I so desperately want to leave some kind of supporting comment on this post, but I cannot imagine what I, a complete stranger, might possibly say that would be of any worth.
It’s an intern coming to grips with…no, just go read. Let her tell it. It’s her story.
Read it now.
Via GruntDoc.
Gun fearing socialist pussies everywhere, relax: my favorite African-American, Kim du Toit, is closing The Other Side of Kim, having gotten tired of shouting the ugly truth into the faces of people who have an ideological commitment to not hearing it.
When he started, he was one of the few strong advocates for the crazy idea that ordinary American citizens, men and women regardless of creed or color, were competent to run their own affairs, even in matters of life and death. He started the idea of National Buy a Gun Day, as a part of his Nation of Riflemen campaign, aimed at re-arming the militia of which the Second Amendment speaks, the unorganized one.
He has also been a tireless critic of communism, socialism, nannyism,and big government generally.
He was one of my very first daily-read bookmarks when I myself realized that the Second Amendment imposed much the same duty as the first: to actively participate in the nation’s political process in ways far beyond mere voting. (What, you thought the First Amendment was all about Freedom From Religion, and your right to buy, sell, and make child pornography?)
He put his money where his mouth is, nearly suffering financial ruin when his employer discovered he, uh, Spoke Real Truth to Real Power, and fired him. So great was his distress that he actually sold off some of his substantial collection of firearms to make ends meet. (And you may judge the size and value of that arsenal by the fact that selling off only a part of it actually made a difference in the finances of a family, including teenagers, who had recently purchased a new home in Dallas.)
He has also taken dozens of people, men, women, and children, Off to the Range, and taught them how to shoot. Fittingly, one of his last posts today was about one such excursion.
All Americans can be proud that when he escaped from the hell hole of South Africa he chose to come here; all Texans can be proud that when he abandoned Mayor Daley’s fiefdom to its own rot, he came here. He came not for a free handout, but to do his part in holding the line in the world’s Last, Best Hope for Liberty.
He, a foreigner, has been a better American than I, a native; indeed, a far better American than almost all of us, including especially many of those who now hold elective office. He took an oath to become one of us, he meant it, and he’s done his level best to keep it.
Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Please enjoy having a private life again; you have already done more than your share.
All my adult life, I thought Paul Newman was the quintessential Young Punk, while my dad was a stodgy Old Fart.
Newman died at 83. My dad is 81, and, I’m happy to report, still kicking.
Chelsea started to get out and about Cairo today, taking a horseback tour out to the Pyramids:
They are in a type of artificial desert with Cairo spreading out around them, the pictures I’m sure you all have seen are shot from a specific angle to make it seem like they are isolated in the middle of the desert. It was still magical and amazing to see them rise up from behind a hill as we were riding out.
…
I won’t be taking horses out the next time though. The horses are malnourished and are whipped to exhaustion everyday.
…
The area around the pyramids is abysmally poor. You ride through alleys of huts with dirty barefoot children waving at you while their mothers try to sell you things like individual packets of Keenex. Their is trash everywhere.
…
As bad as I felt for the horses, I suppose it is a way for the people there to make some type of living. I am still conflicted about the whole experience.
She took pictures, but felt they were too blurry to post.
Her classes will start Saturday, 06 September.
Google map I’ll try to maintain of places she goes to. So far, only AUC and the pyramids.
View Larger Map
[I've got to say, I hate the Google map interface when it comes to creating custom maps and passing links around. I very often cannot get the display I want. Let me know, then, if this link shows you something different than what I claim it does.]
Google map of the pyramids area, showing the very sharp demarcation between the desert and the irrigated urban area of Cairo.
View Larger Map
[Sorry, no. Google Maps is being a useless pile of rotting camel dung, and will not save the coordinates and zoom for the area I want to display. Why do these idiots make it so bloody hard to that? Why can't I find instructions on how to do that? OK, it's working now. What the hell?]
Cairo is UTC/GMT +2, seven hours ahead of Houston time, so when it is noon here, it’s seven p.m. there.
