Rest In Peace, Gunny

R. Lee Ermey, dead at 72.  He was one of a kind.



Semper fi, and enjoy the ride up there, Gunny.  Just take it easy on the new arrivals - they're not recruits.

Running Silent, Running Deep - A Brigid Guest Post

Since Borepatch told me I was still welcome to stop by with a post, a Chapter from Saving Grace - A Story of Adoption that those of you who have read my posts about my late brother, the Submariner (SeaWolf, Halibut, Michigan) might enjoy. - B.

Chapter 44 – Running Silent and Deep

Friendships can form over many years of interaction. They can form in the sudden heat of battle. They can form over a handful of open, reflective conversations on or off the web—similar experiences, shared pain, among those who have earned your trust. They can involve humans, and they can involve four-legged friends who hold us just as dear, who protect us just as strongly.

All are valued.

I have one long-term friend who is very much like some of my friends, and beyond the conception of others. He’s a couple years younger than me, never married, his whole life spent in service to our country including a trip or two to a war zone. Now he works in something that would be the stuff of a TV show if you could somehow narrow it down to an hour, throw in some cleavage, unrealistic outcomes of science, and the occasional bumbling probie

But real life is not like that. It's not designer clothing while you assess the blood splatter, logical conclusions, or the good guys always winning. It’s continuing to bear with weight and steadiness the evils and excesses of man, holding up strong under the business of the slain even when you might lose. Throw in a dress code and the occasional political yard gnome, and though we don’t talk about it, we occasionally see something on TV and just look at each other and laugh.

He sometimes disappears for weeks or longer when I don’t know where he is, and I know not to ask, though I’ve seen him on TV before. Then with a phone call out of the blue, he pops in, occasionally on my front porch.

My husband understands our long history and that bond and just smiles a wry smile while the guest bed is made up and my friend and I have animated conversations involving Bosnian goats, wrong way tanks, and various shiny aircraft. For it is a friendship that is like family, even though we don’t share blood or any sort of romantic history—just a lot of years, some mutual skirmishes, a number of fish sandwiches and pints, some bullets, and a passport or two.

Then there were the friends of childhood. Often such friendships didn’t survive high school as we grew and evolved into the people we would eventually be. One such person was the girl who lived across the street. She was my best friend in grade school; a tiny little thing with ice-blond hair. When we were kids, her little sister died of a rare form of cancer, then her still-young mom of the same disease. Her dad soon followed though we’re not sure if it was disease or heartbreak. She and I lost touch after high school, the friendship being more one of young girls than grown-ups.

We went off to college, myself initially majoring in engineering, my friend doing pre-med. I heard later she ended up working for a medical research facility. She studied the disease that had laid its cold hand on her family, hoping for a cure, likely looking at it each day with both horror and astonishment. Unfortunately, the disease took her before she could take it. She was only in her thirties, the world to her still comprised of small wonders.

We hadn’t had any contact in years, and it was months after she passed that I heard. She had no living family left; nothing remained of her but the handcrafted wood that held her remains. So small, so bare. That’s really all that life ends up as, I thought, and my heart swelled with tears—for the girl she’d been, for joyous laughter watching cartoons, for whispered conversations about who liked what boy, for afternoons at ballet class; for all the joy and adventure we had as we explored our world with a curiosity and courage that had not learned limits. I cried with the realization that we had both let that slip past us, unremembered over so many years.

All I could do was go to the church and light a candle for her, then blow on it to release the flame, releasing her laughter with it, and the memories of childhood.

If we are fortunate, those we live with are also our friends. My dad married his best friend, as did I. I look at other friends of mine long married and I see that, and it’s precious to behold just being in the same room with the two of them; sitting across the table as we say grace you can feel the flame.

There’s nothing better than sharing a last name with your best friend.

Growing up, my big brother Allen was the best friend a kid could have, his not abandoning me even in high school when it just wasn’t cool to hang out with your baby sister. But lately we’d gotten much closer.

