#174 Veterans Day ... V--the Home Front

We're all veterans. All of us alive today are literally and etymologically "old ones" (Latin root vetus, Fr. cognate vieux) when it comes to war--when it comes to the common-sense-defying serial warfare that America has been waging for the last 60 years. The war-weariness of especially us Vietnam-era, "home-front vets" has been insufferable Then not much more than a decade later we get Grenada, Panama, Iraq; then Yugoslavia, Somalia; then Afghanistan, Iraq again; then Afghanistan again, and now Pakistan--dumped on us. Hey, you VFW's had it easy, fighting from the gut--unphilosophically!--over life and limb, while we were left here state-side having to worry and brood guiltily, obsess morally and politically over whether you guys were getting dead and disabled for a just cause. Give us a break.

But can you imagine such a pollyannish poster above being hung anywhere in America today without invoking peals of derisive laughter? I don't know ... maybe if Lady Victory were sowing poppy-seeds. Yeah, that's the ticket. Plant a back-yard garden so our surplus agriculture can go to feed the lately impoverished Afghan farmer and his drug cartel. In the dark days of WWII, though, Americans were serious about their patriotic support, and homeland sacrifices, for the troops overseas. (The muscular Rosie the Riveter poster, which I'm sure you've seen, captured the spirit best.) Since I was born during that war, I would have (unknowingly) shared with my parents some of the hardships, such as food and gas rationing, associated with the war effort on the home front. Some of that is still with us: like my parents and grandparents before them, I always refer to a little improvised horticultural patch as a Victory Garden.

No, I'm happy to say that the better angels lurking in the heart of the American people have NEVER shown that kind of unequivocal support for war, after what I consider the warning-knell of Korea--so aptly nick-named the Forgotten War, at least until M*A*S*H used it purely as an anti-Vietnam metaphor. Since then, the Electorate has been about evenly split about undertaking a foreign war, and then, very soon after--prompted I believe by some Founding-Father super-ego in us all--we're against it. All it seems to take, thankfully, is a bit of hard-nosed TV coverage--and now the internet--to expose military adventurism gone wrong. A few body-bags and bloody-stumps will do it. Okay, not any more. We have to back-exstrapolate from coffins--recently banned from coverage--and V.A. hospital interviews. The ONE THING that Bush and Obama seemed to have learned from Vietnam: don't let the Free Press get too close to the blood and guts, or the people at home will turn against you. Notwithstanding, I take heart in the fact that the majority of Americans now disapprove of our war in Afghanistan, and that many of those polled mention Vietnam.

My first three sons are too old to serve, and safe, but not my last. Remember, it was inconceivable in the early 60s, when JFK began planting a few U.S. "advisers" here-and-there in Southeast Asia, that 50,000+ Americans would die there. But it happened. He was sowing dragon's teeth. My real concern, though, returning to the starting point of this series, is How much longer must my children and grandchildren be subjected to the mental and moral anguish of America at war? That's no small thing. I'm un-scientifically convinced that us war-babies and baby-boomers would have much healthier psyches if we weren't witness to the ceaseless shock and awe of Vietnam. Wasteland carnage ... destroyed villages ... coffins and body bags ... disfigured and all-but-disgraced VETERANS, many of whom are still with us. Sound familiar? The indelible My Lai Massacre has already been replicated a couple of times in the Middle-East War.

Yet lately I've been hearing oxymoronic noises about "WINNING the war in Afghanistan." Will you have a part in Victory?
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#173 Veterans Day ... IV--Onwards and Backwards into Afghanistan

Yet another uncle of mine, by marriage--I had a bevy of good-looking aunts--was, like his father-in-law (yes) Corporal C.A. Edmunds, a veteran's veteran. Even more so. First of all, no mere Gumpish wound to the buttocks for Uncle Frank: during the Allies' last great squeeze that would stifle Nazi Germany and lead to V.E. Day, an exploding land-mine took off both of the infantryman's legs below the knee. What's more, after his state-side convalescence, the Veterans Administration its-very-self figured to put him on the payroll. Hey, a double-amputee war-vet with great spirit and an ingratiating personality (he had one) = perfect P.R. He worked with the V.A. till retirement, which he and my aunt are still enjoying in Florida, alive and well in their late-eighties. Talk about a survivor.

