The Death of a Soldier
Life contracts and death is expected,
As in a season of autumn.
The soldier falls.
He does not become a three-days personage,
Imposing his separation,
Calling for pomp.
Death is absolute and without memorial,
As in a season of autumn,
When the wind stops,
When the wind stops and, over the heavens,
The clouds go, nevertheless,
In their direction.
–Wallace Stevens
If this youth baseball story doesn’t put a smile on your face, you’re probably Vulcan.
There’s an interesting article here on the enduring value of handwritten letters in the age of instant global communication, and I can’t say I disagree with any particular point.
I have a stack of special letter paper in my desk drawer. When I have an opportunity to send a letter or thank-you note to someone, I get the expensive, parchment-like paper out of the drawer, and ink up the best and most fancy pen in the case. Just a few days ago, I wrote a five-page letter to my mother in Germany, who isn’t quite down with the whole email thing. I included a stack of new pictures of her grandkids, and a little gift to go along with everything.
Now, the paper letter isn’t as fast as email, and not nearly as efficient. I could have attached all those pictures to an email and sent the whole thing across the Atlantic in the blink of an eye. Instead, I had to get out the paper, ink up the pen, take thirty minutes of my time to hand-write the whole thing, stick the paper into an envelope, and actually go to the post office to send it on its way. It cost a few dollars instead of a few cents, and it will take about a week to reach its destination.
But you know what? I know for a fact that Mom enjoys getting a physical letter much more than she would an email, because she, too, knows the kind of extra effort it takes.
The handwritten letter has much in common with the handwritten draft. The act of writing by hand is a mentally exclusive activity. You focus on what you want to tell the reader, and you’re in a particular state of mind while you do so, one that revolves around the narrative and the intended audience. Your mind is with the narrative and recipient the whole time, a kind of reflective meditation that doesn’t happen for me when I dash off a two-paragraph email in between checking Twitter and doing research on Wikipedia.
Best of all, the recipient gets to hold something that was in your hands not too long ago, something you worked on personally, something that took a chunk out of your day to produce and send off. It’s done in your handwriting, which–however neat or sloppy it may be–is a part of you, a physical expression of your personality and mood.
I have a drawer full of letters from family members, handwritten snapshots of their lives at some point. There are quite a few written by my grandmother, who passed away three years ago. I have these artifacts here that were touched by her, on which she made marks with a pen in her hand, and which she personally carried to her local post office, all because she valued me enough to let me know her thoughts.
We don’t hand-write letters to people we don’t care about, and that may just be the main reason why people still enjoy getting handwritten envelopes in the mail. If my grandmother had been computer-savvy, she probably would have sent me emails a few times a month, like my connected siblings do. But would I have valued her last email as much as I do the last letter I ever received from her?
News from Long Island: Punk-ass teenage thug gets into trouble his Daddy can’t get him out of for a change. Daddy is very upset that the court didn’t show mercy, considering Junior was only 17 when he stabbed an Ecuadorean immigrant to death on the street for kicks, because, hey, can’t a kid screw up once or twice?
What’s amazing is the father’s stubborn insistence to disavow all guilt or responsibility on his son’s part, even though the background story paints a less-than-wholesome picture of the young choir boy.
Let’s recap the situation:
Now, somewhere along the line, Junior’s dad should have looked at all those clues and figured out that his offspring may not be entirely lily-white. To take offense to the 25-year sentence for manslaughter, and opine that you expected an acquittal in the first place, is the act of someone who’s in total denial about the quality of human being he has managed to raise.
I guess it’s a natural defensive reaction–who wants to face the fact that one’s offspring is a no-good, murdering bully and thug?–but to me, it’s yet another example of how effectively people can practice self-deception.
Now one man is dead, two families are grieving, and a teenager will spend the next quarter century in a concrete cage, with a stinky roommate, lousy food, and communal showers. And all for absolutely no good reason.
