New Computer

 I am not good with change.

Now, I have a new computer which husband has labored over for far too many hours.

Lovely. Transferred all my stuff over, well, except WORD, which is the only effing thing I use the computer for other than oddball searches, You Tube and mail.

Now I have to use a effing password and log in number to get anywhere.

I do not do change well.

Not at all.

It will take me forever to get used to these changes.

I almost wish I had kept my mouth shut about having the oldest computer in the house, purchased in 2009.

I should have kept my mouth shut.

The Cruel War

 Back when the war meant the one in  Vietnam, folk songs were sung throughout the land...some using those very same words, in fact.

They dealt with, rather obliquely, the war, the hardships of those left at home, the terrible things our boys were going through in the jungles and lots of longing for peace.

One of those songs and the lyrics has been going through my head all day.

It do believe it was a remnant of the Civil War here in the US. It is sung by a woman who doesn't want her soldier husband to go off to fight, for whatever reason. She calls it a cruel war and begs him to let her go with him!

Well, back in those days, men often took their wives along with them to cook and wash and snuggle in the camps. Other men often took comfort in the whores who hung around the camps, offering what comfort a man away from his loved ones or one who had never been with a woman could get. Many of these fighting men got venereal diseases that left them withered and eventually dead. Whole towns on each side were full of pros. These parts of towns lasted well into the 20th century.

I digress.

This young woman of the song, with her plaintive cries, eventually gets the guy to agree to let her go with him.

Now, in this time, there are women in the military.

They are strong women, stronger than the WACs of old, who were military but not allowed on the front. These soldiers know how to kill and protect themselves and their countrymen, and fight for the oppressed.

But I keep thinking of that poor woman begging her loved one to let her go with him to the war zone.

At the first major battle of that war at Bull Run or later referred to as Manassas, people, civilian men and women, took picnics with them to enjoy in their carriages to watch the fight, thinking it would be one small skirmish and the war would be over.

Well, it lasted four more bloody years. American blood spilled on those battlefields. No one really thought it was a picnic any more.

The war ended with the dissidents losing.

The reasons for the war were supposedly satisfied...they lost their rights to keep people in bondage and servitude. Their properties were ruined and they had to start all over again to run their farms and feed their people, without the help of the "cattle" they had once depended on for so long.

They lost.

But, it seems that war is still being fought.

That cruel war is still raging.

Childhood trauma!!!

https://youtu.be/UoL-3rJXsf0

This song came out when I was six years old and still believed in you know who.
No, not Valdemort.

The thought of some kid not getting anything for Christmas terrified me. Not the little brat who sang it, but that any other kid might not get anything...!
I was too young to think about poor kids.
Or kids in Africa or China who didn't celebrate Christmas. As far as I knew, these places didn't exist and since Santa went around the world on Christmas Eve, surely he'd stuff things in their stockings.

Now, if you listen to the song, the child singing it is a shit. But, not a real juvenile delinquent. That was a big term going around back in the 50s. Bad kids went to detention after school or a home for bad kids and they were always boys. Granted. Only boys were that rotten as to do anything that would get them into real trouble.

But then the little shit has the temerity to blame somebody for snitching on him!

As it so happens, Shirley Temple originated the song, back in the 30s. Now, you know she never did anything bad in her life!

Yet, I worried.
This was one of many songs sung by youngsters, like the ridiculous idea of wanting a hippo for the holiday, or not being able to sing carols because of a missing tooth. The 50s were full of songs extolling the virtues of being good at Christmas.
Gene Autry sang about Santy Claus coming down the lane to bring toys to good little girls and boys.
Rudolf had that nose that saved Christmas.

We were inundated with stories of the goodness involved in Christmas and each house had a little creche with a baby Jesus in a manger. Every one.

I still get a little pain in my stomach when I think of this silly song.

It might have been me! 
No?
Well, you never know what will piss off Mommy and Daddy.

Splashdown!

The astronauts have landed.
Bob and Doug are back on Earth.

Since I was in 6th grade, I have followed the space program avidly.

I am crying with joy for them.

Yay!