I had a great gift for Father's Day: my father came to visit.
He wanted to see his grandson, whose birthday, as it happens, is today -- as is my wedding anniversary. Some years, they all happen on the same day, as they did the year I was married. I told my father-in-law that my first Father's Day gift to him was taking his troublesome daughter off his hands.
Or maybe he told me that. I think we both thought of the joke.
This year, my own father trekked up here from Georgia, along with my mother. We went yesterday morning to the Warrenton Father's Day Auto Show, which is a neat little event. They close off main street, and park antique cars all up and down it. I meant to take pictures, but forgot to bring the camera. They had some good looking Galaxies, a number of Corvettes (parked in a row, so you could see the development), some 30's and 40's era Fords, plenty of 50's era Chevys, quite a few hot rods of various types, and one Vega -- a car that both my father and I found surprising to discover in a car show.
It's interesting going to these things with my father, who grew up working in his father's auto shop in Knoxville. He would glance at a vehicle up the line and say, "Oh, look, a X Y Z," where (X) was the make, (Y) was the model, and (Z) was the year. He was never wrong, not even about the year. He could tell you about the particulars of the engines' construction, as well as amusing stories about famous cars of that type he had known in the past.
It was a great way to spend the morning. We finished off with lunch at a trailer serving barbecue. It was labeled "Blue Ridge BBQ."
"Do you reckon it'll be Virginia style barbecue," my father asked, "or Appalachian style?" For those who don't eat barbecue, or haven't traveled in the South much, the difference is mostly this: Virginia style sauce is vinegar based, whereas in the southern Appalachians, it's usually ketchup-based.
Turns out the folks at Blue Ridge BBQ had decided to split the difference. They served pork, and let you add the sauce you wanted: either a ketchup based sauce, or the vinegar based sauce. It's not quite as good as having it cooked in, but it was pretty tasty. Naturally, I had the Appalachian style sauce.
Well, that's how we spent Father's Day here. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go prepare gifts for the boy. Beowulf is three today.
Grim's Hall
anarchy
I came across an article by that title from a 2003 copy of The Atlantic. It's a fascinating story, which turns out to be available here. JHD will appreciate it, if he hasn't read it already. It's the story of ships at sea, merchants under false flags, and the perils they often meet:
The Flare was a dry-bulk carrier, flagged in Cyprus, and it had a multinational crew of twenty-five. The voyage was extremely rough, with waves exceeding fifty feet. For two weeks the Flare slammed and whipped, flexing so wildly that, according to one survivor, the deck cranes appeared at times to be touching. As it was approaching the Canadian coast late one night, the Flare broke cleanly in two. The entire crew was on the stern section, which listed to the side and began to sink. Strangely, the engine continued to turn, slowly driving the hulk on an erratic course through the night. The crew managed to launch one lifeboat, but it broke away before anyone could climb aboard. The men were panicked, and ultimately twenty-one of them died. But before the end on the sinking stern, there was a moment of savage euphoria when a ship floating in the opposite direction suddenly loomed out of the darkness ahead, as if it were coming to rescue them. The terrified men cheered. To their horror they then saw the name FLARE written on the side. It was of course their own detached bow section, and it passed them by.There's quite a bit more, for the interested.
HOT STOCKS: Revolutionary Rifle Ball Stock
Military.com has a fascinating article today on a new type of rifle stock -- one that would be modular, with a major part of it permanently mounted on your body armor. It would connect to the part remaining on your rifle via a ball-and-socket system. And, it would tie into an "augmented reality" system, serving to connect you and your rifle without the need for a tether cord.
This is the kind of thing I'd really like to try out sometime. It sounds good -- but will it work, or will that extra data become confusing? Only one way to find out.
