Books Read in March 2018

This month was a very dismal month for reading. I only read four books. Two of them I either didn’t like very much or at all. And they were all fiction. I did not read any nonfiction. I can’t remember a month like this – ever. First, the books, then I’ll try to answer why it happened.

“The First Phone Call From Heaven” by Mitch Album. I began the month well with this one. It’s about a small lake town in Michigan where someone says she got a phone call from her dead sister in Heaven. Then several other people say they have gotten calls from departed loved ones as well. While the world comes to this town, some wonder if this is real or a hoax. I had never read Album before but enjoyed this so much I am going to read others.

 “if the creek don’t rise” by Leah Weiss. By a local author and a selection for our book club, these are the only reasons I read it. About Appalachia and its inhabitants living in the North Carolina mountains, it has all of the dismal and illegal things one knows about the area. The story made me very depressed even when it ended on what might be considered a relatively positive note. The writer did an excellent job of making the characters endearing or repulsive. She also made the setting come alive. I just didn’t like the book; and yes, the title is all small letters which I didn’t like as well.

“The Fortunate Ones” by Ellen Umansky. This story had two things going for it that I enjoy reading about: WW2 missing art and multiple time periods. Unfortunately, I did not like one of the two main characters. She lived in present-day New York and was insufferable. I did like the other, a young Jewish girl who was sent by her parents from Vienna before the war to live with foster parents in England. With alternating chapters and advancing time periods for the young girl, both meet in 2006 and the storyline continues. Though it got better as the story went along, it was more of a relationship story and very much less of a missing art story.

“Sleeping on the Ground” by Peter Robinson. The 24^th installment of the Inspector Banks series, this one did not disappoint. Once again, a present-day crime relates back to an old crime. Robinson does this frequently and does it well. I do enjoy the many references to what everyone eats in the pubs and restaurants, as well as the beer, whisky, and wines. Banks also is a music lover, primarily jazz and classical, but also some of the older “pops”, such as Dylan, Van Morrison, and David Bowie. I strongly recommend this series, but caution you to read them in order. Characters are introduced, depart, grow and develop, and you need to understand them to fully enjoy the stories. One last thing about the series lately is that Robinson highlights one of Inspector Banks’ subordinates in the particular episode. He never lets you feel Banks is the centerpiece, which he is, but he has begun to fill out the other characters more. And in this episode, he brings back a popular and important character.

As to why my reading suffered this month as to number and lack of nonfiction I can only say that I had finished my book group selection of March just before the end of February. Since I was the leader for the discussion, I wanted to do a good job. I was tired of reading books that made me think so much that all I wanted to do was to read some good, light fiction. Well, you can see that that went well.

This coming month is promising.     

(Cambria 12)

Mug Rugs

Whatever happened to the old-style coffee mugs that one could buy in a college bookstore or military museum? I’m sure you could buy them in other shops, but that is where I would buy mine.

I currently have five. I used to have six, but one had a catastrophic accident with a cup of hot coffee. The mug survived with minimal injuries; the rug did not.

The first one I bought was from my undergraduate school, Washington & Jefferson College.

 The only other school mug rugs I have are The Citadel in South Carolina and Williams College in Massachusetts. I toured the former when I went to Charleston on vacation. I stopped and walked Williams’ campus on my way to Ft. Devens to retire from the Army.

 I have two military rugs: U.S. Army and the Screaming Eagles, which is the 101^st Air Assault Division but is better known as the 101^st Airborne of World War II fame. The rug that had the fatal accident was from the 82^nd Airborne Division.

The only mug rugs now are quilted and knitted. I don’t like them. And I wouldn’t use them in an Army office unless that is if they were made by one of my daughters.

(TNR 12)

New Phones

Today was spent mostly getting new cell phones. After breakfast out, we went to our Verizon store. Our objective was to get new phones at a reduced monthly cost. We did. A little, but we got new phones.

We had Samsung Galaxy S6 for over two years. They were showing their age. We also found out that in May we would have to begin to pay for Cloud storage. That was enough to go looking for new phones.

We got Google Pixel 2 XL’s. A lot of advantages. Since it is made by Google we don’t have a middleman so to speak. Any Google updates come to its phones first.

