Some things I liked about 2022

This is a blatant rip-off of the post John Scalzi did over at Whatever.

If you're gonna steal, steal from people who you know do good work.

Right?

Anyway, I've never done one of these "year-in-review" sorts of posts before. Mostly because I've been looking forward rather than back; work-life tends to make you do that. You're pushing to stay ahead of the bill-collectors and corporate reviews and colonoscopies (okay, well, maybe not colonoscopies; those, like the occasional sudden sneeze, just sort of catch you) and all the other trouble in the world.

But this last year was different.

For one thing, I finally stopped being a wage-slave and having to strain to look forward.

Being a geologist-for-hire was a huge part of who I am - who I was - for thirty years. I did science for a living and put in a lot of long, hard days outside doing it. Shit, if you go to this website my front-page bio even says that: "...analytical by training and doggedly hard-working by necessity..." That was me.

Now?

Well...I'm still who I was then. Still analytical, still liberal, still...well, actually more judgemental, but that may have to do with the appalling tidal wave of reactionary shitheels that you can't swing a cat without smacking or so it seems.

But I've already gone into that. This is supposed to be about things I LIKED in 2022.

So. 

Retirement. 

I've liked being retired. At least so far.

I liked the lab work, soils testing, the sort of bench-chemistry-index-testing science we learn in school.

I liked the analysis, the puzzle-solving, the looking at the ground and the soil and the landforms and trying to figure out what was going on.

But because the bulk of my work was dirt-nanny stuff? Nagging asshole contractors to do what they low-bid and are trying to slime out of? That's the daily bread of most of earthwork engineers, and sweet baby Jesus how it sucks. Sucks the fun right out of all the other stuff.

So. NOT having to do that? I like that. And it makes up some for no longer having the disasters and lab and analysis to do.

So retirement? I liked that.

The Portland Japanese Garden

As you can probably tell from the photo essays, I love the Garden; the peaceful order, the quietly tended "nature". The colors, the light, the shape and the weight of it.

Membership in the Garden lets me get in early, when the City around it is still and the pathways are empty. I get to stroll and think, watch and reflect, and I like that a lot.

And speaking of Japan...

Anime and Manga

For some reason this past year I've been sinking deeper into the world of Japanese graphic art, whether in written form as manga - 漫画 - or animeアニメ . 

The Girl shares my enjoyment of the animated form; over the last year together we've enjoyed the big-screen versions of a couple of Studio Ghibli classics - The Cat Returns and Howl's Moving Castle - along with perhaps the most visually gorgeous film I've ever seen, Belle.

The story? Oh, just the old "beauty and the beast" chestnut. Fun enough, and the story of Suzu, the "belle" of the title, her friends and family, is genuinely sweet and moving. But that's not the main reason to watch.

It's the graphics.

Amazing.

My taste in the dead-tree forms runs all over the place, from dystopian futurism like Ghost In The Shell to sweetly adorable yuri romances. I think I've mentioned my fondness for the goofy adventure/military/fantasy Gate: Where The JSDF Fought. 

Rory Mercury?

Yow.

My favorite from 2022, though?

Sweat and Soap.

It's a weird, weird, deeply weird premise; the female lead, Asako, has "hyperhidrosis" - meaning she sweats more than she thinks is "normal" - while the male lead, Koutarou, has an incredible sense of smell which he normally uses in his job as soap designer but which leads him to Asako...who smells delicious! At least to him.

I picked it up purely out of curiosity; the storyline seemed odd but the artist (Yamada Kintetsu) has a nice clean style and I'm a sucker for that.

But that didn't catch me. 

What caught me was how it turns out to be a true, sweet, and moving love story.

True in the sense that these fictional people are deeply flawed, as are we all, and that they meet and become a couple in a very weird way...but one that finds goodness and joy even in their own and each others' flaws.

It's just gentle and kind and very, very romantic.

And speaking of romance...

First Night With The Duke

I follow a shockingly large number of comics at the "Webtoon" site, but this was far and away the most delightful; a goofy, funny, exciting, bizarre little story about an ordinary Korean girl who wakes up inside the romance novel she's reading but not (as is the usual form of these "isekai" (異世界) stories) as the heroine or the villainess.

She's just "Ripley", a minor character at the party scene where Zeronis - the titular Duke and a classic manga "dark and dangerous" hero - is supposed to meet the heroine and fall for her.

Instead Ripley gets plowed and ends up in bed with the Duke, who becomes obsessed with her instead of the woman he's supposed to fall for.

