A Father's Love

 It's well known that the holiday season is a depressing time for persons who feel a sense of loss, as I do.  Two decades ago my three children were torn away from me extra-judicially by their mother in a classic case of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), which is a form of child abuse in many people's opinion, including mine.  She had plenty of help from the "professionals" of the sort who hang around domestic-law courtrooms, not good enough to get honest work themselves but more than happy to pick up court-appointed work where they can practice their evil ways like "uncovering" repressed memories and slating their anti-male biases as they help in overbearing the wills of tender young children.

In my case, my three boys have birthdays that come hard and fast following the Christmas/New Year week, one in January and two in February.  Happy Birthday sometime this month, middle child Johnny, I feel I hardly know ye since the last time I heard from you was when you wrote to me in 2006 asking me to provide full payment for your four years of college tuition and fees, which I did.  Hey, you're welcome, not that you ever thereupon said thanks or so much as invited me to your graduation.

I'll be at the Lost Dog Cafe at noon on your happy day for lunch, just as I was on New Year's Day, come join me!  With you and yours, if you want, or you alone, we'll start out finishing the rest of our lives one day at a time going forward.  Shed the ugly image of you now being a full-grown hateful man that cuts out an entire side of his bloodline, all the Lambertons beyond your two brothers who harbor the same hatred and spitefulness inside of them, for no reason that's particular to you or them, or at all.

It might continue to be a fool's errand for me to be there, since no one has ever shown in all these years, but a father's love for his children is never extinguished.  Those other two boys, now men, know I'll be there next month for lunch on their birthdays too.  See you there!  ;-)

The Past Year IV: Books

 In 2021 I read 18 books, the most I'd read since before I retired five years ago.  I'll list the dozen books below that had the most impact on me.

Fifteen books were histories of some sort, focusing on WW2 and the American Revolutionary War mostly but I also read a book on the Black Plague of the fourteenth century, the French and Indian War and the Civil War. One book was a play--I try to read a play a year--one book was a biography of an artist with lots of pictures of his drawings, and one book was literature, not fiction but literature as I try to limit any made-up story I read to be a classic as long as I only read one tale per year.

1.  As I lay Dying by William Faulkner, #1930.  I love Faulkner.  Everybody should read Faulkner. Such scathing disapprobation of the racial inequities in the South, but also such love for its uniqueness. And its strong women, what wonderful depictions of them! There's subtle humor that's occasionally laugh-out-loud in them, like when the poor white trash family in this book can't afford to take an adult family member to the doctor after he breaks his leg, they try to fix it themselves by making him a cast out of concrete. But first they have to persuade the store owner to break open a 25-pound bag to sell them 10 cents worth of cement, which the proprietor finally does to get this smelly out-of-town riff-raff out of his store. Having a cement cast does not do the injured family member any good, it turns out. I suppose it was worth a try, in a canny sort of way.

2.  The Conquering Tide: War In The Pacific Islands 1942-44 by Ian W. Toll, #2015.  My Dad fought in the Pacific War with the First Marine Division at two horrific battles and was training to be in on the invasion of the Japanese mainland in 1946, with its projected one million American casualties, before we dropped the bomb which finally caused beaten Japan to surrender already.  Sorry, but not sorry at all about that.

3.  Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific 1944-45 by Ian W. Toll, #2020.  The Americans ruthlessly and relentlessly brought the ruthless and implacable Japanese to the peace table just before the Russians' cynical, opportunistic and cheap land grab garnered a prized Japanese island for themselves and communism.  The ensuing Cold War would never have been the same.  The section on the peaceful occupation of Japan itself made the book fascinating and worthwhile.

4.  The British Are Coming! The War For America 1775-77 by Rick Atkinson, #2019.  Volume One of the Revolution Trilogy by the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the Liberation Trilogy (WW2, ETO), which I read last year.  I can't wait for volumes two and three to come out.

