“If there is anything that irritates sailors and makes them feel hardly used, it is being deprived of their Sabbath. Not that they would always, or indeed generally, spend it religiously, but it is their only day of rest.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
Category: History
“The American is not, in truth, lacking in a capacity for discipline; he has it highly developed; he submits to leadership readily, and even to tyranny. But, by a curious twist, it is not the leadership that is old and decorous that fetches him, but the leadership that is new and extravagant. He will resist dictation out of the past, but he will follow a new messiah with almost Russian willingness, and into the wildest vagaries of economics, religion, morals and speech. A new fallacy in politics spreads faster in the United States than anywhere else on earth, and so does a new fashion in hats, or a new revelation of God, or a new means of killing time, or a new metaphor or piece of slang. Thus the American, on his linguistic side, likes to make his language as he goes along, and not all the hard work of his grammar teachers can hold the business back. A novelty loses nothing by the fact that it is a novelty; it rather gains something, and particularly if it meet the national fancy for the terse, the vivid, and, above all, the bold and imaginative.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language
“Monday, Nov. 10th. During a part of this day we were hove to, but the rest of the time were driving on, under close-reefed sails, with a heavy sea, a strong gale, and frequent squalls of hail and snow.
Tuesday, Nov. 11th. The same.
Wednesday, Nov. 12th. The same.
Thursday, Nov. 13th. The same.
We had now got hardened to Cape weather, the vessel was under reduced sail, and everything secured on deck and below, so that we had little to do but steer and to stand our watch. Our clothes were all wet through, and the only change was from wet to more wet. It was in vain to think of reading or working below, for we were too tired, the hatchways were closed down, and everything was wet and uncomfortable, black and dirty, heaving and pitching. We had only to come below when the watch was out, wring out our wet clothes, hang them up, and turn in and sleep as soundly as we could, until the watch was called again. A sailor can sleep anywhere—no sound of wind, water, wood or iron can keep him awake—and we were always fast asleep when three blows on the hatchway, and the unwelcome cry of ‘All starbowlines ahoy! eight bells there below! do you hear the news?’ (the usual formula of calling the watch), roused us up from our berths upon the cold, wet decks. The only time when we could be said to take any pleasure was at night and morning, when we were allowed a tin pot full of hot tea, (or, as the sailors significantly call it, ‘water bewitched,’) sweetened with molasses. This, bad as it was, was still warm and comforting, and, together with our sea biscuit and cold salt beef, made quite a meal. Yet even this meal was attended with some uncertainty. We had to go ourselves to the galley and take our kid of beef and tin pots of tea, and run the risk of losing them before we could get below. Many a kid of beef have I seen rolling in the scuppers, and the bearer lying at his length on the decks. I remember an English lad who was always the life of the crew, but whom we afterwards lost overboard, standing for nearly ten minutes at the galley, with this pot of tea in his hand, waiting for a chance to get down into the forecastle; and seeing what he thought was a ‘smooth spell,’ started to go forward. He had just got to the end of the windlass, when a great sea broke over the bows, and for a moment I saw nothing of him but his head and shoulders; and at the next instant, being taken off of his legs, he was carried aft with the sea, until her stern lifting up and sending the water forward, he was left high and dry at the side of the long-boat, still holding on to his tin pot, which had now nothing in it but salt water. But nothing could ever daunt him, or overcome, for a moment, his habitual good humor. Regaining his legs, and shaking his fist at the man at the wheel, he rolled below, saying, as he passed, ‘A man’s no sailor, if he can’t take a joke.’ The ducking was not the worst of such an affair, for, as there was an allowance of tea, you could get no more from the galley; and though sailors would never suffer a man to go without, but would always turn in a little from their own pots to fill up his, yet this was at best but dividing the loss among all hands.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“To enhance the value of the Sabbath to the crew, they are allowed on that day a pudding, or, as it is called, a ‘duff.’ This is nothing more than flour boiled with water, and eaten with molasses. It is very heavy, dark, and clammy, yet it is looked upon as a luxury, and really forms an agreeable variety with salt beef and pork. Many a rascally captain has made friends of his crew by allowing them duff twice a week on the passage home.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
“There is nothing more beautiful than the dolphin when swimming a few feet below the surface, on a bright day. It is the most elegantly formed, and also the quickest fish, in salt water; and the rays of the sun striking upon it, in its rapid and changing motions, reflected from the water, make it look like a stray beam from a rainbow.” – Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast
