More of the Same, with a Dash of History

I am sitting having coffee as I write this. We plan to go to the 3cities to watch the boat races and airplanes. Well, that is MY plan, Cora intends to do some major relaxing next to the pool.

I cracked a molar yesterday. I was chewing on a peanut...not even a hard one. It is a tooth I have been needing to put a crown on, so I will make an appointment for this week and have the damned thing fixed. In the meantime, I will chew on the other side of my mouth...see, the cracked part did not exit my mouth, nor the gum, and it has the potential for being uncomfortable. Still, I am unwilling to pay the extra emergency fee. Since it is not horribly painful and merely an annoyance, I will wait.

I had a decent week. I sat on the tractor and mower for a good part of it. Yesterday, I worked on the house. Mowed the lawn, weeded, etc. Last night we had BBQ steak, steamed zukes and squash, and boiled baby red potatoes. I think it was a success.

I have decided to attempt an article on the Iraqi tank that Bravo Company brought back with them from the first Gulf War. I will put it on my other site, since it is a piece of Washington history. For those of you who don't know, Bravo Company is part of the 4th Tank Battalion of the Marine Corps. It is spead out all over the western US. Yakima has Bravo Company, a reserve unit that was recently called up again. Given the nearness of the Yakima Training Center, it is a perfect marriage. I decided to do the article because it is not well known, apparently, though at the time they brought it back from Iraq, there was quite a media fuss. Amazing how living in one place for awhile actually makes you a place where history is stored. Still, when asked if they knew about i, a few people gave me a blank look...so, might as well do something about it.

That is something I have been taking advantage of, the ability of people to absorb histoy simply by living. A lot of the people I run into have lived here for quite awhile and they have stories and knowledge I have yet to tap. For instance, a month ago I ran into a gentleman who had served aboard the USS Gudgeon during the Cold War. He was aboard for a collision with another ship (Soviet) which is described in one of the books I have read. I plan on going back to pick his brain. Another might have more information on that local gunnery range. I hope to ask about the Pasco Naval Air Station (NAS) while in the 3cities, assuming I can get to the local Museum. So, now I have some places to go with the other site...I am a bit more excited about it. Oh, and if you have not had the chance, click on over to it, I still have that article written by the gentleman from Brazil about the wreck near Stehekin!

Anyone have information on Washington History they would like to see on my blog? E-mail me and I will do my best to hook you up.

Student Teachers Rock.

Today, once again, I got some pay back. You will recall last year I expressed extreme happiness at getting to sub for someone who had a student teacher. Today, once again, I had the same experience. When I was a student teacher, substitutes would come in and read their books while I earned them a day's pay. Today, I was the sub...ahhh, sweet revenge. I actually did something, though. I helped keep the kids at bay!

I liked this ST(student teacher), though. She had...well, class. This is a class where there are actually two teachers who team teach two classes. Therefore there were two subs and one Student Teacher...Guess who did the majority of the teaching! Yep!! The Student Teacher did. Ha Ha Ha! Actually, she seemed more ready for it than I was that first few days. It was a good day. She handled BOTH classes with...well, class.

I made some suggestions about her Social Studies lesson and she decided she would base tomorrow's lesson around them. Hmm, I AM awesome. I think she will go far.

Tonight's dinner was...not quite as good as I expected. I tried to make chicken strips...but, fell short of the chicken. We had canned spinach and an unsuccessful attempt at homemade mashed potatoes...still, we gained sustainence from it...so should we complain? no. Still, at least the spinach was good.

And...the time when I stand on the deck of the USS Kitty Hawk bidding her farewell from the fleet grows near. May she find herself a memorial rather than a reef or, worse, a line of kitchen ware. January 31 beckons.

History..Ho-Hum.

Hmmm, you would expect me to be more excited. I am proud that America has finally elected a minority member to the white house, but I think it would have been more historical to put a woman in the white house. Cora reminded me that black men got the vote first...yes, I think the country is far more sexist than it is racist. That is merely an opinion I have gained from living here in the west. I make no claim to have an overwhelming knowledge of other regions of this great big country, so it may be different where you live. I have noticed that women most often get the short stick, though (forgive the pun)



So, President Elect Barack Obama...That does sound different from his forebearers.




As you may have guessed, the election coverage is what we watched tonight...Alas, there was nothing else on.

McCain's concession speech was well spoken and proud.

Obama made a similarly well-spoken speech. Neither candidate has the same speech impediment that our present president seems to suffer from; that's comforting.

It was just downright cold here today. Wind blowing off the recently snow covered mountins...I hate winter.

63

a less boring attempt to describe my day is below, if you do not want to learn a little history, skip the following 2 paragraphs.

