So, anyone catching the VIKINGS miniseries on the History Channel? If so, you will notice that this season they suddenly got the idea to actually settle in what would become England, instead of just raiding it. This they did, eventually establishing "Danelaw" over half the island. They continued to harry the Anglo-Saxons, until the only unconquered remnant had been chased into the Somerset Marshes. That's right. The culture from which sprung our language, our Common Law and liberty was nearly extinguished - holding only a tiny mound of upland in a marsh.

Their king was no heroic figure. He took the throne only after several of his brothers died, and was in poor health (possibly Crohn's disease). He would much rather sharpen his Latin than his sword. But he led them out, and after many see-saw battles finally defeated the Vikings at Edington, and actually converted the local Viking king to Christianity. Alfred used the temporary peace wisely. He built mutually supporting forts no more than 20 miles apart(the borough system). He organized the militia on a rota basis so that there would always be a force in readiness. He built up the navy to intercept before raiders could land.

But that was just the beginning. Afred translated classical works from Latin to Anglo-Saxon. He established schools for even "a good many of those of lesser birth." He codified the law, and began that work with a translation of the 10 Commandments, parts of Exodus, and verses from the Book of Acts. As to his motivation we will let him speak: "My will was to live worthily as long as I lived, and after my life to leave to them that should come after my memory in good works." WE are those who came after - and for his works he, alone among more than a 1000 years of English monarchs, is called "The Great."

In hindsight, trying to finish four major sewing projects, three large calligraphy pieces, two presentation boards, and a (partridge in a pear tree) novella in the space of three months was... er... overambitious.

BUT I did finish the book and one of the sewing projects, published a second book, and made significant headway on the quilt that will now need to be finished this summer, and I still have four days to complete one calligraphy piece and (maybe) another sewing project before I take off for the sunny, windswept vistas of historic Fort McKavett! West Texas Heritage Days is this coming weekend, and I'll be speaking at the noon meal about my Loyal Valley series, in particular the portion of the just-completed second volume that relates to the history of Fort McKavett. In real life (and therefore in my series), Loyal Valley was home to Herman and Willie Lehmann, whose capture by Apache raiders inspired the novel /Savage Sam/. That incident also prompted the patrol by Sgt. Emanuel Stance and nine enlisted men from the Ninth Cavalry--the Buffalo Soldiers--that resulted in the Battle of Kickapoo Springs, and Stance's gallantry during that action earned him the first Medal of Honor presented to a black soldier after the Civil War.

The things you never learn if you don't live here....

Meanwhile, the other book I've just released, /Look Behind You/, is in more of a World War II-era guns-and-fairies fantasy vein. I've posted a couple of excerpts over on Open Range, including one that's highly appropriate for St. Patrick's Day. Both books are available for purchase from Amazon and other online retailers--but alas, the ebooks for /Loyal Valley: Bystanders/ will have to wait until next week.

Will I manage to get my act together by the time West Texas Heritage Days rolls around again *next* year? Aheh... we'll see....

A guy walks into a bar. He sees an octopus with an eye patch, a duck with a broken leg, and Ben Bernanke.

He sits down next to the octopus and says, "What happened to your eye? Can I buy you a drink?"

The octopus calls to the bartender, "I'll have one shcotch, one gin, one rum, one vodka, one bourbon, a brandy, another shcotch, and a beer." He grabs a glass in each tentacle and, trying to drink them all at once, hits himself in the eye instead. The octopus falls off his stool, moaning in pain.

So the guy turns to the duck and says, "What happened to your leg? Can I buy you a drink?" The duck quacks to the bartender, "Tequila, por favor!" The bartender does the whole number with the shot glass, the lime and the salt. The duck knocks it back and promptly falls off the stool, reinjuring his leg.

The guy looks at Ben Bernanke and says, "What's up with these two? Can I buy YOU a drink?"

Ben Bernanke points to the octopus: "That one's drunk on liquidity." He points to the duck: "That one's a lame duck."