I am using Lingua-naut to look up basic Arabic phrases.
Mom, Physicist, Ham, Home Schooler, Commenter, Guinea Pig, and Friend Chanda has a blog!
And a bunch of really cute and insanely intelligent kids! (I’ve heard a rumor that her eldest, J., recently passed his General Amateur Radio exam! That makes him a better ham than me! )
And she just had a birthday! Happy Birthday, Chanda!!
I, on the other hand, just got a great deal! On a box of exclamation! points!!!
[WARNING! Use of more than two exclamation points in a row is strong evidence that the writer wears his underpants on his head, but I'm a professional and I know what I'm doing!!! I have excellent reasons for wearing my underpants on my head, and I do so only after taking all appropriate safety precautions!!!!]
Can’t get this to embed properly, so here’s the link: a few seconds of video of my Dad relaxing by the fountain in his backyard.
So, you, or someone you know, is thinking about enlisting, “moving to the sound of the guns”. What should you read to prepare yourself?
Beats the bloody-be-heckers out of me. I’d guess maybe Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, famous, even notorious for its provocatively pro-military views. But it’s SF, and the lady in question is not a fan, to put it mildly. (If she were, of course, she’d already have read her Heinlein, including the inspiring but now-quaint retelling of the American Revolution, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
How about movies? I remember Private Benjamin being an entertaining portrayal of a privileged young woman who goes to boot camp in rebellion against her smothering parents and intended husband. An Officer and a Gentleman shows a full-of-himself young man also benefiting from almost washing out in Basic. (Turns out Larz’s Mom has already ordered Benjamin. I can’t wait to find out how that goes.)
But that was all I could come up with, so I wrote to Grim Beorn, a very literate warrior indeed. I knew he’d published reading lists for folk already in the service, but didn’t remember seeing anything for civilians considering enlistment. Grim kindly pointed me to his standard post on the topic. It starts out with a story about adjusting to the culture in Iraq, but then moves on:
“An eighteen year old arriving at West Point,” says Grim, “already knows nothing but High School. What he needs to learn is how to be a hero.”
His suggestions:
Grim explains:
This will teach our soldiers what they need to know to relate to the sheikhs, and indeed many other cultures abroad. But it also does the soldier a great kindness, as it makes him an educated man. These are exactly the things you need to know to comprehend the Western tradition. With these as your base, nothing in America’s history is forbidding.
In his email, Grim goes on to make what, for me, was a very surprising suggestion: The Hobbit, which offers “a deep but subtle introduction into the pieces I suggest in the standard reply”. It’s been a long time since I’ve read The Hobbit, because I prefer the longer, sterner Lord of the Rings. Precisely because of that sterness, and the heavier use of myth and fantasy, I rejected LotR for Larz. And because, in contrast, I’m used to considering The Hobbit as, well, fluffier, more of a children’s book, I didn’t even think of it. But Grim’s got it right: it’s a fairly easy read, and shows very well the transformation of a quiet stick-in-the-mud civilian into a hero. I’m going to have to read it again myself.
He continued:
Try her on the Norse sagas — they involve very much sailing and hardship, and serve as an advanced course in heroism. Don’t worry that they aren’t “modern,” because really, the technology changes aren’t that important. What really does matter is the culture, and the culture of fighting men (and, these days, women) is a thing long ago perfected. We just need to continue to remind ourselves of what our ancestors knew.
Then he said something else I’ve never considered, but take very much to heart:
In addition, the slightly alien feel of the sagas will prepare her for thinking about a slightly alien world like the Navy. It’s an important skill that she should learn, how to think about the meaning behind customs and traditions that are different from what she already knows.
Whether Larz reads this stuff or not, it’s clear that I, myself have some catching up to do. She’s young and fit and strong and can no doubt even now whip my flabby middle-aged butt anytime she chooses, but I will not be outdone on the reading front.
Then, as a parting gift for boot camp, I can in good conscience give her selections from here, the official Marine Reading List. This list also includes another work of science fiction that has come under peacenik fire: Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game. This, too, is a tale of a boot-camp, but a very strange one, one for grade-school children in outer space. I would never have guessed that the Marines would take that as an authoritative introduction to military life–but now I see that the “slightly alien feel” Grim speaks of may well have played a role.