5.  Stars In Their Courses, The Gettysburg Campaign June-July 1863 by Shelby Foote #1994, 1963.  This is a "book" lifted straight out of Foote's magisterial Civil War Trilogy and deposited whole as a history of the Gettysburg campaign, with all of its star-fated actors, Lee who lost the war on the afternoon of Pickett's Charge, Meade who steadfastly defended his high ground that couldn't be taken but just as steadfastly refused to come out of his redoubt and attack a defeated foe and therefore consigned the nation to another two years of bloodletting, Reynolds who died after setting the Union line in its winning position, Ewell who hid behind the words "if practicable" in Lee's order of the first day to attack the reeling enemy and knock him off of his dominant position and therefore failed to unhinge the Union line while it was still possible and assured the loss for the Confederacy of the key battle in North American history.  I tread the massive trilogy back in the nineties and still remember it as a great read, even if written from a Southern POV.  Every American adult should know something, or more, about the Battle of Gettysburg, it is where slavery was doomed to die in North America.       

6.  The Pacific Crucible: War at sea in the Pacific 1941-42 by Ian W. Toll #2012.  The desperate first two years of WW2 in the Pacific, at least until the Battle of Midway changed the course of WW2 in five minutes on June 22, 1942 when American dive-bombers from the US carriers Enterprise and Yorktown  arrived simultaneously over the attacking Japanese fleet by happenstance from different directions and battle groups and sank three of the four Japanese carrier in the enemy's taskforce in the most momentous five minutes of WW2.  Japan never seriously regained the initiative again during the war, just as Nazi Germany never seriously regained the initiative again after the Battle of Stalingrad was fought to a standstill in 1942, before the Russians annihilated the Sixth German Army in January 1943.

7.  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams #1954.  This play won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1955.  Who could forget the machinations swirling around Big Daddy's fortune or the tension between his favorite son the alcoholic and sexually ambivalent Brick and his wife Maggie.

8.  The First Wave: D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory in WW2 by Alex Kershaw #2019.  Extraordinary heroism at work on the five invasion beaches and beyond by men who were the tip of the spear that pierced the Third Reich and destroyed fascism in the world, at least until it reared its ugly head here on home ground during the last enabling, potentially fatal presidency.

9.  Das Reich by Max Hastings #2013.  The bloody tale of the blood-soaked trail left across France by this elite SS Panzer Division as it made its way from garrison duty watching the coast in Southern France to the battle in Normandy after D-Day.  Traveling mostly at night to avoid Allied planes in the daylight, it took 10 days to arrive at the battlefield as it stopped to exact terrible retribution upon innocent civilians every time it was attacked in any fashion by the French Resistance enroute--spending German fury over losing the war on the hapless French population.

10.  1776 by David McCullough #2005.  The book dragged on a bit as it covered a bewildering cast of colonial characters while it described the important events of the fashioning of our nation like Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill and finally Washington extracting the British from Boston by maneuver rather than battle.

11.  Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the US Navy by Ian W. Toll #2006.  An interesting account of the nascent growth of the US Navy from gunboats guarding the rivers and coastline of thenited State to a few warships (six) able to challenge British warships in the proper one-on-one situation and to project American power overseas, especially against the Barbary Pirates.

12.  "A Few Acres Snow" The Saga of the French and Indian War by Robert Leckie #1996.  A French minister consoled the French king who was lamenting losing Quebec and the upper Mississippi Valley to the British during this war by describing the loss as a few worthless acres in a winter wasteland when France still controlled rich sugar-cane islands in the Caribbean.  How did that work out for the French?

The other six books were hardly worth mentioning but I did glean a few factoids and interesting tidbits from each of them, I suppose.

The Past Year III. Autumn.

 In the fall, I went with a friend to Great Falls National Park, to Skyline National Park, and to horse and wine country in Virginia, and we saw some pretty vistas.  The Potomac rapids below Great Falls are sightworthy.

The views from Skyline Drive, either eastward or westward, are worthwhile.  Looking eastward.

Western Virginia provides pretty vignettes.  Even on a grey day.

Halloween has become a big unofficial holiday around here and we took several walks around town to look at the spooky decorations.  I also drove to my sister's house in Ohio for Thanksgiving.

The Past Year II. It sucked or maybe life just sucks.

