Quick update on the cemetery class

It hasn't been as detailed as I'd hoped for but it's been very interesting. To run down, the first week was great. It really whet my appetite for future things to come. The second week was, plainly put, a bust. The lecturer was two-dimensional and boring and I found it difficult to even follow the lecture. She sounded like -- indeed, was -- she was reading from a printed sheet. This week's class, the third, on Death in New Orleans, was quite interesting. One class left to go.

I decided that I'll wait to write about it until the classes end. I had hoped to summarize each class, assuming that they were all going to be as information-heavy as the first one. This wasn't the case but that's an OK thing. I'll probably draw primarily from the first class when I write but touch on things learned from the other three. The first class is what got the ball rolling, anyway.

Time for the rhetorical question of the day:

How stupid do they think we are?

WASHINGTON (AP) - The top U.S. military officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, will be replaced as part of a command restructuring that has been in the works for several months, administration officials said Tuesday. The Pentagon also suspended Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski from her command.

I'm sure it's all totally coincidental that the commanding general of the Middle Eastern Command would be replaced, unannounced, right when all the crapola is hitting the fan and the President's approval rating is in the toilet.

Newsflash: Command restructures are rare and well-announced. The higher you go, the rarer they are. And they're always held with a lot of notification because there are issues that have to be addressed down the command chain. When a general is relieved from command to go to a different post, there's always prior notice as to where he or she will be posted to:

"Brigadier General Sam Jones, commander of Fort Shilliwack for the last five years, will take over command of the 13th Mechanized Infantry Division, stationed in Öddlesbiddlebaddle, Germany. General Jones' change of command ceremony will occur on {a date that's three to six months in the future} and he will assume his command of the 13th on {above date plus two or three weeks}. We wish him well at his new posting."

See how that works? I could find NO information about General Sanchez' new posting, nor an announcement of his leaving. Until today, that is. There was some speculation in the past several weeks, since the news stories broke, but nothing about a command restructure.

Of course they'll say that the announcement wasn't made due to security precautions but isn't that getting to be a bit old to use for an excuse? At least they actually did say they were suspending General Karpinski from her command. Ultimately, it boils down to this: General Karpinski's career is over. She has a big giant neon black check mark next to her name which will ensure that she's passed over for promotion and future "cushy" commands. General Sanchez, being a Lt. General (three stars, vs. General Karpinski's one) will be allowed to step down to some Pentagon duty where he'll be on all sorts of exciting panels and committees for the rest of his career until his imminent retirement.

The weekend, or how I lost my pants at poker and found the last gas below $2/gallon.

Saturday started out as one of those average weekend days for me. I got up around 10 am and wondered if I should go back to bed since there wasn't much to do until later that afternoon, when Jen came over. There was a decent auction going on near the 'ol homestead and I, being the auction nut that I am, decided that would be worth going to. Of course I was also noticing that my back was aching at a higher level than it usually does but I was not going to let a little case of "90 year-old man-itis" stop me from collecting more junk. So I went over and hobbled around and did my auction thing, which was to add to my junk.

I got a couple of good items, though. There was a kerosene heater that looked almost new for $5; a hoover vacuum for $5; three coolers, one of which is a metal Coleman for $6; and two old-fashioned scythes (for a friend of Sandy's who wants to put them in her garden) for $17; and a sleeping bag, the old fashioned canvas kind, for $1. I was in the bidding for a Ranger pickup until it hit $1000. It finally went for $1300 which was a pretty good deal. It was a '91 but it looked to be in great shape. Would have been a nice spare vehicle. So, anyhow, I got out of there for about $35 And everything I got (except the scythes, which I'm not keeping) is usable. I consider that a good auction experience. Plus, Braun and Helmer just are fun to go see in action. When I was little my dad used to take me to auctions and theirs were the ones I loved to go to most because Jerry Helmer is a stitch.

