So there!

I'm not hyper masculine.
In fact, I'm quite feminine.
I've been tested! 

 

The Fleet

  I found this photo of the Fleet Model 2 that my grandfather was posing with when he was a young man.  It looks like the kind of picture you would take of your new car, doesn't it? Maybe this was taken the day he got it. I don't know. But it's a nice-looking airplane.  It's in pretty rough shape now, neglected for I don't know how long, decades,probably.

It's kind of sad to see it that way, but that's the way all our material possessions end up. Things we dearly longed to have eventually finish as just some old junk, stored in the attic or basement and forgotten, tossed out, donated, hauled to the dump. All the wishes to have, all the work you do to save the money to buy the most wonderful thing in the world and it ends up just being trash.

Oh, stop that, Wanda. You're going to depress yourself.  So okay, maybe I will have the Fleet restored.  It would make another great project for my boys, especially if they know once they get it in flying condition they can take to the skies in it and zoom around like Ace Drummond in the 1930s. ♫"Oh give me a ship and a song!"♬  Knowing them, one will pilot the Fleet and the other the Waco and they will dogfight each other. And their mom will be on the ground shouting up at the sky, "Be careful!"

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dead at 24

Forgot to publish this! 

For the week of Memorial Day

Today, May 30, is the real Memorial Day, as my grandparents assured me.  They hated that all our holidays were turned into three-day weekends, erasing their importance and meaning.  Memorial Day used to be a day everyone took off from work specifically to take them out of their ordinary lives to remember and honor those of their fellow Americans who no longer had lives, ordinary or otherwise, because they had been killed in our wars. There were parades, speeches, prayers, visits to cemeteries.

Oh, well.

Then 2nd Lt. Stiles when a B-17 co-pilot.

Here's one of my relatives from the Colorado branch of the family killed in World War II, lst Lt. George Wilbert "Bert" Stiles.  He flew 35 missions as the co-pilot of a B-17 with the 401st Bomb Squadron of the 91st Bomb Group from March through August, 1944, then volunteered for a fighter squadron flew P-51s with the 505th fighter Squadron of the 339th Fighter Group, which he joined in late October, 1944.  He was killed November 26, 1944 on his 16th mission in a dogfight with FW-190s over Hanover, which was defended by 400 Luftwaffe fighters.  He is credited with shooting down one FW before he failed to pull out of a dive while pursuing another, probably because G forces caused him to black out.  That was a common occurrence in those days before the invention of the G-suit. He was 24.

 Bert's passion was to be a writer. The Saturday Evening Post  published four of his short stories about life as a forest ranger in Estes Park, and he had others published in Liberty, The Writer and The American Mercury. While in England, he wrote articles for the Daily Mail as well as Yank and Air Force magazines.

I've read “Portrait of a Guy Thinking About an Island” which was published in Air Force, November, 1944; “Situation Normal” also in Air Force, February, 1945; “It’s a Sad World, Cardwell” published in The American Mercury, April, 1942;  “The Case of the Lucky Amateur” published in The Writer, June, 1943; “Solo” published in Yank, October 15, 1943; “You Can’t Win with Women” published in The Saturday Evening Post, November 22, 1941 (guys have been writing the same lament forever!); and “The Ranger Is a Dame” published in The Saturday Evening Post, February 27, 1943, about a female forest ranger (Do take note trad wife enthusiasts: even back in the good old days you'd be hard-pressed to find one. Women worked "men's" jobs even then.).

 I think Bert would have been a successful and popular writer had he lived.  He had an easy, friendly, conversational style, evidenced in his autobiographical Serenade to the Big Bird. If you want to know what a difficult job it was to fly a B-17 in formation, give it a read.

I can't help but wonder how much talent we lost in that stupid war that was none of our business.  Even the Pacific war, where the Japs attacked us first, we could have avoided if we had not started the Spanish-American war, and thus acquired the Philippines and Guam.  So the fighting in East Asia wouldn't have affected us. And had we adhered to the Neutrality Acts, we could have avoided any involvement in the European fracas.  Yeah, fracas.  Those Euros are always going at each other; they're doing it today.  It's what they love best, slaughtering each other.  Not our business.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ah, yer mother wears combat boots!

