Frustrated

I not only can't upload pictures to blogger, now I can't upload links. The thing is becoming more dysfunctional by the day.

If I were able to post something, which I am not, I would comment on the attire of generals. It struck me, on observing the general who gave a press statement on the latest shooting at Fort Hood was wearing combat fatigues. Now I am pretty sure that the military has dress uniforms for military officers. Some of them even include swords! What is the use of military officers if they don't get dressed up? Check out the photos of General McArthur wading ashore at the Phillipines. Did he look special or what? And when he accepted the surrender of Japan on a naval vessel, with the emperor wearing top hat and tails, did McArthur let the side down by wearing something more suitable for cleaning out the garage?

Yes, even General Petraeus wore fatigues when testifying before Congress. If that is not an occasion demanding formal wear, what is? Yet the general looked like he was wearing his jammies, albeit with a chest full of medals.

If I ever testify before Congress, which is highly unlikely, I will dress up in a fetching business suit or becoming dress, not in my paint-stained blue jeans. But that's just me.

Sorry I could not deliver the free book. It was difficult to get it up at the Kindle Store, but it is up now. Called "Nothing Much," it sells for $1.99. My daughter handled it all or it would not be up at all. Wow! I am recommending it to all my friends. Maybe. Now I have to complete my income tax.

Free book! Apply now!

To all my readers, a group for whom I do not have to rent a large hall: I will send you a preview copy of my new Kindle book, tentativeely called "Nothing Much," All you have to do is turn in a favorable review to Amazon. No, forget it, just comments and suggestions would be enough.

What about all those library books?

I should stay away from libraries. They are all right when staffed by people who report to me, when I run up a total of 50 overdue books everyone takes it as a good joke. And the children's librarian has a longer list than me. But the local libraries insist I play by their rules.

About that latest library book I lost: Damn it, I didn't even finish reading it!I have looked everywhere at least twice, and am beginning to entertain the idea that I dug a hole in the garden and buried it, Except, wait!--the ground has been too hard to dig in as well as covered with snow.

I keep trying to reduce my inventory of books, which are not only filling shelves but exploding in piles in every room. No one can believe the number of books I donate to the AAUW, the Good Will, and other charities. But they keep multiplying.

Hocking a chinek

The Democrats like to choose some meaningless phrase and run with it; right now it's racism of those who disapprove of Obama's actions. I remember when it was "No war for oil." Well, we had the war--where's the oil?

These mantras are meaningless; they are never expanded upon or explicated. This is what bubbe called "hocking a chinek," which I discovered after arduous research, means, beating on a teakettle--preferably an empty one, I suppose, or tea would get all over everything.

still reading deTocqoeville

I just got to the part where he foresees the weakness and eventual disappearance of the federal government. We all know how that one came out. I think I can stop reading him now.

Curses on Amazon Marketplace

I left my coat in California. It's in its third season, so I looked for a new one. I thought they would be dirt cheap, since the Winter is almost over. I got the dirt part right.

Being someone who doesn't know enough to come in out of the rain, I ignored the fact that this coat did not come from Amazon itself--thereby not being shipped free-- but from one of its associates. So they charged me $15 for delivery of a fifteen dollar coat. It was awful and did not fit.

I e-mailed them for permission to return the wretched thing, and they sent me directions, which included me paying postage(!)

So I bundled it up and took it to the post office, where I paid $12.72 to ship if back. So I paid 27.72 for a coat I don't even own. It's worth it though, I didn't want to have the thing in my face all the time, demonstrating to me what a fool I had been.

Anybody got a meaningful epigraph?

While you are puzzling your head re a title for my book. how about coming up with a classy epigaph--preferably from The Wasteland? Or something in Latin, like Justicia fiat or Dolce et decorum pro patria mori. Neither of these works, somehow.

Downton Abbey for Dummies

I am the only person I know who does not care for Downton Abbey. All my friends watch it faithfully. I liked the clothes in the early segments, but drifted away when World War one entered the picture. People fantasize about living in the early years of the twentieth century, thinking they would be members of the Upper Crust, bossing around a house full of servants and living a life of leisure and ease. Myself, I am pretty sure that if I had lived during those times I would have been below stairs, probably a tweeny who had to get up while it was still dark and light the fires and bring shaving water up six flights of stairs to the gentry. I do love the clothes, though. They look very elegant on the cast. The very few photographs I have of my ancestors in this garb are not flattering, though, possibly because you had to hold still for twenty minutes to have your picture taken. Oh yes, and they wore corsets.

Now reading de Tocqueville

It rankles me to see people, starting with Bill Clinton, quoting de Tocqueville, to wit:  "America is great, because America is good."  This saccharine statement would never come from a Frenchman, especially one as discerning and intelligent as Count Charles Alexis Henri Maurice Clerel de Tocqueville.  It sounds more like something a pitchman selling a baldness cure would say on paid television programming.

