Representative Allen West (R-FL), U.S. Army (Ret)

He's a target of the Republican Party establishment, too.  They are in the process of writing his district out of existence.

 

Thirty Years Ago

On this night, thirty years ago, in the year of our Lord 1982, yours truly was spending the night in Howard Johnson's Hotel in Charlotte NC waiting to join the United States Army the next day and be all I could be.  I was supposed to have enlisted on the 27th of January, 1982, but my snuff dipping recruiter messed up my paperwork so I had to spend two nights in that Howard Johnson's instead of one.  With extra time on my hands, I made some phone calls to assorted friends and family.  All in all, no one cared all that much that I was about to step into a new life.  I told Mrs. Howard just now about this date in my history joking that, by having to spend the extra night in the hotel, I was being given one last chance to make a run for it.  She told that if I had run that I wouldn't be here where I am tonight, with her.  And she's probably right.

Sir Winston Churchill

This is a montage of Sir Winston Churchill's funeral with brief snippets of his life. The music is a British hymn, I Vow to Thee My Country.

 

Alfred Lord Tennyson and The Charge of the Light Brigade

Alfred Lord Tennyson

What is so captivating about this poem is that it describes an event that really happened.  The Charge of the Light Brigade was an instance of history, taken from the accounts of the Crimean War.  The story is just as gripping in historical accounts which by their nature concern themselves with facts and not with artistic devices like meter and rhyme.  Tennyson took the bald historical facts and actually weights them with meter and rhyme and produced, in less than 300 words, nearly as complete an account of the battle as any historian.   

I think that what so grips the reader is not so much Tennyson’s skill with words, especially not his employment of rhyme and meter and so forth, but that the story the poem relates is so fascinating to men and women who, though familiar with war, have never seen actual combat; who, though cognizant of the concept of bravery and courage under fire, have never witnessed actual courage in the life and death struggle that is combat; who, though fully appreciative of how bad an effect poor leadership or an untimely mistake can have on an army, nevertheless have never seen that effect played out before their very eyes.  Through Tennyson’s poem, they are almost able to do and to see these things.

The poem is so arresting because it tells of a disaster that never should have happened—that, really, wasn’t even possible; for Britain was the world’s superpower.  But this little skirmish with the Ottomans on the Crimean peninsula was the British equivalent of our Korean and Vietnam wars rolled into one.  Upon hearing the news of the battle, all of Britain was set to wondering, ‘What does this mean for the empire.’  Tennyson’s poem captured the spirit of this sudden soul searching.

Finally, Tennyson’s poem opens a door into the terrible yet fascinating life of a combat soldier.  One of the first things he makes clear is that it is a place called the “valley of Death” where a soldier does his work.  (Greenblatt, 1188)  Then his whole second stanza underscores what everyone knows, that the soldier must follow orders—even bad orders.  The drama opened up here is that we can see, as the soldiers did, the catastrophe that awaits them.  The reader cannot help but be gripped by the awesomeness of the battle, which Tennyson captures in so few words, cannon to the left, right and center, the ground echoing with the thunder of shot and shell.  We see the riders rushing “Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell,” (Greenblatt, 1188) and we want to pull them back.  Perhaps we even scream at the top of our mind’s voice for them to turn back.  But they are soldiers.  The line about “All the world wonder'd,” captures the essence of this fascination with these brave men and the impossible task before them.  Then, miracle of miracles, some of them actually broke through enemy’s lines!  But their lines were “Shatter'd & sunder'd.”  Ultimately, what Tennyson did with his poem was something the newspaper accounts of the story could not do.  Nor could the historians do it.  Tennyson made the men heroes.  You see it in the words “While horse & hero fell, They that had fought so well,” and “When can their glory fade?” and again with the “Noble six hundred!” (Greenblatt, 1188)  He made it matter more that the men were brave beyond brave than that Her Majesty’s mission had completely failed.

The Charge Of The Light Brigade
by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

(Memorializing Events in the Battle of Balaclava, October 25, 1854.  Written 1854)

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd ?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

Works Cited.

Greenblatt, Stephen and M.H. Abrams.  Eds.   The Norton Anthology to English Literature.  8^th Ed., Vol. 2.  New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.

Gingrich on the Media

Said Gingrich, "The American people feel that they have elites who have been trying for a half century to force us to try to quit being American, and become some kind of other system."