My daughter found an old photo of me in Afghanistan the other day. It was poorly exposed and out of focus so she ran it through ChatGPT to clean it up. Chat-chan did an okay job but got some things a little wonky.  The M249 looks like the magazine has been replaced by a Kleenex box or something, for one thing.

What struck me, though, was how young I was then. I still think of myself as the same as I was in those days, the same as I have always been, but old photos put the lie to that. Would I like to be that young again? Not if I had to go through all that I have in the years since then.  At least now they are all in the past. What a blessing that is.

Oh, I was just posing with the M249.  Some guy wanted to take my picture with it (and have my hair down rather than in its usual bun). I had other duties assigned to me by the Great Black Father in Washington.  

That thing was heavy.  With the 200-round drum magazine  it weighed something like 25 or 30 pounds, if I'm remembering correctly.  Anyway, it was heavy.  And needed lots of CLP to keep it working. I can still hear guys cussing it out. Each fire team had one and the poor guy who lugged it also carried a spare barrel or two, three or four ammo drums plus all the usual crap everybody humped, PPE and ruck, so the guy could easily be loaded down with 150 lbs. or more. No wonder so many now suffer knee and back problems. 

I was always armed with my service pistol, the Beretta M9. Due to green on blue incidents, orders were to have it in Condition 1 -- magazine inserted, round in the chamber, slide forward, hammer down and safety on -- at all times and be prepared to defend myself at any moment. Somebody told me that about a quarter of all American deaths in Afghanistan were green on blue, meaning they were the result of Afghan Army soldiers turning on us. I remember one incident where three MARSOC men were killed while meeting with the local police chief in Sangin. He invited them to dinner with him, then murdered them while they were eating.  That same day at FOB Delhi in Garmsir, three other Marines were gunned down by an Afghan Army soldier. With allies like that....

Just thought I'd throw this in here. Good for a laugh. IYKYK, lol.

By the way, Afghanistan had a population of about 28 million people in those days and is the size of Texas.  We put 100,000 troops in there with sort of hand-wavy orders (and lots of ROE) to stop it from being a haven for terrorists, the Taliban and assorted bad guys.  Now you might think 100,000 troops is a lot, but consider that for the army there were something like 14 support troops for every trigger-puller.  I think the Marines claim 10. So in actuality there were, what, at the very most 7,000 guys outside the wire patrolling Indian country trying to keep a lid on things.

Oh, that was gonna work.  Fer shure. 

Get real.

I've heard the American armed forces described as a military of lions led by sheep, but my dad said it's more like a military of lions led by jackasses. And I agree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whatever

I read some post by a woman telling women what types of dresses they should and shouldn't wear.  Yeah, okay, I guess -- if she is saying this is what I like to wear. None of it concerned me because I am going to wear whatever I like and I don't care about some stranger's opinion of what I'm wearing.  But I was curious, so I read on, until she said her husband pointed out a woman wearing a dress at the mall and suggested they could become friends because they were both wearing dresses.  Besides that being a really lame reason to try to befriend someone, what got me was the woman rejecting the suggestion because she didn't like the style of dress the woman was wearing.

Okie-dokie.

That got me musing about how I think I am a conservative but it always turns out I don't have much, if anything, in common with conservative women.  They are always judgemental. What about? Everything! What you wear, what you say, how you sit, what work you do, what you cook, how you raise your children, how you interact with your husband.... The list is endless.  But at the top of it is always something to do with sex and how, by God, you better sit up straight and keep your knees together and never, ever smile at a bawdy joke, let alone laugh.

Phooey on that.

Around the ranch I wear 5.11s or jeans, baggy shirts and clodhoppers.  About the sexiest I get is in summer wearing cut-offs made from worn out jeans and an old tied-off shirt, blouse, cut down tee-shirt or tank top. Some guys do like that, it's true, although my intent is my own comfort and if a work gang of shirtless, muscled, sweating men stops what they are doing when I walk by and I hear a few muttered Oh, my Gods I can't say I mind. (No, really, I don't, Ms Feminista. Sometimes I stop and chat with them so we can each get a good look at the other.)  But when I go out high steppin' it's look out boys, Wanda's back in town! 

 

 

 

 I can hear Paul Hogan as Crocodile Dundee saying, "That's not a boner. This is a boner!"

 

 

Need a hand with that?

     

I'd like to see that!

