Cowboys

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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

 

He loved his country as no other

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

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

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

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

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

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

 Radio play:

The Man Without A Country 

 

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

The Man Without a Country

 

 

1941

 The same year, but two different worlds.
The photo on the left is a vacation snapshot of the Grand Canyon, taken in 1941, the car an up-model Chevrolet, a good car that took a young couple from San Diego to Arizona in style and comfort, while getting 17 miles per gallon, according to their trip notes.
They stayed in motor lodges, motels and then the national park's luxurious accommodations.  They rode to the bottom of the canyon on a tourist mule train and it was all pretty much like Donald Duck and his nephews' vacations.  It was a fun, safe, comfortable world they lived in, and which they expected to continue forever.  Why should it not?
This photo to the right below was taken that same year, in the Philippines.  Army Air Force pilots walk past obsolete Boeing P-26A fighter planes.   Within weeks of this photo being taken, most of these men would be dead, killed in a desperate struggle with the invading Japanese, against whom their old fighter planes were no match.
One of my great uncles was in the Army Air Force in the PI when the Japanese attacked, and fought them in those early days.  He died in that distant land.
From what I understand -- and I don't know much for sure -- he started out there flying P-26s, then moved on to P-35s, then the P-40s.  All I have seen of his days then are a few old snapshots of old planes.  He was not killed in combat but became a PoW after the surrender, an experience which he did not survive.
Besides the P26As, we had P-35As that the government had commandeered from a Swedish order.  When they arrived in the Philippines, they still had the Swedish Air Force markings on them.  They were highly maneuverable fighter planes, with a tight turning circle, but they were under-powered and slow, with a poor rate of climb.  They didn't dive very well either and were under-gunned.  Below is a photo of some of these P-35As taxiing for take-off on a sunny day in the summer of 1941.  Many of them would fall in air combat in the weeks after Dec. 8, but, surprisingly perhaps, more were disabled by lack of spare parts than were shot down by the enemy.
 
The plan was for both the P-26 and P-35 to be replaced by P-40s by the spring of 1942.  Some early model P-40Bs had arrived in the PI earlier in 1941, and a number of the current-model P-40E had begun arriving in November, the last shipment on Nov. 25.  They were crated and had to be hauled from the docks to the airfields, assembled and flight-tested, the engines slow-timed, while the new pilots who arrived with them and who had never even flown anything more sophisticated than an AT-6 advanced trainer, read the operating manuals and tried to get some flight time in them.
To the right below is a photo of a P-40B being assembled.  Not a lot of sophisticated equipment to do it.  Just some crates and hand tools.
Fifty cal. ammunition for their guns came loose in cases.  "Belting parties" were held to load the bullets into machine gun belts so they could be fired.  I looked at the amount of .50 cal. ammunition that had arrived in the Philippines by December 8, when the Japanese attacked, and compared it to the number of .50 cal. guns in the P-40s that were on hand at that date and calculated that if all of it had been belted -- which it hadn't -- it would give each gun three seconds of firing time.
When the Japanese attacked on Dec. 8, the P-40 pilots, contrary to old myths, acquitted themselves very well on their first encounter, shooting down and killing the pilots of eight Japanese Zeros while losing three of their own planes, and
having only one pilot killed in the air (at least eight of our pilots were killed on the ground trying to get airborne and 20 of their airplanes destroyed).  They continued to acquit themselves well in subsequent days.
But their fate was sealed from the onset of the war, as no reinforcements or resupplies were ever sent, and the Japanese came down on them in overwhelming force.  At the left is a photo of a shot-down P-40.  Pretty grim memento mori.
Still, they and our ground forces held out for four months on the mainland of Luzon and another month on Corregidor.   Heroes and legends were born in those days.  And long since have been forgotten.
We should not forget such times and such events. But, of course, we do. We have our own lives and our own wars, and what happened in grandpa's day seems increasingly irrelevant to our own times. But is it?
Below is a photo the Japanese conquerors of the United States Territory of the Philippine Islands took of a disabled P-35A they seized when they overran one of our airfields.  Note the American flag dishonored on the ground as our enemies exult, proud in their possession of a war prize, waving their own banner high.
Do we ever want such a thing to happen again?  If we don't, we had better remember that it has happened before, try to understand why it happened, and do whatever we can to make sure that it never happens again.  Ever.

 

Women??

Often these celebrity transsexual guys who are asserted to be actual women still like stereotypical guy stuff even though they now wear a wig and their aunt's old dress.  Rightist website participants often mock them for this, saying real women only like girly-girly stuff.  Most of the males saying this are, from what they've written that I have read, assorted varieties of nerds and dorks and don't seem to have much experience with actual, real women.  Plenty of women have interests similar to men's, although they may have different reasons than men for doing so, and I don't think you can distinguish a real woman from a tranny by the things she likes to do or is interested in.