Another important item from that list is available on-line: the Marine Corp manual on Warfighting [PDF]. This is golden: the inside skinny on how Marines think about the thing they do better than any other force in the world.
Anyway, thanks, Grim, for the reply, and for your website generally, which has over the past couple-three years given me considerable insight into the Warrior Spirit, as exemplified by this from G.K. Chesterton:
How white their steel, how bright their eyes! I love each laughing knave,
Cry high and bid him welcome to the banquet of the brave.
Yea, I will bless them as they bend and love them where they lie,
When on their skulls the sword I swing falls shattering from the sky.
The hour when death is like a light and blood is like a rose, –
You never loved your friends, my friends, as I shall love my foes.
A couple of other bits I dug out while writing this:
Confederate Yankee’s take on LTC Dave Grossman’s original Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs essay (quoted in its entirety). Everybody, sheep or sheepdog, should read this.
Bill Whittle. Wordy, but oh so satisfying:
Here’s his recent piece on fighter pilots, and the fighter pilot, and what he taught America’s military about war fighting generally. Part 1 Part 2 This is survival material.
Honor, the short, sweet essay that made Whittle’s reputation. “…The many, many sergeants…”
I cannot hear or read the word “sergeant” anymore and not think of this essay.
Freedom, and the price that must be paid for it. Why we have the Second Amendment. Whittle hits his stride.
Empire: “For the first time in history, a nation powerful enough to rule the world has simply refused to do so.” Damn betcha, and why, exactly why, my precious, precious niece does an honorable thing by volunteering to go forth and put herself in harm’s way.
War. Why we’re at it, right now, written at a time so many of us were not sure.
History. A little bit about how we got here, about another time when everybody knew “The war is an abject and utter failure. What everyone thought would be a quick, decisive victory has turned into an embarrassing series of reversals.” And how it all turned around on an insignificant mound of dirt known as Little Round Top, with an insignificant amateur named Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain as the hinge pin.
Whittle. He’s one of the good guys, and does not write often enough. Read all his stuff.
This young lady is considering enlisting in either the Navy or the Marines. (The Air Force, apparently, has ugly uniforms, and is right out.)
All of us who know her, even me, have done a double-take: “The Marines? The Storming Iwo Jima Marines? Squeem Queen Larz in the Marines?”
We are wrong to have done so. Indeed, to my burning shame, I find myself having fallen for the same stereotype as, gack, the Puppy Trainer of Record, the New York Times. From Subsunk over at Blackfive comes this very reassuring take:
Really???? “Potentially misleading”, “selling war”, “She’s supposed to look like she’s being empowered”, “hard to think of it as empowerment”? What’s misleading about female Marines being in charge? What’s misleading about female Marines knowing how to pick up a rifle and use it? What’s misleading about portraying female Marines as Leaders. Where is selling the Iraq war mentioned in the ad?
I don’t know about you, but if a female Marine Officer struck a defensive martial arts stance on me, I wouldn’t think of it as anything other than a prelude to getting my ass kicked if I laid a hand on her. If that’s not “empowering” (God, I hate that word…it is too PC and wimpy for me), then I don’t know what is.
He corrects a few other misconceptions which, I’m pleased to say, I don’t share in the least:
It would seem [from the Times article] that our forces are taking a pounding from the enemy. While I am reasonably sure Ms. Thompson [a quoted "expert"] didn’t actually mean it that way, it is the quote the reporter chose to use, and it conveys facts which are not in evidence. The only “pounding” our guys take is the pounding their morale takes due to long deployments away from home, and the MSM characterizing them as murderers of innocents, and uneducated grunts with bad table manners and horrible breath. In the context of actual combat, while I am sure they do not appreciate incoming fire, I am equally certain that “taking a pounding” is not a sentiment that they would choose to use in describing their situations. “Giving a pounding, ass kicking, meting out excessive punishment, “getting some”, or just generally beating the living sh*t out of some assh*les who desperately deserve it” might be a more accurate portrayal of their language.