So after the auction I went home and unloaded my stuff and got my book (Ordinary Men -- review is coming up) and went to have some Chinese at the buffet next door. I try to make this my Saturday habit. I get up at 9 or 10, then shower and relax a little, then go over to the buffet with my book and eat and read for an hour or two. I enjoy just sitting there snacking and reading and drinking nice warm tea for a while. Some of the waitstaff seem to recognize me now, as they seat me in a booth and bring me the tea without asking. Makes a guy feel special. Cheers in a Chinese buffet setting. Kind of.

After such a rigorous day I felt I needed a nap. It was three in the afternoon, after all, and I'd been up for nearly five hours. I couldn't be expected to function with this kind of stress. So I set the alarm for 4:00 and figured I'd have time to get up and start functioning before Jen got there. Except I wasn't planning on hitting the snooze button continuously until 4:40 when she did arrive. Jen took it in stride; she's seen my underwear before, as I've answered the door when she comes down in it before. It ain't sexual or anything, I wear boxer briefs and they're about as revealing as a swimsuit. Besides... it's Jen, for God's sake. She's resisted my manly wiles for these many years already. Boxer briefs aren't gonna get me any further. But I digress.

I worked on her computer some, which wasn't going on at all. She'd been having this problem since a power outage at her parents' place a couple of weeks ago. I figured it was either the memory or the motherboard. When I looked further into it, I realized I didn't have the same memory as the system took, so I needed her to call Dell on it. She did and they thought it was the memory, too, after having her do a couple of things like taking the video card out and such. Long story short, she got new memory and now is humming right along. Hopefully she'll get the surge protector I've been after her to get for more than a year now.

Then I lost my pants at poker. Good thing I was wearing the boxer briefs. Well, not literally "lost my pants". Rather, I didn't do well. It was Heather's birthday and we all went over to Kim's place and had dinner then settled in for a friendly game of Texas Hold-'em. Which is where the pantsing began. To be perfectly honest, I had crap the entire night. Twice I had a pair in-hand. Beyond that, it was usually seven-four off suit or something equally crappy. But Jen seemed to get the hang of it, in spite of having to consult the cheat sheet outlining the ranks of the hands. She really cleaned up, taking home pure profit. Of course, since I provided her buy-in money, she'd been running on pure profit since the first hand. It broke up around 1am, by which time I was on my third Jameson's and Coke, breaking my promise to myself to keep it to one plus beers. Three J&Cs and one beer. It should have been the reverse -- maybe I'd have done better. Not that I would have. The very mild inebriation I was experiencing wouldn't have prevented me from seeing the crap that was on the table, card-wise.

Sunday was spent doing nothing but relaxing and getting gas for the car. I decided to take a drive around and relax. Sandy came back from Ohio early and decided to tag along. We stopped for dinner at Hometown Buffet, formerly the Old Country Buffet, and had a very filling dinner. Two people can eat well for $20. Not a bad deal. After dinner began The Great Search for Gas Below $2.00 per Gallon. Not quite as easy as you might think. We drove about fourty miles to find gas under this "magical" price. Given that the national average for a gallon of gas went past $2 today, I'm happy I managed to find it. Three places were at $1.999 per gallon, all on Michigan Avenue. I stopped at a Citgo at Michigan in the Inkster area. I don't remember the cross-street but it doesn't matter as I'd bet they're up above $2 per gallon now. Gas prices seem to be rising nearly daily now as opposed to weekly like they were a few months ago. Sandy managed to get it for $1.939 in Ohio on her way home. Yes, I realize fully I burned far more in gas than I saved by looking for cheap gas. But I did it for other reasons: the thrill of the hunt, for one. I like to find the cheapest gas around. It gives me a sense of accomplishment. For another, I wanted to drive out to St. Hedwig's Cemetery over near Telegraph, between Ford Rd. and Joy. It's a cool cemetery on the Joy Rd. side with lots of sculpture and such and I want to photograph it, maybe next week. Also, it was just a really nice afternoon and evening and it was a good night for a drive. Sunny, cool, and the traffic was light. Yeah, so I spent a few dollars' worth of gas. It beat just sitting home alone in my boxer briefs, mourning the loss of my pants.

Regularly updated gas prices....

I've set up a shortcut for the area surrounding Canton here.

Holy crap that was a long book...