But I am about as sure as I can be without actually knowing any transsexual "women" that there is one certain way to distinguish them from real women:  the way they talk, how much they talk and what they talk about.  

I consider myself not much of a talker, but one time I accidentally left my phone's record mode on for some time while el jefe and moi were at home and I was astonished at how chatty I was.  For every word he said, I said 20 -- no, I take that back:  for every word he said, I said 100.  No lie, kimo sabe.  What did I talk about?  I don't even know, just random blah blah, what the weather was like, what a neighbor said, where I got a recipe, should I buy this or that when I next went shopping.... 

I mentioned this to him, apologizing for being  such a nuisance, but he said no need to apologize.  He enjoyed hearing me rattle on. It reminded him that he was home and everything was all right.  It was like listening to a canary chirping and twittering.  It was a kind of verbal sunshine.  When I was away from home, the house seemed cold and empty to him without the sound of my voice giving life to it. 

So, anyway, with these trannies, maybe they can take hormones or whatever they do to give themselves man boobs and shoehorn their feet into size 12 heels and slather on LA Girl cosmetics, but I bet they still talk like men, have the same speech patterns as they always had.  No hormones or operations can change that.

 

 

Children and fools...

                                      Uh oh!

 

Go away?

I've gone to a few end-of-year get-togethers the last few days -- you couldn't really call them parties, everyone is so subdued.  The events of this year have been so dismaying that no one is in a party mood. What's to celebrate?  

I've hosted or helped host these events and my contribution is to focus on what our country used to be, showing old movies and old TV shows, playing old pop tunes, especially those sweet romantic songs that I am a sucker for.  One of my all-time favorite movies is the 1948 Portrait of Jenny and I showed it with some trepidation at one of our gatherings, filled as it was with mostly Macho McStudly types, many combat vets who are cynical about everything, but they all watched it with intense interest.  I even noticed a tear in the eye of one or two of these gentlemen.  I really do think that a lot of guys are very romantic at heart, but they've learned to keep such feelings well hidden.  One person, watching the scenes of New York City life at mid-20th century, remarked on how wonderful it must have been to have a life in that city in those days.  He said he wished the present would just go away and heads nodded and some sighs were heard.  If only there was some button to push, some magic word or phrase to say, to make the last 60 or so years to never have been....  And let me emphasize that all those present are millennials, not old-timers.  All of us yearn for a past we never knew, one that even our parents knew scarcely, if at all.  In Nabokov's words, we weep for the impossible past.

The music I play has a similar effect as I select mainly sentimental slow dances, romantic songs from an era when love and romance were paramount in popular culture.  Even the clumsy, suddenly shy guys discover just how great it is to dance cheek-to-cheek with your girl.  Then settle down together by the fireside and have a hot toddy as the wind sings around the eaves and the rain and sleet beat against the windows and snow flurries dance in the porch light.  Life would be so good if only the present would just go away!

Hmm...

Your result for The Lover Style Profile Test

The Devoted Lover

64% partner focus, 24% aggressiveness, 35% adventurousness

Based on the results of this test, it is highly likely that:
You prefer your romance and love to be traditional rather than daring or out-of-the-ordinary, you would rather be pursued than do the pursuing and, when it comes to physical love, your satisfaction comes more from providing a wonderful time to your partner than simply seeking your own.
This places you in the lover style of the Devoted Lover.
The Devoted Lover is a wonderful style, and is perhaps the best when it comes to developing a long-term, caring and rewarding relationship. The Devoted Lover is a treasure to find, though it is sometimes difficult to establish a relationship with one.

Your result for The Would You Have Been a Nazi Test

The Expatriate

Achtung! You are 38% brainwashworthy, 27% antitolerant, and 24% blindly patriotic

Congratulations! You are not susceptible to brainwashing, your values and cares extend beyond the borders of your own country, and your blind patriotism does not reach unhealthy levels. If you had been German in the 1930s, you would've left the country.
One possible bad scenario is that you just wouldn't have cared one way or the other about Nazism. Maybe politics don't interest you enough.
Did you know that many of the smartest Germans departed prior to the beginning of World War II because they knew something evil was brewing? Brain Drain. Many of them were scientists. It is very possible you could have been one of them.
Conclusion: born and raised in Germany in the early 1930s, you would not have been a Nazi.

Your result for The Mythological Goddess Test

Minerva

You are 71% erudite, 63% sensual, 38% martial, and 21% saturnine.