It was a terrible year.  It's bound to be a worse year.  We were all stupid as December wound down in the dreadful year of 2020 thinking that 2021 would of course be better, we elected a competent president, the vaccinations were rolling out and come January 20th things would start proceeding normally as in the past, solving seeming insoluble problems as Americans do, like you know, landing on an enemy-held fortified continent on D-Day and saving the world for democracy, landing a man on the moon, stuff like that.  But then January 6th happened that threatened and still threatens to end democracy in the world, and the cuckoo-heads won't get vaccinated so we can't get out of this covid soup.  On a personal note I picked up pickle ball in August and maybe I'm playing above my level but I continue to lose 9 out of 10 games despite my continuing improvement, and it is terribly frustrating to go along with not having any children, not knowing my grandchildren, losing a third of my 401K and owing another third of what's left on April 15th to the government in taxes due to a disastrous conversion and, well last year sucked even during attempts at recreation and this year will suck just as bad or worse I'm convinced (I went 0-6 today) and maybe life just sucks.  (Wanna win?  Play against me.)

I tried my hand at political cartooning.  Whaddaya think?  This is the twice-impeached, disgraced, unfit former president plotting a coup with the squirrelly Pillow Guy.  (You can be my Albert Speer in my dictatorship, Mike.)

Was everything last year terrible? I liked my trip to Colorado in August to check on my rental house in Louisville.  And then it came within a hairsbreadth of burning down on December 30th as half the town succumbed to a raging, wind-driven wildfire, and it undoubtedly suffered smoke damage and possibly scorching, I just don't know yet.  The holocaust leveled the row of houses a mere two blocks away.  (At my sister's house in Denver I discovered on her mantle this cross-stitch piece which I had stitched 40 years ago and given to my aunt in Colorado.  My sister acquired it upon my aunt's death a few years back.)

I did take a two-hour hike in Rocky Mountain National Park.  That was a short bit of relaxation and beauty in the vast Saragossa Sea that was 2021.  (A high mountain meadow in RMNP.  The friend I was hiking with pointed out that a wildfire in the mountains came down from up high a few years back and came roaring across this meadow and caused the evacuation of his town, Estes Park, although the fire didn't reach the town that time.  Since he is president of the board at the town's sewer plant, he could not leave, as he had to stay and try to save that public utility in the advent the wildfire consumed the town.)

The Past Year I

 2021 was sucky and I'm not sorry to see it gone in the least.  In fact, it was horrible, from the Maggot Mob's murderous and seditionist riot at the Capitol in its first week to the acquittal in its penultimate month of the teen misfit thug Kyle Rittenhouse, who as a 17-year old in 2020 illegally possessed and transported across state lines a weapon of war, an AR-15 assault rifle, to a protest march far from his home and used it to gun down three protestors, killing two of them and maiming a third, thus the blubbering pork-faced killer became a l'il darling of the right.  (Crocodile tears.)

I made three trips of any note in 2021, all of them notable but only one of which was worthwhile, a business trip to Colorado.  I drove to North Carolina in June so I could visit a friend, swim off a beach and attend a black spiritual church with said friend.  (Jimmy and I attended a service at Pierce Chapel at the A.M.E. Zion Church in Oriental.)

The service at that church was an enlightening experience as I had never attended such a spiritually inspiring service before.  I also did some sailing and swam in a couple of pools so it was a refreshing trip although I was happy to get home after a few days.  (Driving home from NC I stopped in at the USMC Museum at Quantico where I saw displayed the weapon my father carried during his two campaigns in the Pacific, the single-shot M1 Carbine with its 15-round magazine.)

I flew to Colorado to inspect my sole retirement investment vehicle I had set in place to provide a modest stream of income, a rental house in . . . get this . . . Louisville, Colorado.  Yes, the town that half-burned down on the penultimate day of last year, as in, the day before yesterday.  (Thursday's wildfires which burned a third of the town to the ground came within two blocks of my house.)

I saw some people while I was there, my sister in Denver and my niece and her husband there and their daughter, plus two college friends, and I conferred with my property manager and had lunch with my realtor in . . . Louisville.  For relaxation during this business trip I fit in a hike in Rocky Mountain National Park and also around the Independence gold mine in Victor, and I enjoyed a brief stop in a casino up on Cripple Creek.  (My sister in Denver was nice enough to let me stay at her house on my business trip.)