Oh, it's waaaayyyy more complex than that. There's fake deaths, and mad suitors and actual love and it was just big crazy fun. I'm sorry it's over, and I'm hoping that maybe the author will release an English language version, because I'd love to re-read it; it was my Top Romance Story of 2022.

And speaking of even more romance...

Everything Everywhere All At Once

I've been a Michelle Yeoh fanboi ever since her Hong Kong action days. But she, and this wildly inventive film, were perhaps the best thing I've seen at the movies not just in 2022 but for many years.

She's, well, everything all at once; mom, wife, diva, artist, businesswoman, savior of the world...while all the time being the same struggling everyday person just trying to get through one more day that we all are.

It's action and adventure and comedy but y'know what?

It's really a love story.

Yeoh is a woman who is tired. She's tired of herself, her husband, her daughter, her dumpy little laundromat that is her whole life. She's tired of struggling through every day just to find another just like it. And she is terrified to find that there's worse; the actual no-shit end of the world - worlds! - that only she - tired and beat up and struggling - can save.

And she does. Because deep down, she loves herself, her husband, her daughter...she loves the whole world enough to fight to save them all.

It's an epic performance in a terrific flick. 

It won't win Best Picture and she won't win Best Actress. 

It's too weird, and she's not diva enough.

But they should.

The Portland Thorns

God but this was a fun season. Winning the title was pretty awesome; I liked that, duh. But getting to write and think about the team and the league and the game was a hell of a lot of fun, too.

And we might just be getting a new owner and a new front office, after a pretty rugged couple of years from the old regime, and I'm liking that.

Oh, and I love this photo; it's from the post-match celebration. The player in the circle is Olivia Moultrie, who's still in high school and 1) can't drink, and 2) is clearly embarrassed at the grownups. Yeah, Livvy, grups can be pretty cringe-y.

Mary Bennett

One of the most fun things I've read - as a no-pictures-just-words book - this year has been the three volumes of the "Secret Life of Miss Mary Bennett" series, beginning with the first Pride and Prejudice-based story of the middle Bennett sister finding work as a spy for the Regency government and continuing with the next two.

The fun part about these is that the author doesn't try to heroine-up her protagonist by making her more witty or clever or smart or attractive. Yes, she's the "heroine"...but she's also the same socially awkward, pedantic, prosy middle Bennett sister we meet in Jane Austin's novel.

Cowley makes that plausible; being drab, plodding, and detail-oriented might make you a crashing bore at an afternoon tea but a damn good undercover agent.

Mary is more than just that, though. Crowley shows us how her exposure to the bigger world outside of Longbourne helps Mary grow. She learns that she has actual skills, that she doesn't have to push herself forward to show them to others. Indeed, as a confidential agent she has to learn to conceal what she knows and does!

By the third book - where she has to "learn" to kiss to sweeten up a possible source or beguile an enemy agent - she's become genuinely thoughtful and even a bit wise. Does she still manage to find a way to work a moralizing quote into a romantic moment?

She's Mary Bennett! Of course she does!

But this Mary can have a romantic moment, and even enjoy it fully and intelligently.

There's supposed to be two more of these coming; I can't wait.

What else?

I still like this furry butthead. He's a good cat. Or, as my Bride describes him, he's "good at being a cat".

And I still love my family, my home, and my hometown.

So all in all, it was a pretty decent year. There were a lot of things I liked.

Tomorrow I want to talk about the next year, though.

Wait, wait..!

I can't go on without recommending...

 Lore Olympus

Rachel Smythe's post-modern take on the ancient Hades-Persephone tale.

It's funny, clever, sexy, all with the wonderful graphics that pulled me in the first time.

Plus it's an absolutely heartwarming love story.

(Can you tell I'm a sucker for a love story?)

Anyway...go, read it. It's tons of fun.

The Last of the Teens

When you stop and thing about it, the "Teens", whether you want to talk about the Nineteen-teens, or the Twenty-teens, were pretty goddamn shitty decades.

The period between 1910 and 1920 brought us the most pointlessly, brutally destructive war in human history. Sure, the second "world war" was worse in terms of pure human misery. But at least that fucking mess settled the hash of the fucking Nazis and Imperial Japan.

The Great War? What a goddamn disaster; millions of dead, maimed, homeless, impoverished, raped...and for what?

And the Twenty-teens? The Rise of the New Fascism? Terrific. I can't see that getting Disney+ makes up for losing the American Right to the freaking looney wingnuts. Sorry. Ain't gonna happen.

