AND ABOUT TIME

This idiotic game we've been playing along with is just about over. Letting men compete against girls and declaring them all girls is one of the stupider things I've encountered over the last 58 years. It's right up there with letting perverts who identify as women into the girls locker room and restrooms. Finally, they are fighting back.

That a concept so idiotic on its face must be referred to the Courts is a sad commentary on the state of the American political class. They caved into the zealot 2% and let them run roughshod over the rights of girls and women because...... Because what dammit! We used to have perfectly good terms for boys that wanted to be girls. We called them cross dressers and fags. Either was descriptive and accurate and neither intruded on the rights of actual girls or women.

I used to fly with my little girl and it was with little trepidation that I sent her off into the ladies room at the airports because I had no fear any harm could come to her there. I'm not sure how that works for single dads anymore. I can't even imagine how it works in high school locker rooms.

If there is any justice the courts will sort it out properly and it will open the door for thousands of women everywhere to sue the schools and other polities for damages.

FACEBOOK AND ME

I only signed up for an account to keep a channel open to Texas and the West Coast and one particular little person. Today I found this waiting for me when I did my quarterly check to see what insane gibbering and Trump hatred my friends had come up with over the last 3 months:

I was happy to oblige.

They said they would get back to me after they checked it out and meanwhile they were closing my account for my security.

The warm fuzzy from that exchange is only starting to slowly fade away. Thank God that facebook is there to look out for my security. I mean, if you can't trust facebook, who can you trust?

SEGOVIA

I attended Department Head School in my own way. I was young. I lived in the BOQ by the quiet water next to the library and gym. I used to hear the most incredible guitar music from next door. It was another student playing his 12 string guitar and playing Segovia like a master.

I think one becomes an adult when one confesses that you would not give anything to play like that. No. You've got some really awesome things in your life you won't give up on pain of death. I got a couple of those. Well, OK, mabye a couple of dozen.

Still, to play like that. I think it's worth doing. I'm talking about this.




I'd definitely have a lash at it.

Oh, and by the way, if you didn't read Nino Culotta or John Patrick O'Grady, you missed out.

PARIS

I entered Paris via the Gare du Nord where a string quartet of 4 quite nice looking young ladies from the local academy of music were sitting under the glass and playing Mozart. I got a room in a hotel on the Ave Wagram just about a block away from the Arc de Triomphe.1 I was talking to one of the Eldar tonight and mentioned my first time in Paris. I had just come off wartime steaming for a year in the Persian Gulf and was on my way to the next assignment. This was before I had a home to call my own. I had a month or two and no particular place to be and so I did Madrid and Paris and London in one go.

The first morning in Paris was, IIRC, a Sunday. I can look it up. I used to take notes. We'll agree it was a Sunday. I stood at the Arc de Triomphe and looked all the way down the Champs Elysees and there was, by dawn's early light, not one car, not one pedestrian in sight all the way down to the Place de la Concorde. I'm not exaggerating. There was absolutely nobody at all on that street for as far as the eye could see. That's kind of why I won't go back. One doesn't gloss over memories like that lightly and Paris has changed a great deal.

I remember getting a breath of fresh air in the Marine Memorial Hotel in San Francisco at 3 in the morning and marveling that from my 9th floor room I could not see a living soul nor a car or bus. The window was floor to ceiling and was wide open and still, no sign of life in the city of a million souls. Obviously, not NYC, which I loathe, where, supposedly, nobody sleeps. Trust me, in San Francisco, everybody sleeps, a lot.

When I stayed in London I always stayed in tiny little hotels within a block or two of Paddingon. I could get up and walk to her majesty's palace, Harrods, Tottenham Court Road, the Tower, or pretty much anywhere I wanted to. Purdington's (they call it Purdey's) was a regular stop. I drove them mad by walking in and discussing shotguns and then left, not buying the $15,000 shotguns they had for the sporting sort.