Galley Slaves: Liberal Blog Ascendancy
Galley Slaves cites super-liberal blog MyDD (also cited today by Southern Appeal). The argument is that the liberal blogosphere is outpacing the conservative blogosphere, because right-wing blogs don't allow comments:
Unless right-wing blogs decide to open up and allow their readers to have a greater voice, I expect that the liberal and progressive blogosphere will continue its unbroken twenty-month rise in relative traffic. Conservative bloggers continue to act as though they are simply a supplement to the existing pundit class, without any need to converse with those operating outside of a small social bubble or any need to engage people within the new structure of the public sphere.I've always thought of Grim's Hall as a "virtual mead hall" for warriors -- not just fighting men, but people with the fighting spirit. The comments have always meant more to me than the posts, and I'm glad to talk to any of you. As I noted, I pass out "keys" to military men sometimes. Perhaps I should be doing more of that. I prefer to do it with folks who've hung around and commented for a while, so we know you and know you'll be a good mead-bench companion. If you think you'd like one, though, email me.
However, my initial reaction to this story is the one that Mr. Last gets around to after a while: as important as blogs are, unless they translate into physical reality at some point, they don't mean much. If you spend two hours a day reading blogs, but you take the information and put it to practical use in the world, it's an extraordinary and powerful tool for you.
On the other hand, if you spend five hours a day reading blogs, commenting, arguing, refining positions, etc., with people who more or less agree with you already, you're wasting a lot of energy and time. It's distracting you from achieving anything in reality. You'd be doing more for your cause if you took a second job, and donated the money to a charity that supports your interests.
So, you know, it's nice to have big blog hits. On the other hand, does it impact the world in which you live -- or does it become the world in which you live? If the latter, it's hurting rather than helping you.
John Wayne - The Early Years Collection | RowdysDVDs.com - Movies, Music and Television on DVD
I rented a copy of "John Wayne - The Early Years Collection" the other day. It consists of a number of movies made from 1934-1936. These were "early" years for John Wayne, but not all that early for movie making: a whole generation of earlier stars and directors had come and gone, whose names we have already almost forgotten.
Wyatt Earp had come to know several after 1901, when he returned to California from the Alaska gold rush. At that time, he was telling them stories and tales of the West that were already not fresh. The shootout at the O.K. Corral had happened in 1881, twenty years earlier. In the interval, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show had fixed the popular image of the West. Earp helped them make movies that had the right feel.
Tom Mix starred in over 300 such movies, most of them made before sound came to film. Most of his films do not exist any more. By the time John Wayne's early movies were being made, the Western was thirty years old, with well-established forms. These changed little until the 1950s.
What we today think of as "the classic Western" is probably High Noon. But High Noon was almost a complete rejection of all the Western's standard modes. The lawman, who wears a black rather than a white hat, enjoys no support from the people; in the end, though he has done what they dared not, he has lost their respect and has lost respect for them. He leaves the town in disgust, rather than riding into the sunset. John Wayne, by then a veteran star of twenty years' experience, called the movie "un-American."
But Wayne made a similar movie himself ten years afterwards -- The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. It is in some respects even darker than High Noon. The upstanding Western hero of the film, played by Wayne, is a white-hat wearing cattleman of the classic mold. But when he shoots Liberty Valance, it is from ambush with a rifle; and doing so is the ruin of his life, as he loses his girl, burns his home in drunken misery, and dies in poverty. Meanwhile, a good-hearted lawyer from the East gets the credit, wins elected office, and gets the girl as well.
We today would probably think of these as classic Westerns, because we have even more radical changes to compare with them: the Clint Eastwood Italian westerns, for example, in which the hero is largely amoral. If you were going to say two things about Westerns that made them Westerns, it would be these: 1) The movie is set at least partially in the American West, and 2) it is a film about morality. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is a film about morality -- sort of. A Fistful of Dollars isn't even that. The success of these movies inspired a score or more of (mostly lousy) Westerns about amoral or immoral "heroes," including what must be the least probable portrayal ever of Doc Holliday, by Stacy Keach (later to do a pretty good Mike Hammer, though he was limited by the need for his scriptwriters to write for pre-cable television).
Clint Eastwood came around to making Unforgiven, which he designed to say "everything I've always felt about the Western." It turned out to be the best Western in a generation, because it returned the moral structure that underlies the Western. This was not, exactly, what Eastwood intended to do -- if anything, he wanted to show how that moral structure gave itself over to barbarism. Nevertheless, because his characters were interested in morality, aspiring to it or rejecting it, Unforgiven is powerful as no Western had been in a long time.
