Old Journal

My grandfather kept a journal, or perhaps it was a diary, during his final of three wars in which he saw combat.
The first war was the Pacific War.  He was at sea when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and he served until VJ Day.  For a while, he kept a journal in which he wrote a bit about the first few months of the war as he participated in it, but then wrote nothing more.  For example, although he wrote about his first encounter with Japanese warplanes in 1942, he wrote nothing about his ship being sunk or being shot down at sea and not rescued for 37 days.  Nor did he write about anything else that happened to him during the rest of the war.

A WW2 Essex-class carrier that had been hit by multiple kamikazes.

He flew combat missions over North Korea in 1951, but wrote nothing about the experience.  From reading his logbook and the history of his ship, I learned that his airplane was badly damaged by flak on one mission and he barely made it back, but there is not a word from him about that experience.
However, when he began flying missions against North Viet Nam in 1965, he  began keeping a journal, the goal seems to have been, initially, to document some serious problems being encountered, as well as very bad procedures imposed on the Navy fliers by their civilian overseers in the Defense Dept.  But over time, the journal evolved into a diary containing his thoughts and experiences of a very personal nature.  I didn't know of the existence of this journal until recently, when my mother brought it out and suggested I might find it interesting.  I certainly have.  In fact, some parts of it have truly shaken me while at the same time making me incredibly angry and sad.  The mix of emotions has been overwhelming.

Loading Zuni rockets on an F8U.

I don't even know how to start writing about this subject, there are so many aspects to it, and every one so disturbing.  But I'll try.
One of the first things my grandfather noted was that naval aviation at the start of the Viet Nam War was based on peacetime needs and procedures, and the war that was anticipated was  nuclear  with the Soviet Union, so they were trained to attack strategic targets in the USSR using nuclear weapons in what were considered to be one-way, essentially suicide, missions.  So they weren't training to attack bridges or oil depots or river barges.  All of that knowledge had been shoved onto a back shelf.  It had to be relearned for Viet Nam.

Three of the F8Us in this photo were shot down in the spring of 1966.

All their flight suits were bright orange, since, during peacetime, if they had to eject, they would want to be easily spotted by rescuers.  But during wartime, if they were shot down over enemy territory, they needed to hide, evade and escape, until, hopefully, they could be rescued.  Trying to explain that to Navy brass stateside seems to have been an impossible task.  They just didn't get it, and when aircrew bought green dye and dyed their flight suits a dirty greenish brown they were reprimanded.  It was well over a year before they began to get khaki flight suits.

In the meantime, 20 of the ship's aircrew were shot down and listed as either KIA or MIA and another seven were known to be POWs.   Each one of these individuals shot down was personally known to my grandfather, often for years.  Many he had trained.  He knew their families and had spent time with them as part of the close-knit peacetime naval aviation community.  For each man lost he had to write to, visit and console a wife, parents, children.  It really got to him.  He noted that they were losing more pilots over North Viet Nam than they had during the Guadalcanal campaign.
They were also losing a lot of airplanes, more loses than could be sustained.  For example, total production of the A4D, a dedicated attack plane, was 10 a month.  This number supplied not only the entire Navy, but also the Marines.  But my grandfather's carrier was losing on average four A4Ds every month.  F8U loses were equally severe.  In fact, the large number of loses of F8Us led to one of the most harrowing episodes recounted in the journal.  At a pre-mission briefing, the flight leader told the pilots that Washington had insinuated that pilots were needlessly ejecting from planes that were only lightly damaged and he urged each pilot to make every effort to bring back his airplane if it were damaged by enemy action because they were just losing too many.  As luck would have it, his aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire and severely damaged on that very strike, but instead of ejecting after getting back over the water, where he would have been rescued, he chose to try to land aboard the carrier and in so doing crashed, his plane careening off the deck and into the sea and he was killed.  Seeing this, his wingman, his good friend and the best man at his wedding, began literally screaming in his microphone, swearing in rage and crying in grief. When he landed, he declared he would never fly another mission and he didn't.  He said he had become a conscientious objector.  The Navy brass wanted to court martial him, but finally they just let him resign his commission.

And what was the mission objective that led to the death of this man?  You guessed it.  A suspected truck park.
On a liberty at Hong Kong, my grandfather had taken the ferry to Macao and visited an access point to Red China.  There he had seen trucks coming in from the mainland.  They were old Studebakers, probably lend-lease from World War II days, given to the KMT, or perhaps even to the Soviet Union.  He noted in his journal that the trucks they were attacking were probably ones like these with a Blue Book value of $25 or something.  That ties in with an item I read in The Pentagon Papers, leaked CIA documents regarding the war.  The CIA had determined that for every dollar of damage our bombing raids did to North Viet Nam in 1965, it cost us $6, and in 1966 $10.

My grandfather noted that after the first two months of bombing the north, there were no more worthwhile targets.  Not that there had ever been very many.  He wrote that North Viet Nam was a bicycle and water buffalo economy with a veneer of modernity that was obliterated within weeks.  Instead of standing down, however, Robert McNamara's Defense Department ordered that the  attacks continue, but that each A4D, which was capable of carrying six 500-pound bombs, only carry one bomb on each sortie, McNamara thus being able to report to President Johnson the large number of sorties the Navy was carrying out daily. In addition, given the number of targets assigned, pilots had to fly two missions a day.  This raised the ire of McNamara, who insisted the pilots fly 1.5 missions a day.

