Those that jump into danger in the dark...

June 5, folks. John Wayne pretends to be a leader of Airborne troops hoping for a break in the weather and gets it (it was only a movie about real people doing the best they could). Never loaded up for a night jump has our President Obama, nope. I was lucky that I got to do many go out in the dark from the back of the perfectly good aircraft doing NAP of the Earth until time to bounce up to jump altitude. Nothing particularly brave about a paratrooper, they gave him twenty-five dollars for the danger, the glider riders got zip and had to worry about bad landings. Still everyone on the fifth of June, in the aircraft, on the ships, in the gliders going towards Normandy, France, knew this was the calm before the storm. Many had been in combat in Africa and Sicily, but most hadn't, they were trained and they knew the Germans were waiting and they knew what the grinding war was like in Italy where the defenses had been built up. It was dark and tomorrow would bring what tomorrow wasn't telling, the orders were clear, the beaches named, the drop zones identified, the weapons and equipment checked and counted, the lean was forward and those really ready were going to sleep until they were called to perform, the lightly nervous were quietly boasting or counting off their pre-attack mantra - stuffing fear in the back of the mind and mentally performing heroic feats for their fellows.

I once read about a paratrooper's account of his first jump, and all the things he thought of that he could have been doing if he weren't in the aircraft getting ready to do a fool thing like jump out of it, trusting his parachute and the jump master - then trying to remember all they had told him, drilled into him and preached at him and forgetting it as fast as he remembered and they called out "Ten Minutes!" and the drill was now the exercise. They were all getting ready for that point where the drill became the exercise and the attack was on and wouldn't stop for a debriefing or anything. Leaning forward, waiting for the ramp to drop, leaning forward holding the static line and keeping the equipment bag, ammo and rifle from fouling up on another paratrooper's gear - had to get out the door, leaning forward towards the jump. Nope, our current President wasn't there, he is too young. And although he honors those that were, the living and the dead - he doesn't understand why they went, he hasn't ever had to pay the price for living as an American, he probably thinks those serving in uniform today are doing it professionally for the money. But I know better, they have had to pay the price and understand the cost and they are leaning forward --- just hoping that there is some one watching their back, investing their lives, loves and sacrifices in important points for American Freedom.

Yep, everyone will concentrate on the D-Day Invasion of Normandy, France - 6 June, 1944, but I will honor the calm courage and preparation in meditation that was done on 5 June as they leaned forward ready to give everything they had, in the dark, in the water, up the beach and the cliffs to the hedgerows and on to victory or death. Considering the Economic Crisis, the Education Crisis, the Homeland Defense Crisis and the "can't we all get along?" crisis --- I am much more at home with those leaning forward preparing to attack for all the best of reasons than those hiding behind the headlines, or the media spotlight, hiding in plain sight.

Violence Never Solved Anything...

One of my mother's favorite "I know so much better than you" quotes to squander upon my bold boy being brutal mind... I didn't believe it then and I still don't. I grew up fighting, and that was a good thing. Watch most mammals you Evolutionists and see the dominate males snap, push and shove the younger males into line - playfully, until they later have to drive them off to keep the fertile females for themselves. For those looking for religious reasons for little Johnny to fight it is in almost every religious text, myth and fairy tale. Fighting for the benefit of the pride, the clan, the community is heroic and necessary for the survival of the species, so God and Science do approve.

So I have been worried about this constant chatter from the more wonderful thinking folks of the Left (mostly) that have zero tolerance for school yard squabbles. Force young boys to spend eight hours somewhere and not clench one's fists and toss a quick punch in frustration - why you might have to drug them into better behavior. Without the release of those fight and flee chemicals in violent conflict you could get some sick puppies -- now I do know the difference between fighting and killing, and I don't hold with the young folks running around killing each other, but then I see someone that hasn't fought jumping to picking up guns and blasting bullets as the only way to settle those strange thoughts, so sad.

If you fight, with fists and fury, you will often lose and that is an important lesson. If you fight you will notice that bigger, smarter, faster and competent makes a big difference but ready and willing still counts. You will notice after large numbers of attitude adjustments that sometimes diplomacy is required to live to fight another day, that the kid with guts that stood up to your best punches and kept coming is exactly your type of guy and if you were old enough you would buy a beer for him - so he might become your best buddy instead. There are many male life lessons that depend on the fighting and the growth of other ways to settle conflicts - which only come from fighting in that famous free school - the School of Hard Knocks.