The guy nods sagely and says, "I see why you're here; you fit right in." Bernanke looks at him, irked, and says, "What's YOUR story?"

The man shakes his head. "Me? Just an ordinary guy. Got a few bucks in the market. Hoping to retire someday. No one special."

"Oh," laughs Bernanke. "Then the joke's on you."

I'm going to make my blog presence on Liberty Island military-oriented from now on. The topics might delve into other genres from time to time, but all will have the common thread of a military connection between them. That said, I want to start off the new focus with a good story:

Meet Kyle. http://patriotpost.us/articles/23897

In 2010, Marine Lance Cpl. Kyle Carpenter deployed to Afghanistan and dove on a grenade to protect his friend. It was just announced last week that Kyle will receive the Medal of Honor for his actions. Here is a quick interview with Kyle: http://www.military.com/video/forces/marine-corps/marine-who-dove-on-grenade-to-get-moh/3309874326001/

His closing statement in that video is awesome.

His friends corroborate the notion that Kyle's a genuine, humble man, and a true hero: http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/article/20140310/NEWS/303070030/Kyle-Carpenter-s-closest-friends-react-Medal-Honor-news

Perhaps I'm biased, but this young man defines true courage. So thank you to Kyle, and also to the other marine injured by that grenade, Lance Cpl. Nicholas Eufrazio, for their service and sacrifice.

This is a must read. Especially if you are a veteran of Iraq or Afghanistan. Nothing else to add.

http://www.oafnation.com/musings-of-a-grey-man/2014/3/10/when-the-music-stops

On a dark January evening, I headed to City Hall for my first SSMC meeting. Seattle is a comfortably left-wing city. If you're liberal, progressive, communist, or socialist (LPCS), you can count on support from 85% of your comrades. This makes it a natural laboratory for observing LPCS behavior.

This was evident at the meeting, where the Mayor's flack acted as host. The speaker, Scott Berkun, was articulate and sincere. He began by praising the First Amendment and recommending that the Constitution be read once a year--especially since it's only "about 40* tweets" long.

Sound like a Tea Party meeting? Well, up to a point.

Next, Scott introduced examples of "social media mob behavior" such as Justine Sacco's mid-air firing and the mistaken ID of a suspect in the Newtown shooting. To me, the incident that stood out was Spike Lee's tweeting the wrong address to 568,000 followers, urging them to confront George Zimmerman at home. Scott described this as "wrongful harassment" for which Spike Lee apologized.

I asked if the apology was sufficient since Lee only said he was sorry for getting the address wrong. Wasn't the real offense his attempt to incite an angry mob to physically confront Zimmerman, who was already being tried in the legal system? Scott merely thanked me for my comment. A woman nearby told me she thought he just didn't understand the question. Who knows?

Scott is basically a fair-minded guy. He urged the audience to check sources and also consider facts that don't support their biases. But the situation was a classic demonstration of the LPCS mindset: They start with the Constitution, but at a certain point there's a disconnect: We all know Zimmerman is guilty--so, forget due process; sic the mob on him. It's social justice. Or human rights. Or international law.

You can believe in those things if you want, but they aren't in the US Constitution. We don't do mob rule here.

So here's my slogan for the LPCS mob: If you don't get it, don't share it.

I read somewhere that what makes vampires such terrifying archetypes is how they compound loss and betrayal. They murder someone you care for and then, a few nights hence, your loved one rises again. It's a lie, though--the person you cared for is dead. The monster that remains just wears their face like a mask until it can kill you, or make you into something like it.

It's a fitting analogy for our own age. Sure there's still a resemblance, elections being the most obvious, but is the country you're living in now still the place you grew up loving? Would the place you loved have so many people in it that vote themselves your paycheck? Would it spy on you constantly? Maybe what you loved got killed at some point, and you didn't quite notice. Whether it was 2008, the Patriot Act's passage, the New Deal or sometime else, the date of death doesn't matter. We've got more immediate problems.

