THE SUBJECT OF BOOZE

does come up in one of the episodes. As in "if I took a drink every time I thought I needed it I'd be drunk by noon." Or words to that effect.

And one thing you will notice if you do start watching these episodes. The smoking. Lots and lots of smoking. Robert Lansing was a four pack a day smoker. He's the guy in the dark with the brandy bottle. 

So was Ike so the stories go. Smoking. I don't know what his booze preference was or how much he drank.

"NINETY SIX MEN WHO WERE ALIVE THIS MORNING

what do I do about that?" Commander of a group of B17's to his wing commander. Who is also a friend Average crew size ten men including the pilots. Average age? Late teens to early to mid twenties. We asked a lot of those young men. Most of them came through. Another episode later. 

As usual my blog entries tend to jump around. I've been watching old Twelve O'Clock High reruns on YouTube. I remember watching this show as a kid. Didn't realize it at the time but Twelve O'Clock High is probably unique.

Started out as a novel written by two writers who actually saw air combat during WWII. And the novel is out of print at this time. And used copies are going fast. 

 Spawned a hit movie starring Gregory Peck. A war movie that didn't show much war until the last twenty minutes or so. When the group commander had a break down. Too much sky. Too much flack. Too many gauntlets hosted by the Luftwaffe. Too many crews that didn't come back. Too many friends that didn't come back. Too many letters home to their families.

The film spawned the series. A show about war that spent more time covering the costs than it did showing explosions. Ran two and half seasons. Viet Nam was heating up. The WWII generation was aging out. And since the show was trying to follow the actual time line of the war and D Day had happened I"m not sure how long it would have gone on anyway. Send them to the Pacific. Different planes. Different war. Probably need a whole new cast. 

Anyway. Here is a link to one of the best episodes.  Hope this works. The best parts start around the middle. Heavy on the truth telling and the responsibilities of command. Yeah that part went right over my head the first time. 

Now? When I look around? Heaven help us because we seem to have forgotten how to help ourselves.

(I checked. The link works but it takes you to the middle. Take the time to watch from the beginning. The general is sitting in the dark with a bottle of brandy for a good reason. At least from his point of view. If he isn't writing the letters home he still has to sign them. And remember.)

LIVES IN THE BALANCE

NO I haven't forgotten my story but this song is as true now as it was in  the  mid eighties when Jackson Browne wrote this. Perhaps even truer. 



"Lives In The Balance"

I've been waiting for something to happen

For a week or a month or a year

With the blood in the ink of the headlines

And the sound of the crowd in my ear

You might ask what it takes to remember

When you know that you've seen it before

Where a government lies to a people

And a country is drifting to war

And there's a shadow on the faces

Of the men who send the guns

To the wars that are fought in places

Where their business interest runs

On the radio talk shows and the T.V.

You hear one thing again and again

How the U.S.A. stands for freedom

And we come to the aid of a friend

But who are the ones that we call our friends

These governments killing their own?

Or the people who finally can't take any more

And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone

There are lives in the balance

There are people under fire

There are children at the cannons

And there is blood on the wire

There's a shadow on the faces

Of the men who fan the flames

Of the wars that are fought in places

Where we can't even say the names

They sell us the President the same way

They sell us our clothes and our cars

They sell us every thing from youth to religion

The same time they sell us our wars

I want to know who the men in the shadows are

I want to hear somebody asking them why

They can be counted on to tell us who our enemies are

But they're never the ones to fight or to die

And there are lives in the balance

There are people under fire

There are children at the cannons

And there is blood on the wire

AN OLDIE BUT SO TRUE

To be honest, if any of our cats could fight that hard? They were well enough.