                                         

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

The Great War

 For the week of Memorial Day

(Updated information on Kay Tusing and Egbert Beach, 5-30-26) 

 

 The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of Nineteen Eighteen.  The end of the war to end all wars.  The war to make the world safe for democracy.  We mustn't forget.  Neither the war nor the propaganda.

Three of my relatives were killed in that war:  Pvt. Kay Tusing, Pvt. Charles Kayser, and Lt. Egbert Beach.  All were killed in France.  Pvt. Kayser and  Pvt. Tusing are buried there still.  Lt. Beach was brought home after the war and buried in the family plot.

Immediately above is a remembrance card for Private Kay Tusing, my great-great uncle, who was killed in action in France during World War I.
The printed copy lists his date of death as October 1, 1918, but someone has penciled in a 6. Checking with Dept. of War records, he was killed in action on the 16th. The person who penciled in the correct date was probably his sister, Mrs. Effie Canfield. 

Kay was drafted in the summer of 1918 and served with the 80th, "Blue Ridge," Division. On October 16, 1918, the Division was engaged in a brutal, multi-day struggle to capture the Grand Carré Farm and clear the southern edges of the Bois de Bantheville. This was part of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive in which the division faced grueling combat against entrenched German troops who had occupied the area for years. Fighting in densely wooded terrain, the division suffered heavy casualties from German machine-guns and relentless artillery barrages. The Bois de Bantheville was strongly fortified by the Germans as part of the Kriemhilde Stellung (the last of the Hindenburg Line's defensive positions). The woods and farm areas were subject to constant enfilade fire and poison gas attacks. I do hope Kay was not killed by poison gas.  What a horrible way to die.

Second Lieutenant Egbert Beach survived the sinking of his troop transport by a German U-Boat the night of February 5, 1918, (267 American troops and 10 ship's crewmen drowned) making it ashore to the Isle of Islay in the Irish Sea from which he was rescued and sent on to France.

Beach was killed on April 27, 1918.  While mapping out trenches near the village of Villers-Tournelle for an infantry working party, he died when a German 155 mm artillery shell exploded nearby. At the time of his death, he was serving with Company B of the 1st Engineering Battalion of the 32nd Infantry ("Red Arrow" Division). The area near Villers-Tournelle was an active, heavily shelled front line trench warfare sector enduring daily high-explosive bombardments and gas attacks. On this exact day, units recorded sustained heavy shellfire across their trenches, leading to numerous casualties. 

Beach had graduated with a degree in engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and enlisted when America entered the war.

 Private Charles Kayser was killed in September, 1918, on the 29th. I know something of his death because his sister Henrietta wrote to his unit commander and asked what happened.  Major Lucius Salisbury, 106th Infantry Sanitary Detachment, 27th Infantry, replied:
"Following over the top with the company, your brother stopped near the Knoll, and, exposed to heavy machine-gun and shell fire, had dressed the wounds of one man and started to dress those of another when a shell exploded and killed all three.  Your brother offered his life for the cause without regard to personal danger...."  There followed some lines of sympathy.
Reading a little bit of the history of the war, I found that during the night of September 24 – 25, 1918, the 27th Division relieved the British 18th and 74th Divisions near Ronssoy, France. At 5:30 a.m., September 27, 1918, the 106th Infantry attacked as part of a major frontal assault in what was called the Battle of St. Quentin Canal, its assigned objective the capture of Bois de Malakoff, or as the troops called it, the Knoll.  During that battle, more than 13,000 American doughboys became casualties.  Pvt. Kayser had a lot of company.

"You can always tell an old battlefield where many men have lost their lives. The next Spring the grass comes up greener and more luxuriant than on the surrounding countryside; the poppies are redder, the corn-flowers more blue. They grow over the field and down the sides of the shell holes and lean, almost touching, across the abandoned trenches in a mass of color that ripples all day in the direction that the wind blows. They take the pits and scars out of the torn land and make it a sweet, sloping surface again. Take a wood, now, or a ravine: In a year's time you could never guess the things which had taken place there.
I repeated my thoughts to my wife, but she said it was not difficult to understand about battlefields: The blood of the men killed on the field, and the bodies buried there, fertilize the ground and stimulate the growth of vegetation. That was all quite natural she said.
But I could not agree with this, too-simple, explanation: To me it has always seemed that God is so sickened with men, and their unending cruelty to each other, that he covers the places where they have been as quickly as possible."

