Love

    I remember Christmas as a boy in the deep, dark woods on my Grandparent's farm.  I can remember the routine of tending to the cows being interrupted by a trip into the woods to cut a tree and decorating it and trips to the attic for Christmas paraphernalia.  My Grandparents had amassed the most marvelous train set. 75 different cars. Two engines, a coal and a diesel locomotive. Two transformers and hundreds of pieces of track, trestles, tunnels and accessories.  About once a year we would take it down and play with it on a few idle summer days as well.
    For some reason those Christmases were always white.  The house was always filled with those who could make the trip that particular year.  Bustle and baking, comfort and cooking.  Gossip and wrapping paper.  Scenes that Norman Rockwell had in mind for us all which were repeated across the country.  Warmth and cheer, all cast in the softened colors of memory.  A whiff of coal smoke takes me back 60 years and longer.
    My Grandparents had eight children.  By the time I happened along those children had all become adults well on their various ways in life.  I noticed a few things about that that I have always tried to remember.  Instead of having children my Grandparents had a wide circle of adult friends and they treated them exactly that way.  It was a good example and it showed me that I would know my children far longer as adults rather than kids.  With my own kids I always tried to think of the adults I would like to know and I always tried to imagine the qualities in those adults I would like to see.
    That eventually got me to thinking about friendship and loved ones.  I've noticed that my friends do treat me with affection and toleration just as we all do.  Friends will seek and value my advice and even take it from time to time without criticism or condemnation.  Friends will ask for or offer assistance without reservation or resentment.  They will freely offer advice and be critical without reservation, condescension or self-consciousness.  These seem to be hallmarks of true affection.
    On the other hand,  loving a person seems to be a terrible thing to do to them.  It seems to open the door to all kinds of negative features of human relations.  I've always tried to treat loved ones as though I just really, really liked them.  To the point my wife knows that my saying  ' I really like you'  is high praise indeed.
    I really like  Christmas Eves and remember them in great detail.  Christmas Day, not so much.  They always seem like a sort of  anti-climax.  I will say, in all this time, there has never been a Christmas day I would call bad just less memorable than the evening before, somehow less special.  I dunno.  How do you rank something like that?  You don't.  You shouldn't.  You can't.
    I really like Christmas Eve and I proved it by getting married on that evening years ago.  Our joke was it was either very romantic or we had just ruined a perfectly good holiday.  I guess the jury is still out on that.  It's been a pretty good quarter century of Holidays.
    One more thing:  Tinsel, no more than four strands at a time and no throwing.
    Merry Christmas to you and yours.  I hope you really, really like your Holidays.

There Is This

    An awful lot has been said about the current first lady.  People across the political spectrum have shared their thoughts on Melania.  You do have to admit the circumstance is "unusual" to say the very least.
    Other than a veritable cottage industry growing up around the idea the woman hates Trump not much real comment has been spent on exploring what she really thinks.  She really doesn't have the opportunity for frank comment.  That's understandable.  On top of that her accent, fairly or unfairly, is a handicap to any communication she might impart.  However, if you factor out the obvious plagiarism and the  'Moose and Squirrel' aspect of her accent you have to assume there is an active mind there.  The grammar is perfect and the words all have the right number of syllables.  If you were trying to send some sort of message you certainly could do worse than plagiarizing Michelle Obama.  If you wanted to be subversive to current circumstances you could hardly do better than Michelle Obama.  It may be wrong to ascribe things to the failings of subordinates.
    Melania recently compared the White House to a South American prison. That's not too unusual or really noteworthy.  Bill Clinton once said the White House was the crown jewel of the federal prison system.  Who remembers that?  More telling,  she recently said she'd rather spend Christmas on a desert island.  I don't think she's happy but if you look at her photos over the years, both famous and not so famous, no one is gonna call her 'Smiley'.  Apparently, you can't get her to crack a smile with lots of jewels and a Gulf Stream.  Some women are just like that.
    So, the question becomes: Is the first lady being deliberately subversive or are these just off-hand, casual remarks,  maybe subtle jokes from an active mind?
    Consider this: The White House has been decorated like a scene from "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and the first lady came out in costume as Sally/ Shock from that movie.  You would have to believe the woman is completely culturally ignorant to not recognize that was,  not a cry for help but a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
    No matter what you think about that it certainly creates an interesting dynamic and probably led to some interesting private residence conversations.

