It seems like a long 48 hours, but Blogger seems to have chased down and beaten to death whatever was breaking it.I won't try and pretend I had something brilliant and couldn't post it, but it was fiercely annoying to know that if I had I couldn't. Minor irritation, but still, irking to find how much time I spend fiddling with the thing.
I checked the comments on the "Columbus" post the other day and realized with some chagrin that I had not posted since the third of this month; more than a week, and that's bad blogging, even for me.
The thing is...I'm frankly bloody discouraged - to the point of real despondence - by the failure of my liberal compatriots to be willing to go bareknuckle against the Teatard Insurgency that comprises the current GOP and force the government to shut down rather than to accept one more cut in the Death of One Thousand Cuts that the Remoras of Oligarchy are working on the U.S. I grew up in.
I just haven't had the heart to blog about that because the result would be a furiously incendiary angry rant, and one that I can't even promise to make entertaining because the object of my fury wouldn't be the caricature-able morons of the Right (from whom I no longer expect even coherence, much less actual governance) but the "centerist" Democrats, the Obamites and Clintonistas, that are all that's left to represent "me" in U.S. politics. There's nothing funny about that crew, and even their cravenness is a calculating, bloodless sort that defies open mockery; it would be like trying to get all wisecracky and snarky on an Arthur Andersen audit.
There's just nothing to work with there except sick bile and rage.
And I don't know about anyone else, but as one who has been to one of those wedding receptions where the family curmudgeon gets bombed on shitkeg beer and explodes on everyone to the cousins of the third degree who have insulted, ignored, belittled, or whatever his alcohol-battered brain interprets as disrespected him over the past forty years...well, it's not pretty, it's not enlightening, and it's not really entertaining except in a debutante-falling-down-the-staircase sort of way.
And right now I don't really have the heart to blog about anything else. I feel like I'm watching a bunch of overprivleged frat boys beat the nation I loved, the nation I grew up in and helped make me a man, down to the size of some shitty little Second World kleptocracy whilst half of the pundits applaud and the other half tut-tut in helpless kerflustery.
This whole standing-by-while-the-world-ends-not-with-a-bang-but-with-a-tea-party feeling seems like it will result in a blog post. But I'm just not big enough to write it right now.
It's like we're driving off a fucking cliff with one bunch of fucking idiots slamming Natty Lights and stomping on the gas pedal while the other bunch makes little hamster noises and flutters their fingers over the steering wheel, and I'm supposed to find a blog post in me to somehow change that. I feel like I'm watching some beloved friend suck the shotgun while desperately trying to explain why this might not be such a good idea.
Here's a good example of the kind of thing I'm despairing, from the New York Times:
"Passengers fainted when a 5-foot hole opened in the roof of a Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 flying from Phoenix to Sacramento last week. The most frightening moment may have been when, as one passenger said, “You could look out and see blue sky.” It was an unusual episode in an industry with a strong safety record. But that record might be hard to sustain: on the very day that Southwest’s Flight 812 was diverted to Yuma, Ariz., for an emergency landing, the House of Representatives passed a bill likely to make it more difficult to detect and prevent midair ruptures, metal fatigue and other serious flight risks. The bill would cut $4 billion from the Federal Aviation Administration’s $37 billion budget...(an) agency (which) has been short-staffed for years. A $4 billion cut will necessarily reduce the work force further."
What the fuck can you do with a story like that? Where's the bloggage there?
What sane fucking country would do things like that? Cut back on airliner inspections - what could go wrong? Who could figure that one out? And what the hell can I, a middle-aged geologist in Portland, Oregon, without political connections or the cash to buy them, do the fuck about that if the so-called smart people who run the country can't?
Except fucking swear at the fucking screen and wonder what the hell happened to the fucking country that used to defeat Nazis and cure diseases and now seems to be about nothing but sucking up to rich people and fiscal frottage for big commerce?
So I beg your indulgence for another day or so of silence. I will be back, I promise.
Missed my internal deadline for the Battle for November, so the Battle of Unsan will be coming your way this week. It's just been a busy, rainy week and I've been getting home dirty, tired, and wet. Not conducive to good blogging.
I note in passing the relative insignificance of this little blog, sadly, in comparing the reaction to this post here - nothing - to the same post over at MilPub; a host of comments and discussion about the Christmas Tree Moron and his FBI-fueled fantasy.