Like the vampire, the thing pretending to be what you loved will try to turn convert you where it can. "Here, sign-up for some gubmint sugar, be a dependent slug." "Hey, believe what we say--you don't want people thinking you're a bigot." And so on. Where it can't, it'll try to destroy you as evidenced by the disgusting Lois Lerner.

In some vampire movies--thinking of 80's flicks like "Near Dark", "The Lost Boys" and "Fright Night"--vampirism can be reversed. This is how many a conservative views America. "Sure she's been turned into this loathsome thing that's trying to kill us, but we can totally change her back!!" By contrast, in the Stephen King masterpiece "Salem's Lot" you can't change the girl back. The only choices are running for your life, or sticking a stake in her heart and ending the lie.

It's easy to see which scenario makes for the more realistic horror story. Easy to see, too, which more closely matches where we are in real life.

As you probably know, following a dust-up with his editor, Mark Steyn has been banished from his customary spot as the featured weekend article on National Review Online. But you can still read "National Review's Happy Warrior" on his own website, SteynOnline.

This week, Mark appears to be touting Liberty Island's mission, as per the title of this post. Check it out at: http://www.steynonline.com/6151/where-the-action-is.

My other go-to source for Saturday morning refreshment is Steve Hayward's "The Week in Pictures" feature on Powerline. Steve's a Happy Warrior, too. And this week's "Crimea River Edition" is as funny as always. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/03/the-week-in-pictures-crimea-river-edition.php

I cruised by my facebook feed this morning and read the comments from friends who had watched some awards ceremony last night. And I'm all like, "Aw, man! I missed it!"

My coffee didn't even taste right after I knew that I had wasted my Sunday evening by NOT watching something about giving millionaires trophies. But I really wanted to see it.

And it's raining outside now. Fitting.

So now I'm all like, "man, I sure wish I had seen them give awards to folks for being the first this and the first that and stuff."

But then I remember that I only wanted to watch two movies in 2013 - Thor and the Counsellor. And I haven't even seen those yet. But anyway, folks on facebook are like, "Oh, lol j/k smh" and "First time I agreed with the Academy Awards" or "The Oscars suck," and then I feel all, "Aw man - can't believe I missed it and now it's raining."

Then I go to Yahoo to check the e-mail real quick, and Yahoo's all like, "These folks wore clothes at the thing you missed!" and I'm like, "Whaa? I missed that, too! I love their outfits!"

So now I'm thinking about starting a Twitter account just so I can read more about something that happened last night, which I've already forgotten about missing out on. And now I don't remember why I came here.

Anyway, let's see what folks are raging against this week. It appears telling the world about your preferred sexual fetishes is the soup du jour... still.

*I'm blogging from my phone today as a test. The technology of the day is just too fascinating.*

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit linked the following article and asks the question, "is sending your kids to public school parental malpractice?"
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/184745/#respond

If you read that story you might be inclined to answer in the affirmative, at least in regard to that specific (yet unspecified?) school.

For those unfamiliar with instapundit, Glenn Reynolds talks about education frequently. Especially the higher education "bubble." The story linked above raises many mote questions about the system as a whole. What will today's kindergarteners experience after high school? Is the entire system imploding? Will it still be there in 20 years? That is to say, in 20 years will children still grow up in an America where the normal timeline is go to school, get good grades, go to college, get a degree, make money, pay taxes, vote?

I've long believed the public ed system exists to create ideal citizen worker voters. And the definitions of desired results are vague if not absent altogether. It's a paradigm built on exclusively macro views of life with little to no regard for the concept of individualism. Individualism is treated and summarily dismissed as selfishness. Outliers in approved behavioral norms are seen as threats to some warped vision of order in society, whether the behavior is actually dangerous or not. It's different, and therefore does not fit. Ideal citizen worker voters do not fidgit while they complete the worksheets.

The whole system is infatuated with the notion of winning the future by chasing statistical data from the past, extrapolating "mosts" and discarding everything else.

Try running anything like that. It doesn't work. Hell, even my dog learned the futility of chasing his own tail.

It appears that life today is trending away from tail chasing. Or does it only seem that way?