A Call to Wings

New Home

2012-01-25T09:20:00.002-09:00

Thank you for your patience everyone.

The next chapter has started at -
http://cradleofliberty.blogspot.com/

Turning the page - a love letter.

2011-12-25T21:19:00.003-09:00

Four and a half years ago, I moved to Alaska.

Since then, I have had the adventures of a lifetime.

I've felt the stillness of a snow-shrouded day, the only sound the hiss of snow under my runners and the loping of dogs in front of me. I've looked down from the window of a tiny plane alone in the sky, and saw wave after wave of mountains receding beneath us - most of them even now without a name or a human footprint.

I've stood in awe of moose towering over me, and laughed with otters dancing in the bay. I've read outside in the midnight sun, and gotten entirely too intimate with our state bird. I've cherished hot coffee in the dim dusk of a winter afternoon, and been hypnotized by the glowing white haze of a foggy winter night.

I know the knotted dread that comes with with seeing fireweed climb the stalk, the long peaceful calm of winter, and the giddy delight that comes from splashing in the year's first wet puddle.

This is a land without equal.

More than that - here I have met some of the best friends of my life.

Some have gone before me, others remain behind - but one and all they were Alaskan.

I love this land more than any place I have ever lived.
I love these people and this culture more than words can tell.

But I've found something - someone - I love more.
And so I'm leaving my home.

I think then that it's best to end this record here.

Time permitting (as way leads on to way...) I'll come back and fill in some missing details here or there, replace those images lost with my old domain a couple years back - maybe even wrap up a couple of those "to be continued" multi-part threads I've left hanging.

But this chapter of life is over.
Call to Wings is done.

Thank you all for coming along on this journey with me.

And don't worry y'all.
The next chapter will pick up at a new location along about the middle of January.
You don't get rid of me that easy!

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

PS... this is gonna be AWESOME.

Blessed Day!

2011-12-25T10:16:00.001-09:00

Whether this day finds you well or ill, whether you are with family loving and infuriating, or alone and feeling dark in the brightness of celebration - whether you are home, called to work, or looking towards your loved ones from a distant desert -

You are loved.
You are remembered.
You are treasured.

Merry Christmas!

Glória in excélsis Deo...

2011-12-23T22:53:00.000-09:00

Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men

Merry Christmas, y'all.
*sniff*

Gresham's purse.(II of II)

2011-12-12T21:33:00.001-09:00

... so why did that little packing incident come to mind?

It was a result of the book I've been picking at since my last stay in TJICistan - Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell.

The whole Roman history thing is slowly starting to come together in my head, after a year or two of books, podcasts, and lecture series. I won't say I feel comfortable with it yet, but at least the broad sweep of the narrative is starting to feel familiar.

Anyhow, I just got to this section on Emperor Diocletion's price controls. Once upon a time, a denarius was a silver coin about the size of a nickel. By the time of Diocletion the coin itself is out of use, though it remains a unit of account.

Now "a law some months earlier had set the value of a silver coin at 100 denarii and the silver-washed copper nummus at 25 and 4 denarri depending on its size."* Tracing back to Goldsworthy's source, it looks like even more importantly, "[Diocletian] continued to issue vast quantities of coper coins, particularly of the smaller denomination, where were not even plated with silver" (Jones, p.438)

For some reason, prices have started climbing. And so we get price controls. Mysteriously, people seem to be ignoring them:

The only literary source to mention the price edict derides it as an utter failure, ignored by merchants who knew that they could charge more for their goods. Papyri from Egypt do suggest that prices soon rose far beyond the supposed maximums established by the emperor. As far as we can tell it was abandoned fairly quickly, but at least one copy was maintained long enough for a few of the prices to be altered. In his long introduction to the edict, Diocletian reminded his audience of the stability and success his rule had brought, and claimed to be expressly concerned that his brave soldiers were being overcharged. There may also have been a desire to set rates at which the state would pay for goods and services regardless of the market price.

