We grow too soon

     In case you're wondering, the title is from an old Pennsylvania Dutch saying: "Ve grow too soon oldt undt too late schmart."  Translation: We get old too soon and smart too late.  Yah!

     In the case of this quote, I am altogether in agreement.  I learned far too late to do me any good several things about making girls interested.  This short blog comprises two of them.

     Thing the first: babies are CHICK MAGNETS!  It's true.  Holding a small child in your arms or merely looking after it in the lobby of a busy hotel will pull just about any woman over 20 over to admire the child and its antics.  Too late!!  I learned this only when I became a grandfather.

     Thing the second:  Using a good line from Jane Austen's novels will win long conversations with well read, young women.  Again too late, far too late, I must add.  I learned this only this morning when two very attractive young women sat near me in a coffee shop.  Looking at them, I was struck by their eyes.  Both had nicely shaped eyes of a pleasant color.

     When I quoted Mr. Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, they were delighted and spent the rest of their time in the shop chatting with me about their love of reading, their jobs and other things.  Would that I had understood this fifty years ago.  Again, too darned late.

     Thing the third: Women like to hear about themselves.  Before I was married, I spent most of my time with women either showing off, bragging or trying to get them into bed.  I believe that if I had talked about my dates to them and more importantly listened, I would have had more fun, gotten more second dates and (possibly) even gotten laid a time or two.

     Oh well.  I guess it's better late than never.  I still enjoy the company of women.  When they are young and pleasant to look at, I enjoy even more.  But it is W A Y to late to take them to a drive in movie and neck frantically through the feature.

     Like I said at the beginning, too soon oldt und too late schmart!!!

"Austenland" by Shannon Hale

          We are talking about one of the best novels I have read in years.
          Shannon Hale has combined the best parts of a Jane Austen novel, a modern romance, a comedy and a mystery.  What am I saying?  Austen did these things with her writing.  This goes from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first.  I do not believe that the reader has to be a fan of Austen's writing or the delightful films made from them to appreciate "AUSTENLAND", but it will definitely help to review some or all of the above.

          Shannon Hale has put a marvelous fantasy together.  Her characters develop as the story moves along.  Jane, her main character grows both through the story line and by the insertion of brief stories about her various, unsuccessful loves.

          Briefly, the story concerns Jane Hayes and her visit to Pembrook Park.  Jane is a moderately successful graphic artist in New York.  Pembrook Park is one of England's stately houses that has been turned into a vacation park for people, mostly middle aged married women, who want to relive a regency romance.  The non-vactioners, from the gardeners to the gentry, are all actors.  The gentlemen are in sufficient number to pair up with the vacationing ladies.

          The pairing is one of the first mysteries.  But some of the actors seem to jump outside their roles and romance the ladies for real...  Or do they?  The second mystery.

          Ms. Hale gives a delightful interplay between modern and old; acting and real; fantasy and the world.  Each major character moves delicately among these and among their memories and the present.  The tracery moves the reader through an intricate minuet.  It is a joy.

Renovation (the World Science Fiction Convention) update #1

     This is the staff pin for Renovation, the 2011 world science fiction convention.  We are in beautiful Reno, Nevada.  The pin features the convention logo and is, presently, the only con photo I have loaded on my computer.

     I turned a 3 day drive into a little over a week by routing myself through St. Louis, Denver and several national parks.  It was a long, lovely drive.  But the Arapaho National Park was very dry.  Many of the pines had died.  I suspect that the pine borer beetle that killed so many trees in New Mexico is the culprit.

     This is the second official day of the con.  Of course, the people who are responsible for smooth running of events and stage management or just organizing their staff have been working since Sunday.

     My staff is slowly trickling in.  Last night, there were just two volunteers on duty.  We did party patrol, but had to close the office earlier than we wanted.  Of course there was a problem while we were out, checking functions.  My boss was called in at 0200 this morning.  She did not appreciate having to open our office and hang out until the problem was solved.

