Actual Violence Reduction Is An Orphan

     Say there was program with an actual track record in reducing big-city violence.  Not a new restriction on firearms, not a "stop and frisk" policy skirting the Fourth Amendment, not a massive increase in police boots on the ground or more midnight basketball--

     You'd think the high-profile "gun violence prevention" groups would be all in favor of it, right?

     Nope.

     "Not our lane," says the Brady Campaign.  At Bloomberg's "Everytown For Gun Safety," home of the big wallet, "We're focused on...how to improve the laws."  The same program was talked about offstage during the most recent series of Executive Branch pushes for gun restrictions...but mention of it never passed Presidential or Vice-Presidential lips.

     Pro Publica -- dependably left-leaning -- covered this last Fall.  Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has been beating the gun control drum pretty hard, has never breathed a word about it.

     I don't know, maybe it's not much of an idea -- but a program that focuses not on the gun nor punishment after the crime, but on the men mostly likely to become killer or victim, sounds like it might have some merit; given the groups that don't think enough of it to pony up a single thin dime or ten seconds in a speech, it sure seems to me it's worth looking at.

     What if there was a way to reduce the inner-city death rate and nobody cared? Yeah, yeah, Pro Publica, sack'o'pinkos, etc., and no doubt theirs is a very favorable reading of the data; but even a blind sow finds an occasional ear of corn.

Decoration Day

     That's what day this is -- or was.  They call it "Memorial Day" now, a name already adopted as the last vestiges of the armies whose fallen once had their graves decorated and the sacrifices marked on this day: the Grand Army of the Republic and the United Confederate Veterans held their last gatherings in 1949 and 1951, respectively.

     Remembrances for the dead of each side had evolved separate Decoration Days -- pragmatically in the spring, when the first large growth of flowers were available.  The commemorations gradually merged, though you'll find remnants of Confederate Memorial Day still on the calendars of some southern States.  One of the earliest such days was in the South, in May 1865 -- but marked Union dead, as African-American residents cleaned up and landscaped the graves of prisoners of war who had died in the prison at Washington Race Course (now Hampton Park) in Charleston, South Carolina.

     By 1868, the day had attained a degree of official recognition which continued to grow in North and South alike, even as the veterans of the war that inspired it faded away.

     It is a day for remembering the fallen, for remembering the price of war's prizes, a day not for arguing why or how but honoring those who went, did their duty -- and never returned.  Spare them a thought.  Tend their graves this one day, at least.

Then I was A Year Older

   And at work.  Since 0400.  It's that kind of day in Indy.  If this was a starship, the engines would be moaning, the lights would be blinking, and we'd be well outside normal reality.  That last may have genuinely been achieved this morning.

But I Ain't Dug No Sixteen Tons...?

     Another year older, nevertheless. 

     Yes, gentle friends, it is that time again -- and, for a wonder, my birthday falls on neither 500-Mile Race Day nor Memorial Day!

      I am now about twenty years older than I ever expected to be. And there's still no Lunar settlement and no Orbital Hilton. You people need to get to work on that. I'm too old to learn Mandarin.

Must...Eat...Brains?

     I'm telling you, if zombies have headaches like the kind I've been getting, I totally understand the lurching walk and implacableness.  And if I thought eating brains would help, some of you would be at considerable risk.  --Oh, Senator, not you.  Of course not.

    It's just the usual migraine plus allergies, I think.  They multiply rather than add.

Clown Sugar, How Come You Taste So Funny?

    Oh, "Senior Chamber."  Oh, "world's most deliberative body!"  --If you needed more evidence that government is run by the same cadre of mutual knob-polishers that made student government an exercise in futility, passing resolutions in honor of Homecoming pep rallies while the cafeteria served parboiled toads and half-deranged teachers put students through twisted personal hells, look no further than S.Res.475 - A resolution recognizing the 100th running of the Indianapolis 500 Mile Race.

     The ol' 500-mile race track has been privately owned since Day One and it still is, right down to a yellow-shirted private army of traffic cops and sidewalk superintendents (backed up by genuine po-lice with guns and arrest powers when necessary -- but the Yellowshirts work en masse and a wise denizen of the track will refrain from incurring their ire).  The 500 needs Senate recognition like they need two more wheels on the cars.