Uncle Frank got along well with or without his artificial limbs. Without was better. Not as much pain--pain that has never completely gone away. Whenever this particular war-hero uncle (among several on all sides of the family) took off his cumbersome prostheses and his no-heel-or-toe socks, we kids--especially this First Nephew--were allowed to cop a feel. Of his scarred and be-wrinkled stumps. After all, it was a cheap massage. And while we were always squirmifiably embarrassed, he seemed totally un-self-conscious about the whole thing. For me, at that young age, it was nothing less than exhilarating. In touchy-feeling the effects of a just-short-of-deadly land-mine, I was magically transported to the European Theater of the Second World War. Right down into the battleground of exploding meat and gristle. My WWI Grandfather Edmunds would TELL me bed-time stories of his battlefield escapades (literally: he was in a tactical retreat when he got the bullet to the bum)--my WWII Uncle Frank could SHOW. Just as well, because he never talked about it.

Getting around without prosthetic help, my uncle looked exactly like Specialist Andrew Soule', 25, pictured above, R&R-ing along the Salmon River in Idaho. An Afghan war-vet, he was blown up by a land-mine, too. (La plus ca change ... indeed.) It was by way of the Middle-East species of land-mine called an I.E.D. We've talked about them before (esp. DM #131). The device carried out its incendiary ambush beautifully, destroying a truck and effectively deleting at least one enemy soldier. To get Forrest Gump-ish once more, it may not have been the kind of "deactivation" that Specialist Soule' would have desired to mark the end of a military career--his cinematic counterpart, Vietnam-wise, was double-amputee "Lieutenant Dan," who would rather have been killed ... martyred heroically in the CAUSE. "Dulce et decorum est ..." again: Sweet and righteous it is ... to die for one's country. Gary Sinise's character in the movie descended into disillusionment and despair when he didn't. Only a Hollywood denoument would save him.

Problem is ... since WWII there has been no cause. No casus bellum to die for, or sacrifice body-parts over. My grandfather's wounded hind-quarters helped defeat the Kaiser; my uncle's lower-extremities helped pay for victory over the Nazis. Just wars. And these were veterans who were proud, and proudly welcomed home, after righteously defeating the aggressor nations on foreign soil. No such happy homecomings have been in store for American veterans ever since. But, please, nobody tell young Andrew (my second son's name) Soule' that he lost his legs for nothing. (more)
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#172 Veterans Day ... III--the Great Sequel

The Germans, though, were finally forced to throw in the towel at the end of WWII. No wimpy armistice here. Not a stand-off, cease-fire, truce. Rather, abject and unconditional surrender on the part of Nazi Germany; total victory for the allied countries. It was Victory in Europe Day, celebrated everywhere on 8 May 1945. In this famous snapshot, a Georgia sailor-boy, sent into battle by my Granddaddy Edmund's draft board, jubilates the occasion in Times Square. Well ... could of been. He's never been indisputably identified.

Again we got in late; again we won the war for them. And once again we reluctantly fought a perfectly righteous, DEFENSIVE WAR. We hadn't quite yet developed our penchant for belligerent interventionism that has characterized our foreign policy forever after. On the defense, and surviving veterans, were two of my blood-uncles from either side of the family. One of them was the son of that same WWI Cpl. C. A. Edmunds, named Pierce, who served in the second one as a rear-turret gunner. "Tail-Gunner" Pierce. Considering that assignment's casualty-rate, no need to point out how lucky he was to be alive to celebrate Veterans Day later in November of that victorious year. But wait ... it was still officially Armistice Day. Only WWI veterans need apply. And moreover it was still meant to be a sort of Wilsonesque PEACE celebration. But the war in the Pacific hadn't ended yet, really for years to come, as it turned out. Korea, Vietnam, and all that.