Diocletian's government lacked the machinery to enforce such a rigid pricing system on a day-to-day basis. Perhaps the most striking thing about the edict was its ambition - even if it was economically naive. Combined with the objective of profound change is the highly moral rhetoric. Talk of 'the peaceful state of the world' now that the 'seething ravages of barbarians peoples' have been restrained by great effort, is followed by outrage at a new evil attacking the soldiers. `There burns a raging greed, which hastens to its own growth and increase without respect for human kind.' A little later the emperor compared this greed to a religion. The tone is typical of the other legislative activity of the tetrarchs and of their recorded rescripts - replies issued to legal questions and appeals sent to the emperor. The sense of outrage was accompanied by savage and often inventively cruel punishments.

How Rome Fell
Adrian Goldsworthy
pp 170-171

Hunh....devalue the currency, print bushels of devalued money, then scream and yell that anyone who tries to keep up with your devaluation is greedy and mean spirited. Don't see that much anymore. ;)

Also? I found a new piece of ~~clutter~~ memorobia I want for the history room:

A copy of denarius issued by Brutus. One hint - "EID MAR" refers to "The Ides of March." That's also an early Libery Cap there between the pugiones on the reverse. Cool, hunh?

As an aside, just like "favorite founding fathers," I'm starting to get "favorite Romans." So far I think Brutus the Younger is far and away leading the pack**. Torn between duty to his country and loyalty to his friend - to say nothing of the weight of his familial heritage and social pressure - the guy went through a firestorm and rode it to the end.

Anyhow - on with the packing!

======================
* Goldsworthy p.170, referencing p.438 of
The later Roman Empire, 284-602: a social economic and administrative survey by Arnold Hugh Martin Jones

** Though OKAY I admit it. I have lust in my heart for Purefoy's portrayal of Antony. Shut up. ;)

Interstitial - day of rest

2011-12-12T01:41:00.003-09:00

Oh that was nice!

I had a fun afternoon in with History Friends. They were nicely set up with a stove and chicken coop, so they inherited my firewood stack and all the corn I had leftover from my parched corn endeavor of - gah! - last year already!

Anyhow, one of 'em's starting to get crazy into the longhunter thing, so we put on some parched corn in the woodstove -

The pot wasn't quite what I'd normally use - a deep pot instead of a spider or skillet, but it worked alright. And between the bacon grease and extra salt was soooo good.

I've been trying to learn Little Miss B on the Three Southern Food Groups - Hawg, and Cohn, and Weeds.

She especially liked the bacon.

Alright Miss B, I'm gonna teach you what my daddy taught me - repeat after me...

This hawg....
"this hog..."

"Na- this hawg...."
"this hog..."

*sigh*

"diyid not..."
"did not..."

"... dah in vayne."
"...die in vain"

Close enough! :)

A bit more hanging around, lots of talk of all sorts of things - then dinner and playing with the house chicken. Pretty good afternoon all told - hope yours was fine. Happy Sabbath, y'all.

Gresham's purse.(I of II)

2011-12-11T12:12:00.003-09:00

Once upon a time, my Daddy handed me a quarter. He told me to look at the date.

"All the ones on or before 1964," he told me, "are silver. They're worth a lot more than 25 cents! If you see one of those, pick it out!"

For a few years with the avarice only a child can muster I checked the date of every quarter, dime, and the occasional 50 cent piece I came across. Needless to say, I never did see a single one of those precious magical super-special quarters in my change, and eventually stopped looking. The pony would have to wait.

Years later I find myself packing up my Alaskan cottage, and come across a homemade leather purse filled with four years of my pocket change. Obviously I'm not expecting silver, but since in the last couple years I've taken to collecting those smooshed pennies from the "here I am" tourist machines, I thought I'd spend a bit of time and pick out the pennies that were actually copper for the next time I was downtown. It would be nice to have an "Alaska" one since I've lived here so long.

Whoosh! went the purse to the bag, and I commenced to picking:

I did see one wheat penny, which was kinda cool. I also found one of the subway tokens the mint is turning out now. In pictures there's not much difference - the new shiny almost looks attractive. In the hand, the super-light subway token feel of the newer penny is just incredibly offputting.

Once upon a time, I remember laughing when Tam read some PJ O'Roarke poke at the Europeans and their "comic book money."

