Category Archives: Scribbles

Of gravestones and art

Michael Fay, a Marine combat artist, seems to have cleared out his Fire and Ice blog in favor of a real gallery show in Doylestown, PA. At the James A. Michener Art Museum, no less. Michener, of course, is buried here in Austin. Less well known is the fact that, many years ago, I rented part of an old mansion on the road between New Hope and Doylestown. Meanwhile, I’ve been planning for a while now to get out to the Austin cemetery where Michener is planted to talk to some of the nearby headstone people about getting my own slab ready. Already own the plot. Macabre? Not really. Be prepared, that’s the Boy Scout’s marching creed. I will find a snap of Michener’s stone and post it. I’m not talking about the state cemetery, where there’s a commemorative stone for him, which is just political PR, but Austin Memorial Park. His own chosen headstone is a trifle unusual, as you might expect of such a prolific character. Find A Grave has it, here.

Speedy critters

Things certainly look placid enough. Ah, if only you knew. Folks at the equator, according to NASA, are riding the Earth’s rotation at about 1,000 mph. In Texas it’s probably around 700 mph. Meanwhile the Earth is speeding around the sun at 67,000 mph. Can’t feel a thing, can you? Obviously, things are not what they seem.

The peasant’s gun

The AK-47 assualt rifle celebrated its 60th birthday Friday, and Lt Col P at Op-For notes the fact, while dissing the technology. Reliable? Check. Simple? The same. Accurate? Not hardly. But, then, on full auto, hosing the opposition, who could tell? And that’s what peasants do. They ain’t target shooters.

Fricasseed Tomcat

Mr. Boy is devastated. Not only did the Navy retire the F-14, his favorite fighter jet. Now they’re chewing ’em into tiny pieces. To keep the parts away from the Iranians. Now that’s a cause I can get behind.

Chinese goods

Ligneus at Spiced Sass weighs in on the adulteration of imported Chinese edibles, and predicts mass defection from their goods. I suspect L. has no children. China is a godsend for children’s clothes, shoes and toys. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten anything imported from China, and I certainly won’t now. But my purse would be a lot thinner without the good and cheap children’s stuff they send our way. My Shakespearean purse, that is.

Stolen Child

Much as I have enjoyed Loreena McKennitt’s music I somehow missed her first album, "Elemental," until recently. It has a haunting song using as lyrics William Butler Yeat’s poem "Stolen Child." This is the chorus:

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping
than you can understand.

The rest of the poem is here, and a somewhat echoey YouTube version. The original is better.

Happy 231st, America

On this wet and dreary Fourth of July, we couldn’t get up the energy to attend the annual neighborhood parade led by Mr. Boy’s cub scout pack. So he missed seeing his chums and we missed seeing their parents. But there’s still plenty of time for fried chicken, potato salad, apple pie and iced tea, on this, the country’s 231st birthday. It’s too wet for fireworks, even for the sparklers we planned, so we’ll watch them on television. An old Army friend recently wrote that he thought the country and the Army were in peril, in this age of Islamic terrorism. Perhaps. But I have always thought that the nation was too tough, too resilient to be imperiled for long, and I believe that the Long War will be no exception. If you’re an American, I know you will understand my sentiment. If you’re not, as seablogger Alan Sullivan says, you have my condolences.