There have been several more recent Westerns, and they've been good by and large. They've also been a return to roots. In some respects, Open Range is almost a reversal of High Noon: the entire town comes out with rifles, unasked, to defend strangers they really aren't sure about; and in the end, the ability of one of those strangers to do violence for justice is enough to win him a place in their hearts. Where Gary Cooper left in disgust, Kevin Costner found a home and the respect of a people.
Tombstone, of course, returned the Wyatt Earp legend to its traditional form.
Meanwhile, Tom Selleck has made some great Westerns lately. Though his first -- Quigley Down Under -- was unusual for being set in Australia, it was a solid Western. His later ones are a complete return to roots, usually including even the white hat, and being based on long-beloved stories by famous writers. Crossfire Trail, Last Stand at Sabre River, and Monte Walsh, the last one an ode to cowboying.
I think this underlines a great truth about art. The changes in the Western are similar to the changes in the wider art world, except that they started later and ended quicker. It was not until the 1950s that the structure of the Western felt so stale that directors set out to shake it up, in ways that were shocking at the time ("unAmerican"), but now seem like a classic part of the genre. Like visual artists, the makers of Westerns became excited by the idea of playing with the structure, and they did some great things by thinking new thoughts about the old modes.
But then came a generation of artists who knew little about the classics, and had only studied the rejectionists. They did not understand that the power lay in the eternal form -- the great truth that was being explored by the art. The rejectionists had been able to achieve great things because they involved the audience in thinking about that great truth in new ways. The later generation, never knowing what the truth was, never having learned the basics of the art, made spirtually empty garbage.
It was only through a return to the traditional forms that we could escape that, and recover the meaning and power of the art. This is a lesson that the Western seems to have learned quickly -- perhaps because it was lucky to have Eastwood, one of the first rejectionists, still around to remember what the genre had originally been about. Unforgiven did a lot to set the Western back on track.
The remaining arts must learn the same lesson if they are to survive. If poetry and orchestral music, painting and sculpture cannot learn these things, fewer will study them, and fewer will care to hear or see the works of those who do. The Western points the way for them.
It does that for us, too. That's why it survives, after Tom Mix, after John Wayne, after the 'Old Chisholm trail is covered in concrete,' and "cowboy" is considered an insult in lands that once sent them forth.
It is entertaining, if nothing else, but like the guy says. "Shooting stuf is fun".
I hadn't ever given the properties of dry-wall much thought.
Knife Review : commentary on knives, sharpening equipment and related products.
For those interested, it turns out that the Physics department of Newfoundland's Memorial University has a page devoted to knife reviews. I have to say that I'm impressed:
Graduate programmes are offered at the M.Sc. and Ph.D. level in Atomic and Molecular physics, Condensed Matter Physics, and Physical Oceanography. Experimental, theoretical and computational research topics include non-linear dynamics, membrane biophysics, polymer physics, magnetism, strongly correlated electron systems, optical and vibrational spectroscopy, atomic collision, ocean acoustics, and ocean circulation.And yet they still found time to test fighting knives to see how well they penetrate phone books.
I do love a practical scientist.
eBay item 6539278490 (Ends Jun-15-05 11:51:03 PDT) - Stek Damascus Cowboy Fighting Knife
Yeah, I know. I've got a lot of knives. But if I had the "buy it now" price for this in my wallet, I'd snap up this beautiful knife. This guy really knows what he's doing. It's not only top quality pattern-forged steel, it's exactly the optimum length: eight inch blade, four inch backstrap, thirteen and a half inches overall.
Now that's a fighting knife.
Immigration Law as Anti-Terrorism Tool
Perhaps you saw today's front-page article in the Washington Post:
Whereas terrorism charges can be difficult to prosecute, Homeland Security officials say immigration laws can provide a quick, easy way to detain people who could be planning attacks. Authorities have also used routine charges such as overstaying a visa to deport suspected supporters of terrorist groups.Once everybody gets finished muttering, "Well, so the Bush administration is finally doing something right," I should point out that this paragraph isn't the lead, though it is the lede. It's actually paragraph number six.