Minerva was, just like her Greek counterpart Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom and Freedom as well as an all powerful Goddess of War, which made her a most formidable opponent indeed.
Among the many disciplines that fell under her control were: writing, the sciences, architecture, embroidery, and just about anything else dealing with artistic skills, wise counsel, and of course battle and warfare.
Like Athena, owls were considered sacred to Minerva, representing wisdom. She was a very wise warrior, respected by the Roman legions.
She was also the Goddess of Women's Rights and patroness of career women.

 

Merry Christmas!

 

 

 

Memories of a Christmas that seems so very far away and so very long ago now:

A year

Above the marge of night a star still shines,
And on the frosty hills the sombre pines
Harbor an eerie wind that crooneth low
Over the glimmering wastes of virgin snow. 
~ Lucy Maud Montgomery

 

A bitter cold day, with a raw north wind and relentless rain and sleet mixed with snow.  It began last night and, except for brief teasing interludes -- once even with a burst of brilliant sunshine -- it hasn't stopped.  It didn't rise out of the thirties all day.  The mountain tops are covered with snow and the ocean is a constant rumbling roar with occasional ominous thuds...I guess  big sleeper waves crashing ashore.
The weather matches my mood, dark and gloomy and full of sad resignation.  My heart trapped in muddy slush.
Oh, well.  Not the first time.  Could be the last.  Who knows?  It was just over a year ago my dear friend lost his battle and went on ahead.  How fast a year passes!  His grave is now covered with dead needles of cypress and pines and a few blown down twigs. I brush them away chatting with him about the weather, hoping he is warm and safe. Safe!  Why not pretend he is still with me?  Why not delude myself?  Or is it delusion?  And what does it matter?
Twice I decided to go outside and walk to break my mood and remind myself of the great, wide world out there that doesn't care about me and my questioning gloom.  The first time, around midday, I put on a heavy, rain-resistant coat and a rain hat and sallied forth, but I didn't get very far before I concluded I really didn't want to go for a walk.  Just as I was deciding to turn back I almost collided with a big black cat who was making his way along the same path I was, but coming towards me.  His head was down against the weather and he didn't even notice me.  I saw him first and stopped, but he kept coming until he was almost upon me.  Then suddenly he became aware of me and halted short, staring in surprise.  Clearly, he did not expect to see a human out in such weather.
We eyed each other for a bit, then I decided to backtrack and turn off the trail.  I expected him to resume his journey, but he just kept watching me without moving.  I thought about having a contest of wills with him, to see who would move first, but then decided I really didn't care and retraced my footsteps. 

My coat and hat were dripping water and my boots were soaked when I got back, and I was chilled.  I made some tea and put a dollop of cream in it to go along with the sugar.
The second time I tried for a walk it was just before dark and I hiked up a ridge on a trail through the forest.  The trees broke the wind and provided some shelter from the rain and sleet.  About halfway up the ridge, snow began falling more than rain, and it collected wetly on the cold ground.  The trail grew slippery and I skidded a few times, almost falling.  Then it was all snow, swirling down so thickly it was hard to see ahead.  I was thinking to myself how dumb I was to be out in this weather as darkness was about to fall, but also how smart I was because my mind was wholly concentrated on the now and I had no room to dwell on my grief.  It was forgotten in the struggle to make my way forward.
Just as these thoughts were half-forming in my mind, I encountered deer.  As cold as it was, they had no warm, waterproof coats to put on.  They had no buildings to retreat into.  As with all wild creatures, they had to endure.  What troubles did they have?   They fed and mated and avoided predators, gave birth to young and spent their lives with their birth herd, which was really their family, three or four generations deep, living on the same land as their ancestors had for...how long?  Thousands of years maybe.  Who could tell?
I watched them for a while, as they watched me.  Like the cat, they stood still and waited me out.  After a while, as the sky grew gloomy with the setting of the invisible sun, I turned back on my footsteps and made my way home descending into a darkness that was somehow comforting.
It was all right.  I would get over this. The storm would pass, as all storms do, and the sun would shine again and day after day would be warm, dry and pleasant.  I would even see the deer again.  Maybe even the cat.

Pull that man's statue down!

At least they had someplace to flee to.  Where escape now?