About the picture - around Christmas 1968, I am twenty and a sergeant and I left my date twice to go outside and fight at the Battery party. She thought that a little strange. In 1993 at another formal function (Senior NCOs, Officers and dates) another Command Sergeant Major asked my wife if she would like to dance, she said he would have to ask her husband, her husband asked him if he would like to fight before or after the dance, he didn't - so my wife had no dance and I got no fight, sigh. The proper answer was to fight after the dance... I do wonder if those that want to have only peace understand the light that a woman might have in her eyes when her man is fighting for her and the things they believe in... ah, I only know a little about the fighting and nothing about the romance stuff, but I do think there could be a connection...

Movie Review...

Well, Sunday afternoon's motorcycle ride had me meeting my ideal romantic interest at about eighty miles an hour, she in black leather on a black Japanese street racer, and I on my Trusty Triumph, she was young, slender and brunette and so lucky I am so old and very married. She waved and I answered, she was going South and I was headed North and I won't tell you what road we were on, she might be a reader of this blog (yes, I still have illusions of greatness). She did fit my pattern of women I pay attention to, but then I went to the movies today with the woman that was and still is all I ever need to pay attention to...

The movie is Fighting and I thought it was a great date movie, but then my date is usually sleeping in SciFi movies or ones with long dialogue and Elizabethan English. My date was once one of the most dangerous women I knew, but only in the most gentle manner - not one to wield blades nor blast bullets but certainly a bone breaking bruiser of improper unlady-like refinement. The story-line is a fairy tale, nice views of the grime of New York where the tourists aren't going, where people are probably carrying illegal guns but that wasn't in the story too much. Anyway, she liked the movie and all the story and all the action and that is high recommendation from her side. I loved the movie, don't know any of the actors and could care less about the director and camera guy --- except this was the first movie that by the last fight had my body twitching in response to the fight on the screen - and when I caught myself on the second block and combination I started laughing at myself - but really appreciated how difficult that was to achieve - I am not the kind of guy that gets reacting to movies like I was there - I can read to that level but not just watch, until today. If you never fought upclose and terribly personal since school yard bullying - well, you might not get it, but this movie dragged me onto the floor better than most. So if you can catch the matinee, get a military or Senior discount and aren't out getting the fields planted while the sun shines and the rains hold off a bit - it is worth the look. I will be buying it in DVD one day, just that kind of a movie that I will want to see again.

There are good days and there are bad...

There are really, and I wonder why the day felt so wrong and so bad. I got to ride my motorcycle to work, that was a good thing although the promise of rain awaited the afternoon and evening. I had four bins of mail and two boxes of books, so it was two trips up and down the steps but that wasn't a problem. Maybe the email with the announcement of the resignation of one of the other library keepers bothered me or started the darkness descending. The crew showed up, and worked well, the patrons showed up and bothered everyone - but that is their job and they do enjoy it. Still I guess it is the feeling of alone, in the midst of peopled plenty. There was that very formal and threatening Memo from the Communications Officer of the Office of the Secretary of State, all about blogs and their proper use and the destruction of your life if you misuse a blog or the State Owned equipment and Heavens won't help you if you actually say something that isn't in accordance with the Office. Sam Reed is a better man than the memo, but he does get protection and loses my support because of it. Those two items could have been my weights dragging my Will down... Will being my grandfather's, and mine and potentially my grandson's secret name. Everyone should have a secret name.

There were other things in the email but I wasn't picking up on anything that didn't have to do with my support of the library, I was too gloomy. I guess looking at Time magazine and People magazine during processing and finding out that I hadn't made the 100 most influenza people or BEAUTIFULL people for the year bothered me. All I know about beauty is that it begins and ends in the heart, and grows as it is shared, and I like to think that influence can't be measured by polling data, money raised, ad campaigns won - influence is butterfly effects and finding out that something one did or said had a good result somewhere beyond the scope of the originator.

I told my wife about Socrates today, it was part of a discussion she was listening to and she wanted to know why he was important - since she hadn't heard of him before. Yesterday, I processed and linked many of our new books and two about the start of the Revolution had come in, Lexington and Concord and Paul Revere's Ride. I told the inmate workers to look up Samuel Whittemore, and they did and read about him. I would get to tell the story one more time as I rode the bus from the dock to the parking lot where the Trusty Triumph waited, wet with the afternoon downpour. The rain - which broke for my time on the road going home and I was mostly dry but very happy when my wife opened the garage door for my motorcycle. By the time I had some hot bean soup warming me up I was a happy man again, blest as always. Wonder if I will ever go back to work?

