Eating my words

I was delighted to post back in January that I had sat through my last first day of school. I thought to myself that day, "surely if I can only get through the 19th Grade unscathed, I will finally be smart enough to be unleashed on the world!" Now, only 9 short months later, I regret to inform you that I am at it again. Like eating boiled crow, indeed.

I had my first day of work at Elon University today, bolstering the already talented Advancement Office's bench strength by filling the post of Assistant Director of Gift Planning. Just so youse know, any of youse out there want to be giving away money, you come and talk to me first. So long as you are giving to Elon!

Not only that, but I am blogging right now because I am halfway through my assigned reading for my first class at NYU Law's famed Tax LL.M. program, which I am pleased to be taking via teh internets. Ah technology. Actually, it may not be too different from actually attending class - half of that felt like I was just watching a videotape of the professor, anyhow.

Seriously, this is exciting to be doing, even if tonight's reading is all about cash and accrual accounting methods and how they are treated under the Internal Revenue Code.

Oh well. Wish me luck.

Family Fun

It didn't occur to me while we getting the kids ready for bed last night, but the growth of our little family is more than just the simple addition of Caroline. There is an entirely new product, maybe even exponential dimension now that she is added to the mix. Like we jumped suddenly from Shaw³ to  Shaw⁴ - that's a big deal. And it is a good thing to see, even though it took looking at a couple of pictures to make it sink in.

We were playing on the floor in Caroline's room, and Jack dragged out the big copy (yes, we have more than one) of Goodnight Moon.  It is less of a story and more of a poem/lullaby, the way the words and phrases weave about and repeat and suddenly come together in a soothing cadence. This edition is a particularly well-worn book, even though it is not yet two years into its hopefully long life. There was a period a couple of months ago when Jack liked to stand on it and try to rip the pages/cover off. So needless to say, it has fought its share of battles. But it is also the book we read to him nightly when he was just 6 or 7 months old, and barely big enough to turn pages, and certainly not old enough to pick his own books - which he now does, recently opting for one about fire trucks or bulldozers, or maybe Hand Hand Fingers Thumb, if he is in an introspective mood about the meaning of the universe (I mean, how else can you interpret "millions of monkeys, drumming on drums....").

But it was the funniest thing having Caroline there, because he brought it over and laid it on the floor and started flipping through the pages, narrating as he went in his lilting pidgin non-english language that we barely understand. I am pretty sure that "Li smo kat funan wip pig, li smo fat yon" means "Goodnight clocks, and goodnight socks". I was able to step back and take a picture or two, and looking at them later I realized just how big of an added dimension that Caroline brings to our lives, and to Jack's. It is fun to have a family.

    

Goodnight stars, Goodnight air. Goodnight noises everywhere.

There's a Wocket in my Pocket

Well, I am actually not quite sure about the Wocket, but I am quite certain there's a Jertain in the Curtain:

A tale of two (military history) books:

After reading the excellent war fiction Killing Rommel, I pulled the trigger on another North Africa campaign book, this one the recent military history text by rick Atkinson, Army at Dawn. The class of warriors that led us through the breach WWII are leaving us at the cyclic rate these days, to the detriment of our corporate knowledge and experience. I thought that North Africa would be a good topic, for it is where our Army as a world power was first bloodied - the dogfaces that stormed ashore at Omaha and Utah had first gotten their blood up at places like Kasserine and Sidi bou Zid. Sure, the Marines got bloody noses at every island in the Pacific from early '42 onward, but that had been happening to the Marines for years during the interwar period anyway.

An Army at Dawn skips the majority of the British Eighth Army's retreat to and subsequent drive out of El Alamein and begins with the Allied invasion landings at Morocco and Algiers. Atkinson ably chronologizes the personalities of the key characters of Operation Torch and devotes some time to the political and diplomatic interplay that form the underpinnings of any tactical maneuver of that size. Because of this, the focus on generals and interpersonal strife of the key players (which I grant is a key element of how things turn out in this sort of event), rather than the big blue arrows on the battlefield or the average Joe mucking it out, I had a hard time getting into this book. It is well researched and annotated, and provides a terrific bird-eye view of the strategic and operational levels. But it just wasn't a bell-ringer for me, although I'll try out the other two books in the trilogy just for res gestae's sake. To be quite honest, what really through me from the beginning was a writing style that was cumbersome and unreadable, with ridiculously long sentences and poorly chosen transition words. I recognize this might be law school speaking, but I just felt like I was slogging through each page.

