It’s Singalong Opposite Day!
Altogether now:
"Breakin' rocks in the hot sun;
I fought the law and the law won.
I fought the law and the law won.
I needed money 'cause I had none;
I fought the law and the law won.
I fought the law and the law won.
Well I miss my baby and I feel so bad;
I guess my race is run.
She's the best girl I've ever had.
I fought the law and the law won.
I fought the law and the law won.
Robbin' people with a six-gun;
I fought the law and the law won.
I fought the law and the law won.
Well I miss my baby and I feel so bad;
I guess my race is run.
She's the best girl I've ever had.
I fought the law and the law won.
I fought the law and the law won."
If you’d like to bring the above to life in a truly unique way, here are the Trailer Park Boys, with a mini-film (very “mini”) weaving its way around a rendition of the song performed by The Big Dirty Band (who look suspiciously like Getty Lee and company fronted by punk rocker Care Failure, formerly of what Wikipedia called the “sleaze band”, Die Mannequin and, before that, The Bloody Mannequins). Oh, and be sure to crank your sound up. Your neighbours will love you!
(Now to be fair, I did say “unique”. It's not my fault if you didn't take that as a warning.)
So why Singalong “Opposite” Day, you ask? Well, in my case, it’s because I fought the law and the law didn’t win (but if anyone asks, I’ll deny it! So don’t ask.)
A few weeks ago, I had a simple goal to meet – to get a package into the hands of a winery employee at the Opolo Vineyards in Paso Robles, California. During our little trip down there earlier this year, my wife and I passed a long, delightful lunch under canvas in the middle of that fine vineyard under the blazing sunshine of California’s Central Coast wine region at a combination lunch / wine tasting.
As was already recounted here, since I am an incurable chit-chatter, the very first time I went to the tasting bar I commented to the fellow pouring the wine that if they have an award for the farthest distance travelled to today’s tasting, my wife and I would probably win it.
The conversation grew swiftly when he found out we were from Ottawa, because he knew the Senators had just won their way into the Stanley Cup finals. (Finding a hockey fan in the middle of California’s Central Coast wine region was unusual enough; finding one who was following it closely enough to know Ottawa would play for the Cup was, well, to put it into wine terms, as frequent an occurrence as a Grand Cru year for grapes.)
Two things happened in fairly short order: first, our “tastings” rather abruptly became full four-ounce glasses of wine – to the obvious chagrin of tasters at adjacent tables as they sat down with their single-ounce shots, and saw what I was coming back from the tasting bar with; and secondly, the pourer and I discussed the possibility of a friendly bet should his team, the Anaheim Ducks, beat Detroit in their own semi-finals and then go on to become Ottawa’s opponents in the Cup finals.
After returning home, I followed up by e-mail, and we affirmed that the terms of our bet would be as follows: Should Anaheim – who did indeed beat Detroit to become Team 2 in the Cup final – win, then I was to send to him a Senators t-shirt and a bottle of Ontario icewine. Should Ottawa win, he would send an Opolo Vineyards t-shirt and a bottle of their award-winning Zinfandel north to our home.
My sojourn into lawbreaking began when the final buzzer sounded on Anaheim’s fourth win in the series.
First, I bought the booty. Then, like an idiot, I phoned Canada Post to ask if there were any restrictions applied to shipping a bottle of wine into the US. (The last thing I wanted to see was a late-evening television news clip showing a Homelands Security sniffer dog poking furiously around the periphery of a familiar-looking “suspicious package” to be followed by the inevitable clip of my wine shipment being blown to smithereens in the middle of a vacant lot near the border. This is, after all, the Agency that at one time considered toothpaste a possible threat to national security.)
Mistake number 1 (and you think I’d know this by now) was asking someone in officialdom if there are any rules about ANYTHING! [In a variation of the rule, you never phone up Canada’s tax agency around tax time each year to ask if something is taxable. Because (a) it is; and (b) it might trigger an audit.]
Need I even say so at this point? – Canada Post advised me there is but one restriction regarding the shipment of wine across the border by a private citizen – you can’t do it. Period.
