All of a sudden, it's autumn. The leaves are red and orange, and the temps are falling. I'm chilled even with my jacket on. Now it's dark at 6:30 p.m., I am still used to the easy, relaxed late sunlit summer nights. (Never mind, I wish I was still on vacation, too!). It's the kind of Fall weather that makes one think of chili, so, we are letting our separate pots simmer on the stove. Washington, even though it's mild, has enough of a change of seasons that makes me look forward with anticipation to the newness of a fresh change, a chance to "start anew" with whatever, and have new hope.
It's been a busy week, with extra projects due at school for Sarah, a Venus Fly Trap model she had to concoct on Tuesday, and materials for a cactus desert habitat to school on Friday. This, plus homework, and extra reading: four books with the reports due Oct. 23. Since this is the first quarter, there is heavy parental intervention going on to read, prod, and force feed the accomplishment of the project.
Well, I should be checking on the chili, and Sarah, now. It's a busy but rich life!
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Update on Talking Chihuahuas
Just a quick update. Our Daddy Day on Columbus Day went well, and Beverly Hills Chihuahua was not as bad as it might have been. In the relatively limited genre of talking dog movies, I enjoyed it rather more than I did Underdog, for example, but those of you without kids probably will not find it necessary to see it, though as Sarah pointed out to me beforehand, Beverly Hills Chihuahua was the number one movie in America the past two weekends. This is either because 1) the economic meltdown makes everyone want to see talking chihuahuas who can fight off Dobermans and Mountain Lions; 2) has melted all our brains or 3) means only our kids can choose the movies.
Not too much else to report from the week. A new couch for the family room arrives tomorrow, and we're going to have to buy a new washer this weekend due to a distinct burning-electrical-wire smell on ours last night. Oh, why not. It's not like we have much left in the retirement accounts.
Not too much else to report from the week. A new couch for the family room arrives tomorrow, and we're going to have to buy a new washer this weekend due to a distinct burning-electrical-wire smell on ours last night. Oh, why not. It's not like we have much left in the retirement accounts.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Eve of Columbus Day
I guess it's not actually the "eve" of Columbus Day since it's after midnight. For reasons not totally clear, Tam doesn't get Columbus Day off. (Theoretically the reason is that to give them the Friday after Thanksgiving off -- not an official Federal holiday-- they need to give up another holiday, and since as the Air Force Association they can't give up Veteran's Day on November 11, they have to give up Columbus Day. My office doesn't make you trade off, they just give you Friday after Thanksgiving anyway, but well, what can I say?)
So this means tomorrow is a "Daddy Day," a word from the old days of day care when I had Sarah two days a week. She still likes "Daddy Days," though they're less frequent. We have agreed to chili dogs for lunch and to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Sound warning if you're at work as the music starts to play). Father-daughter days are nice though I have much to do and it doesn't strike me as the greatest movie ever made.
Yesterday we went to the Smithsonian's new Ocean Hall in the Natural History Museum, since Sarah is always big on ocean life. A really extraordinary new exhibit, and a permanent one, so we'll need to go back to see it all. We also visited her favorite sites at the Natural History Museum, namely the gem collection and of course the dinosaur hall. And then home.
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So this means tomorrow is a "Daddy Day," a word from the old days of day care when I had Sarah two days a week. She still likes "Daddy Days," though they're less frequent. We have agreed to chili dogs for lunch and to see Beverly Hills Chihuahua (Sound warning if you're at work as the music starts to play). Father-daughter days are nice though I have much to do and it doesn't strike me as the greatest movie ever made.
Yesterday we went to the Smithsonian's new Ocean Hall in the Natural History Museum, since Sarah is always big on ocean life. A really extraordinary new exhibit, and a permanent one, so we'll need to go back to see it all. We also visited her favorite sites at the Natural History Museum, namely the gem collection and of course the dinosaur hall. And then home.
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Friday, October 10, 2008
Still Here
I've probably used "still here" more often than any other title. I am, however, still here. We just can't post during the work week much. More soon.
Monday, October 6, 2008
My Take on October 6
Since Tam has blogged below about October 6 I'll do the same. As she noted, we met on October 6, 1983, at an Egyptian Military Day Party. (Actually I'd met her before since I had regular contact with the Egyptian Military Attache's office, and she was a receptionist/secretary there despite having a Master's Degree in Middle East studies. But we didn't know each other except in a vague, "is the colonel in?" sort of way.) October 6 is a day with a lot of resonance for old Egypt hands. As Tam noted, it's the anniversary of the October 1973 war, which is celebrated in Egypt as the war that made peace with Israel feasible by showing Egyptians could regain some of their lost land. In 1981, at the Military Day Parade, Anwar Sadat was assassinated, but despite that, the date remained Egyptian Military Day, and only two years after Sadat's assassination, at the 1983 party celebrating the tenth anniversary of the "crossing" (of the Suez Canal), Tam and I talked for a while, she offered me a ride home, I offered to buy her dinner (the long-departed Blue Nile Restaurant, one of the earliest Ethiopian Restaurants in DC), and we dated for some months before she dumped me. I eventually got even: I married her. As she noted, October 6, 1993, ten years after that meeting at Fort McNair and 20 after the "crossing," was our first full day in Tunis on our honeymoon. This was, I believe, the day of our "STEAK!" story, told here on our old family website. So October 6 was a day with many resonances for us.
Having mentioned the "crossing" several times, which is how the Egyptians always referred to 1973, I need to quote one of those wonderful Egyptian jokes that, however, requires a lot of explanation since it involves several languages. "Crossing" in Arabic is al-'Ubur; it was the triumph that caught Israel off guard and began the war. But Israel recovered and sent a force across the Canal to the western side that cut off one of the two Egyptian field Armies in a salient known as Deversoir. Someone came up with this brilliant couplet:
[And I suppose I've just confirmed the famous exchange when Oscar Wilde said, "I wish I'd said that," and Whistler responded, "You will, Oscar, you will."]
.
Having mentioned the "crossing" several times, which is how the Egyptians always referred to 1973, I need to quote one of those wonderful Egyptian jokes that, however, requires a lot of explanation since it involves several languages. "Crossing" in Arabic is al-'Ubur; it was the triumph that caught Israel off guard and began the war. But Israel recovered and sent a force across the Canal to the western side that cut off one of the two Egyptian field Armies in a salient known as Deversoir. Someone came up with this brilliant couplet:
Bonjour, al-'Ubur;I wish I'd said that.
Bonsoir, Deversoir.
[And I suppose I've just confirmed the famous exchange when Oscar Wilde said, "I wish I'd said that," and Whistler responded, "You will, Oscar, you will."]
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Our Own Oct. 6
Yes, it's me. Tam, the other half of the Dunn parenting duo who has written only one or so blogs, because I am just ... too ... busy ... dealing with work, the family, the house, the bills, etc.
But I wanted to dash something off today, as it is Oct. 6. Why? Because the Dow closed down below 10,000 points today? Because it is the 35th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War? No and No.
I write because today's date is the anniversary of Michael's and my meeting, at the Oct. 6th Egyptian Military Day celebration at Ft. McNair, in 1983, and also the subsequent happy day during our honeymoon in Tunis in 1993.
