Better the devil you know?

We chatted outside on the porch after dinner about how things would change if there was a nuclear war and Washington, D.C. and the state capital got destroyed. Would we even know it was my first thought, but then others chimed in with more practical opinions:
No more taxes!
No more expensive and nonsensical requirements and regulations!  If we wanted to open a business, we could just do it.  We could hire whomever we wanted.  Families would have to stick together to take care of the aged and ill, educate and protect children, defend against intruders.
We could enforce our own rights!  (Not sure what that meant, but I think it would be like if you caught a rustler -- yes, they exist! -- you could handle him the way they did 150 years ago, and with no delay).
Then there were more thoughtful considerations:

Would paper money still have value, or would we have to barter or transact with specie?  If a gang of thieves and murderers arose to pillage the countryside, how would we deal with it?  (That one was easy:  we'd form posses or militias and hunt them down and exterminate them.)  But what if an army of raiders swept over the land, like Comanches, Vikings or Huns?  We'd have to build walls and forts, let no strangers who might be spies come near.

And so on. No one thought it would be a disaster.  But some women did worry about life in a lawless world.  The men dismissed that fear.  It was more important that finally we could be left alone to live our lives without being pestered and plagued by politicians and bureaucrats.    I said but the raiders who would prefer to pillage than work would be professional warriors, skilled in warfare and weaponry, violent and cruel.  How could we herdsmen and farmers successfully fend them off?  We'd have to develop our own warrior caste, who would inevitably rule over us, extracting tribute, taxes if you will.  So we'd be back where we started, only without the benefits of an advanced civilization.  No one had an answer to that and the subject was changed.

 

I want to be pretty

It was June 2012 when the CH-53D helicopter that Marine door gunner and airframes ­mechanic Sgt. Kirstie Ennis was flying in went down in ­Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

The 21-year-old was on her second Afghanistan deployment. She suffered severe trauma, especially to her brain, spine, neck, shoulder, face and left leg, which after some 40 surgeries was amputated below the knee three years later. A month after that, it was amputated above the knee.

“The first thing I thought about wasn’t ‘Am I going to be able to run again?’ It was, ‘Can I wear a dress?’” Ennis told  Military Times. “Am I going to be able to wear heels? Are people going to look at me ­differently? Am I still going to be attractive?”

From Marine to Model 

 Can you talk about that moment and what happened in the crash? 

KE: June 23rd, 2012 was a day like many others I’d gone through in the past.  It started out as an extremely simple mission.  A few hours before we were outbound flight plans changed.  We would now be flying to FOB Nawzad to Musa Qala to pick-up some Marines that had gotten bogged down.  It was a bizarre day and nothing that we would’ve done normally really went the normal way.  There were a few things that changed throughout the day like my crew, my aircraft, but we were all so excited to be directly helping the guys on the ground.  That’s what Marine Corps Aviation lives for.  Our job is direct support.  We picked up three space available PACs and they were Army Medics we were going to bring to Nawzad.  All was fine up until we got right outside of Nawzad.   There was just a lot going on at the time. 

The pilot made inputs on the sticks and wasn’t receiving outputs that he desired.  At that moment it kind of became a little bit of a panic because we obviously aren’t going to come off of our guns until they say, “Crash is imminent.”   We are going to do everything we can in our power to help out the pilots in the front, but also to protect our cargo and what we are moving.   Next thing you know we started to go so far nose up that we rolled left and the rest was history.  My tail gunner tried to get out of his belt in hopes of getting into his seat which there weren’t many seats available in the first place because of all the cargo we were moving.  He flew out the back and when we hit the ground... I was kind of ripped apart.  The last thing I remember was the screaming I heard.  I was kind of in-and-out from there.  My leg was mangled and snapped, my right shoulder was destroyed, I could fit my fist through my face and my jaw was completely destroyed.  My teeth were gone, my jaw had to be rebuilt as well as one of my orbital sockets, it blew out my eardrums, I had fractures in my C2, C3, C4 cervical spine and had severe damage to my lumbar.

 The Veterans Project

I wonder if guys can understand what Ennis was feeling when she thought about being still able to wear a dress or heels.  They probably think it's silly female narcissism that a person with such horrible injuries would immediately wonder if she could still wear high heels.  High heels, after all, are designed to make your feet look smaller, your legs longer -- and give a sway to your sashay when you walk so men will look at you.  Well, maybe it is, but I don't think so.  Being attractive is so much a part of what it means to be a woman, to have self-esteem, that its loss, even gradually through normal aging, is resisted in every way, from wearing sun hats to using make-up, dying one's hair, to, in extreme cases, plastic surgery.  But most women come to accept the new non-attractive (okay, non-sexual, really), role life steers them into: being matrons and grandmothers.

But to lose your looks when you are young, to become someone men turn away from and other women pity ... it's just too much.  It's not fair!  You rage against it.  I know there are some women, maybe many women, who life did not give the greatest looks to who rebel against the hot babe meme, are hostile to attractive women and women who try to make the best of what God gave them by dressing fashionably, doing their hair, using make-up effectively and so forth.  I've written about them before, including one who refused to even wear pantyhose as some kind of political statement against the patriarchy or something.

But for normal women, we want to look attractive, to be sexy, to have men give us a second look -- or even a long third -- to walk past guys who gaze longingly at us, who say one to the other, "Did you see that? I would do that, I would so totally do that!" 

Now, there are all sorts of reasons women joined the armed forces, and a number of those reasons end up placing women in heavily male combat roles, roles in which they must suppress any indication that they are women.  And even if they don't serve in combat roles, the military uniforms women must wear are utterly asexual.  I suppose that's a good thing, although I do note that my grandmother, a navy nurse in World War Two, was able to wear very feminine uniforms, smartly tailored and attractive with hair styled to match and even high heels, whereas now we have to wear get-ups that look like shapeless camouflage-patterned pajamas and wear our hair short and tied in a bun, our feet shod in ugly frog stompers.