A Mistake

    It's a trick of age I suspect.  I remember 1974 as though it was yesterday.  On the other hand,  I remember yesterday as though it was 1974.  Apparently, you'll have that.  It can be sort of annoying sometimes but usually it's just nice.  I sure can hold a grudge  but I tend to forget recent arguments.
    Speaking of holding grudges. I sure didn't like Richard Nixon much and in the ensuing years my opinion hasn't gone up to any measurable degree.  I thought it was a mistake in 1968 and I still think so.  How's that for holding a grudge?
    I, like most of the country, was taken by surprise when Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon.  A lot of people seem to think Ford's pardon was the factor that made Jimmy Carter President.  Nah, people didn't like most anything to do with the republicans by that time and Carter was a very good candidate.  He seemed to speak directly to the Angels of Our Better Nature.  That's sure fire if you're following a sour puss.  Gerald Ford was a nice guy but Carter surely followed Nixon in the nation's mind.  Carter's major shortcoming was he actually wasn't a politician.  He was completely unprepared for what the people surrounding Reagan were prepared to do.  He was a genuine nice guy.  I don't think it had sunk in to him there actually were people of that ilk in government.  I digress.
    People didn't like the idea of pardoning Nixon much.  I understood at the time and until recently thought it was the right thing to do.  Nixon wasn't just the symbol of dishonesty.  He was the symbol of the failure of the ideas that got us into Vietnam and by that time those ideas were recognized as poison.  We realized we had been sold a deadly bill of goods.  A few more years of criminal trials of Nixon were not what was needed.  It was time to heal and move on with the business of the nation.
    The business of the nation.  That brings up a mistake about that era.  There have been several reasons given for the economic troubles we faced at that time.  None of them are correct.  There were really only three things that mattered.  The foremost problem was knuckling under to OPEC.  That really screwed us all.  It exacerbated the other two.  Second was the economic wind down from the Vietnam War.  The third one is never mentioned but was very important.  The Baby Boomers came of age in that decade and entered the job market in unprecedented numbers.  The pressure that put on the labor markets can't be overstated.  It would help if it were even noticed to any degree but there you have it.
    But that's not the mistake I mean.  Given what's going on now it seems to have been a mistake to not make an example out of Nixon. There are people who seem to have gotten the idea that blatant, literal crimes against our way of life carry rather light personal consequences.  Nixon actually dying in prison might have better informed the malefactors.  I don't know about you but I prefer my malefactors better informed and with a tad more class.  I prefer Ceasare Romero over Heath Ledger; Burgess Meredith over Danny DeVito.
    Here's more of that mistake.  The Federal Government is not a business.  It can't be run as a business and a businessman almost certainly will be at least incompetent if not an outright disaster.  One aspect we're witnessing now is the tendency to misunderstand the penalties for failure.  In a business based on bombast, exaggeration and sharp dealing the greatest penalties are bankruptcy and occasionally subordinates do short stretches in jail.  In politics the ultimate penalties can find you hanging upside down at an abandoned gas station while thousands cheer.  Though not as extreme, we did miss an opportunity for Nixon to set a useful example and that was a mistake we are paying for.