Our actual wedding anniversary was last week, Oct. 2, but I've been in a reflective, happy and sentimental mood for all of these days. It's partly why I suggested we go out of town on the spur of the moment on Friday night (echoing Sarah's desire for a hotel, too). Fifteen years is a healthy chunk of time to share your life with someone, and deserves comment, reflection, and no small amount of gratitude, to Michael, and Sarah, and life in general.
Yes it is true we are all going through some rough uncertain times these days. But how much worse would it be if we did not have each other to help negotiate these rough waters? So, despite the gloomy times, I've been celebrating, and appreciating, all the goodness in our life together.
The fact that I married a man who can drop everything and just go off for a quickie overnight to an area of the region we three love, and cherish, as much for the history (see Michael's blog entry on mustering militia) as for the natural beauty of water, sand, and sky, and delight in the geology and paleontology of the area as well, are great gifts in our marriage. I am so blessed. We all came back from that foray much refreshed and renewed.
And I find myself also appreciating these trips even more, partly because the gasoline prices are still so high, but not nearly as high as they were in July (a gallon at Dawson's now goes for $3.32, versus 4.10 in July--the peak). So I feel a little better about venturing out these days. It is a gift that we really do not have to travel great distances to be in wonderful renewing places, I have always felt fortunate to live in Virginia. I know Michael and Sarah feel the same way.
So, here's to the last fifteen years of a good, happy marriage, which has seen plenty of good days, some hard and challenging and sad days, and some spectacular joys. I'm grateful to Michael, and to Sarah, for all of them!
Tam
Monday Oct. 6, 2008, 5:26 p.m.
But I wanted to dash something off today, as it is Oct. 6. Why? Because the Dow closed down below 10,000 points today? Because it is the 35th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War? No and No.
I write because today's date is the anniversary of Michael's and my meeting, at the Oct. 6th Egyptian Military Day celebration at Ft. McNair, in 1983, and also the subsequent happy day during our honeymoon in Tunis in 1993.
Our actual wedding anniversary was last week, Oct. 2, but I've been in a reflective, happy and sentimental mood for all of these days. It's partly why I suggested we go out of town on the spur of the moment on Friday night (echoing Sarah's desire for a hotel, too). Fifteen years is a healthy chunk of time to share your life with someone, and deserves comment, reflection, and no small amount of gratitude, to Michael, and Sarah, and life in general.
Yes it is true we are all going through some rough uncertain times these days. But how much worse would it be if we did not have each other to help negotiate these rough waters? So, despite the gloomy times, I've been celebrating, and appreciating, all the goodness in our life together.
The fact that I married a man who can drop everything and just go off for a quickie overnight to an area of the region we three love, and cherish, as much for the history (see Michael's blog entry on mustering militia) as for the natural beauty of water, sand, and sky, and delight in the geology and paleontology of the area as well, are great gifts in our marriage. I am so blessed. We all came back from that foray much refreshed and renewed.
And I find myself also appreciating these trips even more, partly because the gasoline prices are still so high, but not nearly as high as they were in July (a gallon at Dawson's now goes for $3.32, versus 4.10 in July--the peak). So I feel a little better about venturing out these days. It is a gift that we really do not have to travel great distances to be in wonderful renewing places, I have always felt fortunate to live in Virginia. I know Michael and Sarah feel the same way.
So, here's to the last fifteen years of a good, happy marriage, which has seen plenty of good days, some hard and challenging and sad days, and some spectacular joys. I'm grateful to Michael, and to Sarah, for all of them!
Tam
Monday Oct. 6, 2008, 5:26 p.m.
Second Day of the Getaway
It's past midnight but I want to get at least the basics down while the other computer is uploading videos to YouTube.
The second day of our unscheduled getaway went very well. We got off to a late start, after sleeping in, but then began with the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, an old favorite of Sarah's and ours, which had opened a new Paleontology exhibit since our last visit, not to mention that they now have an "eco-invaders" exhibit including the infamous snakehead, first found just a few years ago in the Potomac. It is, as Sarah noted, "Uhhhhhgggllyyyyy." I hope that gets the pronunciation across.
We saw a snake in the water, visited the otters and other residents of the place, saw some tracks in the mud of raccoons and herons and other stuff, Sarah got a fossil shark's tooth from the "find a fossil" exhibit and we decided to go look for real fossils later on the beach.
In the gift shop/bookstore we went a little overboard. I bought some books, bought Tam as an anniversary present a little thing for one of the bathrooms, and splurged and bought Sarah a lovely enameled butterfly jewel box she fell in love with, after making her swear that she would treat it carefully, not play with it, etc. So far only half successful but at least it isn't broken yet.
From there we went into Solomon's Island, just adjacent to Solomons and on an island, if you couldn't figure that part out already, an old oystering town, now mostly for tourists, only an hour or so out of DC. We ate at Stoney's Kingfishers, a crab house on the water, and had crab cake sandwiches (except for one of us who had Kraft Mac and Cheese. Guess which one). A splurge but worth it. Then across the street to an ice cream stand on the boardwalk adjacent to a playground and called (sorry) Cone Island, which Sarah has known since she was a toddler and is a de rigeur stop in season on Solomon's Island.
Having already discussed several options for the afternoon (none of them going home and getting work done), including a sail on a cruise on the Bay, and looking for real fossils on a real beach, we decided on the latter, and for the first time visited Flag Ponds Nature Park in Calvert County Maryland. It's just a little north of the Calvert Cliffs State Park, famous for its strata of fossils that erode out onto the beach, but a specialist at the Calvert Marine Museum told us that the beach was much easier to get to than at Calvert Cliffs. It's also just north of the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, I believe the only nuclear plant in Maryland. It was visible from the beach.
The beach was relatively empty and, if you check our YouTube videos, quite nice; besides lots of seashells there are a lot of fossils to be found. We got there late on a Sunday when it was presumably picked over, but found several pieces of coral, and my immediate thought was, "Coral? We don't have Coral in the Chesapeake." So I asked a conservationist/ranger (or whatever) and he said no, it's old. "Is it a fossil." "Getting there." "How old do you think?" "A couple of million years." That seems a bit young for these supposedly Miocene cliffs, but it's old enough for me. (It's older than me, and these days that itself feels like an accomplishment.)
By the end of this I was tired, sore, and ready to go home, so we did. But we were grateful that we got away. I'm uploading the videos now, the first on YouTube since the fourth of July (never have put together the vacation videos). Forgive. Till I got the new laptop I had real trouble editing video on the road, and am too busy at home. If you're close kin and aren't yet accessing our YouTube and Flickr accounts send me an e-mail and I'll invite you again. It's free. Either tonight or tomorrow (depending on how slow the upload is as it's late and I need sleep) there will be five [COUNT THEM: 5] new videos on YouTube. Some new stuff at Flickr too.
