This ain't Hell, but you can see it from here

Author: Zero Ponsdorf

  • Rocks and Shoals

    Watching this crop of ‘hippies’ protesting whatever it is they are protesting has led me once again down memory lane.

    Follow along if you will?

    Until 1951 the US Navy was governed by the Articles for the Government of the United States Navy, also known as Rocks and Shoals for this bit:

    The punishment of death, or such other punishment as a court martial may adjudge, may be inflicted on any person in the naval service —

    10. Or intentionally or willfully suffers any vessel of the Navy to be stranded, or run upon rocks or shoals, or improperly hazarded or maliciously or willfully injures any vessel of the Navy, or any part of her tackle, armament, or equipment, whereby the safety the vessel is hazarded or the lives of the crew exposed to danger.

    When I was in (64-69) Rocks and Shoals was discussed freely by the old timers.

    At least as late as the ’60s corporal punishment was used in schools (and yes, I know from my own experience) .  Even my grandmother favored a willow switch to get my attention on occasion.

    I gotta wonder if this lot of occupiers has EVER been held responsible for their actions?

    Me… rather taking a swing at ’em, I’m considering finding a willow switch and putting them, one at time, across my knee.

  • Oh Crap… Anyone Anywhere Who Didn’t See This Coming?

    Been out mowing and brush-hogging, and drinking beer. My diabetes is under control, but my mind ain’t.
    Chavez slams “horrible repression” of U.S. protests?

    CARACAS (Reuters) – Socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez condemned on Saturday the “horrible repression” of anti-Wall Street protesters and termed a Republican presidential candidate “crazy” for his criticism of Cuba and Venezuela.

    Although still convalescing from cancer surgery in June followed by four rounds of chemotherapy, the 57-year-old Venezuelan president is quickly returning to the tough rhetoric and strong views that have made him famous worldwide.

    Not surprisingly, Chavez expressed solidarity with American activists who have been staging rallies and marches against what they view as corporate greed by Wall Street.

    Don’t you folks feel better? Hugo is on top of things.

    BTW, has anyone seen repression anywhere?  Laughter doesn’t count… I think?

     

  • Mea Culpa: I Was a Weekend Hippie

    Yet another ME post. I’ve covered parts of this before here and there, but in honor of the various Occupiers it is time to distance myself from that lot once and for all.

    1967: The Navy, in their wisdom, sent me to Mare Island Naval Shipyard for a school. It was the beginning of The Summer of Love in ‘Frisco. Needless to say weekend liberty found me, in civies,  at the corner of Haight and Ashbury observing the nubile, female, dispensers of Free Love. I don’t recall exactly how many, but I spent several weekends doing the same. My opinion of the hippie culture was NOT in any way negative. Make Love Not War made perfect sense  to me? And some of the music was outstanding.

    1969: I once again found my self  in San Fransisco. I’d flown into Travis AFB and was leaving via SFO. At the latter a group of hippie looking folks decided to spit at me and my brethren and/or our uniforms. Most of us had just came back from a war and were a bit testy – fun ensued . Interestingly none of those hippies looked particularly nubile or sexy?

    I out processed and came home to West Virginia. I ran into some high school pals and found out they were heading to Cape Cod for the summer so I joined up with them, hopped into my newly acquired ’69 Buick and headed out. I planned to go to school in the fall, so why not? We had a nice house there, and I found a job renting sailboats and giving sailing lessons.

    Then we started hearing about this concert down in New York. I bought two tickets, made arrangements to get that Friday off, loaded up my current lady friend along with another couple and off we went.

    I won’t bore you with further details except that most of the hippies there were akin to those I’d first came into contact with and I wondered about those at the airport? I had to be back at work Monday so we left early Sunday morning walking behind the stage while the Jefferson Airplane was playing.

    Aside: I tore up my two tickets when it was announced the concert was free. I’ve been kicking myself in the ass about it since.

    A year or so later I hitched across country a time or two, was educated (disillusioned) about communes, and developed a even more jaundiced view of ‘hippies’. There were some good ones, but fewer with each encounter. I wasn’t sure if I was changing or they were?

    Flash forward to 2007.  Some friends and I organized some folks to go to DC to counter some “hippies” who said they were gonna target Our Wall.  Some of us had met at The Kerry Lied rally on 2004 and had stayed in touch.  At GoE I saw first hand what passed for hippies in the 21st century.  There and at subsequent similar events I developed something more than simple distaste for what Jonn now calls hippies.

    So I will maintain that there were some good, well meaning, hippies once… myself amongst them. Now they are just shitheads who call themselves hippies.

  • Drones, Bones, and Che

    The Occupy (fill in city name) drones likely sport a few Che Guevara t-shirts and that is fitting. It seems Che was executed 44 years ago this week so some celebration of his life is, perhaps, in order.

