The reference comes from Dr. Johnson:

“Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.” Boswell: “Lord Mansfield does not.” Johnson: “Sir, if Lord Mansfield were in a company of General Officers and Admirals who have been in service, he would shrink; he’d wish to creep under the table.”

DaTechguy expands on this idea:

I didn’t shrink but I felt the way a man feels when his work is being done by someone else, and that is I believe more than any other reason why Veterans Day and Memorial Day have basically become retail holidays.

When we see a serving soldier we are reminded that there are a small group of men and women who are doing our work for us. They are part of a community that if you are not a part of it you may not understand.

This has been the price of the all volunteer army that was born in the desperate attempts of college students to avoid service in the 60’s. For decades our popular culture looked down upon these men, our movies have and still paint them as “broken”. Even after Sept 11th our popular culture still never caught up with the average man who recognized that maybe just maybe there is something more to the soldier than someone who is looking to pay for college.

C.S. Lewis once wrote that a man in sin will avoid signs of God because it reminds him of his current state. I think a similar thing has happened to Veterans Day and Memorial Day. We don’t want to think about it, we don’t bother to attend. It is safer to simply shop, because if we look at Veterans Day and Memorial Day for who they honor and what they do we look at ourselves and remember what we have not done.

This is not, I hasten to add, a call for a return to conscription. But I remember draftees from the early 1970s, and while you could tell that they definitely wanted to be somewhere else, they weren’t about to let the rest of us down. When you’re called by something bigger than yourself — well, first you have to realize that it is bigger than yourself. Not everyone possesses this level of awareness: the newspapers are full of stories of people who couldn’t imagine anything more important than themselves.

And then I read about someone like, say, Tim James, and all the headlines melt away.

At the 2004 dedication of the National WWII Memorial, that old soldier Bob Dole said:

What we dedicate today is not a memorial to war. Rather, it is a tribute to the physical and moral courage that makes heroes out of farm and city boys and that inspired Americans in every generation to lay down their lives for people they will never meet, for ideals that make life itself worth living.

Mark that: every generation. Yesterday my oldest grandson turned ten. Will he someday put on the uniform, take up a weapon, as I once did? I don’t know. I’m not going to try to talk him into it. But I’m not going to try to talk him out of it, either. Not everyone is cut out for that kind of life, and that’s fine; I figure, so long as he’s not creeping under the table, it’s all good.

“Train a child in the way he should go,” says the Proverb, “and when he is old he will not turn from it.”

(Via WTF Do You Have a Kid?)

From a couple of weeks ago:

It occurred to me some time last week that I have one person on the blogroll who wasn’t even born when I started out.

Well, now she’s rolled over the big one-three:

I FEEL OLD, GUYZ. Even if I’m not. Not OLD, necessarily, just not wise, at least. I always had this idea that when I aged I’d be all ~philosophical~ like Morrie Schwartz and awesome like Anna Piaggi. I’m older but not wiser. Just like… awkward.

Comes with the territory, I’m afraid. Anyway, happy (belated) birthday, Style Rookie.

see more pwn and owned pictures

Even with glasses, which I didn’t wear until my mid-teens:

I used to argue that this sort of thing skipped a generation, but not so: my kids were decently cute, and their kids were more so. So it just skipped me.

More sizes at Flickr, with another shot from what appears to be the same session.

“And you thought you were a stud for taking 5 AP classes senior year…”

[Seventeen] students from Montgomery County (Md.) Public Schools have earned the rank of semi-finalist at Intel.

Intel, the computer microchip company? No, dodo. The 2009 Intel Science Talent Search, the holy grail of science nerds.

And of course, we’re going to be needing every science nerd we can get in our Zoomy Technological Future. These are the names we’ll be looking for:

The Montgomery County semi-finalists are: Eric An, Christopher Bodine, Jean Fan, Anton Frolenkov, Edward Gan, Akimitsu Hogge, Ansh Johri, Sneha Kannan, Debattama Sen, Benjamin Shih, Sang Tian, Srinivas Vasudevan, Sikander Porter-Gill, Re-I Chin, Kavitha Anandalingam, Mingda Su, Philip Kong.

You were expecting maybe John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt?

It would never have occurred to me to buy some hyperexpensive sled for either of my kids, largely because I’m not in a position to afford a hyperexpensive sled.

There are, of course, other reasons:

I once had a well intentioned mom buy a 1998 Audi A4 from me. The good news? It had over $8000 worth of records over a period of 120,000 miles. The bad news? Re-read the last sentence and add arrogant 16-year-old kid and clueless Mom into the equation. I explained to them the high costs and maintenance involved, referred them to a very good repair shop, and even showed them the owner’s manual stating the next service due. As you already figured out, it didn’t matter.

By the time we were filling out the paperwork, Junior was blasting the speaker system so loud that you could hear it from the inside of our building. Even with the Audi’s and building door closed. Mom blew my advice off quicker than a texting teen and less than 2 months later the turbocharger literally exploded into pieces. $2300 and several Italian style tongue lashings later, a humbled Junior was forced to ditch the German that cost uber-Deutsch Marks in maintenance for a “sensible” Corolla.