UPDATE: A very late addendum. As uploading was taking longer than I hoped, I did it double-barreled, using two computers on the same broadband link. One result was that two of the shorter videos from today went up in reverse order: the "Calvert Marine Museum" video comes chronologically just before the "Family Time on the Bay" video. In the greater scheme of things, this probably does not rank with whether the Trojan War occurred (a question Sarah asked this weekend, which I answered with discussions of the recent German discoveries of the upper city of Troy VIIA, which was not a third grade answer) or certain other issues. But for the record, "Calvert" came before family time, not after.
Check it out.
.
The second day of our unscheduled getaway went very well. We got off to a late start, after sleeping in, but then began with the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland, an old favorite of Sarah's and ours, which had opened a new Paleontology exhibit since our last visit, not to mention that they now have an "eco-invaders" exhibit including the infamous snakehead, first found just a few years ago in the Potomac. It is, as Sarah noted, "Uhhhhhgggllyyyyy." I hope that gets the pronunciation across.
We saw a snake in the water, visited the otters and other residents of the place, saw some tracks in the mud of raccoons and herons and other stuff, Sarah got a fossil shark's tooth from the "find a fossil" exhibit and we decided to go look for real fossils later on the beach.
In the gift shop/bookstore we went a little overboard. I bought some books, bought Tam as an anniversary present a little thing for one of the bathrooms, and splurged and bought Sarah a lovely enameled butterfly jewel box she fell in love with, after making her swear that she would treat it carefully, not play with it, etc. So far only half successful but at least it isn't broken yet.
From there we went into Solomon's Island, just adjacent to Solomons and on an island, if you couldn't figure that part out already, an old oystering town, now mostly for tourists, only an hour or so out of DC. We ate at Stoney's Kingfishers, a crab house on the water, and had crab cake sandwiches (except for one of us who had Kraft Mac and Cheese. Guess which one). A splurge but worth it. Then across the street to an ice cream stand on the boardwalk adjacent to a playground and called (sorry) Cone Island, which Sarah has known since she was a toddler and is a de rigeur stop in season on Solomon's Island.
Having already discussed several options for the afternoon (none of them going home and getting work done), including a sail on a cruise on the Bay, and looking for real fossils on a real beach, we decided on the latter, and for the first time visited Flag Ponds Nature Park in Calvert County Maryland. It's just a little north of the Calvert Cliffs State Park, famous for its strata of fossils that erode out onto the beach, but a specialist at the Calvert Marine Museum told us that the beach was much easier to get to than at Calvert Cliffs. It's also just north of the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Power Plant, I believe the only nuclear plant in Maryland. It was visible from the beach.
The beach was relatively empty and, if you check our YouTube videos, quite nice; besides lots of seashells there are a lot of fossils to be found. We got there late on a Sunday when it was presumably picked over, but found several pieces of coral, and my immediate thought was, "Coral? We don't have Coral in the Chesapeake." So I asked a conservationist/ranger (or whatever) and he said no, it's old. "Is it a fossil." "Getting there." "How old do you think?" "A couple of million years." That seems a bit young for these supposedly Miocene cliffs, but it's old enough for me. (It's older than me, and these days that itself feels like an accomplishment.)
By the end of this I was tired, sore, and ready to go home, so we did. But we were grateful that we got away. I'm uploading the videos now, the first on YouTube since the fourth of July (never have put together the vacation videos). Forgive. Till I got the new laptop I had real trouble editing video on the road, and am too busy at home. If you're close kin and aren't yet accessing our YouTube and Flickr accounts send me an e-mail and I'll invite you again. It's free. Either tonight or tomorrow (depending on how slow the upload is as it's late and I need sleep) there will be five [COUNT THEM: 5] new videos on YouTube. Some new stuff at Flickr too.
UPDATE: A very late addendum. As uploading was taking longer than I hoped, I did it double-barreled, using two computers on the same broadband link. One result was that two of the shorter videos from today went up in reverse order: the "Calvert Marine Museum" video comes chronologically just before the "Family Time on the Bay" video. In the greater scheme of things, this probably does not rank with whether the Trojan War occurred (a question Sarah asked this weekend, which I answered with discussions of the recent German discoveries of the upper city of Troy VIIA, which was not a third grade answer) or certain other issues. But for the record, "Calvert" came before family time, not after.
Check it out.
.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Militia Muster at Saint Mary's City
We spent part of the day in Historic Saint Mary's City, Maryland. I'll post more later, but here's Tam in the pillory, Tam with a helmet and musket, and hoisting a musket. We also witnessed a display of firing (repelling a raid by pirates) which will go on You Tube, probably in two pieces since it's longer than YouTube's 10 minute limit. As I noted yesterday, the promotion spoke of the need for militia to repel pirates and Virginians, and soon after we arrived someone fired a cannon. They must have recognized us for what we are.
There was an encampment as well so we spent some time watching the reenactors; Sarah's seen reenactors doing later periods but the 1600s stuff was a bit new for all of us. We have a friend who does 18th century and have seen a fair number of civil war reenactments, but the 17th century stuff was different enough to be in
teresting -- although Sarah declared that the battle part "stunk," she showed interest in visiting the encampment beforehand.
Reenactors of course can never recreate the past, which really is and always remains another country; a reminder of this came at the end of the battle when a group of girls in bikinis, possibly from the college adjacent or from a boat on the river, wandered through the reenactment area, in rather stark contrast to the guys in 17th century halberds and helmets. I have no idea what the girls were doing there (it was a bit warm but still October) but it made for considerable comment. [UPDATE: It belatedly occurred to me the next day that this could have been a deliberate college prank, showing up in bikinis -- I don't think any were in one-piece suits -- at a 1600s reenactment. Assuming college students still do stunts like they used to.] [UPDATE 2: When I mentioned this to Tam she said, "Sure, I figured it was a prank all along. They were all in black, skimpy suits. What else could it be?" Okay, I'm slow, but I got there eventually.] The pirates, having been repelled, retreated in the same direction as the girls, but that may have been coincidence. It would have made a great picture but it happened too quickly and I had the camera turned off.
The 17th century reenactors, like civil war reenactors, tend to be on the heavy-set side: rather more so than I suspect the first settlers of Lord Baltimore's proprietary really were. (The movies "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals" used renenactors for battle scenes, but some of them look a lot better fed than your average Confederate infantryman.)
More on the day in a bit. As usual I don't post pictures of Sarah's face on the blog to respect her privacy.
A bit later: Although I knew Sarah hadn't enjoyed the "battle" that much (there weren't that many reenactors and 17th century firelocks take a long time to reload, so the musketry was scattered at best), I asked her what she had enjoyed most about the day: was it the reenactors' encampment where we were shown how they lived? No, she said: it was when I turned on the GPS in the car. And it does indeed work.
More tomorrow. This was an unplanned weekend but it's a fun one. I may not get the YouTube videos up till tomorrow or so.
The reenactor in the pic with Tam has obviously lost his helmet and musket to a Virginia plunderer, by the way.