Whenever I read senseless shit like that, I can’t quite decide whether we’re just a hair too smart or a hair too stupid for our own good. One thing is for sure: any species whose members routinely kill each other over trivialities such as the melanin content of their skin doesn’t quite deserve a seat at the Great Cosmic Grown-Up Table just yet.
This is TempOffice, the desk on the screened-in porch I set up for when I have work to do, but still want to keep an eye on the kids as they play outside.
It’s in the Nineties up here in Cryogenica right now, and I have a pitcher of cold iced tea (unsweetened), and a giant fan situated about six feet to the left of that desk. All in all, I’ve worked in worse locations.
I have some pizza dough rising for dinner, a chapter to conclude, and two articles to finish. Fortunately, I’m a hoopy frood who knows where his towel is. Hope you’re having a tolerable workday, too, wherever you’re slaving away right now.
Back to the old theme for now. Not because the Nays outnumbered the Yeas by two to one, mind you, but because I’m the boss ’round these parts, and I can change things around at my whim. Yeah, that’s it.
(Actually, reader and fellow NE Bloggershoot attendee Scotaku put his finger on the property that bugged me about the Notes theme: the text didn’t line up with the lines on the background paper. Also, I prefer serif fonts for readability, and there’s no way to change the font on the other theme.)
So we’re back to the boring, efficient Teutonic-like scheme that you all have come to know and love. (Except those of you who use RSS readers, that is.) I’m kind of itching for a change to keep things fresh, but so far I haven’t found a theme that is clearly superior to the old standby.
Comrades! The first vegetable harvest from our AeroGrow indoor garden is in!
After months of loving care and cultivation, let me present to you the bounty from our tomato bush:
We will feast tonight, and split a very small tomato salad.
(We made the mistake of not pruning the tomato bush. The next batch will be more numerous, hopefully. The lettuce, on the other hand, is flowing out of the AeroGrow nicely.)
(Content Warning: Rant on kid-related stuff follows.)
Once upon a time, I thought that buying clothes for myself was just about the most aggravating possible shopping experience. Turns out I was dead wrong–shopping for two preschoolers is worse by far.
For starters, why is it that I can’t find pants to fit these kids to save my life? If they’re long enough to not end above the ankle, they’re invariably much too wide in the waist. If the waist fits, they’re too short. Quinn needs pants that are Size 5 in length, and Size 4 at the most in waist circumference. Right now I have to buy the Size 5 pants, and tighten them up with a belt. Lyra has the same problem, which is aggravated in her case because few girl pants even have belt loops. Now, I know my kids are not particularly skinny, but the near-universal occurrence of too-short-or-too-waisty pants leads me to believe that being smack in the 50th percentile for height and weight is somehow unusual for kids these days.
Then there’s the lack of variety in girl clothing. When I go shopping for Lyra, I have a great variety of options, as long as I look for either a.) glittery princess shit, b.) Lil Bratz-type wannabe club couture, or c.) Prostitot wear. I’m sorry, but there’s absolutely no reason for midriff-revealing clothing in the pre-teen age bracket, and that goes double for the pre-school bracket. Do people really tart up their little girls like Tijuana hookers?
Last point of grievance: the almost complete lack of shoes that don’t have fucking Velcro fasteners. Some of us would actually like to teach our kids to tie their own shoes, thank you very much.
Can’t I just buy normal freaking clothes for my kids, please? Jeans that fit boys of average weight and build? Plain button-down shirts? T-shirts and footwear without cartoon endorsements? Girl clothes that aren’t glittery, sugary, cutesy, slutty, or cheesy? I swear, it’s enough to make a Dad look at stitching patterns for sack cloth ponchos…
is the saiga 308 a viable mbr
It’s as viable as the person shooting it, although I’d probably not choose a rifle that requires magazines stamped out of sheets of pure unobtainium. The Saiga .308 is like the Bren Ten of the rifle world….statistically speaking, there are probably 0.8 magazines per rifle in the country.