It has been 63 years since the world awoke to the atomic age. On the Morning of August 6, 1945, after almost four years of war, a lone B-29, or B-san as the residents of Japan called them, flew over the city of Hiroshima, Japan. Residents looked up and then went back to their business; they had just come back from an air-raid drill, and a single B-29 bomber did not an air-raid make. It was probably a recon flight, they probably thought. It was not. Many had wondered why their city had been comparatively spared the horror that other cities had suffered. That morning at about 8:16 AM, local time, the cordite charge in the bomb nicknamed "Little Boy" fired and drove a heavy uranium bullet into the corresponding set of uranium rings at the end of a barrel. It was called a gun-type bomb for a reason. The bullet travelled down the barrel and when it got to the rings, the enriched Uranium, U-235, went critical and the chain reaction began. The following explosion was comparable to 12,500 TONS of TNT. That morning, it became apparent that Hiroshima had been saved from other bombings only to be gutted by the atomic bomb.

The people below either began a nightmarish saga or the last milleseconds of life. The description is unnecessary. People below were simply vaporized if they were within a small circle near ground zero, but did not fair much better further away. Everyone has heard about the odd things left behind: the shadow of a ladder on a wall, the shadows of people on sidewalks burned in permenantly, the printed flowers on a school girl's blouse soaking up the heat more than the lighter shades and burning their pattern into her skin, and many other instances of the unimaginable horror that an atomic bomb brings to its target. There are other more eloquent and poignant descriptions and I see no reason to depress the reader more than necessary. It was a sad day. It was the second to the last blow to Japan that would force it to surrender. I believe it is important to remember what happened that day. You can find out more if you are interested simply by googling the following words: Atomic Bomb, Nuclear Bomb, Nuclear testing, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or Enola Gay. If you are still interested, I'd like to suggest some readings: The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes, and Dark Sun also by Richard Rhodes. There are plenty of others, but these books offer a very well written account of the entire nuclear program in language that non-science types can understand.

I had planned a longer post and will eventually manage one on my other site. Thanks to Cora's reaction, though, I decided to shorten my planned essay.

Today was my day off and I was successful at reading very little. I made an attempt to create a feng shui feel in the living room by re-rearranging the furniture. this was in response to Cora's whining. I think it turned out well--or I did before Cora came home. She said she will have to try it out for a few days before she decides whether she likes it. Cross your manipulative digits.

I began the day by doing some laundy, then I switched to dishes. After that I had some corn on the cob...boiled and then buttered and salted. Not the most filling of lunches, but, by gum, it tasted wonderful. The I decided to go to town and got the mail to boot. I received one of my books. Then I went to town and got a furniture mover glider for moving the TV stand. I also got some tv cable so I could move the TV further. After that I took Cora some coffee at work.

On the way back i used my GPS to locate a cache my father had left for me. He was up yesterday and created a geocache for me. It was a piece of genius and more than a little entertaining. I went to the location indicated by my GPS and found, just like my dad's instructions had described, a man and a tree...the man was exceedingly small, MAYBE 1/2 inch in height. Below him was a note directing me to the next point. There I found four sheep...each about 1/2 inch long. and the next clue. The last point was marked by a crashed aircraft...rather a gobot that I had gotten when I was in seventh grade...some 21 years ago...it is an antique, I suppose. There I found another note in a pill bottle, this one was a note from the combined intellects of my father, my mother and my favorite neice! It was fun!

I made stir fry for dinner and Cora is finishing the changing table...slowly. I will post video later. I hope you enjoyed this installment.

Historic Eve

I was aware of the day, about 20 days ago. I did not mention it. I remember things like this for some weird reason. I live in a historically important area. In the early days of WWII the town of Hanford was uprooted and its residents sent elsewhere for the war effort. By 1944, the area was exceptionally well inhabited and VERY active. By 1945, it was the home of the atomic bomb. The A-Bomb. The local high school team is the "Bombers."

In the wee hours of the morning on July 16, 1945 the sun rose twice. Depending on where you were it may have risen once in the west. At 5:29 and 45 seconds the firing circuit closed and the atomic age began. Near the town of Alamagordo, New Mexico, at a site named Trinity, the world's first atomic bomb was tested. It was an implosion device. It compressed a non-critical mass of plutonium into a critical mass which caused the atoms of plutonium to split at GREAT speed. It caused a gigantic fireball, so hot that the desert sand was fused into a green glass called Trinitite. It presaged the end of World War II.

It was a technical marvel, which is a term TOO often used in description of the Manhattan Project, but none-the-less true. The amount of scientific, mechanical, and constructional know-how necessary to bring this fine feat of physics to being was fantastically phenomenal. (sometimes I feel the need for alliteration) Tomorrow, I will post a considerably longer...err... post, concerning the atomic bomb and its use. I will post a technical one on my other blog. It is more the technical aspects that interest me than the maming aspects, and I do not discount the loss of the thousands who perished in the only two atomic bombs used directly against an enemy.