Not that I’d actually wish the crapmobiles they own on my children, but at least they can get them (partially) fixed once in a while.

Which, of course, he will do later on.

(Also here.)

Once in a while, my daughter-in-law sends out a batch of pictures, some of which get reproduced here. This time around she’s prepared a slideshow, which you can see after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

I mean, how is it possible that I have a thirty-year-old daughter?

Yeah, I know: do the math. The facts are inescapable. I just hope she takes it better than I do.

And I could note here that she’s far more mature at this age than I was, but people who knew me when I was thirty are likely to ask “Yeah, but who wasn’t?”

My children, who used to live about 25 miles apart, now live about four miles apart, which simplifies the logistics a little, but only a little: daughter works nights, son works days, and so it’s generally expedient to do two separate visits than a single combined visit. (Somewhere in between is my ex and her current spouse, so she’s there to slap ‘em down if they do things as dumbly as their old man used to do things. I am more grateful for this than you can possibly imagine.)

As you might guess, what matters here is the simple fact that a distended family remains a family, and it therefore never occurs to anyone to hash, let alone rehash, any old woes; life has presented us with some odd cards, but we play what we’re dealt.

Four hundred miles (more or less) tomorrow, and I can put away the suitcases for another year. Right now I’m just happy to have gotten through all this in one piece with minimal difficulty. Gwendolyn gets a spa day on Thursday, followed by a new license tag. (You didn’t think I was going to drop $85 on plate updates before a road trip, did you?)

Oh, and the hotel elevator has been repaired, although it sounds like hell. Then again, I sound like hell after climbing the stairs from the first floor to the third.

Makes you wonder what her high-school graduation is going to look like, doesn’t it?

Three grandchildren, one floor, possibly one photo session:

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m hanging stuff like this out at Flickr these days; you may see rebigulated versions there.

They, by which I mean “Gerald Ford,” used to say that about Ronald Reagan back in the day, but I think this more truly represents the spirit of the color, especially since it’s October and all. And I’m hoping that, given this much of an unruly mop at a mere six months, this child will end up closer to his grandma’s side of the family, hair-wise, than to mine, and that he’ll retain it for longer than the twenty-four years I did before things began to thin out. (Then again, I got married at twenty-four. Coincidence? I’m starting to wonder.) Full 640 x 480 dimensions here.

Writer Chick gets a look at Kid Nation, and probably won’t watch it again:

The basic idea of this show is to take a bunch of kids aged from 8 to 15, put them in a ghost town and see if they can create a community. I suppose on the face of it, it sounds kind of cool and innovative and all that stuff that television execs get worked up about. But to me, it sounds a little sad. Kids are supposed to be kids. This is their time to learn, have fun, have adventures, be care-free and just live — hopefully fully employing their amazing imaginations and creating some precious memories for when they are old farts like the rest of us.

Cut to this story from six summers ago:

She might have been ten, she might have been twelve; it would never have occurred to me to ask. And she’d chosen the middle swing from the row of three, because there was much more room to swing, not only to and fro and up and down, but also side to side. I smiled at her as I stumbled down the hill towards the “cluster boxes” that the Postal Service finds so endearing and the postal patrons find so annoying.

“Whatever happened to my youthful exuberance?” I muttered to no one in particular while I pulled bill after bill out of its dingy receptacle. I mean, I don’t have the urge to clamber onto a swing and get myself airborne or anything; the cruelty of gravity is something I’d just as soon not face. But here she was, a pretty girl on her way to becoming a beautiful woman, seemingly paying no attention whatsoever to the unending pressures from a culture she barely knows. “Grow up! Find romance! Spend money!” Who needs this sort of foolishness? Let her fly while she can, and let her grow up when she’s ready.

By the time I’d started back up the hill, she’d moved to the far side of the playground, perhaps because she thought there would be fewer creepy old guys with twisted grins passing by. The twenty-first century refuses to be ignored, even by twelve-year-old girls. Even if they’re ten.

(Previously reposted here; I still think this is one of my better pieces from 2001. Title swiped from this.)

What’s its basis? Gold, silver, petroleum, T-bills? Nope. It’s the humble cuss jar:

A few years ago the spuds started to learn some ’special’ words. In order to curtail this inappropriate communication we started charging them a quarter for each offense. As their pocket change dwindled and the quarter jar filled they started to get the hang of it. After a time, a simple reprimand of ‘quarter’ was all it took to get them to straighten up and fly right.

Lately they have taken to shorthand. When they wish to be inappropriate they just say things like ‘you quarter’ or ‘quarter, quarter, quarter!’ One truly irate spud yelled ‘a buck fifty’ the other day. I guess it is better than the alternative.

The March of Dimes was never like this.

My daughter advises that this is the last birthday she plans to celebrate, and that in future years she will celebrate the anniversary of this birthday.

Under the circumstances, I don’t blame her.

Dinner this evening with Russ and Alicia and their three quasi-hellions at O’Charley’s, a place Russ suggested, I suspect, for its noise level: whatever unearthly shrieks the children emitted would scarcely be noticed. And actually, the two boys were relatively placid, comparatively speaking.