My grandfather recorded in his diary actual results of strike missions compared to the results he was ordered to supply as official reports that would be forwarded to Washington.  A typical attack might be against what appeared to be 10 trucks moving along a road.  The fighter-bombers, forced by terrain and cloud levels to make their approach from an obvious and easily anticipated altitude and direction, faced accurate, concentrated anti-aircraft fire. They could only afford to make one high-speed pass.  So the pilots could never really be sure what, if anything, they hit.  After-mission debriefing and later bomb-damage assessment from photo reconnaissance might lead them to conclude the greatest likelihood was that they had destroyed three trucks and damaged two more.  But if that report were submitted, it would be rejected, so a completely bogus report that would be accepted  had to be fabricated -- a 20-truck convoy bombed, 12 trucks destroyed and six damaged.

The aircraft carrier he was serving on was a World War II veteran that had been struck by kamikazes, killing hundreds of sailors, starting huge fires and inflicting major damage.  The ship had been repaired, but the fires had burned out all the grease in the expansion joints and as a result the old ship creaked and groaned in large seas and an odor of burnt residue would permeate the lower passageways.  Many of the ship's crew swore the old boat was haunted and could recount tales of encounters with ghosts, my grandfather, too.  In his diary, he writes of one time having an overwhelming foreboding that he would be shot down and killed on his next mission.  He sat down at the little desk in his quarters to write a farewell letter to his wife and children.  But as he was trying to compose his thoughts, staring at the blank paper, a hand firmly gripped his shoulder and someone, speaking very clearly, told him not to worry; he would not only survive the next mission, but complete the cruise and return home safely.  My grandfather didn't recognize the voice and turned to see who it was.  But there was no one there.  He got up and looked out at the passageway.  It was empty.  

Looking at the list of combat missions he flew, I note that the least he flew in a month was 16 and the most was 28. He repeatedly writes how tired everyone is, not only the air crews but all the personnel who serviced the planes.  Most of these missions were flown in very bad weather.  During the northeast monsoon, which started in November and lasted until mid-May, the weather over North Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin was miserable, nothing but day after day of heavy clouds and rain. Conditions were especially challenging when a weather phenomenon my grandfather referred to as “le crachin” occurred. That's French for "drizzle," but apparently it was much more than that -- thick clouds and ceilings as low as 100 feet, in combination with fog and the persistent drizzle. 

 
Cloud cover was usually broken with some holes at about 6,000 feet with solid overcast above and scattered clouds at 4,000 feet. As my grandfather noted, to acquire the target in such weather, he had to descend through the cloud layers and fly between 4,000 and 6,000 feet, where he became vulnerable to ground fire. North Vietnamese gunners  knew the altitude of the cloud ceilings, so he and his pilots were forced to fly even lower, into the effective range of small arms, to avoid being at a known altitude. The low ceilings also required the use of horizontal or low angle glide delivery bombing, which brought aircraft even closer to AAA. The low ceilings also restricted the directions from which aircraft could attack, making North Vietnamese barrage fire more effective -- the North Vietnamese didn't usually aim their anti-aircraft fire at individual planes but, knowing the altitude and direction the aircraft would have to fly to attack the target, filled the sky along that path with a storm of shrapnel.  It was sheer luck whether a plane was hit and there was nothing that could be done to avoid the flak. And under these weather conditions, it should not be forgot, the difficult and dangerous task of landing aboard the carrier after the mission could mean disaster for the stressed-out and exhausted pilots, all too often flying damaged planes.

In addition to strikes against North Vietnamese targets, pilots had to fly what were called Barrier Combat Air Patrols.  These were needed to intercept Chinese Air Force sorties against the carrier that simulated attack profiles.  There was no way to know if these were feints or would actually be carried out if not intercepted.  So they had to be intercepted.

__________

Well, I am tired. I will continue this another time.  There is a lot more to cover.  It gets worse. 

How does it end?

 I'm in a glum mood.  I really should not pay attention to the news. 

 

I mentioned to a friend that when I had said to someone that no matter how bad things got, as an American descended from those who created this country, that I would stick it out and hope to outlast this current crash into totalitarian madness and help the recovery on the other side, only to have it pointed out to me that almost all of my ancestors had been refugees from persecution who had fled their oppressors -- German anabaptists, French Huguenots, English Quakers -- so why shouldn't I and all the others being victimized also flee, and that my answer had been okay but flee to where?  To which I got no answer.  

It's been done before.

He thought for a minute and said, if you can find no country to flee to, why not create one?  He explained that, as an example, American ex-military could travel to some out of the way country and seize control, then invite whites to emigrate from the United States to their new homeland.  He went into a lot of detail about how this could be achieved, but that was essentially the plan.  I said it sounded like the plot for a Frederick Forsyth novel.  He said so what if it does? A couple of other guys were listening in and grew increasingly interested in what we were talking about and joined the conversation.  I listened to the three of them play around with the idea, considering it seriously.  They finally decided that the country to take over would be one of no strategic importance, with no mineral wealth or anything else to attract the predator nations.  The government should be weak and corrupt and the population small and poor, but not so poor as to be a magnet for NGOs. It should.... I excused myself and left them poring over maps and fact books on their cells.  They didn't even notice my leaving.

I went outside.  It finally felt like spring was on the way, the sun shining, melt water trickling through the mud.  I took a walk.