~ William March, Company K

 March served as a sergeant in Co F, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, 4th Brigade of Marines, Second Division of the U.S. Army Expeditionary Force. He saw his first action at Verdun near Les Éparges. He fought at Belleau Wood, where he was wounded. He participated in the battles of Soissons and Saint-Mihiel. He received the French Croix de Guerre with Palm and the U.S. Army Distinguished Service Cross for valor.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

 ~ Wilfred Owen

2nd Lt. Owen was killed in action on November 4, 1918, during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal.
 

Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori

For the week of Memorial Day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a poem about the Battle of the Bulge. 

The Battle
by Louis Simpson

 Helmet and rifle, pack and overcoat

Marched through a forest. Somewhere up ahead

Guns thudded. Like the circle of a throat

The night on every side was turning red.

They halted and they dug. They sank like moles

Into the clammy earth between the trees.

And soon the sentries, standing in their holes,

Felt the first snow. Their feet began to freeze.

At dawn the first shell landed with a crack.

Then shells and bullets swept the icy woods.

This lasted many days. The snow was black.

The corpses stiffened in their scarlet hoods.

Most clearly of that battle I remember

The tiredness in eyes, how hands looked thin

Around a cigarette, and the bright ember

Would pulse with all the life there was within.

Quoting from Wikipedia:

"During World War II, from 1943 to 1945 Simpson served with the 101st Airborne Division. He fought in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. His company was involved in a very bloody battle with German forces on the west bank of what is now the Carentan France Marina -- Simpson wrote his poem "Carentan O Carentan" about being ambushed there. In the Netherlands, he was involved in Market Garden and Opheusden fighting. At Veghel, his company suffered 21 killed in a brutal shelling while in the local church yard. At Bastogne, he and his fellow paratroopers endured bitterly cold temperatures while under siege by German forces."

Carentan O Carentan 

Trees in the old days used to stand

And shape a shady lane

Where lovers wandered hand in hand

Who came from Carentan.

This was the shining green canal

Where we came two by two

Walking at combat-interval.

Such trees we never knew.

The day was early June, the ground

Was soft and bright with dew.

Far away the guns did sound,

But here the sky was blue.

The sky was blue, but there a smoke

Hung still above the sea

Where the ships together spoke

To towns we could not see.

Could you have seen us through a glass

You would have said a walk

Of farmers out to turn the grass,

Each with his own hay-fork.

The watchers in their leopard suits

Waited till it was time,

And aimed between the belt and boot

And let the barrel climb.

I must lie down at once, there is

A hammer at my knee.

And call it death or cowardice,

Don’t count again on me.

Everything’s all right, Mother,

Everyone gets the same

At one time or another.

It’s all in the game.

I never strolled, nor ever shall,

Down such a leafy lane.

I never drank in a canal,

Nor ever shall again.

There is a whistling in the leaves

And it is not the wind,

The twigs are falling from the knives

That cut men to the ground.

Tell me, Master-Sergeant,

The way to turn and shoot.

But the Sergeant’s silent

That taught me how to do it.

O Captain, show us quickly

Our place upon the map.

But the Captain’s sickly

And taking a long nap.

Lieutenant, what’s my duty,

My place in the platoon?

He too’s a sleeping beauty,

Charmed by that strange tune.

Carentan O Carentan

Before we met with you

We never yet had lost a man

Or known what death could do.

This poem is about what came to be known as the battle of Bloody Gulch. Carentan was a vital crossroads that separated the American landing zones at Utah Beach and Omaha Beach. Capturing the town and its canal system was essential for the Americans to merge their two beachheads into a single, continuous front and establish a secure defensive line. The approaches to Carentan led through marshy fields that could only be crossed by four bridges over the canal or across the Barquette Lock. The Germans flooded the area, funneling the American troops onto these narrow passageways. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the 101st's paratroopers seized the Lock and held it against German counter-attacks. Between June 10 and 15, the paratroopers engaged in brutal, house-to-house combat to push out the German 6th Parachute Regiment.

Not forgotten

 In honor of Memorial Day, I thought I'd repost this entry from an old blog I had.  The lieutenant was one of my great uncles.