For even when it officially was, it wasn't. It seems to me that getting entangled in the "Pacific Rim" in the final stages of WWII--we had to, of course--was our undoing for another 60 years. The wars started to pile up-- interventionist, non-defensive wars carried out, for the most part, on the other side of the planet. And the VETERANS!--they now began to run into the millions. It must have occurred to some folks in Congress that the current "honor-thy-veteran" Armistice Day just wasn't cutting it for those un-dead warriors returning from battles fought apres WWI. So after the Korean War, a bill was passed and signed by President/General Eisenhower on 26 May 1954 extending recognition on Nov. 11th of every year to ALL armed-service veterans of ANY war, or no war at all. But here's the wrinkle: it was still to be called Armistice Day! But this, apparently on second thought, wouldn't quite wash. So on Nov. 8th of that year--in the nick of time--an amended bill was sent and signed, re-naming the federal holiday "Veterans Day." All pretense of any association with peace-making was thus permanently abandoned.

And rightly so. We were by then the policemen of the world, and would remain quick on the trigger for the rest of the century and beyond. Just this little bit of perspective should do it: TOTAL TIME American forces fought in BOTH World Wars = only HALF the time our troops have been fighting in Afghanistan ... so far. The Germans after the "Great War" had it right all along: Volkstrauertag. Mourn your heroic war-dead once a year (our Memorial Day) and be done with it. Veterans? Fugeddaboutit. We're all veterans. Moreover, veterans now could be veterans all over again after the next war ... and the next ... (more)
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#171 Veterans Day ... II--the Great War

My Granddaddy, Corporal C.A. Edmunds avoided the American cemetery at Flanders Fields, though several of his squadron are buried there. It was almost wiped out during one of the final Allied offenses against the Germans. It was in the Battle of Argonne Forest that he was Purple-Hearted in approximately the Forrest Gump area of his lower torso--"only a flesh wound." Not only did he survive the War To End All Wars, he was one of a handful of WWI vets alive when he died just a few months shy of 100. In fact, he became the veteran's veteran: as head of his county's draft-board for many years, during WWII and beyond, he was responsible for manufacturing them.

But who could have predicted that next war? Surely not my grandfather, ready to limp back to his Georgia farmstead. After all the obvious carnage that the new modern mode of warfare could produce--killing and maiming and warping a whole generation ... surely the Great Powers would have learned something from the "Great War." (To see how la plus ca change ... please refer to DM #127-129, the "Dulce et Decorum" series, where WWI France could double for today's Afghanistan.) They did, and didn't.

Germany, for one, never really accepted defeat. They didn't have to, technically. The war ended in an armistice = a cease-fire, a truce, a stand-off, if you will. Not a formal surrender--though the harsh terms imposed on the Germans, treaty-wise at Versailles, would make it appear so. Not surprisingly, what the allies celebrated subsequently and variously as our Armistice Day, Le Jour de l'Armistice in France and Belgium, and Remembrance Day in the British Commonwealth, was NOT and never-ever would be observed as such in Germany. For them, Nov. 11th became a memorial all right, but not for peace. The annual Volkstrauertag (trauer = "mourning") is for their fallen warriors, heroically dead on the losing side. Could just as well be called Valkyrie Day. Point is ... they never gave up. And thus the sequel to The War To End All Wars was less than one generation away.