HOW TO GIVE PILLS TO CATS AND DOGS

 

• Pick cat up and cradle it in the crook of your left arm as if holding a baby.  Position right forefinger and thumb on either side of cat's mouth and gently apply pressure to cheeks while holding pill in right hand. As cat opens mouth pop pill into mouth.  Allow cat to close mouth and swallow.
• Remove pill from floor and cat from behind sofa. Cradle cat in left arm and repeat process.
• Retrieve cat from bedroom and throw soggy pill away.
• Take new pill from foil wrap, cradle cat in left arm holding rear paws tightly with left hand.  Force jaws open and push pill to back of mouth with right forefinger. Hold mouth shut for a count of ten.
• Remove pill from goldfish bowl and cat from top of wardrobe. Call spouse from garden.
• Kneel on floor with cat wedged firmly between knees, hold front and rear paws.  Ignore low growls entitled by cat. Get spouse to hold head firmly with one hand while forcing wooden ruler into mouth. Drop pill down ruler and rub cat's throat vigorously.
• Retrieve cat from curtain rail, get another pill from foil wrap.  Make note to buy new ruler and repair curtains.  Carefully sweep shattered figurines and vases from hearth and set to one side for gluing later.
• 8. Wrap cat in large towel and get spouse to lie on cat with head just visible from below armpit. Put pill in end of drinking straw, force mouth open with pencil and blow down drinking straw.
• Check label to make sure pill is not harmful to humans, drink 1 beer to take taste away. Apply Band-Aid to spouse's forearm and remove blood from carpet with cold water and soap.
• Retrieve cat from neighbor's shed. Get another pill. Open another beer. Place cat in cupboard and close door onto neck to leave head showing. Force mouth open with dessert spoon. Flick pill down throat with elastic band.
• Fetch screwdriver from garage and put cupboard door back on hinges. Drink beer. Fetch bottle of scotch. Pour shot, drink.  Apply cold compress to cheek and check records for data of last tetanus jab.  Apply whiskey compress to cheek to disinfect. Toss back another shot. Throw away T-shirt and fetch new one from bedroom.
• Ring fire brigade to retrieve the friggin' cat from tree across the road. Apologize to the neighbor who crashed into fence while swerving to avoid cat. Take last pill from foil wrap. 
• Tie the little bastard's front paws to rear paws with garden twine and bind tightly to leg of dining room table, find heavy duty pruning gloves from shed. Push pill into mouth followed by large piece of fillet steak. Be rough about it. Hold head vertically and pour 2 pints of water down throat to wash pill down.
• Consume remainder of Scotch. Get spouse to drive you to the emergency room, sit quietly while doctor stitches fingers and forearm and removes pill remnants from right eye. Call furniture shop on way home to order new table.
• Arrange for SPCA to collect mutant cat from hell and ring local pet shop to see if they have any hamsters.

 

 

DOGS

• Wrap it in bacon.

HOW DO WE GET THE BIG GUNS OFF THE STREETS?

Comment from post on guns. 

We get the damn weapons of war off the streets. Have a rifle. Have two! But NO PRIVATE CITIZEN needs an AR-15, or magazines that can shoot 30 or 60 rounds before the need to reload. The reason legislators fear the NRA is not the money they may or may not accept from it. It is that the NRA has developed a very effective way to attack and remove from office (through the vote) any legislator not on board with its agenda.

November 25, 2017 at 8:23 AM

Lisa I agree with you but how do we do it? That always seems to be the sticking point. Buy backs? Social pressure? Loudly reminding our congress representatives that the NRA is peopled by a tiny fraction of our population?  Could the mainline churches help? Somehow? Heck one old geezer brought his pistol to church, talked about it, showed it to his friends after taking the proper precautions, put it away. Apparently he forgot to do SOMETHING. Someone else wanted to see the gun and nobody was too sure what happened next. Maybe he forgot to put the safety on. Maybe he put the magazine back in and chambered a bullet by mistake. Who knows. 

Anyway the gun went off, Wounded him. Passed through him and hit his wheel chair bound wife. They both ended up in the hospital. Can you imagine what would have happened if there had been two or three "good citizens" with guns in the church. They could have had a free fire zone in that church. Now that I think about it. That may be the only way to get the ball rolling. Imagine the headlines. Gun goes off and several law abiding bystanders turn a church, mall, shopping center into the Killing Fields. If they have the guts to run the story 

I do know what else might get the ball rolling. Get rid of Faux Noise. Kick out Limbaugh, Beck,Savage, Jones and the rest of the right wing wing nuts. Of course there goes the first amendment. Can we save ourselves without turning the constitution into a noose or shredding it? 

PART 2 OF ?