It has a great camera. But since it is not Samsung, we have spent the day and evening learning how the phones work. It is a work in progress, but I think it was worth it.

Anyhow, I took no time to blog today except this excuse. Sorry.

(TNR 12)

LAIC #2 - The Shooting Stick

Continuing my first LAIC post on 18 March, one of the classes during those first eight weeks of class was one called “Workshop”. It was located in a building near the Tank Museum near the entrance to the camp. It was filled with all kinds of machines – grinders, sanders, metal-cutting machines and the like. It was definitely not my cup of tea.

I initially thought it was to give us a break from the standard classwork of calculus, physics and the like. There was probably a little of that, but it also had two other very practical objectives.

One was to provide us with an exposure, albeit on a somewhat smaller scale, how machines would make the parts of the vehicles we were going to be designing. It was a dirty business; so much so, that we had to wear our tank coveralls over our uniforms.

The second reason, and equally practical, was that each of us made a shooting stick. Shooting sticks were, and still are, very popular in England for use in watching horse races, cricket, rugby, football (soccer), and sometimes even shooting.

If you look it up online you will see that you can buy one from Amazon, complete with a leather seat, for $60-90 dollars. Ours didn’t have a leather seat, but where we sat had been smoothed down and was very comfortable. And it was free.

The circular disc near the top of the stick was removable by unscrewing it and placing it on the bottom of the shaft, again by screwing it on, to keep the stick from continuing to go into the ground once you sit on it. 

We used our sticks when we went “out in the field”, whether it was to tank driving or shooting ranges, weekend pheasant shoots, or my favorite, TEWTS.

The last was Terrain Exercise Without Troops”. This was really a walk over some chosen terrain where we would discuss tactics and pretend battles. Sometimes, if the land was similar, we even got to replay a famous real-life one.

I used my shooting stick when my daughters grew up playing soccer. I don’t think I will use it for any local Civil War battles down here.

But I was proud I was able to make it like Pop would have done.

(TNR 12)

What do People Collect?

I was watching TV news the other day and the program had a short blurb about a man who collected the button panels from inside of elevators. He had some from all over the world. It showed him going into an outside storage shed you commonly see along a highway inside of a security fence. Elevator panels must be a high-value item.

Seriously though, it got me to thinking about what people do collect and more specifically, what have I collected, and do I still collect anything. I searched for “what do people collect” on Google. Boy, what a find! People collect almost anything. I found sites that listed and showed everything from belly button fuzz to banana stickers to back scratchers. The following site is worth visiting: http://www.atchuup.com/weirdest-collection-of-things-ever/

Of course, there were the normal things most people collect. Usually, the first one is coins. Stamps are always high on the list, as are comic books, rocks, marbles, dolls, and baseball cards.

Talking to my brother on Skype Sunday, he told me that he collects jade donkeys. He only has six, but that still counts as a collection. Here are two of the nicest.

Looking at the lists I found online, I realized I have collected many of the items. Some of them I didn’t really consider a collection until I thought about it. A collection is defined by Dictionary.com as “something that is collected; a group of objects or an amount of material accumulated in one location, especially for some purpose or as a result of some process.”

That said, my childhood collections consisted primarily of stamps, coins, plastic airplane models, matchbook covers, baseball cards, and marbles. I read comic books but didn't collect them.

What do I collect now? To be continued…

(TNR 12)

Monday

Today's post is a little different in that I am posting some pictures that will show up again for future posts. I am working on a couple of other posts right now, but they are not blog-worthy. Therefore, to keep my blog going, I'll entertain you with a few pictures.

This is me at about 1-2 years and my first dog, Blondie. Yes, there's a story there.

Mom and me, I was less than a year obviously.

Pop and me. I was about 1-2 here. The blurs are dogs.

The 1979 Macy's marathon in Kansas City. I'm in the center.

All of these will be in future posts. Until then...

(Times New Roman 12) 

Driving Miss Blind Daisy

When I was in high school I got the greatest summer job. I drove a car for a most wonderful lady who was blind and worked for the state blind association.

Her name was Ann Porter, and he routinely visited blind persons over a tri-county area. My mother had driven for her for several years, but when I got my license and Mom began working at the local hospital, Ann offered the job to me.