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There was an encampment as well so we spent some time watching the reenactors; Sarah's seen reenactors doing later periods but the 1600s stuff was a bit new for all of us. We have a friend who does 18th century and have seen a fair number of civil war reenactments, but the 17th century stuff was different enough to be in
teresting -- although Sarah declared that the battle part "stunk," she showed interest in visiting the encampment beforehand.Reenactors of course can never recreate the past, which really is and always remains another country; a reminder of this came at the end of the battle when a group of girls in bikinis, possibly from the college adjacent or from a boat on the river, wandered through the reenactment area, in rather stark contrast to the guys in 17th century halberds and helmets. I have no idea what the girls were doing there (it was a bit warm but still October) but it made for considerable comment. [UPDATE: It belatedly occurred to me the next day that this could have been a deliberate college prank, showing up in bikinis -- I don't think any were in one-piece suits -- at a 1600s reenactment. Assuming college students still do stunts like they used to.] [UPDATE 2: When I mentioned this to Tam she said, "Sure, I figured it was a prank all along. They were all in black, skimpy suits. What else could it be?" Okay, I'm slow, but I got there eventually.] The pirates, having been repelled, retreated in the same direction as the girls, but that may have been coincidence. It would have made a great picture but it happened too quickly and I had the camera turned off.
The 17th century reenactors, like civil war reenactors, tend to be on the heavy-set side: rather more so than I suspect the first settlers of Lord Baltimore's proprietary really were. (The movies "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals" used renenactors for battle scenes, but some of them look a lot better fed than your average Confederate infantryman.)
More on the day in a bit. As usual I don't post pictures of Sarah's face on the blog to respect her privacy.
A bit later: Although I knew Sarah hadn't enjoyed the "battle" that much (there weren't that many reenactors and 17th century firelocks take a long time to reload, so the musketry was scattered at best), I asked her what she had enjoyed most about the day: was it the reenactors' encampment where we were shown how they lived? No, she said: it was when I turned on the GPS in the car. And it does indeed work.
More tomorrow. This was an unplanned weekend but it's a fun one. I may not get the YouTube videos up till tomorrow or so.
The reenactor in the pic with Tam has obviously lost his helmet and musket to a Virginia plunderer, by the way.
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Friday, October 3, 2008
Road-Testing the New Toys
Friday night. Sarah, who got 100 on her spelling test today (much improved over last week), is sitting with me and when I say "let's have a family fun weekend" she answers, "It would be nice to stay in a hotel." Well, the problem is it's already Friday and we haven't made plans. "But I haven't tried out my Nintendo DS on a road trip." It isn't clear to me how the Nintendo DS would play any differently on a road trip than it does at home or in a restaurant, but I note the point.
Then Tam comes home. I mention the conversation. She says she was thinking the same thing. Thursday was our 15th wedding anniversary, so we've been celebrating, and despite the horrors on Wall Street, we still have some tax refunds and such. Tam says that she's missing water, since we did mountains for vacation and haven't seen the Bay or the ocean all year. So she's thinking of our old haunts in southern Maryland, on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay. Only an hour or two away.
Well, now that you mention it, I have a new laptop, and a new little GPS receiver, neither of which has been road tested. (The GPS finds Red Pine Street just fine, and requires the laptop to function -- couldn't afford the freestanding kind -- but I've been wanting to try it out.)
Okay, I'm supposed to finish a book chapter this weekend, but not for work -- for a reference book that pays only 100 pounds sterling. It's already late so an extra day or two won't matter. This will be an anniversary getaway.
So we made a reservation at our old haunts in Lexington Park, Maryland, near the Patuxent River Naval Air Station (Pax River), which lies near such sites as Solomon's Island, Point Lookout, Old St. Mary's City, etc. We'll road test the new toys and get away overnight on Saturday. This post from more than a year ago gives you the basic geography.
Ah, thinks I, I'm pretty sure St. Mary's City, the old historic site of Maryland's first capital, of which we are members, sent me something recently, so I check the old E-mail and sure enough I discover that tomorrow is a militia muster with colonial reenactors. Adding to the fun is the fact that the E-mail, like the web page I just linked to, mentions that you can:
And, of course, I realize that most American kids these days probably don't even study the English civil war. Most American history books jump from Jamestown and the Pilgrims to the preparatory stuff for the Revolution, like the French and Indian War.
More from the road test.
.
Then Tam comes home. I mention the conversation. She says she was thinking the same thing. Thursday was our 15th wedding anniversary, so we've been celebrating, and despite the horrors on Wall Street, we still have some tax refunds and such. Tam says that she's missing water, since we did mountains for vacation and haven't seen the Bay or the ocean all year. So she's thinking of our old haunts in southern Maryland, on the western shore of Chesapeake Bay. Only an hour or two away.
Well, now that you mention it, I have a new laptop, and a new little GPS receiver, neither of which has been road tested. (The GPS finds Red Pine Street just fine, and requires the laptop to function -- couldn't afford the freestanding kind -- but I've been wanting to try it out.)
Okay, I'm supposed to finish a book chapter this weekend, but not for work -- for a reference book that pays only 100 pounds sterling. It's already late so an extra day or two won't matter. This will be an anniversary getaway.
So we made a reservation at our old haunts in Lexington Park, Maryland, near the Patuxent River Naval Air Station (Pax River), which lies near such sites as Solomon's Island, Point Lookout, Old St. Mary's City, etc. We'll road test the new toys and get away overnight on Saturday. This post from more than a year ago gives you the basic geography.
Ah, thinks I, I'm pretty sure St. Mary's City, the old historic site of Maryland's first capital, of which we are members, sent me something recently, so I check the old E-mail and sure enough I discover that tomorrow is a militia muster with colonial reenactors. Adding to the fun is the fact that the E-mail, like the web page I just linked to, mentions that you can:
- Discover how able-bodied male colonists were required to arm themselves and be prepared to defend the colony against pirates, Virginians, and others intent on plundering.
And, of course, I realize that most American kids these days probably don't even study the English civil war. Most American history books jump from Jamestown and the Pilgrims to the preparatory stuff for the Revolution, like the French and Indian War.
More from the road test.
.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Barbecue, Blues, R&B, and "I Really Love Hiking!": The Last Day of Summer
A brief update on the weekend, in case I can't get back to it soon. After a stay-home day on Saturday, followed by an evening at Red Hot & Blue, where Sarah ate barbecue and bounced around to both blues and R&B (and on hearing Big Mama Thornton's original version of "You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog" said "Isn't this a classic?" and "Didn't Elvis do a version?" I knew once again that we're raising her right. (She did ask if Big Mama was a man or a woman. Fair question when the voice gets husky, I think. And when I started to explain about Carl Perkins doing "Blue Suede Shoes" first, she zoned out.) She likes barbecue now -- the meat, not the sandwich, the sweet sauce, not the vinegar or hot, the inside meat, not the browned outside meat, etc. -- but any decent barbecue eater is picky.
Today after church she said she wanted to do some nature hiking so we went out to Manassas Battlefield. Our eastern battlefields are often our finest outdoor preserves; she had already had to hear my lecture at Antietam over Labor Day how the site of the bloodiest single day in American history was such a beautiful spot today. She insisted on walking a trail she knows -- the old Unfinished Railroad from Sudley Road westward, key to the Second Manassas battle -- and though we saw nothing more "nature" than a bunch of weird mushrooms, it was good to get outdoors on the last day of summer (Fall starts tomorrow morning) and it was a spectacular day. 80ish, not a cloud to speak of, dry. Hot when in open sun, but just great.