Because he was dying.

He had kept the truth from our ninety-four-year-old father, hoping that he would outlive Dad, sparing him that agony. But I knew even if he didn’t tell me, having too much knowledge of medicine not to understand what was going on. But I did everything I could to spend as much time with Allen during those last six months. In his last months on this earth we’d talk of everything: about our dad, about growing up (or our inherent refusal to). One thing I am glad was that I never heard from him during those conversations, “I wish I’d . . .”

I’ve heard so many people say: “I’ll do that when I’m older, when I lose twenty pounds, when I’m retired.” We go through life saying, “I would, but it probably wouldn’t work out,” or, “ I’d like to but . . .” We too often base our actions on an artificial future, painting a life picture based on an expectancy that time is more than sweat, tears, heat, and mirage.

 You can’t count on anything. For out of the blue fate can come calling. My husband and I had recently lost our beloved black Lab Barkley after a brief but valiant battle against bone cancer and a weekend of pain we couldn’t keep at bay for him. In a flash, life robbed me even of the power to grieve for what is ending. I think back to when Allen and I were kids: going down a turbulent little river with little more than an inner tube and youth, risking rocks and rapids and earth just to see what was around the bend of that forest we’d already mapped out like Lewis and Clark. The water was black and silver, fading swirls of deep current rising to the surface like a slap, fleeting and gravely significant—as if something stirred beneath, unhappy to be disturbed from its slumber, making its presence known. A fish, perhaps; or simply fate.

I think of the true story of the woman whose parachute didn’t open on her first jump and she fell more than a mile and lived—to change her whole life to pursue her dreams. Did she sense something as she boarded that plane, looking into the sky at a danger that she could not articulate that she could not see? Or was she unaware until that moment when she pulled the cord and nothing happened, as her life rushed up to her with a deep groaning sound? What was it like in that moment, that perception of her final minutes, what taste, what color, what sound defined her soul as it prepared to leave? 

I was in the paint section of a hardware store the other weekend, looking for a brick-colored paint to spruce up a backdrop in the crash pad’s kitchen. I noticed the yellows, the color I had painted my room as a teen. I noticed the greens, so many of them—some resembling the green of my parents’ house in the ’60s and ’70s, yet not being exactly the same color. The original was one that you’d not see in a landscape, only in a kitchen with avocado appliances while my Mom sang as she made cookies. I remember Allen and I racing through the house, one of us soldier, the other spy, friends forever; stopping only long enough for some of those cookies, still warm. Holding that funky green paint sample I can see it as if it were yesterday. Memories only hinted at, held there in small squares of color.

What is it about things from the past that evoke such responses? For some, it’s a favorite photo; a piece of clothing worn to a special event; a particular meal. Things that carry with them the sheer impossible quality of perfection that has not been achieved since. Things that somehow trigger in us a response of wanting to go back to that time and place when you were safe and all was well. But even as you try and recapture the memory, it eludes you, caught in a point in your mind between immobility and motion, the taste of empty air, the color of wind.

One morning while out in a hangar checking out a pilot friend’s home-built project, I had one of those moments. It was an old turboprop lumbering down the taxiway with all the grace of a water buffalo. It wasn’t the aircraft that caught my eye, it being one of those planes that carries neither speed nor sleek beauty, but rather serves as the embodiment of inertia overcome by sufficient horsepower. No, it was the smell of jet fuel that took me back—to years of pushing the limits, not really caring if I came home, only that the work was done without my breaking beyond re-use something I was trusted with.

Until one day, while my heart was beating despite being broken unseen beneath starched white cotton, my aircraft made a decided effort to kill me. It was not the “Well, I’ll make a weird sound and flash some red lights at you and see what you do,” an aircraft’s equivalent of the Wicked Witch of the North cackling: “Care for a little fire, Scarecrow?” No, it was a severe vibration that shook the yoke right out of my hand as we accelerated through 180 knots on the initial climb when, unbeknownst to me, a small piece of metal on the aircraft’s tail had come loose and was flapping in the breeze.