 

I enjoy being a girl

I was browsing the comments to some on-line columnist and blundered into one of those squabbles between two disagreeable persons.  The male complained that women "won’t give us skirts, dresses, nice hairstyles, nylons or pumps" and the female responded: "I’m not going to spend fifteen minutes of my day squeezing into a pair of panty hose, nor am I going to stand in front of a mirror primping for God knows how long. Most of all, I’m not going to torture myself in a pair of 'pumps.'”
My reaction to that, aside from considering the commenters people I would cross the street to avoid saying hello to, is that the male complaint is reasonable although men love to grumble about women spending too much time getting ready to go out  and notoriously don't notice when a women has her hair done or anything else to enhance her appearance.

But I don't care about that.  I enjoy making myself look good.  I like messing around with make-up and adjusting this and that, trying different shades and combinations, changing my hair style, etc.  I'll try on this outfit with those shoes and then those other ones, then try on that outfit...endlessly.  I can spend an afternoon doing that, even when I'm not going anywhere.  It's kind of a hobby, I guess.
When we go out, I see to my hair and make-up, wear something chic and appropriate, with heels and stockings and matching accessories.  I have no interest in being a frump.
About putting on pantyhose, I think the woman was exaggerating or is incredibly fat.  I wear pantyhose in the winter or when it's chilly out because they are warm and it takes me maybe 30 seconds to put them on.  It's not a big deal.  Otherwise I wear thigh-highs.  Depending on my outfit, I might wear knee-high socks, especially with Mary-Janes.  If it's warm out and I wear a sundress  or the like I will go bare-legged.  Of course I wear socks with jeans and am bare-legged in shorts or cut-offs.  I have all kinds of high-heel shoes, mules and sandals and pumps and....  I love wearing them. I love the way they make me look and how they give a swivel to my walk.

 I've spent a lot of time in East Asia and it's my observation that the number of really good-looking women is about the same there as everywhere else, but a big difference, one often remarked on, is the much lower rate of obesity, so more seem attractive.  But another thing I noticed that helps them look good is that they dress well, really paying attention to looking stylish.  A lot of American women dress like slobs.  To be fair, so do American men.  If you are fat and slouch around (good posture is another point in favor of the Oriental woman) in an old sweatshirt and yoga pants one size too small for your fast-food-enhanced butt, well....
But looked at objectively, a lot of Oriental women have what my dad calls stump-puller legs -- thick calves and ankles.  Combine that with a general lack of curves, hair you can't really do anything with, and small eyes, and Oriental women shouldn't be considered all that attractive.  
But if you combine height-weight proportionality, good use of make-up and attention to dressing to enhance your natural assets, standing up straight, you've got something.  Add in paying attention to your demeanor (act feminine, enjoy being attractive, don't be pushily aggressive or overtly competitive, don't nag), and your voice (you don't have to screech or yowl or talk through your nose), and you end up with an attractive package that men will take a second look at.

And -- admit it -- isn't having men take a second look at you one of the pleasures of life?  Doesn't  it brighten your day, boost your self-esteem?  It seems to me all those what I call "public women" who write and speak about things like the male gaze and all sex being rape have some serious emotional issues. Those things are so stupid.  Sure, you can get unwanted male attention, and, yes, rape is real and something to be wary of, but those are part of life and you have to learn how to deal with them like all the other slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to coin a phrase.  If men aren't attracted to you, how are you ever going to get a boyfriend, and without a boyfriend how are you ever going to have a husband?  And without sex how are you going to have children?  A family?  Isn't having your very own family what it's all about, what makes this world worth living in?

Maybe it's because in so much of my working life I have had to wear NWUs or combat uniforms and boots, my hair cut short and tied in a granny bun and in every way dressed to de-emphasize my femaleness, but I enjoy dressing to let the world know I am a woman.  I enjoy enhancing my sex appeal when the occasion is appropriate.  I wear tight skirts and form-fitting dresses slit up to here and underwire push-up bras that enhance my cleavage and four-inch heels that give a swing to my sway. I do my nails and take care of my hands and feet. I use make-up.  I wear perfume.  I wear a bikini when I go swimming. I wear Victoria's Secret lingerie to bed.  Ain't I terrible?

Christmas in the Paddies

This poem used to be broadcast over Armed Forces radio, in olden times called FEN (Far East Network) and now called by the seriously lame name AFN Eagle 810.  Well, anyway, this was the most requested Christmas song on the station up to the 1990s, by which time conditions in Japan for SOFA personnel had changed so much that it didn't have much relevance anymore.  When it was first written, probably in the 1950s but no one knows for sure, most dependent housing was off-base.  The houses had no insulation and the only heating was supplied by kerosene-burning space heaters and electric blankets.  So houses in winter were cold!

Anyway, here are the lyrics.  They were sung to "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town," the instrumental version by Booker T and the MGs when I first heard it.  In earlier years it was doubtless sung to some then-popular version of the song. I don't know who the singer was, probably some enlisted journalist serving in Japan ages ago.

