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Larry the Cable Guy redelivers me to the world of “Cracker Soul”

It’s one fine day. No work. I got up. I ate. I went to Jason’s Deli. I had the Club Lite. I don’t like the new bread. It’s kind of rough around the ages. I shopped at Kroger. I said: “Hello. How are you?” to the meat lady. And did the same to the lady who seems to keep the right-wall area with the bread and organics in great working order. This young guy comes up to me on the aisle with the skin lotions. He works there. He said: “Smell this. It’s vanilla. I bet I could get all the women with that.” It was surreal. You had to be there. I came back to the crib. I went for a walk. I have been thinking about writing a book forever. I have got a rough theme. It would be, like Kris says, “partly fact and partly fiction.” It would be, in all likelihood, controversial. I’ll give you a hint. Flying bird dogs. Does that make you crave for it? No? Well, that’s why I’ve got to think more about this thing. The walk was nice. I came back and sat down to this Internet on this one fine day.

I surfed into Cracker’s Web site. It was on purpose. This was because I watched late last night the History Channel show “Only in America with Larry the Cable Guy.” Larry is a guilty pleasure. I shouldn’t like him. But he has just that right amount of crassness combined with weirdness. You might even learn something.

Larry was at a Florida ranch where he extracted bull semen. He helped drive cattle across a marsh and into a barge and onto an island ranch. All of this was in Florida. The ranch foreman or owner said the origin of the term “cracker” came from Georgia folks who migrated to Florida. They came with their whips to help herd cows. The whips made the cracking sound. Hence came “cracker.” It’s sometime used as a derogatory word black people use for whites. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that, Gump. I’m not sure if my description of the rancher’s explanation was exactly as he said it, but it’s close enough. Because this was not the Cracker site to which I clicked.

I started listening to Cracker in the 90s. I continue to believe they were one of that decade’s best rock bands. Cracker, which has a dual life with the band Camper Van Beethoven, combines rock, some California country and whatever else it is they do. I haven’t listened to nor have I heard any Cracker songs from beyond the turn of the century. “Turn of the century” makes them sound old, doesn’t it? The band remains. That is it. It’s not bad that they just remain. It’s a good remain. In fact, it’s fantastic.

Cracker continues to produce, perhaps, what would result from Led Zeppelin meets the Eagles. I don’t know if that is accurate, but I mean it as a compliment. I guess they are too explicit for radio, although a couple of their hits are played on Classic Rock stations.

A number of great videos, some dating back to the 90s, can be found on the Cracker site. Perhaps the most interesting is “Yalla, Yalla.” Cracker driving force David Lowery explains the name comes from Arabic, kind of an expression like the Spanish “vamanos”  when used as a command. It is a speed-demon rocker of a song that, according to Lowery, doesn’t take any sides in the Iraq War. Lowery later explains that he was against the Iraq War because the war in Afghanistan was what deserved our nation’s attention. As I felt and feel, the U.S. needed to get out of Iraq leaving it in a stable state. This piece is not for arguing. Enough of arguing, already. I must also warn that “Yalla, Yalla” has some very suggestive scenes of military personnel whose videos came from You Tube. Please read Lowery’s explanation before watching.

 

There are more than two kick-ass videos on the Cracker site. Here is number two. It’s a dynamite Cracker-style country-like tune called Friends with Patterson Hood. Dysfunctional friendships such as is described are probably more common than anyone will imagine. Some of my friendships have been dysfunctional, I make no admission nor charge as who’s to blame. By the way, Patterson Hood is guitarist and vocalist for the Southern Rock band Drive-by Truckers, I had to look that up. You’re welcome. Oh. Okay the song is ‘Friends’ and it’s played with Patterson Hood. He’s the guy with the beard and glasses. I’m so confused.

If you enjoy these two songs. More rest upon the Cracker video site. Happy Friday. Oh, and “One Fine Day” is a bluesy, somewhat spiritual tune. I’ve had one fine day today. But it hasn’t exactly been like “One Fine Day.” So remember, spring forward this weekend.