We then stopped at a Best Buy in Manassas to get a B-17 Nintendo DS game for Tam which Sarah then adopted as her own (the DS was her present from the tax stimulus plan), and some other stuff. We got ice cream at a 7-11, ate it in the car, and headed home. One of the things we bought was a DVD of The Princess Bride, one of my all-time favorite movies, which Sarah liked.
More as we go along, but now that she's into barbecue as well as chili I'm convinced that environment does trump heredity sometimes (though her Hunan genes may lean her toward chilis).
.
Today after church she said she wanted to do some nature hiking so we went out to Manassas Battlefield. Our eastern battlefields are often our finest outdoor preserves; she had already had to hear my lecture at Antietam over Labor Day how the site of the bloodiest single day in American history was such a beautiful spot today. She insisted on walking a trail she knows -- the old Unfinished Railroad from Sudley Road westward, key to the Second Manassas battle -- and though we saw nothing more "nature" than a bunch of weird mushrooms, it was good to get outdoors on the last day of summer (Fall starts tomorrow morning) and it was a spectacular day. 80ish, not a cloud to speak of, dry. Hot when in open sun, but just great.
We then stopped at a Best Buy in Manassas to get a B-17 Nintendo DS game for Tam which Sarah then adopted as her own (the DS was her present from the tax stimulus plan), and some other stuff. We got ice cream at a 7-11, ate it in the car, and headed home. One of the things we bought was a DVD of The Princess Bride, one of my all-time favorite movies, which Sarah liked.
More as we go along, but now that she's into barbecue as well as chili I'm convinced that environment does trump heredity sometimes (though her Hunan genes may lean her toward chilis).
.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Bringing things up to date
I've been busy; except for my long, rambling 9/11 meditation I haven't posted much since Labor Day. One of the reasons was the purchase, already mentioned, of the new laptop, plus Tropical Storm Hannah's visit; it takes a while to get all the computers talking to each other (I had to network a Windows ME computer, which becomes Sarah's now (and which I hope to clean up enough to load XP), with one running XP and one running Vista; I'm rather surprised I succeeded. Those of you using Macs will, as always, wonder why we even bother. Because all our employers are PC-based. Betamax was better than VHS, too, but it didn't win.) That's mostly up to speed now (a printer or two still to install to it, but all three computers are talking nice). And Sarah of course is plunging into third grade, and I'm on deadline for the fall issue at work, and so on and so forth.
The new laptop will be good on trips, since it has a built-in webcam, and a lot of power, compared to the aging 2001 laptop (bought just before we went to China) or even to our desktop, now about two years old.
Oh, and yesterday was my birthday. I'm 61. I have no idea how this happened. Last I remember, I was about 27. Anyway it doesn't inspire the same reflections I had on turning 60, since it's not quite the same sort of marker, but I guess I should note it. And to return to the theme I first laid out in this post, Churchill turned 61 in 1935. He was very much in the political wilderness, and the following year, when he turned 62, he would burn all his bridges by supporting King Edward VIII against his own party in the abdication crisis. So obviously he was a failure, right? Oh, yeah, later he saved Western Civilization. There's hope for us Geezers yet.
The new laptop will be good on trips, since it has a built-in webcam, and a lot of power, compared to the aging 2001 laptop (bought just before we went to China) or even to our desktop, now about two years old.
Oh, and yesterday was my birthday. I'm 61. I have no idea how this happened. Last I remember, I was about 27. Anyway it doesn't inspire the same reflections I had on turning 60, since it's not quite the same sort of marker, but I guess I should note it. And to return to the theme I first laid out in this post, Churchill turned 61 in 1935. He was very much in the political wilderness, and the following year, when he turned 62, he would burn all his bridges by supporting King Edward VIII against his own party in the abdication crisis. So obviously he was a failure, right? Oh, yeah, later he saved Western Civilization. There's hope for us Geezers yet.
I won't add much at this point to our posts on the vacation and the Labor Day weekend away, but I will note that between August 8 and September 1, less than a month, we managed to be in seven states* and the District of Columbia. While we weren't trying to carve notches in our van's hood or anything, Sarah found this interesting. (We were also within 20 miles of Pennsylvania but couldn't bring ourselves to do it: Sarah's been in Pennsylvania before anyway. The only really artificial trip in that lot was the brief foray into South Carolina, blogged about here, and we weren't really trying for some kind of record even then.
More when I can. Be merciful. I'm 61.
*Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Maryland and West Virginia, plus DC.
.
More when I can. Be merciful. I'm 61.
*Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Maryland and West Virginia, plus DC.
.
Monday, September 15, 2008
The First Weeks of Third Grade
I haven't blogged much lately except about our weekend trips and 9/11, but of course in the midst of all this Sarah started third grade just before Labor Day. So far she seems to like it. She's still in Catholic school at Corpus Christi, but we've talked about moving her to public school next year, a real savings in money and something she claims to want. But I'm not certain that we'll do it if she changes her mind, since she seems happy at Corpus Christi, despite the financial sacrifice involved. (Of course, the economic blows hitting the economy right now could make the decision for us.)
Her teacher, Miss Bird, she seems to like, though she was hoping to get the other teacher, Miss Kay, who hatches baby chicks in her classroom. But she likes Miss Bird and so, after only a couple of meetings, do we. She's from southwest Virginia so she has a good up-country southern accent, something Sarah needs to get used to since it's close enough to Ozark and other highland south accents to get her used to hearing more of her kinfolk.
Homework hasn't been too burdensome yet, and Sarah is doing choir practice.
More as we go along.
Her teacher, Miss Bird, she seems to like, though she was hoping to get the other teacher, Miss Kay, who hatches baby chicks in her classroom. But she likes Miss Bird and so, after only a couple of meetings, do we. She's from southwest Virginia so she has a good up-country southern accent, something Sarah needs to get used to since it's close enough to Ozark and other highland south accents to get her used to hearing more of her kinfolk.
Homework hasn't been too burdensome yet, and Sarah is doing choir practice.
More as we go along.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
9/11 and 1968: Memories
Seven years on. This is a family blog, so I'll leave politics out of it, though obviously as a Middle East specialist 9/11 cut close to the bone. But I don't think I've ever recorded in words the experiences of that morning.
It was, here as in New York, a gloriously perfect autumn morning. Blue skies, perfect weather, everything idyllic. Tam was in her last week of maternity leave (we'd adopted Sarah in July; she was returning to work the following week I believe) and, to prepare Sarah for day care, we'd started her on half days at Miss Adela's day care on Monday. 9/11 was a Tuesday of course, Sarah's second day. As we dropped her off at a little before 9, we saw Miss Adela (a Peruvian day care provider who goes to our church) watching the first tower afire. A plane had hit it; I thought immediately of the World War II bomber that had hit the Empire State building in a fog, but how with modern navigation could such an accident happen?