Well, okay, if that's what Uncle Sam requires, so be it.  But whenever we can, we bust loose and exult in displaying the fact that we are females, girls, women, total hot babes who have it going on, mad savage sexy.

And, of course, when all is said and done (to coin a phrase), the reason women's self-esteem is tied to looking sexy is so that men will want to enjoy their company, the end result being -- wait for it --  ... babies!  Huzzah!

He loves that damned old rodeo

 

 Here are a couple of cowboy songs sung by George Strait that I think may help explain what it is about cowboys that makes me so fond of them.  It's a certain humble independence,  a determination to do what they want to do even if it costs them so much, spiritually, physically and monetarily.  It's just what they have to do.

It may seem strange, sometimes it does even to myself, that of all the places I've been and lived, all the things I've seen and done, the education I've had, the career, I find myself just so happy to be driving down a dirt ranch road in a beat-up old Ford 4X4 F-350 with winches front and rear, the windows rolled down, the smells of grass and sunshine and cows washing over me, and then the local C&W music-and-ranch-news radio station spins a George Strait platter.  I turn the radio up and sing along with all my heart.  Sometimes tears fill my eyes.  Sometimes my vision blurs so much that I have to stop. I lean my head on the steering wheel and cry. I don't why.  I just do.  I'm such a goof.

 

 And here's Judy Collins singing about a girl in love with a cowboy.  I know what that's like.  And it's just fine.  For a time.  I sing along with this song like I know the guy she's talking about.  Maybe at one time I did.  Maybe I did.

Chaperone for a day

I drove my uncle, a widower and old tin can (destroyer) sailor, to his annual checkup with his dermatologist the other day.  He could have driven over by himself but I didn't want it to seem that he had no one to care about him.  Chauffeuring him is always a bit...um...interesting.  When we approach a stop sign he visibly braces and pushes down on a nonexistent brake pedal and if he thinks I'm not slowing down quickly enough exclaims, "Throw out the anchor!"  When we arrived at our destination and I stopped, he remarked dryly, "And so we come to another screeching halt."  In this case, this was in a street lined with parked cars and only one tight space available for parallel parking if you were adroit enough to manage it, which I did in one smooth move.  My uncle looked both astonished and impressed.

 The dermatologist's office was in the old renovated hotel I mentioned in an earlier post.  No one was wearing masks  outside, but when we entered the lobby a sign said wear a mask.  There was a mask dispenser beside it, but it was empty. I had brought along a couple in my purse, just in case, though, so we dutifully put them on and climbed the broad stairway up to the second floor and the doctor's reception.  

When we signed in, I noticed the receptionist was not wearing a mask so I ask if we needed to and she said it was optional. We took them off.  She was a cutie pie and my uncle began flirting jocularly with her.  She was good-natured about it but said she had work to do so I collared him, shaking my head at her, saying, "My husband can be such a handful!" as I steered him to a chair.

After we sat down, he looked me over, squinting one eye and raising the eyebrow of the other, and said, "So, you wish you were my wife, do you?  I wonder what Dr. Freud would say about that!"  I crossed my eyes, opened my mouth and stuck my index finger in it making gagging motions.  "Oh, you can't fool me," he said.  I punched him in the ribs.  "Do that one more time and I'll take you across my knee and give you a good spanking!" he threatened, so I poked him again, saying, "I dare you!  You know how spanking me affects you.  Do you really want the doctor to see you in that condition?"

At this juncture, I noticed that the physician's assistant had come out and was watching us.  When she caught my eye, she motioned us in, saying if I was the wife I could come in, too.   I really did not want to be present while my uncle got a full-body skin exam, so I declined.  After they went into the examining room and I sat back down, the receptionist said, "Your husband seems really spry for his age."  I nodded but said, "He's not really my husband. I was just joking around with him because he was nervous about the exam and I wanted to take his mind off it.  I'm his niece."  "He didn't seem nervous at all, to me," she said.  "I was about to tell you two to get a room before you collected an audience." 

My uncle came out of the examination room beaming.  Everything was fine, and as we walked down the stairs he proudly informed me that the doctor had told him he had the best pair of feet for a man his age that he had ever seen.  I told him he should set  up an OnlyFans site for female foot fetishists.  "A what?" he asked, then wondered aloud if there really was such a thing as female foot fetishists.  I don't think there are, foot fascination being pretty much a guy thing, but I assured him that there were doubtless legions of randy women obsessed with old men's feet.  He gave me the fish eye again.

We had lunch at the hotel restaurant.  My uncle ordered prime rib with a baked potato the size of the K-T meteorite smothered in sour cream and chives, and I had a pineapple salad. Afterward, he wanted to go into the bar and say hello to "his girl," by which he meant the nude painting behind the bar.  We sat on stools and chatted with the bartender while he drank his house steam beer and I sipped a sparkling water with a lemon slice. He informed the bar keep that the model for the painting was my great-grandmother and she was only 16 years old when she posed.  "Don't you think my wife here" -- gesturing at me -- "resembles her?"  The bartender looked at the painting, then at me and said, "From what little I can see, she might, but I'd have to inspect a lot more of her to really form an opinion."  I said, "Dream on, sport!"  and he responded,  "Oh, I can do that all right!  Want me to tell you my dreams?"

Emerging from the bar into the glare of sunlight, my uncle spotted a barbershop across the street and decided he needed a haircut. I started to go in with him, then realized that he wanted some man time with other men, so I told him to give me a call when he was ready to go, and I went window shopping.