... it ain't so funny anymore.

Anyhow - sometimes, I act utterly illogically in a fit of pique.
This was one of those times.

On my errands that day, I dumped that whole bag of now-sorted leftover token coinage into the machine at my bank, then on the way home stopped by the little coin shop in town.

Tra-la!

I'm not the coin expert my daddy is, and couldn't care a fig for rare date this or special mint that. But pocket change did use to be a lot prettier back when they made 'em out of real silver with nicely sculpted images.

Incidentally, see that head? The stylized image of Liberty in a Phrygian cap? That used to be the norm - almost all of our early coinage featured stylized images of Liberty in one pose or another. It wasn't until the first part of the 20th century that we actually started putting dead presidents on our money.

Now personally, I think once the images of real people start going on your coins, your republic is on thin ice. Once the images of real living people start showing up - it's time to turn out the lights and hang the Dear Leader posters - the Republic is done.

Evil Brown R...

2011-12-06T09:38:00.000-09:00

New toy happy dance - I got a Brown Bess musket!

From poking around the Lexington and Concord area museums, this one looks a little early for what the British brought that day - most of those I've seen on display have much simpler lines to the wood and more businesslike furniture. Still, it strikes me as entirely plausible that some colonial might have been carrying something much like this old lady to the Concord fight - they were apparently quite the motley crew-

Via David Hackett Fischer's Paul Revere's Ride and the wonders of Google book search, here's a description of the colonials on that day -

"To a man they wore small clothes, coming down and fastening just below the knee, and long stockings, with cowhide shoes ornamented with large buckles, while not a pair of boots graced the whole company.

'The coats and waistcoats were loose and of large dimensions, with colors as various as the barks of oaks, sumach and other trees of our hills and swamps could make them, and their shirts were all made of flax, and like every other part of the dress were home made.

"On their heads was worn a large round-topped and broadbrimmed hat.

"Their arms were as various as their costumes. Here an old soldier carried a heavy Queens' arm with which he had done service at the Conquest of Canada twenty years before, while by his side walked a stripling boy, with a Spanish-fusee not half its weight or calibre, which his grandfather may have taken at Havana, while a few had old French pieces, that dated back to the reduction of Louisburg.

"Instead of the cartridge box, a large powder horn was slung under the arm, and occasionally a bayonet might be seen bristling in the rank.

"Some of the swords of the officers had been made by our own blacksmiths, perhaps from some farming utensils; they looked serviceable but heavy and uncouth."

Such was the appearance and equipment of the Continentals, to whom so often and finally, so completely, the well armed, disciplined and uniformed soldiers of "His Majesty" were compelled to surrender.

Colonial Amherst:
the early history, customs and homes; geography and geology, of Amherst...
by Warren Upham

At some point this coming year I intend to sew up an Appeal to Heaven flag to wrap it all up in for a wall decoration. Maybe frame that broadside to hang up with it to and make a nice Colonial Menotomy themed history corner.

And oh yes, it's an Eeeevil Brown weapon - it even has a bayonet lug!

Now I just need me some redcoats. ;)

Thanks lady

2011-11-23T06:53:00.000-09:00

Thanks for the memories.

You made 13 right fun.

Dream Dinner Guest

2011-11-19T23:51:00.001-09:00

One of the "get to know you" questions Travis and I have passed back and forth a couple times now is "If you could pick anyone in the world to have over for dinner, who would it be?"

Limiting it to mortals presently alive - lots of folks have come to mind - historians, musicians, commentators, heroes - maybe the occasional statesman... but in the long view of things, I think it's the geeks that really have groundbreaking unique stories of their own - and who end up passing the most to posterity.

Case in point - Peter Thiel.

This guy keeps coming on my radar, and each time I'm more impressed. I mean...lots of folks once they'd founded a bajillion-dollar business might call it good.

Not him. No -founding a new school paper, getting all lawyery, and then helping start paypal weren't enough. Angeling all kinds of web companies wasn't enough.

This guy doesn't think for next month or next year - he's aiming to help humanity decades if not centuries out - spaceships! biotech! Floating cities!