What he has not yet articulated is that Barack Obama is the media's president, the media's creation. But that's coming.  But, before that comes, he has to show that Romney, too, is a media creation.

The elite media determined the outcome of the presidential election in 2008.  It was the media who chose the candidates and the media who anointed the winner.  Than must not be allowed to happen again.  To paraphrase Ronald Reagan slightly, in the present circumstances, the liberal media are not the solution to our problems.  The media are the problem.

 

Ozymandias

The "colossal wreck" of Ozymandias

The most amusing thing I read about Percy Shelley, son of privilege, was when, after he had written that stupid pamphlet, The Necessity of Atheism, and had the gumption to mail it to the bishops and higher muckety-mucks at Oxford, he “to his shock and grief” was unceremoniously booted from the university. (Greenblatt, 741)  It showed that, even in the Romantic era, there remained plenty of people of good character and common sense, albeit at Oxford.

Shelley, at least in his youth (he only lived 30 years), was a loser in the mold of his contemporary, Lord Byron.  Kicked out of college, he ran off with a “commoner” and became a drifter.  No job.  No money.  No skill or willingness to work.  Yet he thought the world owed him something.  His development of thought, as expressed through one of his worthless poems, that “institutional religion and … morality” were the “roots of social evil,” and that they must soon “wither away and humanity will return to its natural condition of goodness and felicity” revealed him to be quite insane. (Greenblatt, 742)

The episode with Harriet, his wife whom he was tired of, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter, whom he ran off with, and that girl’s stepsister … inviting his estranged wife, Harriet to come and live with them, revealed him to be … not exactly the kind of guy you’d want your daughter to bring home for dinner.

Shelley the poet “almost entirely lacked an audience.” (Greenblatt, 742)  This demonstrated that, in the Romantic period, good character and common sense was not limited to the faculty at Oxford.  It was something the lower and middle classes possessed in great quantity.  To gain his audience, Shelley was forced to sojourn in Italy.

The most interesting thing I read about Percy Shelley, son of privilege, was his poem about Ozymandias.  I learned that Ozymandias is the Greek name for the famous Egyptian king (pharaoh) Ramses II.  I took the poem as somewhat autobiographical.  It was about a man who thought very highly of himself, calling himself “king of kings.”  But the only evidence of support for that conceit was “two vast and trunkless legs of stone in the desart,” a “shattered visage” still maintaining its “sneer of cold command,” and the words etched on a pedestal, “I am Ozymandias, King of Kings.”  Shelley described this sight as others might have described his life and work, as a “colossal wreck.” (Greenblatt, 768).

And, it was short.

Works Cited.

Greenblatt, Stephen and M.H. Abrams.  Eds.   TheNorton Anthology to English Literature. 8th Ed., Vol. 2.  New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.

My Favorite Cartoon Strips

These are the ones I read every day.

Family Circus





Blondie





Pickles




Dilbert



Wally is my inspiration.


Dustin



The best ones usually depict Dustin's father.  He's cool.


Hi and Lois



Hi's alright.



The Lockhorns



Sometimes we cut these out and post them on the fridge.

Lord Byron: Lord Loser

The question to which we are asked to respond is whether one can separate the characteristically flamboyant “Byronic” lifestyle from Byron’s poetry—or whether the two are inextricable.  In other words, is it really Lord Byron’s poetry for which he is appreciated by the literary elite; or, is it the fact that he was such a dissolute loser that brings the accolades down upon his memory?

… The caveat being that his poetry is appreciated.

Byron’s poetry included Manfred (1816), at least parts of which were plagiarized.  Regarding the parts of the poem which seem to borrow heavily from Goethe’s Faust, the editors of the Norton Anthology preface to Manfred claim that “Byron denied that he had ever heard of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and because he knew no German he had not read Goethe’s Faust, of which part I had been published in 1808.”  The editors provide further elucidation upon this “Byronic” claim by relating the story of one Matthew Lewis who visited Byron two years before Manfred was published.  During that visit, the young Mr. Lewis, a friend also of Percy Bysshe Shelley, read parts of Faust aloud to Lord Byron, “translating as he went.”  Byron then “worked memories of this oral translation into his own drama in a way (the editor’s claim) that evoked Goethe’s admiration.” (Greenblatt, 635)  Perhaps Goethe’s admiration stemmed from the result that more attention was drawn to his own work than was gained by Byron’s.  Regardless, if an American Public University student circa 2012 were to compose an essay employing Byron’s technique, he or she would be exposed to the university’s stated “consequences for academic dishonesty.” (Student Handbook)

