Graphic Firing Table

 So it took the Boy about month - no, really, closer to three weeks - to discover what pretty much every young person getting out of high school over the past twenty years or so has learned; that low-skill, low-responsibility, entry-level commercial/retail wage work sucks ass.

Long hours (usually bad hours - he's got the 2-to-10 shift almost every workday so far...), poor pay, and the work itself is both mind-numbingly boring and irritatingly un-slide-throughable - you can't sort of glide along with it, you have to pay attention, but what you're paying attention to only requires about 10% of your intellectual capacity, leaving a ton of headspace for being irked and bored.

It's not that it's a "bad job". It's that it's a bog-standard "low-skill, entry-level" job that requires the entry-level person to be willing to spend a considerable time doing the drudge work before moving up to, say, produce, and he's the lowest of the low new hires.

Plan B, now?

Begin taking "fire science" classes at the local community college with the eventual goal of full-time professional employment with one of the big municipal departments.

I'm...very cautious about this.

First and foremost because almost every smoke-eater I'm run across has been a pretty serious jock. It's a job that requires a fairly insane level of both strength and aerobic fitness - the level that requires a jock-attitude towards working out.

This is a kid that, love him as I do, could make a sloth look perky. As far as I know the only muscle groups he's regularly exercised are the thumbs-and-forefingers of his gaming controller hands.

It's not that he couldn't change; anyone can do that if they want to hard enough. It's the magnitude of the change. He'd need to re-orient himself completely...to the point of almost being a different person. I'm not sure that he can do that - discipline and rigor have never been huge friends of his - and I'm very sure he has no idea how to even begin.

The second concern of mine is that I'm unsure...no, be honest - I've very sure he has no idea what this career entails. I'm betting he's done little or no diligence to find out what the best pathway towards this goal is, or even what the goal is. It's like he's ten years old and wants to be an astronaut.

I desperately want to sit down with him. I desperately want to map out a fitness plan and begin pushing him along it. I desperately want to find out what he knows about this and point him in the ways he can learn more.

I pretty much want to do the "Learn the pathway to your goal you must, young padawan, but the goal itself you must first find" thing with him.

But...

He's never been a kid who could be either led or driven. He's the king of Flat Affect, the ultimate in "listens with blank stare and then goes and does what he wants" kind of kiddo. I'm not sure whether I really want to spend a half hour I'll never get back trying to get some kind of response out of him that I'll never be sure is truly genuine.

He's eighteen. I get that this is the time for trying, for experimentation. 

My concern is that he doesn't seem to be "experimenting" very hard. I'm okay with him trying this or that...I'd just like to think he's learning more about this or that before he tries. But I'm utterly unsure that I can help him...not learn, but learn how to learn.

In the immortal words of Donald J. Trump; who knew that this parenting stuff would be so hard?

So this week the Boy jumped the low bar that is U.S. high school graduation.

I don't want to low-rate him. He did what he needed to do, so good on him.

The difficulty is...what now?

A high school diploma is the bottom-line of any sort of employment. He's not going anywhere exciting with that. And he's gone nowhere outside ten miles of his North Portland home for eighteen years. He has no idea what's out there.

The saddest part was that after his graduation, while his pals were hugging and taking selfies, he was walking home, alone, with his mom and sister and me tagging along behind,

I honestly don't know what to do.

He's going to do whats he's going to do, and I have no idea how to change that.

...I'm a man of little enough wealth and taste, well...that's open to interpretation.

Visiting my friend Maia's blog (which is sadly, quieter even than my own, but worth the while to visit for her gorgeous photographs...) I realized that one thing I haven't done is take the time to update my c.v. So if I'm going to start writing here again, I should begin with who and where I am at this time, the People's Republic of Portland in the province of Cascadia, near the end of the year 2019.
I turned 62 this past October, so I've officially entered the "terminal phase" or "descending branch" of the ballistic arc my parents fired me onto back in the autumn of 1957. That's...suboptimal, but at least I lasted longer than my birth-brother Sputnik I, who lived fast and died young.

I'm still who I tell you I am on the cover page here: inquisitive, judgmental, analytical, hard-working. And still husband and father, scientist, retired Army sergeant, and social and political liberal.

I'm no longer a teacher, though. That's unfortunate, because I enjoyed it to some extent. But the time-suck was too huge and the pay too grim. "Adjunct" is community-college-speak for "wage-slave", and I no longer have the patience to do the work it requires for the paycheck it returns.

Physically? I continue to get older and slower. I finally had my left hip replaced this past winter, so that helps, but my "...back's bad and my legs are queer". I'm eaten up with osteoarthritis, and everything, especially on cold mornings, creaks and groans (and makes unpleasant grinding or cracking noises, which is worse). I've got a couple of knee replacements in my future given I live that long.

I'm still a toiler in the vineyard of soils engineering and geology, still where I have been for the past couple of years. It's fine. It's a job, no better than many I've had, but better than some. I work with some good people, some slackers, some yobs. Sometimes my work is fascinating, sometimes drab, sometimes difficult. For every fun landslide there's a day spent with my heels up watching a bunch of chucklefucks pave a parking lot. It's a glamor profession.

Outside of work, I still follow soccer in Portland, both the Timbers on the men's side and the Thorns on the women's. I lost my gig writing for Stumptown Footy, though - and there's a special sort of humiliation getting canned from your non-paying side gig! - and moved over the another blog (called Riveting!, in case you enjoy being bored out of your skull about soccer...) where I do the same thing for the same pay.

What can I say? I like soccer, I like to write about it, I'm often mistaken but never wrong...that's kind of the point of blogging, right?
Outside of that, it's reading; history, science fiction and other fun junk-novels. I get enough heartache from the news, so my taste in literary entertainment is pretty light. I should really put up a post about several authors I've run across lately that are a lot of fun. So between that and beginning to work out again - the hips made that kind of chancy - my idle hours are taken up pretty well.

Family? Well...

Mojo is now in her second year as School Secretary of our kiddos' elementary school. She's the beloved "Miss Mojo" of a wild rumpus of kiddies. This Halloween it was pretty adorable to open the door on a bunch of fun-sized elves and superheroes and Pokemon who immediately started screaming "MISS (Mojo's name)! MISS MOJO!" until she came over and greeted them and gave them their treats. She's still smart and sarcastic and still uninterested in politics and soccer. How we find anything to talk about I have no idea, but I love her like fresh meat loves salt.