Calling a couple shipping companies only resulted in my hearing elaborations of the rule. FedEx, in fact, went so far as to admonish me for even asking. “We can’t ship wine to the US! That would make us bootleggers.” (Methinks, dear, you have seen this movie maybe one too many times.)
Finally, after literally a couple weeks of my trying to find some sort of work-around, it turned out the best advice I got was from a co-worker who said, “Just package the damned bottle up and send it!” And he used to work for Canada Revenue!
As it turns out, in the end I did exactly that. In fact, I “packaged” the stuff so thoroughly that I began to think it would indeed take a Homelands Security explosives charge to open it. Fortunately, a bottle of icewine is a smaller than a typical wine bottle so right from the start I had size and weight working to my advantage when it came to allaying the suspicions of the watchful guardians of our frontiers. But no amount of wrapping was going to shield the “slosh” should one of those same guards decide to give the package a random shake.
My next bit of subterfuge, therefore, was to buy a 750 mL (typical wine-bottle-sized) bottle of Québec maple syrup to identify on the shipping label as the source of any sloshing that might be heard. (The near-Sauterne density of icewine is also such that it pretty much sloshes the same way as, indeed, does syrup.) I also wrapped it in close proximity to the icewine bottle. Now, I reasoned, only an X-Ray would reveal two bottles inside the container. And surely they’re not going to X-Ray every last shoebox-sized container crossing the border... are they? That left only the thought that maybe some far thinker in Homelands Security had devised a system of weight alerts to indicate when the package was noticeably heavier than its contents list suggested.
(I know, I know, and for the record I realize that, in my turn, I probably have watched one too many episodes of this show.)
So my final shipping label reported the syrup, the t-shirt and (surely about the same weight as a bottle of icewine) a “Special Commemorative edition of the Ottawa Citizen”. It was all packaged, as noted, under about a quarter mile of industrial strength transparent duct tape.
At the end of the day, it did indeed arrive safely and complete, precisely where it was supposed to arrive and in the message advising me he had received it, my US co-gambler added a compliment on the thoroughness of my packaging. (At least I think it was a compliment. After all, it invoked the name of the Son of God. Complete with His middle initial.)
As a footnote to this whole sordid saga of shameless flouting of Canadian shipping regulations, I most certainly do NOT recommend Canada Post’s self-touted “online tracking system”. For 19 days running, the only news the website conveyed was that my package had been “accepted for shipping” at the drugstore postal sub-station where I sent it off on a wing and a prayer. (Well, prayer anyway, since I decided I didn’t want to spend the money for air freight and ground transportation was guaranteed to be no more than ten working days to any address in California.)
On the 21st day after it left, my California friend sent me the message telling me it had arrived. Coincidentally (and why did this not surprise me?) Canada Post phoned me the very same day and acknowledged they had failed to fulfill their warranted “ten business days” shipping time so they were going to initiate a refund of the value indicated on the box’s contents list. They also told me that even if it did eventually get delivered, I would not have to return the refund. So, thinking about a half a second slower than I should have been doing – in other words, the typical speed for me – I blurted out to the friendly Canada Postie that they didn’t have to do that, because I had just received an e-mail from the intended recipient informing me the package had been safely delivered. So just close the file, I said.
(Feel free to cue Jethro Tull at this point in my story.)
(... Oh. PS... In case any official agent of either Canada Post or the Canada Revenue Agency should ever happen to be reading this, I’d like very much to thank my brother-in-law Bob for sharing the preceding hilarious story of how he worked his way around this fine nation’s justifiably protective legislation that keeps us safe from either sending or receiving harmful booze. I have actually reprinted his story here in its entirety exactly as he told it to me, hence the use of the first-person-singular pronoun throughout. So it’s him you want... not me.)
- - -
And continuing with our musical theme in this update:
25 per cent of the Beatles is still 100 per cent of the entertainment!
One of my recent music acquisitions is a Greatest Hits collection by none other than Ringo Starr, entitled “Photograph”. Besides being the title of the collection, “Photograph” is also the title of one of its biggest hits.