     The positive side is that every second the Senate spends -- and I'll be back to that word in a moment, "spends" -- on frivolity of this sort, National Gardenia-Scent Aftershave Day, Hug A Scorpion Day, whatever, is one less second spent misappropriating funds and sodomizing pages.  If, like me, you figure the fed.gov has all the laws they could possibly need for the next hundred years or more, such wheel-spinners do keep the empty suits from making it more illegal to serve guests milk from your own cow or making lists of approved pronouns (better write your Senator now, you frelks and throons!).

     On the other hand, they've got the lights on and the air-conditioning running, coffeemakers gurgling and the vast presses of the Federal Register humming, world-famous Senatorial bean soup* glooping gently in the stewpots and filling every task, even the ones usually automated elsewhere, well-paid workers, hardworking (or heavy-sleeping, but I didn't pay for a first-class flight of fancy ticket just to judge some low-level functionary) and ready to fulfill just about every whim...of the people in the big, fancy room, orating grandiloquently on the anniversary of an automobile race a third of a continent away: they're spending my tax money at a nearly moonshot rate to perform self-important nonsense.

     "Most deliberative body?"  Fat lot of good that does, if they mostly deliberate bulldoodle.  Send 'em home, turn out the lights, set the cooling to the bare minimum needed to keep the place from growing mold and pare the staff down likewise.  The Senators can set up a party line or a BBS if they want to impress one another.

     If I was setting up a "deliberative body," I'd have 'em work standing up, outdoors, skyclad.  They wouldn't muck around.  Especially when the weather was bad.

     Gah.  If you didn't have coulrophobia, a close look at the United States Congress could give you a bad case of the stuff.
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* Coals to Newcastle, beans to the legislatively flatulent.  And nary a block of government cheese in sight!

A Quick Note

     Maybe, like Mark Twain, because I didn't have time to write an even shorter one?*  Y'got me.  Anyway, it's Wednesday, which means time for the regular meeting with Mom and her caregivers, which means I dash this off while bolting a slice of toast and a cup of coffee.  Well, cinnamon toast, I'm not a total barbarian.

     At last word, Mom was doing better and better, but she's still in the neck near-immobilizer and will be for some months to come. It's exactly as no fun as you might think, if not more so.

     On the good news side, we seem to be building a potted-plant greenhouse on her windowsill.  She's enjoying it.
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* The Twain quote, "Sorry for the long letter, I didn't have time to write a short one," which alludes to the time taken by editing, was at the very least not original with him -- if he ever wrote it at all!  Blaise Pascal appears to be the first person who used the line.

The Queen Is Dead, Alas

     Bobbi (in a bad imitation of a lower-class British accent): "'Our Mam's bad sick. We keep giving her the good food you set out for us but she just gets worse and worse. I'm worried 'bout her'"

      Tam: "Stop anthropomorphizing the kitchen ants!"

      As of this morning, it looks like the poison ant baits have done the job.  I do feel a little guilty.

A Brand-New Week

     Vacation is over and it's time to get stuck back in.  --I dread it.

Insomnia

     For whatever reason (sinus pain, mostly), I was hardly able to sleep last night.  Here I am now, but still pretty out of it.

Hello, Hello, I'm Here -- Post-Roadtrip

     I went to the Dayton Hamvention yesterday, where there were plenty of vendors despite the rain -- though the ones without tents or awnings in the flea market did knock off early.  That just gave me a chance to check the inside booths, mostly commercial, charitable or social organizations.

     Many of the regulars were there -- Vibroplex, Doug Hauff's American Morse Equipment, and the blend of artistry and engineering Begali Keys has brought to that part of the hobby.  I don't remember the UK's Kent Keys having attended in the past but they were there this year, in a booth presumably staffed by the Kents themselves, Mrs. Kent calmly knitting amidst the chaos.  On the other hand, I never found G-QRP or the Morse Telegraph Collectors, both of them booths I look forward to visiting.  (For the high-speed operator, AME is building their version of the out-of-production WBL keyer paddles formerly made in Indianapolis, one of the best super-high-speed paddles ever made: good bearings, good design and a whole lot of weight; you cannot outrun them but you'd better be prepared to copy that fast, too!)

     Among other items, I purchased a Kent straight-key kit, a Chinese (YouKit) antenna analyzer I have had my eye on for a couple of years, and passed up a couple of short Bud (or Par-Metal) racks with partial projects in them, which I may regret later.