    Big Peace has the facts and this:

    Tens of thousands of Cuban youths learned that Che Guevara’s admonitions were more than idle bombast. In Guevara, the hundreds of Soviet KGB and East German STASI “consultants” who flooded Cuba in the early 1960s found an extremely eager acolyte. By the mid-’60s, the crime of a “rocker” lifestyle (blue jeans, long hair, fondness for the Beatles and Stones) or effeminate behavior got thousands of youths yanked out of Cuba’s streets and parks by secret police and dumped in prison camps with “Work Will Make Men Out of You” emblazoned in bold letters above the gate and with machine gunners posted on the watchtowers.

    Jonn is our resident Latin America expert, but amidst all the angst (quite legitimate) over our use of aerial drones the closing paragraph of the article struck me as fitting.

    One day before his death in Bolivia, Che Guevara — for the first time in his life — finally faced something properly describable as combat. He ordered his guerrilla charges to give no quarter, to fight to their last breaths and to their last bullet. With his men doing exactly what he ordered (fighting and dying to the last bullet), a slightly wounded Che sneaked away from the firefight and surrendered with fully loaded weapons while whimpering to his captors, “Don’t shoot! I’m Che. I’m worth more to you alive than dead!” His Bolivian captors viewed the matter differently. In fact, the following day they adopted a policy that has since become a favorite among many Americans who encounter (so-called) endangered species threatening their families or livestock on their property: “Shoot, shovel, and shut up.”

     

  • On Satellites and Cosmic(?) Karma

    I live on a dirt road a few miles outside Nowhere, WV.  Nearest neighbor is about a quarter mile away, etc. I have to drive about 5 or 6 miles for groceries and/or beer.

    My chunk of ridge is beautiful regardless of the season. Wild animals galore with hunting and fishing on my patch. Gardening is doable with a little care, we have adequate sun and rainfall, etc. About 30 acres for hay and/or livestock… about 40 acres is woods.  We have a private natural gas well.

    It’s important to understand the pastoral nature of my lifestyle for perspective.

    We have frequent power outages so we have two backup generators. We have 4 sources for water, and 3 sources for heating/cooking. Our land-line telephones are pretty dependable, but we also have marginally effective cell service. We have satellite TV and a few off–air channels.

    And we have satellite internet! We’re used to outages from rain or snow. Of course the weather is a known quantity.

    Yesterday morning THAT satellite turned away from earth AND my dish!

    I sat out under the stars last night and pondered the meaning of events. Yesterday I got my truck fixed and got the parts to fix my old riding mower… it should have been a plus day, but I have lingering concerns that karma was telling me something?

    The internet problem was fixed this AM, but still somewhere in the cosmos an quark or something changed its state and a satellite got momentarily lost. Was it something I did?

  • To Allay Some Concerns.

    I have a couple of  pix to add for those with twisted perspectives.

    I recognize the difference.

    I got permission from The Sniper to post that one.

    On the other hand… this is The Sniper!

    Draw your own conclusions. I am NOT a lawyer!!!

  • TSO Made Me Do It!

    Those of us that blog here got an email last evening. Seems Jonn is on a road trip today. His dedication to hygiene has him chasing a virus all the way to DC!

    But TSO reminded me that the email ended with the promise that if we post: “I’ll give you all 100% raises and sing your praises from the rooftops of DC.”

    ETA: Pix by Mrs Sniper. She already yelled at me for banging her gong with my stick.

    Isn’t he cute?

    But he can be brutal! These Army guys ALL are.

  • Almost Heaven…

    The Wife and I will be heading out to vote shortly.  What happens here in West Virginia today might be a bellwether of sorts.

    GOP Sees Upset in W.Va. Governor Race

    Bill Maloney, a Republican running on an anti-establishment ticket, has enough momentum to become the next governor in true-blue West Virginia, party insiders hope.

    Even though Maloney never has run for office, he is just one point behind the Democratic incumbent in the election on Tuesday, according to a new Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey.

    And Maloney, one of the men behind the rescue of 33 trapped Chilean miners last year, has enough support among registered Democrats to snatch victory from Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin in the special election, Maloney’s campaign staffers believe.

    “The Democrat says he’s been around in politics for 36 years, and that’s true, but 34 of those years have been pretty lousy for West Virginians,” one Maloney staffer told Newsmax. “The thing about this campaign is we are not against the Democratic Party because there are too many Democrats in the state – we are against the establishment.”

    One turn of phrase strikes my fancy: “we are against the establishment.”

    The TEA Party needs to start using that line more!

    But, of course, the REAL twist is that those yahoos (What Jonn calls Hippies) currently protesting whatever it is they are fussing about have become part of  The Establishment in fact.