There was a lot of foot traffic along the sidewalks and all the stores seemed to be open and busy.  No one was wearing a mask.  Down toward the edge of the business district, where there began to appear some empty storefronts and thrift shops and pedestrians became scarce, I spotted a lingerie shop with several expensive cars parked in front that had some nice things on display in the window and decided to go in and see if I could find something I liked.  I love browsing lingerie shops even if I don't buy anything, and I had time to kill.  

There was a hard-eyed woman in a tight miniskirt standing outside beside the door smoking a cigarette who gave me a glance as I went inside.  The display racks had a dusty, neglected look, and, unlike the alluring items in the window, the things they held appeared to be stuff Goodwill rejected.  I was about to leave when a woman came out of a back room wearing a silk robe and mules and, spotting me, came over and asked if I would like to fill out an application.  An aroma trailed her that was familiar but that I couldn't quite place.  Lilac...?  Talcum powder...?  Ah!  Baby oil!  Why would she have that smell about her?  Curious, I followed her over to the counter where she clicked open a computer and said, "We only need a contact number, a name, when you are available and your specialties.  We take 50 percent for the first referral and a third after that, which covers use of a room, the lounge and refreshments."  I looked at her puzzled and not quite comprehending for about two heartbeats before it came to me.  The lingerie store was a front and this was actually a place of professional assignation -- a bordello!  

While I was standing there processing this revelation, an older man wearing a camel hair sport coat over a tee shirt came in and said a woman's name to the receptionist.  Mandy or Candy or Brandy or Sandy...something like that, but probably spelled with an "i."  She picked up the house phone and spoke to someone.  While she was, the man glanced my way and let his gaze slide over me from toe to topknot.  I gazed back, noticing the Pi Kappa Alpha pin in his lapel, his well-polished, expensive shoes and Omega Speedmaster watch, the wedding band on his finger....  Just as he started to say something, the receptionist hung up the phone and, excusing herself to me, led him through a door marked "No admittance."  I took this as my cue to make my exit.  Outside, the air smelled fresh and clean.  The smoking woman was still there.  I wondered if she were some kind of lookout.  I examined the row of parked cars on the otherwise empty street and wondered which was Mr. Pi Kappa Alpha's.  I spotted an older BMW Z4 that hadn't been there before and thought that he would drive something like that.  Why do such people always drive BMWs?

As I walked back up the street toward the hotel, I glanced at my cell phone to see if I had missed a call from my uncle.  I hadn't, but noticed it had been an hour since I left him and I was getting tired so when I got back to where there was plenty of pedestrian traffic and I spotted a cafe, I went inside to sit down at a booth and wait for him to call me.  The place was jammed with customers, all the booths seemed occupied and only a couple of stools were open at the counter.  I didn't want to sit at the counter so I turned to leave, but as I did the man sitting at the booth I was standing next to caught my eye and motioned me to have a seat.  He had a lot of papers spread out across the table and he moved some to give me space for the ice tea I ordered.  We began to chat and he told me he was on the staff of the county planning commission. We had an enjoyable conversation and I learned a number things about the county I would otherwise never have known, including some amusing anecdotes about local personalities.

I was laughing at one of these when a shadow loomed over me and, glancing up, I saw a scowling woman glaring from me to my booth mate and back.  "So!" she said.  "So!"  He tried to stand up but, being in a booth, needed to slide out first, which she blocked him from doing, so he sat back down heavily.  He started to speak but she cut him off. "Don't say anything!  Don't you dare!  I've heard enough of your lies!"  Seeing her focus on him I seized my chance to escape.  As I did so she looked at me and seemed about to say something when, apparently, she saw that all the customers within earshot had turned to see what was going on.  Her mouth snapped shut and she sat down where I had been, beginning an earnest but much quieter conversation with the guy.  I sought out my waitress and gave her a ten, apologizing for the ruckus.  She asked me if everything was all right and I said, "Apparently not," as I headed for the door.

Once outside, I looked at my phone hoping my uncle had finally called me.  He had not.  I uttered a rude word and called him.  He did not pick up.  I said something blasphemous loud enough for a passer-by to glance askance at me.  I sighed.  Then  I walked back to the hotel, deciding to wait for him there.  When I got into the lobby I hesitated, not knowing where to go.  It was either stand in the foyer, go into the restaurant or head for the bar.  And suddenly I realized I needed to visit a restroom.  Ice tea does that to me.  So bar it was. 

I asked the bartender where the ladies lounge was, even though I knew from previous visits.  What I really wanted to do was have an excuse to ask him if my uncle had left a message for me with him.  He had been there, the bartender said, but had not left a message for me, although he had mentioned me and let a grin  flicker across his face.  A man standing at the bar listening interrupted us, saying, "Lady, I bet you have to squat to pee!"  I only half heard him, wondering what on earth my uncle had said and why, and, believing I had misheard him, said, "What?"  He repeated in a loud voice, "You have to squat to pee!" I walked away hearing the bartender informing the lout that this was a class joint and he would have to ask him to leave if he didn't mind his manners.  As I passed a table full of well-dressed town swells, I heard one of them say, "She can squat to pee on me anytime!" and they all laughed. I didn't return through the bar but followed a hallway that led me past the restaurant and back to the lobby.

I decided to go back to the car and wait for my uncle.  And there he was, fast asleep in the fully reclined passenger seat.  He woke up as I opened the door and got in, mumbling, "About time!  Where have you been?" Then he apologized for having forgotten to bring his cell phone.   He slurred his words slightly and his eyes were shining so I guessed that he had definitely had a few. I didn't say anything, just started the car and rocketed out of there.    After a while, he began singing the Oscar Mayer wiener song with dirty lyrics:

 Oh, I wish I had a big gigantic wiener
That all the girls would want to come and see
Cause if I had a big gigantic wiener
I'd ball them till they came all over me.