I shot this in front of Gwendolyn’s rear bumper right afterwards. You’ll notice that Laney is trying to bounce out of the picture, that Jackson won’t give up that last chicken strip, and that Gunner is trying to ignore the whole procedure. (Click to embiggen.)

Later they were bribed with ice cream, I am given to understand.

Thirty months old, and already he’s wearing glasses? Bad eyes must run in the family or something. Anyway, here’s Jackson, just shy of 2½, getting a good look, which would have been a better look had there been a real camera instead of a cell phone handy.

Disclosure: I got glasses at fifteen. Horn rims, because I aspired to wear tweed jackets and date girls who could write sonnets on short notice.

A couple of weeks ago, I might have left the impression that a new low in baby names had been reached, what with a Swedish infant being tagged with the name “Metallica”.

Veronica (a perfectly lovely name, by the way) reminds us that it could be much, much worse:

1. If your kid isn’t ever going to live on Middle Earth, then maybe, just maybe, it’s really not okay to peg your child as being the progeny of total dorks for the rest of their lives. +2 to damage for anyone with a little Arwen or Samwise. This applies to all the would-be parents of Celtic royalty, Saxon bards, and assorted Druids, as well.

2. Likewise, if there are no Jedi on your homeplanet, it’s possible that you shouldn’t sell your kid out to George Lucas.
3. Aesthetically selecting a name from a culture you’re not related to, immersed in, or really even vaguely acquainted with is both bad form and an excellent way to end up with a kid who’s name translates to “dog food jock strap.”
4. If you’ve made up a name, please make sure it’s decipherable. It’s one thing to name your kid Shaya or Raydson. It’s entirely another to name your kid Cheighye or Rhaihdghson.
5. Despite deciding that “Danger” or “Racer” or “Steele” would make a totally rad name when you were in the 2nd grade and really thought Transformers were tubular, perhaps you should re-think those long held dreams and opt to not saddle your kid with something that makes them sound like a unpurchased five and dime action figure.

Little Eukanuba Suspensor thanks you for number three.

Above, Jackson contemplates his sphere of influence; below, Laney channels her inner Amazon.

First shot of Gunner, born on the 28th of March. Still has that rich tomato-ey glow. (Runs in the family, I think.) Personally, I think Alicia and Russ were trying to save some money on birthday parties, since Laney’s the 29th of March and Gunner’s the 28th. (That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it as long as I think I can get away with it.) Oh, and don’t even think about calling him “Gunsy.” (Addendum: I really think they’re going to quit after three, but then I really thought they were going to quit after two, so pay no attention to me.) (Further addendum: For some reason, I decided that this picture would look better somewhere other than hung off the right edge of the page, so I moved it in. Wouldn’t be the first time I made some dubious aesthetic judgment.)

Shel Silverstein wrote, and Johnny Cash sang, a ballad about a boy who grew up with the name “Sue,” and you’ll remember that Sue grew up bitter and resentful — eventually, weapons were involved — as a result. I have no idea whether this sort of thing will happen to a girl named Metallica or a boy named Jihad, but I don’t think it’s really useful to have laws against such names: “Earning the lifelong resentment of their ill-named progeny should be punishment enough.”

Keep in mind that my daughter came this close to being named for a Beatles song — one by McCartney, at that — and I have a grandchild named “Gunner.”

But no pix yet, reports daughter-in-law:

Wednesday, March 28, 2007 (yes, just one day before Laney’s fourth birthday) @ 3:14pm we became the proud parents of our third child. Our new little man Gunner Memphis Hill weighted in at 9lbs 6oz and is 22½ inches long. He had his first doctor visit today and is a perfect healthy little guy.

For those keeping score, this is grandchild #4. As for the name, hey, I’m just happy they didn’t name him after me.

There’s an old joke about a child who never speaks. He cried a bit when he was a baby, but they all do that; once he got over it, he never said a word.

Somewhere around age five, the family was having dinner, and suddenly he spoke up: “Mom, the turkey is dry.”

The parents — well, you can pretty well imagine. After they calmed down, Mom asked: “You can talk??”

“Of course I can.”

She gave him That Look (you know the one) and asked, “How come you never said anything before?”

“Up to now, everything was okay,” he explained.

I’ll bet almost anything Drake Esmay knows that joke.

“She would have been eleven today.”

Because everybody just loves gratuitous grandchild photos, here’s a couple of them. First, Laney contemplates that mysterious girl in the mirror; next, Jackson observes from a safe distance. (Bigger versions are just a click away.) Clearly they’ve gotten this hair from their mom: there aren’t any carrot-tops on my branch of the family tree.

And speaking of Alicia, she’s been very good about delivering photos to us Distant Relatives, and this seems like as good a time to thank her. I couldn’t ask for a better daughter-in-law. (After all, it takes a remarkable woman to put up with one of us Hill guys. Ask any of us.)

And the Princess of Darkness and the SpiderLad mean business. (Ages: Laney, 3½; Jackson, 8 months; furnishings in the background, God only knows.)