I was planning to go in to work a little later; we went home, turned the TV on, and learned the second plane had hit. At this point we knew that New York was under attack. I was well aware that the idea of using airplanes as weapons was not new: as far back as 1972 the Israelis shot down a straying Libyan airliner they suspected of such a motive; Ramzi Yousef, of course, had planned a multi-aircraft attack in Asia. Not everyone knew this but I certainly did. Cautiously enough I said to Tam that this might not be a good day to go to the Capitol or Pentagon for business, but since Tam was on maternity leave that wasn't a big issue.
I left for work. Driving in on Route 50, listening to all-news radio for the news from New York, I reached a point on 50 where the road points virtually due east straight towards Fort Myer and you can see the Washington Monument centered ahead of you. Suddenly big billowing clouds of black smoke were rising in front of me. It looked like either a fuel or ammunition fire, something stoking itself, not just a house or building fire but something with flammables, and I immediately thought that what was happening in New York had now moved to Washington. I thought of the Pentagon, or perhaps the USA Today towers (as they then were) in Rosslyn, or something on the National Mall. I'll admit I thought of the Pentagon first because we seemed to be on a straight line with it. Nothing on the radio yet, then suddenly an announcer broke into the reports from New York to say there were reports that a helicopter had crashed into the Pentagon. (The plane did come in roughly on the side with the helicopter pad, and perhaps that led to the confusion.) I pulled off Route 50 and turned the car around: instinctively I wanted to be with my family, not at work, and I tried to call Tam on my cell, but couldn't get a signal (no one could that day). I drove back home, called work and told them I'd not be in till I knew what was going on, and discussed with Tam what we should do. We both agreed to go to Miss Adela's and pick up Sarah. It was a day for families to be together.
While at Miss Adela's we heard sirens everywhere, and at one point a muffled boom -- this I think was a secondary fuel tank explosion mentioned in a few of the accounts of the Pentagon crash, but I recognized it as an explosion and decided still more must be happening (by this time the White House and Capitol had been evacuated, there were reports of a car bomb at the State Department, and chaos was taking over). We brought Sarah home.
She was just a toddler, not yet speaking more than a few words, and though she didn't understand what was going on she picked up our tension and reflected it. We took her to the local playground and played on the swings, and I think Tam went back later with neighbors.
I still have that image of the black cloud rising over the Pentagon, straight ahead of my car on Route 50. And it then -- and since -- evokes the one other time I have seen Washington burning.
Usually in college Easter break was too short for a trip to Missouri, but in 1968 (spring of my Junior year at Georgetown) I decided to leave earlier than the official break (didn't have any exams just before the break) and scheduled a flight home on April 5. The night of April 4, Martin Luther King was assassinated. The next morning as I went to the airport the city was under siege, riots having gone on all night. The white cabbie, I remember, was full of racist invective all the way to the airport, the sort of thing you don't hear anymore, at least from cab drivers expecting to be paid. (It was along the line of "the n------- are really going wild" and such like that). I stood at National Airport waiting for my flight and seeing three or four large black columns of smoke rising over the city across the river: the seventh street corridor, the 14th street corridor, the H street NE corridor.... and of course the Capitol Dome and the Washington Monument clearly interspersed among the columns of acrid smoke.
Those two sets of black smoke columns, 33 and a half years apart, will always be burned together in my mind: our nation's capital in flames. I know they were different events and not really comparable, but black smoke over my country's symbols.
Later in 2001 we took Sarah in her stroller to Arlington National Cemetery for a B-52 flyby. We stood on the ridgeline in Arlington Cemetery, looking down on the great black gash in the Pentagon building -- a gash that was gone completely by the first anniversary, unlike the great hole that still stands in New York -- and as I looked at the gash I saw the thousands of small white headstones, row on row, of Arlington Cemetery, of all our war dead, and knew as we all did that there were now going to be more because of that gash in the Pentagon ... and the B-52 came by, and we went home, and you know the rest. Today they dedicated the permanent Pentagon memorial. New York says its memorial is still years from completion. The Pentagon memorial may be finished but Arlington Cemetery is still growing...
Back in 1915, after the battle of Ypres (pronounced by British soldiers not as ee-pr but as Wipers, an endearing sign of Englishmen's eternal refusal to learn French) the Canadian soldier John McCrae looked at similar rows of graves and famously wrote:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row...
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Such words, from the War to End Wars (it didn't, actually) can still inspire (and are, or at least were, iconic in Canadian patriotic rhetoric when it existed), but we should also remember the other observation by another poet (Wilfrid Owen) of the same war:
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
And a modern evocation of the same theme from 1976 in Australian Eric Bogle's Green Fields of France (also known as Willie McBride or No Man's Land and sung a lot in Irish pubs)
And I can't help but wonder, young Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
Since we're doing the "British poets of World War I" (and a Canadian and a modern Australian to boot) seminar I should mention that one of my Dad's favorite poems was one that I think has been more or less neglected lately, Rupert Brooke's
IF I should die, think only this of me;
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
That has little to do with the war as such, but my Dad liked to quote it as a poem many soldiers empathized with (it is in fact titled just "The Soldier"). And it's my blog and I can write what I want. Brooke did die in that war, not in combat but of a mosquito bite -- on his way to Gallipoli. His corner of a foreign field that is forever England is on the Greek island of Skyros.
There is absolutely no political agenda in my quoting these: war is hell, as Cump Sherman said (and he did a lot to make it so), but it is also the lot of man, and World War I was a particularly stupid and pointless and bloody one, though three of my uncles (my mother was the youngest in the family of 12, so the siblings ranged over 25 years) fought in that war and a great-uncle lost the sight of one eye as a Marine in Belleau Wood. My ancestors have fought in most American wars, and on September 11 we were not asking for it, and for all my qualms about Iraq I've never doubted we had to take out the Taliban in Afghanistan. We must honor those who fight for us, but never glorify the horrors of war. Sun Tzu was right that the best war is the one in which you win without ever engaging the enemy (by maneuver alone), but I don't think even Sun Tzu ever saw such a war, and for all our idealism, as Plato said, only the dead have seen the end of war. And with that, I'll try to come back on a more cheerful note.
Remember 9/11, but don't confuse justice with vendetta. We survived 9/11, like we survived Pearl Harbor and the Alamo. But we remember. And there's still a big hole in New York. And I guess the rest of us, too.
More another time.
It was, here as in New York, a gloriously perfect autumn morning. Blue skies, perfect weather, everything idyllic. Tam was in her last week of maternity leave (we'd adopted Sarah in July; she was returning to work the following week I believe) and, to prepare Sarah for day care, we'd started her on half days at Miss Adela's day care on Monday. 9/11 was a Tuesday of course, Sarah's second day. As we dropped her off at a little before 9, we saw Miss Adela (a Peruvian day care provider who goes to our church) watching the first tower afire. A plane had hit it; I thought immediately of the World War II bomber that had hit the Empire State building in a fog, but how with modern navigation could such an accident happen?
I was planning to go in to work a little later; we went home, turned the TV on, and learned the second plane had hit. At this point we knew that New York was under attack. I was well aware that the idea of using airplanes as weapons was not new: as far back as 1972 the Israelis shot down a straying Libyan airliner they suspected of such a motive; Ramzi Yousef, of course, had planned a multi-aircraft attack in Asia. Not everyone knew this but I certainly did. Cautiously enough I said to Tam that this might not be a good day to go to the Capitol or Pentagon for business, but since Tam was on maternity leave that wasn't a big issue.