I have always been a fan of the post-Beatles Ringo. More than any of the Fab Four, he seemed to have the most fun making music after the quartet’s members went their separate ways. The result is a largely playful, immensely toe-tapable collection of original songs and covers, buttressed by a remarkable collection of supporting musicians who are themselves hardly slouches.
“Photograph” is also complemented by a series of liner notes in which Ringo places each tune in its context. Strangely enough, the context for almost all of them seems to be along the lines of “Well, we were sittin’ around one evenin’ ‘avin’ a bit of a lark and decided this would be fun...” Here, for example, is what he says went into “Only You (And You Alone)”:
“This version of the Platters song is good and
my voice is good because it was too high for
me so I went into this strange falsetto. And it
was like, ‘Wow, it works!’ And the video for
‘Only You’ is great. It’s just Harry Nilsson
and me on top of the Capitol Building. We just
went on the roof and filmed it. Harry was in his
bathrobe and no one thought anything about it.”
The album also features a duet with none other than country legend Buck Owens, “Act Naturally”:
“They're gonna put me in the movies;
They're gonna make a big star out of me.
We'll make a film about a man that's sad and lonely
And all I gotta do is act naturally.
Well, I'll bet you I'm gonna be a big star
Might win an Oscar you can never tell
The movies gonna make me a big star
'cause I can play the part so well.”
One of the few departures from comedy – although not entirely even here, as you’ll note – in the notes is when he describes why he wrote “Never Without You”, a lovely little tribute he wrote after George Harrison died:
“It’s all about George. This song is still very
poignant for me, and I tried not to do it on the
last tour, but I had to because it’s a beautiful
song and expressed what I felt for the man.
The song actually started with one of my
co-writers, Gary Nicholson. Then I thought
of putting Harry Nilsson, John Lennon and
George into the song – all of my friends who
had left. But in the end that got so mad, and
I thought let’s just do it about George. He
had just gone and I wanted to express my love
for him. Also the guitar solo is pretty good –
it’s by that guy who does ‘Layla’ – what’s his
name? He lives right down the road and who
else could I have? Peace and love, Eric.”
("That guy who does 'Layla'” is, of course, Eric Clapton.)
20 tunes in all. Beaucoups of fun!
So if you’ve got a few minutes left and haven’t already nodded off, thanks to the miracle that is You Tube, here are
1. Ringo and Harry doing “Only You” on the Capitol roof – with a more than nodding tribute to Klaatu and Gort, as well. (No, no major security threats were incurred. It’s the Capitol Records Building in Hollywood, not that other thingie in Washington DC.)
2. Ringo and Buck doing – well, essentially clowning their way through – “Act Naturally”.
and 3. Ringo’s touching good-bye to former bandmate George Harrison. I like this one a lot. Besides the subtly lovely touch of burying the images of George in little places like the viewscreen of a studio TV camera, the almost childish rhyming in the lyrics echo, perhaps, a much simpler time when “She Loves You, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” went platinum overnight.
“I was in the greatest show on earth... for what it was worth.”
- “I’m the Greatest”... Ringo
All Things Must Pass.
À la next time.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
Cry havoc and let slip the Ducks of War…
A couple military meanderings this go ‘round.
The Canadian mission in Afghanistan not so long ago got as close to me as it’s probably ever going to get (knock on wood) – a co-worker is the wife of someone who was injured in a recent roadside explosion of an “improvised explosive device” that killed three other people riding in the same vehicle as he was. Thankfully, his injury is “non life-threatening” although that doesn’t take into account that his wife might club him to death with his own crutches should he decide to go back when he recovers.
But in subsequent days, I read more closely those articles that talk about the public’s “support” (and that of our various elected representatives) for Canada’s mission in that country. The always politically astute group of Bloc Québécois airhead MPs happily feeding at the federal trough while chanting the mantra of a sovereign Québec, for example, have warned they are prepared to bring down the present minority federal government if a firm mission end date is not announced when Parliament resumes sitting. (The recent deployment of the much battle-honoured Royal 22nd Regiment has put francophone soldiers on the front lines, you see, and that inevitably has already led to francophone soldiers’ deaths. Can’t have that. After all, there are few enough Bloc votes left as it is.)