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Coming near you: The Big “S” for Sequestration

There are a number of reasons to fear “Sequestration,” the automatic delete switch that flips on U.S. government finances come March 1. Sequestration sounds kind of like “castration.” Perhaps it will not be as painful as castration, but if it happens it surely will bring on some real hurt of its own.

The majority of the public doesn’t seem to give a rat’s ass whether these painful cuts hit the federal government itself or its workforce. Among the possibilities are 22 days of furloughs set over a particular period for federal employees. That won’t happen immediately and it will not happen consecutively. Still, being deprived of almost three-quarters of a month’s salary is not a pleasant prospect, particularly for those whose general schedule (GS) are toward the end of the scales and especially for those in that situation who work part-time. Let’s just say “I know a little ’bout it,” as I always like to bring up some song lyrics from the good ol’ days such as that one from Lynyrd Skynyrd. Happy memories from a rockin’ tune sometimes makes the hurt go away for 3 minutes or so.

I don’t ask anyone to feel my potential pain but here are a few points to ponder if we get s**t-slapped by the “Big S:”

Watch as it hurts fiscal oversight. What oversight you say that is, boys?

¡Buenos dias, la migra! What’s a few million more illegal immigrants?

Cuts to training for 80% of American Army ground forces. Over hill, over dale, we will just sit on our tail …

And not just the Army. The wolf is at the door of the U.S. Armed Forces, says deputy SECDEF

Oh this is just folks with a vested interest crying wolf, you say. Well, read on …

It’s happening, says GOP senator Coburn!

Yes, I agree with Coburn. At least with his saying: “It’s a stupid way to govern … ”

Screw the poor, again, right? Right. And whomever else happens to be in the Republicans’ way.

 

 

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“That lady ain’t no lady, sir. She’s my rifle squad leader!”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta left a nice little parting gift, depending on where you stand on the rights of military women. Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey will lift the ban on women serving in combat. A fully “gender-integrated force by 2016” will potentially be completed in the U.S.armed forces, according to the independent Defense Department newspaper “Stars and Stripes” in their online edition today.

The Associated Press reported that Panetta’s action expanded an initiative last year in which nearly 15,000, practically all of them Army, combat positions were opened to women. An additional 230,000 positions in Army and Marine infantry units may open under the Defense Secretary’s proposal.

Including women in front-line combat has long been a hot-button issue steeped in lawsuits and rhetoric worthy of antebellum debates. Many supporters of women’s rights have looked to the history of the inclusion of female soldiers in the Israel Defense Force (IDF) — the state military — as a model. And while Israel is the only nation in the world to compel both men and women to military service, the record of women combatants has had a mixed record there over the years.

A landmark 1995 Israeli Supreme Court decision allowed women to qualify for combat pilot positions but it as well paved the path for women to serve in all IDF combat slots. The “Military Service Law” was amended, adding:

“The right of women to serve in any role in the IDF is equal to the right of men.

Women comprise a third of all IDF soldiers. They serve in significant numbers in all units and make for an astounding 70 percent of service in the Caracal combat battalion. It is the only co-ed combat unit in the IDF. Meet this tough little cookie from the Caracal.

Having women in combat units will pose challenges just as it has in Israel, and how it likewise challenged old, salty chiefs and young sailors alike when the gender integration began on U.S. ships almost 35 years ago. In the really old days, it was considered bad luck to have women on ships. Today, women have met and tackled the last frontier, submarines.

There will be problems in combat: let’s get the big “P” (pregnancy) out of the way first; feminine hygiene; red light-green light issues; touching; sensitivity. You don’t have to start reading all those magazines like Gunny Sgt. Highway in “Heartbreak Ridge.” But if you have somehow learned some common sense, or can learn it, you are already halfway there.

Just a personal word now. The world’s not coming to the end. I have seen women do jobs of more than one man and do it in an outstanding manner. A woman may turn and run in the heat of battle. Men might do the same. We are different in temperament and in physiology but we fight the same enemy and do so for the same person, our foxhole buddy. This may be one of the best steps taken in the history of the U.S. I may be wrong. But I don’t think so.

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I second that a’ motion

My mind is out in space this afternoon, figuratively speaking of course. Where would I be if my mind was literally out in space and the rest of me was sitting in this chair while poking a keyboard ? That raises the question: How long would it take a thought to travel from the edge of space to near sea level?