**************** 

Lieutenant George Schuncke

The President of the United States of America takes pride in presenting the Navy Cross (Posthumously) to Lieutenant George William Schuncke, United States Naval Reserve, for extraordinary heroism in operations against the enemy while serving as Pilot of a carrier-based Navy Combat Plane in Composite Squadron SIXTY-FIVE (VC-65), attached to the U.S.S. ST. LO (CVE-63), in action
against enemy Japanese forces on Saipan in the Marianas Islands on 2 July 1944. Lieutenant Schuncke valiantly launched an attack against two Japanese armored cars firing on a U.S. Navy seaplane. Despite the terrific and concentrated anti-aircraft fire he flew in low to attack, holding persistently to the heavily armored targets until his plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed behind enemy lines. His courageous initiative and determined aggressiveness were directly instrumental in saving the seaplane from probable destruction and reflect the highest credit on himself and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

General Orders: Bureau of Naval Personnel Information Bulletin No. 338 (May 1945)

His ship didn't long survive him.

USS St. Lo

The St. Lo, hit by a kamikaze, doomed, Battle off Samar 10-25-44.

At 10:47, the task unit came under a concentrated air attack by the Shikishima Special Attack Unit. A Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero—perhaps flown by Lieutenant Yukio Seki—crashed into the flight deck of St. Lo at 10:51. Its bomb penetrated the flight deck and exploded on the port side of the hangar deck, where aircraft were in the process of being refueled and rearmed. A gasoline fire erupted, followed by six secondary explosions, including detonations of the ship's torpedo and bomb magazine. St. Lo was engulfed in flame and sank 30 minutes later.Of the 889 men aboard, 113 were killed or missing and approximately 30 others died of their wounds.

William was a descendent of  Christian Ludwig Schuncke, the early 19th century German pianist, composer and close friend of Robert Schumann.

         

Yeah? And what else?

 
 Some women on one of these social media sites called me hyper-masculine because I was in the Navy or because I fly airplanes or whatever. I give that an eye roll and a tongue click. Please.  That's funny to me because when I was first in the Navy I was chastised for being too feminine, too empathetic, not hardened enough.  And you know what?  In my first NEC trajectory that was true.  No doubt. But I honestly think that a lot of the guys sincerely appreciated that I wasn't.  In that rough, gotta be tough world, there were times when a guy swimming up out of his haze of shock and pain saw a female face bending over him, whispering to him, it meant something. It helped him. It did. Ultimately, it hurt me too much to continue. I took too much of their pain inside me and couldn't do it any more.  I was too soft.  That is why I radically changed career paths. It was not easy.  But I did it.  I've written about all of that before.  No need to rehash it.

Anyway, believe me, flying airplanes is not masculine coded. And lots of women fly planes.  Have done so right from the beginning. So phooey on that. I mean, really.  Is driving a car masculine coded? A tractor? How about handling a team of horse and wagon? Plowing behind a mule? Women do and have done those things routinely.

But it did annoy me to be called hyper-masculine by other women.  If you are a guy reading this, how would you like it if other men called you hyper-feminine? Ew, no!  Right? Especially if you weren't in any way, but maybe liked to do something some see as female coded like... I don't know... sewing your own clothes, even though there have always been tailors.  You'd be a bit peeved.

This reminds me of what Nora Vincent wrote in her book,  Self-Made Man: My Year Disguised as a Man. When she was herself as a woman, other women considered her "butch."  But men, believing her to be a man, thought "he" was very effeminate. So maybe the wannabe mean girls gossiping about the crab who escaped the bucket think I'm masculine, but all the guys know I'm a feminine female from topknot to toenail.

 I was tempted to say to one harridan, hey, lady, give me five minutes alone with your husband and he'll forget your name.  Ten minutes alone with me and he'll forget his own name!  Haha.  But I didn't.  Rule No.1 when dealing with internet nuts is don't engage!  Walk on by. Anyway, why would I want to have anything to do with that gleeb's husband? Probably has breath so bad that it would scorch the paint off a Buick.  

I don't know if men police other men's behavior the way women do other women, but there is a certain type of woman who allies with others of her ilk to drag down women who attempt to excel...at anything really, but especially at things...beyond.  Not all women, but there is that type.  I think they are full of themselves.  They think they are the cat's meow and the bee's knees and they absolutely do not like it if some other woman outdoes them. If it's making a better rhubarb pie, it's bad enough, but if you become a heart surgeon or an astronaut, Katie bar the door because they are coming after you, going to do whatever they can to drag you down, belittle you, humiliate you...whatever they can think of.  Well, that doesn't work with me, nor with women like me, of which there are plenty in various fields, various accomplishments, achievements and successes, but we are all sisters in character.

