I don't clean up my blog email inbox very often, so I have lots of old emails spanning my blogging career. But just now I found one tucked away in a folder that was from three years ago this weekend. One that starts...

Interesting post. I am retired AF, former helicopter crew chief/flightmechanic/gunner who got an engineering degree then returned to the flightline as an aircraft maintenance officer.

My first contact with Bunker.

I feel his absence all the time. It's bittersweet for me to travel to Texas this weekend, because we had planned to someday meet. I know that if he were still alive, I would've gotten to meet him this weekend.

I'll still go meet him someday, just not the way I pictured it.

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Darned Cardinals and their darned seven-game NLCS series and their darned rain delays. Now I've got a major dilemma on my hands.

This weekend I'll be at the SpouseBUZZ conference at Fort Hood. I'm very excited about participating in this panel, and I know it will be fun to meet fellow bloggers and hear their stories. But I also know that half my mind will be focused on the darned World Series.

Of course, that's not as bad as my friend from college, who had a wedding to attend last Saturday. She spent most of the reception with her face pressed against the reception hall window, trying to see the TV in the bar across the street! She says it should be illegal for people to get married during the World Series or March Madness.

I'd love for the Cardinals to just go ahead and win the thing, but I can't stand the thought of them winning the World Series while I'm 1000 miles away from my favorite Cards fan.

Anyway, if you're in the Fort Hood area and would like to say hi, I'll be at the SpouseBUZZ conference on Saturday. Should be a fun time. And let's pray for torrents of rain so the rest of the series gets postponed until next week.

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I was thinking more this morning about my post from yesterday. CaliValleyGirl and I may have grown up in wildly different zip codes, but I can't think of any values she and I don't have in common. Conversely, I know of several lefties who lived their whole lives in rural Missouri. I guess I'm no closer to figuring out what makes us embrace the politics we do.

And then thinking of California made me think of Tupac. Which made me think of my absolute favorite Dave Chappelle skit, one that makes me laugh even harder than Rick James. Maybe it's because I once dated a guy who was really into Tupac conspiracy theories. Yeah, I know, leave me alone.

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CaliValleyGirl is back in L.A. after living nine years in Germany. And she just took a trip to another planet: Alabama. You must go read her post before you keep reading mine. Go on, git.

I went to college in rural Missouri, population 17,000. Interestingly enough, we had a pretty big foreign exchange community. And I had this exact conversation with a French exchange student. He was dismayed that our town in Missouri never showed any foreign films in the local movie theater, because the locals would benefit from learning about other countries. Our local movie theater had three screens. Three. I tried to explain to him that his idea was not a very sound business move for a rural movie theater, but he insisted that everyone in France is educated about the United States, so we should educate ourselves about France.

I asked him why he didn't study abroad in Finland. He got a little puzzled and said that he didn't really know anything about Finland. Well, don't they have a culture that's worth learning about? Why wasn't he interested in learning about Finland? If he wants rural Missourians to learn all about France, then shouldn't he spend some time learning about Finland? Of course it's a silly juxtaposition, but it made the point that Finland is out of his experience. Learning about Finland might be interesting in and of itself, but it does nothing to really affect his daily life or his future. He was in the US to learn English in order to hopefully get ahead in the business world. What would it help him to learn about Finland, or a rural Missourian to see a French film? Not much in a practical sense.

Everyone wants others to know about and respect his culture. It's his, right? So it must be worth learning about! But "middle America" -- Jesusland, Flyover Country, Red States, or whatever you want to call us -- are really out of the average Californian or New Yorker's experience. I can't really fault them for not knowing about us, any more than I can fault a Frenchie for not knowing about Finland, but we do make up a big freakin' chunk of the country.

I have never been to California or NYC. (Before my mom interjects, I disclose that I went to NYC as an infant, but that hardly counts for my point here.) All I know about L.A. and New York comes from TV, the same way Europeans learn about the US. The disconnect is that my entire US experience, the America that I know, comes from living in Oklahoma, Texas, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky, and South Carolina. That's the US I know, and it's quite different from CaliValleyGirl's US (living in Hawaii and California).

I'm happy she visited my version of the US. I'd like to visit her version someday too. I think it can help us establish common ground, which would be good for all 300 billion of us.