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house,
The cold would awaken the sleepiest mouse.
The stockings were hung by the space heater with care
In the hopes that St. Nick-san would soon be there.
And I in my blanket, with the heat turned on high
Had just settled down–oyasumi nasai.
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
Mom was checking the oil drums and as mad as a hatter.
I threw open the window and peered through the plastic.
Gomen nasai darling, don’t do anything drastic.
I had forgotten to order some more of the stuff,
And it looked as if Christmas would be kind of rough.

The moon on the breast of the gravel and snow
Gave the luster of midday to the compound below.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear
But a chisai sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.
A little ol’ honcho, so lively and quick.
I could tell by his accent, he must be St. Nick.
More rapid than jet forces he came
And he whistled and shouted and called them by name:
Now Dozo, now Daijobu, now Chotto and Matte,
On Soba, on Sushi, on Ah So Desuka.
(Because of the unions I suppose over here,
He probably employs Japanese reindeer).
As fast as lightening, he entered the door
And opened his furoshiki and dumped on the floor
Dozens of packages and gifts of all sizes,
Just what the kids wanted plus extra surprises.
I was so happy I wanted to squeeze ‘im
Christmas would be merry, even though we were freezin’…
Thank you, I said, You’re such an old dear,
Domo arigato, as they say over here.

But how did you ever find this place?
We worried that maybe you just went on base.
His eyes, how they twinkled; “Now don’t ever tell,
But I don’t go by rank or key personnel…”
What did you bring me? I wanted to know.
He shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of tofu.
“Well, you private renters sure need a lot,
But for you, it’s something special I got;
It’s much too big to go under the tree,
So look out in the yard and you will see,
To keep peace in the family, you know what I mean,
Your gift is a drumful of kerosene.
And now I’d better be off, for I’m on TDY
And it’s quite a trip back to the good ol’ ZI”
He sprang from his sleigh and to his team gave a whistle
And away they all flew like the thrust of a missile.
But I heard him exclaim as they drove out of sight,
 “Christmas Omedeto and to all a good night!”

 

And here's a version for Marines.  It was written by Lance Corporal James Schmidt.

Twas the night before Christmas, he lived all alone
In a one bedroom house made of plaster and stone.
I had come down the chimney, with presents to give
And to see just who in this home did live.

As I looked all about, a strange sight I did see:
No tinsel, no presents, not even a tree.
No stocking by the fire, just boots filled with sand.
On the wall hung pictures of a far distant land.

With medals and badges, awards of all kind
A sobering thought soon came to my mind
For this house was different, unlike any I’d seen.
This was the home of a U.S. Marine.

I’d heard stories about them, I had to see more
So I walked down the hall and pushed open the door
And there he lay sleeping, silent, alone
Curled up on the floor in his one-bedroom home.

He seemed so gentle, his face so serene
Not how I pictured a U.S. Marine.
Was this the hero, of whom I’d just read
Curled up in his poncho, a floor for his bed?

His face was clean-shaven, his weathered face tan.
I soon understood, this was more than a man
For I realized the families that I saw that night
Owed their lives to these men, who were willing to fight.

Soon around the nation, the children would play
And grown-ups would celebrate on a bright Christmas day
They all enjoyed freedom, each month and all year
Because of Marines like this one lying here.

I couldn’t help wonder how many lay alone
On a cold Christmas Eve, in a land far from home.
Just the very thought brought a tear to my eye
I dropped to my knees and I started to cry.

He must have awoken, for I heard a rough voice
“Santa, don’t cry, this life is my choice.
I fight for freedom, I don’t ask for more.
My life is my God, my country, my Corps.”

With that he rolled over, drifted off into sleep.
I couldn’t control it, I continued to weep.
I watched him for hours, so silent and still.
I noticed he shivered from the cold night’s chill.

So I took off my jacket, the one made of red,
And covered this Marine from his toes to his head.
Then I put on his T-shirt of scarlet and gold
With an eagle, globe and anchor emblazoned so bold.

And although it barely fit me, I began to swell with pride
And for one shining moment, I was Marine Corps deep inside.
I didn’t want to leave him so quiet in the night,
This guardian of honor so willing to fight.

But half asleep he rolled over, and in a voice clean and pure
Said “Carry on, Santa, it’s Christmas Day, all is secure.”
One look at my watch and I knew he was right.
Merry Christmas my friend, Semper Fi and goodnight!

Some Things...