I am pretty sure someone could answer that question or at least give it a shot. It seems like there are as many answers out there, perhaps even more, than there are questions. Here’s a question for you. How fast does the Earth move around the Sun? I had to find — on the Internet — an astrophysicist to answer this one.

“Earth’s average distance to the Sun is 150,000,000 km (93 million miles), therefore the distance it travels as it circles the Sun in one year is that radius x 2 x pi, or 942,000,000 million kilometers in a year of 24 hours/day x 365 1/4 = 8,766 hours so you divide to get 107,000 km/h or about 67,000 mph. You could also say the Earth moves around the Sun at 30 km/s. The Sun circles the center of our Galaxy at about 250 km/s. Our Galaxy is moving relative to the ‘average velocity of the universe at 600 km/second’ “– From “Ask the Astrophysicist, 1997.”

It certainly doesn’t feel as if we are traveling that fast. I bet if we felt that velocity, then even us Texans would talk fast.

Perhaps it is that I might make a couple of airline trips later this year that I ponder the many illusions one confronts when traveling in a physics-laden universe. I think in specific, why it seems one isn’t really going anywhere, or at least, isn’t going anywhere fast, while traveling at hundreds of miles per hour.

Oh, I’m not talking about takeoff or landing or making airborne turns or experiencing turbulence. I speak of the motionless feeling of flight itself. You can close your eyes and practically feel as if you are sitting in your favorite uncomfortable chair at home. Then, if it is daytime and not cloudy outside your little air cabin porthole, you peer downward some seven miles to terra firma and can tell the plane is moving somewhat. That is even though it doesn’t feel as if you are traveling 500 mph.

While you are looking at the ground to see what’s there or if you are trying to locate something you recognize, all of a sudden you see another airline in the distance and it is literally flying by. It’s flying by, as in “zoom,” it’s out of here!

It’s all just an illusion, you remind yourself. Such trickery doesn’t find limits in flight either.

I remember when my brother brought a motor boat home from Connecticut that he won playing poker with some Navy shipmates. We set “sail” out on Lake Sam Rayburn in East Texas, and when my brother cranked the outboard to full speed, it felt like we were “flying,” as in we felt like we were hauling ass! Yes, I know. It’s an odd idiom. But you know what I mean. We were maybe going 25 mph, but it seemed even faster out there on the lake.

Years later when I was in the Navy I joined my ship, a mid-1940s version destroyer, which was in a San Pedro, Calif., drydock having a new hull installed. It was only a month or so after I reported on board that the work was completed and we took the ship to water for the first time in several months for a “shakedown cruise”

It seemed to take forever to transit from the shipyards, under the Vincent Thomas Bridge and out past the breakwaters. Once on a bit more open water the captain ordered “All Ahead, Full” and the 30-year-old warship let its engines rip. I was standing out on the fantail watching the screws churn thousands of gallons of seawater effortlessly. I can recall the smile that came across my face as it did some of my new friends who were goofing off, getting sun and tasting the salty air spraying us all. I don’t know how fast we were going. I guess technically a warship’s speed is classified, but the Fletcher class destroyer as we were on was designed for almost 45 mph. Were we going that fast that day? Who cared, as long as little springs of water didn’t start popping out of the hull.

One of those other strange sensations on water, but even in the air or on the ground is how one feels after concluding a journey. In a car after a long ride, you might go to bed that night feeling like you are still riding. Or perhaps you feel “bouncy” after a long flight.

The sensation I found even more bizarre was docking in port after encountering heavy weather. I learned pretty fast how to walk down a passageway during big waves, thus gaining my “sea legs.” It came to be second nature, so it wasn’t a total surprise when I walked with sea legs off the brow and on down the pier for a ways.

Your body, nature, the land, sea, physics all seem to converge at times to play a little joke upon the unsuspecting. I adapted like a duck in water when I rode the Pacific on a 390-foot, 2,400-ton tin can. It took a bit longer not to tighten-up when the bumps began while flying the friendly skies. But it took only one ride that day at the carnival when my Daddy and I made the idiot decision to ride the gravity-defying Tilt O’ Whirl.