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1 Several years ago we took a trip up Hwy 1 in California, Oregon and Washington. Most the time while we were in California, until we reached extreme Northern California, my husband kept saying, "I feel like I'm in a foreign country". I just recognized we were in California, and I didn't realize how much discomfort he was feeling about it until we reached extreme N Calif and he told me how relaxed he was and felt he was back in the USA. I get the same feeling when in Boulder, CO. We've lived on the East Coast in a couple of different areas, and several on the Gulf Coast all of course, in the South.

Posted by: Ruth H at October 25, 2006 07:37 AM (Y77sF)

2 million... 300 million...

Posted by: Will at October 25, 2006 10:56 AM (QRBGL)

3 Whoops. What is this, China?

Posted by: Sarah at October 25, 2006 04:20 PM (7Wklx)

4 You and I have sooooo much common ground, Sarah...but my boyfriend and I also always make a big deal of the little differences. For example, before saying goodbye to me in Germany, my bf sat me in front of the computer and made me read some personal safety website about how to identify and avoid dangerous situations...I think he would feel best if I had and carried a gun. I think he really thinks that I would need it 24/7 here in LA. Anyhoo, America is great...loving every minute being back home!

Posted by: CaliValleyGirl at October 25, 2006 09:32 PM (deur4)

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Woohoo, the voodoo doll worked!
Go Cards!

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Bleak House: Republicans deserve to lose, but what happens if Democrats win?

First, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has promised that election of a Democratic House would insure "a rollback of the [Bush] tax cuts." Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, who would be chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, would make sure no tax cut extension bill would ever get to the floor. He voted against the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts and the bill that later extended the tax cuts until 2010 (as did all but seven of the 205 Democratic House members). In September Mr. Rangel said that he "cannot think of one" Bush tax cut he would agree to renew.

Investors Business Daily recently pointed out that since the Bush tax cuts took effect in 2003, "the economy has added $1.26 trillion in real output, $14.4 trillion in net wealth and 5.8 million new jobs." But that progress doesn't seem to matter to the liberals, whose primary goal is to raise income tax rates. "Taxing the rich" will be the leading economic argument of a 2007 Democratic House, and a rollback tax bill of some kind will reach the floor.

Second, President Bush will not be able to re-energize his effort for individually owned Social Security accounts, for "preventing the privatization of social security" is in the Democratic National Committee's "6-Point Plan for 2006." Democrats don't trust people to own or invest their own retirement funds--better to let a wise government do that, for as socialist Noam Chomsky says, "putting people in charge of their own assets breaks down the solidarity that comes from doing something together." And since Congress gets to spend Social Security tax receipts that aren't needed to pay benefits, letting people invest their payments in their own retirement accounts would be a costly revenue reduction that the new, bigger-spending Congress won't allow to happen.

Via Instapundit. Yikes. Read the remaining points. Double yikes.

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Well, I didn't make it to the store or the post office or anything else I was going to do yesterday, but I did finish knitting a Detroit voodoo doll all in one day.

Heh. Go Cardinals!

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I wrote before about how much I love the stained glass window in the chapel on our old post. Now, according to my old neighbor, they're getting rid of it and designing a new one. I hope they keep the old one intact and put it somewhere else. For whatever reason, that window touches my heart in a way I can't describe.

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I was asked for a pupdate, which is something I will always oblige. So here the stinker is, cute as can be, snuggled up with his squeeky toy. And it's a good thing he's cute, because yesterday he ate through the apartment mini-blinds like they were made of ham.

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My goal for today is to whip out one of these in a Detroit uniform, in time for tomorrow night's game. Heh.

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Yesterday I posted food for thought. Today I post the other side of the argument:
If we had known then...
If We Knew Then...

You wanna know what I think? I think I'm not smart enough to know.

I too thought of the idea of hindsight when I read Goldberg's article. Tactical mistakes were made during the Civil War and WWII, yet we look back on those two as wild successes. I just don't know how time will look back on Iraq. Someday when all of this is a short paragraph in a high school history textbook, what will that paragraph say?

I don't have all the answers to the War on Terror. I rely on my husband, who's been in two of the three Axis of Evil countries, to give me his informed opinion. I trust our government has far more information than I could ever have about the situation. And I go with my gut and hope that in the end my gut was right.

That doesn't mean I don't have doubts. I constantly refer to the Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States. I think that has a major bearing on whether democracy can work in the Middle East. Reading LGF does nothing to bolster my confidence. But despite my doubts, I still think that Saddam Hussein had to go.