The last time but one the security officer at Heathrow very quietly asked me to join him and we walked to a very private screening area where he asked if he could open my bags. I was nice and said, "sure." He opened them up and started pulling out holsters and empty magazines and one of those flashlights with the 90 degree bend that clips to one's deuce gear and kept on rummaging. I knew he wasn't looking for the pony. He was convinced I had undeclared pistols or machine guns in my luggage. He was young. He kept turning the flashlight on and off as if maybe, just maybe, it was some sort of top secret American weapon. I explained that I left the guns behind but the holsters were mine.

Sometimes, I used the subway or the tube but mostly I was a man fresh off the boat and I liked to walk. I kind of needed to walk. Our secretary once showed me pictures from her and her daughter's trip to Rome. The pictures recorded a visit to every single thing in Rome. You name it, she got a picture of her and her daughter in front of it over the course of a 9 hour layover. They might have walked a couple of feet. Mostly it was downtown tourist bus and ruins and things that ought to be ruined. I suspect that by perambulation, I could have taken pictures of just 3 of the sights. I'm OK with that. I am related to Rikki Tikki Tavii and I like to run walk and find out.

There's a certain majesty in strolling into one of those sidewalk establishments in France and spending a few maddening minutes trying to convince the waiter that you don't want coffee, you want coke and when one says coke one means one hell of a lot more ice cubes than the solitary and lonely ice cube they fished out of the gutter and stuck in the glass. It was more fun having these french debates with woman waiters who were willing to go all-in to explain that there is a worldwide shortage of ice or that the guy with the recipe quit last week and all you are going to get my American friend is that one tiny iceberg. They were so Earnest.

SECOND AMENDMENT

I wrote it. It wasn't hard. I knew the spelling and even the punctuation wasn't all that hard. I might try writing some of the other amendments, but I don't believe in some of them so, no.

WIDESPREAD HISTORICAL IGNORANCE

I thought this was an interesting tidbit. From Letterman and his ilk, who went out every so often and asked average LA denizens such depth defying questions as, "can you tell me who is the President of the United States" and got a lot of blank stares, confusions, idiotic giggles and massive ignorance, it's a bit of a reach. They are really really stupid in LA.

I liked this guy, watch and learn, 

Listen to a professor who has reached the status of the "immortals". It's well worth your time.

I'm just about convinced that nobody in our schools bothers to teach history. I don't care about the invincibly ignorant who cannot place a battle into a war but it's concerning when those "highly" educated high school students don't even know about either our Revolution or the Civil War and cannot place either World War in the same century.

I know a lot of people who would place the blame on the teachers. To a hideously large extent, so do I. On the other hand, I blame the students.

Yes, yes, pity the poor students who must learn not just about how to placate and win at Candy Crush but are also being asked to learn about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Aristotle and a host of other dead white men.

On the gripping hand, ignorance is still high up there as a culling tool. We no longer have the draft or world wars requiring millions of youngsters to die in the mud and the rain and have pretty much glided by without for over half a century without putting the unwilling 18 year old man in front of the bullet or bayonet and things are looking pretty good, unless you're some kind of curmudgeon who thinks everybody needs to know about Boiling Springs, PA.

I have always had a fascination with history. Not so much the names and dates, as the path of history. Perhaps if kids were encouraged to walk unescorted through the forest along the path, they might learn something about the nature of the path of history.

I don't know if it worked but my sister took one of those historical path books you used to find and she took it apart and taped the entire path of known history to the walls of one of her houses. You know the books. They put the whole of history, (snort), onto a continuous pull out page from a big book for kids. She was the first I've seen to tear the whole damned thing out of the book and nail it to the wall. Contemporaneous history for all!

I was taught human evolution decades ago. I am fascinated by every find in that realm just as I am when historians find new Viking cultures in North America decades after I was taught that Columbus was the first European on these shores.

History! Bring it On!

SPACE X LAUNCHES INMARSAT INTO GEO SYNCH

Watch on full screen. I love this stuff.