Paragraphs one through five are a sympathetic portrayal of a poor Lebanese fellow who was arrested by a vicious, arrogant, masked Federal agent in a surprise raid on his home. Grim's Hall hates that: police should neither be allowed to wear masks, nor conduct military-style raids. Nevertheless, they do.
Paragraphs eight through ten are given over to "Muslim civil liberties activists" who charge the following: "They argue that authorities are enforcing minor violations by Muslims and Arabs, while ignoring millions of other immigrants who flout the same laws."
Paragraphs eleven through sixteen point out that Muslims were rarely the focus of immigration law before 9/11. Ahem. You don't say. (There is also a note to the effect that certain roundups have been "controversial," and there is a gratuitous description of our intelligence and law-enforcement services as inhabiting a "murky" world.)
There follows then a long series of paragraphs providing another sympathetic portrayal of a poor Muslim immigrant who came under Federal scrutiny for donating to one of bin Laden's charities. She claims she is innocent, and perhaps she is; but the government, heavy-handed thugs that they are, decided after watching a few jetliners slam into our buildings that they wanted to be sure.
Finally, toward the bottom of page three, someone from DHS is actually allowed to respond to the charge: "Are you thugs targeting Muslims?"
In the interest of balance, they are permitted to cite two success stories to go with the two examples proposed by the Post at the beginning. Here we are:
For example, Nuradin Abdi, a Somali immigrant living in Ohio, was locked up on an asylum-fraud charge in November 2003. He was subsequently charged with plotting with an al Qaeda member to blow up a shopping mall. He has pleaded not guilty.That's all that is said about these cases, after two and a half pages of intense beating on DHS for the two cases the Post didn't like.ICE officials also point to cases in which they have deported active supporters of terrorist groups, including at least two men who had attended guerrilla training camps in Pakistan.
There are two more pages in the article. The first one is devoted to the government's case, which is presented thus: 'It's hard to charge people with terrorism, but we can easily deport them if they've violated immigration law. National security is "guesswork," so we're doing our best with what we've got; and anyway, we ignored counterterrorism in the 1990s, and look how that worked out!'
The last page, to bring the article to a circle, is devoted to another sympathetic portrayal of a Muslim immigrant.
I am left drawing these conclusions:
1) The Post is opposed to using immigration law to address counterterrorism issues, on the grounds that it might not be completely fair to all parties involved.
2) The Post, while willing to conceed that these national security issues exist, weighs the whole mess of those issues as being somewhat less important than the handful of cases anti-enforcement advocates pointed out to them. The Post dwells on those cases for three and a half pages of the five page article. It gives less than two paragraphs to the cases cited as successes by DHS, plus another paragraph to a third case later on.
3) Neither the Post, nor the anti-enforcement advocates for whom it is carrying water, actually intend this claim to be taken seriously: "They argue that authorities are enforcing minor violations by Muslims and Arabs, while ignoring millions of other immigrants who flout the same laws." This is not a call to enforce immigration law in an evenhanded fashion.
It is a call to stop enforcing immigration law at all.
Via American Digest, I came across this post by the Anchoress, "Wealth Porn and Cognitive Dissonance at Grey Lady" where she discusses this article by Dick Meyers.
A money quote from the article:
"Bill Clinton didn't bash the rich a lot, but he could have; Johns Kerry and Edwards did bash the rich a lot, and it flopped. It flopped partly because Americans who are not rich simply do not have a European-style, class base resentment. Americans aspire to being rich. That's the American way. But the '04 Democratic rhetoric also flopped because the guys spewing looked like such phonies; they weren't just rich, they were richer than the Republicans: they were hyper-rich."
And its this that strikes both Meyers and the Anchoress about the NY Times. Blathering on about class in a Red sort of way, while advertising to the Hyper-rich (Not that I really like that term, hyper, as it smacks of Braulliard), but still.
I saw more of this 'wealth porn' this very morning while waiting for my car's oil to be changed--the TV had on the morning news of ABC's New York Affiliate, where apparently one of the important stories this morning (along with the Michael Jackson trial, and that lost girl in Aruba) was one on the British Royal Family, and I thought to myself, "Why on Earth is this important at all to Americans?" For some strange reason, there was also a copy of a recent Conde Nast Traveller magazine, which, frankly, is just chock full of the stuff.
