Wayward Landlubber

      I like history in all of its many permutations, even the stuff that makes republicans cry. Especially the stuff that makes republicans cry. History is rarely that upward line trending  towards justice. Every advance is followed by a struggle to return to what the villains of history grew up with, that mythical time when things will be great again. The optimist will say that we are still progressing, and sometimes we are. But we haven't changed all that much. The difference between ancient history and recent history is the implements used at the time. The people that wield those implements have not changed, demanding their right to possess implements of war but lacking the wisdom to use them. As Mark Twain once said, "history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes". Case in point, Mike Flynn.      Lt.Gen. Michael Thomas Flynn was an early adopter of using Artificial Intelligence in counter-intelligence operations. He seems to have been very good at ...

     It is considered by sailors to be bad luck to change a boat's name. Imagine how that superstition may affect a US Navy ship; a guided missile destroyer like the USNS Chancelorsville, ironically named for a battle where the Union army was defeated by Lee's Army of the South. But that is what just happened. The new name of the naval vessel is now the, Robert Smalls. It is named after a former slave who was conscripted to serve on a Confederate steamship during the Civil War. History tells us that he was a skilled navigator serving on a sidewheel steamboat named the CSS PLANTER. Being a navigator is a complex skill combining mathematics and astronomy, we do not know how Mr Smalls achieved that skill, but I will cover later in this missive a possible explanation. The South, even today, does not like to allow the wrong people to be educated, but the Confederate navy needed his skills enough to assign him to a steamship only recently put into service. It is said that the C...

     I'm a smart-ass. That is not the opposite of dumb-ass, and I may drift into dumb-ass territory occasionly, but i make no excuses. I'm not telling any of you something you didn't already know, but social media encourages some people to participate who have a narrow range of knowledge, and no understanding of humor.      Recently I responded to a post on Tribel that said in large font, "I'm a Liberal". Somebody responded, "I'm in the center". I bet you can say with confidence what my response was. You are so right. I told the respondent that the center of the road was where the flattened opposums lie. Ordinarily we would all have a little chuckle and go about our business. It's a joke, not necessarily a good joke. But this particular respondent fired back that I clearly knew nothing about country roads.       I grew up on country roads. I rode my bicycle on them as a child and as an adult. I parked with girl friends in hop fields duri...

     "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed." Ernest Hemingway      There's a thing about writing, you either get it or you don't. It must be nurtured and taught of course, but in the end you either grasp the ineffable quality of arranging words into a painting or you don't. Some of us get it late (it's never too late), and some of us never will. It might not surprise you that I see this in a partisan way, and you know which side doesn't get it. It's too bad, they used to, not too long ago.      What makes a good writer? That's a complicated question. The reader might say that a good writer is one who tells an engaging story, exposes inequities, allows us to see the humor in life, creates artful poetry. A writer would point out, in addition, the quality of thought, sentence structure, or other technical attributes. The critic would look for excellence in communicating the subject matter. Few but the wri...