Surprisingly, only the Girl had a Happy New Year; she went over to her pal Lucy's house and rocked out with games and treats and fun. The five of them - two girls and three boys (color me a bit shocked - when I was in middle school my parents would no more have been okay with me having an overnight party with girls than they would have been okay with me putting on a dirndl and trolling the docks for sailors).

But the Girl's friend's parents took the whole thing in stride, and so did the kiddos; it was all good fun, and everyone went to bed alone (but not until the pre-dawn - the Girl has now slept most of the afternoon away making up for lost sleep last night...)

The kiddos understand to a point where they stand, and what is happening to the country around them. They hate it, but they are cynical as hell, and don't think there's much they can do about it. They don't understand how old cranky white people can hate their gay friends, or want to hurt poor people, or homeless people, or just plain helpless people...but that's being a kid. As an adult I've seen way too many ruthless, heartless bastards to think that any outfit that promises to hurt the people those bastards hate won't profit from that promise.

But regardless of who and how old we are, here we stand, on the precipice of a new decade.

It is up to us, We the People, to decide what kind of decade we're going to get. Who will rule; will we be the nation of Martin Luther King, or the nation of Stephen Fucking Miller?

I'm an old sergeant, so you know what I think We'll choose. As my old drill sergeant, SFC Harris, famously said; "GI's, eh? Those fuckers'll fuck up a wet dream."

But here we are, nonetheless.

And, for the record, here's the scene at the Fire Direction Center this afternoon; you can practically taste the excitement. The Girl is the large black lump hiding from the camera, by the way. She did eventually emerge to whine about her brother and complain about my dinner selection.

But that's parenting - as I've warned you; it's a contact sport.

But, hey...how about those Ducks!

The Last Night of the Year

The Boy is the only one of us to honor tradition this year. He's off with his pals playing "Dance Dance Revolution" and awaiting midnight as part of a New Year's sleepover.

The Girl is watching ponies with her little budgie under her hair, my Bride is reading the latest installment of the "Gentlemen Bastards" series.

I'm right here.

Tonight is supposed to be the night that we look back over the past year. And make promises for the coming one.

I don't make New Year's resolutions anymore; making pledges on my honor tends to end up with either breaking the pledge or the honor. And I have little enough honor left as it is. So that leaves looking back.

2013 wasn't an awful year for me (other than the slow painful deconstruction of my right hip, which would have happened regardless of what year it was).

I did some good.

Some good parenting, first. The Bride and I topped off our visits with Jean the Kid Counselor with the agreement that I would stop using my Drill Sergeant voice on The Boy. Jean said that although it worked - it stopped the Boy's behaviors that summoned the Drill Sergeant from the black depths of R'yleh - it had built up a pretty massive pile of anger and resentment in the Boy. So I stopped getting angry, at least on the outside where it showed, and since August the Boy has gotten much less angry and rough with his mother.

So, there's that.

The Girl? She's easy; just give her love and she turns to you like a flower seeks the sun. She loves her ponies and her soccer and her little budgie and her parents and her friend Lilah because Lilah likes what the Queen likes and it is important that you like what the Queen likes.

I've done some good marriage, too. My Bride and I have lived and loved in the way that good married couples live and love; sometime we've leaned on each other, sometimes we've pounded on each other, sometimes we've just leaned together against the winds of children and work and worry that never stop blowing.

Sometimes we fought, although usually fairly.

Sometimes were agreed to let each other go to hell each in our own way.

Mojo has done a terrific job working as a reading instructor at the kid's elementary school this year. She's also developed a sudden utter fascination with the news from North Korea (my Bride, the woman hitherto devoid of current events. Huh.)

Her sewing has grown apace. She is more accomplished, wiser, and more graceful than she was a year ago.

I've done some good work, more of the same I've been doing now for...21 years.

Damn, that's a long time.

Looking back I realize that there's a hell of a lot of awful crap littering the Portland area that I'm responsible for; fast food joints, quickie marts, cell towers, subdivisions. Think of any sort of horrible eyesore and I've been responsible for helping it get built.

But I've also worked for some good projects, too. Landslide fixes, road and embankment repairs, bridges...although if I never have to hike in two miles to another wilderness bridge project it'll be too soon.

Good citizen? Well, as always, the world outside my city and state seems to be going do hell in a handbasket, largely because of the toxic combination of a greedy elite that has learned nothing and forgotten nothing from the lessons taught the French aristocracy in 1789 and an intractably moronic Teabagging tribe of adult-sized four-year-olds on the political Right that is completely fooled by the former.