It used to be, I think, that people really weren't so aware of this. I can't say why exactly, although I think the monopoly that media had on information distribution had something to do with it.
That has changed. It can only be a good thing it has.
Differences Between Men and Women
Cassandra recommends this guide to female psychology. Normally I'm opposed to psychology, but this one appears to be pretty solid, if my own experience is any guide.
At least, the parts about Roger are right on.
Yeah. I know. WTF?
Since we've been discussing fashion (or lack thereof) I thought I'd highlight this item I came across on the Drudge Report:
Japan's Middle-Aged Men Start to Preen
Is it a sign of the Apocalypse? I dunno. But be prepared for more of this sort of thing. Since one way the Japanese government has decided to deal with global warming is to get its office workers to turn down the air conditioning, I think we're going to see more of this.
I wonder if it will spread? I know I'd rather not be wearing a tie in the summer.
Winds of Change.NET: Zimbabwe Changed My Mind: Guns Are A Human Right
A big welcome to Canadian Joe Katzman of Winds of Change, who has come over to join those of us who assert that the right to bear arms is a human right of the first importance. He has a strong post about it today.
Those of you who would like to consider the issue ought to start with A Human Right, which is linked in the "Gunfighting and Bladework" section. It is an excellent resource on several levels, by an artist and former citizen of the Soviet Union. Those of you who are already convinced on one side or another will still find thoughtful argument (and some very clever posters the fellow has made), but the real target audience is those who are still thinking about it, or those who used to be convinced who have begun to think it over anew.
The Fourth Rail: Sometimes "Cowboy Diplomacy" Means Learning A Little Lakota
I have accepted Bill Roggio's kind invitation to become a regular blogger at The Fourth Rail. I will be doing blogging on the war / national security issues.
Blogging on cultural issues, social issues, domestic politics, and entertaining stories will continue here at Grim's Hall.
Kim du Toit - Daily Rant
Joel Leggett warned me about this.
I think that any self-respecting individual should take the time to ensure that their grooming and apparel standards are up to snuff. Nevertheless, I categorically reject the idea that an obsessive concern with the latest fashion trends is the hallmark of gentlemen. That is the hallmark of a fop. Remember, the concept of the gentleman comes the tradition of chivalry, which was itself an ethical system for fighting men, not fashion models.Exactly right, I said -- but since we've never discussed it before, we can hardly be charged with "obsessive concern." Just trying to sort out the rules, once and for all.
Well, it seemed reasonable at the time. I now see that this kind of thing gets out of hand quickly. Today even Kim du Toit is giving fashion advice:
I have only one simple fashion rule: Never, never wear Realtree camo after Halloween. It has served me well.That's good advice. I myself have only four rules, which I'm going to lay out here and then leave the topic forever:
1) Khakis and cowboy boots for "work" at the office, blue jeans and ropers for real work.
2) Boots and belt should match the sheath of your knife or pistol, unless it's going to be concealed anyway.
3) Never leave home without a good hat. Not only will it protect you from wind, sun, and rain, but if you get too cold it will help you stay warm, and if you get too hot you can fill it with water and dump it on your head.
4) You should either wear a beard or moustache, or you should shave cleanly and properly. Trying to look like Aragorn, when you haven't actually been living in the Wild for the last few months, only makes you look like a jackass.
There you go.
Next topic: First Aid Kits. The Geek with a .45 asked for advice, and Doc came through with flying colors.
I don't have anything to add to Doc's comments, which are far better informed than my own ideas about such things. Like the Geek, I took First Aid and Lifesaving in the Boy Scouts. I took away a different lesson from him: instead of needing a proper first aid kit, my instructor suggested that you could fix most anything that can be cured with one of these and one of these. Splint a limb? Rig a sling? Bind a wound? Make a tourniquet? That's all you need.
My sense is that Doc has the better idea, but I'm not sure I'd know how to use an epi pen -- what is one, anyway? "A disposable drug delivery system," so the page says. Looks like one of those Star Trek injectors. I'm a fighter, not a doctor, dammit!