I left for work. Driving in on Route 50, listening to all-news radio for the news from New York, I reached a point on 50 where the road points virtually due east straight towards Fort Myer and you can see the Washington Monument centered ahead of you. Suddenly big billowing clouds of black smoke were rising in front of me. It looked like either a fuel or ammunition fire, something stoking itself, not just a house or building fire but something with flammables, and I immediately thought that what was happening in New York had now moved to Washington. I thought of the Pentagon, or perhaps the USA Today towers (as they then were) in Rosslyn, or something on the National Mall. I'll admit I thought of the Pentagon first because we seemed to be on a straight line with it. Nothing on the radio yet, then suddenly an announcer broke into the reports from New York to say there were reports that a helicopter had crashed into the Pentagon. (The plane did come in roughly on the side with the helicopter pad, and perhaps that led to the confusion.) I pulled off Route 50 and turned the car around: instinctively I wanted to be with my family, not at work, and I tried to call Tam on my cell, but couldn't get a signal (no one could that day). I drove back home, called work and told them I'd not be in till I knew what was going on, and discussed with Tam what we should do. We both agreed to go to Miss Adela's and pick up Sarah. It was a day for families to be together.
While at Miss Adela's we heard sirens everywhere, and at one point a muffled boom -- this I think was a secondary fuel tank explosion mentioned in a few of the accounts of the Pentagon crash, but I recognized it as an explosion and decided still more must be happening (by this time the White House and Capitol had been evacuated, there were reports of a car bomb at the State Department, and chaos was taking over). We brought Sarah home.
She was just a toddler, not yet speaking more than a few words, and though she didn't understand what was going on she picked up our tension and reflected it. We took her to the local playground and played on the swings, and I think Tam went back later with neighbors.
I still have that image of the black cloud rising over the Pentagon, straight ahead of my car on Route 50. And it then -- and since -- evokes the one other time I have seen Washington burning.
Usually in college Easter break was too short for a trip to Missouri, but in 1968 (spring of my Junior year at Georgetown) I decided to leave earlier than the official break (didn't have any exams just before the break) and scheduled a flight home on April 5. The night of April 4, Martin Luther King was assassinated. The next morning as I went to the airport the city was under siege, riots having gone on all night. The white cabbie, I remember, was full of racist invective all the way to the airport, the sort of thing you don't hear anymore, at least from cab drivers expecting to be paid. (It was along the line of "the n------- are really going wild" and such like that). I stood at National Airport waiting for my flight and seeing three or four large black columns of smoke rising over the city across the river: the seventh street corridor, the 14th street corridor, the H street NE corridor.... and of course the Capitol Dome and the Washington Monument clearly interspersed among the columns of acrid smoke.
Those two sets of black smoke columns, 33 and a half years apart, will always be burned together in my mind: our nation's capital in flames. I know they were different events and not really comparable, but black smoke over my country's symbols.
Later in 2001 we took Sarah in her stroller to Arlington National Cemetery for a B-52 flyby. We stood on the ridgeline in Arlington Cemetery, looking down on the great black gash in the Pentagon building -- a gash that was gone completely by the first anniversary, unlike the great hole that still stands in New York -- and as I looked at the gash I saw the thousands of small white headstones, row on row, of Arlington Cemetery, of all our war dead, and knew as we all did that there were now going to be more because of that gash in the Pentagon ... and the B-52 came by, and we went home, and you know the rest. Today they dedicated the permanent Pentagon memorial. New York says its memorial is still years from completion. The Pentagon memorial may be finished but Arlington Cemetery is still growing...
Back in 1915, after the battle of Ypres (pronounced by British soldiers not as ee-pr but as Wipers, an endearing sign of Englishmen's eternal refusal to learn French) the Canadian soldier John McCrae looked at similar rows of graves and famously wrote:
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row...
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
Such words, from the War to End Wars (it didn't, actually) can still inspire (and are, or at least were, iconic in Canadian patriotic rhetoric when it existed), but we should also remember the other observation by another poet (Wilfrid Owen) of the same war:
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
And a modern evocation of the same theme from 1976 in Australian Eric Bogle's Green Fields of France (also known as Willie McBride or No Man's Land and sung a lot in Irish pubs)
And I can't help but wonder, young Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you "The Cause?"
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain,
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again.
Did they Beat the drum slowly, did the play the pipes lowly?
Did the rifles fire o'er you as they lowered you down?
Did the bugles sound The Last Post in chorus?
Did the pipes play the Flowers of the Forest?
Since we're doing the "British poets of World War I" (and a Canadian and a modern Australian to boot) seminar I should mention that one of my Dad's favorite poems was one that I think has been more or less neglected lately, Rupert Brooke's
IF I should die, think only this of me;
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
That has little to do with the war as such, but my Dad liked to quote it as a poem many soldiers empathized with (it is in fact titled just "The Soldier"). And it's my blog and I can write what I want. Brooke did die in that war, not in combat but of a mosquito bite -- on his way to Gallipoli. His corner of a foreign field that is forever England is on the Greek island of Skyros.
There is absolutely no political agenda in my quoting these: war is hell, as Cump Sherman said (and he did a lot to make it so), but it is also the lot of man, and World War I was a particularly stupid and pointless and bloody one, though three of my uncles (my mother was the youngest in the family of 12, so the siblings ranged over 25 years) fought in that war and a great-uncle lost the sight of one eye as a Marine in Belleau Wood. My ancestors have fought in most American wars, and on September 11 we were not asking for it, and for all my qualms about Iraq I've never doubted we had to take out the Taliban in Afghanistan. We must honor those who fight for us, but never glorify the horrors of war. Sun Tzu was right that the best war is the one in which you win without ever engaging the enemy (by maneuver alone), but I don't think even Sun Tzu ever saw such a war, and for all our idealism, as Plato said, only the dead have seen the end of war. And with that, I'll try to come back on a more cheerful note.
Remember 9/11, but don't confuse justice with vendetta. We survived 9/11, like we survived Pearl Harbor and the Alamo. But we remember. And there's still a big hole in New York. And I guess the rest of us, too.
More another time.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
Update
Okay, we returned from the Labor Day weekend to a load of work. Then on my day off, Friday, I picked up Sarah at 3:20 rather than letting her go to extended day, and we went and spent our shares of our stimulus payment (we filed late so we just got it). I bought the new laptop I've long needed (the old one was bought in 2001 before leaving for China), and Sarah got a Nintendo DS. I've been struggling all weekend to get software loaded, bookmarks moved, etc. etc. Yesterday we were rained in all day by Tropical Storm Hannah, but today was lovely and we went to my old alma mater, Georgetown, to show it to Sarah for the first time. Reflections another time.
Monday, September 1, 2008
Almost Heaven, West Virginia...
Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River...