His Byronic heroes included the serial fornicator, Don Juan.  A work deemed so “unacceptably immoral” by his literary advisors that one of them only agreed to publishing its first two installments “without identifying Byron as the author or himself as the publisher.” (Greenblatt, 669).  The noted Thomas Carlyle’s counsel, concerning Byron’s poetry was to “close thy Byron; open thy Goethe.” (Greenblatt, 607).

Byron was fond of choir boys (Lecture notes, slide 27), incestuous relationships (Greenblatt, 610), and idleness (Greenblatt, 609).  He led a generally sorry existence characterized by sexual promiscuity, wasteful spending, avoidance of military service, and public scandal.

One of account of his activity in the House of Lords—publicly supporting the cause of the Nottingham weavers “who had resorted to smashing the newly invented textile machines that had thrown them out of work” (Greenblatt, 609)—suggests that, had Byron lived in the United States circa 2011, he would have fit in well with the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

George Gordon, Lord Byron loathed the military service of his own country and was derelict in his duties pertaining to national defense as a member of the House of Lords by touring Europe while England’s armies under the Duke of Wellington led the northern European coalition against the resurgent French emperor, Napoleon.  While England’s finest bled on the battlefields of Waterloo, Byron left on an extended jaunt around the continent punctuated by “a sequence of liaisons with ladies of fashion.” (Greenblatt, 609)  Byron’s scandalous lifestyle finally induced England to banish the young loser from the kingdom in 1816. (Greenblatt, 610)

Byron epitomized the “jet set” of his day.  He and his literary brethren were the Hollywood stars of their time.  Their published works were to a segment of the British public what Hollywood movies are to certain parts of the American public in our day and time.  Byron’s renown was fed by the scandals of his personal life as a member of the upper house of Parliament, his travels abroad, his personal intervention on the side of the Greeks in their quest to free themselves from the clutches of the Ottoman Empire, and the fact that he, Kennedy-like, died so young.  But Byronism, and the “Byronic” lifestyle, is synonymous for being a loser.  Therefore, the only plausible answer to the question of whether it is possible to treat Byron’s misspent life as a thing wholly unrelated to the things which he wrote is that, while doing so may make for an interesting academic exercise, it would only demonstrate in a backhanded way that such a thing is not possible.  No one in the real world would have ever wasted five minutes with anything Byron wrote apart from some level of knowledge about his life.  His life and his poetry are one.  There was no virtue in the former; there can be none in the latter.  George Gordon, Lord Byron was a colossal loser and his poetry survives because of that and that alone.

PS—

One really cannot separate the lives of any of these poets from their works and still be studying their works.

Works Cited.

Greenblatt, Stephen and M.H. Abrams.  Eds.   The Norton Anthology to English Literature.  8^th Ed., Vol. 2.  New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.

Student Handbook.  American Public University.  Accessed Jan. 16, 2012.  < http://www.apus.edu/
student-handbook/writing-standards/index.htm#Academic_Dishonesty >.

John Dunbar's Theme

During our trip to Mount Airy, by chance I pulled an Andre Rieu CD ("At the Movies") from the console. Track #10 caught my ear. I played it over and over again. Some of you may recognize it from the movie, Dances with Wolves. The tune is now, officially, one of my favorites.

   

But they could've chosen better slides for this.  Oh, and sorry for the abrupt ending.

Destination: Mount Airy

A five hundred and fifty-three mile round trip in the silver bullet took Connie and me to visit Mom and spend a little time together.  The bullet has more than 200 thousand miles on her, but she still runs like a Timex Watch.

It was a lot colder in Mount Airy than it was here in Augusta, but it wasn't that bad.  This morning, you could see a little snow on the south slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains.  You needed a heavy jacket and some gloves.  But the weather was very tolerable for this time of year.  Our trip had been planned for almost a month, and it was always conditional upon the weather.  There have been a lot of mid-January's where snow and ice hampered travel up and down I-77 in the northern part of North Carolina.  But this trip was trouble free.  Worse thing that happened was Connie spilled coffee all in the front seat ... because I ran over a curb exiting Starbucks in York, SC on the way home.