December of 2016 and I was into I believe the fifth or sixth bout with cellulitis. With something else going on. An area of discoloration near the cellulitis blisters that would drain. Primary saw it. Wound Center got involved with the last bout. I was going to the doctor at each attack. Taking my meds. My test numbers for the warfarin never really settled down but they were in the accepted range.

After the last attack the doctor at the wound center decided to debride the the affected areas. Still don't really know the why of the discolored areas just that by the time it got to the surface the damage was done. OK debridement was done. Primary checked the results. I went into the wound center to have it checked. That day was a bummer. Breathing was hard. Got home. Discovered some petacchia on  my abdomen. Checked an hour later and there were more. Decided the hell with this and called 911. Went to MKW first. They were full. Sent me to Riverbend.

I was admitted and things get a little fuzzy. I think it was the second morning. Therapy tried to get me up. Right ankle was too sore to stand and I felt like crap anyway. After that? I remember some really weird dreams. Then I woke up. Flat on my back. In a different room with a tube  down my throat. It took a little doing but I finally got someone's attention. Finally got rid of the tube and the staff started bringing me up to date. I didn't find out until later that I had had four surgeries, I'd been out for ten days.

And really, truly I don't know how many installments this will take because heck, I still have a life and I can only take so much of this at one time. So be patient. Please.

I WON'T BE TALKING POLITICS

with my brother in law any time soon. I don't know him well enough to know  where he gets his news.  But, I was informed that the Vegas shooter  killed several security guards before opening fire. He didn't. The one guard who was wounded survived. He did alert the cops, helped evacuate the floor and gave them as much information as he could before being treated for the leg wound he received when the gunman fired through the door. Hitting him in the leg.

And that the shooter was targeting Christians or conservatives or Republicans or any or all of the above. Presumably because only Christians, conservatives, Republicans or supporters of the current occupant go to country music festivals. In Las Vegas. I mean it's not like we have our political or religious affiliations tattooed on our foreheads.

We can't ask the shooter. He's dead. Could it be that he was another nutcase with access to a lot of fire power and a handy crowd? That he didn't much care WHO he shot? I did find out that my nephew's sister in law was there. The person in front of her was shot down and she damn near got trampled in the stampede for cover. She did make it out on the first available flight.

I do know that the NRA pretends to speak for a membership that numbers in a small fraction of the population of this country. I do know that most of their funding comes from the corporations that make the guns not the people who own the guns. And while a majority of our supposed representatives would rather walk over hot coals than opposed the NRA it wouldn't help if we had legislatures composed of saints.

There are so many guns in this country that we would have to shred the constitution to get MOST of them off the streets. And think about it. African Americans aren't responsible for most of the mass shootings. Hispanic Americans? For the most part no. Asian Americans? Nope. And so on down the road. A few by followers of radical Islam. And almost no women from any ethnic group.

So. What do we do about the white males from almost any age group from early twenties to almost senior citizens? The tiny, tiny minority of white males?  Bless me if I know the answer. I wish I did.

DON'T FEEL SORRY FOR ME

OK. Here goes nothing. This may take more than one post.Probably will or this will look like war and peace. And it's going to stir up some demons.

Last year was a bitch. I ended up in the hospital and rehab. Twice. First time for breathing and other problems and they discovered some clots in my lungs and I was put on warfarin. That MAY have been the beginning of the rest of the story. Home for a few weeks. Mild problem with fleas because frankly once your cats know what's coming....developed a weird set of I'm not sure what they were frankly. Some sort of blisters on the feet and ankles. Back in good ol' MKW and then rehab for dressing changes. And some really good meds.

Finally home again. And I won't go into those details in public. Developed a fast moving case of cellulitis and back in I went again for IV antibiotics. Home again. Home again. But I wasn't dancing a jig. And if you want my opinion of the wound care outfit working at MKW message me privately on FB.

Got hooked up with a good primary care guy. And I'm guessing that nobody saw what was coming because they'd never seen it before. Leave it to me to be "original." And the cycle began. I'd get over one bout of cellulitis and start all over in a few weeks. My breathing never really came back. I went to the doctor. Took my meds. Clotting levels never really settled down.

At that point mom was ninety and starting to really slow down. We kept doing our thing. Somehow. Roberta came over when she could. Got through Christmas and New Years.

