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."