The pair of them are doing their level best to return my country to the Gilded Age, a time that was exceptionally awful for people like me. And for people like the Teabaggers, too, had they the wit to understand anything but their spastic grasp for guns and God. Which they do not, more's the pity.

So what has become a weary sort of year-end political ritual I look backward without fondness and ahead without hope. The chances for a renewed social contract that will benefit I and mine in any sort of reasonable way seem dimmer and dimmer. I do not look for a new New Deal in my lifetime.

As always, I stop at year's end to wonder what my purpose here at this blog is.

I can read the numbers, and the average supermarket flier probably gets a wider readership. I cannot pretend that I am doing any political good here, or any social good. It does seem that my essays on military history draw readers, but my own interests there are growing slender.

For those who take interest in this sort of thing, I have roughly eleven more "Battles" posts over the next two years.

Nothing at all for January and February. Glorieta Pass in March, nothing in April, two posts - the 1453 Fall of Constantinople and Crete 1941 - in May. Two more for June: Chalons in 451 and the Battle of the Philippine Sea. After that Bosworth Field in August along with a sort of extended rumination on the Stalingrad campaign. Marathon in September, The 1813 Battle of the Thames in October, and the Battle of Baquoba in November.

That's it.

Much of what I write here I write to amuse or entertain myself. But I could do that on a sheet of foolscap that I would put into a box, so clearly I must want someone else to read what I write. And though I am foolishly fond of some of what I write I won't pretend that I am better at it than many other writers out there in the Aether.

This past year I've found some of those writers to enjoy and refreshed my delight in some familiar companions.

Lisa Jakub is doing a fine job over at her joint; she's simple and fresh and intelligent, a good woman learning the strength and depth of her own goodness and finding her voice as a writer.

And Paul Bibeau is always reliably wonderful; acerbic as a splash of lemon in the eye, unsparing of fools and with a gift for the fine language that I wish I could summon as deftly as he can. An unfailing dispenser of delights.

And so to the end; I have no more tonight.

I wish I had something of exceptional matter, some crafty comment about the passing of the old year to end this post with.

I don't; my own life had no great joys or sorrows, no subject of great weight for me to jot down here. I and mine passed through the year with the small passing days, the pattering succession that marked our way from darkness to darkness, us holding up our lights as best we could.

But perhaps the simple steady passing of the days and the year is matter enough.

We choose this night to mark a boundary between the years, making the sunset one and the sunrise another.

But at the same time we know that tonight is not really different from every other night, that it is just one more pass in the the endless passing of the terminator, that boundary between day and night, that every night of every year passes over us as we move with the turning earth and wakes us with the light of a new day.

And a New Year.

The Last Night of the Year

Sadly, 2012 appears to be both the pinnacle and the nadir of the story of The Civil Wars.

I will miss their divine harmonies. Indeed I will.

As for 2012, well...

I suppose it could have been worse.

Mojo remains unemployed amidst the Great Recession that has so many others searching desperately for work and hope. My heart hurts for her. I hope that the coming year finds her working, and content.

My children continue to grow and thrive; may that never cease.

My soul continues to seek for a reason to hope, and my heart for a hope within reason. My body continues to falter beneath me. Every night I go to my rest aching and rise still restless and sore in the dark pre-dawn.

I understand that this is the cost I am paying for the adventures of my youth, and while I would not give back those times I cannot but rue the hard days ahead.

To my friends - and if you are reading this you are my friend - I wish the hopes of happiness and the blessings of peace and the love of those you love.

I wish you joy, and the strong pull of good muscles and hard bone as you enjoy the blessings of your mind and body in the coming year.

To my country...well, I have little hope and less expectation. May you surprise me with a glimpse of a probity and righteousness that I fear you have lost to the broad road to Hell that is wealth and sloth.

May we all wake tomorrow to a bright morning and a fair day. May you and yours be gentle, and greet the day with a kiss and a caress from the one you love. May your hopes be luminous, and the road rise to meet you. May you be blithe, and bonny, and good, and gay. May all your hopes for the coming year be fulfilled, all your fears be unrealized, and your uttermost dream be fulfilled.

May you in your sleep tonight take flight and that journey bring you safe and whole into the dawn tomorrow.