I'LL TELL YOU WHAT IS HARD

There is, effectively, no way to get powder burns out of ones face after shooting a black powder muzzle loader cavalry pistol out the window of a moving car. So. Don't do it. They will leave a mark.

JUSTICE INVESTIGATES FBI

Justice in this country has departed. It will surely end with show trials and the triumph of New Speak, but the comedy is just beginning as the DOJ finds a towering pillar of probity, honesty and integrity who will investigate the FBI over its handling of Hillary Clinton's wanton and knowing release of Top Secret, SCI and Special Access Program information to any  hacker worth his or her salt who bothered to look at her unsecured and unclassified network and servers. I don't actually think such men exist in the DOJ anymore. The last man of integrity to work there left many years ago and now writes interesting columns about the shameful misdeeds and injustice enacted by those he left behind in the vasty halls of darkness known to us as the Department of Justice.

It looks from the Bloomberg article like all the people that are accountable to the people are planning to recuse themselves from any involvement in the new witch hunt and let the unimportant dogsbodies do the digging, rooting around, and investigating before everything is once again stitched up as beyond mortal ken and best left alone and misremembered much the way that jackass Walter Cronkite screwed up the true meaning of the Tet Offensive and the utter destruction of the Viet Cong.

I almost hate to write this but what we appear to need now is our own Court of the Star Chamber. It seems that our DOJ makes deals with powerful and rich crooks and thieves and fines their banks and investors billions for the misdeeds of men who are NEVER held accountable, fined and sent to prison for a few decades after looting the country because their business/bank is "too big to fail." I'm tired of it.

Shakespeare had the right of it back when the Star Chamber was just getting off to a good start in England when he wrote,  ''The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.'' You really can't go wrong with that kind of start. It was them and those like them that wrote things like civil forfeiture laws and implemented them on a society that wrote these words into their Constitution:

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

 Our police turned into thieves overnight because they are the law and the law allows them/encourages them, to loot the populace in the gentle name of the people. Likewise, the layering of courts and jurisdictions that mean that a man found not guilty of the crime of murder may then face the same penalties if the same case is retried as a violation of civil rights. That was a pernicious evil that should not have been allowed.

People comment on spirit of the law and the written physical meaning of the law and then they go well outside any normal barrier to reason in order to find penumbras or shadows or bright lines and lose sight of the clear and concise meaning of the English language as written into the highest law in the United States of America.

If one simply put the facts and the law, as it stands, before any group of 8th graders I think they would all find that Hillary violated the laws and should be punished. I'd make it a blind test and present the case without reference to any names or parties. I'd simply put it to them that a person knowingly violated national security laws and then tried to destroy all the evidence even after it had been subpoenaed by lawfully empowered investigators.

I think Martha Stewart might have appreciated a hearing in the Star Chamber. I doubt they would have found her guilty of any crime. I don't think Hillary Clinton can say the same. If she went before the Court of the Star Chamber, she'd be escorted to Tower Hill and her head would be lopped off. On the other hand, to use the delightful phrase she seemed to find so potent and powerful as Secretary of State, Senator and First Lady, "at this point, what does it really matter anyway?"

Exactly. This evil barnacle of spite and hate has finally fallen from the body politic and will have to live or semi-live the remainder of her life knowing that she had the presidency in her very grasp and lost it all because she could not, even once, bring herself to behave in an honorable and upright fashion. Future generations will write scholarly articles about the loathsome critter and wonder that any sane person could vote for such a foul creature. To this day, those that voted for her cannot point to a single achievement she ever accomplished whether as Mrs. Governor of Arkansas, Mrs. First Lady, Senator from New York, or as Secretary of State. She was, at the end, a big fat nothingburger.

FADE AWAY GIRL

Brutal day. I called my x yesterday and got the most pathetic peep out of my daughter as her mother loathed me over the phone, long distance, like she does. I hung up and I went for a walk, very worried about a little girl who lives very far away. I was heading to the local coffee shop which is about a mile away and it's just an easy stroll through the neighborhood and I walked by this church.