new orleans (september, 2005)new orleans (september, 2005)
new orleans drowns
new orleans drowns and i sit in a coffeeshop
new orleans drowns and i sit in a plastic wicker chair
at a dark green table on the patio of a coffeeshop in a city in new mexico
new orleans drowns and the cries go up for help
please help us god we are drowning
we are forsaken, stranded, dying of thirst
water everywhere but none to drink
we are awash in the poisoned sea
new orleans drowns
new orleans drowns and the faces and voices on the television news
are black if they are in new orleans
raising their voices and their hands to plead for help and deliver us into their rage
new orleans drowns and a black man sits at a table just to my right and reads the paper
and i am a white man and i am afraid to look at him
damn straight i am afraid
new orleans drowns
new orleans drowns and i have no boats
no emergency supplies
no heavy lift capacity
no politicians in my pocket all wound up and set to dance
set to make their crazy sounds, they smile, they look concerned
new orleans drowns
new orleans drowns and people sitting at a table just to my left talk about
the wine festival last weekend, it was fun
there was plenty of wine, lots of cheese
someone even got to be interviewed on television
new orleans drowns
(Copyright 2005, 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“[T]he requisitioned civilians. This concerns a category of witnesses, often children or adolescents at the time, of whom one finds no trace in official reports or archives. Neither victims nor executioners, these people were often requisitioned at their homes on the morning of the execution by an armed man; sometimes they were requisitioned because they had a wagon, a shovel, cooking utensils, a bag, or a sewing needle. This invisible group, undoubtedly, make up one of our principal discoveries, all the more so as they appear nowhere in written documents. At most, they are referred to in the passive form: ‘The graves were dug,’ ‘the clothes of the Jews were taken off,’ and so on. But by whom and how? These requisitioned civilians were not hiding at their windows watching the columns of victims marching toward the graves. Neither were they perched on trees in the distance. They were at the place of the crime, very often well before the Jews were brought there. And this anonymous labor assisted the executions from start to finish, beside the victims and their murderers, sometimes sitting on the grass, only several meters from an open and screaming grave. A vital point is that these requisitions were not simply improvised. They were made an integral part of the implementation of the crimes. At times more than 150 children were used. Forced actors, these requisitioned locals shine a light on these dark events and allow us to gain an accurate understanding of what happened.” – Father Patrick Desbois, “The Witnesses of Ukraine or Evidence from the Ground: The Research of Yahad-In Unum” (collected in The Holocaust in Ukraine: New Sources and Perspectives, 2013) (emphases in original)
“What was your reaction when you saw the blood? This simple question can stimulate the witness to describe the scene to us, adding new elements. In a general way, during all the interviews, it is a question of keeping the focus on what the person saw or heard. To that end, an inalterable rule: to remain fixed on the objects of everyday life, all the while respecting the viewpoint of the witness in such a way that does not bias the witness’s account. That, incidentally, is the irreplaceable contribution of oral history, which offers precisely the possibility of “looking” through previously unseen points of view.” – Father Patrick Desbois, “The Witnesses of Ukraine or Evidence from the Ground: The Research of Yahad-In Unum” (collected in The Holocaust in Ukraine: New Sources and Perspectives, 2013) (emphasis in original)
“Good afternoon folks. I am Grace Lynn. I am a hundred years young. I’m here to protest our school district’s book-banning policy. My husband Robert Nichol was killed in action in World War II, at a very young age, he was only 26, defending our democracy, Constitution, and freedoms. One of the freedoms that the Nazis crushed was the freedom to read the books they banned. They stopped the free press, banned and burned books. The freedom to read, which is protected by the First Amendment, is our essential right and duty of our democracy. Even so, it is continually under attack by both the public and private groups who think they hold the truth. Banned books, and burning books, are the same. Both are done for the same reason: fear of knowledge. Fear is not freedom. Fear is not liberty. Fear is control. My husband died as a father of freedom. I am a mother of liberty. Banned books need to be proudly displayed and protected from school boards like this. Thank you very much. Thank you.” – Grace Lynn, at Martin County, Florida, school board meeting, March 21, 2023 (quoted by Brandon Gage, in AlterNet, March 22, 2023)
