First, I thank all the people who have left such wonderful comments on my blog! Thank you, and thanks for the warm messages as well. It great!! I realized i have friends in every time zone across the continental United States, a microcosm of the 302 million of us the census estimates there are...
I previously had written here about the Ken Burns series, the War, and was wondering, am I alone in being a little disappointed in this program? I think the New York Times said something in the review that ends:
“The War” gives generous voice to a wide variety of remarkable people, but they are all American voices. Mr. Burns delivers almost everything viewers care to know about wartime America; it’s also telling that this is the only tale he wants to tell.
That's valid, but what did you expect, Ken Burns presents The War: A Perspective on France?
NO,that is not what I find less satisfying about it...I think to me its important for people in this country to understand about the sacrifice civilians and military made to ensure the Axis did not dominate the world. I mean I remember in school learning how the Axis had decided they would split America , and anyway you slice it, had they won, i would be living in Imperial Japanese Empire Colony of America. I remember my grandparents telling me about listening to the radio, for news. How grandfather moved the family to California, so he could apply his master carpenter skills to whatever task assigned at the Mare Island Shipyard. Grandma would be teaching me to make something in the kitchen, and telling me about the anti aircraft gun emplacement in back of the house they had in Vallejo.
I guess maybe I have been conditioned to endless retelling of history, particularly about WW II. I don't know the answer. All i know is I am not going to invest 15 hours watching it, 6 was enough.
And Now for something completely different....
When I was a kid we had a two bedroom 1 bath house, where my brother and i shared a bedroom; he had a bed on one wall, and I the other. When my youngest brother was born, my parents decided that he and my other brother could share the room, and i would have my own room. My own room!
Dad did some carpentry, probably assisted by grandfather, and he walled in "the den", a space off the living room that I guess was a precursory to the modern family room. It housed my dads desk, a bookcase and and a giaganticgun cabinet. Another bed was purchased, I think it was a surplus from the army navy store. I had my own room!
Going to bed in our house was when the grown ups said to, and many a time after school had started we were sent to bed after dinner, so it would still be light. I think sleeping in this room, and reading all the certificates my dad had on the wall warped my brain. His Marine Corps Commission, pictures of marines, heck there is one of these pictures in my hallway right now, of him and his men and a horse called Sgt Reckless.
I like war movies( if they are based even loosely on fact); I love westerns and face it, these are not "normal girl things". Or so i was led to believe. Fast forward, and after a taking a lot of history in college, i became fascinated with technology. From the early Greek and roman inventions, to today. I used to sign up for the tours offerred by the local air force base, an air depot, partly because it was extremely interesting, and partly because it was a great way to meet a lot of lonely air force guys...thats another story..oh, the thought of those dances, and how polite they were, and how they always would ask me the same thing...no not sex, but "do you have any weed?" I never met a bunch of more hearty party animals than these guys. By day, repairing and testing damaged aircraft, by night drinking, smokin, and howling at the moon..
Out of all this I gravitated to reading history, or historical fiction, and once the internet came along, i began to look up stuff online, especially when reading a Tom Clanceynovel..."He raised the aantenaeof the AN-PRC 75 radio..." the WHAT? Anyway, I think you get the picture...I like technology, and most of our technology in one way or another seems to have a link to the military...even the Iinternet which was not invented by Al Gore, but did get its genesis from DDARPA And now a bbreifhistory lesson:
"Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DDARPA/strong>) is the central research and development organization for the Department of Defense.
The Internet as we know it today traces it origins back to a Defense Department project in 1969. The subject of the project was wartime digital communications. At that time the telephone system was about the only theater-scale communications system in use. A major problem had been identified in its design - its dependence on switching stations that could be targeted during an attack. Would it be possible to design a network that could quickly reroute digital traffic around failed nodes? A possible solution had been identified in theory. That was to build a "web" of ddatagramnetwork, called an "ccatenet, and use dynamic routing protocols to constantly adjust the flow of traffic through the ccatenet
DDARPAInternet, largely the plaything of academic and military researchers, spent more than a decade in relative obscurity. Several Internet research teams proceeded through a gradual evolution of protocols. In 1975, DDARPAdeclared the project a success and handed its management over to the Defense Communications Agency. "
Did ya know that?
So I was watching TV, and saw this program, and the guy that invented the M-16 (which is modified and now called the M-4 in use in the armed forces - is a 50 year old design!) says our troops should have a more modern weapon, and the guy says the current AK designs from Russia are superior in function! Why don't our ttrops have more modern reliable weapons...because a modernized rifle, which sells to the military on a bulk contract basis is worth a lot less than say a modernized fighterplanee, and so they spend money on that. But like the guy said, Fighter planes don't hold territory, boots on the ground do.
Honey explained what that means to me once. They were watching a couple of jets bomb the heck out of a position, and then the command came to move in. As they did, his commander pointed at the planes flying back over them, and said " By the time we actually get into the town and occupy it, thosebastaa$$s will be back in Thailand, sipping a cool one." Boots(troops) do the hand to hand stuff, not airplanes.
In case you can't tell, honey was a "grunt" - gawd what a term! GRUNT - "Term of affection used to denote that filthy, sweaty, dirt-encrusted, footsore, camouflage-painted, tired, sleepy beautiful little son of a bitch who has kept the wolf away from the door for over two hundred years." -H.G. Duncan
Good evening!
No comments:
Post a Comment