Life’s a trip, isn’t it?

 

 

 

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Are today’s veterans being “dissed” on campus?

An article on the online version of Stars and Stripes brought back some memories recently. The staff-written story on the “independent” Department of Defense-run newspaper told of veterans incurring anti-military attitudes on college campuses. Such a piece sparks an interest in me because I have long followed veterans issues and the fact that I am a veteran who is a college graduate in part due to the GI Bill.

First though, a little about the quotation marks surrounding the word “independent.” Stars and Stripes first published in 1861 when a Union regiment found an abandoned newspaper office in Missouri and gave today’s paper its name.

Stripes became well-known during the first and second world wars among soldiers overseas, featuring journalists who are now considered among the greatest talents of the 20th century. Among them, the great sports writer Grantland Rice and noted drama critic Alexander Woollcott from the WWI era. The World War II staff included Andy Rooney and cartoonist Bill Mauldin of “Willie and Joe” fame.

For all the restrictions on journalists through wars during the last 90 years Stars and Stripes has published, I have to say it is a very good newspaper. The civilian writers certainly have unique office politics as well.

A reporter I knew who covered military issues for a metro-sized Texas paper went to work for Stripes. She called it the “world’s largest PR firm,” or words to that effect. Nonetheless, she could for the most part experience and write about what any other battlefield journalist could. Combat news coverage has never been perfect even though the best practitioners of journalism have given it hell over time.

Okay, perhaps a little more than you might want to know about Stars and Stripes, but I am just trying to give the story a little context. This isn’t The New York Times, but Stripes also isn’t MSNBC or Fox News. The writer in the linked story gives only limited anecdotal evidence that today’s veterans are being “dissed” on campus and that professors are overtly antagonistic toward ex-military. That isn’t to say that such feelings do not get displayed on college campuses today, especially given the divided religious and political viewpoints in our society which are egged on by talking-heads in media.

Given, 1980 — when I matriculated — on an East Texas college campus with a large portion of its student body hailing from Houston and Dallas suburbs is different from 2013 at a school such as UC-Berkeley. But one factor we had in common is age. We were young then. These vets, who may have experiences that have made the grow up way too fast, nevertheless are for the most part also young men and women.

Now I believed what many told me about former military folks who attended college. That was, they were more serious about studies and generally more responsible. That is true. I worked full time as a firefighter during most of that time as well. As I have said before, the monthly GI Bill payment was mostly gravy. But looking back, I mistook a quasi-cosmopolitan attitude from my service and world travels for wisdom. And though I started school at 25, I quickly felt at ease with the majority of those 18-to-21-year-olds who made up most of the student body.

I remembering engaging with certain professors with whom I disagreed. I found for the most part that they dug it. I actually ended up more liberal when I left the military than when I enlisted. Thus, the “left-leaning” professors, which absolutely were in a minority where I went to college, were all right by me. I also enjoyed being engaged and made to think as well as learning so very much that I didn’t know, not that it has always stuck!

Members of the military are treated better nowadays by the public than anytime I can remember. Though the extent of hostility toward military personnel during the Vietnam War has been questioned, those in uniform during that entire Vietnam Era could easily encounter prejudice. Such hostility wasn’t just from long-haired “peaceniks” either. I once talked to several Vietnam vets who avoided service organizations such as the VFW or American Legion toward the end of the war because the majority World War II membership saw that day’s serviceman as a “loser.”

Former Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey Jr., said in the Stars and Stripes article that veterans attending college should be open to others and walk away from scholars whose minds you will not change. I certainly agree with the first part of that. But I think the vets need to engage those they do not agree with as well, whether professor or student. It contributes to a richer learning atmosphere which is just as much a major portion of college as books and lectures. All of this also doesn’t have to happen in a classroom. Who knows how many theories I discussed around a keg or in the bar.

I can’t help but have kind of mixed feelings on the case made by the news article. Yes, there are a great number of people against the war in Afghanistan and our adventure into Iraq. But the outward show of support military people get today makes it difficult to believe, minus greater evidence, that campus animosity toward veterans is as rampant as the story suggests.