Old ways, new ways

 I've mentioned line shacks in some of my posts.  They are, as a rule, basic shelter for those working too far out on the range to get back to the main ranch. Unless they are in really rugged terrain that requires supply by pack horse, they are pretty well equipped.  There is no electricity of course, nor indoor plumbing, aside from a hand pump raising water from a well.  But there are kerosene space heaters, stoves, lamps and even kerosene-powered refrigerators.  Most of these appliances are many decades old, but they still work just fine.  In the old days things really were built to last.

In some of the older shacks, instead of a kerosene space heater, there is a wood or coal-fired stove. We also use the so-called pot belly stoves to heat the main ranch workshop, bunkhouse, cookhouse, school and church.  They are of different brands and vintages -- US Stove, Ball, Red Cloud, Station Master -- and most are well over 100 years old, having been bought new except for a few of the Balls, which were acquired when Ft. Keogh was disestablished after WWI and some of the Station Master and US Stoves, which were acquired from auctioned-off caboose and railroad station furnishings, I would guess probably in the 1950s and '60s.  They burn coal which we get free by occasionally driving out to where the coal trains take a curve and always spill some. We know several spots like that you can get to in a 4wd. In a couple of hours we can gather enough loose coal to fill a pickup truck bed and trailer.  
I read somewhere some guy saying he had seen a pot belly stove glowing cherry red and putting out so much heat you couldn't get close to it.  I wonder about that.  I've never seen any of these stoves glow cherry red.  I think that would shorten their life and certainly be a waste of fuel.  You can definitely get close enough to them to get toasty warm, pull up a chair and prop you feet up. Some of the stoves have a ring around the  belly where you can rest your feet or -- what I think they are designed for -- place boots or other things to dry.
You always try to burn the minimum fuel and not waste it producing excess heat.  Coal is heavy; you can fill a big old coal bucket, one of those that looks sort of like a pitcher, not round like a water bucket, with about 40 pounds of coal, enough to keep the stove going for a day, depending on how cold it is. Of course, you have to shovel that into the bucket from the coal shed and carry it into the shack, and you really don't want to do that any more often than you have to, especially in winter weather. And then you have to empty the ashes and clinkers and put them in the ash can, a tiresome, messy job you don't want to do any more often than you have to, either.  And then you have to haul the ash can away and empty it.
Coal also costs money if you buy it (duh!), as much as $200 a ton in truckloads. Of course, if you buy it in those little bags at the feed store, it's considerably more.  Fortunately, we don't have to buy it.  If we did, we'd might stop using the pot belly stoves and use kerosene space heaters like we do in most of the line shacks.  But kerosene is expensive at about $10 a gallon, and the space heaters burn about a quart or so per hour.  Plus, of course, we'd have to buy the space heaters.
A ton of coal will last a potbelly stove pretty much through the worst of the winter, a couple of tons will usually last all winter and see some left over you can use next year.  You can't keep kerosene more than a few months so you have to buy fresh every season.  We can pile up coal as we have the time to send somebody out to get a load, so we always have plenty on hand.  The main advantages of kerosene are that it is compact compared to coal and easy to transport and it is much cleaner, both to handle and to burn.  You can also use it as a solvent for cleaning paint brushes and so forth.
We do have some wood burning pot belly stoves and cook stoves in some of the remoter line shacks that can only be gotten to on horseback or foot.  The crew cuts their own firewood and stacks it.  Naturally, to avoid as much of this hard work as possible, they only burn enough wood to cook with and take the chill off the shack. A roaring fire uses too much wood. And wood for the cook stove has to be cut to a size that fits the fire box, plus you have to split kindling, and nobody wants to do that any more than absolutely needed, especially if you are dead beat from working outdoors in winter weather all day and just want to get warm, clean up, chow down and hit the hay.

A triple-wide mobile home --!

In the large acreages we added to our ranch that I mentioned in an earlier post we are putting in some new line shacks, although they are really a lot more than shacks.  One of them is a triple wide that will be trucked in in sections.  It will have a septic tank and indoor plumbing, and a deep well supplying plenty of fresh water.  It will also have electricity, supplied by solar panels, a wind turbine and a diesel generator, allowing for hot water, central heating and air conditioning.  It will also have satellite TV and internet.  The kitchen will have all-electric appliances.  In addition to the shack, or, really, house, there will be a pre-fab steel building housing a fully-equipped work shop and garage to shelter heavy equipment and other vehicles.  There will of course be a stable and corral.  There is a long-term plan to upgrade all the line shacks to modern standards, most likely by simply replacing them with prefabs or mobile homes. We'll be doing some road improving, too, especially on the newly acquired properties, which were long neglected.

It's necessary to upgrade the line shacks because, increasingly, trustworthy, reliable, hard-working men won't put up with the primitive living conditions of the old shacks.  If we want to keep such men, we have to provide decent accommodations. 

Why mention all this?  I guess for me, although I recognize the need to do this, I regret the replacing of the old with the new.  All those old line shacks, many over 100 years old, some probably almost 150 years old, but always maintained and still fit for purpose after all these years, mostly equipped with original, or certainly quite old, furnishings -- stoves, lamps, beds, tables cupboards and cabinets -- to me maintain an important link to the past and all those who have lived and worked this land for so many generations.  To see them all replaced and abandoned --they'll either be torn down or simply left to fall into ruin -- seems a crime against history.  I know progress is inevitable, but still....