“The maiden voyage of the newly recommissioned USS Pueblo in January 1968 was not a well-planned operation. The ship’s preparation was hurried, and the crew was not adequately trained to meet the emergency that confronted them. The SIGINT detachment did not know how to conduct aspects of its mission and, more importantly, did not train in emergency destruction measures. There were numerous highly classified documents aboard the ship that were outdated, some were not needed to carry out the mission, and still others were in unnecessary duplicate copies. When the destruction order finally came, the Pueblo crew was thrown into complete disorder. By at least 20 January, North Korean military authorities were aware of the Pueblo‘s presence off North Korea. Visual reconnaissance of the Pueblo began shortly thereafter. Once the Pueblo was confirmed by the North Koreans as an American vessel and as an intelligence collector, the North Korean purpose was to force the ship into submission and to seize it.” – Robert E. Newton, The Capture of the USS Pueblo and Its Effect on SIGINT Operations
“It is a vast achievement, the surest ideal, perhaps, to render the condition of men a little less servile, a little less painful; but let the mind detach itself for an instant from material results, and the difference between the man who marches in the van of progress and the other who is blindly dragged at its tail ceases to be very considerable.” – Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee
the split-nuclear agethe split-nuclear age
my son has a sister who is not his
mother’s daughter and another who is
not his father’s little girl. the first of
these two half-sisters has herself two half-
siblings in virginia, while the second
is closely related to several
persons in hawaii. we progenitors
(several inter-breeding mothers and
fathers) are, or may be, closely related
to people in colorado
texas
ohio
tennessee
scotland
france
germany
the netherlands
and possibly viet nam
now that we’re so many of us closer
cousins than we may suspect, sex seems not
quite so advisable, at least not for
procreation (pace his eminence
the holy father, with his children of
a different sort). the bunny-rub feels
so good, this is true, and there is nothing
to match a good orgasm (is there any
other kind?), but we could accidentally
generate to follow in our wayward
footsteps an even stupider gener-
ation than our own, unless we decide
to hell with the consequences, dub ourselves
royalty, and set to interbreeding
like the kings and queens whose offspring were
hemophiliacs and at least one world war
(Copyright 2023 by Tetman Callis.)
“According to Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General [pre-2005], 19 percent of the general population of the United States has a diagnosable mental illness, 6 percent have an addictive disorder, and 3 percent have both a mental illness and an addictive disorder. Most of the sufferers continue to function more-or-less well outwardly, despite the internal turmoil: only between a third and a quarter of these illnesses result in diagnosable functional impairment or are severe enough to interfere with social functioning. The others may or may not be detectable by an untrained observer, even though they can seriously compromise the sufferer’s judgment.” – Major Laura J. Heath, USA, “An Analysis of the Systemic Security Weaknesses of the U.S. Navy Fleet Broadcasting System, 1967-1974, as Exploited by CWO John Walker”
“The personnel security system appeared to be a solid, workable solution to the need to keep classified information out of untrustworthy hands. However, on closer inspection, the system was far less comprehensive than it seemed. The process for investigating personnel for Secret-level clearances was extremely cursory—it was incapable of uncovering the great majority of criminal convictions, and it made no effort whatsoever to check any other security-relevant areas, such as finances. Even such a minimal vetting process was routinely undermined by people with vested interests in concealing information. Granting Top Secret clearances involved a more elaborate series of checks; however, the results were still highly untrustworthy. DIS [Defense Investigative Service] and the adjudication system were chronically underfunded and undermanned, there was virtually no reliable scientific information on which to base decisions, and the Navy allowed commanding officers to override the adjudicators’ decisions anyway. Periodic reinvestigations were almost always backlogged by several years and could, in any event, be easily avoided by tampering with personnel records. Policy existed that required supervisors and coworkers to report suspicious behavior to the authorities, yet almost no one did; however, the policy makers apparently made no effort to find out whether their policies were being followed, or even if sailors knew the policy existed. Even if sailors had reported suspicious behavior, the law enforcement agencies charged with investigating and prosecuting espionage were divided, distracted by political meddling, and had few good legal methods available to them for collecting and presenting evidence in court. The official government policy towards espionage made covering up the crime more important than punishing criminals; the result was a climate of minimal deterrence for potential spies. All of these facts should have been known to decision makers who were designing FBS [Fleet Broadcasting System] in the mid-1960s, if they had looked into the matter.” – Major Laura J. Heath, USA, “An Analysis of the Systemic Security Weaknesses of the U.S. Navy Fleet Broadcasting System, 1967-1974, as Exploited by CWO John Walker”
“A society is moving toward dangerous ground when loyalty to the truth is seen as disloyalty to some supposedly higher interest. How many times has history taught us this?” – Marilynne Robinson, “What Are We Doing Here?”