The American commanders seemed to have a sense of this in the last days--indeed the final moments--of WWI. I alluded to Monty Python in the first paragraph, and here I'm indebted to one of them, Michael Palin, for providing an interesting sidebar on the events of Nov. 11th,"The Last Day of World War One" (BBC-2008). He hosted (and co-wrote/produced) a documentary so-entitled that was re-run on PBS this Veterans Day. According to the TV-doc, the allied officers in the field, especially our own "Black Jack" Pershing and his minions, were out for German blood right up till that "eleventh hour of the eleventh ... etc." Hostilities were officially to end at 11:00 pm, but everybody on both sides KNEW that the railway-car armistice would have already been signed at 5:00 pm on that day (news spread fast betwixt and across the densely populated trenches). So ... would the allied officers give these long-suffering Tommies and Doughboys a break? Not on your Nellie Duff. During the 6-hour interval, in order to punish the aggressor Kaiser-kampfers to the last possible "detail," the allies launched further offenses along the line, gaining meaningless territory, and senselessly losing more lives. The last to die was a Canadian, at one minute to eleven.

Fortunately ... my grandfather, Corporal C. A. Edmunds, A.E.F., was presumably resting comfortably somewhere behind the lines, nursing his backside. (more)
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#170 Veterans Day--Raining on the Parade

Last week, while our non-vet Commander-in-Chief Obama continued to weigh his options vs. the Middle East War, Veterans Day (officially non-apostropheed, as if nobody wants ownership) was celebrated all over our lucratively-militarized state of North Carolina. It rained all over, too. Parades were canceled or marched indoors ... and I'm glad, rhetorically. In order to make a historical point. (There is a sufficiency of war-vets in my family to memorialize, thank you.)

Originally, November 11 was Armistice Day, federally ordained one year after the fact to commemorate the signing of the (lit.) "arms-stand" agreement ending WWI hostilities at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918. It's still celebrated as such by our then-allied countries in that "war to end all wars." It didn't. And I'm unaware of any cease-fire pacts being signed lately. No, let Veterans Day stand rather for this country's perennial war-mongering, it's inexhaustible capacity find itself at-war with someone--somewhere and everywhere--serially and seemingly all of the time. In this soon-to-be former decade wherein my young grandchildren took their first steps, they have not known a moment of at-peace.

It wasn't always thus.

I think that in 1919 the world was genuinely optimistic--having seen the apocalyptic havoc that modern warfare can wreak--that we really weren't going to go through that again. After all, President Wilson and the American "dough-boys" had won the "Great War" in Europe in record time once we got into it, and the planet once again seemed "safe for democracy" ... except in the U.S. Senate. Wilson's idea of the League of Nations was well on its way to becoming reality across the old and newly-coined democracies of Europe (and remained so sans U.S. till after the next war), and everybody signed-off our President's famous "Fourteen Points" for achieving a lasting peace ... except the U.S. Senate. That's right, the world's greatest deliberative body misread the League of Nations treaty as Health-Care Reform, defeated it, and paved the way for WWII.

Okay, I suppose the German people must again share the blame for the latter. Really all of it. What's the old saw?--"Get one German together, he broods; get two together, they argue; get three together, they march." Or something like that. And so the first half of the last century was an era of uncalled-for defensive war, on our part. We resisted entry into both world-wars till the Germans sunk our ships in the first one, and the Japanese did it again in the second one. Ah, the good old days. Nobody really wanted to fight the second one, the caught-by-surprise devastation of the first still holding most nations in shock ... except for Germany. Appeasement was the order of the day, until it was too late. Perhaps this was the sinister and ultimately self-defeating lesson learned and carried over to second half of our last century and dribbling over into this one, that has made us--sometimes in collusion with the latter-day League of Nations: the U.N.--so damnably interventionist. Kennedy's "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech sums up our long-distance blood-lust over the last 60 years. Ancient-Germanically though my blood may course, the Blogman has no wish to be a citizen of Berlin. I really do wish JFK had meant, "I'm a jelly-doughnut"--for so the urban legend goes that he misaligned his word with a (for-real) popular confection--but, in context, he didn't.

At 11:01 pm, Nov. !!th 1918, my maternal Granddaddy Cliff, by-then-veteran dough-boy, might have celebrated the Armistice with a jelly doughnut, but not with a Berliner. The young Georgian, Clifford Alonzo Edmunds, Corporal, American Expeditionary Forces, and his squad had already killed enough of them. That fellow on the right above looks a bit as he did, compared with our old photograph, taken at the same time and place. (more)
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#111 Saturday Matinee: COMING SOON!