     As I said, folk are beginning to volunteer.  Next post will have more pictures.

Libya: Does anyone get the message?

The more I hear our president speak about this situation, the less I think he understands.  Certainly the talking heads of the media are demonstrating huge naivete about what is going on.  So let me say a few things from an ex-soldier's point of view.

Currently, the resistance to the rule of Colonel Gaddafi appears to be a rabble with rifles.  The on-the-ground reporters seem surprised that Gaddafi's forces push them back when they wish.  The resistance consists of men who are armed mostly with rifles and rocket propelled grenades (RPGs).  These are good weapons against conventional infantry.  It appears they also have some anti-aircraft (AA) guns and machine guns.  These are obsolete.  Against a modern fighter jet, they are usually ineffective.  I'll go into the reasons for that later.

Gaddafi's forces are trained infantry, artillery and armor.  Aircraft, for the most part, are denied the battle field due to the NATO "no-fly" zone.  These forces are accustomed to working together.  They appear to have good communications.  It has been demonstrated that they know how to aim and use their weapons and to act as a team.

It would seem that there is an idea out there to level the battle ground by giving advanced weaponry to the resistance.  In the old days, such an idea might have had merit.  But there is a LOT more to firing a modern artillery piece than just shoving a shell in the breach and pulling the lanyard.  To be fair, that is basically what is done.  The trick is to do so in such a way that the projectile lands where the firing team wants it to.  That takes experts who can calculate the proper direction of fire (azimuth) the elevation of the barrel and the charge behind the projectile.  Firing artillery effectively takes a team, one that knows the current position of the target, its speed and direction.  Remember that tanks and the like don't just sit still and wait for someone to shoot them.

The resistance lacks teamwork.  They lack communications, command and control (C3).    Without these, even well trained soldiers are not as effective as those with it.  That is why during Operation Desert Storm, the allies first hit Iraqi communication centers and, of course radar.   Those things tell soldiers where the enemy is and which way to go to hit him.  The resistance lacks discipline and leadership.  Even our Department of State is not completely sure who they need to talk to in order to negotiate and work out aid programs.

Machine guns and AA canon usually can't hit modern aircraft.  Even as far back as WWII, gunners had trouble hitting aircraft, even the ones that were flying down their throats.  Hitting a moving object with a gun requires the gunner to lead it and fire at where the craft will be when his bullet or shell reaches the area.  Anyone who has played shotgun games like trap or skeet can tell you that it looks easier than it is.  The clay targets that are used in shotgun games don't shoot back or drop bombs on the shooters.  Going back to WWII, thousands of rounds were expended for each hit on a plane.  Those rounds were being fired by men who were trained in that type of marksmanship.  That training takes time, more time that it appears the resistance has.

I do not believe that NATO forces should be the ones training the Libyan resistance.  Countries in the Mid East that have stated sympathy for them are the logical ones to supply arms and training.  They have more at stake.  Their soldiers share a common language with the Libyans.  Supply lines from Saudi Arabia or Egypt or Jordan are much shorter.  If Arab states supply the arms, training and leadership, there can be no accusations that the US, UK or other NATO countries are meddling in Islamic affairs.  A stable Libya is of significant importance to its neighbors.  The countries surrounding Libya have a better understanding of the psychology and politics of that country.  Their intelligence services probably know the players better than we do.

Let's face it.  The United States and NATO simply can not afford the monetary cost of another war.

Dumb, dumb, dumb!

No pictures in this post.  Who cares to look at a bunch of outraged union members or smug politicians.

The Governor and Legislature of Wisconsin passed a new law that eliminates collective bargaining for government employees.  This was done by a combination of voting and parliamentary maneuvers.  Even though Democrat senators left the state to try stalling the legislation, it passed.

So why dumb?

First a little background on yours truly: I'm politically conservative.  I voted for John McCain.  I also vote for the man, not the party.  I was a member of management for most of my working life.  But after I retired and began writing, I joined the National Writer's Union... mostly for health benefits.