A Boost For Modern Methods

In some respects the old days were perhaps ahead of these,
Before we got to wanting wealth and costly luxuries;
Perhaps the world was happier then, I'm not the one to say,
But when it's zero weather I am glad I live to-day.
Old-fashioned winters I recall—the winters of my youth—
I have no great desire for them to-day, I say in truth;
The frost upon the window panes was beautiful to see,
But the chill upon that bedroom floor was not a joy to me.
I do not now recall that it was fun in those days when
I woke to learn the water pipes were frozen tight "again."
To win once more the old-time joys, I don't believe I'd care
To have to sleep, for comfort's sake, dressed in my underwear.
Old-fashioned winters had their charms, a fact I can't deny,
But after all I'm really glad that they have wandered by;
We used to tumble out of bed, like firemen, I declare,
And grab our clothes and hike down stairs and finish dressing there.
Yes, brag about those days of old, boast of them as you will,
I sing the modern methods that have robbed them of their chill;
I sing the cheery steam pipe and the upstairs snug and warm
And a spine that's free from shivers as I robe my manly form.

~ Edgar Guest

Winter, winter, winter

 

Winter continues...and continues and continues.  Come on, Big G, it's almost April!  I suppose I should make some snarky comment about Global Warming, but, blahhhh!  All those people who tout that should take a long walk off a short pier.

Well, at least it's fireplace weather.  Few things better than curling up in front of a cozy fire, listening to the wind moan and whistle around the eaves and roar in the cedars and pines, look out the window and see the snow swirling into drifts, check the thermometer on the porch and think, man, is it cold out there.  Glad I'm in here!  A cup of hot chocolate and something engaging to read...life is good.

What am I reading? Dygartsbush by Walter D. Edmonds.  It's a novella first published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1937.  It's about a man and wife pioneering in the Mohawk valley of New York in the years immediately after the revolution and how they come to re-establish their relationship and pick up their lives after she returns from  being kidnapped by the Indians and living with them for seven years. Captured in the early days of the rebellion, when the British paid $8 for the scalp of an American, she was lucky that a brave took a fancy to her and made her his squaw. After the British defeat, the Seneca signed a peace treaty with the Americans, one provision of which was the return of all white captives, and thus she came home.  Eight or nine decades ago, when the country still belonged to us, stories such as this one resonated with Americans -- real Americans they were then, not a mob of indifferent, ignorant, arrogant and incurious FOB foreigners who claim to be Americans but are not -- and novels like Drums Along the Mohawk and Arundel enjoyed a wide audience, and Edmonds is probably the best who ever wrote about the early days of our country.

What else do I do on these stormy winter days?  One thing is dance with the house apes, mine and sometimes a couple of the ranch hands'. One guy is a widower, his wife lost in a traffic accident, and one is divorced, such a common thing these days, he having partial custody of his child. They usually stay and watch, sometimes they'll try to dance, too, after some good-natured coaxing (they are a bit bashful), and I will show them some simple steps. The time spent is enjoyable for both the grown-ups and the kids, and we do have so much fun while I'm teaching them various dances.  We laugh a lot. Afterwards, we're all tired and can have a snack -- the kids like brownies and cup cakes with milk, the adults maybe a BLT or ham with chips -- and then the small fry take a nap while the adults chat.  I'll make the guys a hot toddy with a little extra dash of whiskey and they relax and tell me about their days. If something breaks or the cattle need their attention they will be out in this weather, hands and feet freezing, icy wind whipping into their faces and cutting right through their coats.  But they won't quit till the job's done.  So I'm happy to provide them a little bit of fun and relaxation when things are going well and they have some free time.

What do we dance to?  Songs like this, one of our favorites:

Why?

 The cat's asleep; I whisper "kitten"
Till he stirs a little and begins to purr--
He doesn't wake. Today out on the limb
(The limb he thinks he can't climb down from)
He mewed until I heard him in the house.
I climbed up to get him down: he mewed.
What he says and what he sees are limited.
My own response is even more constricted.
I think, "It's lucky; what you have is too."
What do you have except--well, me?
I joke about it but it's not a joke;
The house and I are all he remembers.
Next month how will he guess that it is winter
And not just entropy, the universe
Plunging at last into its cold decline?
I cannot think of him without a pang.
Poor rumpled thing, why don't you see
That you have no more, really, than a man?
Men aren't happy; why are you?
―Randall Jarrell

 

 

Is it I?

Approaching Two Harbors, Catalina Island.

 

Will spring never come?  What a winter this has been, in so many ways.  I can't wait to put it behind me.  I'm thinking of taking off for California for a while to break the spell of this bleak season.  Stroll around Santa Barbara and Isla Vista, drive out to Gaviota, do some surfing.  Then down to Channel Islands and rent a sailboat, something like a Catalina 28.  I used to sail one of those a lot when I was in high school and college. Sail out to the Channel Islands, maybe go all the way out to Santa Barbara Island, from there maybe down to good old Santa Catalina Island -- island of romance!  Then sail past San Clemente Island down to San Diego, wave at North Island. 
Yeah, well, dream on, Wanda. I've got too many obligations and responsibilities, too many people relying on me, to just take off like that.  Here I am and here I'll stay.

