The Mighty Eighth

Last year, I screened The Cold Blue, which was an amazing film. In WW2, 5 famous Hollywood directors, William Wyler, John Huston, John Ford, George Stevens, and Frank Capra went into harm’s way with small film crews and documented the war. John Ford, for example shot – I believe- the only footage of Midway as it was being attacked.

I’m in danger of swaying into this fascinating story, but I will say one thing. The war affected them all, and it can be reflected in their post war work. George Stevens, for example, having seen so much death and destruction in Europe, in making Shane, thought gunfire and being shot should be portrayed realistically, a first for a Hollywood Western.

11th Minute of the 11th Hour of the 11th Month

…1918 was the agreed time for hostilities to cease in that “war to end all wars”.

I have never been one who has recorded many of our family stories. Although on reflection I wish that I had.

But among the few that I have remembered occurred in Baltimore, MD on an evening of October 11, 1918.

Happy Birthday, America!

By lex, on July 4th, 2009

Hard times 233 years ago today. By the time the Declaration of Independence was signed, the colonies that would become the United States of America had been at war with the center of the metropolitan empire for over a year, reeling from defeat to retreat in the field, and managing only the not inconsequential feat of avoiding detailed destruction. Perhaps if the Brits had ever gotten around to scribbling down their own constitution in one spot, an awful lot of confusion about the rights of Parliament to levy taxes upon the crown’s overseas possessions could have been avoided. Perhaps not.

Virginia Hall

Since writing about her yesterday, curiosity had gotten the best of me, and I read a bit more on her. What an amazing woman.

As to David Holahan’s statement that ” James Bond had nothing on her”, Bond of course was some fantasy of Ian Fleming. To think that some spy would arrive with a self-confident (arrogant?) attitude in an Aston Martin and tux, well, of course real spies are the opposite. Most times a person who one would least suspect. When the best have disappeared the world is left wondering who they were, or at least what they looked like.

When the Manhattan Project was started, “an informant in the British civil service notified the Soviets. As the top-secret plan to build the bomb, called the Manhattan Project, took shape in the United States, the Soviet spy ring got wind of it before the FBI knew of the secret program’s existence.” It was 4 years after the war before  the identity of one, Klaus Fuchs, was discovered.

Happy Birthday, America!

Posted by lex, on July 4, 2006

This is what we’re fighting for. Well, at least partly. Some of us, anyway.

And because there are also ladies who visit, I thought it only fair to provide them with equal consideration: American beefcake .

Who’s ya’ daddy?

Back To The Index 

A July 4th Message from Lex

Happy 4th!

Propaganda

By lex, on February 28th, 2012

Very much in the eye of the beholder, according to the admittedly partisan Hinderaker, who surveys the legacy media’s response to “Act of Valor“:

The Distress of the Eloi

By lex, on October 6th, 2011

H.G. Wells wrote of a Victorian gentleman visiting the far and distant future, one in which society had devolved into two separate species, the Morlocks – who live and labor under the earth, keeping the world’s machinery and infrastructure intact, and the Eloi, a “child-like, frail group, living a banal life of ease on the surface of the earth..” who, “(having) solved all problems that required strength, intelligence, or virtue, have slowly become dissolute and naive. They are… smaller than modern humans, having shoulder-length curly hair, chins that ran to a point, large eyes, small ears, and small mouths with bright red thin lips. They are of sub-human intelligence, though apparently intelligent enough to speak, and they have a primitive language. They do not perform much work…”

No, they do not perform much work, because they apparently teach school children in San Francisco (which is good work while it lasts):

Happy Fourth!

By lex, on July 4th, 2011

My father was born in 1916, and grew up in Glen Allen, Virginia, just north of Richmond. Glen Allen has become a suburb of Richmond these days, but back then it defined rural. Dad’s father worked the railroads. Mom was born in 1920 and grew up in Wyoming County, Pennsylvania. Her old man had gone from coal miner to soldier in the Great War before coming back home again to serve as a paymaster for the company. He died in the aftermath of a train robbery that left the family destitute, and what with the Great Depression going on in their childhoods, those were hard times all around. She always kept the larder full, and my old man ate heartily. They remembered times when hunger wasn’t something that came up just prior to lunchtime, but rather something you lived with.

Right here in America.

On patriotism

By lex, on June 19th, 2006

Something ASM826 wrote in comments the other day, and inspired by the latest bit of insipidity set loose upon an amazed and often embarrassed world set me to thinking:

I have been thinking about this interview since I read about it a few days ago. Patriotism is not a uniquely American trait. Others have held it. It makes the most sense when there is a clash between societies and someone believes that theirs is the superior.

For example: Winston Churchill was questioned by cabinet about negotiating a settlement with Nazi Germany, and his reply was, “ if this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.”

Not much question where he stood, eh? No matter what problems his country had, compared with the alternative he thought Britain was better. Not much question where U.S. patriots stand, either. This country is better. The things we share and believe are better. Even our problems are better.

…

Flying the flag, loving my country, and feeling contempt for people who can, see the obvious value of the things that I love about the United States isn, pandering. It’s my personal response, welling up out of who I am.