But snarking aside, it occurs to me that there probably is precious little about this war that will precipitate its end except a drop in public support to a level so low that political expediency, and nothing else, will bring the troops home.
Because has anyone defined a goal whose achievement will allow us to say we won?
Let’s face it, the events that caused the troops to come home in previous wars were pretty specific – the enemy, beaten so badly that his cities were rubble and his armed forces crushed, signed armistices. That’s how WWI and WWII ended. The Korean War’s actual shooting ended with the declaration of a shared agreement that both sides would simply stop shooting at each other. (Interestingly enough, in legislative terms, the Korean War is still officially not “over” because no official peace treaty has been agreed by all sides, but rather it is in abeyance by virtue of the decades-long observed ceasefire.)
When asked, I love the troops; hate the mission. I explain that by tapping into the Alcoholics’ Anonymous approach – before you can cure someone, that someone has to want to be cured. And for all the admirable things that Canadian soldiers are doing for the shattered civilian population in Afghanistan, sadly there are still many other people in the country who want to blow up the rebuilt schools, murder the women who try to make something of their education-driven sense of what’s right and fair, or more egregiously enforce their own particular religion’s core message of world peace and harmony simply by killing everyone who does not share it.
And until those people (the ones with guns and bombs) are willing to stop using them, Afghanistan is and will remain a largely fruitless mission whose only benefit will be to provide a field for live-ammunition training for our soldiers. (With the tragic downside for the “good guys” of occasional death or dismemberment.)
I honestly have yet to see a good answer to the question, “What are we doing in Afghanistan?” The short answer, that we are spelling off the US forces who should be there so that they can fight the “War on Terror” in Iraq, leads immediately to, “Well yes but, just what part of the ‘War on Terror’ is in Iraq?” Unfortunately, that’s a question even less answerable (unless of course you’re still among the by now single-digit percentage of the world’s people who are completely deluded into accepting the spin that Iraq is where 9-1-1 came from.)
For the sake of my co-worker, I hope her husband proves willing to take his hard-earned and well-deserved professional laurels, add them to his incredibly good luck, and find a much less risky but equally satisfying way to employ his skills. For her sake and that of their young child.
For the sake of all the families of all the soldiers deployed to Afghanistan, I hope someone in authority wakes up one morning and, after opening his day’s newspaper to a headline screaming of yet another terrorist-driven killing of “collateral” civilians, says, “Screw this! Everybody come home right now and when they ask for help because they don’t want to kill each other any more, we’ll come back by the thousands. Until that day, have a nice life… or whatever you call the stupidly short span of time on this earth that your actions will inevitably earn you.”
But that’s probably just me.
- - -
And on we ramble…
There is another ongoing debate in Canada with a military theme – this one over a 70-or-so-word sign that highlights an exhibit in our National War Museum. The debate, such as it is, is centred on the Museum’s contention that “controversy rages” over the purpose and results of the WWII Bomber Command offensive against Germany, especially late in the war, when attacks were launched against major cities such as Munich, Dresden, Berlin and Cologne.
I could go on at length summarizing the debate’s main points, but Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells frames both sides of it beautifully in the two quotes he placed on his blog, “Inkless Wells” on August 29:
On the one hand: “Art Smith, a former Bomber Command captain and former Conservative MP, explained: 'The words said that we were responsible for 600,000 dead. I took offence that we were just helter-skelter bombers. We always had justified targets.'"
-- The Globe and Mail, August 29
On the other hand: "The British and American navies were fully occupied with the ongoing Battle of the Atlantic. The British and American armies were engaged in North Africa, and later in southern Italy, far beyond the range of aircraft based in Britain. As a result, the only major task that the British and American air forces could entertain was a sustained bombing offensive against Germany's heartland. They applied themselves to the task with mounting ferocity.... The first 'Thousand-Bomber Raid' took place on 30/31 May 1942. Cologne, Germany's most ancient city, was trashed in the space of two hours. In August 1942 the USAAF brought over its B-17 Flying Fortresses, and began a daily programme of escorted daylight raids to supplement the RAF's night-time activities. At the Casablanca Conference of January 1943 the Allied leaders ordered that priority be given to 'precision bombing' of submarine yards, aircraft factories, railway lines and oil refineries. But this was largely ignored. On 27/8 July 1943 Hamburg, Germany's premier port, was destroyed by a firestorm in which 43,000 people perished and a million were made homeless. Berlin was repeatedly attacked, so that it resembled a moonscape of rubble long before the Red Army arrived. On 3 February 1945 a USAF raid on Berlin killed 25,000 people at one go. Less than two weeks later, a combined British and American raid on Dresden caused a second firestorm, as at Hamburg, in which perhaps 60,000 people died for no known military purpose."