“By June 21 [1915], the eight JN–2 airplanes, eight sets of spares, and twelve engines had arrived at San Diego. The new airplanes were quaint by today’s standards; but compared to the awkward-looking pushers and clumsy early tractors, they were beauties characterized by low rakish lines, staggered equal-span wings, and a long, narrow fuselage. Their appearance, however, hid serious defects. ‘They looked like airplanes,’ [Captain Benjamin D.] Foulois later wrote. ‘But we were to find that an airplane that looks like an airplane may be something less.’ ” – Roger G. Miller, “A Preliminary to War: The 1st Aero Squadron and the Mexican Punitive Expedition of 1916 ”
“White people are scared of change, believing that what they have is being taken away from them by people they consider unworthy. But all they’re doing is poking a bear with a stick. In 2004, the Anglo population in Texas became a minority. The last majority-Anglo high-school class in Texas graduated in 2014. There will never be another. The reality is, it’s all over for the Anglos.” – Evan Smith, of the Texas Tribune (quoted by Lawrence Wright in “America’s Future is Texas,” The New Yorker, July 10 & 17, 2017)
Memorial DayMemorial Day
The final letter
July 23, 1950
Dear Folks
I have a little more time to write now than I did the other day. In case you didn’t get the other letter there was $80 in Travelers checks in it.
We are aboard a Japanese Ship (I can’t pronounce the name of it) We will get to Korea in the morning or at least we are supposed to. We have to sleep on the floor, eat “C” rations, wash in helmets all the comforts of home.
Tell Bob that I am in a 57 M.M. Recoiless Rifle Section, which we do not have yet and I
haven’t ever seen either but we will get them in Korea. I am an ammunition bearer and carry a carbine. There is five men in our squad.
The coast of Japan is in sight now, it is only about a mile (1) away. The name of it is pronounced Sasabu (I don’t know how it is spelled)
We pick up a convoy of ships and escorts here I hope.
We drew 40 rounds of ammo this afternoon and will get some more tomorrow.
Tell Toby and the rest of the kids to be good and to behave themselves.
Okinawa (or what I saw of it) was dirty, filthy and almost primitive beyond your imagination.
I got seasick on the first day out of Frisco and again on the 11th, 12th + 13th days as we ran into a typhoon. Don’t ever believe that it isn’t a miserable feeling. I wanted to vomit till my boots came out my mouth. One of few times and I hope for the last I missed three complete meals so you know I must’ve been sick.
I did not have time to get my baggage and equipment that was stored in the Walker, so they just gave me new stuff in place of it.
Please keep these pictures for me.
Well I can think of anything else so I’ll close. Write soon
Love
Henry
PERSONAL
Mother or Daddy
Tell Lib to send Ann what money that she (Lib) thinks neccessary. I have made out an allotment to Lib.
In case I don’t get back, and I certainly do intende to, make the kids go to school, they will need all they can get.
The Ascension of Henry Callis
Corporal Henry Callis, younger brother to my father, was on a troopship steaming to Japan in the summer of 1950 when the Korean War broke out. He was on his way with several hundred other troops to join the 29th Regimental Combat Team on Okinawa and be part of the post-World-War-Two American Army of Occupation there. The regiment was understrength and had only two battalions, instead of the three called for by its full complement. Nobody had expected war in Korea. If war came, everybody expected it to be nuclear and against the Soviet Union.
Henry and the others on the troopship arrived at Okinawa one morning and learned their mission had changed. They were issued combat gear and company assignments. By sundown they were aboard another troopship along with the rest of the 29th and were on their way to the port of Pusan on the bottom-right corner of the Korean peninsula. A day later they arrived. They disembarked and headed up to the front line, the location of which no one was certain. The North Koreans had launched a devastating surprise attack to start the war against South Korea a few weeks earlier, and were still on the march. What few American troops were available in Japan had been rushed to South Korea to help the shattered South Korean army. They were being overwhelmed. The North Korean army was large and well-equipped, well-trained and possessed of many veterans of the Chinese Civil War, which had ended the previous autumn. The situation was fluid and becoming desperate.
The soldiers of the 29th Regimental Combat Team were told they were going to fight a couple hundred communist guerrillas near a town called Hadong-ri. They headed that way by train and then by truck, and then by foot. Their rifles and machine guns were all new. The machine guns were still packed away in their protective shipping grease when the regiment got to Pusan. They hadn’t been test-fired and their sights hadn’t been aligned. And not all the equipment had been distributed. Not all the regiment’s doctors had medical tools and supplies.
The men — boys almost, like Henry, who had himself just turned twenty that spring — were very confident and very green. Very few of them, maybe about one out of every one hundred, were Second World War combat veterans. These were generally the sergeants and not the commissioned officers.