The Boy is in his third year of high school, and has entered the Monosyllabic Phase. He's still struggling with his tendency to slack off; he really doesn't like to work - something I recall from my immediately-post-pubescent-period - and until now has done as well as he's done by pure mental throw-weight. He's taking a bunch of AP classes this year, though, and has found that he can't slide on through on pure headspace alone. His response has been somewhat gratifyingly diligent, though, so we'll see. There's a lot of promise there. But at 16? It's still mostly promise.

The Girl...well, I should start by saying that one of her funny things is that she absolutely hates it that I talk about her here. She's got a fanatic obsession that some sort of creepy stalker is going to chase her down through this blog, as if I try and boost my clicks by chasing down creepy stalkers. So I won't say much other than that she's a middle school kid with all that entails. She's gone from sweet little miss to salty little devil over the past year or so. My favorite story from that evolution came the other day, when I was digging through the spice drawer and came across this:
Daughter: "Seriously?"
Father: "What the..? I didn't think we still even had this."
Daughter: "So what is "authentic Asian taste", anyway?"
Father: "Hell if I know. Have you tasted yourself lately?"
Daughter:
Daughter: (licks back of hand) "Salty. With a hint of bitterness."
Father:
Daughter"
Father:
Daughter: "What? You asked!"

She's a gifted artist and something of a dramat - though she's all about the tech side and has no ambition to shine on the stage rather than behind it. Weirdly, her love for musical theater has revived my old affection for the genre, and we've enjoyed several shows including Wicked (which I enjoyed far more than I thought I would given my indifference to the source) and In The Heights.

The Damn Cat is being a damn cat. I don't want to pen him up indoors, but I wish to hell he'd stop killing little birds. Knock it off, you furry bastard.
Oh...and, oddly, the other thing I've taken up lately is...archery.

We have a very odd little, very Portland, sort of place here called "Trackers", and one of the things they do is run bow-making and archery classes for kids. And they also run an indoor range, and a friend and I have taken to turning up there every week and killing targets. It's a hell of a lot of fun for five bucks.

Being me, of course, I can't settle for just plunking away at a paper printed with concentric circles. The fun part is the challenge of hitting some small noisy thing, like a plastic bottle or a cardboard cup. The other day all I could find was a plastic seltzer bottle, so I shoved that in the hay bales and proceeded to twang away at it. Thing is, I didn't want to try and hit it standing up, like you'd shoot can's with a rifle. I wanted to hit it end-on and, more particularly, opening-end on, so I'd have to put an arrow through the 1-inch wide pour hole.

Took me probably a dozen flights to finally hit it.
But when I did?

GodDAMN that was satisfying.

So that's me writ small; I still can't do things the simple, easy, or sensible way.

But I'll keep firing away until I hit the fucking thing.

And there I am.

See you again in a bit.

It's easy to underestimate.

Rain shut down the job I'm covering, so I had a whole afternoon to myself in Medford. In the rain. And cold.

Rainy, cold Medford is pretty damn...well, it's Medford in the cold rain. Figure it out.

So I took a shower and caught up on some paperwork. Read a book - Cold Iron by Stina Leicht; "blackpowder-and-socery", elves with magic and flintlocks fighting humans with ring-bayonets and 12-pound Napoleons and a fun read - and did some bloggage. Chatted with some friends via e-mail and FB.

Finally I ran out of entertainment so I sat down and did these;


This is "Kittehs o' War" for the Boy, and this


...is "Drachma the Cat God" for the Girl. HAD to be their beloved kittehs, of course. I had a buttload of these postcards and realized that the kiddos have NO interest in reading some sort of boring letter from me. My Bride I can write to...but the urchins? They love the cartoons.

So I taped the postcards together to draw the images and then took the tape off. I'll mail them tonight so next week the littles can put them together as jigsaw puzzles. A quick and fun little project and, hopefully, entertaining for them.

But now I'm done and bored again. I wonder if there's a bad movie on?

My kid used the word "worshed" the other day and I realized that I have several peculiar verbal tics. That's one of them.
For the English word to describe what you do with dirty clothes I say "Did you put your socks in the worsh?"

I don't know why I do this. I don't call folding money "corsh" or a mixture of meat and potatoes "horsh". It's just how I pronounce the word wash, and I don't remember why the hell I do it.

Now that I have had to actually think about it I'm embarassed by it and have consciously tried to amend my speech to the correct pronunciation, "wash".

Now that I think of it, I realize that I've picked up a couple of these odd verbal tics.

I use the word "arsed" in the sense of "worked up over" or "bothered to"; "It isn't something I got arsed enough about to get done...". This is a Britishism, and I suspect I picked it up from listening/reading about English soccer.

When I'm exasperated about something I will often say "Jesus wept!" as a way of saying "What a ridiculous fuck-up!" I do know wherte I got this; from reading that the two words are the shortest verse in the Bible. I liked that, and somehow it found its way into my speech.

If someone tells me something obvious, or something that I have already agreed to, I will often reply "There you go." (or if in rough company "There you fucking go."). This was my old drill sergeant SSG Layne's reaction to anything he agreed with (spoken, by the way, in his very distinctive Caribbean accent with the accent on the first word: "Dere you fokkin' go!") and it has stuck with me.

When I was little we had a cat named "Possum", and ever since all cats (when speaking to the cat) are "possum", as in "Who's da sweet fluffly li'l possum?" (said in babytalk voice while rubbing cat's chin).
The cats don't seem to care one way or the other but, then, cats should all be named whatever the sound of a can of cat food opening sounds like.

So. Those are my verbal tics, oddities, and peculiarities. I have no idea why this suddenly occurred to me, but there it is. Embarrassing, perhaps, but better than running around a comic convention in nekomimi ears, so there's that.

Do you have any of these odd little verbal tics, and, if so, what are they?

The autumn is deep upon us and, with it, the Rains.