     I also rejoined the RSGB.  I was a member of the Radio Society of Great Britain for several years running but dropped off when the economy worsened just as I became a new homeowner with a suddenly-increased tax burden.  This year they had a special offer, three months free and payment deferred until September.  One of the RSGB staffers joked that he despaired of explaining to non-radio amateur friends just were he went and what he did on Hamvention weekend -- I didn't have the presence of mind to offer that Dayton was where the Wright Brothers hung out their shingle and took powered flight from a stunt to an art, nor that it was where the initiators for WW II atomic bombs were made.  And much as Brits and Americans like to think of one other as being pretty much the same except for our accents, there are wide cultural gaps -- a plain old ordinary security guard walked by with a full "batbelt" and the young woman who was signing me up locked eyes on his holstered sidearm and had difficulty looking away.  (Yeah, it's easy to be snarky about unarmed cops -- but try walking up to a policeman in the U.S. and saying, "I've had far too much to drink and I'd better not drive," and see if he hails you a cab, as I'm told is SOP in the UK.  Different countries, different ways.) 

     Other times, the gaps are not so wide, though the language diverges.  At the Begali Keys booth, I asked after an extra weight for their marvelous "Intrepid" bug.  I purchased one when they were first offered (and the dollars-to-Euros ratio was a little more favorable) and I have to work up to it; the lower end of the speed range for mine is about 15 wpm and unless I'm on the air a lot, my ability to copy code drops to about 10 to 13 wpm.  Begali had an Intrepid on the table slowed down to 10 wpm with a pair of larger weights.  That intrigued me; did they offer those weights as an accessory?  The first staffer I asked was struggling with the American language (the Begali booth is large and the 25+ feet of keys on display is consistently two or three hams deep, either sending code or asking questions; try ten hours of that in a language you didn't grow up speaking and you can imagine how he felt.)  He passed my question on to the ever-stylish (and quite fluent) Bruna,* who apologized that it wasn't a regular item, but she'd ask -- and proceeded to ask Mr. Begali himself!  Piero thought a bit, produced a weight from somewhere and bustled out into the crowd to show me how to add the weight without damaging the key, holding up their demonstration copy.  There's a step milled into the part that carries the second pivot, and a machine screw and a tiny plate clamp the reed and pendulum assembly into place; of course, just about every word for every action and component is different in the two languages and we were venturing into territory where even conversational fluency rarely treads.  Geekery will find a way, and with the device in hand he conveyed the gist far better than I could have managed.  It would seem that when you purchase a key of this quality, you're also getting a level of customer service akin to that of a bespoke luxury car.  (He's also a naturally nice man.  We usually exchange greetings at the Hamvention.)

     One other "lost in translation:" when I bought the Kent key, I jokingly asked if there was, perhaps, a discount for RSGB members.  He thought about it, and said, "Five dollars, that's the best I can do," and even though I replied I was kidding, five dollars off it was.  Kent Keys are Big Engineering, UK-style, with smooth ball bearings, proper springs, coin-silver contacts and no surprises; they are built to last, keys your great-grandchildren will still be using.

     I don't know how far I walked.  By six p.m., despite buying a rucksack to haul my loot, my back was aching, my feet were sore, the Hamvention was closing and it was raining.  Time to drive home.

     Drove back in the rain, too slow for many drivers (65 is plenty for me when cars are kicking up huge clouds of spray.  It's not that I don't trust my tires, I fret about making a too-sudden move), listening to Welcome To Night Vale.  It's a good way to pass the time on a long drive.
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* At Dayton, she is the only person in the entire venue who knows how to properly accessorize a company-logo T-shirt, usually with a harmoniously-patterned scarf and tasteful jewelry.  I find this an enviable talent.

A Lunch And A Birthday

     Tam and I went to Taste Of Havana for lunch yesterday -- Cuban sandwiches, of course, and once you've had the real thing, you'll snicker at the various amateur efforts.  They were outstanding!  The owner is a pleasant, avuncular fellow, larger than life, and his family/staff were just as nice.  Alas, no time for coffee but we'll be back.  At 2:00 p.m. on a work day, they were so busy that Tam peeled off to grab a table and had me order, otherwise we wouldn't have had a table.

     That evening, I went to visit Mom X and my siblings.  It was Mom's birthday and we had (ice cream) cake (I about froze my teeth!) and presents, small things and flowers suitable for the hospital-type room she's still in.  Her aides had outdone us, giving her new pajamas and an easy-on outfit for visits to the doctor; they'd gotten size information from my brother and cleared it with us in advance.  It was a nice visit and Mom is doing better and better with every passing day.  She's hoping to get back to her apartment elsewhere in the retirement complex before too long.