Then he switched to a dirty version of the Beatles song "All My Loving":

Close your eyes and I'll lay you
Tomorrow I'll pay you
I'll screw you right up your kazoo...

 He followed that with a ditty the tune of which I didn't know:

Well, I railed Mary Lou
Tried Peggy Sue
Laid pipe with Donna
And Barbara Ann, too.
I screwed Runaround Sue
But she wasn't as good as Wanda,
No, she'll never be as good as Wanda.
'Cause Wanda always wanna, wanna wanna!

 As he sang it, he placed his hand on my thigh, slid it under my dress and leered at me.  His hand was warm, almost hot.  I asked him how long it had been since he last hitch-hiked.  He started saying, "I guess it's been a good 50 ye--..." and then he noticed the look I was giving him and withdrew his hand.  He didn't say another word for the rest of the drive.

                           * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

That evening before dinner, I talked with my mother about my uncle's behavior and she told me it was my fault for making that crack about being his wife.  "You know how men are," she said.  "I told you how they are all absolutely crazy about sex when you hit puberty and you've certainly learned from your own experience since.  You can't make any kind of sexual banter with men other than your serious boyfriend or husband.  They don't see it as banter.  They see it as an invitation.  They see it as you letting them know you are interested in sex and ready to be, depending on the man, propositioned or simply taken.  Never forget that sex is always on a man's mind, especially with a good-looking woman such as yourself."

"Mom...."

"No false modesty.  And you know you like making yourself look attractive.  What did you wear today?  I was giving you directions to the doctor's office as you were getting dressed -- remember?  You put on a thin, button-up-the-front cotton summer frock, the top two buttons left undone, over a sheer lace push-up bra and panties and wore open-toed high-heel sandals."

"With closed backs and ankle straps!  So you're telling me that I was asking for it by the way I dressed?  Really?  Really? You can't be saying that! -- I've seen photos of you at disco clubs in the Seventies. You weren't dressed like a nun!  I like looking like a girl and I love wearing cute lingerie and I'm shoe crazy, you know that.  When am I ever going to get to dress like that except when I am going in to the city?  What? -- Am I supposed to wear an old set of blueberries or peanut butters?  Or maybe some bib overalls over a plaid shirt and wear some old clodhopper boots?"

"Well ... you did look very attractive, even sexy in a pleasant sort of way, not overt, but self-confident.  You do know how to dress to make yourself look your best.  But, dear, didn't it occur to you that you would be spending the day with your uncle?"

"Oh, but he's in his seventies!  And he's my uncle!"

"But still a man.  And he has always been extremely fond of you, you know that.  And you've always liked him.  You've often said that he is your favorite uncle."

 "I do like him a lot."

"And you teased him about spanking you and getting aroused --"

"That was just a joke!"

"-- and you called yourself his wife.  Wives have sex with their husbands, often after they've been spanked as part of foreplay.  You've done it haven't you?"

"Mom...!"

"Well?"

"Um...."

"You're lucky things didn't go farther than they did, and, after all, you did handle the situation.  You should speak to your uncle though and let him know there are no hard feelings."

"Nice choice of words."

"Don't get smart!  Chat with him over supper.  Make light of the day's events so he knows you are not upset with him.  If you act as if you are angry still, that tells him that what he did was important to you.  But if you don't, that lets him know that to you he and whatever he does is of no consequence.  And, after all, he's a widower and starved for female companionship."

"Speaking of that, I think I found a place where he can solve that problem."

"Some kind of golden years dating service?"

"Something like that."

"How nice! You could introduce him to the service yourself and help him get what he wants."

"Um....  So when's dinner?"

 

J'entre à pieds-joints dans mon bain de pensées

 After a difficult day...

 

Non est ad astra mollis e terris via

 

This guy, Dr. Nguyễn Xuân Vinh, Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, Ph.D. in mathematics, professor emeritus of aerospace engineering, is so amazing.  I found his biography, A Life in Hypersonic Flight, among papers in the family library and was mesmerized.  How could anybody live such an astounding life?   The blurb says, "His seminal work on the guidance, dynamics and optimal control of space vehicles has played a fundamental role in space exploration."   I can't even begin to list all his achievements, but suffice it to say that his original contributions to the development of supersonic and faster atmospheric vehicles and space vehicles and their control makes him a real, true-life "hidden figure," although, of course, he is well known in the field:  His biography was jointly published by JPL and NASA.  We couldn't have gone to the moon or developed the space shuttle without his research.  And before that, he was head of the Republic of Viet Nam's Air Force and was also a pilot and officer in the French Air Force.  He fought the Viet Minh and the Viet Cong.

Oh, and he is also a prize-winning, wildly popular novelist.  In 1960, he wrote a novel, the title in English, A Pilot's Life, which became a best seller (now in its sixth printing) and Vinh was awarded Viet Nam's National Literature Prize. The novel is in the form of a series of letters written by a pilot to his sweetheart.

Vinh's real-life sweetheart was Cung Thi Toan. They were married for more than 50 years at the time of her death in 2008. They have four children, all successful, productive Americans.
The father of Mrs. Vinh, Cung Dinh Van, was a national hero, an athlete  and
political leader. He was executed by Ho Chi Minh along with other nationalist leaders in September, 1946. Cung Thi Toan was fourteen years old at the time. Her story, and how she and her family survived the decades to come is both tragic and inspiring.  