He not only can think big, not only goes out and does it - he encourages other people to go out and make the world awesome-er.

Twenty under Twenty

(wow - read the bios of some of those kids. Oh my good God. At best, you'll feel like Ceasar to Alexander's bust, I promise. :p)

Anyhow - I'm sure I wouldn't agree with him on everything - but what a mind!
This is a guy I would love to have over for dinner.

(pssst - Hey Peter? Whatcha doing next fall? Wanna go caribou huntin'? I know folks that know folks... and an awesome cook. :p )

Morning Visitors

2011-11-16T11:12:00.000-09:00

The cavaliers are at it again, doing touch-and-goes at Elmendorf. The way their flight path is running, the house is getting buzzed at just a few hundred feet AGL by Raptors.

These guys are AWESOME. :)

(And an extra thanks to all y'all keepin' 'em in the sky. You know who you are. :) )

"... except for all the others."

2011-11-13T18:27:00.001-09:00

This story was just too fun not to share.

I'd *like* to think it weren't true, but um... yeah. :p

THE WAY CROCKETT BEAT HUNTSMAN.

Adam Huntsman opposed Crockett in his two last canvasses for Congress. In the first he failed, but succeeded in the second, and it is thought would have triumphed in the former, but for the following trick of Crockett's: They stopped one night on their rounds at a well-to-do farmer's, who was a great Jackson man, and of course for Huntsman, though he did not admire his rakish propensities. Crockett and Peg-leg, as Huntsman was called, in consequence of having a wooden leg, were put in the same room to sleep. The house was of the ordinary country kind of that day — two log-cabins, with a passage between, and a porch extending the whole length in the rear, with shed-rooms at each end, in one of which the two candidates were placed, while the farmer's daughter occupied the other. After all had retired Huntsman went to sleep and Crockett to planning. An idea occurred to him which he carried out in this way. Getting up quietly, he opened the door, taking a chair, and walking stealthily across to the young lady's room, made an apparent effort to force her door, which awoke the girl, who uttered a scream, when Crockett, hastily catching the chair by the back, and placing his foot on the lower round, using it as a leg, hurried back to his room, dropped the chair, hopped into bed and went to hard snoring. The next moment the farmer rushed in, and was about to kill Huntsman, whose protestations of innocence he paid no attention to. "Oh you can't fool me," he exclaimed, " I know you too well, and heard that darned old peg leg of your'n too plain." The consequence was that the farmer, with numbers of others, changed their votes, and Crockett was triumphantly elected. Huntsman would never have ventured to stand another canvass had not Crockett considered the joke too good to keep.

James Davis History of Memphis

(The next story on in that book's even better, though a tad long to relate here. Worth the couple minutes it'll take though. :) )

The red shirts weren't enough of a giveaway?

2011-11-13T00:09:00.000-09:00

I've been re-listening to Dan Carlin's "Death Throes of the Republic" series (again, highly recommended) and just finished the bit on the Punic Wars.

Ick.

But anyhow - the things you find on Google Image Search - the account's suspended, but still in cache is this little gem - Apparently someone decided to name their toy Enterprise the U.S.S. Cannae.

I think that's a ship I'd pretty much never want to set foot on.

(Unless it's a really backhanded Mr. Rasczak reference, which is just incredibly geeky enough it almost comes right around back to cool. :) )

This modern age....

2011-11-12T10:36:00.000-09:00

Gosh it feels weird to be looking at the incoming link stats and finding you've had a visitor by way of a friend-unmet who's recently passed on.

Bless you, William. I'm sorry we never had the chance to meet in person.

Also - this internet thing is weird.

A Little Something for Keith

2011-11-11T18:52:00.002-09:00

While listening to lectures a few weeks back, I accidently ran across Horrible Histories on youTube.
So *incredibly* fun.

Yes, it's a kid show. Shut up. :p

My favorites so far are this'n, the Celtic "Boast Battle," the English Civil War bit, aaaaaand.... oh yeah.
The dude in the Cleopatra song playing Ceasar just *rocks* the whole smugly hot bit. Nice. :)

Whole Again

2011-11-11T18:34:00.002-09:00

Today I met with Friend Paul and had a wonderful chat over coffee. Being Veteran's Day, the conversation veered into his time on the water, then swung through (of course) Roman history and ended up in Alaskan oil policy. Fun!