 Sometimes, reading websites and blogs absolutely discourages me.  I was reading one where some guy said he had tried to read Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim but couldn't get through it because it was too difficult and poorly written.  Sigh.  Joseph Conrad a poor writer?  Words fail. Civilization is crumbling before our eyes.  Lord Jim is a novel every person should read, and, I think, most especially youths -- by that I mean young men or boys on the verge of manhood. 
How can it be that a novel that has been admired, enjoyed and learned from for well over a century, one of the most popular in the English language, cannot now be understood?
I don't mean to belittle the person who couldn't read or understand this novel; it's not his fault.  I do mean to express my dismay at the dying of my civilization.  The previous generation failed to preserve and pass it on.  Any civilization is at most three, but more likely just two, generations thick.  It's like looking at a wildfire.  On the ground you see a wall of flames that could, for all you know, be infinitely thick and deep.  But looking at those flames from the air, you see that they are merely a thin line.  That, to me, is how civilization is. But it is not formed of flames, but of a thin line of parents and grandparents, sometimes also great-grandparents -- but no more -- who constantly hand forward to their children and grandchildren the values, folkways, religious beliefs, wisdom, knowledge, way of life -- all that comprises a culture and civilization.  Maybe you could compare it to a relay race in which the baton handed off is civilization itself.  And the last two generations have simply failed to preserve and pass on Western Civilization to the next generations.  So it is not the fault of the person who can't understand Lord Jim that he can't do so.  It is the fault of those who failed, didn't even try, didn't think it was important, to teach him how to understand it, how to read it, how to appreciate its writing; how to tackle difficult, demanding subjects, persevere even in something so trivial as reading a novel, trivial compared to the other demands life will place on each of us.  Demands which, as Lord Jim examines, we may fail at. In the pitiless glare of life's challenges, we may discover that we are not much, that we are cowards, that we run away.  And after such knowledge, as they say, what forgiveness?  How can you forgive yourself when you have learned who you really are?  That we are all Lord Jim.
Of course, many will never face such challenges and go through life in ignorance of their own true natures.  But they may wonder how they would behave under supreme stress.  They may imagine they would be heroes, brave, resourceful, unafraid.  But Lord Jim whispers to them that that will not be so.

“There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention―that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his hope and his fear, the pain of his fatigue and his longing for rest: which means to smash, to destroy, to annihilate all he has seen, known, loved, enjoyed, or hated; all that is priceless and necessary―the sunshine, the memories, the future―which means to sweep the whole precious world utterly away from his sight by the simple and appalling act of taking his life.”
― Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

This and that

Formulaic description of Hebbian learning.

The other day, I mentioned I have an ancestor named William Hebb.  I was wondering why that name Hebb seemed familiar to me and finally it came to me.  Back when I was getting my advanced degrees in underwater basket weaving or whatever it was, I studied Hebb's postulate, aka cell assembly theory.  It's a neuropsychology rule stating that an increase in synaptic efficacy arises from a presynaptic cell's repeated and persistent stimulation of a postsynaptic cell. Or, in other words, the neurons that fire together wire together and  those that fire out of sync lose their link. It was introduced by Donald Hebb in his  book, The Organization of Behavior. Hebb's work anticipated spike-timing-dependent plasticity, among other things.  I won't bore you with anymore of this shop talk, but, see, I ain't just a pretty face and a curvalicious bod with a swivel in my wiggle and a gasp in my groan when I get the bone.  Heh.  Okay, down girl. Lol.

A favorite book:

 

Annie Dillard, An American Childhood. 

 “What does it feel like to be alive?
Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs rising roughly back up, up to the roiling surface, full of bubbles that slide up your skin or break on you at full speed. Can you breathe here? Here where the force is the greatest and only the strength of your neck holds the river out of your face. Yes, you can breathe even here. You could learn to live like this. And you can, if you concentrate, even look out at the peaceful far bank where you try to raise your arms. What a racket in your ears, what a scattershot pummeling!
It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation's short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.”

From another favorite book, Herman Melville's Moby Dick:

 “To enjoy bodily warmth, some small part of you must be cold, for there is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself. If you flatter yourself that you are all over comfortable, and have been so a long time, then you cannot be said to be comfortable any more. For this reason a sleeping apartment should never be furnished with a fire, which is one of the luxurious discomforts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deliciousness is to have nothing but the blanket between you and your snugness and the cold of the outer air. Then there you lie like the one warm spark in the heart of an arctic crystal.”

 

 

 

 

Back in the saddle

 I've been getting back in shape for the last fortnight or so, starting gingerly negotiating the stairs, as I mentioned earlier, gradually increasing my activity level day by day.  I've been surprised at how quickly I'm getting back to normal.  The bruises are gone. My knee is fine. I can take deep breathes without pain, 'though I still get winded too easily.  But that will take care of itself as time goes by. Otherwise, it's almost as if nothing had ever happened.  That's so often the way it is.  Fortunately.  As long as you don't lose a limb or suffer brain damage or have severe internal trauma. 

Have I literally gotten back in the saddle?  No.  I'll let that go for now.  At some point I suppose I will need to do that, but there's no hurry.  It can wait till spring.  Or summer.  But I have gone down to the stable and supervised the house apes as they curried-combed their favorites.  I did finally Skype with el jefe and had a long chat, which cheered me up immensely.  Just to see him looking well and hear him talking, telling jokes and stories, made me so happy.  I can't wait till he gets back home, at least for a while.  I do want him to wrap up his career and come live on the ranch, but I suppose that is wishing for too much.  In some sense, when he is not with me I feel as if I am in suspended animation, waiting for life to begin again.

Oh, right.  I did do as I said I would when I got better.  I went to the rec room and danced.  Not too vigorously, but a good stretching and cardio workout.  What was the first tune I danced to?  You wouldn't guess, lol.