Two of the nationalist political leaders who were executed at the same time as her father were Pham Quynh, a prominent scholar, and Ngo Dinh Khoi, the brother of Ngo Dinh Diem who would become the president of the Republic of Vietnam in 1954 and attempt to lead his country into the modern world.  Had he succeeded, South Viet Nam would very likely be as prosperous and successful as South Korea, at least.

Here's an extract of a monograph on optimal trans-lunar injection trajectories -- a trans-lunar injection is aerospace jargon for leaving earth orbit and heading for the moon.  It has to be done just exactly right.  Nobody had ever done it before.  Nobody knew how to do it.  Vinh was on the team that helped figure out how to achieve it.

 

 NGUYEN XUAN VINH – A LIFE IN HYPERSONIC FLIGHT

I got my kicks

Road trip! Road trip!  

       A clean windshield, a full tank of gas, an empty bladder, snacks, tunes and five-hundred miles of open highway.

Why Memorial Day Is

"I still don't understand why lookers-on of battle try to use words to tell what they've seen. Or why I do. You don't remember the things of war with the part of your being that forms and chooses words. It's not that the brain forgets. Mine remembers that during the daylight hours of [Iwo Jima's] D Day plus 6 and D Day plus 7, the U.S.S. Samaritan took aboard 551 critically wounded Marines, a hundred more than the ship had been built to carry.

"But it's my stomach that remembers how the ship smelled. It still could tell the difference between the orthopedic wards aboard where there always was plaster dust in the air from the fresh casts, and one of the wards for abdominal injuries, where the smell was of decomposing flesh.
And it's my ears that remember the ceaseless surge of small boat engines beside us as they delivered up their loads. They still know an Amtrac from an LCVP, the small Higgins boat with the ramp for a bow. They know the human noises masked by that sound, the curses and commands and breathing of the seamen carrying stretchers hour after hour. And how people sound when they are hurting terribly.
"It's my feet that remember the blood. A pool of blood was something a man left behind him on the deck like his gun and his pack. The important thing about the blood was that it was slippery under your feet, and you had to be careful if you were standing in it not to fall down when the ship rolled.

"None of these impressions, though, is as unfading as what the heart remembers...."

 ~ Written by a woman who was there.  And never forgot.

Changes

 

I invited a friend, a typical city/suburban type, to spend her vacation with us on our ranch and she's certainly enjoyed it.  She marvels at the silence, the ability to hear the wind rushing through the grass, a leaf falling making a great crashing sound, as it seems.  She'd never seen the moon rise or set directly on the horizon, unblocked by buildings.  She'd never seen a shooting star or a satellite crossing the night sky, never seen the Milky Way, the North Star or any of the constellations. She'd never heard the sound of a bird's wings in flight or the singing of field mice underground in their nests (you don't believe that, do you?).  She marvels at the sky and clouds, having never seen cloud shadows race across the ground, never seen a storm front approach, filling the whole sky,  never heard the sound of rain approaching, never seen a whole rainbow....  

But, still, when she wants to know what the weather will be, she consults her cell phone instead of looking out the window or going out on the porch and looking, smelling, feeling, letting her senses tell her what is and what is coming.  I can't really fault her.  Most of her days have been spent indoors, often in offices without windows, or shopping malls or big stores illuminated by artificial lighting, the only sounds those of human activity, piped-in muzak, ventilation equipment, the only smells those of plastics and chemicals, old carpet, stale coffee, restaurant or cafeteria food, deodorants, perfumes and flatulence.  Even when she has gone outside building surrounded her, blocking the horizon, and the sounds of humanity were everywhere, especially all variety of internal combustion engines.

When I explain to her that north winds are cold, south winds are warm, southwest winds  are warm and humid, southeast winds bring rain, she is amazed.  And which direction is which, she asks.  I explain the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and she asks which way are those directions.

Since she's been here, she's discovered that she likes animals and has enjoyed working with the large animal veterinarian, assisting her with extracting semen from stallions (it ain't erotic, trust me), helping with calf birthing, treating dogs with rattlesnake bites and otherwise tending to all the creatures' ills and ailments.  She also likes helping to train them, especially the border collies, who make good cow dogs.  

She's lost weight since she joined us although her appetite is ravenous and she chows down like a champ, vacuuming up grub she'd have turned her nose up before:  corn bread and slow-cooked pinto beans served with maple syrup, apple sauce and campfire coffee; potatoes and chili peppers with  eggs all fried in bacon grease and served on pancakes with blackberry jam and apple butter and sides of ham, sausage and bacon.  After a day working hard outdoors it's all burned off.  She has some kind of phone app that tells her how many calories she's used and it says she is expending about 6,000 calories a day.  I tell her the men work far harder than she or I do and they need all the energy-rich food they can get.  Watching them, she can believe it, and understands the need for high-calorie food.  I remind her that the same sorts of work they are doing in spring weather they will be doing come winter and they will burn even more calories just keeping warm.  

Of course, we do have plenty of fruits and vegetables, most grown ourselves or growing wild -- apples, of course, but also, in season, pears, peaches, persimmons, cherries, grapes, strawberries, boysenberries,  blueberries, blackberries....  And we have fresh grown veggies, everything from rhubarb to radishes, in season, otherwise frozen or preserved.  But what keeps people working is the high energy foods.  They can't get enough of those.   Meals that would give cubicle drones heart attacks make for robust health in a horse wrangler, jingler and fence rider.  Taking noon shade under an old cottonwood, he'll happily unwrap a lunch comprising a thick roast beef sandwich spread generously with butter, a couple of boiled eggs, some corn dodgers and an apple turnover.

The ranch life seems to suit her.  She's tanned and fit and her rather depressed, withdrawn and cynical nature has turned sunny and outgoing and she smiles and laughs a lot.  She's up before dawn and in bed and sound asleep an hour or two after sunset.