... TO A THEATER NEAR YOU!

THIS WEBLOG! ... wide screen ... technicolor ... cast of thousands ... if the Myriad Readers can only wait a bit longer.

Still some problems to FIX.

Taken some logistical LICKS.

Not to panic,

Nothing satanic,

But the number is six ... six ... SIX!

New target date for total resurrection of the Daily Mosteller mews up a trifecta of my lucky number: upcoming March 6 marks the 66th anniversary of my birth event, and the rebirth of this here blog thing.

Vicissitudinality of healthitude, economitude, domestitude, techno-cybernetitude ... and some attitude have blogged the Blogman down, but he shall rise again.

Watch for it.

There's a lot to talk about.
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#110 Bloggus Un-Redivivus...Until 01/01/09

Sorry ... blogged too soon last post. Will have to take a grievously unwanted vacance from the DM and its Myriads till target-date 1 Januarius 2009. Just too painful to type, especially for a hunt-and-pecker (or so she said) ... like me. The "neuritis/neuralgia" (or whatever the bejeebies it is) has spread to left neck and shoulder blade. A good sign. It's still only a flesh wound. And will continue its progress till either neuro-homeostasis or brain death. One or the other by 1 Januarius 2009.

Meanwhile, in this dead, dark season of "bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang"--they actually do. The Bard evidently just didn't get up early enough. Despite the execrable early sunset, Winter Solstice is not far off ... and life abounds. I can feel it in my left shoulder at this very moment. Pain is an indisputable sign that you're not dead. And in a grand profusion of life-renewal, I've got TWO of my grandchildren celebrating birthdays this week. Same thing happened two-in-a-week last month. Fecundity in the midst of murkitudity.

Sol Invictus!
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#100 Sunday Sundries

In no particular order...

• Personal computer still down, but flu has improved--enough to say a few words commemorating the 100th episode of the Daily Mosteller. As is traditional with such a milestone--e.g. Seinfeld, Bonanza--the WebLog can now be offered for syndication to the major networks or cable companies or, in extremis, to local stations and even public access channels. Goodness knows, I could use the advertising revenue. I would of course have final say over casting. The late, great Paul Newman would have been great as Dr. J.D.--handsome, blue-eyed intelligence and all--but maybe his longtime partner in crime Robert Redford is available. The age is about right, anyway.

• Speaking of which, my 100 posts have beaten out the mere 70 produced by that venerable old lady from Woy Woy, Australia (my post #27), Olive Riley, who gave up blogging only because she was dead. At 108. I take inspiration from that, and hope to follow exactly in her pioneering footsteps. There is a strange sort of dedication that one develops, I must confess--a dedication that I can't fully understand, but which I will address in a later post about this whole business. Meanwhile, as I pass the hundred mark, blogwise, here's a Thank You to the Myriad Readers who have read and commented (both in and outside the blog). I hope to be back on my game soon.
  

• And a Happy Birthday to Granddaughter Ashley on her Eleventh!

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#99 Friday Funnies--"Crashes" of One Kind and Another

Yep, the Economy crashed all right, but as either Hamlet or Horatio said, "Misfortunes come not one at a time, but in battalions." Attendant upon, it seems, the attack on our national financial structure by the armies of misfortune are the following major and minor skirmishes of this dark October week of 2008...

• Computer crashed several days ago. I'm at this very moment keyboarding away in my inimical hunt and peck style (that's what she said) in my neighborhood public library. Wish mine were this state-of-the-art ... but, notwithstanding, this is why I haven't quite kept up with the "daily" part of the Daily Mosteller of late. It's not "due back from the shop" till next week. (I'll give the Myriad Readers a "consumer report" on the Geek Squad.) Meanwhile, expect only a post or two in the interim.