It's where we go to practice Tai Chi. It also happens to be the church of a fellow barberian who gets his hair cut in the same little shop that everybody in Cleveland uses to get a haircut. That's where I met him the first time. I knew the name of the deputy second under assistant minister and I thought he might be able to provide me with the name of a worthy lawyer who would be good for a child custody battle.

I caught him at an auspicious time. His girl Friday (as I think about it, his wife)  showed me to his office where he was busy packing up things into boxes but he graciously made time for me and we chatted. I told him what I wanted which was no more than the names of any lawyers he thought might help me and he then told me that he was packing to leave. After 7 years in MetroParkCentralis he had come to an end and had his own ministry. He was heading west to take charge of a church which is just about a mile away from my daughter's house in Portland 2500 miles away. He will be there next week. We talked.

I don't go to church.

My daughter is in the 7th grade. For some reason, that calls to mind this wonderful lady who was the very first person I ever worked for. I was in the 7th grade and I 'helped' her in the library when I was not in class. She gave me a complete first day cover envelope and commissioning package from the commissioning of USS NIMITZ. I kept it pristine, still in the original package right up until I gave it all to Chaplain Harvey. As with Mike Lemieux, I wish that I had followed my friends a little closer. I had no idea that the oldest child of Chester Nimitz passed away in 2015. That's just a breath away in time.

TO SIT AND TO READ

I have 9000 books. I got them because what I like to do is to read.

I had the full adventure gene complex and signed up and went to the very first ongoing war I could find. I went to all the active military fronts my country had and spent a lifetime NOT READING.  I now prefer to put my feet up and read.

You can't do that when you're on the road with friends and lovers and you can't do it at the movies and you can't do it while watching television. [It's a secret but I can read the internets while observing TV but I still can't read a frigate book.]

There is NO FRIGATE like a book.

19 million books and I like to read.

It doesn't happen without time and space. I used to read 9 million words a minute but you cannot travel in your mind at that speed. I deliberately slowed down to read what I want to read. I no longer have to read 4000 navy messages/day or instructional manuals on ID1700 engines. I'm done with all that.

I know people who only read in bed.

I'm not one of them. Never was. I only read in bed in the dark because that was the only handful of minutes I was allowed to read by the people that controlled my life. I have no idea why it's an oddity that readers only ask to be left alone, so they can read the damned books. We all resurface in a day or two, like submarines rising for the Dominoes delivery man/girl every night at the pier.

Reading is a vice and it truly is best practiced alone, out of sight. Only coeds read in sunlight and only then on the school green while tanning. I'm not a coed, don't tan, and prefer to read alone.

My parents moved out of their house of two stories with a basement last month. That basement was my dad's. He read down there. You could tell by the trail of books left in his wake....ok, bookshelves and filing cabinets, newspapers, and a computer. He now lives in a special hell that readers know. It's the hell where people come up to you, kick you twice to get your attention and suggest that maybe we should do something.

He's 80 and he did something. More than anything in the world he'd like to put his feet up and read without interruption, without plants, without deer, without ....

Why is it so damned hard to read?

Yeah, I'm familiar with the answer, read on your own time. I've gone abroad, I've seen the Oliphant, I've waged war and I've seen the things that were worth seeing long ago. Short of time travel and good restaurants, I'd just like to read now.

There is always something.

RIP

I read this and it was valuable information but then I paused to reflect. I'm probably never going to swim in the oceans again. Those days are behind me. Back when I lived by Fletcher Cove and literally swam, surfed and lived the life aquatic in Solana Beach, this would have been good info. I had a lifeguard swim out to me once because she said I was in a rip. She was more than a little pissed off that I didn't see her waving her head off at me to clear the water. I had to point out that without glasses I don't see all that much beyond about 10 feet.

I used to swim a mile a day at lunch. Swimming holds no fears for me.... but there are sharks.

IN THE QUIET HOURS, THE MOON

There have been years since my last reading of this poem but it always roars back like it did the very first time I heard it. I heard it in Chicago one night on their local public radio as I drove into town after midnight and then I asked the most erudite and knowledgeable professor of (back then, English), who authored it and he told me, for he really does know many things beyond the ken of seafarers.