The ostensible reason for the meetup though was that he was returning a piece of leather Tough Chick Mel had borrowed after her first Appleseed so she could practice with her new rifle. Now that her own stuff has come in the mail, I got mine back.

After putting the groceries away, I put it back in its rightful place. And I have to say, it felt *really* good to have everything together again. Baby just doesn't feel right without that ol' piece of cowhide hangin' off her.:)

Baby was a birthday present some years ago, but for the last several years has been living with my dear brother M.. Once I started planning some more out-there walks up here - not to mention started getting midnight knocks again - he loaned her back to me so I'd have *some* respectable boomstick in the house.

She's one of those family posessions that doesn't really feel like *mine* though so much as something to get passed down to a son or daughter or niece or nephew someday. But in the meantime, having the modern iteration of Dan'l Boone's Ol' Betsy around is kinda cool.

(And ain't that Gadsden patch awesome? Dear Friend TJIC and I found it at North Bridge in Concord. I couldn't think of a more appropriate place to put it. :) )

But the scars remain

2011-11-11T10:42:00.000-09:00

Friend Peter has got some just striking pictures from Over There.
Likewise Friend Paul some rememberences from his time on the line.

So thanks all of y'all who took up the spear. You done earned your day.

Thanks grampa!

That said I'd like to offer an extra thanks for you Korea and Viet Nam guys especially. The one forgotten, the other slandered - y'all shouldn't have had to wait over a generation for your welcome home.

You done good.
And I have to say - of all my elders, it's been the Viet Nam guys who've been my favorite. When we were stupid kids, you stuck by us to the end. Thank you.

Making Do

2011-11-11T01:38:00.003-09:00

Yay! In packing up the house, I finally ran across the USB cable for my camera. Which means over the next few days you'll get some of the bits and pieces for the last month or so of life.

First off, here's what I worked on tonight when I got sick of looking at a computer - homemade buttons!

I stuck a piece of firewood in my kitchen drawer as an impromptu shaving horse, and planed out the end to just over button-thickness. Then I sawed off a chunk, and took to carving two button-shaped discs.

Wrapped them in scrap fabric, sewed them down, and voila! Old-timey buttons!

Truth be told, now that I've tried it I think I'll stick with ties - I just think they're prettier - and a lot easier to those of us that'd rather sew than carve! But more on that in a day or so. :)

PS - the view from work just before signing off and going home -

Radical Means

2011-11-09T21:20:00.000-09:00

Oh, Woodsrunner Keith is on a roll today!

He's got two posts on Lexington and Concord, both with different video interpretations of the event. The History Channel one is decidedly meh, but the scene from the dramatization April Morning is pretty close to recorded events, and very nicely done.

As an aside - one of the things that still troubles me about visiting Battle Road is that it is not just suburbia now - it was suburbia then.

In the movie The Patriot Mel Gibson's character explains his vote against armed rebellion by saying "mark my words: this war will be fought not on the frontier or on some distant battlefield. But amongst us, among our homes. Our children will learn it with their own eyes. And the innocent will die with the rest of us."

Fictional as the movie was, that reality was dreadfully true. And it was never more true than in Lexington, in Concord - but most especially Menotomy, modern-day Arlington.

For a moment, imagine with me that you are standing on the main street of your hometown.

.. Now imagine an armored column rolling down that road. Everything else around is just like it always has been - there's the gas station you always visit, there's the bank, there's the Starbucks.... excepting that this time - today - a patrol of US Marines just ran inside the coffee shop and shot two men having a drink.

The same uniform you may have stood shoulder to shoulder with a decade ago - maybe wore not long ago - you now see on the back of the men shooting your neighbors.

... And your neighbors are fighting to, screaming and firing out their windows and from their porches.

I've tried time and again while standing on that road to imagine that day - seeing my nation's army and my own neighbors slaughtering each other, right in the middle of downtown in front of God and everybody.