The things I learn on the Internet...

From Doubletapper, that other seasonal holiday, Chanuka Festival. Well worth reading.

Remember to be Thankful , for those that serve...

A C-141 cargo plane was preparing for departure from Thule Air Base in Greenland, and they were waiting for the truck to arrive to pump out the aircraft's sewage holding tank. The Aircraft Commander was in a hurry, the truck was late in arriving, and the Airman performing the job was extremely slow in getting the tank pumped out. When the commander berated the Airman for his slowness and promised punishment, the Airman responded, "Sir, I have no stripes, it is 20 below zero, I'm stationed in Thule, and I am pumping sewage out of airplanes. Just what are you going to do to punish me?"

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Thanks to my mother for reminding me to be thankful for all the wonders and the works. This is never the day to be alone, reach out and touch someone, somewhere, somehow - we are not going to be alone in saying thanks, in giving thanks nor earning a heartfelt thanks. Thanks. Especially to the Rogue Gunner where I gleaned the idea, never alone.

Never enough time, or I am way too slow...

Watching the Women's 800 this morning, and sure enough if I had started with them they would have finished before I got to the 250 mark. Still I do love the women that do things fearlessly. Then I caught the Russian Pole Vaulter! Talk about fearless, after brushing the bar twice at a possible new World Record (5.05 m), she went for a third and Prayed (talking to herself and God, no one else could answer) as she applied sticky and did the vault flawlessly - at least in her mind. Then she flew down to the pit, placed the pole and sprang to the ceiling and cleared - and her smile came back as she relaxed on the way down to that cushion. Lovely thing being fearless, and Wyatt is on vacation or she would have been the Olympic Hottie of the day (I know she is above all that - but some men are so shallow) - and when she smiles I almost wish I were young and foolish and single - but I am only foolish. Inspired I went out for the morning jog - between rains squalls with lightning. It was a good morning and I was inspired and cranked on pumping my arms with the hand weights and dreaming, then I got by the Greyhound Rescue Ranch, and I had lots of running buddies - they would bark joyfully and start running along the fence with me and then look back when they realized my speed was stall, sputter and stall, sputter and stroll. Such a slug, but they are beautiful when they stretch out and leap into the distance and future, if I ever get a dog it isn't going to be a sight hunter - I would need a horse to keep up, and I don't do horses. Good day to be alive, isn't it? Wife recommends no motorcycle in the squalls, sigh, don't you just wish she weren't so often right? Nah, I remember when she was all the fearless I could handle, and I am not sure I ever did. Got to go, disconnect, turn off computer and join the taxpaying public...

No it isn't a National Holiday, but it is important...

6 June 1944, after a twenty-four hour weather delay the invasion of France is on, from the air, from the sea, far from the hearts of the women that loved them - thousands of American, British and Canadians would assault the wall that Rommel built, and he was off to buy some fine shoes for his wife, funny how life works out. Lots, and more than lots of men would leave their lives in the sea, in the trees and on the ground they fell upon, you can still visit the cemetery and look upon the markers, there were so many acts of true heroism performed that day - most unreported, that the Allied Force won a hold on the beach, up on the cliffs and into the interior - then slowed down to catch their breath and reorganize, rearm and wonder 'why me Lord?' It would take Patton to break free of inertia, but he didn't pay attention to physics just martial courage. Still, this is the day, D-Day, and in Europe they understand its importance more than we ever will. But we should Never Forget, so remind everyone what day it is - I don't need Congress to make it a holiday, I just remember it.

Response to Responsibility to Remembering...

The Roman Empire fell, and although it gave Shakespeare and much of Hollywood a living retelling the stories of toga parties before the frats went wild. Which is a fool way to start a blog about where Western Civilization is going to fall apart again. I think the Romans failed to respond to the changing threats, they wanted someone else to bear the burden. They stopped requiring everyone to serve, they hired the people with little future and sent them out and promised them a retirement in twenty or more years, in far flung borderlands of Latin speakers. If as we get ready to replace the nation's executive leadership in a multi-billion dollar media blitz it is clear the nation is made up of people that don't know there is a war on - somewhere, who our allies are, what our goals are and how we are treating the wounded and maimed and soon to be missing (returning veterans that will zone completely out). But then I know, and lots of others (none in charge it seems) do know, and I care.