Lines Composed a Few Miles from Downtown Augusta

Tintern Abbey.  The poem is not about this place.
It's just that its location is near the banks of the Wye that
gives the poem its name.

My review of William Wordsworth's “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798” contained these comments ...

We are sometimes asked to describe in what sense William Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey offer readers a "religion of nature.”  It is, one imagines, a typical question often asked about pieces written during the Romantic era.  In the writings of that era, religious allusions were frequent.  Profane literature was salted with the phraseology of the Bible.  Therefore, conclusions about the spirituality and religious character of writers, or at least the Christian content of their writings were—and still are—drawn.  For example, readers coming across The Lamb, by William Blake, frequently conclude that the work has some sort of religious meaning.  It doesn’t, but conclusions that it does are still drawn.

True, Blake’s allusion is to the Lamb of God revealed in scripture, but there is no more religious intent in his use of the phrase than in the use of phrases like “King of kings,” “virgin born,” “little Lord Jesus,” and “Mary and Joseph,” at Christmastime in America, circa 2011, by persons positively identifiable as … let’s just leave it as non-religious.

A Little Light Reading

Not enough hours in the day sometimes.  My list of reading ... which I brought home with me--JP 1 Doctrine for the Armed Forces; JP 3-0 Joint Operations; JP 3-18 Joint Forcible Entry Operations; JP 6-0 Joint Communications System; and some others including either joint or Army publications on Joint Deployment and Redeployment; and Special Forces Communications operations.  Got to be prepared in case I have to answer some questions tomorrow.

John Bunyan

John Bunyan

Today I discovered a pretty decent website about John Bunyan.  The site contains .pdf files of all of Bunyan's works.  With the discovery of this site, and Bunyan being one of my favorites, I've added him to my list of counselors on the right hand side of this blog.

Many know Bunyan as the author of the Pilgrim's Progress.  There has probably never been a better book written that describes true Christianity.  Generations ago, any Christians kept a copy of the Pilgrim's Progress as a companion to their regular Bible reading.

I learned of John Bunyan a long time ago as his name was often mentioned, sometimes in sermons where I attended church, and sometimes by friends who were familiar with Pilgrim's Progress and others of Bunyan's works.

I came to really appreciate Mr. Bunyan by reading a book about the man's blind daughter, Mary Bunyan, by Sally Rochester Ford. Ms Ford tells the whole story about the hardships endured by Bunyan and his family, of Bunyan's being imprisoned in the Bedford Jail for twelve years for the crime of preaching the gospel without a license, and of his family's sufferings at the hand of the government as they ministered to Bunyan's needs while he was in jail.  Parts of the narrative are simply unbelievable not to mention heart breaking.

I recommend to anyone looking for answers to religious questions, but who are suspicious (rightly so) of all the TV evangelists and the "recognized" authorities, to consult Bunyan.  Spend some time with the Pilgrim's Progress and some of his other works.  You will probably find more answers than you imagined possible.

Bart Starr and the Green Bay Packers

My first new book of 2012

For Christmas I got what I get just about every year, a couple of gift cards for Barnes and Noble.  These are always my favorite gifts.  For one thing, they make Christmas last a bit longer.  For another, I have never had to take one back to the store and return it or exchange it for something else.  Of course, the best reason is that they afford the opportunity to read something new without splurging.

Today I found this book about one of my childhood heroes, Bart Starr, who once quarterbacked the Green Bay Packers, back in the day when I was actually a fan of professional football.  Since I just got the book, all I've had time to read of it, so far, has been the cover flaps and the introduction.  What's interesting is all the memories that have come flooding back just from this one little stimulus.

My first memory of football was when I was in first grade.  We lived in a duplex on Poindexter Drive in Charlotte, NC.  My brother, Greg was still just a toddler so I spent a lot of time playing by myself.  I don't know what sparked my interest, but I remember that I really wanted to play football.  I got my parents to buy me a complete football uniform, complete with pads and helmet.  The jersey and helmet were a dark blue and the pants were white.  This was great, except for the fact that I didn't own a football.