Moore vs Jones

    There were a lot of things about the recent special Senate election that have been reported wrong and or just didn't happen.  As the pundits adroitly manipulated the numbers from the last several elections in Alabama to divine what might happen they totally missed the import of the numbers they were looking at.
    The first and most important fact that is never reported enough is states like Alabama are NOT "deep red". They are purple at best and they will remain so.  The reported recapitulations of the last several years of statewide elections in Alabama show the votes have always been very close.  I would really like to know what roll increased scrutiny of rural voting machines played.  No matter. There were over 22,000 write in votes for other candidates.  You have to believe they were republicans who never would have voted for Jones but couldn't vote for Moore.  It is reasonable to observe a generic republican candidate would have won albeit narrowly.  It was Moore's election to lose and he stayed in and did just that.  Only Moore could have lost this election but it's a shame he lost over 30 year old allegations whether they were true, distasteful or not true.  The guy has been a flat out, objectionable nut case in much more recent years.  It's hard to imagine someone like this has stayed out of jail let alone held public office; without visiting any malls.
    It does seem to be a rejection of the influence of Trump.  First, he backed Luther Strange in the primary and was rejected by the voters and then came late to the cause of Roy Moore and was once again rejected.  It's reasonable to say those 22,000 write-in votes were votes against Trump.  It's also reasonable to say Strange would have won the general election.  However, is anyone surprised a real estate tycoon from New York doesn't have a lot of influence in the deep south?
    In spite of what the pundits say there doesn't seem to be any predictive value for next year beyond the ordinary. The out party is going to be highly motivated because they are the "out" party. They will turn out in great numbers and the "in" party will lose seats.  Trump is very unpopular and will be a drag on republican candidates.  Nothing that happened  in Alabama will change that but we see projection after projection saying there is some indication of a sea-change. Nah.
    We saw the same "urban" verses "rural" divide and it's being much discussed.  The truth is, no such thing seems to actually exist.  What has happened and is happening is where people live in greater numbers they vote against republican candidates.  The standard republican message of exclusion for whatever reason just doesn't work on Americans grouped in large numbers.  It may be that people living in closer proximity understand exclusion doesn't work.  It is probably just a fluke in numbers distribution in large groups.  Now, you can't really sell that on CNN but if you're a political consultant or a politician you should understand and remember.
    The election coverage did re-prove one time honored axiom: Unless it is currently on fire or being shot into space, television news is worthless as a source of information.

Remember Pearl Harbor

    I love conspiracy theories. They are just simple enough in their complexity to be accessible to all.  In a world of seemingly ever more intricate and intractable problems they offer such simple, satisfying explanations.  All you have to do to feel just a tad superior is to connect the dots. Unfortunately,  the world has not changed.  Things have always been intricate and intractable.  People haven't changed either.
    I would eagerly believe all conspiracy theories except for two undeniable facts.  You should never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity and most conspiracies really boil down to confederacies of dunces.
    Conspiracy theories can be very powerful.  The international communist conspiracy for a time stripped democracy from the United States.  Currently, the international Islamic conspiracy has us pretty much eating our young.  That's nothing compared to what the international Zionist conspiracy theory did to Europe in the early part of the last century. That theory eventually produced World War Two.
    You think WWII was something?  Wait till you get a load of this.  The World Trade Center was attacked twice because the attackers saw it as the center of Jewish Banking in the world.  No other reason.  It was the locus of the Zionist Conspiracy. How's that for a conspiracy theory?   When you consider the World Trade Center was a failed real estate development,  owned by the Port Authority because it couldn't be run at a profit the whole thing is pretty funny.  Here's a conspiracy factoid for ya.  You can make the case Manhattan real estate brokers and building owners were primary beneficiaries of the 9/11 attacks because it so dramatically changed the vacancy factor for prime office space.  Hmm. I wonder if the new building has anywhere near the offices the Twin Towers had?  Who's a big owner of office space in Manhattan?
    See how easy it is to string together simple statements and questions to create an almost Byzantine world?  But that's not my point.  And I do have one.
    I was originally thinking about the importance of institutional memory in organizations large and small.  In this particular instance I was thinking of the U S Navy.  Pearl Harbor is, in one way, a story of how institutional memory was preserved.  It's also the basis of a conspiracy theory.  It's a dandy and parts of it have the useful feature of being true.
    The story is Roosevelt and his cabal knew the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor and did nothing because they needed an excuse for a reluctant America to enter WW II.  We had broken the Japanese military codes and knew the date and hour and just waited.   Some of that is sorta true.
    At that point we had broken the Japanese diplomatic codes but it wasn't till later we broke the Japanese military codes.  Nevertheless, we did know they were coming and where and when.  The idea of a reluctant American public is kinda funny.  A couple years of contemporary Gallup polling shows that somewhere around 80% of Americans thought war with the Axis Powers was inevitable. There may have been a need for casus belli to motivate republican isolationists in Congress but the public was ready to fight.  We're Americans by God!  We'll fight at the drop of a hat.  I wish people would quit believing that's not true.  In point of fact we are the most violent people who have ever lived.  We are the people who conceived and built an atomic weapon and then we actually used the damned thing.  Now we have 10 or 12 thousand laying around ready to go.
    The Arizona was the most modern battleship in the fleet. It was built in 1916. In the 1920's and '30's Japan had built a modern battle fleet.  The truth is: Had our battle fleet met the Japanese fleet it would have been a disaster. Our fleet would have been dispatched to the bottom along with the crews.
The difference on that Sunday morning was the crews were at liberty.  It's a truth of combat that those who have survived a first encounter tend to continue to survive subsequent encounters.  There is a deadly truth to the phrase, ' battle hardened veterans'.  For example: The veterans of North Africa and the Italian campaigns cut thru the Germans in France like a knife.
    So, by allowing the Japanese to sink a fleet of obsolete ships while their crews were ashore,  institutional memory was preserved and then employed in modern ships to defeat the Imperial Fleet.
    It was a conscious decision. The lives of 1,300 people were traded for the lives of maybe 130,000.  How would you like to be confronted with that decision?
    So, was it some sort of conspiracy?  No, it was a choice made by decent men faced with totally unattractive alternatives.
    The question we face is: Do we currently have men who could make such a decision?