Wherever there are deer there are pumas. They get thirsty too.

Since she's on vacation, she doesn't have to do any of those things she's been helping with and may do as she pleases.  And she does.  She likes riding her favorite horse, a mare we thought would be too much animal for her, but the horse gentles down at her touch.  She also enjoys going down to the creek or the ponds, which are stocked with trout, and skipping rocks, wading the shallows or swimming in the deep pools or in the ponds.  She'd never been skinny-dipping before and when I did it she was a bit surprised but was game to try it and soon discovered how delightful it is.  Now her clothes come off as soon as we spread a blanket.  There's no one around so what difference does it make?  Deer and other creatures often come down to drink, a sight that delights her.  We're into baby deer season and she is almost delirious with joy watching all the little ones trot behind their mothers, nurse and play.  The sight of a mountain lion coming down to the water astounded and frightened her, as well it should have, and suddenly she realized why and was glad that I always bring along a trusty Winchester .30-30 and have it handy at all times.  The old sailor saying that you may love the navy but the navy doesn't love you back applies to mother nature as well:  you may love the planet but the planet doesn't love you back.  To it you are just some other animal's food.

When we drive into the closest town, population 700, she marvels at how friendly people are.  Strangers say hello as you pass on the street and clerks, cashiers and wait staff chat with you.  In pleasant weather store doors are propped open so a breeze can waft through the aisles.  She was surprised to see a dog wander into the meat market and come out with a soup bone.  Of course, the county seat is bigger and not so cozy, but it offers plenty of shopping, dining and other entertainment.

Speaking of drives, she also marvels at the empty roads winding through delightful scenery.  She says it's like driving in a car commercial.  Her emotional drive also seems to have been changed.  She tells me that what she used to consider important now seems trivial, her daily life tedious and frustrating.  She doesn't want to go back.  She's been talking with our vet about becoming a veterinarian assistant and then a veterinarian technician.  The local community college offers an Associate of Science degree in registered veterinary technology. It takes a couple of years of study plus several hundred hours of internship with a veterinarian.  Our vet says she could use a good assistant, so maybe something will come of that.  Who would have thought that inviting someone to your home for a vacation would change the direction of their life?  I sure didn't.  I hope it turns out well.

“The blue sky, the brown soil beneath, the grass, the trees, the animals, the wind and rain and stars are never strange to me; for I am in and of and am one with them; and my flesh and the soil are one, and the heat in my blood and in the sunshine are one, and the winds and the tempests and my passions are one. I feel strangeness only with regard to my fellow men, especially in towns, where they exist in conditions unnatural to me, but congenial to them.” 
― William Henry Hudson

 

 

The last of the Indian Scouts

Pawnee Scouts gather beside a Union Pacific train in 1866.

The last to retire were Apaches, but the first and most famous were the Pawnee.  Fully 800 joined the US Army in 1864 and were formed into their own battalion.  They protected the Union Pacific railroad as it was constructed from attack by the Sioux.  Perhaps the next most famous Indian Scouts were the northern Cheyenne who fought the Sioux at Wounded Knee.  

It's a shame that the Army's Indian allies are now forgotten and a false history, full of lies and distortions, is promoted -- if it is promoted at all.  Indians are the ignored minority.

Northern Cheyenne Scouts, Dec., 1890, during the Ghost Dance troubles.

 

 

The Pohjola's daughter legend is related in the eighth poem of the Kalevala. The old hero Väinämöinen is traveling south when he catches sight of the beautiful daughter of Pohjola (Northland) sitting at the edge of a rainbow. Smitten, he stops his horse and says, "Come, maid, into my sleigh, step down into my sledge!" Before she will agree to do that, the girl gives him three tasks to perform. Two of them he accomplishes. Then she says, "I'd marry one who could carve a boat out of bits of my spindle." Väinämöinen sets about carving a boat, but on the third day an accident happens.  The axe blade strikes a stone and the axe bounces off the rock and hits Väinämöinen, cutting him badly, and he had to abandon the third task and leave Pohjola's daughter.  There's a connection between this story and the Indian Scouts.  Can you guess what it is?

Non sense

I was chatting with a Japanese acquaintance about current affairs and she mentioned that there were so many Ukrainian refugees in Japan now.  She kept exclaiming on how many there were, so finally I asked her how many, expecting a figure in the several thousands.  She said nine-hundred.  I started to mention that the US had taken in more than 15,000 and planned to accept 100,000 but then stopped.  She would just nod.  After all, as she had told me often before, America belongs to everyone.  I used to consider that something to be proud of.  But now I kind of resent it.  No it doesn't.  At least, it shouldn't.  It should only belong to Americans.  Does Japan belong to everybody?  Does Mexico?  How about Guatemala?

This same Japanese also remarked that the affluent Los Angeles suburb of San Marino, which has become heavily Chinese, is called Chan Marino by her friends.  That reminded me that I once overheard a conversation among Chinese students who referred to Japanese as "the Js."  And one time when I was sitting on the sand at Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro with a Mexican friend some Orientals walked by.  My fence-jumping, bean-eating friend referred to them as pie-faced squinties.  His friend, sitting with us, called them Chingchongs.  Later we stopped by a Korean market and bought some delicious hot roasted peanuts in their shells.  The cashier did not smile at us nor speak.  I said hello to her but she did not respond, ignoring me and staring with open hostility at the Mexicans. She scooped up the peanuts and bagged them with a sour look on her face. Ignoring an outstretched hand, she put the change down on the counter, then took a step back. I wondered what I, a native-born, pioneer-stock American ofay, was doing in this place with these people. A hundred and fifty years ago any ancestor of mine would have shot and probably scalped the bunch of them.  Had he spotted me, he would have ordered, "Daughter, hie thee hence!"