As to my day it passed without interest and only minor inconvenience. Others, I now know, enjoyed their first day back in school...ahh, the pleasures of being on the RIGHT side of the desk. I hope all who returned to school today had a good day! We have a few more weeks. Ahh, summer is drawing steadily to a close...dammit.

Like a Bridge Over Nubs of Teeth...

I had a good day…in some ways excellent, but that is not important here. I enjoyed my time with my professor. One of my friends does not like him, but I think my friend just does not know how to handle him. Today, I asked about his family and learned A LOT about him. It explains why he fell asleep on a few occasions while I was attempting to discuss Cold War books with him. He is a really nice guy and he has a great sense of humor. I believe he really cares whether his students are getting the most out of their educations.

I got my Bridge in…which, for those of you who do not know, is where they take a tooth out from between two other teeth, and the two other teeth have had their nerves REEMED out. They grind the other two teeth down to nubs. Then they make a new large tooth (out of whatever they have lying around, I think they used parts of a Cue Ball for mine) and then glue (cement, or in my case I think they used sheet metal bondo [you know, for car bodies]) them to the nubs of your dead teeth. It sounds more complicated than it is. And it is more expensive than it should be. Still, it seems to have worked, despite the obscene pain of sticking the damned thing into my gums…that hurt A LOT.

I came home and I made Satay Chicken, while Cora Instant Messaged her friend in AZ…Kim, you should tell her she needs to help me make dinner! Satay Chicken is chicken grilled in strips, then you dip the strips in a peanut butter/soy sauce/cilantro sauce that is just yummy. You need to like peanut butter, though, since the taste can be somewhat strong…I am a big fan.

Can I just give KUDOS to Kylee for knowing what she is talking about in her comments?! She was right. Look at China, now going strongly toward a market society, far removed from the socialist climate envisioned by Marx.

The Long Telegram

This is the view of Mt. Shasta as we left California...for the last time.

Happy day. I helped the “hard worker” put signs up, but he did not think that digging holes was the way. We just used a post thingy to jam it into the ground. I was the one with the presence of mind to use a tape measure to straighten them in relation to the sidewalk. At the end, it looked like a row of disused telephone poles…they were leaning different directions and were at different heights.

The last part of the day was spent on board tractor…I was ostensibly flattening dirt yet again, but it was not doing much more than throwing up dust. I think I looked a little like a small brown man. I used high pressure air to dust myself off. Apparently I missed some on my face…since Cora instructed me to shower before we went to town.

We got dinner makings and a few other items of necessity. Dinner was going to be tortellini in pesto sauce, Cora volunteered to cook…unfortunately, when we arrived home and the tortellini was almost done Cora discovered that the pesto had a neat little patch of mold on it. Yuck. Fortunately, a family friend makes pesto and the IN-Laws had some…It was probably better than the store bought!

We’re watching Deadliest Catch, prior to my going into seclusion to read a Cold War book. This one is called Cold War, Cool Medium. The author basically compares the maturation of Television with the growth and maturation of the Cold War. He spends a lot of time on McCarthy. It turns out McCarthy only had a little over a four year run…and the author suggests that Television, as an industry, was scared of him at first, but as his witch hunt progressed, television as a whole industry began to bow their backs, as did intellectuals and professionals alike. McCarthy was an idiot and a bastard, and his name has become intertwined with “witch hunt.”

As you know, my latest question involves Containment as a large part of the question. Containment was what the US attempted to do to the Soviet union as it attempted to spread communism. Everytime the Soviets attempted to move into some country, the US would show up and try and win over the inhabitants. Containment was the idea of George Kennan, whose "Long Telegram" said as much. He was a diplomat in Moscow in the mid-1940s.

Well, I am sorry, this got a little long, I guess I should go ahead and make another blog specifically devoted to my Cold War ruminations, and NO, I will not tell you where it is, I have enough trouble keeping names straight let alone my handle on American History.

Thank you for being patient, here are a few more photos.

This is the B-47, the back bone of Strategic Air Command (SAC) for a decade. 2000 were built. I love these 6 engined behemoths.

This is me coming out of a B-36, SAC's 10,000 mile bomber. She had 6 turning and 4 burning, which referred to the 6 propellor engines and 4 jet engines. It was the Big Stick. There are now only four complete examples left. I have seen 2 of them.

Originally designed as a daytime fighter (no radar) this little sportster (F-100)was modified to carry an atomic bomb in Europe in the mid to late 1950s. The pilots would basically fly a suicide mission...sure they would loft it (like tossing a baseball underhanded) but still, the likelihood of coming back in a hot war situation was...well, it wasn't.