Remember when I said I was going to write about the books I'd read? I wrote my review of The Devil in the White City in a February entry. It isn't like I've been slacking since then. I started reading Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like it in the World which was the story of the building of the transcontinental railroad. This was a book that was out of both mine at Dr. Ambrose's usual realm. We're both military historians who specialize in World War II. (Except he did the writing and I did the reading)

This book was an exercise in taking a break from writing about World War II for him. By his own admission, he wasn't used to writing without being able to interview the people who took part in what he was writing about. The transcontinental railroad was finished in 1869 so there aren't going to be very many people available for interviews. As a result there is less narrative-via-storytelling in this book. Ambrose relies on a narrative drawn from copious records stored in the archives of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads. There are many of them: telegrams, letters to family and businessmen, cargo and shipping manifests, etc. But these aren't really recollections as much as they are lists and facts. With the exception of the personal letters to family, there are few diaries to draw information from. And it's a one-way street. You can't ask a letter home to expand on a comment made in passing. What was of little immediate importance in 1867 may be crucial to a larger puzzle in the 1990s when he was doing research for the book.

It wasn't an easy read for me because I'm not as familiar with the background material. When I'm reading about D-Day, I already know about the larger picture; I've read dozens of books about the war in Europe and I'm aware of how the planning occurred and how it related to the war in general. But with this story, I had embarrassingly little prior knowledge so I found myself having to go back and reread passages to understand them better and to go to other sources to allow me to put these events in context. It was more like studying for an exam than it was reading for pleasure. It was still fun. I know a LOT more about the labor history of the middle ninteenth century now and I know a lot more about the people from that time. Up to this point, my knowledge was limited in scope to the Civil War and a little bit of side reading about the broad cultural aspects of the period.

This book was widely criticized as being too one-sided and Ambrose was accused of plagarizing large passages of it. Someone of his stature and reputation cannot plagarize. His books are used as references for dozens of other books and any plagarism is going to be found quickly. In this case, I think there were probably examples of the same ideas found in other books being stated similarly. After all, there are only so many ways to convey an idea well. Sure, he could have quoted over and over, just to make sure but then the book becomes a string of quotations sewn together to make a new book. So I'm not at all behind the idea of his being a plagarizer. He was just too good an historian to do that.

I did enjoy this book but I don't know that I'd be able to get into this same period of history, at least this topic of this period of history, enough that I could fill in background myself. It's a really interesting era, no doubt about that, but it doesn't captivate me the same ways that other topics and historical eras do.

The classes you can take in college today....

So, thanks to Heather I found out about a seminar seeries being offered at the U of M, Dearborn titled "Graveyards 101". Heather, knowing me as she does, knew that I would love to go to this lecture series. Of course, she was right. There are four lectures over the course of the next four Wednesdays. They'll be titled:

May 12th
"Death and Dying in Pre-Modern Europe"

May 19th
"Death in Vienna"

May 26th
"The New Orleans Way of Death"

June 2nd
"Images of Death in Comparative Perspective"

There are several texts used in the course, today's concentrated on a book written by Philippe Aries, The Hour of Our Death Aries was not a historian in the trained sense. He was a lover of history. After his day job, he would go home and research and read history. This is one of his best books. I've read parts of it before, but I'm going to order it and read it cover to cover now.

I've decided that I'll discuss the topic each class covers here. My thoughts and the ideas presented in class. I have to say that I came out of this class awhirl with ideas and concepts that I hadn't really been able to gel together before. I'll be interested to see where I go with them.

More later.

It's all in a day's work

I'd fully intended to plug away at a new entry, one of depth and substance but that was before I decided to "tweak" the look of the blog in general. That created a "fix one thing, break two more" loop that lasted for quite a while. But finally it seems to be fixed, I managed to keep everything and I got a template that I more or less like.

I wanted one that had the sidebar stuff on the left with the journal entries on the right but it looked messed up in IE every time, no matter what I did. It always looked OK in Netscape though. But I'm all about consistency across platforms, so I had to scrap that idea.

It looks OK -- for now. I've also enabled comments, so feel free.