I still can't quite manage it - and for that I think I'm grateful.

But that is what was April 19, 1775.

=====

Keith also shares a pretty infamous scene from the John Adams miniseries (highly recommended by the way)

Since it's an issue that comes up fairly often in conversation about the event, I'll echo my comment here -

The real John Malcom was indeed tarred and feathered - but because he beat a boy in the street with his cane.

Which ain't to say Sam Adams and his Sons of Liberty were angels - I daresay I'd have been fed up with them myself if I were a 1775 Bostonian.

That said, it wasn't "for the price of tea" - the price actually went *down* with the tea acts. The sticking point was that it was a Crown monopoly, and a tax levied by a body we had no say in.

A decent modern analogy might be if the UN security council said you could only buy some ubiquitous product - say gasoline - from a supplier *they* designated, with funds from that supplier going back to them.

As you might imagine, that got more than a few people hot and bothered, even if they didn't all think bringing out the torches was a good idea.

Hrmm.. trapped between an overzealous mob and a self-serving crony-capitalist elite. Good thing that never happens anymore, eh?

Ave, Populares

2011-11-06T22:15:00.002-09:00

The Founders reading inevitably led me back to Rome.

All roads do lead there eventually I guess - it's pretty much impossible to read our own Founders without being drawn back time and again. Gibbon's work of 1776, Joseph Addison's play Cato (beloved by G. Washington), the pseudonyms dotting the pages of the Federalist Papers.. it's in the air.

So I've been detouring into Classical history, and I have to say - once you start to catch the allusions of 18th (and 19th!) century writing a whole new world opens up. The texture of their world just fills out in an a startling way.

... and I've got to confess some of that fascination's started to rub off.

I've made some headway in the (translated I'm afraid) originals - Livy, Tacitus - I'm just starting Virgil's Aenid*. Add to that scads of secondary sources** ... it's a fascinating story.

And a sadly familiar one.

It's no surprise, really. You build a similar ratmaze of rewards and punishments in society, you should hardly be surprised if some of the same problems crop up.

And Lord is it familiar.

It's no new thing of course for the citizens of a republic to see kings and tyrants in every corner. Hardly new to split into factions and see the threat of a new Ceasar and cancelled elections whenever the other faction is in power. (In fact, I had this very conversation with a friend today, and he was certain GWB had been trying for a third round himself)

Caesar however was not of the Optimates.

Caesar was a Populares. It would be a little misleading to call him a Democrat in today's terms, but perhaps Andrew Jackson makes a decent comparison for the modern American mind - certainly Jackson was called so at the time. Military adventurer (arguably extra legally so!), and a self-styled champion of the common man - the poor and underprivileged. A man of the people, who would spank the elites and bring justice to the masses.

Or to be more blunt - when the dictator came - when you do see a Republic crash down and a Caesar, a Napoleon, a Stalin rise to become the strongman - it's with the applause of "the people" - the democratical element of society. (As only makes sense really - as one of our own bewigged gentlemen observed, the aristocratical element have no reason to rock the boat.)

That is - when dictatorship has come, it's come generally from the Populares.

BUT.

That day came for a reason. The Optimates had overstepped reason and decency. They had abused their position. They had created an environment when a man could answer the call of his country, then come home to find in doing so he'd lost his land, becoming a tenant on his own fields. Where imported slaves did drive down the cost of labor to the point a free citizen was reduced to scraps.

And that I think is why reading over and over the last days of the Republic is so hard.

It inspires the most claustrophobic feeling - of being trapped between those who've abused their freedom and fellow citizens for self interest, and those who willingly hand power to a tyrant, killing mankind's liberty for over a thousand years.

Blood may indeed buy liberty.
But it will not keep it. That is the place of virtue.

=====================================
* Between that and the Illiad I see now where so much of the Dawn Treader story I loved as a kid came from. But the Aenid is dense as heck unless the Illiad's fresh in your mind, fair warning. For added texture, make certain you know some about Augustus and the Julii before wading in.

*mad props to Dan Carlin's Death Throes of the Republic by the way. Awesomely done!