So I have taken it upon myself to read his masterwork, "Democracy in America," in full.  I have in my hand the Complete and Unabridged Volumes I and II.  Unfortunately I neglected to read it in college, not even the Cliff Notes which were undoubtedly consulted by Bill Clinton, because I was so busy thinking about boys and fixing my hair in the latest styles. By the way, this work is far harder and less fun than "Michelangelo and the Pope's ceiling." Just so you know.

I dug in to the first few chapters and found myself reviewing the material I learned in the compulsory civics class  I took in eighth grade in Columbus, Ohio.   Talk about deja vu!  To be fair, French children don't have to take the course, so de Tocqueville clued them in.  Now any French person interested in American municipal government can learn all about it in the original French.

I don't think Americans are any better than anyone else, or greater. We have a better system of government, and that is what deTocqueville is trying to explain, but it takes two volumes to do it.

By the way, someone got snarky with me because I mis-spelled exhilerating. Or, er, ex--oh, the hell with it! It never looks right no matter how you spell it, so I am going to leave it alone in the future.

More about Michelangelo and the Pope

Julie Z asked me how Ross King knew that Michelangelo used a scaffold.  I scoured the book and came up with an answer:  M wrote a poem about it, illustrated with a sketch of him painting the ceiling, reaching his arms above his head and bending backwards like Ginger Rogers dancing with Fred Astaire--okay, not leaning that much, but definitely leaning, and complaining about it.  As he seemed to complain about everything, especially his rotten family, a bunch of do-nothing brothers who just lounged around his father's house, enlarging their carbon footprints.

Now I am reading about Robert E Lee, a biography by Charles Bracelen Flood.  It's almost a hagiography.  Apparently Lee had some quality that led other men to like him, look up to him, and follow him, even unto death.  He was offered the command of Union forces, but turned it down, unwilling to fight against his native state, Virginia.

Apparently he had something that did not outlast his life.  Call it charisma.  I remember how people worshipped Roosevelt when I was a tot.  Nowadays he is receding into history, but Churchill said that meeting him was exhilarating, like your first taste of champagne. 

Update:  Apparently leaning back to paint had little or no ill effect on Michelangelo, who died at 89.

George Washington Bridge scandal--or is it?

The brouhaha about theGeorge Washington Bridge scandal raises some questions about the intelligence and efficacy of the plotters.  The lane closings were meant to wreak vengeance on the mayor and citizens of Fort Lee, but did that happen?  Most of the frustrated drivers who were inconvenienced at the bridge were simply traveling through Fort Lee.  Fort Lee was not their destination; they simply had to go through it  to get from Point A to Point B.

Most people who use the GWB come from elsewhere, not necessarily even elsewhere in New Jersey.  People commute from as far away as Upstate New York and Pennsylvania.  They take the bridge (or one of the tunnels) because Manhattan is  an island; they work on the island, but live elsewhere.  So in what way did these lane closings single out the residents of Fort Lee?  This was just a bunch of dumb politicians playing games with the public welfare because they could.  I can't imagine Christie having anything to do with it.   He seems to me an intelligent man and an effective politician.

It's terribly frustrating to commute via the bridge at all.  I once lived in Westchester County but worked in New Jersey.  It took me an hour and a half to get  20 miles to work.   By the time I arrived at my destination I was a gibbering idiot.  It took me an hour to calm down.  On evenings when there was a baseball game at Yankee Stadium, it took two and a half hours.  In fact, I sometimes headed up to the Tappan Zee Bridge just to avoid the inevitable traffic jams on the GWB.

What to do when it snows

My default position on occasions like this: Open a book; read the whole thing; put it down; open another. Rinse and repeat. If I followed my natural inclination I would sit and read all day. But that is a good way to get nuts. After a while I start to think I am a fictional character, and look behind me to see if I have cast a shadow.

So I exercise, take a walk, watch a movie, cook something, eat something, clean something, call someone, do laundry. Or blog, perhaps about something I am reading. I am now reading about Michelangelo and how he came to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It is called "Michelangelo and the Pope's ceiling," by Ross King. I bought the book at the Good Will store, a place where you never know what books you will find.

He was first hired to design a tomb for the Pope, Julius II. Julius was not one of those namby pamby popes such as we have today, always going on about charity, greed, yada, yada, and other things he knows little or nothing about. Julius was a patron of the arts with a bad temper. A really bad temper, so bad that he used to beat up the people around him, like a schoolboy. He beat up his servants when they displeased him, and sometimes beat up anyone he felt like beating up. He also hired soldiers to beat up other nations. The Venetian Ambassador to the Vatican, on his deathbed, said that one of the reasons he didn't mind dying was that when dead he would not have to cope with Julius, patron of the arts as he might be.

Anyway, I hate to disappoint anyone who has visions of Michelangelo lying on his back while painting the aforementioned ceiling. He had a scaffold built and he and his subordinates stood on a platform to paint. It was tough enough as it was. The ceiling had to be painted while it was wet.