At that moment, as I heard the silent groaning of the earth below, I thought: I do not wish to die—and I fought back. In that moment of slow and quiet amazement that can come at the edge of sound, finding in myself a renewed desire to live; recognizing the extent and depth of that desire to draw another breath and share that soft warm breath with another.

Today is a memory that months from now could be one of those memories—not of fear, but of triumph. You may look back and see this day, the friends you were with, the smile on your face, the simple tasks you were doing together. Things, so basic in their form to at this time simply be another chore: cleaning, fixing, an ordinary day; while children played with a paper plane fueled by laughter and the hangar cat drowsed in the sunlight. It might be a day you didn’t even capture on film—no small squares of color left to retain what you felt as you worked and laughed together, there in those small strokes of color, those small brushes of hope as you wait for your best friend to join you.

Twenty years from now you may look at yourself in the mirror, at the wrinkles formed from dust, time, and tears around your eyes, at the gray in your hair; and you will think back to this day, the trivial things that contain the sublime. On that day, so far beyond here and now, you may look around you, that person you were waiting for no longer present, and you’ll want it all back. Want it as bad as the yearning for a color that is not found in nature, in the taste of something for which you search and ache, acting on the delusion that you can recreate it, those things that haunt the borders of almost-knowing.

You touch the mirror, touch your face and wish you’d laughed more, cared less of what others thought, dove into those feelings that lapped at the safe little edges of your life, leaped into the astonishing uncertainty.

Allen spent years running silent and deep under the ocean, visiting places I can only guess at as he will not speak of it, a code about certain things I share with him. But I knew the name. Operation Ivy Bells. He understood testing the boundaries of might and the cold depths to which we travel in search of ourselves.

On his last nights, Allen and I talked, but not of those days under the ocean. We both were aware of grave matters of honor, but do not speak of them, not even with each other. I’d sit as he talked about Dad and how he hoped Dad would live to be a hundred; how he hoped he would be there to take care of him, even as I watched 120 pounds leave Allen’s frame as he went through that second round of chemo and radiation.

He talked until his eyes closed, only his labored breath letting me know he was still with me; the rise and fall of his chest as he was trying to push up from the waters of the sea, unfathomed flesh still so buoyant if only in spirit as the cold water lapped against him.

I too have had more than one day where I stood outside on a pale crescent of beaten earth and breathed deeply of that cold. On those days I felt every ache in my muscles; my skin hot under the sun; the savage, fecund smell of loss in the air, lying heavily in the loud silence. Somewhere in the distance would come a soft clap of thunder; overhead clouds strayed deliberately across the earth, disconnected from mechanical time. I’d rather be elsewhere; the smell simply that of kitchen and comfort: the sounds only that of laughter. But I knew how lucky I was to simply be, in that moment, and alive.

I’d go home on such nights and pour a drink, prepare a small meal. I’d eat it slowly, letting the sweet and salt stay on my tongue. For me there would be no quick microwaved meal eaten with all the detachment of someone at a bar, tossing back a handful of stale nuts with his beer. No, I wished to taste and savor the day, the warm layers of it, this day that had been someone’s last.

You can’t control fate, but you can make choices. You can continue your day and do nothing, standing in brooding and irretrievable calculation as if casting in a game already lost. Or you can seize the moment, the days, wringing every last drop from them. Tell the ones you love that you love them. Hug your family; call an old friend you’ve not spoken to for months; forgive an enemy; salute your flag—and always, always give the dog an extra biscuit. Then step outside into the sharp and unbending import of spring, a dying winter flaring up like fading flame. One last taste, one last memory, never knowing how long it will remain.

