Month: May 2006

  • Memorials to the Dead

    This new Xanga “Footprints” thing is really enlightening. I’ve found that most people are finding my website based on a link from a page about the Spike Africa. Sadly, this post of mine links to a website that no longer exists, so the only pictures of the Spike Africa that remain are the ones I pirated to this site.

    A beautiful boat, that deserves to be remembered.

    But that’s not what Memorial Day is for. Today, I would have remembered relatives lost in battle, but I know of none of my relatives who have been brave enough to fight in war.  Even my own grandfather, an extremely kind and altruistic man, was not brave enough to protect his family from a single Japanese soldier.

    I know of two Philippino guys who were offered military scholarships and turned them down.  Was it because they had better prospects?  Perhaps.  If so, I haven’t seen the fruit of them.  Honestly, I admire the men and women who made the choice to do something with their lives.

    Excerpts from “On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs”
    by LTC (RET) Dave Grossman

    . . . .One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me:

    “Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident.”. . .

    . . . “Then there are the wolves,” the old war veteran said, “and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy.” Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

    “Then there are sheepdogs,” he went on, “and I’m a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.”

    If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero’s path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed. . . .

    . . .There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, but he does have one real advantage. Only one. And that is that he is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population. . . .

    . . .Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I’m proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs. . . .

    Thank you to jmacAggie04 for the post, but mostly, thank you and your colleagues for your service to our country.


     

  • If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Tax ‘Em!

    Politician Launches Fresh Attack on Blogs

    U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, is an enemy of free speech. Allen is launching a new attack on political bloggers with the renewed threat of regulation under the Stifle Free Speech Act Campaign Finance Reform act even after the Federal Election Commission rightly exempted blogs from regulation under that law.

    http://billhobbs.com/2006/05/politician_launches_fresh_atta.html

    Matt tells me he’s been aware of this for a while. I personally don’t see how they could possibly succeed in limiting blogging under the Campaign Finance Reform Act. But honestly, people, this is so silly that I’m only posting it here because someone wanted a link to it.

    Blogging is not the ultimate in political free speech. If the government limits campaign blogging, Lord knows, people will find another way to voice their political opinions. They always do, whether we want to hear it or not.  The day I start getting campaign Instant Spammages over my cell phone is the day I say, “Enough is enough!”

     

  • One Junk-y Website, a Treasure Trove

    This website has all things junk:

    The China Seas Voyaging Society

    from http://www.chinaseas.org/

  • And I Thought *I* Was Having a Bad Day. . .


    I‘ve got a ton of problems to deal with both at home and at work these days. And yet, although things are bad, I’m still alive, and I have my family with me. Not so for these people:








    A Saturday Morning Earthquake Kills
    Over 4,500 People in Indonesia

    http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/international/ticker/detail/Search_
    for_survivors_as_Indonesia_quake_tops_3_000.html?siteSect=
    143&sid=6754936&cKey=1148797448000

    To donate money for help in rescue and recovery projects, it’s quite easy. Click here.


    My mother always used to put money in the collection plate for charities, every Sunday. She believes that if you give money away for a good cause, it will come back to you many-fold. Back then, we never wanted for anything, even though my dad didn’t make much money. We had everything we needed, and sometimes a little more. There was always enough to put something in the collection plate. Perhaps that’s why on CNN’s list, Catholic Charities is listed first.


     


     


     

  • 14′ Wishful Thinking

    I am enamoured of this boat’s simple design, the plans for which can be found at http://www.bateau2.com/gallery/AR15/index.htm.

  • Shopping for Sailboats

    Matt and I have completely different ideas about our desired sailboat size.  On a side-by-side comparison, here’s a Hers versus His:

    On one of the sailboats, they actually had a washer and dryer (!?!?!?).  I am assuming that the washer must run on fresh water, not salt water.  And if you can pay for the water each time you need the washer, I suppose you’d be able to pay for the boat, too.

    But I’m used to washing clothes by hand. Wash-and-wear silk is the key to quick drying.

     

     

  • Open Water

    Recently, I checked out a movie that came out in 2004 — “Open Water.” It was really amateurish, but it isn’t a bad movie to watch while you’re doing laundry.

    I guess what surprises me the most is the divemaster’s response to the film, in which he says, “This is really very bad for the industry as a whole.” Honestly, a movie won’t keep a diver from diving. If anything, it will just make him or her more responsible for his or her own safety. Getting to know one’s divemates is important. Making sure one does a headcount is part of responsible diving.

  • Sailboat Porn

    My xanga site, honestly, is really a repository for sailboat porn. Sometimes it’s really bad sailboat porn, but I hold no delusions that this website is anything more than that.

    So, with that disclaimer, here is my sailboat porn from my Houston trip.

    A lot of people in the Clear Lake area have a canal in their backyard which opens out into the lake, providing easy access to Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

     

     

     

  •  


    San Jacinto Memorial


    When I moved to California, I expected everyone to be blonde and jog a lot. I predicted lots of earthquakes and palm trees. I was going to surf, because, after all, everyone in California surfs, right?


    When I finally arrived in Fresno, I realized that a large part of the population is not blonde, nor blue-eyed, and Fresno is really far from the beach. While I was in the Central Valley, I was only in 1 earthquake. In the Bay Area, there were only 2 earthquakes that I was able to even feel.  When I visited my grandparents in Long Beach, we spent more time in San Pedro eating crab legs, rather than going to the beach. (I miss those crab legs.)


    Now that I live in Texas, I have dispelled the notion that everyone here wears cowboy hats and boots and knows how to ride a horse. (Not that there aren’t a lot of people who really do ride horses here. And in the Texas sun, a cowboy hat is the most practical thing to wear when mowing the lawn.) Not everyone here speaks with a drawl or looks like they just stepped out of the movie “Giant.”


    When we went to Houston last week, we saddled up our ponies and rode around town. I came across this memorial on a peninsula in Galveston Bay. It had some interesting words to say about how Texas was formed. Lately popular opinion seems to be that Texas stole land from Mexico. This memorial supports that idea. Texas was made by Tejanos — Mexicans who escaped the dictatorial government of Mexico to form a new country called Texas. To support their cause, they enlisted soldiers from the U.S. to help them win a place to call their own — Tejas. The soldiers were ordinary men who came from far away places like Illinois, Ohio, Vermont, Germany, Italy, and so on.


    Does Tejas belong to Mexico? Not if the Tejanos have anything to say about it.












    While trying to get a picture of the star at the top of the memorial, I noticed a 22-degree halo peeking out of the clouds.

  • Drive-In Movie


    When I lived in Arkansas, we went to a drive-in movie once. It was wretchedly humid (it was Arkansas), and as usual, I was the only one the mosquitoes went for. I couldn’t hear the movie because the speaker was on a cord that you had to hang outside your car, which meant that I either had to suffer through mosquito bite anaphylaxis, or close the damn window and not be able to hear the movie. Needless to say, we left before the end of the movie, which sucked anyway. (It was “The Money Pit”, a movie which I could only appreciate after I bought my first house.)


    Where we live, there is a drive-in – the only place in town that serves deep fried Twinkies, which alone is reason enough to go there. But also, they have drawn me back to the drive-in movie because they broadcast via radio frequencies, so that one doesn’t have to have a speaker pole, nor a speaker box on a cord in order to hear. Nope, at this drive-in, movie sound is limited by how good your car speakers are. And our brand new car has EXCELLENT speakers.


    Gone are the mosquitoes. Texas Plains weather is currently too hot and dry to support mosquito larvae, and for that I’m extremely thankful. Yeah, this drive-in has made me a drive-in believer.




    Superman trailer in the sunset