Jim > Recent Status Updates

My life was narrated for me by others. Their voices were forceful, emphatic, absolute. It had never occurred to me that my voice might be as strong as theirs.

What I learned, as I looked back on those times, was that the lies are what sustained us. The lies kept us going. Gave us hope. Without lies we must face the truth long before we are ready for it.
Long before we are prepared to fight it.

Hardly had the truce expired when the Scots attacked the castle of Norham just inside the English border and near to Berwick, burning the town and carrying away many prisoners and cattle. This feat so close to the headquarters of the English command in Scotland was a clear warning to the men of Northumberland and Dunbar that they could look for no defence from England and both areas renewed their tribute.

".....When someone's ready to die, killing them just furthers their own objectives. Mind you, I'll grant their wish if it comes to that, but I'll do it on my terms. I don't want their deaths inspiring anyone."

.....Confederate soldiers were abandoning General Lee's army in droves, and while most simply went home, others crossed into Union lines and surrendered. Some straggled into Washington on foot, the tatters of their gray or butternut uniforms hanging from their emaciated frames, but most arrived around four o' clock every afternoon on the "deserters' transport," ....

"War begets war. Destruction begets destruction. On Earth, a century ago, in the year 2020 they outlawed our books. Oh, what a horrible thing--to destroy our literary creations that way!...."

___from "The Exiles"

Jefferson was no warmonger. He had attempted to keep the peace despite his instincts. But now he felt justified in calling for America to go to war....The Barbary states were already at war with America, and they seemed to understand only one kind of diplomacy--the kind that was accompanied by a cannon.

.....her gaze fell to a short verse etched into a wooden plaque....: The forest is sentient in a way man is not. She sees with a thousand eyes and forgets nothing.
"Is that from the Holy Scriptures?" she asked.
The priest shook his head. "Not one you'll find in your holy book..."

"....Well, people do die, Lew. Some die at twenty and some die at a hundred and twenty, and it's always a surprise. They stand there seeing the big blackness opening up for them, and as they go into the hole they say, My God, I was wrong after all, it's really going to happen to me, even to me!...."

".....Have you seen the children walking around selling chewing gum?"
Harry nodded. The area around the go-go bars in Patpong were teeming with them.
"That's the code. The chewing gum means they're for sale."
Harry realised with a shudder that he'd bought a packet of Wrigley's off a barefoot, black-eyed boy, who had looked terrified....

"Meet our real masters, " Rasheed said in a low-pitched voice."Pakistani and Arab Islamists. The Taliban are puppets. These are the big players and Afghanistan is their playground."
Rasheed said he'd heard rumors that the Taliban were allowing these people to set up secret camps all over the country....

With bow and spear, she was strong and accurate. With the axe, she had no peer. Horses and women responded with the desire to please her when she worked with them to learn skills...

As Stalin sat listening to his counterparts' arguments..., he quietly doodled on the paper in front of him....if discussions were proceeding in his favor, Stalin would smile and draw benign figures in red pencil, but if he became angry, his scribbles would take on a hostile air, and wolves and foxes would flow from the pencil's tip.

Dogs' senses are much sharper than ours. They hear, smell, and sense things with a clarity that we can hardly imagine. Because they hear higher and lower frequencies than we do, the sound of thunder is more intense. Their hearing is sensitive, so the volume is much higher.

....McCracken dropped to his knees, his legs creasing the muddy grasses. When he finally rose, he held out his open palm for all to see.
It blazed with flakes of gold and flattened, fingernail-size nuggets. The expat's face was alight. "It's all over the place, here in the grass...."

....in 1451, a grim and relentless Sultan, Mohammed II, the Conqueror, ascended the Ottoman throne. In 1453, he besieged Constantinople with 150,000 men.
.....The last of the Byzantine emperors, Constantine XI, had only 8000 men....

I don't much like traveling in space, even though I have a comfortable yacht. It gives me too much time to think, and as the years have passed, I've found I have too much I'd rather not think about.
And this case looked full of pitfalls...
from "Lost Lamb" by Barbara Delaplace

"....Tombstone's dead. The mines shut down when water flooded them. Dust blows down Allen Street. The old gambling palaces are either charred wood or decaying to dust. Such people as remain there are mostly kin of the old outlaws and cowboys and still despise Wyatt, Morgan, Virgil, Doc, not to mention Wells Fargo..."

But nobody really trusted or respected Kerensky. His prime ministership was an uncertain wavering, first to the left and then to the right...This was not the sort of leadership that could enforce orders or inspire much confidence in a political crisis that had now gone on far too long.

....Chester arrived at a busy Durham emergency room. While the other patients around him made the usual requests for pain medications, diagnostic tests, and reassurance that they were not about to die, Chester gave an entirely different kind of demand.
"I don't want no n----- doctor," he said to a nurse on duty.

Sherman almost didn't make it in the war. After seven months of service as commander of the Union forces in Kentucky, he became so panicked by a rebel threat, which he grossly exaggerated, that he was relieved of command and hastily transferred to a backwater post in Missouri. The press labeled him crazy.

(Benedict) Arnold needed money to live in a mansion and keep his stylish new bride happy. She was beautiful 19-year-old Peggy Shippen. The daughter of a wealthy Tory family, she was also a close friend of Major John Andre, England's chief of intelligence in America.

At the height of the empire, Rome had boasted a population in excess of one million. Now a scant thirty-five thousand lived within its walls. Where once the Circus Maximus had thundered to the beat of horse and chariot, now shepherds grazed their flocks...

At 7:45 P.M. ( on July 18, 1863), six hundred men in the Fifty-first Massachusetts, a black unit, charged the fort (Battery Wagner), a suicidal mission that left 262 dead, along with their commander. The bombardments and charges continued for days, then weeks, until the approach to Battery Wagner was a carpet of corpses and dead cavalry horses rotting in the summer heat."

In the spring of 1786, Comanches and Apaches clashed near the Pecos River; seven Apaches were killed and four captured without the loss of a single Comanche warrior. Later that year, (Comanche chief) Leather Cape sent a party of warriors to join (Governor of New Mexico) Anza and his Spaniards in a successful campaign against the (Apache) foe along the Rio Grande.

On the hot August day (in 1864) that saw ( George B.) McClellan win by acclamation on the first ballot, delegates to the Chicago (Democratic) convention and citizens throughout the North were sick and tired of the war. To many, including Abraham Lincoln and members of his cabinet, McClellan's election seemed all but assured without a series of battlefield victories.

In his video, Rick had said that after he told his father what happened, his father replied that there was nothing they could do, as they were Native and powerless against the most powerful man in town.

Wang hesitated for a moment before taking out a stack of papers, Wei Chang's three-body mathematical model. "I ...I came here for this. I brought a mathematical model that solves the three-body problem. I have to reason to believe it will likely work."
As soon as Wang said this, the crowd around him lost interest.

Where am I? Darling, where are you?
The battle sounds around me. Tom's yelling. I can't see him. I can't see anyone.
There you are, Libbie. Let me reach for you....
God, I thought I'd live forever, but do you know what?
After today, I will.

They used to talk about making it to the very top one day and hiding out there. They imagined a hidden deck only they'd know about. Grander than the upperdecks. Full of swimming pools and gardens and spice cake.