The regiment drew near to Hadong-ri and deployed along a ridge with one battalion on one side of the road and the other on the other. They saw a few soldiers moving around in the valley in front of them. They weren’t sure if these were stray South Korean soldiers, but they thought it likely that’s what they were. They had been told they would be mopping up guerrillas and they didn’t expect to see uniformed soldiers in front of them. The regiment’s commander and his staff got out of their jeeps and stood in the road at the top of the ridge and tried to figure out what was going on. They stood in a clump. Binoculars hung from straps around their necks and they held maps in their hands. Mortar and recoilless rifle fire slammed into the ridge. The first shots killed the regimental commander and his staff. The regiment was not facing a group of ragged irregulars they outnumbered five to one. They were up against a crack North Korean division that outnumbered them ten to one.
It was not long before the 29th Regimental Combat Team was shattered and routed. Its fragments were driven back down off the ridge and through the rice paddies behind it. Hundreds of American soldiers were killed or went missing. Henry was one of the missing. The soldiers were so new to their companies that many of them didn’t know each others’ names. There was no one who knew Henry Callis who survived the battle and could say what had happened to him. He was as gone as though he had vanished from the face of the earth, lifted up bodily in the rapture of war.
“This Republic means something. It means something to me. I’ve buried a lot of soldiers, and my dad and mom fought in World War II, relatives that fought in a lot different wars. And this country means something, and Constitution means something. And it’s bigger than us, bigger than any one of us, and we’ve got to protect it. If we don’t protect it, then God help us down the road.” – Gen. Mark A. Milley, USA, November 17, 2021
“In time of war men must choose one side or the other.” – Christopher Hill, The English Revolution 1640
“The morality that Puritanism preached was precisely the outlook needed for the accumulation of capital and expansion of capitalism. The emphasis was on thrift, sobriety, hard work in the station to which God had called a man; on unceasing labour in whatever calling, merchant or artisan, one happened to be, but with no extravagant enjoyment of the fruits of labour, and unceasing preoccupation with duty to the detriment of ‘worldly’ pleasure. The wealthy were to accumulate capital, the poor to labour at their tasks – as a divine duty and always under the ‘great Task-master’s’ eye. This belief inspired the bourgeoisie to remodel society in the divinely ordained fashion God’s ‘elect,’ and if that fashion bore a striking resemblance to the capitalist system, they were ever more fervently convinced that they were doing the work of God and that ultimate victory was both predestined and assured.” – Christopher Hill, The English Revolution 1640
“The journey into history can help us make sense of the barrage of daily news reports, allowing us to react thoughtfully to events and thus shape their outcome.” – Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe
“It’s not the election that creates a democracy; it’s that peaceful transition of power.” – Lt. Gen. Walter A. Piatt, USA, November 3, 2021
“Using words to lie destroys language. Using words to cover up lies, however subtly, destroys language. Validating incomprehensible drivel with polite reaction also destroys language. This isn’t merely a question of the prestige of the writing art or the credibility of the journalistic trade: it is about the basic survival of the public sphere.” – Masha Gessen, “The Autocrat’s Language”
“We’re now in a situation where the greatest Ukrainian warlord in history is a Jew, which proves that God is Jewish and has a sense of humor.” – Timothy Snyder, “The Making of Modern Ukraine: Ukrainian Ideas in the 21st Century” (emphasis in original)
“The First World War was the moment when basically the countries which governed the planet—ruled the planet—decided to have a terrible war on the tiny bit of territory they were from, kill each other on the scale of millions and then tens of millions, and then see what would happen.” – Timothy Snyder, “The Making of Modern Ukraine: Republics and Revolutions”
“If you want to lose a war, there’s a trick, which is, start one.” – Timothy Snyder, “The Making of Modern Ukraine: Republics and Revolutions”
“You can’t make sense of yourself without other people. And you can’t make sense of yourself without listening. And you can’t make sense of who you really are without understanding what influences are coming in from where and what circumstances.” – Timothy Snyder, “The Making of Modern Ukraine: Polish Power and Cossack Revolution”
“Are you speaking the language, or is it speaking you?” – Timothy Snyder, “The Making of Modern Ukraine: Before Europe”
“If we cannot help but blame others for things that are beyond their control, this may be because wretchedness is our basic condition, as inevitable as it is blameworthy, and only an ideology—such as the one that has reigned throughout modernity—that stresses our earthly perfectibility will place the wretched in the earthly purgatories of rehab clinics and ‘correctional institutions’ and psychiatric outpatient clinics, where in each case the purported goal is to purge the wretchedness right out of a person.” – Justin E. H. Smith, “A Surfeit of Black Bile”