And, unbeknownst to me, I had an audience. A 'poke had dropped by to ask about something, and, finding no one in the parlor, followed the sound of music to the rec room and stood politely waiting for me to finish hopping and gyrating before excusing himself to me and making his inquiry.  Was I dressed as in the video?  Um... *cough* Well, I do like to get my girly-girl on!  I can't wait to tell el jefe about this.  He will get a good laugh out of it.

 

The Black Room

 

How do you survive a complete and utter loss of hope?

 Where do you live? Park Place, Main Street, Lake Shore Drive, Mulberry Lane, Lennox Ave., corner of 4th and Walnut, three miles out on Route 7? Come now, you know better than that. You may hang your hat anywhere at all, but you live in the black room of your own mind.

"The Black Room," first broadcast by CBS Radio Mystery Theater on October 29, 1974.

Different strokes

I was listening -- okay, trying to listen --  to some pop songs people liked a lot that I found posted on some website, things like "California" by Blue Oyster Cult and "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" by Paul Thorn and I am sorry but I just couldn't take more than about 30 seconds of each.  Okay, okay, I'm not sorry, that's just verbal padding to cushion the comment, but, really, I just don't understand why people can enjoy stuff like that.  I know tastes differ, can differ radically, but I feel like I must be a visitor from another world suffering culture shock.  I don't know if I am out of touch or just have good taste, as somebody once said -- it's something I read somewhere, and I kind of agree with it.  I don't know about the good taste part, but I definitely am out of touch with what a lot of people like.

 When it comes to popular music, as a rule I like something danceable and singable, a catchy tune, a conveyed emotion but nothing really serious and certainly nothing trying to make a Statement.  Like somebody also said, if you want to send a message, call Western Union.  Or I guess nowadays, text it, don't sing it.

It does amaze me how seriously people take their pop music tastes though. To me, as I've said before, it's all just ear candy and nothing really important or worth giving weight to. As my dad once remarked when he heard me listening to a Buddy Holly tune, "Three chords, a cloud of dust and a hiccup at the end."  Well, yeah.  And what's wrong with that?

Speaking of tastes in music, I asked my dad what he liked as a teenager.  I mentioned Elvis and he made a face. No!  Hates him.  So...what did you like, I asked him.  He thought back and said he remembered as a senior in high school driving his dad's 1966 Chrysler Newport with a 440cid four-barrel a hundred miles an hour while listening to Paul Revere and the Raiders sing "Kicks" and shouting along at the top of his voice.  Way to go, Popster!  I listened to it and like it. I could dance to it, fer shure.

I guess that was a message song, though, anti-drugs, so I gotta revise my thoughts on disliking message music.  Life is so complicated!  Heh.

Oh, well.  Like what you like.  Just don't make me listen to it.  And don't call me a moron if I don't like the stuff you like and you don't like the stuff I like.  And what do I like?  As if you didn't know.  Stuff like this:

PS:  

Regarding how people are different, I read someone in a blog comment putting down those people who write comments on old pop songs in YouTube saying how this one brings back memories of their first date, or when they met their future wife or husband or it was their mom or dad's favorite.  This guy just found such comments banal and boring and like who cares about your stupid life, just shut up.  I guess he preferred comments about how the video shows Biff Blowblatt on the kazoo while the original line-up of the band had Zippy Muldoon making that kazoo rock, so this is not truly authentic or, you know, like whatever or something.

But, for me, those memories people post telling what the song meant to them are endlessly interesting and I never get enough of them.  Those commenting on the history of the band or technical details and so forth I skim past.  I don't care.  But if your mom always sang that song when she was happy and you played it at her funeral, well, gosh, I will read every word and then listen to the song again and think about your mom and try to understand why she liked it so much.

It's the same with blog posts.  I like the personal stuff most of all.  I don't care all that much for the pontificating on Covid or the Ukraine or some political or economic thing, though, of course, I read them to try to keep up with what's going on in the world, but mostly they are all the same to me, whatever the point of view.  But, when the blogger slides off into some personal musings, then is when my ears perk up and I read with close interest.  Yeah, yeah, Amerika sucks, BFD, what else is new? But you ate that for supper and liked it?  Huh -- just looking at it makes me want to heave.  And it only cost 57 cents?  Too expensive at half the price, if you ask me.  Or, you were able to bicycle to the grocery store despite the two inches of snow on the ground, but, darn it, they were out of spotted dicks and only had extra large chocolate ones, but they did have a case of Three Musketeers on sale and you snatched that right up because your father-in-law, who is diabetic, loves them and...

 

¿Que esta chingadera?

 I managed the stairs the other day, stiff-legged with my bum knee in a brace, and walked outside for a while to enjoy some fresh air.  It was sunny in only the way sparkling winter sunshine can be.  There was a brisk, cold wind blowing steadily from the north, but out of the wind and in the sun it felt toasty warm.  I carefully sat down on some brick steps to enjoy being outside for the first time in so long.  They were warm from the sunshine and felt delightful.  I could hear the wind soughing through the trees and watched them swaying.  A flock of small birds, too far away for me to make out what they were, flew low across the ground. 