-- Norman Davies, Europe At War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory, published 2006
A number of the most recent news articles about the argument included a most succinct quote from Canadian historian and author, Margaret MacMilllan (whose book, “Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World”, is the single best volume I’ve yet read about the impact that the Treaty to end World War I had on the world that followed it). Here’s how her comment was cited in the August 29 Globe and Mail:
“No one questions the veterans' bravery,
Ms. MacMillan insists. ‘But a museum
Is not a war memorial. It should allow
the public to make up their own minds.’
She warned that the decision to alter an
exhibition to satisfy the veterans could mean
‘whoever screams loudest can have their view
made known.’”
Exactly. As ugly as the pall of civilian wartime bombing deaths is, they occurred and the weapons that caused them were dropped by fliers wearing Allied insignia on their uniforms.
As for any possible dispute that the infernos of Munich, Dresden and, on the other side of the world, Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima are “controversial”, the period sits at the end of the sentence that reads, “60 years later, we’re still arguing about it.” That’s the nature of history. Trying to erase it is the nature of propaganda.
= = = = = = = = = =
And finally, on a less bellicose note, I spent a happy few hours a couple weekends ago at a Vintage Wings Ottawa Rallye (and yes, that’s how it’s spelled)
Here’s some photo evidence.
One of the National Capital Region’s resident millionaires, Michael Potter, probably could spend his money on worse things than maintaining and flying a fleet of pristine vintage aircraft. Needless to say, there are some among us who are mighty happy he doesn’t. Three of the best from his growing collection were there:
The plane that won the North:
the De Havilland Beaver
The plane that everyone except Hawker Hurricane enthusiasts will argue won the Battle of Britain:
the Supermarine Spitfire (albeit an earlier version than this high-powered lightning-fast Mark XVI, which only debuted in the war’s final months)
The plane that helped the Allies win the battle of the WWII bombing fleets, the P-51 Mustang. (Before its arrival, fighters that escorted bombers were lucky if they could manage 10 or 15 minutes over the target before they depleted their fuel to the point they had to return home, abandoning their charges to their fate at the hands of enemy fighter pilots.
This was one of the big reasons that the Luftwaffe failed to bring Britain to its knees with campaigns like the Blitz where their bombers attacked London but suffered huge losses to the RAF when their escorting Messerschmitts had to return to their bases on the continent. The Mustang carried enough gas that it was able to accompany its bombers the full round trip, with enough left over to allow them to mix it up in dogfights with enemy aircraft.)
The oddest aircraft on hand this day were a quartet of amphibious aircraft called SeaBees.
This one, absent any paint on its high-gloss aluminum skin was far and away the most beautiful of the four.
And before we exit, thank you, Leslie, for cropping these photos down to the way they appear here from what began as airplane-shaped dots in the sky, very high-resolution dots in the sky, as these cropped images will bear out, but dots in the sky nonetheless. I must find out how she does that. (I understand the initals "RTFM" may be involved.)
Until la prochaine.
A couple military meanderings this go ‘round.
The Canadian mission in Afghanistan not so long ago got as close to me as it’s probably ever going to get (knock on wood) – a co-worker is the wife of someone who was injured in a recent roadside explosion of an “improvised explosive device” that killed three other people riding in the same vehicle as he was. Thankfully, his injury is “non life-threatening” although that doesn’t take into account that his wife might club him to death with his own crutches should he decide to go back when he recovers.