I would drive to her home about 10 miles from ours every weekday morning. There we would leave and visit all day with a list of clients she had in her records. Ann had been blind since shortly after birth when she blinded by an illness. She was about 45 when I drove for her. She was such a great person.

Her husband, Henry, was also great. About the same age, Henry had been a truck driver when he was involved in an accident and lost his sight. They had met after he was blind.

Ann had a large Braille book that had her records of her clients I in it, complete with directions as to how to get there; which side of the street it was on; what color the house was; did it have a walkway with steps, and how many; plus the number of steps she had to take to get to the house. These were just a few of the things she wrote in her book and memorized.

She had a German Sheppard Seeing-Eye dog named Missy who went with us. I loved having Missy around. I think she was even smarter than Ann, but definitely me. Missy would know where we were going once turned onto the street of the house. And she knew the steps and walkways as well.

I would drive about 5,000 miles each summer while I was in high school. I would have continued when I went to college, but I got a better paying and more convenient job as a janitor working for Bell Telephone a block from college.

Yes, I was a lucky young man in so many ways. They were wonderful people.

(Verdana 12)  

An Interrobang and a New Fishing Pole

One day awhile back, I was writing something that I was excited about and wrote it as a question. So I did what I normally did when that happened, I put a question mark ? and an exclamation point ! at the end of the sentence.

Then I stopped and began to wonder if there was a punctuation mark that combined the two. Sure enough, there was. It is called an Interrobang.

It was invented in 1962 by Martin Speckter, an American who ran an advertising agency. He thought it would look nice in ads that used surprised rhetorical questions. After asking for names for this new punctuation mark, he settled on Interrobang.

Interrogatio is Latin for “rhetorical question” and bang is printers’ slang for the exclamation mark. It subsequently got included into several fonts and word processing programs. The easiest one I found is in the Wingdings 2 font, pressing the ] key. 

You may read more about this interesting font as well as other ways to find it with other fonts on Wikipedia, from which I got most of my information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interrobang.

 Our wooden bear figurine has needed a new fishing pole for some time. My wife bought this one for 68 cents; it was poplar wood. It warped very quickly.

I went to Lowe’s and bought an oak one for $1.68. It should last almost a year.

All the critters look happy now. Snow tonight]

(Lucida Sans Unicode 12)

Bunnies & Puppies & Lions, Oh My!

Something lighter today I think is due. Yesterday, when we went shopping at the local Wal-Mart we spotted some interesting cakes in the bakery section. Obviously, too many calories for either of us, they were still cute.

The bunny looked so “Eastery” I was very tempted, but I didn’t give in. I bet it was a devil’s food chocolate.

The little puppy was so cute. Too bad I didn’t see him today. It’s National Puppy Day, isn’t it?

And what can you say about the lion? Nothing except that I didn’t and still don’t think it looks much like a lion. It reminds me of that commercial where the parents put a fake mane ordered from Amazon on the family dog to make the baby happy.

Library volunteering is scheduled for this afternoon.

Snow is forecasted again for this weekend; another 3-6 inches. We’ll see.

(Comic Sans MS 12)

The Khatyn Massacre

Today marks the 75^th anniversary of the Khatyn massacre. On March 22, 1943, the village of Khatyn in Belarus with its 156 inhabitants and 26 houses was completely destroyed by a Nazi Police battalion made up of primarily Ukrainian collaborators. I visited the site on my March 1991 trip to Russia and Belarus (see my 1 March post).

Over 5,000 settlements and villages in Belarus were burned and destroyed by the Nazis in a three year period from 1941 to 1944 for collaborating with partisan forces. Many were burned numerous times.

Khatyn was destroyed on this date because earlier in the day a convoy of the German Schultzmannschaft Battalion 118 was attacked by Soviet partisans near Khatyn. Four police officers were killed, including the commander who was a famous 1936 Olympian.

The police battalion gathered the villagers together and locked them into a barn, put straw around it, and set fire to it. Those villagers that tried to escape by jumping out windows or breaking the doors down were machine-gunned. There were only six persons, one adult, and five children, who survived the burning of the village. Two other adult women were away from the village for the day. 75 children under the age of 16 perished that day.

