What I did On My Obamacation
Wife’s off at some la-di-da writing conference … her tax-writeoff vacation … and I’m enjoying my Obama vacation. That’s when you didn’t get any stimulus bucks, you just got dunned for someone else’s, and you’re home with the kids for the week … happy that it’s paid vacay and not a furlough or a layoff, and grateful that the great blue-collar conservative tabloid for which I toil is one of the few American newspapers, if not the only one, still making money in these dire days.*
While I’m out, I left the Boutique Warmongery unlocked, show yourself in, “Cry ‘Havoc,’ and leaf through the books of war.”
Fortunately, I had the great foresight to settle near the beach, so I can still get in some beach reads. I’m already into this one. The War of Wars: The Epic Struggle Between Britain and France: 1789-1815 by Robert Harvey is as Bernard Cornwell reports “well-paced … a real pleasure.” Starts with the French Revolution … one of history’s great, bloody, idiotic and cautionary trainwrecks, sometimes falsely depicted as a milestone of freedom, more accurately as Harvey reports a precursor to the worst authoritarian horrors of the 20th, and incidentally yet another reason to be grateful my Huguenot line got the boot and became Englishmen a couple of centuries earlier … and just keeps going for 26 horrific rollercoaster years of death, destruction, triumph and disaster. Don’t worry, it has a happy ending.
Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War Nathaniel Philbrick. Been meaning to read this one for a while. It all plays out around my house. Might as well read it while staring out at Cape Cod Bay.
Now out in paperback, the real-time classic that ranks among the best war memoirs of all time, Dexter Filkins’ The Forever War. If you haven’t read it, start now. He’s the reason why the New York Times deserves to live. Dexter, an indirect sort of acquaintance currently wandering around Bleakistan, owes me a beer. And I owe him one.
Speaking of Afghanistan, here’s one newly out and relevant all over again, given Marine Corps operations in Helmand. It’s the deeply embedded photog Ed Darack’s Victory Point: Operations Red Wings and Whalers - the Marine Corps’ Battle for Freedom in Afghanistan.
Pride of Baghdad Brian K. Vaughan. Graphic novel that looks interesting, views the invasion of Iraq through the eyes of lions loosed from the Baghdad zoo, appears at a quick flip-through to rise above the usual Bush-lied moralizing. The creative decision to include very few people bothered me a little. I spotted a couple of soldiers, both sides, a couple of bodies. In April 2003, that place was crawling with people, who weren’t shy about hanging out, watching and looting even in the midst of firefights.
Speaking of graphic war novels involving animals, a couple of highly regarded classics: Maus I: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History and Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began Art Spiegelman.
Something else different, Hitler’s War Sci-fi master Harry Turtledove’s alternate history.
In historical debunkification, Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome by Rodney Stark, who reportedly goes to work on assorted myth and perceptions:
Some of Stark’s more interesting findings are: (1) Orthodox Christianity, not “Gnosticism” or some other “Lost Christianity” was the original form of the religion. (2) “Gnosticism” was a loopy, lunatic fringe blend of paganism and Christianity. (3) Orthodox Christians did not persecute paganism into oblivion. (4) Pentecost most likely did not result in 3,000 newly baptized Christians, but simply 3,000 wet Jews and pagans. (5) Paul did not invent Christianity and actually had very little to do with the spread of Christianity throughout the Empire. (6) Paul was much more successful in converting Jews to Christianity than in converting Gentiles. (7) Hellenized Jews provided large numbers of Christian converts during the first four centuries of Christianity.
Fascinating. No word on what Stark does with the lion-feedings.
Meanwhile, my pal Larry Gwin, who started this booklist thing, reports favorably on his summer beach reads:
Joker One: A Marine Platoon’s Story of Courage, Leadership, and Brotherhood
Horse Soldiers: The Extraordinary Story of a Band of US Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan
OK, you know as well as I do I’ll be lucky to get another 20 pages into “War of Wars” before nodding off, maybe crack the upscale comic books. But I’m off the net for the week, see you after that.
* OK, technically the furlough/layoff is probably your Barneycation. You know, Barney lied, the economy crashed. A real Obamacation is when you’re a layabout hack or conniving chisler whose do-nothing government job and/or accomplish-nothing pork project was saved by an influx of stimulus bucks, so you can go back to what you were doing before … not much. Or if you’re an ethically challenged financier, overpaid worker in an underperforming sector of the auto industry, etc. …
Topics: everything
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 9:49 am on Saturday, August 15, 2009
4 Responses to “What I did On My Obamacation”
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August 15th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
We are reading* “Washington’s Crossing” by David Hackett Fischer which is a detailed military history of the battle of Trenton and the events and personalities that lead up to it. Highly recommended for any military history or American Revolution fans.
*actually listening to a reading on CD.
August 15th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
[...] Look at Jules, bragging about vacations! [...]
August 16th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Rodney Stark is a tool and Christian apologist. His work would have a better effect if it was used to fuel a cooking fire, or a small smattering of heat on a frosty day. Otherwise, if you must buy it, get the paperback. You can use it to wipe your backside rather than read his dribble.
August 16th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
NB: I am NOT attacking Christianity in my comment above. I want to make that plain. I simply find his work to be deplorable and not worth a bucket of warm spit.
Other than that…. :)