For Thanksgiving I made a whirlwind trip to Columbus, Ohio, driving there on Thanksgiving day to enjoy a festive repast with my sister there and her family.  Then I helped her with some moving of things and sorting for a couple of days and drove home on Sunday.  (On the day after Thanksgiving, my sister and I enjoyed a delicious lunch at the original City BBQ restaurant in Columbus, my favorite barbecue joint anywhere.)

That pretty much sums up this past year when we didn't get out of the pandemic thanks to the selfish, unpatriotic 40 percent who eschewed vaccination.  Aside from the three aforementioned trips, I made it into the District three times on a perambulation around the Tidal Basin in the spring to see the Cherry Blossoms and two Christmas Lights traipses in December, and I went for a drive in the fall on Skyline Drive with a friend.  (Skyline Drive.)

And by the end of the year I had lost a third of my 401K in the stock market and incurred a tax liability of well over a hundred grand in a disastrous and ill-considered conversion, which unbeknownst to me at the time could not be re-characterized thanks to the GOP's tax giveaway in 2017 to corporations and the 0.01 per cent when they changed the conversion rules so that the middle class could pay for their largess to their donors.  Hello 2022, what do you have in store for us that will equal or be worse than the last dreadful year?  (Amerika.)

Old Christmas Lights

 As I said in yesterday's post, the Trump International Hotel is actively excluding the public this month from its lobby, even though it is a public space since the property, the Old Post Office Pavillon, belongs to the federal government and is leased to the failed businessman.  Here is the Christmas Tree inside the space from 2019.

I was very disappointed that I couldn't get into the Library of Congress this year to see its tree, despite presenting myself for admittance on two different days.  Once the library was closed to the public per its current posted hours (closed Monday and Tuesday) and the second time, a Wednesday, I was told that reservations were required on that day to be admitted, a dictate I was told, on the spot, that came down "that morning," particular to that day for undisclosed reasons.  Here is the tree from 2019.

The Peace Officers Tree is a live tree outside the DC Courthouse that is short, a transplant of recent years, from around 2017 I believe, when the live tree formerly there was suddenly gone.  Here is a picture of it from perhaps 2015 when it was tall and robust, before it vanished, to be resurrected later in the form of a newly planted tree.

The National Tree used to be a more spectacular display than its current version.  Here is the tree from around 2012.

The Christmas Lights

(The Union Station tree.)  Every year I venture to the District to perambulate about to see the beautiful Christmas Trees there. I used to sometimes do it at night, running, sometimes leading a group of runners from the Ellipse ( the National Christmas Tree) to Capitol Hill (the Congressional Tree) and many of the points in between. Indoors, outdoors, most are beautiful. Those years when I was injured I used a Capital Bikeshare bike to get about to see whatever trees I could find, as I did this year in two trips to the District earlier this month.  (My tree.)

The Great Pandemic made it hard these last two years, many of the indoor venues were closed up tight, especially last year, and many outdoor sites were scaled back.  But I continued the tradition and here are some of the pictures from this year.  (The Peace Officers Tree.  Each ornament represents a local fallen police officer over the years.)

The most beautiful tree was the tree inside the Willard Hotel.  I really wanted to see the Library of Congress tree, which I saw in 2019 and considered then to be the most beautiful tree I had ever seen in the District, but it was closed on the Monday when I went this year and I was denied entry on the Wednesday when I went when it was supposed to be open.  I was told on that day it was "Reservations Only" although there was absolutely no line and they hadn't made that qualification apparent on the Monday when I had talked to them about when I could come back.  Too bad!  (The inside Willard Hotel tree.)

A great tree every year is on the outdoor plaza at the Canadian Embassy where it overlooks Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol.  It's across the street from the FTC, where I worked for a quarter century.  (O Canada!)

The Congressional Tree on the lawn on the west side of the Capitol is always a great tree.  The Capitol backdropping it had a fresh coat of whitewash around its lower level, due to the murderous Maggot Mob that desecrated the People's House earlier this year as they tried to usurp our government as they pushed the Big Lie to invalidate a majority of the presidential votes cast last year.  (A wreath-like holiday decoration on the facing of the Smithsonian Textile Museum.)