 The sculpture above was made to represent the sole adult survivor of the burning, Yuzif Kaminsky, who searched and found his son’s body in the charred remains of the barn. When I visited the site, the guide told us that he was actually away tending his field at the time and came back only afterward. I don’t know which story is true. Most of the information and all of the photos on today’s blog are from a Wikipedia site which I will post at the end of this blog today.

Another part of the memorial I saw was the remains of the 26 homes. Only the brick chimneys remain. Bells were put in the top of each chimney and they are rung in unison every 30 seconds representing the rate at which the Belarusians were killed during the war. Over 2 million people were killed during that three-year period, about 25 % of the population.

 Another moving part of the memorial was what was called a Cemetery of villages, which consisted of 185 cubed onyx-like boxes in rows representing a village in Belarus that was destroyed. Each box contained ashes from that particular village.

According to some sources, Russia used this memorial to confuse the foreign community with the covering up of the Katyn massacre.

A final note: among the group of our peace conference high schoolers that day was a small group from Germany. They said very little. I can only imagine what they were thinking.

Please go to this site for more information:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khatyn_massacre

(Calibri 12)

Another Snow & Trivia Nite

A fourth Nor’easter is hitting the Northeast today. It began last night and will continue up the coast into Thursday. We were expected to get 4-6 inches.

We didn’t. At least we didn’t on the roadways. It’s already melting and will soon be dry on all the surfaces except the grass. That should be gone by the weekend when we are expecting some more. But not as much; so I guess that means we might not see any.

The photo above I titled “Prisma Disco Snowfall”, using the disco option in the app. I think it reminds me of a burning something at night. Eerie don’t you think? Here it actually was as I took it this morning.

Maybe the disco version was what it really did look like last night while we were sleeping.

BTW, we tied for first place in last night’s Brew Ridge Taps’ bimonthly trivia contest. We tied with a team of four young men from W&L. Their team was called Dormy Staniels. Kids.

Anyhow, after four tie-breaker questions, which both teams got the first one correct, but got the next three wrong, time was called. Each team won a $15 gift certificate for the next time we meet. We’ll buy some appetizers.

I’ll post a picture of the winning teams when BRT post it on Facebook.

(Verdana 12)

Prisma

Posting yesterday’s art done by a horse made me realize that I can do as well as that. Well, maybe not exactly the same, but with the help of a special photo app on my phone called Prisma.

As you can see Prisma takes an ordinary photo and then allows you to choose a variety of looks with different colors. The photo above is a fruit bowl in the kitchen, the first I took. Here are a few others.

This is a pint from the Brew Ridge Taps where I will be playing Trivia Night again this evening ahead of the approaching snow storm.

This is my Cav hat I wore in Vietnam for ceremonies with my air cavalry unit.

And the last for today, my favorite bourbon – Makers Mark.

I have more, don’t worry. Check the app out.

(Arial 12)

A Horse is a Horse of Course...

This afternoon I was volunteering at the library. I was working in the stacks, in the 900 section towards the rear of the library. I came out of one of the rows and almost ran into a horse!

Once I regained my equilibrium, I saw it was just a statue of course. It was made of some ceramic or other glossy material. And it had been painted of sorts. The artist evidently was another horse. Of course.

I had seen no mention of this in the local paper, but then I am always tardy when it comes to reading the paper. But my wife didn’t mention it and she reads the weekly newspaper cover to cover.

I am going to have to find out more about it. Of course.




(Ebrima 12) 

Long Armour Infantry Course, Chapter 1

This will be the first of several posts about the LAIC. When I was in the Army and just completing the Armor Advanced Course at Fort Knox, I received a call from my branch. Those are the folks that plan where to send you next (sometimes, but that is another post).

The branch officer wanted to know if I wanted to attend the British Army Long Armour Infantry Course in Dorset, England. It was 18 months long and was starting in January 1971.

It took me about 10 seconds to decide. I was selected in large part because of my math background. There would be only one other American officer going, an Ordnance branch officer, though starting the next class in 1972 an infantry officer would be added.