I used to live above a beach or two and just about every single night the second time I lived in Newport, I would walk down to the beach. The other two Ensigns and our senior housemate, LT Mike Lemieux figured I was crazy but, I like the beach, even if it is covered with snow and ice.

The sea is calm to-night.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand;
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
Only, from the long line of spray
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Agaean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery; we
Find also in the sound a thought,
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Dover Beach
Matthew Arnold

In the quiet hours, as I head into my 56th year, I like to remember a friend, who still owes me money.

He was a most excellent man and officer of the USN.

PLAYING H2OPb WITH THE WATER

From the fascinating blog of the newest Special Assistant Attorney General of Michigan, news of a suit recently filed.

They filed a complaint in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in November 2015 and companion complaints in the Michigan Court of Claims and Genesee County Circuit Court. The complaints include both tort and Constitutional claims against the governmental actors as racial minorities are disproportionately affected by the lead poisoning.

He and his pals are going to investigate and prosecute all those stupid people who made the good people of Flint drink radium and plumbum and other icky stuff like that instead of good clean fresh Lake Huron water which, as we think about it, would  still have been a toxic menace to the good people of Flint since all the lead came from the pipes that distribute the water. Oh, and it's Waukesha that is forcing the people for the last 100 years to drink double the good amount of radium with each filthy glass of water consumed.

You know, when SMOD drops in, the media will again tell us that its impact is felt most by racial minorities and women. They just can't get enough of the racism inherent in the speeding meteor of death.

Short of ripping out and replacing ALL the pipes, the peep show being prepared to bag, tag and jail low echelon Aqua people will simply amuse the peasants while doing nothing at all about the underlying pipe problem.

The prosecutions have begun, the trials and hangings will follow and yet, there remains the troubling language of the idiocracy.

...switched its drinking water source from Lake Huron water treated by the Detroit water system to Flint River water treated at the Flint Water Treatment Plant. Michigan Department of Environmental Quality officials have acknowledged a disastrous mistake when they failed to require the city to add corrosion-control chemicals as part of the treatment process. 

The corrosive water caused lead to leach from pipes, joints and fixtures. Although Flint reconnected to Detroit water in October, after state officials acknowledged the lead-poisoning problem after months of denials, the risk remains because of damage to the water infrastructure system. 

Officials also still are exploring possible links between the river water and the Legionnaires' outbreak. 

The state and city are now treating the pipes with higher levels of phosphates in an effort to build up a protective coating that will prevent lead from further leaching. Having more water flowing in the system would help that process, and that's one reason Snyder and other state officials want Flint residents to start using their taps again.

So, you see, it wasn't the water that was dangerous. No! It was the failure to add chemicals to the water that brought about the problem which is 100% caused by the lead pipes that nobody is talking about replacing.

You know, some people went hermatile at the notion of adding fluoride to the water supply. Does anybody ever ask/wonder what chemicals they're putting in the water to keep the lead from showing up? Yea, I went hunting for the wonderful clip from Conspiracy Theory but it was not to be found.

Isn't it wonderful that absolutely NOBODY is suggesting that the best course of action is to replace the dangerous lead pipes that furnish the leaded water to the people?

Oh drat, I just realized that, here in the city of higher elevation, they are replacing the main waterline running all the way up to the water plant that is guarded by Homeland Security, the SS and Bolos. drat. What have I been drinkin aaaarrrrgggghhhh.

Yeah, it doesn't quite get to the aargh scene but it's still a killer rabbit, aint it?

GETTING IT WRONG

I do it all the time. Last night, I was convinced that I was wrong. That's slightly more rare. This morning I found that I was right after all. No, I didn't have to google it, a darkness fell upon the land and the rocks broke apart and spoke and all the birds fell from the sky, dead, as the voice from....well, you know.