Move over Rambo, you're cramping new man's style - Yahoo! News
You surely saw the AFP article featuring the man wearing his suspenders backwards. "All the traditional male values of authority, infallibility, virility and strength are being completely overturned," says the article. I saw it on Southern Appeal, which responds in exactly the way I'd expect: a flat and proper rejection of the aesthetics involved.
What interests me about the article, though, is something a bit further down from the headline.
The designers claim that this "overturning" of "traditional male values" is being driven by that most traditional and bedrock of all male values: Courage.
"The traditional man still exists in China, Le Louet said, and 'is not ready to go'. But in Europe and the United States, a new species is emerging, apparently unafraid of anything.There are two things to be said about this. First, this is not a new trend, but a remergence of a primitive one. Second, it has already been tried in the modern world, and has proven to be a disaster.
'He is looking for a more radical affirmation of who he is, and wants to test out all the barbarity of modern life' including in the sexual domain, said Le Louet[.]
To the first point: you may remember the character in Little Big Man who rode his horse backwards. This was a reflection of a real kind of Cheyenne warrior called a "Contrary," or a "Contrary clown." Like the character in the movie, these warriors were the sort who were most devoted to proving their courage -- so much so that they openly invited ridicule, yet made themselves so dangerous that few would dare to offer it.
The same drive has been seen in any number of primitive societies, often associated with shamanism, as it often was among the Cheyenne as well. The exploration of boundaries is meant to break them down for you; and the exploration of sexual and other boundaries is meant to train the spirit in the habits of courage it needs to be brave enough to break through the boundaries between worlds.
It may be that many in Europe, and in certain portions of the United States as well, are genuinely frightened by the boundaries they see falling apart before their eyes. The demographic changes in Europe, particularly, mean that much of the walls that have held society together are falling apart: religious attendance has all but ceased in Europe, and birth rates are falling, and there is massive immigration of unassimilated people of different culture; and there is economic worry, such as the French displayed in their recent vote on the EU, that the social support systems on which they rely may be failing.
Under these circumstances, it is not at all surprising to see a resurgance of this primitive form. It is, in its way, reasonable. If all the barriers are falling, and there is nothing you can do to put them back up again, it makes some sense to explore what sort of character you must adopt to survive after the catastrophe. Exposing yourself to sexual humiliation -- to "all the barbarity of modern life, including in the sexual domain" -- may help you prepare for the greater and final humiliations that are to come. It may ease your passage into this new world, as it does the shaman's.
Before adopting this movement, though, you should consider Oscar Wilde.
Oscar Wilde was one of many who adopted this same idea in the last century, when the industrial revolution was also breaking down barriers in Europe. He too sought out 'the barbarities of modern life,' especially in the sexual domain. He also thought of it as expressing a kind of courage: he called it "The Time of Feasting with Panthers," in which "the danger was half the excitement."
The problem with breaking down barriers between yourself and other worlds, is that it can cause you to lose touch with this world. Traditional shaman often appear to be mad, even though they have a place in their culture that supports what they do. Modern life lacks one. You can see the results in Wilde's writings:
My own experience is that the more we study Art, the less we care for Nature. What Art really reveals to us is Nature's lack of design, her curious crudities, her extraordinary monotony, her absolutely unfinished condition.Wilde wrote that 'sunsets are not valued because we cannot pay for sunsets.' Chesterton replied, "But Oscar Wilde was wrong; we can pay for sunsets. We can pay for them by not being Oscar Wilde."
And, in time, Oscar Wilde himself came to agree. In his prison writings, he had reconsidered. Having found the ultimate humiliation, which he had so sought among the Panthers, he found that the next world, the world without sunsets, was not at all to his liking.
For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us. Outside, the day may be blue and gold, but the light that creeps down through the thickly-muffled glass of the small iron-barred window beneath which one sits is grey and niggard. It is always twilight in one's cell, as it is always twilight in one's heart.... I know also that much is waiting for me outside that is very delightful, from what St. Francis of Assisi calls 'my brother the wind, and my sister the rain,' lovely things both of them, down to the shop-windows and sunsets of great cities. If I made a list of all that still remains to me, I don't know where I should stop: for, indeed, God made the world just as much for me as for any one else.But he had cast away the world made for him, and sought another. By breaking down those barriers, by seeking out humiliation, he found himself in just the place that Chesterton described later in his work:
We might fancy some children playing on the flat grassy top of some tall island in the sea. So long as there was a wall round the cliff's edge they could fling themselves into every frantic game and make the place the noisiest of nurseries. But the walls were knocked down, leaving the naked peril of the precipice. They did not fall over; but when their friends returned to them they were all huddled in terror in the centre of the island; and their song had ceased.So it is here, and now, and would be shamen should mark it. We do live in fearful times, but Man always has.