New Year's Day

The rain this morning falls
on the last of the snow

and will wash it away. I can smell
the grass again, and the torn leaves

being eased down into the mud.
The few loves I’ve been allowed

to keep are still sleeping
on the West Coast. Here in Virginia

I walk across the fields with only
a few young cows for company.

Big-boned and shy,
they are like girls I remember

from junior high, who never
spoke, who kept their heads

lowered and their arms crossed against
their new breasts. Those girls

are nearly forty now. Like me,
they must sometimes stand

at a window late at night, looking out
on a silent backyard, at one

rusting lawn chair and the sheer walls
of other people’s houses.

They must lie down some afternoons
and cry hard for whoever used

to make them happiest,
and wonder how their lives

have carried them
this far without ever once

explaining anything. I don’t know
why I’m walking out here

with my coat darkening
and my boots sinking in, coming up

with a mild sucking sound
I like to hear. I don’t care

where those girls are now.
Whatever they’ve made of it

they can have. Today I want
to resolve nothing.

I only want to walk
a little longer in the cold

blessing of the rain,
and lift my face to it.

~ Kim Addonizio

The Mirror Crack'd

This blogging is an odd thing.

It really doesn't matter much in the sum of things. Just a little trickle of more noise, really, lost amid the greater noise of our cacophonous Information Age where we are carpet-bombed with light and sound until we shout just to be heard yet find ourselves one of millions of shouters whose voices drown each other out.

I wish I could pretend to have some trick worth coming to read, some facility within that produced some wisdom without, some internal depth that would translate into words on the screen that you would clamor to come to ingest them, and ponder them, and that would in turn provoke you to some great insights within yourselves. I can't.

I don't have any real insight into politics, or human nature, or sex, or warfare, or knitting. I have the contents of my head, and I take them out and air them here, in hopes that they will touch something in you. I don't know why I feel compelled to do this. Vanity? Probably; I'm a trifle vain of my own erudition and skill with words. But I haven't the skills to make a living at it.

Well, there's David Brooks, then.

Hmmm.

Let's say, rather, that I haven't the skill that should allow me to make a living at it.

But this odd little forum allows me to natter away without consequence, and allows me to at least pretend that someone or someones come to read my nattering. Looking back at last year I seem to be losing something; I didn't manage to find enough to talk about to match my postings for the year before, and certainly not from the Big Year, 2008, where I found enough materials lying around inside my skull for almost a post a day.

I'm not sure why.

Perhaps it was the official "end" of the Third Gulf War and the plainly-visible-to-everyone-outside-Victor-David-Hanson outcome (like "a dragon by the side of the road", as Bill James once said) of the Umpteenth Afghan War. Maybe it was the final, painful realization that my country is going to slide back into a half-assed sort of Gilded Age without even the prospect of enough dismal jobs in meatpacking and ironmongery to keep the parents of the future match girls and breaker boys in laudanum and cigarettes.

Maybe it was just preoccupation with the usual sorts of things we use as excuses for our national lack of political, economic, and social concern; work and family.

I don't think I'm done here. And I certainly want to thank and appreciate all of you who take the time to stop by, to read, and, especially, to comment back, especially those familiar friends and comrades; Lisa, jim, basil, Ael, Don Francisco, Pluto, Dee, Podunk Paul, Big Daddy, labrys, mike, Leon, Kevin...you are always welcome here, and welcomed. I hope to continue our epistolary friendship in the year to come. So this blog will be here, and I will be here, and, I hope, you will, too.

And I will continue to blab out whatever's in my head; poetry, and war, and love, and Korean in-laws, and kids, and ire at fucking Newt Gingrich, that vile staff-banging plutocrat, and soccer, and politics, and Portland, and the Northwest.

Oh, and I have eight more beers to review!

So, I hope, that even if I have nothing much to say I can say it well.

Welcome, friends, to 2012. I hope it finds you all well, strong, douce, and happy. And may we all leave it better, saner, happier, stronger, and kinder people than we enter it!

"On either side the river lie
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And through the field the road run by
To many-tower'd Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Round an island there below,
The island of Shalott."

~ Fred Tennyson

Not in anger but in sorrow

What can you say?

As years go, 2011 had its usual share of blessings and curses.For me and mine, well, I'm a father, so perforce my year was consumed by my children, and in that respect it was more blessed than not.

My Big Guy turned eight and started third grade, while Little Miss made five and started public school altogether, going to kindergarten with Peep's K-teacher from three years ago. They seem to be growing and thriving.