Books my newsman relative left to me.

A job I took as an undergrad was freelancing articles for a national magazine. I didn't know how to go about reporting and writing articles so I asked my newsman relative, of whom I've written, who retired after 40 years on a major metropolitan newspaper.  He counseled me, helped me revise and edit. I learned a lot from him and when I got a piece to the stage where he said, "It'll do," I submitted it.  My articles were well-received by the editor, often becoming cover stories. I even got quoted in Time magazine, was a guest (via phone) on WOR-AM, appeared on some CNBC show, had agents call me wanting to shill me to other outlets. And what did the women staffers on the magazine say to me?  Well, one, in a very bitter tone, told me that everything had been just fine until I showed up and started writing these blockbusters.  Blockbusters.  Her word.  I didn't consider them "blockbusters" just stories my relative said were adequate.  I considered them half his, anyway.  Other women gossiped that I was an alcoholic (oh, please!), a drug addict, and, of course, that I was a lesbian.  When somebody's car was hit and damaged in the parking lot they accused me of doing it even though my car didn't have a scratch on it.  I'd rushed and had it repaired, you see.

Sigh.  Well, that whole experience soured me on wanting to have anything to do with journalism.  And also wised me up to a certain type of woman.  Not all.  There was another girl there, a full-time staffer, who was very good, certainly far better than me because she was doing it all on her own, not having a pro to coach her, and whom the other women and even the men, attacked viciously, so viciously that she quit, which was the goal of the harassment. Never underestimate the nastiness of underachievers, second-raters and the lazy. She and I were friends, allies against the malevolent midgets. When I dropped by the office to hand in my copy, we would have lunch.  The other staffers had done such a number on her self-confidence that she would start crying telling me of the abuse -- and it really was abuse -- she was subjected to and wondered if she was any good. I told her, truthfully, that I thought she was the only good writer they had and I read her stuff with interest and to help me to learn how to organize and present complicated facts in a readable style. Oh, yeah, she was accused of being mannish, too aggressive, by the other women.  Hyper-masculine, if you will. Same old same old.

As an aside, one of the "no fairs" of life:  I had a journalism pro, bound to me by blood, to help me do well in a job I was only doing as a temporary side gig.  I had no intent or desire to become a journalist. Yet the person who wanted that as a career, had the J-school degree, had no such connection, no one to coach her.  She was on her own with no helping hand. And probably a mountain of student loan debt. She got a good job and thought if she worked hard, did good work, she would establish her career and advance.  But instead, her stellar ability only earned her animus. Had she been a mediocre smoozer ... well, you know how that goes. 

I never heard from her again after she quit and, thinking about her now, for the life of me I can't remember her name. I hope that she has had a successful career, the one she deserved.

Musing on all this, I got thinking about my boy-crazy era.  I've mentioned before that I posed as an artist's and photographer's model and I really got a kick out of doing that, especially being a photographer's model, both professional and amateur. As I've written, I started  posing when I was still in high school and kept at it through college.  I think I liked posing for the amateurs more than the pros because those guys got so excited. I could tell. What a vanity high that was.  If my mom knew what I was up to she would have killed me. My dad would have killed the guys. And that there, bub, is a big difference between the female and the male. Mom would have yelled at me, informed me that she had brought me into this world and I shouldn't make her regret doing it and then grounded me till I was passed menopause.  Dad would have had a come-to-Jesus meeting with the boys and explained the lay of the land, their perilous position in it and suggested it would be in the best interest of their health to find another hobby -- now. But first he would have winked at me. 

Anyway, I don't think any of those guys would have considered me hyper-masculine. 

Not even, I'm sure. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of the past

 I was listening to the radio and heard Humoresque No. 7 by Antonín Dvořák. I hadn't heard that in ages and my immediate thought was kindergarten and kiddie music classes and enforced nap time.  Man, I hated that stupid piece of music. Aaaah! It began rattling around in my head till I had to go "Lalalalalalalala!" until I could chase it out. Ugh.

