May 23, 2015
PBS is looking good for Saturdays although it’s very odd when an established program changes its main characters, especially if you’ve missed any transition. So far, the story is still ticking along, but the only character from the previous programs is Dennis Waterman.
New Tricks, cast and characters
Up-side is, it’s still on.
Scott and Bailey‘s up next.
May 18, 2015
For years I’ve had one of Colin Dexter’s paperbacks floating around my bookshelves: The Secret of Annexe 3. The printing date is 1998, so I’ve had it a while. During those years, I’d often look through my bookshelves at bedtime for a book to re-read. I prefer easy books when I’m trying to go to sleep. I’d look at Annexe 3, but always skipped over it because I knew that I hadn’t ‘got’ the story the first time around. Still, the book was an Inspector Morse story, so I never got rid of it.
About a week ago I was again browsing through my bookshelves and I decided to give Annexe 3 another try. How hard could it be?
Eighty-eight pages into the story I found out why I had no clear recollection of the story: the page after 88 was 25 — the very same page-25 I’d already read. I flipped through the following pages to see if this second page-25 was an anomaly, but it wasn’t. The repeat pages didn’t end until page 56, and then they skipped to page 121.
Page 88 – 25 of The Secret of Annexe 3
Pages 56 – 121 of The Secret of Annexe 3
I’m assuming I don’t need to point out that this goof-up severely interrupted my understanding of the story line. Don’t ask me why I kept this copy. Any memory of that reason is long gone.
In recent years I’ve complained to myself about the decline in the quality of recently-published books. Most complaints have to do with typographical gremlins that crept in, or story lines that don’t track well. Given this blooper from the last century, I’ll probably have to cut newer volumes a lot more slack.
I would be interested in reading the complete book, but I just checked and the library I use doesn’t have this volume. I’m leery of buying another Annexe 3 because the book shown at Amazon has the same cover as mine. I didn’t see any complaints about an entire section having been mis-inserted into any of the books that were reviewed, but it would be just my luck to get another from the same batch. I think my next bedtime book will be one from my collection of Agatha’s books.
May 10, 2015
For the most part, I spare this blog any political outbursts. The uproar in Texas over the Jade Helm military exercise for 2015 changed that.
As any reader of this blog may have gathered, I’m “military,” although I haven’t served on active duty since the late-1960s. Despite the span of time since then, my “people” are “the military.” I was born in an Air Force hospital to a former WAC and my dad didn’t retire from the Air Force until two years before I joined the Army myself, which was about four years before my brother joined the Navy, and about six years before my sister joined the Air Force. For us, “the military” was the family business.
I served on active duty and married another soldier whose career with the Army didn’t end until 1999. I knew about civilian activities, of course, but the important stuff (pay, housing, kids’ schools, where I bought food, most of my friends) was all “military.” When I was 50, I was living at my 50th change of address, a coincidence which is oddly satisfying.
Because of this background, when someone starts making charges about the danger of “the military,” I perk up. It’s like when someone from a rival school badmouths a teacher you don’t even like. You can crab and complain about Coach Hatchetface, but you don’t like it when a rival does.
Usually my bristling about uninformed complaints about “the military” fades, but when the charges are about how “the military” is going to start rounding up civilians and locking them in WalMarts (seriously?!?) — and a governor says he’ll send state troops to keep an eye on the federal ones — then the smack-talking is out of control.
Yes, crap happens concerning “the military.” Statistically, it can’t help but happen, especially in such a large organization. Sometimes, the reports about crap happening are accurate and the crap gets fixed (so we hope). Sometimes the reports have kernels of truth surrounded by embellishment and the incident goes back and forth for a while. This time, concerning the Jade Helm exercise, the reports are off-the-rails nuts from people who seem to be actually believing their own propaganda and not just posturing politically.
Yes, I’ve read rational explanations about why some of the people who will be near the exercises are concerned:
Those are normal, reasonable concerns. They’re the same ones that West German farmers and landowners had (click on PDF URL; see top of document-page 2) concerning Reforger (REturn of FORces to GERmany — and watch out for Fogarty blasting from that site), an annual joint military exercise in Europe during the Cold War that was sometimes referred to as Autumn Forge.
But the wild-eyed fears about Jade Helm aren’t about reasonable concerns. The fears around Jade Helm are about some kind of invasion of Texas by the same servicemembers that we’ve spent the last decade or so applauding and telling how much we appreciate their service. Everyone goes dewey-eyed over servicemembers walking through airports, but, apparently, God forbid those same servicemembers stop and hang around for a while.
Another training situation besides Reforger used to involve “Trigon Circle.” Catchy name, no?
Trigon Circle was the name for the aggressor-force during war games used for training. The unit of currency used as a prop was called the “fralmato.” Really. This 50 fralmato ‘bill’ is our sole souvenir of my husband’s Trigon Circle days.
Fifty fralmatos. The really poor-quality photocopy picture on the reverse was of “Comrade Marya.”
These Field Manuals offer the aspiring alt-hist writer a treasure trove of information on a totalitarian state’s military circa 1947-1959, with detailed descriptions of tables of organization, ranks, medals, divisional histories, and doctrine.
All this was to support the U.S. Army’s Aggressor Force (aka Manouver Enemy) which was an asymmetrical opponent training program that ran from November 1946 to 1978, when the Circle Trigonists were retired in favor of an openly Soviet-Style OPFOR known as the Krasnovians.
One of the most memorable Trigonist operations was Operation LONGHORN in March/April 1952, when Lampasas County, Texas was used to stage a huge mock battle between the Aggressor Forces played by the 82nd Airborne and liberating US Forces played by units from nearby Fort Hood.
[see page for other links, plus photographs of the exercise from Life magazine]
Hell, as far as “the military” loving field training exercises goes, I remember at Ellsworth AFB when I was five that the entire housing area was evacuated as a drill. After the alert sirens went off, the dads stayed at their duty stations while the moms loaded all us kids into cars and drove into the Black Hills where we stayed all day. We now know that this would have been completely irrelevant to any survival of a nuclear attack, but in the mid-1950s it was considered a strategy. That drill was a mess — can you imagine an entire housing area worth of babies and kids loose in the woods without anything constructive to do and only some outhouses and a few picnic tables? Those poor moms.
The evacuation drill was never repeated.
In the spirit of people learning from their mistakes, I hope this nutsy-cuckoo reaction to Jade Helm is never repeated, either.
The upshot of this blog post is that military exercises are nothing new. My dad recounted stories of his cavalry troop riding their horses around the hills around Monterey, California and Fort Ord, probably the last of the horse cavalry in the late-1930s.
1939 Dad on Warwhoop at the Presidio of Monterey.
These exercises are what the taxpayers pay “the military” to do when “the military” isn’t actively fighting. It’s not all peeling potatoes and painting rocks. The work done during these exercises is how skills stay sharp. It’s how new techniques are integrated into what servicemembers already know. It’s how new equipment is tested.
If you want to read a thorough, if profane, explanation by someone who speaks in the voice of my people of why the nonsense-hyperventilation about Jade Helm is irresponsible pot-stirring, hop over to Stonekettle Station. I can’t improve on Mr. Wright’s rant.
Valerie Bonham 