I was wearing a thick terrycloth robe, navy blue, that absorbed the heat of the sun and kept me toasty warm.  I decided to take off my knee brace and get some sun on my leg.  It was the second one I've had to wear. The first was a plaster half-cast put on in the hospital, wrapped tightly in bandages.  This one was removable.  Held on by Velcro stays it had metal braces on each side and was made of some thick heavy black material.  It was more comfortable than the plaster cast, but not by much.  So anyway, with my leg stretched out straight I undid the Velcro straps and gently slid it off.  Ahh!  My leg felt cold for a second as the light sweat under the brace evaporated, but then the sun warmed the skin.  When the first cast had been taken off and replaced by the brace, my leg above and below the knee was covered by a black bruise, purple around the edges.  But now it was a fading yellow and I could see no swelling.  I took a chance and tried flexing the knee.  No pain.  So I did it again and again.  My leg actually felt better.  In a week, maybe two, I should be walking normally, my ribs and collar bone knitted, my bruised and battered lung recovered, and all that has passed merely another fading memory that, by and by, I will forget all about.

 I was browsing a well-known rightish blog when I came across this exchange in the comments to a post:

"Given everything we know about women, it’s amazing to me that male homosexuality is still so stigmatized.

Given everything I know about women, it’s amazing to me that femicide is still so stigmatized."

And those rightie-tighties wonder why women would rather run screaming into freeway traffic than have anything to do with the alt-right or dissident right or whatever they call themselves.  You have to wonder how many bodies some of these commenters have on them.  If they had wives -- like that would ever happen --  they are the type who would destroy them with verbal and physical abuse.

These righties very especially hate white women and blame them for everything they don't like about the world today and say the most scurrilous things about them.  It seems that if they could push a button and all the white women in the world would vanish, they would mash that button flat. 

Being a mating pair (to use an ethological term) is good in so many ways.  Of course, there are bad matches and all sorts of potential troubles, but if the two of you are compatible, like each other -- or dare I say love each other -- life is so much better.   Caring about one another, having a deep, abiding affection, a pleasure in each other's company...and so much more in this emotion, this feeling, we call love is, it seems to me, very much what life is about; at least a very significant part of it, a part without which this weary life can seem unbearable.
 

Funny, nobody talks about love any more. It used to be the most important thing between a man and woman.  Now it's supposed to be sex.  I wonder why that changed.  Or if it really did.  Looking at ads and articles in magazines from the 1930s, there was a lot of female nudity. And before the Hays code the movies were getting pretty raunchy. In one of them you can even -- gasp! -- see Claudette Colbert's nipples. 
I've written about all the blatant sex going on in the 1930s.  And the birthrate was low.  But by the 1940s there was much more of an emphasis on courtship and love, and a lot more public prudery -- and when the boys came home after the war there was a baby boom.  Correlation?

Speaking of sex...well, kinda...one time I was chatting with some friends and someone asked what was the award or contest or game they were most proud of winning.  People mentioned scholarships and sports triumphs and culinary feats and so forth. When it came to me I blurted out, "A wet tee shirt contest!" It was true, too.  I've gotten scholarships but I never felt proud that I did so, only relieved and thankful. I'm not a sports person so my happiest sports memory is being kicked off the high school softball team for hitting a home run and then running around the bases the wrong way.  I thought everybody was cheering me not yelling at me.  (Why was that a happy memory?  Because I didn't want to play on the stupid team but I had to for character development or something.  I sure didn't see that happening.) I've never entered any kind of cooking contest although I like to cook but I have entered wet tee shirt contests, not as my own idea but at the urging of boy friends or el jefe.  And I win!  So, frivolous as it is, I get a rocking (jiggling?) vanity high -- and a proud male squire. Men are so easily pleased.  Fortunately.  Well, at least men who actually like women.  It seems there are fewer and fewer of those every day.  Whose fault is that?  Hmm.... Opinions differ.

I don't really understand the complaints about places and things named for American Indians demeaning them.  They were named after Indians out of admiration and respect and an acknowledgement that Indians were an integral and important part of the American story.  One of my relatives was Billy Two Moons Aenoheso, descendant of some very tough hombres who fought Crook and Custer, Terry and Gibbon, back in the old days.  But he never thought much about that, as far as I ever knew.  When it was his time to serve his country -- yes, his country -- he joined up and fought in Viet Nam, being pretty badly wounded there.

His wife, Arvelos Whitewolf Crazymule, was a direct descendant of Hump Back Woman, a survivor of the Sand Creek Massacre.  If anyone had a right to hold a grudge against white America, it would have been her, but, as far as I ever knew, she did not.  The past is the past, and it is this present we live in that we have to get through as best we can.  Both passed away a few years ago, however, and I wonder whether, if they were resurrected into today's woke world, they might feel the need to harbor resentment.  And, after all, it is a hard thing to be on the losing side of history, to be defeated and your culture, your way of life, your worldview, your personal and ethnic self-esteem be erased, leaving you no choice but to adapt to the conqueror's culture or die.  But at least American Indians were defeated by a foe that did not belittle and denigrate them but honored them in defeat, putting their visage on the two most commonly circulated coins in the years after the Indian Wars were finally over -- the Indian head penny and Indian head or buffalo nickel.  Not much, you may say, but still.... 