Once the return to Standard Time spells the end of evening light the clouds that lour upon our house seem all the lower and more lour-y, the rain more incessant, and the season chillier and more inhospitable. This isn't really as awful as it sounds; its just what happens in the Northwest in the waning of the year, and, by and large, we're both used to it and accepting of it.

But...that doesn't mean we enjoy it, and our delight in the rare sunny autumn day is the proof. This past Saturday was a lovely, sunny and mild autumn day and it seemed like all of Portland got out to bask in it.

Perhaps except for me; I had to work that morning, so I spent the first half the day in a muddy field outside the permanent traffic-tie-up that is "Tualatin" keeping an eye on people making the field less muddy.


The heavy fog lifted by mid-morning and the lowering sun strengthened from watery to warm. The dank earth steamed, the dark coffee in my hands steamed as well, and I stood in pleasant lassitude watching the work. The contractor knew perfectly well what his crew needed to do; my presence was purely decorative, a sort of large finial or an ambulatory bit of trimming designed to make the work prettier for the owner. So like any good eye-candy I promenaded about looking attractive, made an occasional note or three, and generally bided the time until I'd put in enough of an appearance to justify my paycheck.
The only upside to working a weekend is the relative emptiness of the freeways. Portland, sadly, is becoming more like our neighbors to the north and south; where once serious freeway traffic was restricted to circumscribed morning and evening "rush hours" random congestion is now both more common and vastly more random. I have encountered parking-lot-grade jams at midday and at midnight, on weekend mornings and weeknights in the early single-digit darkness.

Saturday the pavement was delightfully untenanted; I rattled north into the downtown enjoying the velocity while fretting slightly over the odd noise the old pickup truck was making. The drawback of an owned-free-and-clear-ten-year-old vehicle is that you have reached the age where anything may fail catastrophically and often will. What once was a small but annoying squeak now may be a wheel bearing announcing its imminent death or a leaf-spring suggesting that iron oxide has overcome the elastic properties of the metal.

(And I should notes that it is just this sort of fretful irruption from which wealth provides such insulation. Mister Micawber would have recognized it; the natural consequence of having to worry about whether you can manage to make ends meet on that twenty pounds. You listen to that squeak with the cold understanding that it may mean penury somewhere else, a new bearing rather than a new toaster, or a new leaf-spring rather than a coveted book. This is the reason that freedom is and always will be dependent on wealth; being forced into decision by straitened finances is not practically different than being forced into decision by a fist or a law. Being a wage-slave is, in many practical ways, less unpleasant but no different than being a chattal-slave.)

So it was with a small feeling of relief that I pulled into the sunny street outside the big bakery on 12th Avenue.

A soft white cloud of yeast followed me across the street and down the sidewalk paved with gold. The Boy's team was playing on the field beside the Edwardian pile of Portland's technical high school, and so I turned right and up the stone steps towards the noise.


The Boy's team had won that morning. The task at hand was to defeat some outfit with the terrific name of "Psychic Pineapples", which had already become my favorite kid-soccer-team name. But, honestly...the sun was warm and the turf was soft, and the crowd was happy and busy so the business of winning and losing seemed less than pressing. The Boy's team scored. The Pineapples scored. The play was, as it usually is in these upper-grade-school games, an ungainly collision of deft and clumsy.

The Boy himself is not a skilled player; certainly not the worst on his team at the fundamentals of what is, really, a very simple game but not really anywhere near as good as even the average player on his outfit. I try to retain the fond eye of a parent rather than the critical one of a long-time player and observer of the game, but there is little denying that my child will never be essential to the fortunes of his team. He plays with a lanky enthusiasm, however, and makes several good tackles and with that I am content.


The final is 3-all; the Boy's side went up 3-1 near the half but conceded twice - actually, three times but had a lucky break in that one of the Pineapples went over the touchline on the way to scoring - late in the match to settle for the draw. Scoreline forgotten almost instantly the group briefly convenes for a photo then disperses to homes and entertainments in the sunny afternoon.

In the line at Voodoo Donuts I am pleased to see that at least one Portlander has her sandals on, her bare toes defying the passing of the year. She reminds me that we here in the Rose City do not give in to the rains easily; we sieze upon the slightest hint of sunshine to shed the layers and glower of winter.
The sagging truck smells of fresh bread, and the Boy and I enjoy the sight of the honey-brown loaves emerging from the oven.

We agree that although neither of us particularly craves plain white bread that the leavened aroma has us hungering for that simple taste. The day slows to a stop as I tell my son about my fifth-grade field trip to the old Sunbeam Bread bakery in Philadelphia. He tells me about his fourth-grade field trip to the zoo. In the long light of late afternoon as golden as the loaves of bread we sit companionably together, unhurried, waiting for Missy and Mojo, listening for footfalls loud in the quiet street that announce the slow arrival of his sister and my wife.

When you were a baby you were the noisiest, most restless baby in the history of babies.


We kept you beside us for the first half year, in a sort of platform thing that stuck onto the side of the bed. It was called a "co-sleeper" and was supposed to be the perfect solution to keeping your infant near you without actually having them in the bed where you could, say, roll onto them in a drunken stupor and suffocate them.

We called it the "co-screamer" and looked upon it with unmitigated loathing for the nocturnal hell-din it signified.

When you were four you had a caretaker you adored. She and her wife loved you and indulged you and scolded you and watched over you and you thought that the sun rose and set on her. That same year your elders here in Oregon decided in their wisdom that people like your caregiver shouldn't be able to call their beloveds "husband" or "wife", and we tried to explain to you why she was sad. We told you that some boys liked girls and some girls liked boys but some girls liked girls.

"But dada..." you said, insistently, "Janey and Susie are boys."


When you were seven you had night terrors that lifted you shivering and sobbing from your bed in a dream so terrifying that I could not console you.
When you turned eight you told me that there were two people who knew everything about everything in the Universe; God, and Santa Claus, and you weren't certain about God.

You told me that you would rouse in the small hours of the night and think about Big Things; stars and galaxies, about how big the world was and how many things were in it and how you might never know all of them and how that made you feel small and sort of sad.

When you were ten you would break into tears, sometimes at the smallest of checks, because you had frustrations and fears and hurts you couldn't express. You hurled yourself at what you loved, like your mother, with the wild thoughtlessness of one who has never been badly hurt and then were aggrieved when she pushed you away as too rough.