Since I didn't have a football I improvised.  I used a plastic shampoo bottle shaped like Mickey Mouse.  For hours I would kick that shampoo bottle back and forth across the front yard.  I did kick-offs, extra points, field goals ... I had nothing to aim at for goal posts, so I just used my imagination.  I remember seeing pictures Mom took of me in my uniform kicking that silly shampoo bottle.  I think I got my first football that Christmas.

I remember watching football on Sunday afternoons when we lived on Firwood Lane, also in Charlotte.  I was in the second and third grades at Collinswood Elementary School then.  I loved the Pat Summerall narrated highlight reels of the previous week's games.  And it was always a big day if the Packers were on.  The season when they won their second Super Bowl was really the first season I watched football as a kid.  I was always wishing I was a year or two older so I could have seen more of the Packers' games.

I distinctly remember three games that season, before they reached the playoffs.  There was their 55-7 thrashing of the Cleveland Browns.  Packer kickoff returner, Travis Williams returned two kickoffs for touchdowns.  The highlight reel the next Sunday was really neat.  Then there were two heartbreaking losses, one to the Baltimore Colts, 13-10, and another to the Los Angeles Rams by a score of 27-24.  In that one, Travis Williams returned a kickoff for a touchdown but it was called back because of a penalty.  So they kicked over again, and again Williams took it all the way back for the score.  The Rams blocked a Donny Anderson punt late in the fourth quarter which set up a short Roman Gabriel touchdown pass which beat them.  I was so glad when they were rematched in the playoffs and the Packers stomped them 28-0.

In elementary and junior high school, one of my favorite things was once a week when the class went to the library.  I loved to browse and look for books.  Among my early favorites were The Three Investigators, featuring Jupiter Jones.  But, as I got just a little older, I discovered sports books.  Packer great, Jerry Kramer wrote a book called Instant Replay that read sometime when I was in junior high.  There were some real heroes back then.  I read about Johnny Unitas, about Fran Tarkenton, Red Grange, Bronco Nagurski, Jim Thorpe, Gayle Sayers, and Brian Piccolo.  But Bart Starr was always #1 with me.

Starbucks' Prices vs. What You Get

OK, it's not like highway robbery or anything like that.  It won't break the bank for me to pay an extra 1% on my daily Starbucks order.  I mean, the only thing I ever get is a tall coffee (bold).  So, for me, we're talking a whole 16 cents.  The poor and minorities that will be hit hardest.  You know, the ones that always get those $5.00 double blended, iced mocha java, vanilla mousse, caramel cream, chocolate espresso lattes with four or five shots of something.

The thing that gets me is that for the new price they're still playing the same old, lousy music.

What the Iowa Caucuses Mean

2008 Winner of the Iowa Caucuses
Governor Mike Huckabee

Rush Limbaugh so much as said on his radio show today that the Iowa Caucuses won't really decide anything.  I think he may be wrong.  It could just help decide which candidate will be offered a job this fall at Fox News.

The Army in 2020

Original sub-title was
A Study in Unpreparedness

My first book of the new year is T. E. Fehrenbach's This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness.  As you can see from the photo, that title was changed in later editions to This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History.  The latter title, while sounding more palatable to sensitive American ears, misses the intent of the author, which was to expose how the nation, from its highest office holders to its officer corps to its NCOs to its lowest privates, were totally, disastrously, unconscionably unprepared for Korea.  The amazing thing, as I read it, is how similar this unpreparedness in Korea was to previous unreadiness in World War II, to later lack of preparedness in Vietnam, the Gulf War, Operations ENDURING FREEDOM and IRAQI FREEDOM, and other operations.

Beginning late last year, the Army began conceptualizing what it may be called upon to tackle in the year 2020, what the operational environment will be like, and what capabilities we will need.  As I read Fehrenbach's clear eyed account of where we have been, and knowing something of how little we have been prepared for the intervening conflicts between then and now, I'm not too confident that we will be all that much better a preparing ourselves in 2020 than we have been in wars past.  Indeed, Mr. Fehrenbach's closing comments on America's future, written in 1963, are perhaps even more applicable now than they were then.

"A 'modern' infantry may ride sky vehicles into combat, fire and sense its weapons through instrumentation, employ devices of frightening lethality in the future -- but it must also be old-fashioned enough to be iron-hard, poised for instant obedience, and prepared to die in the mud."

"The lesson of Korea," he wrote, "is that it happened."