I'm glad that people like MilPub. I'm just a little sad to see this place decline into a naething.
I'm up late after "Back-to-school-night" at our little Astor Elementary. The usual hyperkinetic crowd of kids, kidlets, and megakids with their adults in tow variously entertained, bemused, doting, baffled, or bored.Followed by an evening of homework (for the Boy) and "art projects" (for the Girl) topped off with a screening of the Disney Classic "Beverly Hills Chihuahua".
Surely you remember "Beverly Hills Chihuahua"?
Yep, that "Beverly Hills Chihuahua";Dear God, my eyes.
Anyway, after getting the littles to bed I spent a while reading through the usual blogs and trying to think up a worthwhile post here.
No luck.
I checked a look at my sidebar and noticed what a strangely cyclic year this has been for me. January and February? Huge - a post a day or almost. Then after the winter rain the drought of Spring. March barely a post every two days, April even less, May found me parched for ideas; 12 posts all month.
And, suddenly, the creative juices flow again. June and July the old fire direction center was processing missions and cranking rounds downrange like a bunch of Vietnam redlegs with eight woodcutters and a whole troop of monkeys in the free-fire zone and a truckload of projos to fire up before the end of the fiscal year.
And then?
August, the worst so far. September, too, has been a wash. In these bleak months I just don't seem to find anything interesting to say.
What the hell? Is this some sort of symptom of some sort of odd manic-depression? The hallmark of wild swings from euphoria to lumpish inertia?
I have no idea.
Part of the problem, of course, is part of the solution that is MilPub. I have another outlet for my political and military ranting, so that part of this blog has pretty much gone. I haven't done much politicking here, and, frankly, even my sense of military outrage has just been ground down to a nub.
There seems to be no point in reminding the people who visit here - a small and self-selecting group who largely share my view - that the notion of sending armed GIs to swan about the rocky deserts of central Asia in hopes that while they're waiting some turbaned Paine or chitrali-capped Jefferson will turn up (or, perhaps, someone will put a round in the center-of-mass of the Evil Taliban Emperor and secure victory for Luke, Leia, and the Rebel Alliance) is about as sensible as my donning purple Speedos and a tank top and hanging around the Seven-Eleven on the corner of North Lombard and Wall in hopes that I will catch the eye of
Jamie Lee Curtis as she drives past on the way to Fred Meyer and she will stop to pick me up and take me home for a evening of spontaneous, uninhibited wild monkey sex. While entertaining as fantasy, as bases for long-term policy both are poor substitutes for actual reasoning regarding probabilities, costs, and benefits.
And what remains is pure personal maundering; kid stuff, family tales, storytelling, army tales, local news, personal opinion, or "...battles long ago."
It seems to me as if I'm reaching a point where I still have things to say, but that on the great issues others say them better. While on the small ones...well, those, perhaps, are what is left to me.The picture in the center in the snapshot above is my son's self-portrait, BTW. If you look closely you will see he has given himself glowing red and green eyes like a fictional sorcerer. I'm intrigued, yet he will explain nothing.
But in the interim, perhaps a bit of Wordsworth:
"Will no one tell me what she sings?-- Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow For old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago: Or is it some more humble lay, Familiar matter of to-day? Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain, That has been, and may be again?"
Well. Here it is, halfway through August and I have yet to find my voice. I am wandering about lost in midsummer, unable to find anything compelling to speak of. My family is fine, I'm actually on vacation at the moment, but I have been unable to get a moment to myself to sit and think, and write.
And I can't really find anything to write about that doesn't drive me batshit crazy.
So I am going down to the Oregon Coast with my family for a little while, in hopes of enjoying some quiet time in a peaceful stretch of the coastline near Tillamook. Hopefully the sea will work its way with me, as it has in the past, and restore a portion of breadth to my vision, and some depth to my reflection.Thalassa by Louis MacNeice
Run out the boat, my broken comrades; Let the old seaweed crack, the surge Burgeon oblivious of the last Embarkation of feckless men, Let every adverse force converge-- Here we must needs embark again.
Run up the sail, my heartsick comrades; Let each horizon tilt and lurch-- You know the worst: your wills are fickle, Your values blurred, your hearts impure And your past life a ruined church-- But let your poison be your cure.