On the other hand, although I have gotten just 30 pages into The Road to Guilford Courthouse, I can already tell it will be a favorite. Despite writing about the 18th century campaign of the British in the Colonial South, the pages fly by like the minutes in a battle and you quickly find yourself much more engaged than you anticipated. This single volume account of the American Revolution as it unfolded in the souther colonies of the Carolinas addresses an oft-overlooked aspect of that fight. Like John Keegan, Buchanan focuses on the sociological makeup of the armies involved and the civilizations that fielded them in searching for connections between similar results. It helps that the terrain is very familiar - from the battle of Fort Sullivan (later Fort Moultrie) and skirmishes at Breach Inlet, to landings at Seabrook and fighting at Cowpens and Greensboro, this is a story that unfolds in the backyard of my upbringing. I am looking forward to finishing this one.

Little Hoot

 

The hardest part of bedtime is not figuring out which pajamas to wear (this handsome outfit, of course!) or whether to give Dean Dog a goodnight kiss (of course!), or even which stuffed animal to sleep with (all of them!) - it's trying to pick which book to read!

 

Tonight it was Little Hoot. Thanks, Heather.

Fix Bayonets!

On the evening of June 1st, 1918, Marines from the 5th Marine Regiment serving under the command of the U.S. Army Expeditionary Force conducted a forced march along the road to Chateau-Thierry, and plugged into the line against the Boche. One of my very favorite books is Fix Bayonets!, written by Captain John W. Thomason of First Battalion, 5th Marines. The cadence and imagery of his prose and his battlefield sketches do credit to the esprit-de-corps of the Marines in a way that few other authors have, before or since:

There is no sight in all the pageant of war like young, trained men going up to battle. The columns look solid and businesslike. Each battalion is an entity, 1,200 men of one purpose. They go on like a river that flows very deep and strong. Uniforms are drab these days, but there are points of light on the helmets and the bayonets, and light in the quick, steady eyes and the brown young faces, greatly daring. There is no singing—veterans know, and they do not sing much—and there is no excitement at all; they are schooled craftsmen, going up to impose their will, with the tools of their trade, on another lot of fellows; and there is nothing to make a fuss about. Battles are not salubrious places, and every file knows that a great many more are going in than will come out again—but that is along with the job. And they have no illusions about the job.

There is nothing particularly glorious about sweaty fellows, laden with killing tools, going along to fight. And yet—such a column represents a great deal more than 28,000 individuals mustered into a division. All that is behind those men is in that column, too: the old battles, long forgotten, that secured our nation—Brandywine and Trenton and Yorktown, San Jacinto and Chapultepec, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, Antietam, El Caney; scores of skirmishes, far off, such as the Marines have nearly every year—in which a man can be killed as dead as ever a chap was in the Argonne; traditions of things endured and things accomplished, such as regiments hand down forever; and the faith of men and the love of women; and that abstract thing called patriotism, which I never heard combat soldiers mention—all this passes into the forward zone, to the point of contact, where war is girt with horrors. And common men endure these horrors and overcome them, along with the insistent yearnings of the belly and the reasonable promptings of fear; and in this, I think, is glory.

THEY LOOKED FINE, COMING IN THERE . . . THROUGH THOSE LITTLE TIRED FRENCHMEN.

Semper Fidelis, Marines.

Bonus Update: On tonight's edition of Jeopardy!, the $1200 question in the category "Woodrow Wilson's War" featured the 5th and 6th Marine Regiments at Belleau Wood.

A Classic Coming-of-Age Tale..

You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter.

Like Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield before him, young Jack is beginning to unleash his attitude and shape the world to his liking.