Now you are eleven.

Even after more than a decade together I am sometimes amazed at what I don't know or understand about you.

I have no notion where you inherited your slender build; your mother and almost all of her family are compact and boxy rather than gracile (where they are not simply as round as balls...) and I am as bulky and squat as most of mine. What long-legged girl or lanky boy married into your family too long ago to be remembered, whose small, rounded arms and legs are reborn in you? Certainly not the one you took your rufus colors from, all thick Celtic hair and freckled fair skin.


And perhaps the most strange: I cannot seem to see though your eyes. You are too different from me, sky where I am earth, cloud-topped highs and drenching teary lows where I stretch away endlessly calm and stolid.

I do not understand your frequent glums, how often you give up quickly rather than persevere, why you seem to see boredom and frustration where I see patient learning and practice.

I love you, but I often don't understand you. We are air and flame against earth and water.

Here you are now, poised near the Land's End of boyhood, at once straining to strike out into the dark seas of adolescence while still clinging to the last vestiges of childhood; your mother's touch, your stuffed friends, the small warmths and cozinesses of your brightly-painted child's room. You are beginning to strain away from me while I am still finding new things to love about you.

I love your small sweetnesses and your great silliness, your quiet moments and your wild, tearing energy. I love you, my no-longer-small-boy, with the open-eyed recognition of all your faults and failings that live alongside your virtues and strengths. Family is for loving when there may be little liking and we are, at the last, family.


It's late, and I am tired, but before I am done I will walk slowly down the darkened hallway in my halting step, to lay my hand on your head where you sleep wondering what dreams you dream and hoping, in the still, silent moment the hope of every father for every son; that he will wake each day wiser, kinder, and stronger than he lay down.

And so I do for you, my son.

Happy Birthday.

We don't do much religion at the Fire Direction Center, but this year the kiddos wanted to decorate eggs. So.


To credit the artists: left and lower right, Daddy. Top right and right center, Missy. Top left and lower left, The Boy.

Here's another look.


Turned out rather well, for what Bugs Bunny would have called "da technicolor henfruit"...

One of the good things about time is that it makes kids grow up.
Okay, sure; babies and toddlers are very cute; indeed, its probably that very cuteness that saves dozens of them from being drowned in sacks like excess puppies.

But they...well...let's just say that if they were a dive, or a gymnastic routine, or a video game, they wouldn't rate high for difficulty.

It's not that they're easy easy. They're fairly to insanely high-maintenance and burn through your waking time as well as depriving you of a hell of a lot of your non-waking time, at least when small. You're always doing something to or for them when they're little.

But they don't really actively engage your brain. Most small-child-rearing can be done pretty much on mental cruise-control. Love. Hug. Babble at. Feed. Change clothes/diapers. Play simple games with. Read brain-killingly-simple stories to. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Day after day after day...

I know, I've said this before but it's worth repeating; all this bizarre love and respect that a big chunk of American society lavishes on parents for how haaaaard they work, how much they sacrifice, how good and wonderful they are?

Utter bullshit.

Not that parents - a lot of parents, anyway - don't work hard, forego pleasures, and are good people in general and towards their offspring in particular.

But parenting as a job beats the hell out of mining coal or butchering hogs. It sucks way less than cleaning toilets.

Clearing mines under artillery fire? Harder and sucks waaaayyyy more than parenting.

It may often be thankless and at times the hours are bad. But its not like wrestling with psychotic mental patients (and if it is you probably need to have the kid seen to by a specialist...).

The actual worst part about it is the fucking boredom.

Let's be honest with each other; to an adult with a functioning cerebrum a 4-year-old is like a labrador with less bowel control. Just like the pooch will happily play fetch for hours past the moment your mind implodes from the utter sameness the toddler is generally limited to doing things that are about as interesting and engaging as staring at paint chips and to an adult about as enjoyable as eating them.

Doesn't mean that parenting that 4-year-old isn't important, or that doing it well and throughly isn't worth the doing.

But it's kinda hard to get excited about it.

So. Time is great. It turns these little labradors into little people.

Sometimes perverse, infuriating people. Sometimes people who seem determined to piss you the hell off.

But, as often as not, funny, clever, inventive, curious, engaging people who are interesting to be around and to do things with.

The Boy and I spend most of Saturday together because his soccer team, the NoPo "Cheetahs", is playing their hated rivals the "Aftershox" over at Flavel Park in northeast Portland.


After a grab-ass half hour assembling everything we needed (and if you have a kid, or if you've ever run a crew of 10-level workers you know about the grab-ass; "Where's your (fill in the blank)?" "Did you shut your room light off?" "Do you have water in your water bottle?" "Where's your PYSO card?" Yeah, it's like that.) we jump in the Honda and roll out for Parkrose.

On the way we talk tanks, mostly.

The Boy has some inventive notions of building the ultimate tank and how he'd fight it. Given that he has no actual idea of the nature of war, for which I thank the Gods of Blood and Iron every waking moment, and an eleven-year-old notion of how machines, physics, ballistics, and human nature actually work he actually has some intriguing notions.

I try not to shoot down too many, though I may mention the ones that have already been tried and failed (Multiple turrets? Usually not a good idea...) but I have to say I'm slightly impressed at the encyclopedia of knowledge of WW2-and-early-postwar armor he's built up from his beloved World of Tanks game.

We also chat about the soccer game.

He's already a little depressed; in two season the Cheetahs have never beaten the Aftershox. Worse, the typical Cheetah-Shox derby ends with a burst of Aftershox scoring that boots the Cheetahs off the pitch in disarray. It's not a simple fix; the Aftershox have just been all-around better in all things soccer.

We get to the park, already noisy and busy with kid soccer and the bathtub-ring of parents, siblings, pets, various required impedimentia (the average kid soccer team comes to play with more tote-able crap than Hannibal's Army including the elephants. Just sayin') and rations. After all, life does not consist of Sport alone.

Afterwards, there must be Snacks.

The Boy and I traipse over to the north field where his game is scheduled and begin the process of assembling him as Goalkeeper Kid when we discover that in the grab-ass half hour young Peter Shilton has forgotten his shinguards.