Anyway, a missive had found its way here. It said, "SEND THE MONEY OR SHUT UP."

I had taken a page from the Wisdom and sent my daughter a simple letter a mere day ago. I offered money in return for certain things. Everyone who now knows of the offer has made themselves clear on the subject. And that's OK, none of them were dads. I won't convince them. I don't care. I'm not even going to try.

Anytime anybody offers you money? It comes with strings. You need to learn to see them. That is part of my job.

She cannot learn what she does not hear. I'm all about letting her hear. It's what father's want.

Target Angle 180 and opening

LIKE MEMORIES OF ANOTHER TIME

Me and the one share the same fine barber here in MetroParkCentralis. We talk, not often, once. He has a protege of sorts from out in the land of make believe. Where else would a talent like this show his mark?

Nice work if you can draw it.

ACQUIRING A LIBERAL EDUCATION

One can learn a lot from reading. In the old days one had to have money to buy books or access to a nearby library that had books worth your time. We are fortunate in that some very wise and smart people spent some amount of the fire in which we all burn to compile and publish some fascinating books. If only they had been around back when I was an ignorant nipper. The giant brains that I have the most respect for are those who put together the Harvard Classics and Will and Ariel Durant.

The aim of the Harvard Classics was to impart a liberal education. “Liberal education accomplishes two objects. It produces a liberal frame of mind, and it makes the studious and reflective recipient acquainted with the stream of the world’s thought and feeling, and with the infinitely varied products of the human imagination."

Sadly, the stream of the world's thought these days is pretty much entirely filled with scupper trout. This doesn't mean that we cannot benefit from a bit of reading. As Dr. Eliot said, just 15 minutes a day reading the immortals will enrich and benefit the crap right out of you.

This great company of the wisest, the wittiest, the most interesting minds of all ages and every land will afford you entertainment in endless variety, inspiration and stimulation of mind. They will carry you forward upon that road to the high goal toward which all of us are making our way. It is then to the countless hours in which you will walk in step with these great thinkers of all time that this book is dedicated.

  The Harvard Classics are “all things to all men.” They are universal in their appeal and universal in their power to bestow pleasure, self satisfaction and the joy of mental growth to each man, woman and child with impartiality and in infinite variety.

You can get the Harvard Classics right here at this link. They're free to all. They are there in many different formats for whatever device it is that you use to bring you the e-written word. The 15 minutes part is called The Reading Guide so don't forget it. The books at the first link look like this.

Just 15 minutes a day and you can amaze your friends, parents and teachers! Dr. Eliot provided a handy guide so you'll know just what to read and best of all, it starts on 1 January! Get your download and start reading!

New Year's Resolution
#2 Read more and better books

SOCIAL JUSTICE WARRIOR MISSION STATEMENT

A hideous and accurate summation of the Way of the Left.

I suppose the question for the young is, do you want to be on the 'winning' side? Even if you win?

FOX NEW

I'm on the airline roads and I had plenty of time to observe Fox News. I remember the old one from 10 years ago when I had it on in my office and the OPS office for the morning. We were still hard at war back then. Before that I lived in a place with cable of my choosing and Fox was available.

I watched for the first time in 4 years and decided it had turned into MSNBC.

I won't watch it again. Unlike the horrible BBC, it isn't news anymore.

It sucks and is among the most biased 'ne s ' I've ever seen and not in a good way.

You heard it here, "FOX NEWS SUCKS."

A LITTLE YOUNG

My parents weren't big on counseling children. They preferred to set an example. I can't fault them. They did a good job. I'm looking 55 in the face with an 11 year old daughter. She's almost 12. I didn't see that coming when I was in my 20's or 30's. Not at all.

My parents never sat me down for any kind of talks that I recall. I think they expected what they were to rub off on me and my siblings. I think it did. For the first 6 years she was raised independent and happily showed off her own accomplishments. She remained true to that for as long as I've known her.

When one thinks about it, a child is a missile sent into the future and one has just the formative years before they leave home at 16 to shape them as we would want them to grow.