There was a creche on the Ellipse, along with the National Tree and a small tree for each state or territory, and not much else. No Menorah or Santa's Shop or electric train running around the National Tree.  It used to be so much better.  (Meh.)

There were indoor trees at Union Station (no Norwegian mountain village this year), the Navy Memorial, the Hotel Monaco, the Smithsonian Castle and nice holly decorations around the enclosed central courtyard of the National Portrait Gallery.  New this year was a wreath-like decoration fronting one of the Smithsonian museums.  (The Smithsonian Castle Tree.)

There were stacks of coal heaped outside the Trump International Hotel where a sign warned away anyone entering who wasn't a guest or a gust of a guest.  This hotel inside the Postal Pavillon is leased from the federal government and is in effect public property and in years past has had a pretty tree, just as it probably has this year.  (The Congressional Tree.)

Meanwhile, I can't wait for this year to end.  The Boulder County wildfire spawned by 100 MPH winds even as I write this is burning up the very area where my rental investment property is.  I'll have to wait and see how that comes out.  One last kick in the ass by 2021 as it goes out?  (The interior courtyard space at the National Portrait Gallery.)

How Bad Was 2021?

 Well, it ain't over yet. But it's been bad, terrible in fact. And we came into the year with so much expectation that it would of course be better than 2020, it just had to be. But it was an unfulfilled expectations, majorly so.

First came the murderous right-wing riot at the Capitol on January 6th. The maggot mob want us to live under their thumbs and so they engaged in sedition, majorly so. They already turned the USSC into a radical far-right body with three stolen seats that doesn't even purport to represent the vast majority of Americans. How did seven Catholics get on the high court, with the holy see's perverted viewpoints on a woman's right to choose what's best for her own health and future (and her equal place in our society) and the separation of church and state. 

Trumpers claim, it's my body so I don't have to wear a mask (and I'm free to infect the rest of you with covid or delta or omicron) or get a vaccination so the rest of us can  get out of this covid miasma we're stuck in with the virus having free rein amongst the unvaccinated to bring variants and breakthrough cases to the 60% of us patriotic Americans who have rolled up our sleeves for ourselves and our loved ones but also for the common good. Then how can they exclude women from exercising control of their bodies in their choices for themselves. Effin illogical hypocrites.

This year has been the worst I have experienced since my disastrous multi-year quarter-million dollar divorce early this century which cost me extrajudicially my three children through the real phenomenon of Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) perpetrated, in my opinion by their mother and her unscrupulous coterie of "professionals, whois I believe a covert narcissist. Look up covert narcissism, it'll make your blood curdle. Only that half-decade was worse than this year has been. And next year and the year after that, and 2024 might be progressively worse yet. I fear for America and think it might break up into several nations as a result of the tyranny of the minority (the less populated, less productive and crazily evangelical  hinterland) that the likes of Mitch McConnell and his ilk have forced upon the majority for decades now through quirks in the constitution such as the electoral college and each state having two senators so California's teeming millions can be negated in the Senate by Wyoming's few hundred thousands.

Nobody Came

 Well, nobody came to the Lost Dog during the noon hour on Veteran's Day that I recognized so I enjoyed my libation and Dog Collars in solitude. Strange men those three sons of mine, or rather, they're bizarre human beings now that they are fully mature, at least physically. I deny any input in the formation of their adult characters, who blindly shut out family members in unthinking allegiance to an overpowering figure, in this case their mother who is, in my opinion, a covert narcissist. Maybe they're all Trumpites, in mindless idolatry to that destructive egomaniacal person as well.

But life goes on. We lost a friend of mine last week, and an inspiration, Father Michael Hinson, an associate priest at my church who helped me immeasurably in my grief at the loss of my children. He was a man of God, who effortlessly spread wisdom, consideration and succor, and I send my condolences to his grief-stricken family for the sudden and premature passing of this wise, thoughtful and compassionate man. At the April 11th service dealing with Doubting Thomas he gave the sermon and I jotted down in my diary "proof of God." This prompts me to remember Michael pointing out that proof of God is evident all around us, from that beautiful April Morn gracing our outdoor service to the ineffable joys that occur in our lives. 