The Boy is smart and funny, and he even impressed me on Christmas Morning when, confronted by a ridiculously juvenile present from one of his aunties, he simply smiled and nodded graciously instead of rejecting the gift with a snarl. He has taken on a half-portion of preteen snippiness and attitude but seems to have mixed some maturity in there as well.He still seems to me to be myself at eight; determined to go at life the hard way. That's not an easy road to walk, and as a father it pains me to watch him insist on taking it. But all I can do is show him where he's going and love him as he goes there. And hope he chooses happiness instead of troubles.

As the girl gets bigger she's taking an interest in her condition as Chinese and American. She talks of her parents in China, is enthused about everything Chinese, and takes pride in the marvel that she can be Chinese AND American which, as she has told us whenever possible, is way cooler than being plain old vanilla caucasian-American.She is sweet and loving, the very avatar of the peacemaking little sister. So far she has yet to run up against anything she can't overwhelm with kindness and I dread the day she does. Until then I try and keep her in hugs, kisses, and lap chang (臘腸)

And I'm a husband. My bride Mojo continues to be the marvel that is Herself; she has continued her running program, including competing in several 5K fun-runs and getting her distances up to as far as seven miles. She looks wonderful, and from my selfish vantage feels even better - there's something about strong muscles under smooth skin that seems designed to provide delight to the male senses.Her sewing has improved to the point where she is actually making clothes (from "upgrading" existing clothing with appliques and frills). And perhaps the most exciting surprise she has brought to our lives was to learn - just this past week - that her contract with Northwest Natural has been extended six months.

I don't know how I managed to be so gifted with such a woman, but, trust me, I never forget how lucky I have been. I lost a good woman by selfish ignorance and learned from that loss; I hope I will never forget that my beloved is worth more than rubies.

And me?

Well, sadly, all I take with me from this year is the newly-won knowledge that I should have treated my body with more respect. I didn't, and it is finally punishing me for my carelessness with cruelty.In all other respects I hope I have earned another year's wisdom and another year's kindness in return for another year's journey away from the strength and fury of youth. If there is any justice in the world vieillesse should gain in savait what jeunesse can no longer pouvait.

I have my work, which I enjoy and have learned to do well; I have my beloved and my children, who with me weave the strong cloth of "family" from the warp of love and the weft of obligation. Those of you who wear that fabric know whereof I speak; it's not always a comfortable garment, not always stylish or fashionable, but it's durable and a comfort in the cold and the storm. We don't always enjoy the weaving of it. But we often do, and the crafting is both an honor and a joy when it's done well.I have my Portland home and my Cascadian homeplace.

And I AM at home here. I have been a Portlander, an Oregonian, and a Northwesterner longer than I have been anyone anywhere else. Twenty-one years this winter.

I may not have been born here but in all other senses I am a native Oregonian with all the strengths and failings that entails.

In many ways I feel more strongly rooted here, in the dark and wet soil of the Northwest, than I do in the larger nation that calls me its own. I may have spent twenty years wearing the uniform of the United States, but in many ways the flag I fight for now is the green, white, and blue of Cascadia; if 2011 has brought me any revelations it is that while I'm resigned to watching my nation foolishly struggle to return to the Gilded Age at home and fritter away its substance in feckless adventures abroad I am unwilling to let that foolish fecklessness degrade the Pacific Northwest I love. Let the United States take its own road to hell, provided that the Republic of Cascadia prospers.Does that sound callous?

I think it does, and, yet, I cannot retract it. The end of 2011 finds me less enamored of my nation, and many of its people, than ever before. Don't mistake me; I understand that the United States has never been what has pretended to be, that the American people have never been as wise, as just, or as peaceful as we like to say we are. And I also believe that in both its promise and its practice the United States has been on the whole a good place to live and a force for human benifice both to its own and to many other peoples.

But this year, as it has for decades preceding it, my country seems to have grown a little meaner, a little poorer, a little more selfish and self-absorbed, a little less gentle abroad and a little more greedy at home. Sorry, America, you could have been a truly great nation. Shame you didn't really try to live up to your promises.

So.

Goodbye, 2011. You weren't much of a year; just another journey around the sun.Let's do better next time, eh?

Year's End

Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.

~ Richard Wilbur

Dead Time

There's something about watching a soil sample rebound from consolidation that encourages reflection.

Boredom, perhaps?

