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Grokking Starship Troopers
It’s been a pretty quiet week. I had to work Saturday so I haven’t done much besides work. We had a supply drive and it was more fun than I thought it would be. It was set up with the Governor’s office for her inauguration (Governor Kelly of Kansas). My board is all Republicans so it was nice to meet and compare notes with the Democrats.
I had a bit of a mishap at the end and it took me a goodly amount of time to clean up my mess. That shot most of the daylight. I went to this bar and grill Ross’s 20th Street. The Chiefs game was on so there was a loud and drunken crowd. The taps weren’t working so I had a KC Bir Dunkel which is a decent one. That and a Reuben and fries. A little puny but ok. Not my vibe so I won’t be back.
Mostly I’ve been reading a lot. I crushed Ursula Leguin’s Earth Sea Trilogy. Pretty solid fantasy. There was some good language and an interesting set of stories. I’ve also been reading a book on Salvador Dali. Diary of a Genius is our bookclub selection so I picked up a couple of books about him from the library while I wait p0lpfor it from Thriftbooks.
I set that aside for Starship Troopers. I read most of Heinlein’s oeuvre in 7th grade and it stuck with me better than most. I remember when the female pilot shaves her head really made an impression on me. That wasn’t really a thing in 1980, at least where I was from.
I keep seeing this meme with a quote from Heinlein that the people who really grok him like 3 books: Troopers, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Stranger in a Strange Land. I love Stranger, it doesn’t feel as right-wing as a lot of Heinlein. Definitely a favorite of mine.
I’d barely remembered Harsh Mistress. The only thing that has stuck with me was Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Not a bad lesson for a 12 year old. Its an impressive novel and has a nice bit on insurgency and revolution. It hits on his themes of responsibilities as well as rights. I can see it’s appeal from the right and the left.
Troopers is more problematic, popularly considered fascist. I loved the movie which was a bit of a satire and pretty clever. I haven’t finished Troopers but I don’t see it as fascist but it is authoritarian.
The two years mandatory military service to become a citizen is not necessarily a bad idea. I support a mandatory service period although I would count Peace Corp or Americorps or that sort of thing.
There is a lot on this HS civics teacher and his Sargent in basic training that point to social ills having their origin in abandoning spanking. Treats it like it’s science. In 1968 definitely a reaction to what was happening. We know I. Behavioralism that rewarding positive behaviors is way more powerful than punishing negative behaviors.
There are a lot of problematic pieces around those themes. He predicted America not lasting to the 21st century before falling to crime and disorder because of permissive parenting and lack of consequences. You can look at how the rest of the world handles crime and punishment and our crime rates and incarceration rate and see his these are BS.
I think I grok Heinlein I just don’t like him. He thinks because I only like 2 of the 3 I don’t understand him. I understand him I just think he’s wrong. Troopers is a rip roaring good war novel though. I’ll take it over art history any time.
Holiday Letter 2022
It’s a great building, a conversion of an old Jewish temple. One of the coolest buildings in town in a town with a lot of cool buildings. It’s the first time I’ve lived alone for more than a few months. I like it more than I thought I would. Gives me a lot of time to reflect which I was short on for the nine years I served on the Columbia City Council which I wrapped up last year leading to the big changes. In general, it was nice to rip the band aid off and be done with Columbia. Between the brutality of political life and the toll of working with homeless folks it had started to get to me. Getting away and being in a new place doing new things was just what the doctor ordered. If I had stayed in Columbia I would have been pulled into more drama and been put upon do more hard stuff for free, then I feel like doing at this point in my life.
It’s been a little while since I’ve done a holiday letter, but I want to get back in the swing of blogging in 2023 and this seems like a good start. The beginning of the year found me starting a new life in Leavenworth Kansas. I had moved here in November to take a job as the Executive Director of a domestic violence and sexual assault service center. I kept my house in Columbia, Missouri which is about three hours away and I make it back to visit about once a month or so. I got a nice two-bedroom apartment a short walk from work.