Fortunately Coach once played recreational soccer as an impoverished college student and knows the trick of slicing up a cardboard box and slipping the bits inside the knee-socks.

They provide no protection - I caution the Boy that his days of going in hard with his studs flying should be considered over for the day (he snorts derisively) - but will produce an appropriate thump when the referee raps his shins.


The Cheetahs take their warm-ups as seriously as any other group of eleven-year-olds take a mundane and humdrum chore, which is to say not at all. There is lots of silliness and chatter and horseplay.

But as the team huddles up after I look over to see the Boy standing alone, quietly surveying the pitch and swinging his gloves from shoulder to shoulder.


There is a moment before every match when a goalkeeper, if he or she is worth anything, realizes that its their work that day to keep the ball out of their goal.

That while there may be ten or a dozen or a hundred different excuses or reasons or rationalizations for failing to do that in the end it comes down to their speed and strength and skill.

If sport has any value at all it is in that. You are matched against an unyielding standard and you stand or fall. There is no middle ground, no equivocating, no penumbra of doubt. You either give all or you don't, you either rise to the standard or not.

The Boy is learning that hard lesson on the lumpy ground and untamed grass of northeast Portland.

I don't think that's a bad thing at all.

Our usual linesman is missing so I volunteer to run the touchline, limping, attempting to appear neutral and unbiased whilst muttering tactical advice to a group of grade-school children.


At least I manage to avoid using the phrase "utter rubbish!" which I've been told is my standard curse at professional games.

The first twenty minutes or so are fraught. The teams trade goals. There are moments of lovely precision amid the usual schoolboy booting and fumbling. The Boy lets a dangerous bounding cross go right between his hands but luckily for him and the Cheetahs there are no Aftershox on the far post.

The halftime whistle blows with Cheetahs up 3-2.

After a sip and a quick talk the boys run out for the second half. On the sidelines the parents gossip and laugh, happy with the progress of the game, the sunshine, and the Spring all around us.

One of the moms has rushed outdoors - undoubtedly having waited until the last moment for the grab-ass half hour! - in a light dress on a breezy cool day and has had to dig around in the family car to find something warm to wear over it. What she's found is a sort of knee-length light woolen coat that would not have looked out of place on this field fifty years ago.

One of the Boy's defenders' sister stands slim in the shade of a park maple, her long pale hair caught up in an elaborate braid studded with small white daisies the color of the cords and earbuds of her iPod. She gazes into the middle distance, listening to music no one else can hear, little concerned with the doings of smaller brothers.

Suddenly, shockingly, the Cheetahs take control of the match. One of the Boy's teammates is a skilled attacker, but he is usually isolated and suppressed by his singularity. Today the Cheetahs have no less than three players running free, and their interplay slices through the Aftershox defense.

The red-shirted rivals, on the other hand, appear to be missing several of the players that provided them with their most dangerous threats. Their attack is not quite working, their last pass intercepted or wide. When they do fire off a shot the Boy is there to slap the ball away or field it.

Now time is an enemy, seeming to slow to a crawl. Up 6-3 the boys in NoPo blue want the final whistle that doesn't blow. Another Aftershox attack goes out for a goal kick. Cheetahs midfield plays smart, pushing the ball out to the touchline, into the corner, forcing their rivals to chase.


Regaining possession the tall kid with the light-blue shorts plays a good long ball through towards my touchline. One of his teammates on the far side is goal-side of the last Cheetahs defender and my arm goes up as the Aftershox attacker turns with the ball but is met and tackled neatly away. The referee looks at me inquisitively and I explain; she shakes her head, either dismissing the infraction or doubting my impartiality.

The long throw goes up the sideline.

Finally, finally, the long whistle, and the Cheetahs collapse into a huddle like a neutron star of satisfaction. There is the obligatory cheer-and-handslap for the defeated, but both sides know that the underdog has won this year's Superclasico, that the perennial champion has been dethroned. The Boy throws me his gloves and sprints back to the sack of granola bars and juice bags, grabs his share, and is munching and sipping contentedly as we walk back to the little Honda.

"You stood in against some tough shots, little man." He smiles around his juice-pouch straw, satisfied with his play.

The Boy is not built anything like me. Where I am squat and thick with short legs he is gracile, slender and tall, his shoulders narrow as mine are heavy and sloping.

I think of that as I touch his back, feeling the light bones of his shoulderblades like the wings of birds beneath my hand.

It took a while for me to get beyond Bryn's birthday this year.

Between that, and an exceptionally busy work week, and the Boy's continuing story, and a personal fascination with whatever-the-hell is going on in the Crimea I just haven't had the time to get back to this blog.

Sorry.

Blogging will be light for the next week, too, as I will be working on the Battle for this month: Glorieta Pass, 1863.

But I did want to poke my head up and look around so's you didn't think I'd gone into hibernation or something.

So, some minor bloggage.

Fucking CPAC.

What a goddamn shitshow. The fact that these idiots invited, and then cheered, Ollie Fucking North pretty much puts a stake in whatever-functions-as-the-organ-that-conservatives-have-instead-of-a-heart. Certainly not a brain; anyone who would do anything in the vicinity of Ollie Fucking North other than spit on him is a damn lunatic. The man is a walking skid mark on a U.S. Marine uniform pant.

And to top that there's Scooter Fucking Libby? And Bernie Fucking Kerik? Is this supposed to be a conservative convention or a damn parole board meeting?


Pretty much sums up modern U.S. movement conservatism, though. Neither benevolent nor intelligent, just a seething, wretched hive of angry, vindictive scum and villainy. Not with Extra Felons.

Sheesh.
And in other "conservative" news..."conservative Christians" are upset because of "historical inaccuracies" in a movie about...Noah?

Wait.

What?

No, this isn't "The Onion".

Seriously, Jesus-pesterers are having kitten-fits because this movie, whatever else the hell it does, doesn't fit the version of a made-up ancient Hebrew version of an older made-up Sumerian tale about a guy who builds a big-ass boat and stuffs animals in it?

(Extra points to the Jesus-pesterers who seem to have spent a ridiculous amount of wasted time trying to reconcile the logistical requirements of a gajillion animals by trying to hammer the Hebrew word "kind" (as in "two of each kind") as ever-larger phylogenetic categories. Apparently there's even a special Jesus-pesterer term for this - "baraminology" - which is essentially the same thing as the "science" of describing the types of ponies in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.)