Among my ancestors was one William Hebb.  Born in England in 1755, he came to America in 1776 as a soldier in the British Army to fight the revolutionary colonists.  But he had no love for the King and felt sympathy for the Americans' cause and deserted.  He then joined  the Third Continental Light Dragoons, aka Lady Washington's Dragoons, which formed the life guard of George Washington, serving under Lt. Col. George Baylor.  He fought at Germantown,  Brandywine, and survived the so-called Baylor Massacre at Tappan, New Jersey in 1778.  This latter was a night ambush in which 67 of the regiment's 116 men were killed or wounded and Baylor was captured. Hebb was seriously wounded in this action and he was discharged and returned to Virginia to recuperate.  While there, he married a cousin of George Washington, the widow Jemima Washington Jenkins.   The regiment was reformed under Lt. Col. William Washington and sent to the Carolinas where, after recovering from his wounds, Hebb rejoined his regiment, which had amalgamated with the First Continental Light Dragoons due to the heavy casualties it had sustained, and fought at Cowpens, Santee River and Eutaw Springs.  Hebb was wounded at Gilford Court House and returned to Virginia, but recovered in time to participate in the siege of Yorktown.  After the Revolutionary War, he became an active abolitionist and was forced to leave Virginia and settle along a tributary of the  Ohio River.  For his service during the war, he received a pension of $8 a month.  He died in 1833 at the age of 78.  His son, Thomas Hebb, fought in the war of 1812, serving in the Virginia militia. Five of William's grandsons fought for the Union in the Civil War.  

I never knew about this ancestral line until just recently when one of my aunts sent me a a family genealogical monograph.  Reading through it, it seems that I also have French Huguenot and Welsh ancestry.  I had known about my German Anabaptist (Pennsylvania Dutch) and English Quaker ancestors and was aware I had a Knickerbocker Dutch ancestor.  I had thought that the Knickerbocker was the first of my European ancestors to arrive in America, sometime in the 1630s, but it seems my Huguenot ancestor, Abraham Vautrin, arrived some years before then, in 1624.  And, of course, my northern Cheyenne ancestors arrived a few years before that!  So I'm pretty anchored in the good old US of A.  So I guess, whatever happens to our beloved country, I'll ride out the typhoon or go down with the ship.  And since I'm descended from multiple lines of the persecuted -- Anabaptists burned alive by Catholics and drowned by Lutherans, Quakers jailed and exiled by the Church of England, Huguenots massacred by Catholics, American revolutionaries warred against by the brutal British Empire and, of course, the Indians...-- I and mine will manage to endure, survive and eventually prosper again despite what suffering we may be forced to endure as hated white devils.  At least I hope so.

I mentioned this conclusion to a friend and he pointed out that almost all these ancestors of mine fled their persecutors and emigrated to a more congenial land, so why shouldn't American whites do the same, ditch the USA and go where they're wanted. I asked where is that? He did not know. Do you?

Interesting research paper:

Identity Development and Its Relationship to Family History Knowledge Among Late Adolescents

 

The black dog

 

"People can die before their deaths and go to hell."

    I am here, I am frightened and I am alone. And I don't know what to do.

 "Help, Somebody," first broadcast over  CBS Radio Mystery Theater on August 18, 1975.

Musical paradise

 I post so many pop ditties that you may think that is the only type of tune I like.  Not so.  

Here is one of my favorites that I listen to often:  Korngold's Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra.

Some parts of this piece are so beautiful they overwhelm me emotionally and tears fill my eyes.  I often wonder what heights of human achievement European civilization could have attained if it had not destroyed itself in incomprehensibly horrific wars.  Maybe some of the anguish of the European soul slaying itself is expressed in the best of its music, like no other in the world, superior to anything any other civilization has ever produced or probably ever will.  And, of course, Korngold is a minor composer in the vast pantheon of European and European-diaspora genius.  Minor?  One could only dream of being so minor. 

Much of the concerto is derived from Korngold's compositions for movies, the then-new venue for orchestral music.  So audiences in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, enjoyed and were moved by the melodies from Korngold's mind.

From a contemporary time, another one of my favorite musical pieces from a somewhat similar popular venue -- Broadway musicals -- that I do very much like is the original version of "All the Things You Are" from Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II's  musical Very Warm for May. 

What a civilization we once had!  What a culture!  I can only appreciate the trailing stardust as it vanishes into the ever-receding past.  Will there ever be such as we had ever again?  Why did we let it go?

And these two pieces are bagatelles when compared to the towering geniuses of musical composition Western civilization produced.  But what bagatelles!

War lovers of 1945

 Look at the date on this major story (it took up about 15 percent of the whole magazine) in Life magazine:  November 18, 1945.  World War II had ended on September 2, 1945, just about two-and-a-half months before.  And already-- already! -- the smart boys were looking forward to World War III.  And already they knew it would be a nuclear war with ICBMs annihilating cities. 

To me, this is unbelievable.  How could they anticipate the world that came into being about 15 years later and in which we still live?  Why would they want to imagine it and depict it in such detail so soon after the greatest conflict in history had ended with tens of millions dead, empires wrecked, great, historic cities looking from the air like hell with the roof torn off?  I suppose that they published this as a warning in the hope that the prediction, detailed in a speech by Air Force Gen. Hap Arnold, could be prevented.The completeness of the story, focusing on the technology, the weapons, tactics, until the last page, when civilian casualties are mentioned: 40 million dead (out of a then US population of 140 million), every city larger than 50,000 population destroyed, is compelling.

I'm still digesting this story, wondering why it was published so soon after the end of World War II, why it was so accurate a prediction of future global warfare, and what was the intent of publishing it.  But I do find it very disturbing, and dismaying, especially in these times when it seems like the powers that be are intent on making this prediction from the first half of the last century come true.