As I sit and wait for the phone to ring to let me know my husband has landed, I have no idea what this day will bring as it closes. But one thing I do know: today is that memory. Alone or together, I’m going to go out and make everything I can of it. I look at the photos of my daughter Rebecca and the family that adopted her. I look at a photo of Allen, the shirt he wore in the last picture I have of him now hanging in my closet, next to a crisp cotton shirt that still bears the scent of memory. I pause and smile, preparing my evening table with thanks to the Lord for the blessing of family and friends. - Brigid

Blessing of the Bikes

Posting has been delayed because co-blogger and brother-from-another-mother ASM826 stopped by last night.  Bourbon was drunk and the World's problems solved.

Now it's the blessing of the bikes.  Back later.

In re: Syria (again)

pic.twitter.com/A2DclSVClI

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) April 13, 2018

Word.

From the place where Great Britain used to be

pic.twitter.com/3MTu12mfEn

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) April 13, 2018

So the Facebook CEO testified before Congress about privacy issues

Oooooh kaaaaay.

pic.twitter.com/rgItiZPeyH

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) April 12, 2018

I don't use Facebook.  I don't have that choice with our Eye of Sauron.

In re: Syria

Offered without comment.

pic.twitter.com/sJafmaugab

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) April 11, 2018

The Soldier Bear

When Nazi Germany invaded Russia in the Summer of 1941, the prospects facing the Polish soldiers captured by the Soviets improved immensely.  Normally, they would have languished in work camps until most of them were starved or worked to death.  But with the Blitzkrieg taking huge swaths of Soviet territory, Stalin decided that having more troops eager to fight the Germans was in his interest. So they were sent to the Caucasus mountains and crossed into British territory, where they were inducted into the British army.

Along the way, some of them found a bear cub and brought it along.  They fed it condensed milk, and the bear grew up as a mascot of their 22nd Transport Company, Artillery Division, Polish 2nd Corp.  They named him Wojtek.

He was very popular with the troops, and would play and wrestle with all takers.  He would also mimic what they did - he loved being with the troops and they loved having him there.  As the unit prepared to move into theater they got him official paperwork with Name, Rank, and Serial Number.  The paperwork actually got him onto the transport when they shipped out to Italy.

The problem for the troops was what would they do with him when they went into combat.  They were responsible for keeping the artillery batteries resupplied, and they took him on the trucks, keeping him chained to the truck while they moved the shells to the cannon.  One of his closest friends stayed back with him.

Until one day in a particularly intense firefight, his comrade was called forward to be a forward observer.   Wojtek was left alone.  The unit struggled to move the heavy ammunition.

They they saw Wojtek, coming through the smoke.  He was mimicking them by carrying ammunition.  As a now full grown bear, he was easily the strongest member of the unit and they were able to keep up with the demand.  After the battle, the unit adopted his likeness on their official badge.

In May 1945 the unit was shipped to northern England for demobilization.  Wojtek found a home in the Edinburg Zoo where he had to adjust to a life without his buddy giving him some of their beer ration.  He lived until 1963.

You can read more of his story here.

Almost 80,000 78 RPM records now online

Free, at Archive.org:

Last summer we checked in with the Internet Archive’s Great 78 Project, a volunteer effort to digitize thousands of 78rpm records—the oldest mass-produced recording medium. Drawing on the expertise and vast holdings of preservation company George Blood, L.P., the ARChive of Contemporary Music, and over 20 more institutions from around the world, the project aims to save the recorded sounds of the past, and not only those that have come down to us through the efforts of highly selective curators. What we think of as the sound of the early 20th century—the blues, jazz, country, classical, ragtime, gospel, bluegrass, etc.—only represents a popular sample.

Get 'em here.

Hat tip: Chris Lynch.

Happiness is a clean gun

(bang, bang) (shoot, shoot)

It was fun to have a range weekend with co-blogger and Brother-From-Another-Mother ASM826.  We shot a lot of obscure and really interesting guns (range reports anon), but the companionship of friends and like minds is a special reward all its own.

What was particularly interesting (and which deserves a post of its own) is the range of old to new gun designs, of simple/complex designs that you really see by stripping and cleaning different guns all in the same evening.