Anyway, Larz, my anxiety and doubt is relieved. Take the aptitude test, pass your physical, finish high school, sign the contract, take the Oath, get through Basic, and Kick Ass.
Remember the one thing Blackfive says the Times got right:
(And I hope it’s clear that the title of this post is meant to subvert the idea of “girly”, not to denigrate the Marines.)
Update:
Be sure to read the comments at Blackfive. Some note that the Times article can be seen in a very positive light.
Mom (”Hi Mom!”) is growing tomatoes in her backyard garden, right next to the patio. Apparently she’s got a few little green fruit beginning to bud out. We are all awaiting BLT day.
She’s not the only one, although these folks are probably not going to contaminate theirs with bacon:
Three months after US forces dropped tonnes of bombs on Arab Jubur and put Al-Qaeda to flight, farmers are everywhere out in their fields tending their tomatoes.
Homes in the Sunni Arab rural patch about 25 kilometres (15 miles) south of Baghdad, meanwhile, are being rebuilt, schools reopened, roads repaired and irrigation pumps renewed, even as shopkeepers happily dust off their shelves.
“It’s the first time in three years I am able to work in my lands,” said Ammar Wadi, a 30-year-old vegetable farmer who also runs a small dairy herd.
His lands, on the banks of the Tigris, are thriving. Besides tomatoes, he also grows ochre and wheat, while some of his 30 acres is devoted to pastures.
“When Al-Qaeda was here it was impossible to farm,” said the jolly-faced farmer from under an orange cap while taking time out from his labours to visit his cousin’s newly-reopened grocery store on a dusty rural road.
“They cut the power so we couldn’t pump water,” said Wadi. “We couldn’t buy fuel. They would shoot at anyone they saw in the fields. They kidnapped and murdered many people. They destroyed life here.”
If you want some lovely, juicy hope, actually ripening on the vine, read the whole thing.
Via Insty.
By the way, I have to point out that AFP, Agence France-Presse, has been consistently anti-American, and anti-War up till now. If they’re reporting good news like this, it means two things:
First, that the news from Iraq is so very good, and so bountiful, that not even they can ignore it anymore.
Second, that the streets of Iraq are safe enough for AFP reporters to come out of the their hotels and do some actual reporting, rather than depending on stringers of very questionable allegiance.
Finally, is anybody at all surprised that the French identify good news in Iraq as being about…food?
Dr. Edwin Leap tells us a story from the ER:
We expect it from a child. From little ones with lacerations and dog bites, broken bones and IV placements. ‘Daddy please! I want to go home! Can we go home now?’ We’ve seen it untold times in our medical lives. And there the daddies stand, holding the hands of their precious sons and daughters. They may be tough as iron, but they tear up as they see the pain and fear in their children’s eyes. I’ve seen some get angry, and threaten me, or threaten to scoop up their little prince or princess and run out the door, even as they knew it would be the wrong thing.
But yesterday, as I placed the local anesthesia in her gray-covered scalp, and as I placed the staples that would close her wound, my 93-year-old patient cried out, in the mist of her dementia, ‘daddy don’t let them hurt me! Daddy, help me!’ And then, ‘grand-daddy, help! Grand-daddy don’t let them!’
I did the math. Her daddy was probably born around 1880 or so. Her grand-daddy around the 1850’s. Their faces were etched into her mind. She might not remember yesterday, but she remembered the men whose arms held and sheltered her when she was a child. And there, on that hospital bed, in the bright lights of the year 2008, when the world would have been almost unrecognizable to her father, or to her grandfather, she lay calling to them down the long ages.
Read the whole beautiful thing.
There are times, folks, when I really hate being a cold-hearted skeptic, when I almost despise myself for rejecting the promise of Heaven, of eternal Life after the death of my body’s meat. I understand all too well why people long to believe, and why so many intelligent, educated, compassionate folks do. I wish I could, I wish it were so. I can’t, though.
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