Incidentally, and speaking as someone who was issued a .308 battle rifle in the military (a H&K G3), I’ve come to conclude that the caliber isn’t all that suitable for an infantry rifle. Most of your shots are going to be at 200 yards or less, and ammo load is far more important than terminal performance at machine gun ranges. Our battle load for the G3 was five magazines of 20 rounds each, and 100 rounds are gone in a hurry when things get exciting. The 5.56mm does the job just fine at typical rifle-fighting ranges, and Joe Infantry Grunt can carry two and a half times more ammo for the same weight penalty.
what guns do the fbi carry?
The Feebs get their choice between a Glock 22 and Glock 23 when they graduate from Quantico. (This is either directly before or after they get their sense of humor surgically removed.) The Glock 22 is so ubiquitous in the holsters of American law enforcement officers that it has turned pretty much into the S&W Model 10 of the early 21st century.
black bear at the window
Had one right outside our kitchen window last year, which was exciting. He was pawing at the bird feeder above the window. Big bear, too…although furry things tend to look bigger than they are when you spot one in the dark, he was able to reach a bird feeder hanging seven feet up.
pirate action shooting
That’s a new shooting sport discipline I thought up. To clear all the stages, you need a blunderbuss, a cutlass, and a sash full of flintlock pistols.
munchkinwrangler semi automatic revolver
There are two semi-auto revolvers in existence: the British Webley-Fosbery, and the Italian Mateba Model 6 Unica. I’ve never had the opportunity to fondle a Webley-Fosbery, but a friend of mine used to own a Mateba, and I got to handle and shoot it. It’s a funky gun–the frame has no topstrap, the cylinder has no fluting, and the barrel is situated so that the bottom chamber of the cylinder is the one that lines up with the tube. If you use warm enough loads, the top part of the gun rides back a short distance and cocks the hammer as it does, so you have a revolver that functions much like a pistol. With weaker loads, the energy isn’t enough to “cycle” the gun, so it works like a DAO revolver. We used to joke that the Mateba was a clever way to combine the drawbacks of the semi-auto pistol with the drawbacks of the revolver.
.32 h&r mag vs .38
The .32 H&R Magnum puts out roughly the same muzzle energy as a standard-pressure .38 Special, by launching a smaller and lighter pill at higher velocities. The advantages of the .32 H&R Magnum over vanilla .38 are lower recoil, and the ability to squeeze one more round into a cylinder of the same size, making the .32 J-frames six-shooters. Disadvantages include higher cost of ammo, and less availability on gun store ammo shelves.
how much do kid wranglers make
Not enough. If you added up all the jobs and responsibilities of a full-time parent, and then hired specialists to do the work instead, you’d need to hire a teacher, a bodyguard, a cook, a nurse, an office manager, and a driver, and your payroll would be a quarter million dollars a year.
munchkin wrangler pilot varsity nib size
The Pilot Varsity disposable fountain pens sold in the U.S. all come with medium nibs. They also sell a fine-nibbed version called the Vpen, but it’s hard to find in this country.
phds per capita los alamos
Not surprisingly, Los Alamos has a high percentage of Ph.Ds, which may have something to do with the fact that Los Alamos National Laboratory is located there. Places where they do nuclear research tend to attract a lot of people with big brains and diverse abbreviation salads appended to their names. Despite the fact that may of them probably hold more than one doctorate, “per capita” is not quite the right term to use, though. It means “per head”, and is therefore more appropriate for statistics like income and beer consumption rate.
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That’s the take for this Monday morning. Now I’m going to have another cup of Go Juice, and then I have to get the kids ready. Lyra has an appointment at the ophthalmologist’s this morning, and I have assorted stuff to mail to friends and relatives, so we’ll be out until lunch. That’s the high-flying, jet-setting life of the stay-at-home Dad for you…