But in subsequent days, I read more closely those articles that talk about the public’s “support” (and that of our various elected representatives) for Canada’s mission in that country. The always politically astute group of Bloc Québécois airhead MPs happily feeding at the federal trough while chanting the mantra of a sovereign Québec, for example, have warned they are prepared to bring down the present minority federal government if a firm mission end date is not announced when Parliament resumes sitting. (The recent deployment of the much battle-honoured Royal 22nd Regiment has put francophone soldiers on the front lines, you see, and that inevitably has already led to francophone soldiers’ deaths. Can’t have that. After all, there are few enough Bloc votes left as it is.)
But snarking aside, it occurs to me that there probably is precious little about this war that will precipitate its end except a drop in public support to a level so low that political expediency, and nothing else, will bring the troops home.
Because has anyone defined a goal whose achievement will allow us to say we won?
Let’s face it, the events that caused the troops to come home in previous wars were pretty specific – the enemy, beaten so badly that his cities were rubble and his armed forces crushed, signed armistices. That’s how WWI and WWII ended. The Korean War’s actual shooting ended with the declaration of a shared agreement that both sides would simply stop shooting at each other. (Interestingly enough, in legislative terms, the Korean War is still officially not “over” because no official peace treaty has been agreed by all sides, but rather it is in abeyance by virtue of the decades-long observed ceasefire.)
When asked, I love the troops; hate the mission. I explain that by tapping into the Alcoholics’ Anonymous approach – before you can cure someone, that someone has to want to be cured. And for all the admirable things that Canadian soldiers are doing for the shattered civilian population in Afghanistan, sadly there are still many other people in the country who want to blow up the rebuilt schools, murder the women who try to make something of their education-driven sense of what’s right and fair, or more egregiously enforce their own particular religion’s core message of world peace and harmony simply by killing everyone who does not share it.
And until those people (the ones with guns and bombs) are willing to stop using them, Afghanistan is and will remain a largely fruitless mission whose only benefit will be to provide a field for live-ammunition training for our soldiers. (With the tragic downside for the “good guys” of occasional death or dismemberment.)
I honestly have yet to see a good answer to the question, “What are we doing in Afghanistan?” The short answer, that we are spelling off the US forces who should be there so that they can fight the “War on Terror” in Iraq, leads immediately to, “Well yes but, just what part of the ‘War on Terror’ is in Iraq?” Unfortunately, that’s a question even less answerable (unless of course you’re still among the by now single-digit percentage of the world’s people who are completely deluded into accepting the spin that Iraq is where 9-1-1 came from.)
For the sake of my co-worker, I hope her husband proves willing to take his hard-earned and well-deserved professional laurels, add them to his incredibly good luck, and find a much less risky but equally satisfying way to employ his skills. For her sake and that of their young child.
For the sake of all the families of all the soldiers deployed to Afghanistan, I hope someone in authority wakes up one morning and, after opening his day’s newspaper to a headline screaming of yet another terrorist-driven killing of “collateral” civilians, says, “Screw this! Everybody come home right now and when they ask for help because they don’t want to kill each other any more, we’ll come back by the thousands. Until that day, have a nice life… or whatever you call the stupidly short span of time on this earth that your actions will inevitably earn you.”
But that’s probably just me.
- - -
And on we ramble…
There is another ongoing debate in Canada with a military theme – this one over a 70-or-so-word sign that highlights an exhibit in our National War Museum. The debate, such as it is, is centred on the Museum’s contention that “controversy rages” over the purpose and results of the WWII Bomber Command offensive against Germany, especially late in the war, when attacks were launched against major cities such as Munich, Dresden, Berlin and Cologne.
I could go on at length summarizing the debate’s main points, but Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells frames both sides of it beautifully in the two quotes he placed on his blog, “Inkless Wells” on August 29:
On the one hand: “Art Smith, a former Bomber Command captain and former Conservative MP, explained: 'The words said that we were responsible for 600,000 dead. I took offence that we were just helter-skelter bombers. We always had justified targets.'"