When I was in college I never went to one of those spring break hot spots. The first year, I was homesick and went home.  The second year, I spent sailing and kayaking around the Channel Islands with my boyfriend.  The third year I crewed a trimaran that sailed from Port Hueneme, California, to Lahaina, Maui, Hawaii.  The fourth year I went off-trail backpacking into the high Sierras with my dad, both of us figuring that would be the last chance for us to ever do that again, which has proven true.

 “Luxury has never appealed to me, I like simple things, books, being alone, or with somebody who understands.”
― Daphne du Maurier

I was not born in the continental United States.  Several times when I have mentioned this to someone, the person has remarked on how good my English is.

 “No political party ought to exist when one of its corner-stones is opposition to freedom of thought.”
― Ulysses S. Grant

I know a Mexican-American who is utterly disdainful of Mexico and its people.  "I know I have relatives in Mexico," he says, "but I don't know who they are and I don't want to know."

“The streets were dark with something more than night.”
― Raymond Chandler

I was offered a full scholarship to a hoity-toity university back east but when I went to visit it I felt like I was in a sinister foreign country.  Everything looked strange -- too green, too humid, the landscape too closed in.  All those red brick buildings seemed weird to me.  The air smelled of something unpleasant.  And the people looked like menacing foreigners and talked with odd accents.  The interviewers asked what I thought were irrelevant questions and eyed me with a sort of knowing expectation, as if they had caught a fish they would soon be feasting on.  I turned down the scholarship.  When I did, I was told that I was passing up on great things for myself.  Maybe, but the only great thing I wanted was to get away from there.

 “Once they have you asking the wrong questions they don't have to worry about the answers.”
― Thomas Pynchon

When I was in high school, Clint Eastwood, accompanied by a woman who looked uneasy and was wearing a really nice Chopard watch, once asked me for directions outside of Barney’s Beanery on Santa Monica Blvd. He wanted to know which bus to take to get someplace.  I did not know.  I was not pleased that he thought I looked like someone who rode the bus.

“You can't test courage cautiously, so I ran hard and waved my arms hard, happy.”
― Annie Dillard

When I was a seven-year-old SOFA kid in Japan my mother took me to a tea ceremony party at the Nezu Museum in Tokyo.  Afterwards one of the ladies who had conducted the ceremony complimented me on my Japanese and for some reason instead of just thanking her, I stood up and sang the Kimigayo (君が代), the Japanese national anthem.  I learned it by hearing it on the radio and on TV.  It's a lovely song to my mind, easy to sing and the lyrics are short and simple, too:

 君が代は
千代に八千代に
細石の
巌と為りて
苔の生すまで

All the Japanese looked stunned and my mother cringed.   I still don't know why the Japanese reacted the way they did but my mother says they probably thought I was showing off and possibly insulting them. I wasn't.

 “One must pray first, but afterwards one must help oneself. God does not care for cowards.”
― Ouida

One time when I was walking along the beach near Malibu an older man came out of one of the beach houses and approached me.  I thought he was going to tell me the beach was private above the tide line where I was walking  and to move away, but instead he invited me to a party inside the house.  I decided why not? and went up to the house with him. As we walked, he introduced himself as Telly Savalas.  I knew that couldn't be true because my parents knew Savalas and this guy wasn't him. And also he had been dead for a number of years.  I should have taken that as a warning sign and excused myself, but I didn't.  I just wondered why he would tell me that.
Inside, the party was more like a bacchanal.  I looked around amazed.  Naked people were having sex on couches and chairs, standing up, lying on the floor.  Others appeared to be passed out, sprawled wherever they collapsed. There were bowls of pills of various colors, other things that looked like drugs, and, of course, alcohol.  The man who had invited me had disappeared while I was staring at what was going on.   Another man walked over to me and stood beside me watching the action.  After a minute he said, "Pretty wild, isn't it?  Let's join in."  I wasn't in the least bit tempted.  In fact, I was getting scared and wondering how I was going to get out of there.  I was silent for a minute, then I said, "How do you know I'm not an undercover cop?"  He faded away.  I walked back outside and when I stepped onto the sand I broke into a run.

 “I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know an old Japanese lady who emigrated to the US around 20 years ago.  I never asked about the circumstances. All that time she lived in Los Angeles, but recently her neighborhood has become too dangerous, with homeless types breaking into her apartment building lobby and camping out -- not just sleeping but moving in.  They watch when people leave to go to work and then break into their apartments and trash them, apparently just for the hell of it.  Of course, they steal anything valuable.  The cops have been called multiple times but they never show up.  The last straw for her was hearing gunshots seemingly right outside her window late one night.  She moved a thousand miles away to a small Whiteopia.  She is delighted, repeatedly saying how pleasant, helpful and kind the people are.  "It's just like being in Japan!" she exclaims.