Okay, John Denver's dead, and a lot of his songs seem pretty dated now. But I suspect that Country Roads, along with Rocky Mountain High, are going to live on, if only because the states of West Virginia and Colorado have dined off of them for so long. But Country Roads was a good theme for this trip, in the Eastern Panhandle, the only part of West Virginia where the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah are found (the rest of them are in Virginia proper, before the secessionist Wheeling Entity broke away...)
Anyhow, Sarah likes Country Roads., having heard it for the first time on this West Virginia expedition. Denver didn't write it; Bill and Taffy Danoff, a local DC couple (then, I think they're divorced long since) who played at the old Cellar Door in Georgetown (now unfortunately a cheesesteak chain place) did. The Cellar Door, and Desperados across the street, are written up widely on the Web by nostalgic DC music buffs; two of the greatest music venues of all time are now routine restaurants. But I don't think either's a Starbucks yet.
I have my doubts about some of Denver's stuff (dated, sentimental, pc) but I still love Country Roads. Partly memories of my youth, partly my own Ozark heritage. Some of the lyrics don't fit together real well: "Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River" point to the Eastern Panhandle, while "Miner's Lady" and "dark and dusty, painted on the sky" seem to point to the coal mining country, which is farther south and west. (This is of course assuming the Danoffs had ever been in West Virginia, which I don't know for certain.) And "misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye" is curious, since certainly moonshine can produce teardrops (if not overt bleeding from the eyes) but "misty" is not the usual adjective one applies to mountain busthead, though perhaps neither the Danoffs nor Denver ever tasted any. Actually I've only tasted homemade once that I know of, over 40 years ago (not counting a brief chemistry experiment in high school when the nuns weren't looking), but I've had legally produced raw corn liquor other times -- you can buy it in Virginia ("Virginia Lightning, guaranteed aged less than 30 days" and bottled near Culpeper) and most other southern states, legally made with the tax stamp -- and I'd suggest that West Virginia's other motto "Wild and Wonderful" might fit, as might "Wheee-haw!," but I'd keep "misty" for your Creme de Menthe and orange liqueurs.
Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, the third day of our trip. We left Martinsburg, drove over the mountains to Berkeley Springs, WV, a place Sarah has been several times. One of the country's oldest hot spring spas, staked out by George Washington, Sarah loves the fact that she can wade in the springs and pools and catch crayfish, minnows, tadpoles. Etc. The park in the middle of town is a state park, and she insisted on eating again at Maria's Garden and Inn, a place that really gives meaning to the phrase "more Catholic than the Pope," since it is covered in religious icons of various kinds, pictures of Padre Pio and other Catholic figures, and enough statues to start a museum. As Sarah put it, "whoever started this place must be religious." As I put it, "This place would make the average Southern Baptist's head explode."
And the food's good.
We then headed home. If you've been paying attention (and there will be a quiz) we don't like Interstates. We headed down to Winchester, VA, stopped at the Virginia Farm Market near Winchester to stock up, then headed home via the Snickersville Turnpike, now Virginia 734, an old, narrow road across Loudon County that is much nicer than any other route home, with one-lane bridges and narrow passages under lowering trees.
For much of the final part of the trip we were playing a CD of gospel music (Alison Krauss, Elvis, Elvis and the "Million Dollar Quartet" (Elvis jamming with Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins at Sun Studios in Memphis), Tennessee Ernie, Al Green and others, while Sarah watched "Duck Soup" on the DVD player (I told you we're raising her right!). Almost heaven indeed with the afternoon sun going down over the Virginia Piedmont.
I'll post more on my reflections on this weekend but these last three posts have been intended to ensure the basic chronology is remembered.
.
.
Okay, John Denver's dead, and a lot of his songs seem pretty dated now. But I suspect that Country Roads, along with Rocky Mountain High, are going to live on, if only because the states of West Virginia and Colorado have dined off of them for so long. But Country Roads was a good theme for this trip, in the Eastern Panhandle, the only part of West Virginia where the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah are found (the rest of them are in Virginia proper, before the secessionist Wheeling Entity broke away...)
Anyhow, Sarah likes Country Roads., having heard it for the first time on this West Virginia expedition. Denver didn't write it; Bill and Taffy Danoff, a local DC couple (then, I think they're divorced long since) who played at the old Cellar Door in Georgetown (now unfortunately a cheesesteak chain place) did. The Cellar Door, and Desperados across the street, are written up widely on the Web by nostalgic DC music buffs; two of the greatest music venues of all time are now routine restaurants. But I don't think either's a Starbucks yet.
I have my doubts about some of Denver's stuff (dated, sentimental, pc) but I still love Country Roads. Partly memories of my youth, partly my own Ozark heritage. Some of the lyrics don't fit together real well: "Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River" point to the Eastern Panhandle, while "Miner's Lady" and "dark and dusty, painted on the sky" seem to point to the coal mining country, which is farther south and west. (This is of course assuming the Danoffs had ever been in West Virginia, which I don't know for certain.) And "misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye" is curious, since certainly moonshine can produce teardrops (if not overt bleeding from the eyes) but "misty" is not the usual adjective one applies to mountain busthead, though perhaps neither the Danoffs nor Denver ever tasted any. Actually I've only tasted homemade once that I know of, over 40 years ago (not counting a brief chemistry experiment in high school when the nuns weren't looking), but I've had legally produced raw corn liquor other times -- you can buy it in Virginia ("Virginia Lightning, guaranteed aged less than 30 days" and bottled near Culpeper) and most other southern states, legally made with the tax stamp -- and I'd suggest that West Virginia's other motto "Wild and Wonderful" might fit, as might "Wheee-haw!," but I'd keep "misty" for your Creme de Menthe and orange liqueurs.
Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, the third day of our trip. We left Martinsburg, drove over the mountains to Berkeley Springs, WV, a place Sarah has been several times. One of the country's oldest hot spring spas, staked out by George Washington, Sarah loves the fact that she can wade in the springs and pools and catch crayfish, minnows, tadpoles. Etc. The park in the middle of town is a state park, and she insisted on eating again at Maria's Garden and Inn, a place that really gives meaning to the phrase "more Catholic than the Pope," since it is covered in religious icons of various kinds, pictures of Padre Pio and other Catholic figures, and enough statues to start a museum. As Sarah put it, "whoever started this place must be religious." As I put it, "This place would make the average Southern Baptist's head explode."
And the food's good.
We then headed home. If you've been paying attention (and there will be a quiz) we don't like Interstates. We headed down to Winchester, VA, stopped at the Virginia Farm Market near Winchester to stock up, then headed home via the Snickersville Turnpike, now Virginia 734, an old, narrow road across Loudon County that is much nicer than any other route home, with one-lane bridges and narrow passages under lowering trees.
For much of the final part of the trip we were playing a CD of gospel music (Alison Krauss, Elvis, Elvis and the "Million Dollar Quartet" (Elvis jamming with Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins at Sun Studios in Memphis), Tennessee Ernie, Al Green and others, while Sarah watched "Duck Soup" on the DVD player (I told you we're raising her right!). Almost heaven indeed with the afternoon sun going down over the Virginia Piedmont.
I'll post more on my reflections on this weekend but these last three posts have been intended to ensure the basic chronology is remembered.
.
.
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