This week between Christmas and the New Year has always seemed like an odd sort of interval of no-time to me ever since my Army Days. Back in the Eighties, at any rate, this week was usually a period of massive "ghosting"; we'd fall in for a ridiculously abbreviated morning PT - often distinguished by pure fun-PT like basketball, dodgeball, or the usual exercises but led by the junior privates for the entertainment and mirth of all involved - and then go hang around the aid station for the morning, clean already-clean weapons, dick off doing small PM chores in the motor hole, or find reasons to go "inventory our TA-50" which always seemed to entail fiddling with the field gear in our racks with our boots off while watching He-Man cartoons.

After midday chow even this pretense of military activity ceased, and we would spend the rest of the afternoon just goofing off; hanging out in the chow hall, or at the gym, visit our married pals at their quarters, watch bowl games in the dayroom or just chill in the barracks with our friends.

I remember one particular mid-week afternoon that turned into a "Faces of Death" marathon from noon until well into the following morning.

Remember those videos?

In the pre-cable era I recall that the "Faces of Death" videos were considered shocking evidence of the decline of Western Civilization; amateur (or professional outtake) films of people getting waxed in various either horrible, or comical (or both) ways. Hangings, electrocutions, falls, plus all the usual gawdawful atrocities humans have always managed to figure out how to perpetrate on each other...packaged in a tidy ninety-minute VHS tape perfect for bored-GI entertainment. But the usual finger-waggers and professional morals nannies considered them the nadir of human morality and signs that Western civilization was headed for the depravity of Rome and Babylon.

How innocent were we..?

Anyway, this week was also the time when young troops would get involved in all sorts of insane horseplay; it was this time in 1986 when Private Black pioneered "drainsurfing" during an unexpectedly-intense dry season downpour and ended up in the swamps behind Venado Beach. Given Blackie's penchant for bizarre nonsense I'd have to say that this was fairly subdued for him; nothing was set afire, nobody but him ended up naked, and there were no arrests. This week was for "Jackass"-grade stunts before there was a "Jackass".

Today I'm a sedate middle-aged, middle-class father and husband and the notion of jumping in a raging drainage ditch with a foam sleeping pad wouldn't occur to me any more than running for mayor of Portland. But this week, this dead-week between the two holidays, still retains an odd sort of surreality for me.

It has always seemed to me that the old year really dies with the solstice and the Jesus-come-lately graft of religio-commercial holiday glitter we've pasted to it. The silly alcohol-fueled celebration of the New Year a week later marks the beginning of another year's journey around the sun.

But for now we wait, idly diverting ourselves with desultory work and the bright nonsense of our new toys, through the short, dark week as the earth spins through the no-time that spans the end of the old year and the beginning of the new.

And, perhaps, take some time to reflect on where we've been. And wonder where we're going.

The Last Night of the World

Well, no.But on the last night of 2010, can I pause for a moment, a caesura of thought as the busy world spins onward towards that arbitrary dawn we have chosen to mark the passage of another turn around the sun, and just sit with you here alongside the river of electrons that connect and divide us?

I hope that you and yours are safe from harm.

I hope that you are well, and that you are strong, and hale, and that those you love are sound enough to take you up in sturdy arms and lave you with love and laughter.I hope that you have a life that is full of challenge, and joy, and the prospects of a bright tomorrow.

I hope that you will lay down tonight in the fullness of happiness and warmth, and wake tomorrow in the peace of contentment and the anticipation of the day before you.

If you are far from home, I hope you will come safe back home.If you are grieving, I hope you will find nepenthe.

If you are troubled, or seeking, or lost, I hope that the coming year will provide a path for your feet, and the prospect of a better day.I hope you fare well into the coming year, my friends.

Year's End

"Now winter downs the dying of the year,
And night is all a settlement of snow;
From the soft street the rooms of houses show
A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,
Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin
And still allows some stirring down within.

I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake
The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell
And held in ice as dancers in a spell
Fluttered all winter long into a lake;
Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,
They seemed their own most perfect monument.

There was perfection in the death of ferns
Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone
A million years. Great mammoths overthrown
Composedly have made their long sojourns,
Like palaces of patience, in the gray
And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii

The little dog lay curled and did not rise
But slept the deeper as the ashes rose
And found the people incomplete, and froze
The random hands, the loose unready eyes
Of men expecting yet another sun
To do the shapely thing they had not done.

These sudden ends of time must give us pause.
We fray into the future, rarely wrought
Save in the tapestries of afterthought.
More time, more time. Barrages of applause
Come muffled from a buried radio.
The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow."