• My body crashed last week. Intestinal influenza. No doubt due to the FOUL AIR excrescing from the political campaigns and "influencing" my very physical health (original meaning of the word/malady).

• My watch stopped last Monday, kid you not. Needed a new battery.

• I've had a bad toothache for a year.

Life does go on, however, minute-by-minute, in the most positive ways...

• Grandson Marcus will celebrate his 7th birthday tomorrow.

• President-Elect Barack Obama will move into the White House in February. Biden nearby.
  

• Despite the vicissitudes of a random universe, here am I happily hunting and pecking on my 99th post. Who woulda thought...
  

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#78 Sunday Sundries

Worst of the Week

• Has to be the $700 Billion Bailout. Is Bush/Cheney a Socialist? A Pinko-Commie-Symp? My goodness, I guess so. We're now gonna share the wealth with the wealthy. And then get billed later anyway. The neo-con Republican de-regulators are gonna re-regulate--too late. Economics is the so-called "dismal science," and it now seems to be headquartered near the Great Dismal Swamp. Washington should regulate, yes, to guard against FRAUD (this, and FORCE, are the only two things in their varied manifestations that we should pay the Government to protect us from, thank you very much)--otherwise, let the free-market do its job.
  

• Neglect of more important issues on the campaign trail--namely WAR in Middle East and the HEALTH CARE crisis. Presidents can't do much about the Economy, anyway, despite their great power since FDR--but even there, with all HIS tinkering, it was really, most agree, WWII that got us out of that really, really big Depression that some of you MRs have heard about. (But don't think THIS war will do like WWII: the former is strictly a "gearing-down" war from its beginning--though lasting now waaay too long--a war of depletion of ready reserves; whereas WWII was a "gearing-up" war, providing huge economic stimulus to an already sick economy. This one is simply draining us dry.) The only sure thing, statistically speaking, is that Democrats in the White House bring on some sort of mystical "era of good feeling" about the Economy after a Republican administration has somehow screwed it up. And then the Economy picks up again. So please Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain (even though YOU, sir, are exactly on the wrong side)--let's get back to debating the issues, these most dire issues, that you can actually do something about.

• USA lost to Spain in Davis Cup tennis. We were defending champs. It's a great luxury in this life to be able to get a little bit SAD about something utterly inconsequential.
  

Best of the Week

• Sarah Palin's approval ratings are dropping. On the other hand, according to a recent Baylor (Baptist) University poll, 55% of Americans believe in Guardian Angels. No, not the Curtis Sliwa variety. Make whatever connections you like.
• Eldest son's birthday.
• At least a couple of good things to say this week, compared to last, though still a stretch.
  

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#76 Friday Funnies--the "Plinth" [update]

Arrrrr.... But belay that. Nineteen September is "Talk Like a Pirate Day" and, tomorrow the 20th, my eldest son's birthday.

• The former is celebrated annually by sea-raiding corsairs along the Moroccan coast, I think, and by folks who have, through carefully-deferred dental maintenance over the last ten years, lost a front tooth...like me. "Shiver me timbers" sounds so much more authentic with the acoustic hint of a whistle. The tooth had become decadent no doubt, like its owner, but it was a stealth attack--piratical if you will--the evidence of marauding Tartar-beings becoming known only after the fact (i.e.= in the palm of my hand). Admittedly: after using said frontal dentation as nature intended in time of need...as pliers. The tooth actually split laterally in half, the front part leaving behind its stumpy counterpart--and forensic clues to the crime. So like a true buccaneer, this Blogman needs to SAVE UP for a "peg-tooth"--a prosthetic...no, make that cosmeticappliance of some sort, just to make him more presentable in the marketplace. Or lacking that: a pirate costume and a stuffed parrot.