Then I thought about how something can become enormously popular for a while, heard or seen or read everywhere, and then people get tired of it. Then it is mocked and ridiculed.  Then it is forgotten. But sometimes -- not always -- after a while it kind of drifts back, not particularly popular, but around.  I think that's happened to Humoresque.  It was wildly popular in  Dvořák's day, then I guess people got tired of it. It was a regular punchline, I guess you could call it, of the Jack Benny radio show, with Benny torturing it on the violin to audience laughter.  Nephew LeRoy destroying it on the Great Guildersleeve radio series also brought gales of laughter from the live studio audience.  Then it just disappeared from popular culture.  Forgotten. Now it's around and you can listen to it or play it if you want to, but I'd wager most people have never heard of it, let alone heard it.

Something similar happened with the once legendary poem  "Casabianca" by Felicia Hemans.  At one time just a reference to the opening line, "The boy stood on the burning deck," brought to the minds of millions the whole poem and its powerful demonstration of courage, duty and sacrifice, to stand fast in the face of death. It taught generations of youth the ideals of manhood. It was a symbol of all that 19th century civilization stood for.

But then people got tired of it. The glory days of conquest and empire, the times of striving, seeking and refusing to yield (to reference another poem of the era) drifted into the past.  It began to be the butt of jokes, the lines rewritten into parodies. By the fifties of the twentieth century, the opening line was something to roll your eyes at.  The Stan Freberg radio show mocked it along with once revered poems like "Barbara Frietchie" by John Greenleaf Whittier about the Civil War Union heroine and its first line, "Up from the meadows rich with corn" or, especially, the most famous "Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, but spare your country’s flag." Every [Yankee] school child once memorized that poem, but by the 1930s it was a joke, ridiculed by popular radio comedians; Jack Benny wondering if he can get a date with Barbara Stanwyck is told he couldn't even get a date with Barbara Frietchie. Actually, it seems like all of the old sacred beliefs were being made objects of laughter by then. By whom? you ask. Cough. No statement for the press.

And now?  Have you, has anyone, even heard of Barbara Frietchie? Or John Greenleaf Whittier, for that matter, never mind "Casabianca" and Felicia Hemans. They're just gone, vanished from what remains of our so-called civilization.

I'm teaching my children these poems and many others from the great days of the past.  But it's probably pointless.  Who else of their generation, let alone mine, will understand even a reference to these poems they might make at some time in the future.  It will be as futile as making a reference to Macauley's "Horatius."  Huh? My boys love that poem and even re-enact it in their play, but in days to come only they alone will know it or it's most famous lines:

 ''Then out spake brave Horatius,
    The Captain of the gate:
‘To every man upon this earth
    Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
    Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
    And the temples of his Gods'' 

How unwoke can you get, whitey? Lord preserve them should they dare speak those lines in a college classroom. But they will know them in their hearts. Maybe, should fate place them in such circumstances, the lines will come to them and give them the courage to face what they must.

Oh, well.

What's all this got to do with Humoresque? I don't know.  It's just the direction my mind wandered. Humoresque is a fun bit of fluff from an era when even popular music was sophisticated in its fun. But today I'll bet you dollars to donuts that not that many people know it, could hum it if you mentioned it, or even, for that matter, have heard of Antonín Dvořák unless they are music students. Man....

Oh, well, again. 

 

  Listening to this version of Humoresque, I gotta admit it ain't bad. But still....

 

A bit of "Barbara Friechie" 

She took up the flag the men hauled down;

In her attic window the staff she set,

To show that one heart was loyal yet.

Up the street came the rebel tread,

Stonewall Jackson riding ahead.

Under his slouched hat left and right

He glanced: the old flag met his sight.

“Halt!”— the dust-brown ranks stood fast.

“Fire!”— out blazed the rifle-blast.

It shivered the window, pane and sash;

It rent the banner with seam and gash.

Quick, as it fell, from the broken staff

Dame Barbara snatched the silken scarf;

She leaned far out on the window-sill,

And shook it forth with a royal will.

“Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,

But spare your country’s flag,” she said.

A shade of sadness, a blush of shame,

Over the face of the leader came;

The nobler nature within him stirred

To life at that woman’s deed and word:

“Who touches a hair of yon gray head

Dies like a dog! March on!” he said.