Exceptionalism

2011-11-02T23:36:00.001-08:00

My first exposure to Victor Davis Hanson was on a visit to The Porch.

Poking around the Incredibly Awesome Museum and Library that was Tam's place on the lake, just underneath the bookcase with the British pith helmet, I found this curious book. As I started poking through it, she looked up from the computer with something like -

"You know that book I was talking about writing?" Better Killing, Incorporated? That's a good stab at it."

Now, having recently finished Jared Diamond's Guns Germs and Steel, it looked like a good rejoinder. Since then I've come to really like VDH, and alongside David Hackett Fischer he's one of my favorite contemporary popular historical authors. Every now and again then I'll pull up a lecture on youTube while puttering about the house.

... which is where I found out a good ten years ago there was a time VDH and JD went head to head and debated the point publicly. Hardly front page news anymore I guess, but it's still worth a listen I think.

It sounds to me like VDH totally destroys JD anytime they disagree. Well.. he would if JD didn't all but cede the better part of the ground in the first ten minutes. And for a real cringe-inducing moment - you get to hear a caller explain Hoplites and Thermopylae to VDH.

Back to packin' I reckon.

PS - how's the book comin' Tam? :)

Afternoon out

2011-10-30T22:19:00.000-08:00

Today I had the good grace to be invited along as a dear friend took her sweetheart daughter out trick or treating downtown. Daughter's costume was fantabulous, and she came home a nice haul.

Funniest part of the day though was the town emergency services folks. The cops and firefighters were encamped on opposite corners. The firefighters took a great delight in getting a little boy to walk up to the police officers and say -

"when I grow up, I want to be a fireman."

:)

Good Neighbors

2011-10-30T10:40:00.000-08:00

This exchange via OldNFO just made my morning. Most of y'all have likely already seen it, but for those outside that particular corner of the Venn Diagram of Crazy that makes up the folks I love - enjoy - :)

I am having an issue with noise that is generated by aircraft based at NAS Lemoore (and elsewhere), specifically, with their use of a low level military training route that your command is the controlling authority for. Rather than deal with mere underlings, I thought it best to go directly to the source of "where the buck stops". That would be you...

Love those guys. :)

I had been making other plans...

2011-10-27T23:32:00.000-08:00

You know, I'd intended to write something all serious about these crazy times, but just can't settle down to focus on it lately.

So I'll stick to the funnies. Last night was a grand time visiting with my sewing/history friend. I got lots of lessons on the right way to make stays - it's still a pretty intimidating project, but I think I can prolly pull it off eventually. Can't look like a backwoods Scots-Irish tramp all the time. :)

I also heard the most wonderful story - apparently among the 16th c. Italian Humanists there was a little group not unlike our modern day SCA - excepting that they got all gussied up as Romans.

The SCA folks sewing friend knew just loved the idea, and promptly seized on it for their personas.

But the meta is just too good to stop there.
Imagine if you will, if some variant of the Simulation Argument was true.,,

Far-future posthuman playing at being a twentieth century American portraying a 16th century Italian pretending to be a first century Roman.

.. Roman actor that is.
Who's playing a fourth century BC Greek.

Some hobbies are just too weird for words. :p

On a less good note, and in somewhat related news to the "can't really concentrate" - "Gloves" is back. He's been by a couple times in the last few months, and keeps coming back after being run off. Formal police report filed, and other precautions taken. AK crew, Dear Friend - thank you for your support.

Backcountry pests

2011-10-24T09:11:00.001-08:00

While on the phone last night with TJIC, I mentioned I was working on completing a second knapsack - it was a half done early attempt, but I thought since it was mostly there I'd go ahead and finish it - maybe sell it off or trade for som'n.

"But I had this great big pile of materials left," I say, "so before moving I'm kinda going all Whisky Rebellion on it." Being the nut he is, he got the reference immediately.

All of that is why it was so cool seeing this post this morning from Mark in Ulster on a tale of the Western Insurrection - the Whiskey Rebellion as I've always heard it called.

Skimming through it some on Google Books, it looks right fun. Sorta reads like Cooper. Neat stuff - thank you Mark!