La Tuna Canyon CCC/PoW camp.

San Pedro used to be a Japanese-American fishing town.  There are still remains of salt water baths they built down below the cliffs.  After Pearl Harbor, they were expelled and interned at the behest of governor Earl Warren and, according to Gus Russo in Supermob,  Jewish gangsters, who ended up acquiring most of the interned Japanese' property for pennies on the dollar.  A lot of the expelled San Pedro Japanese were initially housed in a former CCC camp in La Tuna canyon just south of Tujunga before being moved to Manzanar.  After they were gone, the camp became a PoW facility housing captured Japanese combatants -- they didn't all fight to the last banzai charge.  One of these PoWs so enjoyed his incarceration that after the war he returned to Tujunga, entered the construction trades and eventually built his own house on the hills north of the canyon. During the torrential rains and massive flooding that hit the area during the winter of 1969, his house was one of the few to remain standing.  The flooding washed out a nearby cemetery and his yard ended up littered with coffins, some of which broke open and spilled their contents.  The camp later became a golf course and I think now it's a housing development.

I have a northern Cheyenne ancestor who attended Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. One of his grandfathers was a  blood enemy of the US Army.  He was described by Isaac Coates, General Winfield S. Hancock's surgeon, who encountered him at Fort Larned, Kansas, in the 1860s, thusly: "He is quite six feet in height, finely formed with a large body and muscular limbs. His appearance, decidedly military. A seven-shooting Spencer carbine hung at the side of his saddle, four large Navy revolvers were stuck in his belt, and a bow, already strung with arrows, were grasped in his left hand. Thus armed and mounted on a fine horse, he was a good representative of the God of War; and his manner showed plainly that he did not care whether we talked or fought."  Yet his grandson was sent off to learn the white man's ways by his parents who wanted him to have a future as part of the American story.  After graduation, he joined the army and served as a mounted scout with the 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry, out of Fort Keogh, Montana. He fought at Wounded Knee -- against the Sioux.  One of his sons joined the navy and became a naval aviator flying a Martin T4M-1 off the USS Langley (CV-1).  He eventually became a member of Adm. Joseph Reeves' staff.  One of his sons also became a naval aviator as did one of his grandsons.  They all married hot blonde babes (like me!) and had lots of rug rats and house apes, all of whom grew up to consider themselves simply Americans.  The Indian part of their ancestry was just one part, but one they considered fully American.  After all, an American Indian helped found the Boy Scouts and the Campfire Girls (Charles Eastland, a Santee Sioux), Jim Thorpe (a Sac and Fox) was one of America's first sports heroes, Will Rogers, at one time America's most beloved humorist and social commenter, was a Cherokee, Charles Curtis, a Kaw, became Senate majority leader and later Herbert Hoover's vice president; had the Depression not happened he might well have become president, Capt. Ernest Evans, who became one of the navy's  greatest heroes in the Battle Off Samar, fighting his ship with such bravery that even the Japanese who sank her saluted the  survivors as they sailed past, was a Cherokee, as was BM1 James E. Williams, the most decorated enlisted man in the history of the US Navy, earning the Navy Cross, Silver Star and Medal of Honor as a patrol boat commander on the Mekong River in Viet Nam.  I could go on...and on...and on.  Americans all, and proud contributors to American history and heritage.  So what is going on now and why?  You tell me, because I don't see the point to it or who profits.

 Well, to hell with it.  It will all come crashing down by and by, either of itself or because we ordinary people give it a kick in the keister.

 In the meantime, Ima laugh at the world, party with my pals and just enjoy myself. Why not?  What's the point of being a gloomy Gus going around muttering we're doomed, doomed, I tell you!  Nah.  We're not.  Just put upon.  So forget it and jump up and dance with me!

“A woman must be a woman and cannot be a man.”
― Martin Luther

The last cherry blossoms of spring

 

 

And so another spring passes.  It was a rainy one.  We had hail rattling down on cold north winds, followed by warm southwesterlies bringing thunder and lightning and bursts of torrential rain.  Gully washers and frog chokers as my dad calls them.  We're going to have a bumper crop of strawberries, fat sweet ones.  That means lots of strawberry preserves and strawberry ice cream, made with fresh cream from our own cows.  And of course strawberry shortcake till it comes out our ears.  I do love strawberry shortcake.  And I make the best shortcake you ever ate.  Ditto sponge cake.  So you can have your choice to go with your strawberries and fresh whipped cream.

I've gotten so used to eating fresh-laid eggs that when I had some at a restaurant the other day I almost couldn't eat them.  Very tiny yolks and splayed out whites, obviously old, maybe weeks old, and kept refrigerated.

On the increasing sunny days the skies are often filled with towering cumulus clouds among which the barn swallows dive and tumble, and far above them the hawks and vultures circle silently.  On such days we often eat outside, either on porch or patio, or take a picnic basket out to an old pine or fir.  We have a grove of deodar cedars and afghan pines planted some 20 years ago that have grown into giants.  The deodars remind me of Kipling and the pre-machinegun-era British imperial armies aromatic of horse sweat and saddle leather, gunpowder and tobacco, cholera, gin and adultery.  How ya doin' Mrs. Vansuythen?

 

 

 

 

Spurious correlations

 Spurious correlations are everywhere these days, especially regarding Covid-19, particularly its postulated origin and the alleged side-affects attributed to various vaccines claimed to counter it, but also all sorts of other things, from the wickedness of whites and their pernicious influence on blacks in all manner of things to the existence and causes of so-called climate change to...well, the list is practically endless.  