The linked article at The Panda's Thumb is made of 100% awesomesauce, BTW; check it out.

"Historical inaccuracies."

Snort.

Speaking of dead conservatives...or were we?

Whatever. Point is, Shirley Temple Black kicked the bucket last month.

I know, I know...she's a film icon, the prototype Child Star and bigger in American film history than Lassie. My problem is that I discovered her in my teenage years and from the lofty maturity of fifteen her juvenile films always seemed cloying, childish, and twee. I've since developed a greater appreciation for her early talents but never quite to the point of loving her or her child work.

My loss, I suppose.
Thing is, I love the heck out of her late Forties work. After the war Shirley had matured into a damn good little comic actress.

She goes toe-to-toe with the heavyweights in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer and is wonderful as a teenager in Since You Went Away. I've also seen her do delightful work in a piece of postwar comic nonsense called Honeymoon; she really had the chops to make it as an actress in light comedy. It's too bad she didn't manage to keep working past the late Forties, and you have to wonder if her childhood success didn't have something to do with that.

Seriously, think about it. Here was a young actress who was attractive, sexually attractive, but who was indelibly associated with the audiences of the late Forties and Fifties with a six-year-old girl. I mean, imagine; the ick-factor of getting a boner looking a little Curly Top?

Yeah, that.

I should add, though, that it's also probably good for her memory that Pete McCloskey beat her for the 11th Congressional District in 1967.

She ran to his right - she was a pretty conservative Republican for the middle Sixties (not that she'd be considered "conservative" today, mind you) and so we remember the child star, the promising young actress, and the gracious apolitical hostess and not a more divisive conservative Congresswoman in the Nixon (and possibly the Reagan) Era.

My favorite story about her?

Anne Edwards' biography says that when she was invited to the White House in 1935 she shot Eleanor Roosevelt in the ass:

"Temple and her parents traveled to Washington, D.C., late in 1935 to meet President Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor. The presidential couple invited the Temple family to a cook-out at their home in Hyde Park, New York, where Eleanor, bending over an outdoor grill, was hit smartly in the rear with a pebble from the slingshot Temple carried everywhere in her little lace purse." (Edwards, p. 81)

So maybe even then little Bubbles was a red-meat Republican.


Probably just as well we'll never know.

This was kind of intriguing in a very odd way:

"China Southern flight CZ628, operating as a code-share with Japan Airlines Co. (9201) as flight JL5021, was headed to Shenyang, China from Narita airport in Japan when North Korea fired the missile at 4:17 p.m. yesterday, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min Seok said today by phone. The jet was over international water at an altitude of 10 kilometers (32,800 feet) at 4:24 p.m. when it crossed the trajectory of the missile, which reached a height of 20 kilometers, Kim said."

Despite what the article says the two objects were not actually very close in time; seven minutes is a hell of a long time at 400 miles per hour (or more, for the missile).

This wasn't a close call.

The odd part about this for me was that when we used to range fire on Fort Lewis, Washington part of our ballistic arc for high-angle fire was within the flight path for aircraft landing at SeaTac Airport in Seattle. Range Control would close the range for some time, ten minutes before or after (I forget the exact envelope) when an aircraft was scheduled to fly over.

That used to drive us bugnuts. The phrase you'd hear repeatedly was "Little bullet, big sky". But there was no room for any sort of miscalculation when a freakish mishap might kill 200-plus people.

We didn't shoot.


The corollary to this - for me, anyway - isn't that the Norks barely missed a civilian airliner. They misse by a mile. It's that they just didn't give a shit; their impact area was downrange of a commercial air corridor and they just popped off rounds without bothering to check and see if there even WAS anyone out there to hit.

That's almost scarier than if they were trying.


It's Saturday morning and if I thought that the end of the week would bring some relief I was kidding myself. Friday is the kids' "game night", so there were video games played from sunset to damn near midnight (okay, 10:30, but close enough...).

Then it was the Boy's "night to sleep with mommy", which is a toddlerhood ritual that he loves to reenact when he can. But the Girl tends to toddle out to the couch - which is where I sleep when the Boy is doing his Oedipus Junior thing - at the wee hours of the morning, so Peep-Mommy Night is always on a night I can sleep in the next morning.

Usually everybody is happy with this, so it was a bit surprising to be awakened sometime in the dark predawn by the sound of someone being violently ill.

It was my Bride, who was wretchedly hugging the porcelain chalice, shivering and gulping. In the Little House it's hard to escape one another so her struggles were everyone else's. The Boy retreated into his bedroom and shut the door (he's still in there at 9:30...), the Girl toddled out to ask what she could do, and I lay down in our bed listening to the sweet little voice and her mother's strained answers.

The Bride is back asleep now, finally at rest, the Girl is watching some sort of bizarre Minecraft video, and I need to get dressed and wake the Boy so we can go to futsal in a moment.

Just another day, and I promise; more substantive blogging when I return.

So the Boy is sitting watching television the other evening in a classic young-adolescent-boy pose; scrunched down with his bare legs thrown over the side of the armchair.
I don't recall what the hell he was watching (which reminds me that I need to really do a Kid Vid update with the latest kiddo faves) but it was probably something loud and irritating like Spongebob or the even-more-loathsome "Uncle Grandpa".

Anyway, I'm over working at the laptop about five feet away, so when he talks I can just barely hear him over the ruckus of the damn boob-tube, but he says almost to himself:

"A 15 millimeter sniper rifle is the intercessional tool of my life."

Yeah, I had to look it up, too;

in·ter·ces·sion [in-ter-sesh-uhn] noun
1. an act or instance of interceding.
2. an interposing or pleading on behalf of another person.
3. a prayer to God on behalf of another.
4. (Roman History) the interposing of a veto, as by a tribune.

I'm not sure what the Boy meant and I'm not really sure I want to know, either.


Meanwhile, Fifth Grade is becoming something of a struggle.