THE SOUL OF A RIVER AND MORE

I originally posted this back in 2014. The almost ignored leak from the Keystone Pipeline, officially just over 200,000 gallons and probably much more, prompted this repost. That crude doesn't just sit on the surface. Especially on ground with a high water table. The soul of Mother Gaia is at stake not just the river. 

A few years ago I invested in the 1990’s Cousteau River Journeys DVD’s. Four of the episodes followed the Danube from headwaters to the Black Sea, with emphasis on the environmental degradation along the river in the former Soviet states. Chemical plants that dumped untreated waste into the river. The dangers of aging nuclear plants that weren’t that well built in the first place. Run off from contaminated ground water along with gas leakage into the atmosphere. Local economies based on fishing and farming were stressed out by the pollution.

The diversion of the river into man made channels to improve navigation, while destroying local economies based on the wetlands and marshes.

So, where is the soul of a river? Is it just the river? Or does the river and its soul stretch beyond the channel and the meandering blue line on a map.

The river is the ocean that gives up its moisture to the rains and snows.

The river is winter ice and summer sun.

The river is snow, rain and hail.

The river is the tiny veins and capillaries of water that stretch beyond the banks and below the river bed.  Searching, seeking, seeping into the deep rocks and the deep roots of the mountains. Finally finding the way to new streams and new tree roots. Coming into the sun again, pulled into the sky a thousand miles from where the rain last fell.

The river is the mountains, home to the springs a rivulets that join to form a torrent.

The river is the animals that depend on it for water and forage, the trees that shade the banks and shelter the birds.

The river is the disappearing marshes and the migratory birds that nested in the reeds.

The canals are the river and so are the drying wetlands that used to hold back the floods.

The dams we build are the river and so are the fish blocked from their native spawning grounds.

The river is the disappearing, sick and mutated fish and the villagers and fishermen who depend on them not only for their livelihood, but for tonight’s dinner.

The river is the untreated chemical waste that leaches into ground water. It’s the sewage from overburdened, aging city systems.

The river is the rain falling through air contaminated with radiation from nuclear plants that couldn’t be built to withstand every possible risk.

The river is us.

The last episode ends with a group of children including one of Cousteau’s grandchildren flying kites along the river bank to remind us that they will have to live in the world we are creating.

(Words fail me sometimes. I have the vision in my mind but can’t find the words to express what I see)

NOT FOR A LONG TIME YET

When the time comes. And it will come sooner or later. Say this in my memory.

DO NOT STAND AT MY GRAVE

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there I do not sleep,

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sunlight on the ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning hush,

I am the soft uplifting rush

of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry.

I am not there,

I did not die.

Mary Elizabeth Fry 1932

And don't be too surprised if you catch me out of the corner of your eye. I'll be the one smiling like the Cheshire Cat. 

STILL MAKES ME_______ FILL IN THE BLANK

I posted this several years ago when I was going through my "you've got to be kidding, wait until you really face persecution" phase. I'm a few years older. The fundies still have a persecution complex.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From Benjamin Corey’s blog about so called persecution of Christians in this country. 

"Ken Ham referenced an Atlanta Fire Chief who wrote a book condemning homosexuality etc. Up front he has the right to write the book. He has the right to use it in his Bible study class. He didn’t have the right to bring copies of his self published tome to the fire house and try to distribute them to his subordinates. He didn’t lose his job because he was a Christian. He lost it, in part, because he was using his position to in effect intimidate those under him. This is the comment that set off my post.

That firefighter has a duty to preach the Gospel of Christ. What he did was not wrong in any sense, him being fired is just another example of what a godless, pagan culture we live in .

Christians have been persecuted since Christ ascended to heaven. We will not stop being laughed at and mocked at until Christ returns." My old post below. 

Guess what. If you insist that the earth is only 6,000 years old. That the earth is the center of the universe and that the Bible is a science text book don’t be surprised if the most polite reactions are snickers behind the hands followed by quick exits and hysterical laughter from the other side of the door. That’s not persecution. It’s pity. Especially for any kids you may be “home schooling.”