When I was working, I had several contacts with unions.  With one exception they were cordial and ended by helping the company and the workers.  I'll deal with the exception at the end of this essay.

I discovered that working with unions shortened and simplified discussions of pay and benefits for the people working for our company.  But in order for discussions to be productive, it was absolutely necessary for both sides to enter negotiations as members of a team, not as adversaries.  Both the business managers for the unions and the company team were conscious of two important facts:  1) without skilled work, the business could not continue; and 2) if the company went broke, everyone lost.

As managers, we approached negotiations with the desire to make sure our employees maintained a comfortable, sustainable standard of living.   Sometimes the economy or market dictated that raises could not be given, or had to be delayed.  We were luckily not working under the conditions of today.  Never-the-less, there was a year we had to not only not raise our worker's pay, but ask them to pay a larger percentage of their medical benefits.  We backed up our requests (notice, not demands) with audited balance sheets and profit/loss statements.  The business managers worked with us to both find a happy medium and to explain the problem to our unionized employees.

While I was in Japan, I was amazed to see a story reporting that at least one union had told their employing company that they would take a pay decrease for the year.  That was while the Japanese economy was still expanding, but the workers decided their employers need extra margin for operations.

Now let's get back to the one exception to my cordial relations with unions.  I was supervising a job in West Virginia.  The job market there was dismal.  Large numbers of miners and other workers were unemployed.  The task was to sandblast and line a large deionized water tank.  Chicago Bridge and Iron was doing the actual work.

Local rules indicated that at least two of the local union members should be employed on the job.  CB&I had no problem with this.  They hired three helpers at the rate that the national union had recently negotiated with most of the large painting contractors.  We assumed that there was no problem.

Alas, the local business manager showed up and informed us that his people would be paid a much higher hourly rate.  The CB&I foreman told him that was not an option.  The BM stalked off the job threatening both a strike and picket line.

I showed up early the next morning to do some paper work and make a couple of phone calls (this was long before cell phones and my motel was in a very small town.)  The BM was in the parking lot, unloading signs for the picket line.  As a I walked into the office, the workers began to arrive.  The CB&I painters stood aside.  The local guys walked up to the car, talked to the  BM for a couple of seconds, then grabbed the signs and started hitting the BM with them.  He got into his car and drove off while the local painter's helpers broke up the signs.

Not everyone is reasonable.  But breaking up organizations just because you can is not only wrong, it's stupid.

My holiday vacation

Good grief!!! It has been six months since I posted here. How the time has flown by.

To any regular readers, my apology for the delay.

This holiday season was spent with our daughter and grandchildren. They are quite grown now. Granddaughter is in her sophomore year in university and gransdon is ready to graduate high school. Before Christmas, we drove to Telluride. We spent a week skiing and snowboarding there. The photos I am posting are from that time. I took a few. My grandson and his friends took the rest.

The skiing was the best I ever had. It had been almost 25 years since I had skied. It took a few days to get my feet under me. I took some lessons.

Vlad took this photo of me as we wondered which of the peaks at the top of the lift was the most photographed.

After a great week in Telluride, we drove south to Los Alamos on Christmas day. My voice remained in Colorado and is, I suppose, walking home. By the time we reached daughter's home, it was well and truly gone and my cold had come to stay a while.

Daughter and one of grandson's friends trying out skis. Daughter taught skiing on the hill at Pacific, MO while she was in college. Most of the kids had only been on snowboards.

Snowboarding seems to be about aerial stunts, going very fast while barely maintaining control

jumping

and sitting down.

Telluride is a beautiful valley town, surrounded by mountains. The sky is magnificent.

Some of the snow melted, then refroze on the aspens and pines in the area. There are more photos in my file. They will be posted, perhaps, in a later blog.

For now, gentle readers, Happy New Year. May the coming year be filled with all good things for you.