• Birthdays are celebrated annually too, I understand. But tomorrow I inaugurate a new tradition in the gift-giving department, which I'll share with my MRs. For their birthday presents, all my sons and whoever else from now on will receive a "thought-gift"--after all, isn't it "not the gift, but the thought that counts"? So let's just take that to its reductio ad absurdum and make the damn thing TOTALLY IMAGINARY. Hey, it'll never wear out. And size and cost...no object. So I'll be giving my son a PLINTH--defined as a pedestal-like slab of stone, usually squared, beneath a column or pier; OR, in wood-joinery a flat member at the bottom of an architrave, dado, baseboard, or the like. That should explain it. Love the word. Borrowed from L. plinthus > Gr. plinthos = "stone"--but cognate in the language already (as often happens) from the Indo-European up through Germanic as our more familiar "flint." Rocky, not woody origins. My gift therefore will be a blue-speckledy granite slab 6' x 6' square and 3" high, to be viewed in the mind horizontally with a slight parallax, to get the full effect. Now this can exist purely in space, or it can be imagined in the back yard surrounded by rose bushes and a gaggle of mannequin pis statues--whatever. Such is the infinite UTILITY of the Thought-Gift.

• Which...I hereby dub generically a plinth, for all time. In honor of its maiden voyage. Thought-gift = Plinth. And you are free to use the term as such, royalty-free, whenever you feel the pinch of hard economic times, or of your own native parsimony. "Sorry, Mildred, I can only afford a Camel-Caravan to Shangri-La this year. Next year a Date with George Clooney or that Breast Augmentation you've always wanted...I promise."

But you know what?--you can give a Plinth to anybody, any time of the year, and all the year around. Make somebody happy with a Plinth today. Failing that, try to come up with a word that rhymes with it. I couldn't. Or just try to pronounce its plural: "plinthes." Takes a pirate, maybe.
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Update 9/21: Just thought of a rhyme that a pirate might enjoy: "absinthe"--the Green Fairy...to be quaffed while contemplating a Plinth.
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#67 Sunday Sundries

Worst of the Week

• RNC in general. Tone. I don't think I'm being overly partisan here, but, from the excerpts I observed, the speeches, when they weren't larded with Republican platitudes (which one cannot overly condemn)--reeked of smug sarcasm. Why should should the drum-beat references to Obama's early work as a "community organizer" bring on the snarky giggles, as if an audience-prompter were flashed on. Well, I guess it was. The line was always delivered with the SMIRK signal--Giuliani's was the best and smarmiest. Must've learned it from you-know-who.
  

• The Palin pick. Wow!--McCain and Company thought--a Christianist and a Feminist all in one! She was cynically chosen to appeal to undecided women and/or evangelicals--very dubious odds there--but she may appeal to the true idiots amongst them. Much more about her in a closer-to-home context later.

• US Open tennis. Stupid seeding, bad theater. Why did we have to see at least one of the brilliant Williams-sisters inevitably eliminated--Little over Big as it turned out-- in the quarter-finals section of the draw? They both should have stayed in for another couple of rounds, leading perhaps to another exciting finale on the order of Wimbledon last.

Best of the Week

• US Open tennis. As it turned out though, the sisters gave us a virtual finale, on the women's side. Two hard-fought, tie-breaker sets--7-6, 7-6 in favor of Serena--meaning (think about it) that they were exactly even in games, the margin of victory decided by only a couple of points in each of the tie-breaks. As for the actual final (delayed by OUR tropical storm Hanna) between Serena and Jelena?--the latter gave it a good shot, but she weren't no Venus. By the bye, Could all these girly-girly names get any prettier? Among other examples, the Russian Darina Safina came close to making the finals!
  

• Hurricane-manque' Hanna. Lots of free moisture for a drought-ridden land. Minimal damage, but still a delight for the now-Gustav-crazed weather-guys.

• GRANDPARENTS' DAY today, as if you Myriads weren't aware. I've got about half-a-dozen (grandkids, that is) and, in one of those cosmic synchronicities that delight us seemingly all the time--today is also the BIRTHDAY of one of my lovely daughters-in-law, Kim. She's been one of the donors, you know.

