such a word, such a concept anymore?  Is the very concept of a country, a nation, a motherland, obsolete? Should it be?

"Remember that behind officers and government, and people even, there is the Country Herself, your Country, and that you belong to her as you belong to your own mother."

 I suppose that very few casual readers of the "New York Herald" of August 13th observed, in an obscure corner, among the "Deaths," the announcement,

"NOLAN. DIED, on board U.S. Corvette Levant, Lat. 2° 11' S., Long. 131° W., on the 11th of May: Philip Nolan."

I happened to observe it, because I was stranded at the old Mission-House in Mackinac, waiting for a Lake-Superior steamer which did not choose to come, and I was devouring, to the very stubble, all the current literature I could get hold of, even down to the deaths and marriages in the "Herald." My memory for names and people is good, and the reader will see, as he goes on, that I had reason enough to remember Philip Nolan. There are hundreds of readers who would have paused at that announcement, if the officer of the Levant who reported it had chosen to make it thus:—"Died, May 11th, THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY."

 Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
~ Sir Walter Scott

 Radio play:

The Man Without A Country 

 

The original story in the December, 1863, edition of The Atlantic: 

The Man Without a Country