Put out to sea, ignoble comrades, Whose record shall be noble yet; Butting through scarps of moving marble The narwhal dares us to be free; By a high star our course is set, Our end is Life. Put out to sea.
For those of you fellow military historians reading here you probably recognize the cry of Xenophon's troops at reaching the Black Sea, having marched back across Asia Minor:
"On the fifth day they reached the mountain, the name of which was Theches. No sooner had the men in front ascended it and caught sight of the sea than a great cry arose, and Xenophon, in the rearguard, catching the sound of it, conjectured that another set of enemies must surely be attacking in front...(b)ut as the shout became louder and nearer, and those who from time to time came up, began racing at the top of their speed towards the shouters, and the shouting continually recommenced with yet greater volume as the numbers increased, Xenophon settled in his mind that something extraordinary must have happened, so he mounted his horse, and taking with him Lycius and the cavalry, he galloped to the rescue. Presently they could hear the soldiers shouting and passing on the joyful word, "The sea! the sea!" (Book IV, Chapter VII)
I note in passing that the actual words these soldiers cried have been debated ever since. Were they shouting "Thalassa!" ("θάλασσα!"), which is the classical Greek for the word "sea" or "ocean"? Many historians, and many publishers, have believed so and copied the passage as such. But the mercenaries escaping Cyrus' disaster were largely Attic, and in the dialect of Αττική the word for sea is "θάλαττα" - "Thalatta". The soldiers would probably have shouted their happy news in their local tongue, and as such have I quoted them at the head of this post.
But thalassa or thalatta, Alexandra Lianeri does well to remind us that
"Most significantly, the march itself did not end at the glorious point of encountering the sea, and the next day revealed a gloomy picture contrasting with the shining moment of the shout.
The Ten Thousand did return to Greece, but there they found themselves as much at a loss as at the start of their journey: the political confusion they encountered when they crossed the Bosphorus left them isolated and without support. An escape story that began as a eulogy of the Greek achievement subverts itself by exposing Greek weakness."
The sea doesn't always afford us a means of escape, and even when it does, we often come to land only to find that we have been pursued by our own failings and futility. We can change our skies, but not ourselves. In the ripe heat of late summer, is it too late to hope that I can find some change of heart in a change of scene?
"Sometimes, in my green retreat, the weather makes a joke, with early falling leaves and snowy flowers. It’s August; nothing will change until we tell it to."
I just can't find anything to say that doesn't involve:
1. Domestic stuff that, while infinitely entertaining to me, isn't really worthwhile fodder for public conversations,
2. Public matters that I can provide neither intelligent discussion nor a unique perspective.
The sad fact is that, once again, my own present circumstances are fairly benign and even pleasant while it seems like the larger world is going to Hell in a handbasket with someone unpleasant - Newt Gingrich, perhaps?
I observe this, noting in passing that the top "news" stories on my Comcast webpage (unavoidable when checking mail, otherwise avoided like an orthodox rabbi walking wide of the Armour hot dog packing plant...) were something about Kate Couric making snarky comments about Sarah Palin's kid's names, and a woman who sent a text message with her toes while tied up by a burglar.
And the only real reaction I can manage to all of this is a sort of irritated grunt.
There seems to be nothing I can do about this idiocy, and to even attempt to tease out whatever threads of common sense are hidden within is to lend myself to the madness surrounding the celebritized, commercialized, Tea-Party-ized, Sarah-Palinized, moron-grade pottage that passes for the Velveeta brand of middlebrow American culture. I come away feeling vaguely unclean and with a strong urge to bite something, perhaps myself.
I have been thinking about teaching, learning, and education as I see it effecting this mess, and I want to post something about that. But that will have to wait a bit for my work schedule to ease off a little bit.
Until then, enjoy the great Ella Fitzgerald bringing you "Night and Day"...
I won't try and pretend I had something brilliant and couldn't post it, but it was fiercely annoying to know that if I had I couldn't. Minor irritation, but still, irking to find how much time I spend fiddling with the thing.
Followed by an evening of homework (for the Boy) and "art projects" (for the Girl) topped off with a screening of the Disney Classic "Beverly Hills Chihuahua".
The picture in the center in the snapshot above is my son's self-portrait, BTW. If you look closely you will see he has given himself glowing red and green eyes like a fictional sorcerer. I'm intrigued, yet he will explain nothing.
Thalassa by Louis MacNeice