 

And here's "Casabianca."  Go ahead, laugh. 

 The boy stood on the burning deck,
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck,
Shone round him o'er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though childlike form.

The flames rolled on -- he would not go,
Without his father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.

He called aloud -- 'Say, father, say
If yet my task is done?'
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.

'Speak, father!' once again he cried,
'If I may yet be gone!'
-- And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames rolled on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath
And in his waving hair;
And look’d from that lone post of death,
In still yet brave despair.

And shouted but once more aloud,
'My father! must I stay?'
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
The wreathing fires made way.

They wrapped the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child,
Like banners in the sky.

There came a burst of thunder sound --
The boy -- oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea!

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part,
But the noblest thing which perished there,
Was that young faithful heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Planes and things

It will look like this once it's back in flying shape.

I decided to put the Waco back in flying condition.  I found a guy who could do it,  has worked on Wacos before and knows what needs to be done.  I swallowed hard at the cost and in an earlier day I would have said never mind.  But in light of recent events, freshly aware of our limited and uncertain time in this mortal coil, I said do it. Do it!  Tarry not! And you know what? Once I made that decision and got the ball rolling, I felt good.  Almost elated.  I don't know why, but I did.  Maybe it was just indulging in something frivolous.  But I think it was more than that. Wacos are beautiful creations and by my decision I am adding an atom of beauty to the world. I could feel that and it was a good feeling.

On top of that, it's going to give my boys something to get involved in and learn skills from. I told them when they were older they could fly it.  I would teach them how to fly in the Husky -- it's docile and simple.  Of course, I will get a CFI to complete their training, but I didn't go into all such details.  No need now.  But they are excited and have something to look forward to.

My daughter, my mini-me, has been a great help with my toddler and clearly loves children.  Ya know, it's funny I call her my mini-me but she is not blonde and blue-eyed like me or my mother. She looks very much like her great-grandmother.   She has chestnut hair and green eyes like she did, and my mother says she has similar mannerisms and facial expressions. Maybe there is such a thing as immortality. She is becoming a very beautiful young woman, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. 

Oh, my second cousin, the guy I went dancing to a jump blues band with a while back, has offered to marry me if I need a man around the house.  I know he's joking -- at least, I hope he is.  I told him I'd keep his offer in mind.  He's doing well at the Maritime Academy and has, I thought, a steady girlfriend.  I asked him about that and he said he had enough manhood for two women, at least.  What a change from the diffident, shy guy he used to be! He's become his own man, gained self-confidence through accomplishment.  That'll do it.  I'm proud of him. But I ain't gonna marry him.  Get out of here. Haha.

I found this photo of my grandfather with the Fleet Model 2, so now I know why we have it. But I'd like to find out how it ended up in our hanger.  I asked my mother but she said she didn't know. This photo must have been taken before World War II, when gramps was a young man. I found another photo of him with a biplane, I think a PT-19, but I'm not sure.  He is second from the left.

And I found this photo of him in Korea during the Korean War.  As I've written, at one point he was a Forward Air Controller (FAC) with the ground forces directing close air support, what today we would call a Joint Tactical Air Controller (JTAC).  This must have been taken during this period, but I don't really know for sure and have no one to ask. When he wasn't a FAC, he was flying Douglas B-26s (nee A-26). He's definitely matured from the time this photo was taken and the one with the Fleet was taken.  I'd guess a decade at least had passed. As you can tell, he was a tough guy. All my men are tough guys. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Say Goodnight, Gracie

 

The late Gracie Allen was a very lucid comedienne,

Especially in the way that lucid means shining and bright.

What her husband George Burns called her illogical logic

Made a halo around our syntax and ourselves as we laughed.

George Burns most often was her artful inconspicuous straight man.

He could move people about stage, construct skits and scenes, write

And gather jokes. They were married as long as ordinary magic

Would allow, thirty-eight years, until Gracie Allen's death.

In her fifties Gracie Allen developed a heart condition.

She would call George Burns when her heart felt funny and fluttered

He'd give her a pill and they'd hold each other till the palpitation

Stopped—just a few minutes, many times and pills. As magic fills

Then fulfilled must leave a space, one day Gracie Allen's

               heart fluttered

And hurt and stopped. George Burns said unbelievingly to the doctor,

               "But I still have some of the pills."

--Alice Notley