The Boy has always been a sort of slap-dash kind of kid. He'd rather do something, anything, really, half-assed and quickly rather than spend any sort of time on it and do it well. He's managed to slide through the first four grades on pure smarts, - because he IS a smart kid - and charm, the goodwill of his teachers. And because the first five grades in Portland Public Schools don't get A-F marks for their work.

But in Sixth Grade all that nonsense stops. And this year he's got a teacher that has been pounding on his tendency to turn work in late, or not at all, and half-ass his way through what he does turn in because she's telling him that next year he's going to get pasted with F's for that.

The Bride and I are trying to hammer it into his hard little head - because he's ALSO a hardheaded little bastard - that, in the immortal words of Dean Wormer, "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son..." And that he will soon find out that you tend to get out in grades what you put into your schoolwork in intelligent effort.

Right now, things aren't looking good. He's fighting this hard. He doesn't WANT to work, and for some reason seems to believe that some kid magic will see him safely through.

I hate seeing this, because this was me forty years ago. I took damn near a quarter-century to get my shit together and on the way took some damn hard hits, some of which are still with me, limiting my options and choices to this very moment.

I don't want to see my own son repeat my mistakes - real intelligence is learning from the mistakes of others - but I have yet to figure out how to convince him of this, and I'm not sure he will be convinced short of some teacher's intercessional tool putting one right in his ten-ring.

We have had the first real snowfall of the year. Yes, its pathetic compared to the avalanche of snow that has buried the Midwest and East coast. But, for Portland, this is a natural disaster;


The children are heartsick that Portland Public Schools has already called off classes for tomorrow.


You'll note, however, the Boy's costume includes nothing but shorts and knee socks. Pants? Yeah, right.

The Girl, child of the sunny south of China that she is, claims that she "is never cold".


Where-ever the recent snowfall rates on the overall scale of winter adventures, for Portland this is a Big One. We're effectively snowed in and reduced to eating lasagna and watching bad cartoons and the post-Soviet Olympics on the television.

Posting light, what with Thanksgiving and the new crewman here in the Fire Direction Center:
The little fellow there on Missy's hand is Spots Pecker Violet, or "Spots", for short. My bride was with the Girl when she picked out the baby budgie and claims she tried to steer young Miss into something more...conventional, like Polly or Mister Crackers, but no luck.

Regardless of things pecker, the Girl is a very good and devoted bird mama. Hopefully the little guy thrives on her attention.

I have also been to see the kid counselor.

The Boy has been having some real problem with his mother.
He has been picking fights with her over, well...pretty much everything.

He picks on his sister mercilessly, the Girl screams out of pure frustration, Mom tries to break things up and the Boy flat out refuses to listen to her. He is alternatively sulky and defiant, and she has called me several times over the past month or so completely driven to distraction.

Unfortunately, that tends to trigger my reflex, the one that was developed in the process of buying a brown flat-brimmed hat, and I show up bringing the heat. The Boy is physically cowed but internally furious, and when I am next away he turns it on his mother and sister.

Jean, the kid counselor, recommended that I dial back the fury. And so I have.

That has been something of a double-edged weapon.

The Boy does seem to be happier, and pleasanter to his mother and sister. He has been fairly decent about listening to her, and me, but...in the absence of the paternal roar getting him to do almost anything - from homework to chores to simple hygiene - is like water wearing down a redheaded stone; a constant steady drip-drip of reminders. Peep, your clothes? Peep, did you pu your clothes in the hamper? Peep, I was in the bathroom and your clothes are still on the floor. Peep...

He detests that and so do I, frankly, but the alternative is kid clothes littered all about and kid-toys heaped every which-where.

I have to say; much as the drip-drip is sort of crazy making I prefer it over the fear-up, too. Not nice having your kid fear you. Makes for those Daddy Dearest sort of post-puberty tell-all books.

Also researching the December 1914 actions in the North Sea collectively known as the "Scarborough Raid" for the Battles series; pure indulgence on my part, but I hope it will be worth reading; a little-remembered action that is one of history's great "what-ifs".

And, speaking of what-ifs...

I've been pondering since October a subject that came up - again - over at the MilPub. To wit; is there something peculiarly toxic, something unprecedented and awful, about U.S. politics circa 2013 - that "something" being the reactionary nihilism of the teabaggers.

My friend seydlitz, strategic thinker that he is, says yes; that the primary reason for the current and recent run of domestic and foreign misadventures (from sequesters to invasions and back) is the result of this pathogen invading the body politic.

My thought on this has always been that the U.S. has seen this before; that it has been sickened by, and then recovered from, similar Know-Nothingism and tribal greed whether in the form of lynch mobs, whiskey rebellions or treason in defense of slavery.

But I was thinking about that this morning as I waited for my drill crew to finish clean-up, and something occurred to me that hadn't before, and inclined me more towards seydlitz's position that there may be something uniquely toxic to American politics about the teatards.

The thing is, yes, we have seen this sort of thumb-sucking idiot before. Time and time again, in fact. They are a feature of human societies, not a bug; the greedy, stupid, shortsighted man-sized infant.

Every society - every human group - has one or two at least. They're the selfish ones, the grabby ones. Like infants, they want all the common goods but don't want to share any of their own.

And, like infants, they think that things magically appear because they want them to - not because of things like good government, regulations, and standards. They think that railways and overpasses and sewage treatment just happen and that somehow "private enterprise" would do just as well at all those public services, from heating houses (the evidence of Enron be damned) or fighting wars (the evidence of Blackwater to the contrary) or treating sick and injured (the ridiculous cost-benefit ratio of the fee-for-service healthcare "system" notwithstanding).

Fundamentally they don't believe in "the common good". They live by my father-in-law's rule; everybody's out to screw ya so watch your back. If they've got theirs, fine - everybody else can just fuck off and die.

Okay, so far, so bad, so much bushwah that we've seen before.

Assholes don't share, are assholes, believe government is bad when it tells them they have to share and not be such enormous assholes - so they don't really believe in government at all outside the occasional aircraft carrier or three.

But here's the thing that got me thinking.

Even back in the dark days before the Civil War the people who were trying to wreck the U.S. government were trying to wreck the U.S. government because they wanted a DIFFERENT government.

Not because they fundamentally didn't believe in any government at all.