There were 30 officers in the class; in addition to us Americans, there were three Australians, one Canadian, and 24 British officers.

 The purpose of the course was to allow combat officers provide direct input into the development of armoured fighting vehicles for the British army by way of designing vehicles from the ground up and presenting them to the civilian scientific community responsible for that mission in England.

The first eight weeks was all class work. We studied subjects such as geometry, calculus, physics, strength of materials, chemistry, electrical engineering, and optics. There were others, but these were the major ones.

At the end of the first two months, we had to take what they called “bar exams”. If you didn’t pass all of them, you were cut from the course and sent home.

When the time came for the examinations, only one British officer was sent packing. My fellow American, Woody, was one of the highest in the class. I passed but was in the lower third.

But my time would come.

(Trebuchet MS12)

The Quiet Man

I’ve visited Ireland four times. The first was in 1990 when we went on our honeymoon. The last was 2000 when we took two of our daughters.

When we went the first time it was an adventure. We had made a general itinerary, but didn’t really know where things were, how long it would take to get between places, and what to expect with driving on the left side of the road!

On our second day there we drove from Limerick to Galway. By the time we had seen enough of Galway, we still had to drive a little more north to Cong, the main filming location for “The Quiet Man” with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara.

By the time we arrived at our B&B, it was evening. The owner welcomed us and politely asked if we were hungry. Knowing we probably were, she recommended a small restaurant and pub in nearby Neale, about 5 km away. She wasn’t completely surprised that this was the prime reason we came to the area.

She promoted the place as being owned by the man who was the double for John Wayne in the film. We were hungry and tired, but when we heard this we just had to go that evening. So we did.

When we got there, we went to the restaurant side. A large man came in from the adjoining bar and welcomed us. This was Joe Mellotte. With gray-white hair, he didn’t look much like Wayne in the front, but he had the build. He “forced” us to each have a draft Guinness from the tap and took our dinner orders.

While dinner was being made, Joe told us of his time in the movie. He often would play some of the long shots, but his favorites were the horse race and the final scenes with the rambling fight over the countryside.

We ate in the rear restaurant area. The food was delicious. To this day, one of the best meals we have ever had. We went back the next night. We each had our pictures taken with him.

We went back in 1997 and took our two youngest, both teens at the time. They got to meet Joe. But by the time we returned in 1998 for a co-worker’s wedding, he had died.

Our final visit to the area in 2000 was bittersweet. Joe was not there of course, but the area had been so commercialized one-way streets had to be put in where the horse cart in the movie was parked. But I still dragged the family around to see most of two dozen plus film sites in two days.

To read more about Joe Mellotte and the film, go to this Reel Classics site.

http://www.reelclassics.com/Movies/QuietMan/quietman-article2.htm

I almost forgot. The last night in Ireland on our 1990 trip we stayed in a small B&B overlooking the Shannon Airport. We wanted to be close for an early departure.

At breakfast, we found out from our wonderful hostess that Maureen O’Hara and she were best friends. It seems that both of their husbands were pilots and had often flown together. Maureen would always stop and see her when she came to Ireland.

Unfortunately, she wasn’t there that day.

(Verdana 12)

Gig Line - Who is He?

Today’s post is mainly for the guys. But you gals could benefit from it as well in certain situations. It’s a term from the military. It has to do with your appearance.

When I was active on Facebook a year or so ago, I had a female friend sent me a message asking what a gig line was. She saw that several of my ex-cadets were talking about “never leaving the house without checking my gig line just like the Major taught us”.

She was almost afraid to ask, but ask she did.

It is nothing more than the alignment of the shirt seam with the belt buckle edge, and seam of the trouser fly. Simple as that. But oh, so perfect and symmetrical.

Now with a military belt, there is an additional requirement. Those of you who were Scouts would know this. The metal tip of the belt should only show out the buckle, but none of the web belt. But it must come out enough to cover only the rear backing of the metal belt. Simple! (Sorry no picture)

What does “gig” mean? Well, in the military if you got a demerit, often they would say that you got a “gig”. Maybe because long hair, no shine on shoes, and crooked gig lines were often the most common demerit sources, the name just followed.

I wonder where the actor Gig Young got his name?

(Verdana 12)