(Richard Wilbur)

新年好

Happy New Year! from Missy, Mojo, Peep and I, who remind you that 1) singing in Chinese is hard, even when you're not singing in Chinese, and 2) we can't share with you. Too bad for you.

Hello

We have a new year's eve tradition up here in North Portland.

Every December 31st most everyone - and certainly every yay-hoo, goober, ex-convict, mouthbreather and oxygen thief - hauls out the hogleg at 11:58 and starts blasting into the air (one fears) or the ground (one hopes). This brief fusillade or celebratory feu de joie is designed to shoot the old year dead, blast the new year into being or just make a pantsload of noise.

Either way, every year I rather idly expect that a spent round will come down through the ceiling - not in a particularly fearful sort of anticipation, but, rather, with the detached sort of expectation of an anthropologist watching the New Guinea highland tribesmen play hitsies with the sock full of fulminate of mercury - and every year it fails to happen.

I can't imagine all those projectiles going up and not coming down on someone. Perhaps they land across the river in Washington - they expect a certain level of barbarity in Clark County, so there it's probably not news.

We refer to this annual one-sided firefight as "Kasey Kasem's Pack of Savage Druze Militiamen On The Roof of the Beirut Holiday Inn Rockin' Mad Minute New Year's Eve".

Not sure whether it was the usual suspects' lack of enthusiasm for 2009/2010, my own weariness, or the heavy rain, but I slept right through it this year.

Excess fluid pressure and the desperate need to brush my teeth woke me about 1am, and after the necessaries were finished I stood for a moment looking out into the rain-slick night admiring the reflections of the one-a.m.-Christmas-lights in the minor lakes impounded by the curb.

So here we are. Done with a year where we lost Marilyn Chambers, Whacko Jacko, Les Paul, Tommy Henrich and Cory Aquino, any chance at re-regulating the malefactors of great Wall Street wealth as well as much of our real estate value, several hundred U.S. troopers in south-central Asia, the inheritance tax ("Dad, Mom, do you mind stepping over here a minute? Yeah, right under that "!0,000 pound weight" thing hanging there. This'll just take a minute. Thanks"), a Timbers' league championship (curse you, Vancouver) and the testicles of a Nigerian martyr wanna-be.

And let's not forget "The Pink Panther 2"

I feel like this year was pretty much a wash. Mojo and are are pretty much the same people we were but a year older. The littles changed a lot, of course, but they're designed that way. We got on well, pretty much, learned a little, grew a little, lost a little, too. Another year in the lives. We're all here, though, which is good and which we often forget is never a sure thing.

This blog seems to keep going, often of its own volition, it seems. 242 posts - down from the Big Year of 2008, where I posted nearly once a day, but respectable. A total of 883 posts since August of 2006, which seems like a lot until you think about the "big bloggers", people like Atrios and group blogs like Steve Gilliard's old site which have thousands of posts. Hell, the group blog we started up in June is already over 100 posts. which shows you what happens when you encourage talkative people to talk to each other. A tip of the tile to all my muckers; keep writing, guys, it's been a good year for blogging over there.

And not a bad one here. I've enjoyed our discussions, as well as your observations on the occasionally random stuff that comes out of my head. I have a bright, loving bride who is a wonderful mom and two kids who are almost always loving and usually entertaining. Always surprising, anyway.

As for me, I just hope that 2010 is better than 2009. Not that I have a tremendous amount of hope - that'd be unsergeantly of me - and we've had enough of all this "hope" and "change" stuff this year, neh? Not a fever of hope, a cascade of hope.

But a little.

Meanwhile, here's Mojo and the kids dancing in the New Year.

Tennoheika Banzai!

And Happy New Year, 1937!

From all the folks here at Imperial Japan!

Loved this series of New Year's Cards reprinted at the ever-informative Pink Tentacle, who also tells us about the flight of the Kamikaze, the first Japanese-made aircraft to make the trip from the Land of the Rising Sun to Europe. Something about the precociously delightful urchins with their Hinomaru (日の丸), toy battleships and planes, the artless depthlessness of the artwork, the weird combination of ukiyo-e coloring and draftsmanship with the artifacts of the aggressive Japanese military of the late Thirties...

...it's perfect!

Yes, they're now an aging nation of pacifists perched on the Pacific Rim mollifying their senescence with tentacle porn and bad pop music.

But sixty-two years ago they were flying, all right, and pretty soon they were gonna use all this technology to tank up the Kates and fly over to visit the big boys with the big toys, so sorry, regrettable incident, wake up call from Tokyo, Yankee!

We got yer New Year right here!