Here are some examples of obviously absurd correlations, but often the absurdity of a correlation is not apparent without solid knowledge of the subject or careful research and reflection.   I do suspect, however, that some who are quite aware that the correlations they are promoting are spurious do so assuming those they wish to influence will not realize it.  Then there are many cases where the correlation may or may not be spurious, as in the relationship between the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and global warming, but the voices of those who suspect it may be so are suppressed.

Graphs are from the book Spurious Correlations by Tyler Vigen. He's got 30,000 of them!

 

 

Vagabonds

Not everybody fits in -- or wants to.  Civilization:  what a drag.  I'm not being sarcastic.  I'm thinking of guys like Christopher McCandless of recent times, or, further into the past, men like Johnny Appleseed or the mountain men who walked off into the wilderness with nothing but a Hawken rifle and a possibles bag.  Lots of these joined Indian tribes, marrying into them and living happy lives far from the settled life of the East.  One of my ancestors was such, lighting out from Pennsylvania after the Revolution and living the rest of his life west of the 100th meridian.

We've always had hobos, tramps, drifters, vagrants and vagabonds passing through, but not part of, the workaday life. I've read that after the Civil War the country was full of them, most veterans of the war, many suffering from what we would now call PTSD, who just couldn't go back to the farm or the shop.  So they hit the road.

Then there are those who simply feel alienated.  From what?  Maybe they don't know themselves, but they just can't fit in.  They want to escape.  Escape what?  Who cares?  Just escape!

I have some sense of how the outsider feels, having been a service brat growing up on a series of navy bases, most overseas, never really having a hometown of my own, even a school.  A semester or two in Guam, three in Japan (broken up between Yokosuka and Sasebo), one in Sicily then Naples, another in San Diego, then Whidbey Island, thence to South Korea and back to Japan....  Year after year.  So when I finally settled in the States to finish out high school and go on to college, the country I found myself in was not at all like the America I envisioned growing up.  I was like a dodo bird, not realizing that all these people swirling around me had not grown up in a "straighten up and fly right, good order and disciple, all ship-shape and Bristol fashion" world, and lots of them were dangerous.  I almost lost my life twice before I wised up.  Well, I've written about all that before.  No need to go back over it.  But the thing is, I get it.  I get it about feeling like -- being -- an outside observer, of not quite understanding what's going on, missing cultural references that everybody else implicitly understands and often not even realizing that you are missing something.

I'm not just talking about living in the States.  I lived so long in Japan that it feels or felt, I should say, more like home in many ways than did the USA.  There were times when I felt almost like I was Japanese, but then something would happen that would jolt me out of my illusion.  To Japanese I was always a foreigner, an alien.  I might forget that, but they never did, and once in a while something they said or did made that clear to me.  Often I was hurt by it, by the rejection, the dismissal, the insult.  Finally, I got it through my head that my home, my native land, was America and only America and I had to make it so, even if I didn't really know how. 

Fortunately for me I did have relatives, including those I had spent vacations with as a child, my parents wanting me to get to know them and also, as I realize now, to not become too isolated from the country of my forefathers.  So I had someplace to call home, settle into, travel the byways, walk the paths and streets that generations of my forebears had done.  I could stop by a local store and casually chat with the cashier who, it would turn out, was my second cousin.  I could have lunch in a diner where my grandmother, as a teenager, had worked as a waitress during summer vacations.  So I could ease into being at home in this far land in a way that I never could in Japan or anywhere else in the world but here.

But there are many people for which such a solution to their alienation doesn't exist.  Or if it does exist, for various reasons they don't like it or want it.  In my case, although I have lived in cities, I am a country girl at heart. I need to see trees and grass and animals and far vistas, open sky, the sun and the wind.  So to find this home that I can make my own to also be in such a place makes me happy and content. I don't ever want to leave or go anywhere else.  I am where I want to be.

But I'm lucky.  Were this place some city, especially one back in the horrid East, I couldn't stand it. I would flee.  But to where?  I would have no place to flee to.  If I were a man, I could become a vagabond, wandering hither and yon, maybe join the merchant marine and sail from port to port. Or maybe even become an ESL teacher drifting from Seoul to Dubai, defensively sneering at the "straights" with serious jobs, becoming ever more alienated and resentful with each passing year of all those with houses and cars, investments and money in the bank living their boring lives.  They don't know, I would tell myself reassuringly.  Know what?  Why what's behind the curtain.  But as a woman, that's really not an option.  Plus, I just don't have that kind of personality:  I'm not sure there is a "curtain," and if there is, I don't want to know what's behind it.  So I don't know what I would do. I don't care to think about it.

Well, I started this post wanting to say something, but I see I've just rambled.  So I'll shut up.  Wait --  I did want to say that I "get" outsiders and I think that society needs such people, those who don't buy the "received" view of the world, don't give a damn about status or career or wealth and would rather sit on a park bench than drive a Mercedes.  We can't all be that way, but sometimes don't you wish you could just chuck it all and thumb a ride on a big rig or swing aboard a freight train and just go? Just go.  Not me.  Not any more anyway.  But how about you?

* * *

 "The Vagabond's House," a poem by Don Blanding first published in a limited edition of 2,000 imprints in 1928, it went on to sell 150,000 copies.  It is here read by Franklyn MacCormack in the middle of the night over WGN radio in 1965. WGN was a clear-channel station broadcasting a 50,000-watt signal that covered most of the Midwest.  Long-distance truckers and train crews, all-night workers in gas stations and diners tuned in to listen to MacCormack read poems by such poets as Edgar Guest, Robert Service and Don Blanding, dreamers and drifters, folksy and familiar, all once wildly popular, now forgotten.

 

"There is a difference between an ideal that cannot be attained and one that is senseless."
~Sidney Hook