One of my links left this mark and it fits my time left. My uncle and father are gone across that river, European Theater and Pacific Theater respectfully and respectively. My mother wrote a poem about being nineteen, her most wonderful year - marriage and first son's birth, and my father said he never was nineteen - which says a lot about his war and where he went.

Anyway, Citizens and well wishers, Memorial Day - the day dedicated to REMEMBERING THE DEAD, is coming. It isn't about the veterans, it isn't about the currently serving (that was Armed Forces Day and you might have missed it - Congress didn't give us a Monday holiday for it). It is about the Dead, the departed, those gone on. If you are in Washington DC, walk in Arlington, visit the graves, markers standing row on row, those mark the passing of a piece of history - our country's history, a little slice. But I would bet, where ever in the world one is, there is a graveyard with a few people sent by their country to do good work, and they did and they died. Go and visit them, talk to the ghosts and spirits, or just think about them - I suspect they live in memory only when we take that time to spend with them.

Went to say good-bye today and wondered...

A memorial, a celebration of a woman's life, was held in my church and I attended. For she was a great little old lady, she had a heart that would have been crowded in a giant and she loved her world well with it. I normally duck mentions of death, especially if I know the person and want to remember them alive -- in my mind they never leave, their memory and spirit are always present. I find the pictures of her as a young woman with a short skirt and a hulking dashing boy friend leaning on a truck interesting - I certainly didn't know her then, looking at her grand-daughter I can imagine her young and lovely, but I knew her as elder and frail and interested and happy. Her husband is going to be lost for a bit, she was the center of his world.

I keep reading about war, for I pretend that I understand it too well, and I found this on the Rogue Gunner's blog. My concerns about cultures that risk their women fade as I read and wonder at this pilot and her duty well done. Never doubted their bravery, never doubted their skills, only wonder at our culture's wasting warriors and wenches for fat politicians... I am probably wrong to value women as potential mothers, there are so many of them that won't be, shouldn't be, and can't be... but still, I think a loving mother is the best thing for a baby and child, and no government program will ever match nature's.

Institutional Library Services - what dat mean?

I need to expound on ILS, Institutional Library Services, to entice you to join in this happy fray. It won't make you younger, sexier, richer, nor more loved or celebrated than Brad Pitt and Angela, as I look at it now - it isn't going to do anything for you. Unless you are in an institution or care about someone that is... (did I get her name wrong? I did didn't I? oops!). When the current President Bush decided to attack Iraq and what ever he thought he could accomplish for History I looked up on the internet the Iraqi libraries, where they were, what they had, and such -- not very exciting, but I knew that some of them would be damaged or destroyed in President Bush the youngster's war. I haven't been back to check, I do know that with American troops come lots of reading material from supply, exchanges and family support, and we will leave much of it for the locals to read in English. I picked up lots of British publications during my trip to Saudi Arabia for the elder Bush's war. Anyway, back to institutional library services.

You have a population of people separated from America's culture and commerce, for healing and treatment or programming. This population needs access to the outside and a library can provide entertainment and education without subjecting the outside population, you, to the stress of contact with the separated persons. That could be what is going on, I am not sure, but some one has decided that a library can assist in the return of this special population to normal society. Is there empirical proof that a library can make an incorrigible into a better human being? I like to point to Red and Malcom X, but then you would have to know I chopped that story into its smallest pieces, and expect that you know not everyone goes to nor uses the library for its maximum potential. That is a disjointed effort in explaining institutional libraries, sorry.

I work in the Institutional Library Services to help provide that help in finding one's way out of the present and into a past and a better future. I know that I am called on daily to bring a change in knowledge, attitude and satisfy one's question without an answer. Do I make a difference? only in that I open the door and allow some one in, they get to open the books. That may be all the difference needed. More library keepers are needed far from the flag pole and all the glory in the Capital, the Washington State Library serves less than twenty institutions, serving over fifteen thousand or so patrons with no other library service. Of the employees in the State Library much less than a third are engaged in Institutional Library Services directly, much less, remember the guards at the border with the barbarians? Institutional Library Services