World Leaders -- Armed and Ready

You read Churchill's epic -- all six volumes -- twice, once for a quick overview of how this guy and his country operated 1935-1945. Okay, a slow overview. Much later in life you read it again to flesh out your information from other sources.

Finally, you keep it handy on your shelf for who-knows-what reason, maybe a time-passer when it is 25 below zero* and you couldn't  be pried from your fireside chair with a crow bar. Just sort of leaf through looking for little nuggets among the old blowhard's Germanic thoroughness of detail, from the important to the trivial.

And speaking of guns, I found one.

Winston had just been made first lord of the Admiralty. He knew the Nazis wouldn't like that and that there were supposedly some 20,000 of them lurking about the Sceptred Isle.  He would really rawther not get shot.

"I had no official protection and I did not wish to ask for any; but I thought myself sufficiently prominent to take precautions. I had enough information to convince me Hitler recognized me as a foe. My former Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Thompson,  was in retirement. I told him to come long and bring his pistol with him. I got out my own weapons, which were good. While one slept, the other watched. Thus nobody would have had a walkover."**

He doesn't tell us about his guns at Chartwell, and that is too bad. If we knew we could have a lively internet debate about whether he was tactical enough. Nevertheless, there's plenty of evidence that Churchill was at least passingly familiar with small, lethal weapons.

(From left: Eisenhower, Churchill, Bradley busting M1 Carbine caps.)

Lucky England. And lucky us who, here in the colonies, some three generations later, also enjoy courageous personal leadership.

xxxxx

(Sotto voice)  Psssst. Mr. President.: Rule 3 violation, but nothing Photo-Shop can't fix. Alert Jay.

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*And it was; coldest of the season, but things are looking up now.

**Churchill, The Gathering Storm, Houghten-Mifflin BCE, 1948, p. 401

Night thought

It is very cold, and I am warm.

Fire has been an obvious winter pallitive since long before the Clan of the Cave Bear. Houses are another matter.

Ayla the Intelligent left the rocky lands and crossed the frozen Eurasian plains, no cave in sight. She  gathered dry grass and branches and set them alight with  sparking rocks.  Extra branches were stacked high and the sleeping skins spread near the fire, in the lee of the fuel.

The wind shifted, Ayla awoke cold, drew the caribou robe closer around her shoulders, and thought.

On some subsequent night she perfected the idea. Her fuel reserve encircled the fire.  Let the wind blow as it will. It remained only to lay some poles and skins  across the woodpile. The roof was born, and the concept of a house as a human contrivance was complete. All else is detail.

Thank you, Ma'am.

If Vanita Nair proposes to me,

I'm afraid I shall have to decline. Too bad. She's a beautiful woman and makes a good buck.

Furthermore, if I should by chance feel an urge to ogle this South Asian knockout raised in Texas, I shall do so with the sound muted and captioning off.

On her CBS morning news gig today, she listened intently to a guy predicting the death of the American shopping mall and said:

"That breaks my heart. When I moved to Manhattan I really missed the "mall experience'."

Suggesting that any delights she might offer would be more than offset by conversational limitations.

The most wonderful Wednesday ever

Four days and a wakeup.

Then it's the Wednesday of the Three Blessings. Two of them are sure things, as sure as any temporal thing can be, anyway. The other is a well-hedged promise.

1. On that day, because I continue to be such a dedicated and competent retiree, President Obama will deliver my monthly stipend which he financed by extorting money from you. Sorry about that, Chief.

2. Simultaneously, my thimble full of that little leveraged-bond ETF I keep mentioning goes "x,"  adding one more piece of pittance to the money I'm trying to put aside for my old age. (I hope, even in that distant future, to be prepared to whip out cash for a clean GI issue 1911 some guy is tired of. Never mind that I might need to hire a kid to rack the slide when I want to shoot it.)

3.  Some time on that day of Woden the air temperature here at Camp Jiggleview, of which I am commandant, will at last exceed 20 degrees above zero. This is another Obama pledge. Of course it is channeled through his National Weather Service, but we know where the buck stops, don't we?

(Subsequently, His Ineptness promises no, repeat no, temperatures seriously below zero for weeks on end. Hope you're right, Buck-O.)

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Returning to the present, the 12-below present, I awoke to a too-cool room, moving me to switch on the propane for about about 10 minutes. (Damn, another $138.22 shot to the devil.) 

The fireplace embers were glowing nicely, and plenty of firewood lay near the burner, but only the normally preferable big oak rounds, close to a foot in diameter and therefore not too good for quickly broiling my frostbitten backside.   So I dressed (before coffee {!}) and trudged to the outer pile  for a load of squaw wood, small and soft, which is now blazing. The aforementioned backside is acquiring a nice sear, and I am content.