“God does not need your good works, but your neighbor does.”
― Martin Luther

I once knew a married couple with children who seemed like a typical normal family except that one of the kids had been fathered by the husband's best friend.  They had been in the same Marine fire team in Iraq and were close enough to share wives, something that is more common than you might think among those kinds of people.  About the arrangement, the husband said, "As long as he's not in there when I want in, I don't care."

I read a semi-biographical novel of 1950s-era SAC by a former pilot of a B-47, Wings of Fire by Henry Zeybel, that contains this line: “When you’re a lieutenant, you’re allowed to do anything you want, short of raping the wing commander’s wife. She might not complain, but he’d probably get jealous.”  But among those of similar rank, key parties and etc. were part of the way of life.  I suppose that's because the men at the pointed end of the war-fighting professions lead such dangerous lives, depend on each other implicitly in the face of death and may be killed at any time, that having sex with each others' girlfriends and wives is, besides probably being a male bonding ritual, a way for them to enhance their enjoyment of their leisure.  Incidentally, the author of the novel later flew AC-130 gunships during the Viet Nam War and was awarded the Silver Star for actions over Tcehpone, Laos, during Operation Lam Son 719.

  I recently looked for one of Edna St. Vincent Millay's books -- "Make Bright the Arrows," her pro-war poetry collection --at the local library. They didn't have it; in fact, they had no books of her poetry at all. But they did have a biography of her, "Savage Beauty." I then checked to see if they had Robinson Jeffers' anti-war poetry collection, "The Double Axe." No; in fact, they had nothing at all by or about Jeffers.

Then, for the heck of it, I checked to see if they had any poetry by Elinor Wylie, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, Randall Jarrell, George Sterling... No, no, no, no, no. But they did have stuff by Maya Angelou. So I thought, well, then, they will have Langston Hughes. But no.
So what value the library? It should be where you can find what is not at the bookstores -- but then, bookstores, even the musty used ones in low-rent blocks, are vanishing.
I drove to a nearby town that has a lovely old Carnegie Library, heavy with dark woodwork, streaming sunlight, and stolid rows of shelves that smell of ancient books and furniture polish, but it was closed, having very limited hours these days.
I remembered a two-story used-book store in the same town where I first discovered Nora Waln, up the creaking staircase to the second floor and far in the back amid old books on foreign travel, so I went there. But it was out of business, as was the bakery/luncheonette next to it where I used to have coffee and a snack while I flipped through the treasures I'd just bought as I half-listened to other diners and the staff chatting and gossiping.
Well, everything can be ordered on-line now, or digitally downloaded, in the bum- and derelict-free comfort of your own home, so it's all good, right? Right? 

It amuses me how intensely interested males are in the female form.  They could be 10 or 100, it doesn't matter.  Some cleavage, a glimpse of a bare  thigh or the swaying hindquarters of a fit woman strolling down the street mesmerizes them.  Girl-watching never gets old for them.  I contrast that with the routine put-downs of women men indulge in, the belittling snark, nasty cracks, sneering contempt and crude insults.  The reverse side of the urge-to-merge coin, I guess.  I've often thought that maybe the hostility to women is a reaction to or a resistance to the intense, relentless desire for women that men seem to never be free from. 
I once sat next to an elderly man, in his mid-seventies I'd guess, on a delayed airline flight.  We got to talking to kill the time, and, as passing strangers often do, talked of many personal things.  At one point he said that his sexual urge was still strong and he patronized what he termed call-girls twice a week to satisfy himself.  He volunteered that he did not need Viagra and would like to enjoy female charms much more often but his budget wouldn't allow it.  "I do have to eat," he said, "even though my digestion won't allow me the foods I like.  But I can still enjoy sex as much as when I was a teenager!"  The man sitting across the aisle began listening in on our conversation and kept glancing at me as if he wanted to say something so I smiled at him and he burst out, "I just wanted to say I hope I can talk so freely and enjoy my sex life as much as your grandfather when I'm his age!"  I started to say that the old guy was not my grandfather and was probably just telling sea stories, but instead said "Gramps and I have a very special relationship," and winked at him.

 “To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.”
― Henry Miller

 

Pearl Harbor Pay Back

The USS Lexington at Pearl Harbor.

 My grandfather was serving aboard the USS Lexington (CV-2), flying Brewster F2As (his squadron referred to it as "the Peanut Special"), when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.  The Lex was at sea at the time, having sailed on Dec. 5 on a plane-delivery mission to Midway Island, but was diverted to try to locate the Japanese fleet, which she did not find.