For example, despite my love for the M1 Garand ("The Greatest Battle Implement Ever Designed"), disassembling it to clean it is non-trivial.  The AR platform (besides being crazy accurate and firing a round which weighs less than half the venerable .30-06) is crazy easy to take apart to clean.

I guess that firearms design advances in 40 years, in many ways for the better*.  No better way to see this than to strip and clean 8 or 9 different guns.

And a huge, huge thanks to ASM826 for hosting this, and to Dan for coming out with his arm in a sling (been there and feel your pain, brother) and to Ken for sharing some of the most interesting guns I've seen in ages.

And for anyone who actually, you know, doesn't get the reference from the post title, here's remedial education**.  It's held up surprisingly well - musically speaking.



* Get offa my lawn, punk.

** Get offa my lawn, punk.

Prospects for future gun control - reasons for pessimism, reasons for optimism

Sebastian has a pretty insightful - and disturbing - post on why the gun grabbers will be stronger in the future.  Essentially, it boils down to the gun grabbers don't have a lot of support but they have lots of money and organization, and the Media is shamelessly on their side.  His point isn't so much that they will be getting stronger, but rather than we will be getting weaker over time.  He lays out this argument clearly and efficiently.

On the optimistic side, The Czar of Muscovy thinks we've seen the high water mark of gun control:

Here’s why: we’re presently pruning gun control restraints back, nationally. More states than ever allow “Constitutional Carry,” and more are in line to adopt it. Even Chicago, epicenter for bad management decisions, is begrudgingly accepting the reality of legal concealed carry. Gun ownership is up, the number of gun stores is greater than it’s been in two generations, and overall, gun-related homicides are down.

And yet we still have 20,000 gun laws on the books. Or 50,000. Or maybe 15,000…no one really knows because indexing gun laws at every level of government in this country is like counting dandelions in a field: as soon as you tally up a section, new ones blossom in areas you just counted.

Yes, there's a web of useless and stupid gun laws - a web that just increased in size a little with the stupid and useless ban on bump stocks - but your Czar points out that these are useless and really the only way to satisfy the gun grabbers is to eliminate the Second Amendment and the American people are very not on that page.  Your Czar points out that the gun grabbers have let the mask slip, with proposals to repeal the Amendment being made all over the place.

The one thing I would add to his excellent analysis is something related to Sebastian's analysis: intensity counts.  While the leaders and financiers of the gun control movement are firmly committed, support among their expected voting base sure seems awfully weak.  The Czar rightly points out how the polls (likely intentionally) skew "support" for gun control to an artificial high.

On our side, though, the story is different.  Gun supporters have been pretty thoroughly radicalized.  I wish I had a dollar for every time I've heard "no more gun control, ever" comments.  You never hear this in the Fake News, but Washington politicians seem to have got that message pretty strongly - the Democrats could have done something radical here in 2009 and 2010 when they controlled the White House, the House of Representatives, and had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  They didn't because the political calculus didn't show them a payoff.  It wouldn't bring may more of their voters to the polls, but it would bring a lot of Republican voters to the polls.

Intensity counts, and is on our side.  I don't see that changing.  If anything, we probably can expect more support as older people die and younger people grow up and start to vote:

Over the last several weeks I've talked to several people about guns. Without fail, every one has been surprised to learn that young people are the less supportive of gun-grabbing than old folks are. Reuters-Ipsos polling shows it and the GSScorroborates. The major media's mendacity strikes again--though in fairness, NPR (!) has given it some attention.

He has charts and data and stuff.

So while we need to make sure that we don't get cocky, I find pretty good reason to land on the optimistic side of things.  And remember, the toothpaste isn't going back into the tube.

The ATF asked for public comments on their proposed rule banning Bump Stocks

Brock Townsend obliged:

The Government's War on Cancer hasn't cured anybody.

The Government's War on Drugs hasn't even slowed down drug use.

The Government's War on Fraud, Waste and Abuse hasn't saved me a nickel.

The Government's control of Forestry has only produces epic forest fires.