And that's really what's happened to the current GOP; it is either run by - or runs in terror from - people who don't believe in government at all.

So I guess I have to admit; I was wrong. and my country is in much more danger than I ever imagined.

Because the barbarians aren't at the gates.

The barbarians are inside the walls and controlling one of the two political parties we've permitted ourselves.

We Are So, So, So, SO Fucked.

So the Boy wanted to be a Greek hero this Hallowe'en.

He loves the Percy Jackson novels, so the idea was to go out as Perseus, or Hercules. I couldn't sell him on m favorite guy, Odysseus, the sly one.

I might have mentioned - once - that dark, fir-bound mountains of Oregon weren't the sun-drenched, pine-wracked isles of Hellas, and that the sullen Willamette unlike the sparkling Aegean Sea, and that the typical outfit of a Greek hero might be a teensy bit chilly for the last day of October.


But a Greek hero he wanted so a Greek hero we sought.

We haunted the seasonal costume stores and the kid-specialty places. He found one on a website that turned out to be available only through the website.

Finally we ended up at the costume store downtown, looking at dozens of ninjas and scads of soldiers and cops (and the adult costumes I can't even begin to describe but let's just say that I've visited an upscale whorehouse and didn't see outfits half as salacious) but no Greek heroes.

However, at this point the fickleness of ten-year-old pushed into the business; the Boy fell in love with a cheap plastic M203 grenade launcher toy.

I have to admit, it had everything that would entice a ten-year-old boy or a Congressman or a defense contractor; glitzy pyrotechnics, loud noises, cheaply manufactured and exorbitantly priced. The Boy was completely entranced, and, suddenly, we were going to build his entire costume around a plastic firearm.

We looked at the soldiers and adventurers and found that the costumes were all shoddily made and foolishly expensive.

"Geez, boyo..." I said, "...I can come up with something more creative than this. How about...a Syrian rebel?"


And by this you have to understand that sometimes fathers have to have the cunning of serpents; I flat-out didn't want to end up buying the kid some overpriced faux-GI gear he's going to outgrow in half a year. But your urban guerrilla, hell...a scruffy pair of jeans and sneakers, a Barcelona shirt and some tatty military gear? Easy-peasy.

So I went out and picked up one of those Lebanese scarf things that everyone in the Levant seems to wear. We found his Real Madrid jersey (and, yes, I know that a hardcore Islamist isn't going to wear the kit of Franco's Own, it's what he's got...) and a long-sleeved undershirt. Well-used Seventies-style warmup pants and his Nikes. And I scrounged up one of my old web belts and assorted pouches.

To prevent some frantic Teatard from calling Homeland Security on "the Terrists!" I even made us up some little nametags:
I did get some pretty good snark from my friends and co-workers out of all this, who kept reminding me that, for instance, the phrase "Treat or die, infidel dog!" was unlikely to produce extra Milky Ways. Or whether I thought that an insurance salesman might be scarier.

But come Hallowe'en Day and the Boy was getting ready for school; we had all the pieces and I figured we were set.

Until I wound the soft black hijab around his neck and he looked up at me with his eyes half-full of regret, and said;

"I don't like this, Dadda."

I cock my head, and he gently removes the hijab, and says, brightening; "Here, I have another idea, look..." and proceeds to run down the hall to his room and return...

...with the brightest orange bandanna I've ever seen.

I didn't even know he had a bright orange bandanna.

He ties it around his neck and his smile creases the fabric and I can't help but think that he looks like one of Butch Cassidy's desperadoes if Butch had ridden for the University of Texas.

But that's what the Boy wants.

He adds a pair of safety glasses, pulls the hood up on his green-and-gray Timbers hoodie and what with all that and the toy grenade launcher he ends up looking like a bizarre fusion between a fashion victim, the assassin character on Assassin's Creed, and some sort of insanely overarmed urban gangsta.
So that was his costume. Feeling like a Syrian rebel promised an alpha strike and ending up with a lone B-2 noodling in the sky overhead I put on the discarded hijab, picked up my toy machine pistol and said; "OK, buddy, let's go score some treats."

I walk him around the block and let his mom take over; I'm tasked with keeping the Girl company, as she hasn't wanted to get dressed up and go out.

We watch her kidvid - now mostly Winx Club (and I should really do another KidVid post about the damn Winx Club...) mixed in with Adventure Time and her still-beloved ponies - surprisingly unbothered by young ruffians seeking treats.

The Boy returns aglow with the euphoria of greed and a sack full of candy, his flagging mother in tow sagging from some sort of stomach ailment. So she falls into bed and a restless sleep, and I end up tucking both the kiddos into bed, the Girl with her stripey wubbie and the Boy with his orange bandanna still around his neck.
And Abu Sheadon sits before the lighted screen in the dark of the last night of October, listening to the sounds of the night outside and the silence of the house within.

We had a busy day yesterday.

First we started off around the corner. There's one of those "little lending library" kiosks on Princeton, one street over, and I went to drop off a bunch of books there. I also found a book that looked perfect for Little Miss, so I traded 10-for-1 and off we went to the Transfer Station. The Boy came along to "help" but was soon immersed in the Tooth Fairy book and between the dump, buying new work boots for me, a stop at Powell's Books to snap up Bob Massie's Castles of Steel, and the trip to the Nickel Arcade the Boy finished the whole thing:


Thing is, on the way to the arcade we passed the big empty lot at 11th and Belmont and saw that the MiniGoats were open for business.


These little guys are the living lawnmowers for this lot and recently the goatherd has been opening the lot as a sort of petting zoo for the little munchers.


They're amazingly socialized for farm animals and they seem to love the attention. This little guy desperately needed a skritch between the horns.


The unquestioned stars of the goat show were the two little baby goats. I won't kid you; I wish to hell I'd have known about the whole "adorable baby goats = total chick magnet" thing when I was young and single.


Did you know that even tiny baby goats have little horn nubbins? They do.


I was shocked that the Boy - who normally loves all things furry and non-human - didn't come out to pet the goats. Go figure. But they were ridiculously adorable and I was saddened to read while I was researching this post the apparently the woman who runs the whole Goat Rental thing is a complete skeevebag. Still, that didn't make the minigoats any less adorable. Bye, adorable little MiniGoats!