I've just been feeling lately that I shouldn't talk above my pay grade. And isn't that mostly what blogging is? I don't have any delightful insight that you people need to read. Sure, I have an opinion on the CNN sniper video and Ted Kennedy offering to help the Soviets. But my opinion is nothing you can't read at Blackfive or Cold Fury, respectively. I think the New York Times is crap for their recent whoopsie, I think it's ridiculous to assume there's institutionalized racism at Cracker Barrel, and I think we need to have a serious investigation into Dirt-gate.

But what do I know anyway...

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Woah. It's a real-life John Doe! I wonder if this guy knows how many dimples there are in a golf ball...

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A thread worth reading:
Iraq Was a Worthy Mistake
Ace's response to Goldberg
The comments are worth a glance too.

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I just want to be a jerk for a minute and point something out.

Go Cardinals!

UPDATE:

Tigers in three? Not so much.

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Today rivals our 4th of July for Americanness. We voted (absentee), went to the State Fair and ate our weight in okra and deep fried Snickers, and now we're drinking beer and watching the World Series. Take that, Mellencamp: this is our country.

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John Hawkins has a great interview with Larry Elder on race, health care, free trade, and blogging.

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Whew, my heart can't handle being a baseball fan. I thought for a while that it might be my duty-Judy to be a Tigers fan next week, but now the Tigers can eat it.
All hail Yadier Molina.

And my sleep cycle can't handle Eastern time zone. Look at me, up until midnight. I'm so off schedule from all these late night games that Charlie and I slept until 0945 this morning. I haven't slept that late since college.

And I sure can't sleep right now; I have to wait for all those butterflies to calm down.

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Iowahawk makes an appeal to Conservative America. I got such a kick out of this paragraph that I can't stop giggling. Republican stereotypes crack me up.

Despite what you may have heard on Fox News, we Democrats know what issues are on the minds of heartland conservatives like you. We know that your number one concern of is the safety of your children -- whether they are plucking their banjos on the back porch, speaking tongues to snakes at Jesus Camp, or torching crosses at your local Nascar racing contest. We also know that the number one threat to your children's safety is the scourge of international homo-ism. That's why we at the DNC have created "The Contract With American Hillbillies," a new multipoint investigation program to identify and root out conservative stealth homoism before it threatens you or your precious little inbreeds.

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Saw this on MSNBC today: A new study finds that even top undergraduates are woefully ignorant of history and civic government

I can't say I'm surprised at all. My college GPA was a 3.92 and I missed a couple on the sample test. Embarrassing. And my college did a pretty good job of forcing us to take a variety of courses. Still, even with all those requirements I never had to take economics, statistics, or anything like geography. I think we do a disservice to students by filling their schedules with stuff like "Environmental Global Warming" or "Gender and the Law". I took a class on serial killers, so now I know more than the average person about Ted Bundy but cringed when I got asked a question about the Revolutionary War. That's sad, but I have no one to blame but myself. I just wasn't mature enough from age 18 to 22 to take anything that wasn't fun. Fat lot of good my Russian literature and Japanese classes have done me since.

By the way, I've been looking for a good US history book because I think I could really use a refresher. Anyone out there have any suggestions?

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Good thing we didn't bet on black.

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1 Scene from Passenger 57: Snipes: "Do you ever play roulette?" Bad Guy: "Nope." Snipes: "Oh, well, do you ever play chess?" Bad Guy: "Not really." Snipes: "Parcheesi?" Bad Guy: "Oh, yes, I quite enjoy that." Snipes: "Well, let me give you a little advice: ALWAYS BET ON BLACK!" Bad Guy: "What?" Snipes: "I'm black." Bad Guy: "Oh.. alright."

Posted by: Will at October 17, 2006 11:00 AM (QRBGL)

2 Thanks, Will. I was REALLY scratching my head on that post. Passenger 57 clearly did not make the same impression on me as on Sarah. Or else early dementia is kicking in.

Posted by: Oda Mae at October 17, 2006 08:51 PM (945XX)

3 Sorry, that's like my husband's favorite ridiculous movie line. He says it all the time. My favorite is "That's none of your damn business, and I'll thank you to stay out of my personal affairs" from Ace Ventura.

Posted by: Sarah at October 18, 2006 03:11 AM (7Wklx)

4 Very nice site http://megamozg.com/master-degree/map.html

Posted by: Dale at November 04, 2006 01:55 PM (yu/yc)

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