So, asides from work my life is pretty quiet. I walk a lot. One of the first things I did is get a list of the Leavenworth Parks and walk to them all. There are some nice ones. Haven Park has mountain bike trails that are fun to hike on, even though the woods are pretty scrubby. Veterans Park has some good trails but it’s on the other side of town, so I don’t get over there much. Three Mile Trail and the River Walk are my go-to walks I do several times a week. I like hikes that start at my front door and a walk through town and down the River Walk to Three Mile Creek and then take the trail to the end and circle back home or walk it backwards if I need more steps is my go-to walk.
It’s a beautiful day for December so I walked down 7th Street to Three Mile Creek to the River Walk and then down Esplanade to 2nd and back was a nice walk and a little longer and may become my new one. I had some back pain so I took the day off and thought a long walk might help me stretch out. I’ve put on a lot of weight this year and am looking to get a lot more active and do some portion control and drop a few pounds.
My job has been fairly stressful until recently. The nonprofit was a bit of a fixer-upper to put it mildly. It had closed down for about a year and never really got straightened back out after reopening four years ago. It took a lot of work to get the accounting straightened our, fix the grant reporting system and bring in solid management staff. We still have a lot of turnover but we are stable if still a bit fragile. I have repaired our relationship with our funders and been out in the community a lot, so donations are up. We’ve improved the data collection but that still needs some work. We are close to getting certified which will be a big accomplishment. We have a few things left to do from our site visit as far as rewriting our rulers to be more trauma informed and paring down our fairly onerous intake procedures. I’m kind of excited about having the space to improve programming.
There has been so much catch up and back-office repair I haven’t been able to focus as much on process improvements. I was finally able to fill our contract counselor position so it’s nice to have another clinical heavy hitter on the team. I hope to start doing some motivational interviewing training for my staff next month. I wrote myself into a COVID grant to do that but haven’t had the time to make it happen. I am also looking forward to doing an annual report. We’ve not done one in many years, and I didn’t have the data or accounting nailed down to do one last year.
Mostly I’ve been pushed at work. Have had very little time to choose my own adventure kind of activities and have been keeping the wolves at bay. I actually have some discretionary time and some ability to slow things up a little and focus more on selfcare. I want to go to Italy in June so I need to get in much better shape to properly enjoy it. Walking more and getting back on the ebike are my big plans and adding some inside workouts when the weather isn’t cooperating.
Besides work I am active in the Chamber of Commerce. I’ve been on the Board of Directors since January which is pretty good for being a new resident. This January I’ll start on the Executive Committee as the Vice Chair. I’m also plugging in on their strategic plan. I’ve also gotten active with the Leavenworth County Human Services Committee and am spearheading their strategic planning efforts. I hope to do it in pieces over the next year working in small groups with rotating members. We rewrote the mission statement, so vision is next.
I’ve also been a Chamber Ambassador, so I go to all the ribbon cuttings. It’s a good way to meet people and find out what is happening in the community. I’ve read research that having lots of weak ties is one of the components of a happy life so I’m doing good on that front for a newbie.
I’ve done a bit of regional travel. I’m planning on wrapping things up here in a little less than a year after I fulfill my two-year commitment. I’m not really cut out to be an executive director. I was a reluctant administrator much preferring direct service and clinical work and clinical management and training but once you’ve been an executive director it’s really hard to get a job doing anything else. It’s been satisfying fixing a broken keystone nonprofit but it’s not how I want to spend my days and the small “p” politics of small-town organizing is a lot to put up with for not having a particular passion for the work or the community. I like them both, but I have a lot of interests and I like a lot of places.
So, I’ve spent some time checking out Lawrence, Topeka and Wichita as well as Atchison which is a bit closer. I’ve done all the hikes within a half hour drive and am working on the hour drive hikes. I’ve also checked out the Flint Hills and Osawatomie. I have concert tickets in Hayes Kansas to see an alt country band, 49 Winchester, in May and my grants manager is getting married in Wichita so I’ll be back down there. The Capitol with the famous John Brown mural is a must see. The John Brown Museum in Osawatomie also has some cool artifacts.
My friend Harry came out and we went to Lawrence to see mewithoutyou on their farewell tour. It was an awesome show and I saw some shows with John. Most notably the Firewater Festival with Blackberry Smoke, the Old 97’s, and 49 Winchester giving memorable performances. I did a float trip down the Missouri from Leavenworth to the next river town. I also did Hartsburg to Jeff City later in the year which was pretty fun. For my vacation I flew into Detroit over Labor Day and caught the Detroit Jazz Festival. I came early and stayed late to see my friends in the homeland.