Scribble, Scribble, Scribble, Ay Mr Gibbon?

    That was said by Prince William Henry, Duke of Glouster and Edinburgh  to Mr Edward Gibbon who wrote " The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".  A magnum opus in every sense of the word.  Even I haven't waded thru that total employment of the King's English in it's entirety. The parts I have had occasion to read are actually quite good. The guy is readable.  Prince William's remark was one of the great put-downs.
    It made me think of "Bulfinch's Mythology". Now there was a tome and it's been a standard text for generations.  Greek Mythology is spectacular as fantasy, science fiction, imaginative fiction.  It's the basis for so much of Greek tragedy and general drama.  Yeah, this guy managed to make it dry as dust and basically killed it.  You try reading that shit.  Even I couldn't do it and in those days I smoked dope.
    I'm not big on memorizing dates except in a general way.  It is good to have a sense of the order of events.  If you have a sense of that you can better understand why this guy did or said this when he did.  Sometimes when she did.  That's a different discussion.  So much of history is dismissed as memorizing dates.  That's too bad.  If I know the era I can look up the dates.
    To me,  history reads like a good novel.  It's certainly not history's fault some of the writers suck. McHistory or the History Channel has kinda bridged that gap if the bridge builder lacked opposable thumbs.  At least it's got people interested.  Sometimes that leads to more detailed reading.  I can't tell you the times I've been reading some historian or other and said to myself, " So that's why!"  Things that make ya go hmmm.  I like that.
    So, there is a point. Honest!  I can think of three real tomes that are very popular.  For my generation it's "The Lord of the Rings".  If you count "The Hobbit" and the "Silmarillion" that's gotta be 1,600 pages.   In actuality, it's a rip off of Norse Mythology but in practice, it's a detailed history complete with dates and significant personages whom we all know.  It is good and evil.  It has pith and moment.
    The other that comes immediately to mind is  all the Harry Potter novels.  More good and evil and pith and moment.  Each one seemingly longer and more detailed than the other.  Then we come to the current magnum opus: " A Song of Fire and Ice".  About ten of you know that's the real title of the series of novels  known as "Game of Thrones".
    They're all histories. They have important personages and pivotal dates.  We all can recite them.  We all know the figures true motivations and impacts.  What are we talking about, maybe 5,000 pages total?
    If the average person had spent as much time reading the history of their own culture as they have reading this drek we would live in a far better society.  It would be damned hard to sell a person thusly informed a bill of goods as we so often see today and sadly yesterday.  Jesus!  If you think you only have so much time to read, read something worthwhile. It's fascinating. Honest!
    Here's some examples.  Did you know that JFK was actually in the gallery at the British Parliament when they declared war on Germany in 1939?   He was so good at managing history because he'd seen so much of it first hand.  Did you know that Franklin Roosevelt not only had been Secretary of the Navy but made the choice, when struck with polio at 39 years of age to forego extensive rehabilitation to pursue his political career?  The career that would make him not just the governor of New York but President?  Did you know that's why it's called "The March of Dimes"?  Did you know that's why FDR's face is on the dime?  Did you know that Harry Truman was not just the last President to not have a college degree  but was an artillery captain in France in WWI? Harry also said, "The only thing new under the sun is the history you haven't read yet."
    If you had spent as much time reading the history of your own country as you wasted reading  "Game of Thrones"  you would know those things.
    Winter is coming. You'll need something to read.