This week I got my booster shot, a Pfizer dose, as it had been over seven months since I received my second Moderna vaccination. Being a patriotic American who cares about my fellow beings, I am keeping myself protected against the Covid scourge in order to ameliorate my potential impact upon our health care system should I get infected and additionally I am protecting all those around me because I am unlikely to fall victim now to the infection. Plus I wear a mask when I am around strangers, especially indoors.

Any American not vaccinated by now without a valid reason is a dangerous ignoramus who should be wearing a bearskin for clothes and live in a cave warmed by fire, with a chipped stone spearpoint bound onto a roughhewn branch with dried animal gut strips holding it in place as his or her most cherished possession, granted full protection by the Second Amendment. (Father Hinson, in the white robe, conducting an outdoor service in March at the Falls Church.)

November 11th

 Tomorrow is Veteran's Day, a midweek holiday this year to honor all veterans everywhere. A time for somber reflection to consider all the heroic sacrifices of our troops, soldiers in the Revolution who seized all those airport tarmacs, the Union troops in the Civil War who fought far from home to Make America Great by giving a version of freedom to all Americans, those who went Over There in a chimeric bid to End All Wars, the resolute warriors of our Greatest Generation who beat back fascism abroad, the stalwarts who stopped Communist aggression in Korea, and the brave men and women who fought in the waste of war in Vietnam and are fighting in the error of the War on Terror.

Grandad went, aboard a destroyer in the North Sea in World War I.

So did Uncle Harry, commanding a marine gun battery aboard the USS Vincennes in the Pacific against the Japanese.  Also Uncle Bill humping the hills in the Philippines and Uncle Bob high above the Mediterranean flying a B-26 Widowmaker.

And Dad, storming the beaches of and surviving six months of close-in combat on the hellish infernos of Peleliu and Okinawa.

And Jack who manned the line against terror in 1983.  Brave, resolute men all.

Hey JJ&D.  It being a holiday tomorrow, I'll be at the Lost Dog at noon; come along with your crew and I'll share my pizza with you and start filling you all in on the strong, wonderful family that you don't know Jacks*it about.

Uncle Harry

 Veteran's Day, excuse me, Armistice Day is this week. You know, the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month the fighting ceased finally in the most destructive war in human history in 1918, the War To End All Wars. It was mostly a European affair, truly the twilight of the European hegemony, and its insidious, destructive peace, the Treaty of Versailles with its impossible reparations for Germany and its War Guilt Clause (again for Germany--after all, they lost) spawned the thrice destructive World War II a mere generation later, which truly was mostly a global affair except for, perhaps, South America.

My immediate forebears were all swept up in it, even as they had barely passed through the terrible times of the Great Depression as children and barely reached adulthood, to be thrown immediately into the crucible of combat in the worldwide conflagration.  My Uncle Harry was there and the following is a moment of time in his service:

My Uncle Harry Lamberton saw the elephant in several Pacific War naval battles as fire control officer of the antiaircraft detachment of the light cruiser USS Vincennes, manned by Marines. A few years back, I read his private notes he compiled as officer of the day in 1944, written in pencil, when his ship was providing fire support off of Peleliu, the southern most island of the Palau Island chain, where a horrific island battle was raging which would decimate the 1st Marine Division (35% casualties) while protecting Army General Douglas A. MacArthur's eastern flank during his egomaniacal drive to recapture the Philippines, which he had fled from (under orders from the president) in a PT boat in 1942 when the Japanese were closing in on his command center at Corregidor. Paraphrasing from memory my uncle's scribblings, the notes read:  

Off-shore from Peleliu to assist in fire support, we off-loaded several marine gunners from our complement as infantry replacements ashore and took on board several wounded marines from the battle in return. Am terribly worried about Jim as he is in the battle and haven't heard from him in weeks. I saw some marines coming on-board who knew Jim and they said he is alive!

This was the note of a twenty-one year old expressing concern for his nineteen-year old brother Jim, both in harm's way protecting our last-century way of life. Uncle Harry earned the bronze star during his WW2 heroics. His brother, who survived two horrendous island battles (Peleliu and Okinawa), was my father.