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#23 Split Personality of Secular Holidays

Independence Day/4th of July has a kind dual identity, as do several other secular holidays I'll mention, that reflects upon the American character, and , I guess, human nature in general. I'm speaking strictly of the non-religious kind, not a true "holy"-day-- all of them having their own kind of built-in schizophrenic issues that can have even global repercussions. But let's save that for a later post.

I was pondering all ofthis while watching the annual fireworks display fill the sky and our living room window (they built the NC Fairgrounds just 3 miles away and at just the right angle for my convenience. Now if I could only get them to muffle the sound). Beautiful. And this is what almost every single one of us associates with this holiday. In fact, if you conducted one of those popular "How stupid are we?" polls among the Great Unwashed, I guarantee that a percentage of our citizens would miss this trick question: "Our Independence Day falls on what date?" (Like the old chestnut, "Does Canada have a 4th of July?"--again reflecting that confusion of day and date.) Or consider this dissonance: I'm gonna watch the fireworks on Independence Day. Doesn't sound right, does it. That's because this holiday maintains a perfect dichotomy between its memorial aspects and the celebration of same. Between commemoration and commission. And so we've afforded it really two different names. No other is quite like that. The true anniversary involving Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson (the latter two dying on July 4th, amazingly, 50 years after the fact), and King George may be in the back of our minds, but it's overshadowed by blockbusters and barbecue. Which is quite OK, and fireworks-displays are surely appropriate historically for the real-war fireworks that followed that Declaration. But we really need to be reminded of that. New Year's Day, on the other hand--pure unashamed celebration. Out of the running. The others have an uneasy duality. Honestly, at this moment, I'm not quite sure who is being commemorated on Presidents Day. Is it ALL of them, or just the Founding-Father luminaries plus Lincoln born around the first two months of the year? But we do get MONDAY OFF!

And I'm afraid this is the principal reason we look forward to the other "seculars," now almost all conveniently embedded in THE LONG WEEKEND. (July 4th got lucky this year.) MLKjr Day (because its new and "political") and Memorial Day (because of its NAME and the ongoing war) are still heavily front-loaded in favor of commemoration, despite their "long-weekend" adulteration. Labor Day actually has an interesting memorial history that I won't bore you with, but for most of us its just a welcome 3-day break nicely bisecting the summer and winter holidays. In fact we think of it more as a weekend than as a "day." Did I miss any? Too late for a curmudgeon alert.
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#22 Sunday Sundries

Worst of the Week

• Obama waffles on on Pro-Choice position.

• Obama to extend Bush's "faith-based initiatives."

• Obama compromises on warrant-less surveillance.

(What's going on with this guy? More in a later post.*)

• NC legislator introduces bill to raise misdemeanor "hate crime" of displaying noose or cross to a FELONY if intent is to "intimidate." Free speech issue here.*

• Tom Hanks' Charlie Wilson's War.*

Best of the Week

• Jesse Helms dies.*

• Tropical depression upgraded to tropical storm and dubbed "Bertha." Will it be a BIG Bertha? The TV Weatherguys&girls sure hope so. You can't miss the wild gleam in their eyes as they fondle their doppler. Katrina-addled, they seem to be mentally screaming Colin Clive's famous line, "It's alive! It's alive!" from Frankenstein. Finally. It's been two, long, dry years for them, despite always-hopeful predictions. They're hungry.

• Wimbledon finals. Nadal over Federer. I just witnessed five hours (!) and five sets of the most competitive and entertaining tennis I've seen since the Borg/McEnroe years. (But wait, didn't I utter those very words last Sunday? OK...no extra charge for prescience.) Let's hope their rivalry endures for a while longer. Same goes for the Williams duo who excelled in the other exciting final. Venus finally beats "little" sister at Wimbledon. What a great All-England-Croquet-and-Lawn-Tennis Championship! I wonder who won the the Croquet play-offs?
  

• Independence Day.*

• McKenzie's 4th birthday.

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