Towards the end of December, his VF was converted to Grumman F4F-3s, the famous "Wildcat" that bore the burden of the earliest and most severe fighting of the Pacific War.

The photo at left shows the Lexington berthed at the Pearl Harbor Navy Yard on April 11, 1942.  By that time she had seen a lot of action and her aviation complement had handed the Japanese some rough payback for the Pearl attack.  

In February, less that two-and-a-half months after Pearl Harbor, the Lex, as part of Task Force II, sailed into Japanese controlled waters off New Britain to strike at the main Japanese naval base at Rabaul, where was based the legendary 22nd Air Flotilla, veteran of the China war, bombing Chunking, blasting the British out of Malaya and the Dutch out of the East Indies and, most recently, bombing Darwin, Australia.

The 22nd's big H6K flying boats spotted the Lexington and radioed her position before being shot down by the ship's air patrol. The 4th Squadron, flying 18 of the the new G4M bomber, equipped with 20mm cannon defensive armament, was launched to deal with the Lex.  One bomber had to abort but 17 flew on and attacked the carrier.  But her intercepting F4Fs shot down 15 of the G4Ms and none achieved any hits on the ship.  The two remaining G4Ms made it back to Rabaul with half their crewmen dead, the the planes so badly damaged that they were junked. 

This was the first time in the history of Japanese naval aviation that it had suffered such a total defeat.  It had always enjoyed, and become used to, victory after victory.  The Japanese were shocked by the capability of US naval aviation operating on its own terms.  The Japanese had crushed the Chinese, humiliated the British, walked all over the Dutch and battered the Australians and none had the ability to deal counterblows.  But the US Navy was demonstrating it was a different foe entirely, and far more formidable.

The Lexington at sea.

In addition to the G4Ms shot down, the US Navy fliers also shot down three H6K flying boats and an E13A floatplane.  In all 88 Japanese aircrew were killed, including the squadron commander of the 4th.  The cost to us: two F4Fs shot down and one pilot killed.

Less than three weeks later, the Lexington attacked the Japanese naval base at Salamaua, New Guinea, taking the the defenders by surprise.  The Lex's  dive bombers and torpedo planes virtually annihilated the fleet in the harbor, some 15 ships, sinking five cargo vessels and four warships plus setting afire and and stopping dead in the water four more warships.  Two other warships were damaged slightly.  One of the Lexington's SBDs was shot down by anti-aircraft artillery and the crew lost.

Among the ships the Japanese lost were the Kongo Maru, Tenyo Maru and Yokohama Maru. The Kokai Maru was beached to save it from sinking, as was the seaplane tender Kiyokawa Maru and the minelayer Tsugaru. The destroyers Asanagi and Yunagi were so severely damaged that they had to return to the main Japanese fleet base at Truk for repairs. The light cruiser Yubari, flagship of the Wake Island invasion fleet, was also damaged and her executive officer killed. Altogether, 130 Japanese sailors were killed and 245 wounded in the attack.

These were the heaviest losses the Japanese Navy had suffered since the outbreak of the war and seriously harmed the ability of that Navy's South Sea Force to carry out offensive operations as well as alarming Japanese naval high command in Tokyo.  Vice Admiral Shigeyoshi Inoue, commander of the Fourth Fleet and aboard the Yubari when it was attacked, had to order the postponement (later abandonment) of the planned invasion of Port Moresby as a result of these losses. He also called for Japanese carrier back-up to counter the US Navy carrier force, thus setting the stage for the Battle of the Coral Sea.

An incident of this episode:  While heading toward Salamaua a patroling SOC floatplane had failed to return.  A large-scale search was not conducted as the carrier was readying its attack.  But on the return, the Lexington, calculating the effects of wind and currents on the probably position of the SOC, sailed to where the crew, if they survived, might be found.  Seven days after the SOC failed to return, it was spotted floating on the calm sea.  As the carrier hove into sight, the SOC started its engine and took off and flew back to the ship, landing as if nothing had happened. The two crew members were hungry and thirsty but otherwise healthy, having survived on their emergency rations.  They had gotten lost and landed while the plane still had some fuel left.  

The Lexington arrived back in Pearl a couple of weeks later for resupply and maintenance, which is when the top photo was snapped.  Shortly after, it would sail again for New Guinea waters and clash again with the Japanese, but this time not being so lucky, being sunk at the Battle of the Coral Sea less than a month after the picture was taken.  The Japanese still had plenty of fighting capability and it would take months of hard fighting between two navies, the likes of which had never been seen before in history, for a winner to begin to emerge.

History doesn't repeat itself...does it?

Click on the images to see them full size.