Ernie Pyle Reprise and Update

Catherine Seipp echoes my Veterans' Day sentiments on Ernie Pyle here. She says:

Even when old books do get reissued, there can be something ineffably satifsying about reading them in their original form. Legendary World War II correspondent Ernie Pyle's Brave Men and Here Is Your War finally became available in paperback again a few years ago, but I prefer my old hardback edition of Brave Men, still as moving and immediate as I imagine the original owner, one Winifred Ellsini (her name is inscribed in my copy) found it when she got it for Christmas, 1944.

A bonus is John Steinbeck's hauntingly prophetic description of Pyle — who was killed by a Japanese gunner near Okinawa — on the torn dustjacket: "His dispatches sound as artless as a letter, but other professionals are not deceived. They know that Ernie Pyle is a great reporter... In his unique way, he is almost sure to be a sort of national conscience. If Ernie Pyle should die tomorrow, as well he may, it would still be a long time before Americans forgot Ernie Pyle's war."

I think Pyle deserves more attention than he gets these days. I've never read any "embedded" report from Iraq that could compare to Pyle's — but then he really was up front for years, often digging his own foxholes.

You can find his books at Amazon.com, but it is more fun to pull out a dusty original at your local antique store. My copy of Here is Your War is inscriped Chestina Gates May '44. I paid five dollars for it, and it came with a welcome suprise. Ms. Gates had left original clippings in it, where they had stayed for fifty years. "Enemy Bullet Fells Writer on Ie Island" is pinned together with a publicity photo of him and one of him talking to the GIs. After the war, Ms. Gates added two stories "Pyle Home Preserved" and "Purple Heart, dedication of center in New York will honor Ernie Pyle". Unfortunately, the Pyle home was recently destroyed. I am currently preparing another snippet from his books for your enjoyment (actually, I am not sure that anyone enjoyed the Veterans' Day selection; and my student aide is working on the snippet--a snippet that I will be using for my American Lit. class).


Peace

Monday Miscellany: Special Thanksgiving Review Edition

It was an interesting Thanksgiving break. I had terrible allergies all day Wednesday. I brought out the medicine that usually puts me on another astral plane (sneeze-free, but astral). The medicine was of marginal use. I would have about one good hour out of four. Thursday I was well, and we enjoyed two fine Thanksgiving meals. Friday-Sunday I was brought low by some kind of intestinal disorder. I don't know if was the two meals, the shock of going back to real Coke, the popcorn during an early morning Super-Duper Family Movie Fun Morning (see below), or a bug. I am almost better today.

In the past, our school has had a sixteen-day Christmas break. This year it is twelve. I would gripe about it, but I realize that the normal working world is lucky to get off two or three extra days off at this time of year. Few would sympathize with my loss. I am humbled and happy to get my twelve-day break (seven week days and four weekend days).


On Black Friday my wife and my mom went on their annual all-day shopping mission. I was left with painful heartburn and two over tired children (see above). I decided to give the kids the full Jedi experience.

Months ago, we had instituted a new family tradition (Super-Duper Family Movie Fun Night). We pop corn, turn out the lights, get out the blankets and pillows, and try to watch a movie that we have never seen before.

One of the movies was Star Wars IV: A New Hope. Both of the children fell asleep about forty minutes into it. We never finished it. Since then my boy has become enamored of Yoda (I think he saw Star Wars II at his cousins' house). Since they were so exhausted from Thanksgiving, I decided that we should watch Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back on Black Friday. We started at about 7:30am. We popped corn and enjoyed the film. My son was enthralled. My daughter (two years old) was interested for about forty minutes. After lunch we watched Star Wars VI: The Return of the Jedi.

My son's observations/review:

• He quickly caught on to the soundtrack. "This is the bad guy music?" He was humming it last night. I am of the firm belief that the soundtrack elavated those movies from hokum to epic.
• At the revelation that Darth is Luke's father, the boy said nothing but his eyes glazed over as his face grew intense. I thought he was going to cry. I remember that I wasn't convinced until the release of Return of the Jedi.
• During Return of Jedi, about Leia's outfit: "Where's her clothes?" He repeated this several times until she finally put some clothes on. He said it as though offended and deeply disappointed. I offered that it was like a swimsuit. "But there is no water to swim in." He'll appreciate it when he's older.
• As Yoda explains the Force to Luke and its presence all around us, generated by all living things, "Where's God?"
• He kept waiting for Yoda to pull out a light saber. I think he was sorely disappointed in Yoda.
• At the end of Jedi, "That was a great movie. Remember when we watched the other movie and we didn't finish it?" "Yes son, you and Evelyn fell asleep." "I didn't fall asleep, I was just laying down with my eyes open." I will save that movie for another day.
• He has been making light sabers, space ships, and blasters out of his Lego bricks ever since.

I am glad he is still a child, and I wonder at the mind of a child. Thankful I am.