The proper response is not to cast aside the world, but to defend the walls. The fashion that will save you is not the fashion of wearing backwards suspenders.
It is the fashion of wearing a sword.
The Blue Bus is calling us...: Let's play tag
I've seen this game played on other websites -- poor Cassandra was hit with several of these recently.
Well, I must disappoint Lizard Queen somewhat, as I never forward chain letters. Still, I will answer the questions, since she asked.
1) Number of books I own: I would be hard pressed to guess. Several thousand, surely. It's inexcusable, because my wife and I move annually. Every year, I promise myself that I will simply donate most of them to the local library, rather than lug the hundreds of pounds of boxed books to another location. So far, I've never managed to actually do so. I keep having visions of the Great Library that I will have someday, in some house far away where we finally manage to stay.
2) Last book I bought: It happened that I finished the book I was reading Monday morning, on the train to D.C. As a result, I needed a new book to read on the way back. In a used bookstore, I found a copy of Flashman on sale for seventy-five cents. I'd heard of the great Flashman stories, but never read any, so I thought I'd give it a try. Our Mr. Blair would like it.
3) Last book I read: I normally read several books at a time, usually one or two nonfiction as well as a novel. My book reading has to take a back seat to my professional reading, plus also to my son and wife. As a result, I end up reading in snatches, and tend to grab whichever of the two or three books is closest to hand when I find that I have a moment.
I'm about to finish McLemore's Bowie And Big-Knife Fighting System, which was recommended by Daniel. The book I finished on the train was The Iron Marshal by Louis L'Amour, another used-bookstore purchase that ran me all of one dollar. I have a couple of others I'm working on as well, but they're closer to started than finished.
4) Five books that mean a lot to me: In no particular order: Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (to include The Hobbit as a prequel), Chesterton's The Ballad of the White Horse, the Beowulf, the Poetic Edda, and Lord's The Singer of Tales.
Now that I've chosen them, I see that there is a strong theme running through the selection. The four fictional works are all epic literature, in fact, Northern European epic poetry (excepting Tolkien, which includes both prose and poetry). The nonfiction book, Lord's, is only a history of life among some of the last surviving traditional epic poets, Turkish 'singers of tales' living at the turn of the 20th century.
I won't be tagging anyone. However, any of you regulars who want to do so are welcome to sound off in the comments. I'd enjoy hearing what some of your favorites are -- as you can tell from the list above, I do take suggestions from you on what to read myself. So far, that has worked out well!
The Belmont Club
I met a gentleman today of many years and poor hearing. After a while, I discovered -- not that he told me, but another man did while he was out of range -- that the old gent was a former B-17 pilot with the 8th Army Air Force during World War II. He had five thousand hours in a B-17.
The Eighth Army Air Force -- the Air Force, not the Eighth Army as a whole -- had higher combat losses in WWII than the United States Marine Corps.
Think about Iwo Jima, and then think about that.
But it's true: 19,733 Marines were killed in World War II. The Mighty Eighth lost 26,000.
I understand he still gets up and flies now and then, with a local Flying Circus, age, sight and hearing notwithstanding. Good for him.
I also learned that the guy who developed the M1A SOCOM II rifle is a resident of the town. He's a former Marine, and would prefer not to have his name associated with the business for political reasons: apparently the development of the rifle occasioned some jealousy between SOCOM and the Department of Justice, which had originally asked for the weapon as a platform for helicopter-based snipers in drug interdiction raids.
But come down to Warrenton some time. Have an afternoon drink at Molly's pub, on main street. You may learn you are sitting beside one of these gents, if only you have ears to hear.
As for me, at the end of the month I move on. But it's been a nice town, and one I shall visit regularly.