Now on to the subject at hand. He did not have duty to preach the gospel on the taxpayers dime in a public building supported with the taxes of every citizen of the city to his subordinates. He can preach all he wants, hire a hall, stand on a street corner, build his own church. Nobody is going to stop him. Probably won't even throw ripe tomatoes at him.

To those who cry persecution when what is really happening is that you are finally being treated like everybody else.

I assume your pastor is still walking free. Hasn’t been arrested. Hasn’t suddenly disappeared. Hasn’t been gunned down in a local cane field. Update. Happened to a Jesuit priest named Rutilio Grande back in the late seventies in El Salvador. Big mistake. Also murdered were an old man and a boy who had the bad luck to be with father Grande when his car was riddled with gunfire.

Helped turn a nice, quiet, devout, hardly ever said a hard word, newly minted
 archbishop named Oscar Romero into a passionate voice for the poor and truly persecuted. Three years later in the spring of 1980 the death squads added the bishop to a death toll that doesn't have an official total. Could be as high as 80,000 in a country that had about five million people. And I don't believe that anyone has ever totaled the number peasants who were forced to flee the country and ended up in refugee camps in Honduras. 

Back to the original post

Anybody try to stop you from going to church. Any troops or cops blocking the entrance to the parking lot on Sunday morning. If you hold a Bible study at home are there any unmarked cars parked across the street watching who is coming and going? Any soldiers show up and turn your church into a barracks. Can a Catholic lay church worker make a delivery of consecrated Hosts to a small rural church without fear of being searched and murdered by the local death squads? Guatalamala.

 Ever see any graffiti on the walls that reads along the lines of “be a patriot, kill a priest? El Salvador. 

Has any congregation in this country ever been told at the end of funeral as mourners in Latin America attending a mass for murdered student activists were told, “stay inside the cathedral because the troops are outside and there's nowhere to run?”

Forgive me, I don't remember off hand where this happened. I THINK it was Argentina but I’m not going to bet the farm on it. The priests and other celebrants proceeded to go outside and begin walking towards the soldiers. Miraculously (I guess miracles do happen sometimes) the soldiers fell back and kept falling back until enough space in front of the cathedral had been cleared so that those inside had a fighting chance of getting down an alley or a side street. All of these things happened in Central and South America during the Reagan and Bush I years. And worse.

Oh, and BTW can your church have a cross outside or on the roof without the government (China) telling you to take it down? Or worse bulldoze the whole building. Or arrest you for belonging to a congregation that isn’t sanctioned by the state? Give me a freakin' break.

Here’s some icing for that cake. Has the Christian population of this country fallen by seventy five percent since say, 2003? This is happening in Iraq right now. In part, thanks to our “Crusade” and experiment in regime change. There were nearly a million Christians in Iraq when the war started. The number is closer to a quarter million and some of them are still there just because they haven’t had a chance to leave yet. There have been Christians in that part of the world since the beginning. Some of them still speak Aramaic. 

Since then the total has fallen even lower. 

So much for the trip down memory lane. 

THE CHICKEN OR THE EGG?

I've said this before. I may be back. And someday I'll go into the gory details of the past few months. But not right now.

It's public record that disgraced judge and senator wanna be Roy Moore belongs to an evangelical Baptist Church. Checking out his Wickipedia site I learned that he was born in Alabama but the family moved around a lot.

What it doesn't say is whether he was raised in a certain branch of conservative evangelicalism or not. If he was, then his church helped shape his apparent belief that teenage girls are appropriate sexual partners. Or, as I suspect, he found a church "home" that fitted beliefs he already had. Either way he's way out of step with most of us. And so is his church in my opinion. Most of us don't see underage teenage girls as sexual partners. And you can go to prison if you act on that belief.

And, in a strange way,  he's way out of step with even the church. He didn't get permission from the families of the women who were teens at the time and are accusing him years later, and it was outside marriage. Watching so called pastors twisting in the wind trying to deal with questions about this sicko without coming down on either side of the fence would be funny if it wasn't so damn sad.

Read the commentary above since we're getting the usual "why didn't they say something at the time" crap. Talk about victim shaming.

And I suspect that at least some of these churches preach the even creepier practice of so called Purity Balls where fathers take their daughters out for the evening. Yuck IMHO.