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth

At least, he can shape the world to his liking until Doc says "no." But she can't say that forever, can she? A boy's gotta *live*!

Little Stinker

A big big Jackson-sized hug goes out to our wonderful Auntie Heather for her birthday gift of three Little Books - the story of Little Oink, Little Hoot and Little Pea. This hilarious (to parents) collection is quite an addition to our rapidly growing collection of 4-inch books made of cardboard and limited to 10 pages.

Little Oink is about the struggles of a poor little pig that just wants to keep his room clean. Imagine that. Even after his pig-parents' exhortations to dig holes, get dirty, scatter countless toys about the house and wear dirty clothes, this little piggy just can't wait for the chance to finally play the game he loves: "house." He sweeps and cleans and stacks his things. Pity those poor little other piggys whose parents require them to always make a mess, and never let them discover the pure and simple joy of cleaning.

Would it surprise you to hear the saga of Little Hoot, the young owl that, in order to be old and wise, must master the dreaded skill of staying up late? All he wants to do is go to bed early, but instead he must stay up playing, jumping on his bed and make a ruckus. If only he was lucky enough to be tucked into bed early, like all of his non-Strigidae friends. Alas, no.

To be honest, the only story that really scares me is Little Pea. This subversive tale of an adorable little vegetable is a thinly veiled attempt to trick young innocents into eating things that are green and better left in the woods. Imagine the agony as Little Pea is forced to eat ALL of his candy, all the while yearning for the heaping piles of spinach that await him for dessert. What a bunch of horsehockey.

Now if only we could find the book that tells the story of the cute little boy that never ever wants to terrorize his parents with another diaper worthy of a CBIRF intervention.. I guess we'll just have to make these book reviews a regular thing. Thanks Heather!

Blogging While Studying

I heard that an addendum to NC's new Texting While Driving Law (more blog posts about this ridiculous thing later) is a general prohibition against Blogging While Studying. Needless to say, I am up to my eyelids in Secured Transactions, Environmental Law, Estate and Gift Taxation, and Family Law (all coming up within the next week). Yay.

Fortunately for my morale, my lovely wife and the ever-beautiful Aunt Rachel dropped by the library and dropped off Jack so they could go giggle together. Not wanting to have anything to do with "girl talk," my boy immediately plunged into the stacks and started researching caselaw to help out his daddy.

Jack: "You can just call me 836 F. Supp. 1342"

Good boy!

Good Books

A quick rollup of the past few months' better reads ...

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski

A fantastic Shakespearean / Coming of Age American saga about a family and their quest to develop a truly unique breed of dogs. Nestled among the Wisconsin North Woods on the edge of the Chequamegon National Forest, you instantly feel at home in the life of the mute, teenaged boy named Edgar Sawtelle. I literally could not put this book down, and 5 days later felt emotionally drained and enriched at the same time.

To quote Stephen King: "I closed the book with that regret readers feel only after experiencing the best stories: It's over, you think, and I won't read another one this good for a long, long time."

Accounting and Finance for Lawyers: Just kidding. Avoid this book like the plague - really.

Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner

I got turned on to Stegner back in 1999 when I spent a summer in Wyoming working on a cattle ranch. For those who seek to preserve the unique character of the American West, Stegner is their literary champion.

This work is a complex, deep, and tortuous map of the path of a family growing up on the cusp of a new American dream, yet never quite cashing in. From the mines of Colorado to the Idaho rivers to old Mexico, the countryside that forms the backgorund of this saga is vivid and harsh and real - and eminiently Western.

Killing Rommel, by Steven Pressfield

I admit that I'm a sucker for WWII side-stories that are wrapped up like thrillers, but once again the author of my one my all-time favorite novels has totally exceeded my expectations. This book follows the exploits of the once-famed Long Range Desert Group in North Africa '42, now a forgotten unit on a forgetten front of our most memorialized war. But instead of just a history, Pressfield uncovers the spirit of a group of men facing unfathomable odds, and drinking of their own ingenuity and wits when their water runs out. 

Quite a treat.