Category Archives: Library

The Colonel’s Lady on the Western Frontier

Posted on April 6, 2007 | Comments Off on The Colonel’s Lady on the Western Frontier

Through her letters to her husband, her sons and others, Alice Grierson becomes a friend you won’t forget–not her hardy life nor her excruciating death. Her candor on intimate subjects, such as contraception and depression, make her seem modern. Her word pictures of soldier and family life in isolated places such as Fort Concho, Texas–where her child, Edith, died of typhoid fever and was buried with military honors–pull you into a vanished time whose routine hazards helped shape the American character.

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Reluctant lieutenant

Posted on April 4, 2007 | Comments Off on Reluctant lieutenant

"Reluctant Lieutenant: From Basic to OCS in the Sixties" is a good read for veterans of the 1960s Army, since it’s one careful writer’s reconstructed memoir of the major events of Basic, Infantry AIT and Infantry OCS. Remember Zero Week? The movies always seem to leave that out. Remember the fear of having to repeat Basic? Author Jerry Morton doesn’t waste energy finding reasons to hate the Army or the war, and he builds his story with details not generalities. But being a Phd psychologist, he can be pedantic at times. He also seems to run out of gas by the concluding, OCS segment. His Infantry OCS was different from mine, in several respects, but he went through a year earlier, in the first half of 1967, so it might have changed by the time I got there in 1968. Basic and Infantry AIT, which will appeal to the greatest number of Army veterans, get the most careful attention. Morton did them in the fall of 1966 at Fort Dix, NJ, and Ft. McClellan, AL. Even if you didn’t (I did Basic and Cavalry Scout AIT at Fort Knox, KY) his details will spark plenty of memories. He uses pseudonyms and reconstructed (at best) dialogue to keep things moving, and often finds his truths in humor: "We had no idea how far we were going or where we were going. We were just going."

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Lock and load

Posted on March 31, 2007 | Comments Off on Lock and load

This war-movie standard phrase has always annoyed me. It even showed up in "Reluctant Lieutenant," a book I’ve been reading, purporting to have been used by sergeants on Basic Training firing ranges at Fort Dix, NJ in 1967. Bothers me, I say, because it’s not obvious to me how one could lock first and then load. But loading first and then locking the rifle’s bolt forward makes sense.

Indeed, the original order was to load and lock and it comes from the M-1 Garand Manual here, the standard rifle of the second world war. But Wikipedia says lock and load also makes sense in terms of locking the bolt back before loading the round into the chamber. In any case, they attribute the current usage to John Wayne in the movie "Sands of Iwo Jima" in 1949. So I suppose it could have been used that way at Dix eighteen years later, and ever since.

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Posted in Library, Scribbles, Troops

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Today’s pretty picture

Posted on March 26, 2007 | Comments Off on Today’s pretty picture

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The Witch Head Nebula, about 1,000 light years away, in honor of Mr. B’s and my reading of Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince, which we are taking slow, since it’s the last one before the concluding book due in July. It’s also got more "kiss-kiss, boy-girl stuff," as Mr. B. calls it with wrinkled nose to show his disgust. So much that I find I have to read around those descriptions, partly because they’re too old for him and partly because he dislikes them anyway. 

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Posted in Library, Mr. Boy, Space

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PG-13 movies

Posted on March 16, 2007 | Comments Off on PG-13 movies

Mr. Boy, age 7, saw his first PG-13 movie tonight, "Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire." He said it wasn’t scary because he knew what was going to happen, but he didn’t like all the "boy-girl-kiss-kiss stuff." He really wrinkled his nose at the Christmas dance scenes. In fact, the movie was pretty intense. Lord V. is certainly more creepy-looking than ever. I didn’t miss the House Elf rights movement subplot, which was vanished entirely, and Mr. B. didn’t seem to notice. All of the movies have gotten better since the first one tried to be a movie-about-a-book. The rest have been pretty good movies. And Mr. B., having been through most of the Star Wars movies, is pretty unflappable. Now that we’ve seen all the HP flicks that are available–and are still plowing through "HP & The Half-Blood Prince" for a bedtime story–we have only to await the next movie due out in July, "HP & The Order of the Phoenix," so far unrated. But surely it won’t be an R. They’d lose most of their audience that way.

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Posted in Library, Mr. Boy

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World Book Day

Posted on March 9, 2007 | Comments Off on World Book Day

Judy Judith Anne at Just Muttering By Myself comes up with this World Book Day survey of the top ten books people (mostly in the UK) just can’t live without. I’m glad I’ve only not heard of one of them:

"The #1 choice was Pride and Prejudice, followed by Lord of the Rings, Jane Eyre, all Harry Potter books, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Bible, Wuthering Heights, 1984, His Dark Materials and Great Expectations."

His Dark Materials. Huh?

A fantasy triology some say outshines Lord of the Rings. I’ll have to try it. 

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God gets laid

Posted on March 8, 2007 | Comments Off on God gets laid

Always glad to see fellow 1968 OCS grad Tucker Smallwood (Contact; Space: Above and Beyond; Return to Eden) get work, and a funny turn. Even when it’s relatively tame material like this Comedy Central piece the other night about a fornicating deity.

Hollywood/television seems to believe that making fun of Judeo-Christianity, conservatives in general and Republicans in particular is just as edgy as all get-out. Real daring stuff, despite the improbability of any retribution. Now if they’d substituted Allah for God…well, that would be real risk-taking with the suicide-belt and pipebomb set. Too real, apparently–for example, here–for the wits at Comedy Central.

Via Drudge 

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