Breaking news from 1935

I found the following valentine to Obamacare above the fold in the Delaware newspaper:

Health woes just part of history

Popular federal programs were target for early criticism, too

Although multiple problems have snarled the rollout of President Barack Obama's signature health care law, it's hardly the first time a new, sprawling government program has been beset by early technical glitches, political hostility and gloom-and-doom denouncements. President Franklin D. Roosevelt faced heavy skepticism with his launch of Social Security in 1935-37. Turbulence also rocked subsequent key presidential initiatives, including Lyndon Johnson's rollout of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, Richard Nixon's Supplemental Security Income program in 1974 and George W. Bush's Medicare prescription drugs program in 2006. Yet these programs today are enormously popular with recipients. ... After FDR kicked off Social Security in 1937, Washington's pre-computer age bureaucrats faced enormous hurdles enrolling people for the old-age benefits. Many had the same or similar names. Not all employers kept detailed records on employees and how much they were paid, further complicating the process.

The online version of the News Journal has scrubbed the story, undoubtedly feeling embarrassed, and they ought to be. If readers don't know what happened in 1935, this is not the place to learn it today. I found it on Newsbusters. It was written by some clapped-out AP hack called Tom Raum. And appeared above the fold! Words fail me.Even this failing, unreadable rag has exceeded my expectations.

Still more about Hannibal

Did you know Hannibal practiced diversity? No kidding. His troops included Carthaginians (Semites), Numidians (black, I think), Gauls, and various Italians he picked up during the course of his long rampage, and God knows what else. This multicultural gang enjoyed pillaging, raping and enslaving their enemies in perfect harmony, without a cross word. And they killed them in large numbers. Of course, their enemies would have done it to them if they could. So that makes it all right.

Anyway, that's the way business was conducted in the ancient world.

I just finished reading about the Battle of Cannae. What a bloodbath! And to think the Romans came back after that. But Hannibal certainly gave them something to think about.

My apologies to those of my readers to whom this is all old stuff.

More about Hannibal

By chance I acquired an atlas of the ancient world. I was particularly interested in tracing Hannibal's route to Rome. I didn't even know exactly where Carthage was. What a brilliant feat of logistics! I know, everyone else knew all about this and I am just catching up. But what a military genius he was! It was not all about the elephants, of whom there were 37. It was about finding enemies and allies along the route. And crossing rivers with the aforementioned elephants. And don't forget the Alps. And deceiving the enemy about his route. Don't tell me how it turns out; I haven't finished reading the book yet. I know he spent 17 years away from home.

I'm only reading this in short bits, because I am concurrently reading a book about the Pope and Leonardo da Vinci and the Sistine Chapel.

My dad's painting

 

Euphemism

Words are used in such a namby pamby way nowadays! I was looking up a nursing home today which provides memory care. They don't care for your memories, or restore them. They take care of those who have lost their wits and cannot care for themselves. What they do is laudable and worth doing, so why hide behind a euphemism?

Why are personnel departments human resources? Is working in a personnel office something to be ashamed of?

What about school resource officers, known in the real world as cops?

My father's paintings--and mine

My father took up painting in his latter years, and he was pretty good, too. He liked to paint urban scenes. But when he died in 1911, only a few of his paintings went to family members. For one reason, most of them were very large. So dozens were left, and his wife had no room for them in her new apartment. So she proposed to put them in her daughter's attic. It is amazing how many people think paintings, furniture, and musical instruments don't need special care, such as climate control. Someone donated a piano to our library, which gussied up the place no end, but was almost unplayable because the sounding board was warped. But I digress.

I took a few of dad's paintings, gave one or two to my kids, and hung two in my house, where looking at them gives me great pleasure. But the disposition of the rest made me think about my own paintings.

Not all my paintings are great successes, although I work hard on them. Some are boring or banal. Those I either put aside for further work or discard. Some I paint over. One or two I have managed to sell, or give to friends.But the vast majority, the ones that came out well, are mostly hanging on my walls. And my walls are full. Adding a room is not an option--I already have 8.

I often see paintings by unknowns, like me, in my favorite retail outlet, the Good Will. Some of them are very good and are worthy of more that the $20-50 that they fetch, mainly for the frames.

So, except for a treasured few, I would like to sell or give away my paintings.

Hannibal

I buy lots of books at the Good Will, my favorite hangout. In fact, I buy better books at the Good Will than I often get at the local public library, and I don't have to return them, either. Sometimes I find something really good, or something which I like to read, which is not necessarily the same thing at all.

Here are a couple of books I found recently at the Good Will: War of the Worlds, by H G Wells, which looks interesting at the very least, and a biography of Hannibal. I thought it might be interesting to know something about Hannibal, in case he comes up in conversation some time, which is very likely, don't you think? I don't know anything about Hannibal, but then I don't know anything about the people I read about in People Magazine, except those named Kardashian.

I would be ashamed to pass myself off as an educated person without knowing anything about Hannibal, who I understand came over the Alps with elephants to attack the Romans. Or maybe not. All my knowledge of Ancient Rome comes from novels by Stephen Saylor, Robert Harris, or John Maddox Roberts, except for a furtive look into Everyday Life in Ancient Rome while at the reference desk, and somehow I failed to obtain the facts about Hannibal from these sources.

So onward and upward with Hannibal, in case there is a quiz.