Peace

Monday Miscellany

My son's preferences (he will be five in January):

• Star Wars character: the green guy (Yoda)
• Color: green
• To be when he grows up: a T-Rex then a teacher (not in order of preference; his plan is to be a T-Rex for a while and then become a teacher)
• Video game: Spyro the Dragon
• Activity with daddy: fighting (either Star Wars or Spyro the Dragon)
• Super-hero: Spiderman
• Joke: Knock knock? Who's there? Banana. Banana who? Banana pants.
• Food: chocolate in nearly any form (that's my boy)
• Meat: he prefers no meat, but will eat chicken nuggets (which hardly count)
• Animal: dinosaurs (particularly T-Rexs which were, I am assured, green)
• Book: Richard Scarry's Busy Town
• TV Show: Any cartoon made before about 1975 (Tom and Jerry, Spiderman, Bugs, etc)

On the day that the new Georgia Aquarium has opened, news breaks that Atlanta has ranked seventh in a survey of most dangerous cities. I think this gives us the new Atlanta slogan: "Last in education. Top ten in crime. First in big tubs of fish."

I have given up on diet colas. The sweetener used in most of them seems to have some unpleasant side effects. Good-bye apartame, hello rapid weight gain. That being said, Diet Dr. Pepper and Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper were the best in terms of taste. Each has so many other tastes that the apartame taste is well-cloaked. So why not give up all cokes? I'll get back to you on that one

As a treat last week, I showed my 9th grade students the fine cinematic feature "Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." My guess is that about 25% of my students found it funny (which is more than I thought--it was actually a student who suggested it). One scene in particular involving a cat caught in a wax head got laughs from most of the class. Comedy has changed a bit over the years. Lou Costello was a brilliant physical actor. Boris Karloff played a fine Dr. Jekyll. Not only did they change a horror novel into a horror/comedy, but a romance was thrown in for good measure.

Peace

Some Updates

I knew I shouldn't have done it. I have already recieved a hit from someone looking for "wife pictures". He or she came from Malvern, Penn using the Shared Medical Systems servers.

Last night I woke up in cold sweat wondering why someone at the US State Department was searching for "Powder Puff Girls". I suppose the Girls are a fitting symbol for their particular corner of the Federal government.

And yes, I might be re-posting the words "wife pictures" and "Powder Puff Girls" to increase my hitcount. I am stuck at "999".

I haven't heard anything back from Nigeria in a while. I think that is normal. It probably takes a lot of time to process the paperwork to transfer $9.5 million to the United States.

The Google Bot Cometh

In the early, heady days of Ohoopee Online, the management was concerned with customizing the website as much as possible. A little bit of code was played with here and there. This was just enough modification to realize that a little bit of code should not be played with anywhere by anyone at Ohoopee until further training is acquired.

One of the few successful modifications was the insertion of a hit counter. I used an easy to use (read "free") one from the good people at statcounter. I wanted one not because I thought my blog would become an instant "hit", but because I love stats. Compilations of numbers fascinate me.

I haven't exactly had a lot of stats to look at; there has not been alot to compile. You can see the counter at the bottom of the page as it slowly counts up to 1,000. It provides me with a report of when people visited, where they come from, and what internet service provider they use. Don't worry, it gives me no personal information and is essentially anonymous. The most interesting statistic it gives me is information on search hits. A search hit occurs when a person searches on Google or Yahoo for something like "Incisive commentary on China" and then clicks on your website out of the list of thousands or tens of thousands that come up. That hasn't happened to me yet.

I have gotten the most search hits on searches for "Powder Puff Girls". One searcher came from the State Department in Washington D.C. They came because of my post entitled "Powder Puff Girls Fraud Alert." The second biggest number of search hits I have gotten have been from searches for the "Ohoopee River." This one makes me feel a little guilty. I have used the name of a river for my website and the only information I have about the river is a picture I stole from someone else's website and a sarcastic remark about how lovely it is. The next time I go down I-16, I will take some pictures with my new digital camera and write a full report. That should be sometime in the year 2017.

The "Google Bot" has come twice. The bot crawls through websites to assess, I guess, their content for suitability and rankability in search results. Apparently, the bot did not like what it found as a search for Ohoopee Online results in 554 links and none for this site. "Gay North Chicago" is there but not TOLN. Change the search to "Ohoopee Online" however, and I come up second of sixteen.

My wife's site gets the creepy searches. One search for "sleeping wife pictures" and another twisted one that I cannot remember because it is too disturbing to think about.

I have also gotten searches for "Doctrine of the Sin Nature", "Letter Star EE", "Other Names for Teacher", "Peter Sellers Being There Opening Music", and many others. I have had searchers from the Russian Federation, Thailand, Australia, Atlanta, and elsewhere come to my humble site. Sadly, I don't think anyone found what he or she was looking for.

Now that I have included the terms "Powder Puff Girls", "Gay", "Sin", and "Wife Pictures" in the same post, I fear my hit count may increase for all of the wrong reasons.


Peace