And that friends has pretty much been my year. Mostly I’ve tried to live a humble and quiet life. I’ve given up big ambitions and focused on what’s in front of me. Overall, I’m pleased with the results. The ego gets going a bit, but I’ve gotten better about keeping it in check and will keep working on it. I’m going to stay on much the same path in the coming year but take better care of myself while doing it. By the end of the year, I should be wrapping things up and packing my things back to my house in Columbia. From there its epic road trip and finding a quiet place to hole up and write a book. I hope to blog more to keep me in the writing mode.
Hoar Frost in the Graveyard
After visiting all the parks here in Leavenworth and the surrounding areas I started working my way through the graveyards. Sunday it was really foggy and I heard reports of ice fog and thought it might be a good day to explore Mt. Carmel Cemetery. It turned out I was right.
Lots of the statuary had hoar frost in what looked like cobwebs.
Even the most whimsical statuary I’ve seen in a graveyard did not escape the hoar frost.
The fog was more of what I expected to see and I got one good shot of it.
It’s a big cemetery and the historic stuff is scattered throughout. They must have had isolated shrines and burial areas back in the day. There are still large parcels that are grassy fields. There are a lot of modern graves with laser pictures, bad poetry and things people are into like sports teams. People leaving grave offerings is touching though.
I also saw my first sex marriage tombstone. It made me feel a little better about modernity when I was thinking history might find us banal and silly. I’ll leave you with this weird Janus Crucifix which had a Jesus on each side in the middle of a turnaround.
Festivals
It’s been over a year since I published a blog post. A lot has gone on since then. I did a pretty good job documenting my epic road trip last year and then, nothing.
After I made it home I fell into a bit of a funk. I went on the trip to find some direction and a sense of purpose. The one I got was not as inspiring as I’d imagined it would. Living a life and abandoning any sense of destiny. Be humble and find some useful work.
That led to job hunting which I’d never been a big fan of. I don’t like self promotion or rejection and job hunting is a lot of both. I’ll spare you the near misses, disappointments and conundrums. The long and the short of it is I agreed to be the Executive Director of a struggling domestic violence shelter in Leavenworth Kansas. Good, meaningful work in one of the fields I have some passion and expertise and for that I’m grateful.
I had to relocate. As the faithful reader knows I own a modest house in Columbia Missouri. John and Flow agreed to look after it and pay the note while I’m away. I went back to van life for a couple weeks until I found a cool apartment. It’s in an old Jewish Temple, a short walk to work and close to downtown.
I’ve been in Leavenworth about a year and settled in quite nicely. I made a two year commitment and absent any personal life changes that feels about right to stabilize my organization, bank some money and be ready for my post career life.
I’ve also been at my job long enough to earn some time off. I took a bit longer than a week and made my COVID delayed bi-annual trip to the homeland and to see the Detroit Jazz Festival. I’m not a huge jazz fan but my friend Trevor is a super fan and his enthusiasm is infectious.
I decided to fly and rent a car so I could make sure I saw all the family and visit some friends in Toledo. I did all of those things and it was nice to reconnect and see how people are growing and changing. I also did an afternoon at the Toledo Museum of Art.
I did a slow walk through their ancient art collection. I’d been seeing this meme about how ancient Egyptian history is like 3,000 years long and 1,000 years after it began their were ancient Egyptian archeologists exploring old tombs. They had about 2,500 years of artifacts in the museum and it was amazing how consistent it is thematically and in style.
We stayed in a short term rental in Mexican Town. It was a little further out then we’ve stayed in the past but prices are rising. It’s been nice to see Detroit on the rise. That hit home when we had lunch on the patio of the Detroit Athletic Club. Trevor had gotten to know this former Chrysler executive who invited us to lunch. He has served on the board of a number of foundations and organizations that were instrumental in Detroit’s revitalization and with the City as a backdrop he ran through a lot of that history.
The festival itself was really great. We caught some select elements versus catching the bulk of it as we usually did. Less was definitely more. Most memorably was Harriet Tubman, a Doom Jazz outfit. I only caught a few of their songs as I jumped over from Hart Plaza to a side stage but it was really different and really fun. The electric guitar in kind of a metal style was really interesting.