-- The Globe and Mail, August 29
On the other hand: "The British and American navies were fully occupied with the ongoing Battle of the Atlantic. The British and American armies were engaged in North Africa, and later in southern Italy, far beyond the range of aircraft based in Britain. As a result, the only major task that the British and American air forces could entertain was a sustained bombing offensive against Germany's heartland. They applied themselves to the task with mounting ferocity.... The first 'Thousand-Bomber Raid' took place on 30/31 May 1942. Cologne, Germany's most ancient city, was trashed in the space of two hours. In August 1942 the USAAF brought over its B-17 Flying Fortresses, and began a daily programme of escorted daylight raids to supplement the RAF's night-time activities. At the Casablanca Conference of January 1943 the Allied leaders ordered that priority be given to 'precision bombing' of submarine yards, aircraft factories, railway lines and oil refineries. But this was largely ignored. On 27/8 July 1943 Hamburg, Germany's premier port, was destroyed by a firestorm in which 43,000 people perished and a million were made homeless. Berlin was repeatedly attacked, so that it resembled a moonscape of rubble long before the Red Army arrived. On 3 February 1945 a USAF raid on Berlin killed 25,000 people at one go. Less than two weeks later, a combined British and American raid on Dresden caused a second firestorm, as at Hamburg, in which perhaps 60,000 people died for no known military purpose."
-- Norman Davies, Europe At War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory, published 2006
A number of the most recent news articles about the argument included a most succinct quote from Canadian historian and author, Margaret MacMilllan (whose book, “Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World”, is the single best volume I’ve yet read about the impact that the Treaty to end World War I had on the world that followed it). Here’s how her comment was cited in the August 29 Globe and Mail:
“No one questions the veterans' bravery,
Ms. MacMillan insists. ‘But a museum
Is not a war memorial. It should allow
the public to make up their own minds.’
She warned that the decision to alter an
exhibition to satisfy the veterans could mean
‘whoever screams loudest can have their view
made known.’”
Exactly. As ugly as the pall of civilian wartime bombing deaths is, they occurred and the weapons that caused them were dropped by fliers wearing Allied insignia on their uniforms.
As for any possible dispute that the infernos of Munich, Dresden and, on the other side of the world, Tokyo, Nagasaki and Hiroshima are “controversial”, the period sits at the end of the sentence that reads, “60 years later, we’re still arguing about it.” That’s the nature of history. Trying to erase it is the nature of propaganda.
= = = = = = = = = =
And finally, on a less bellicose note, I spent a happy few hours a couple weekends ago at a Vintage Wings Ottawa Rallye (and yes, that’s how it’s spelled)
Here’s some photo evidence.
One of the National Capital Region’s resident millionaires, Michael Potter, probably could spend his money on worse things than maintaining and flying a fleet of pristine vintage aircraft. Needless to say, there are some among us who are mighty happy he doesn’t. Three of the best from his growing collection were there:
The plane that won the North:
the De Havilland Beaver
The plane that everyone except Hawker Hurricane enthusiasts will argue won the Battle of Britain:
the Supermarine Spitfire (albeit an earlier version than this high-powered lightning-fast Mark XVI, which only debuted in the war’s final months)
The plane that helped the Allies win the battle of the WWII bombing fleets, the P-51 Mustang. (Before its arrival, fighters that escorted bombers were lucky if they could manage 10 or 15 minutes over the target before they depleted their fuel to the point they had to return home, abandoning their charges to their fate at the hands of enemy fighter pilots.
This was one of the big reasons that the Luftwaffe failed to bring Britain to its knees with campaigns like the Blitz where their bombers attacked London but suffered huge losses to the RAF when their escorting Messerschmitts had to return to their bases on the continent. The Mustang carried enough gas that it was able to accompany its bombers the full round trip, with enough left over to allow them to mix it up in dogfights with enemy aircraft.)
The oddest aircraft on hand this day were a quartet of amphibious aircraft called SeaBees.
This one, absent any paint on its high-gloss aluminum skin was far and away the most beautiful of the four.
And before we exit, thank you, Leslie, for cropping these photos down to the way they appear here from what began as airplane-shaped dots in the sky, very high-resolution dots in the sky, as these cropped images will bear out, but dots in the sky nonetheless. I must find out how she does that. (I understand the initals "RTFM" may be involved.)
Until la prochaine.
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