Chucho Valdez was the artist in residence and his set was good. There was a jazz vocalist I really liked and a South African pianist in his 90’s that I liked a lot as well. Trevor and I walked back from downtown one night and that was fun to see more of the city at night.
As a nonjazz fan the thing I like most about the Festival is the diversity and people watching. It truly draws folks of all races from every walk of life from international jet setters to homeless folks. It’s a beautiful thing. Did I mention it’s free?
It’s another festival that got me blogging again. My brother John is the other person whose love of music gets me out to see shows. We’ve seen Blackberry Smoke a few times, Drive By Truckers and some other bands. He likes alt country and southern rock that’s not Lynard Skinnard. When tickets went on sale for Fire Water, Whiskey Myers southern rock festival went on sale I decide to get a ticket and meet up with John since it’s outside of KC.
It’s not really my thing. I’d only heard of Blackberry Smoke and The Old 97’s but I listened to a Whiskey Myers album and decided to go. I came down Thursday after work taking a circuitous route on the back roads. I had my Google maps set to avoid highways from my trip to the homeland so it took me an interesting route. We’re starting to see a hint of color, mostly the yellows. Cottonwoods and Ash are starting the change.
I live in the loess hills by the Big Muddy and enjoy the topography. With a little flat mostly bean fields I went from the loess hills to the Flint Hills which are equally pretty. It was good to see John. I go to Columbia once a month or so to check in, get some extra socialization and go to my book club. I missed last month because I had to work so it was nice to catch up.
Yesterday we got up and walked the first couple of miles of the Iron Hills Trail. It was a typical rails to trails and more for bicyclists but it was good to be out of the dew and get some steps in. I’ve been trying to explore the region since I’m expecting to be a short timer here in Kansas and the Flint Hills are definitely on my list of things to do.
After the hike we caught breakfast at the only diner in town. It’s themed after trains and there are a couple of toy trains mounted from the roof. Reviews say they are loud and get turned on by request. Portions were good and the bacon excellent. On the weekends they have a breakfast bar which is definitely worth it. I met the owner and he was a retired railroad guy who bought the building on a foreclosure. He opened a cafe at the request of the town and it seemed a hub of social life in Oz.
After breakfast we went to the John Brown historical museum and Battle of Ossawatamie site. Awesome place. It was his brother in law’s place who was a nonviolent Abolitionist and JB and sons stayed there for a time. In addition to the cabin lots of cool JB artifacts including his gun, allegedly a sword (I saw his sword in Topeka at the Capitol), his telescope and his travel trunk. There’s a great statue and it’s an old enough museum where promotional materials are now historical artifacts. People used to be cooler is my general impression.
We stopped by the war memorial as well. A Trump flag flying across the street shows how times have changed in Oz. We returned to the hotel and napped and we were ready for the festival.
It was an interesting crowd and we saw some great shows. People were really nice. Not a lot of diversity but for a country music/southern rock crowd they seemed pretty open minded. We saw about as many lesbian couples as folks in Trump gear.
Nikki Lane was really great. Put on a great show and seemed very personable. The Old 97’s didn’t seem to fit in but it was the most enjoyable show of theirs I’d seen. Blackberry Smoke is consistently great. If you’ve not seen them you’re really missing out. I’ve seen them three times fairly recently and it was a long day so I couldn’t Garner a lot of enthusiasm for the show.
Day 2 we caught breakfast at the train place again. They have a buffet on weekends and it was good. We checked out the historic bridges, the Congregational Church, and the Potawottamie Trail of Tears monument. We tried to go to the Louisburg Cider Mill but the lines were long because of their festival. We got some giant barbecue sandwiches and went to the festival.
There was no one I was super excited to see but it was still fun. Quaker City Night Hawks exceeded my expectations. I liked the Reed Southall Band as well. I had lost my enthusiasm for Whiskey Myers after hearing an old song of theirs about the Confederate flag. They didn’t play it in their first hour and we ran out of steam and didn’t stick it out to see if they were still playing it.
Overall it was a lot of fun and good to hang out with John. I had hoped to put some pictures but they’re too deep in my camera roll so excuse the wall of text.
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