There's more, so much more.  The only thing to add is that "The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms" should be a convenience store.  But this is awesome.

Vince Gill, Gregg Allman, and Zac Brown - Midnight Rider

The late, great, Gregg Allman with some friends.  I've been derelict lately in my mid-week music postings.  I hope that this will be a mea culpa.

Holy cow

This is bad.  Really, really bad.  Elder Gods bad.

Damnitall, we need some Common Sense satellite control, right quick.

Youtube suffers a Mass Irony attack

pic.twitter.com/YftpEyrjqS

— Sal the Agorist (@SallyMayweather) April 4, 2018

Guitar Crazy

Vince Gill, Eric Clapton, Keith Urban, Keith Richards, & Albert Lee.

A College introduced a rigorous Western Civ class, and something weird happened

Demand was double what they expected:

LTRS 3803, the first part of the two-semester, team-taught course at the University of Oklahoma ... goes against all the conventional wisdom. It’s modeled on [W. H.] Auden’s course, with a few changes. The instructors — Kyle Harper, a classicist and the university’s provost; the historian Wilfred McClay; and David Anderson, a professor of English — have spread it out over an entire year, and they’ve excised a few books (Dante’s Paradiso, Baudelaire and Rimbaud, Kafka). But they added The Odyssey, The Aeneid, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Paradise Lost, Robinson Crusoe, Pride and Prejudice, Nietzsche, Invisible Man, and other 20th-century masterpieces such as Derek Walcott’s neo-Homeric epic Omeros. They dropped most of the operas but kept Don Giovanni and Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. They speak frankly in the course description of taking "delight in the Western canon" and hold fast to themes of little currency in the research world: destiny, God and "the gods," a meaningful life, authority. 

When enrollment opened last semester, the unexpected happened. The course filled up within minutes. Harper had already warned his students, "This is the hardest class you will ever take." The syllabus was posted online in advance, so that students knew exactly what they were getting into. The course meets a general-education requirement at Oklahoma, but so do many other courses with half the workload. To accommodate the unexpected demand, the class was expanded from 22 to 30 students, the maximum number that the assigned classroom could hold.

It's higher now.  And while I whine about the rigor of my own study of Western Civ, this strikes me as precisely correct:

One fellow grumbled that he had to do three times as much work as he did in his other classes. The rest nodded. But you could hear in his words the self-respect that comes from doing more work than the norm, from climbing the highest hill while your peers dog it. Another student said that the page-count of the syllabus had flattered her, that it showed the professors respected her enough to demand that she take on a heavy load of historic literature. "This is what I came to college for," another said. One more chimed in, "This class is changing my life."

The flame of knowledge flickers, but has yet to be extinguished in the Fever Swamp of today's Academy.

And the reading list is excellent.  I've read probably two thirds of the list, and cannot recommend Wagner's Tristan und Isolde highly enough - enough that I've posted that it is perhaps the most hauntingly lovely music ever written.  It is said that a civilization can be studied by its deeds, by its thoughts, and by its art.  The art is the only one of the three that doesn't lie.  I'd add this to the canon:

Image via Il Wik

Will Durant's volume on the Renaissance is outstanding about the transformation of art that occurred in the 15th Century, and spends quite some time on this fresco by Raphael.  He wasn't just a turtle, you know.

After all, that's the point - introduce the most important parts of Western Civilization.  Well done, Oklahoma.

Hat tip: Ann Althouse, who has some interesting thoughts on the matter.

Too much Western Civilization

Almost 5 years ago, I scored big at a library used book sale:

I was out on the Motorcycle, and while waiting in traffic saw a hand lettered sign "Used Book Sale".  Well, I'm constitutionally incapable of passing that sort of thing up, and so pulled into the parking lot.  It was the Milton (GA) Library raising money.  It was late in their display time, and so most of the selection was pretty well picked over.

Fortunately, my tastes are a little (ahem) eclectic.  I cruised over to the history section, and saw this:

That's The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant.  10,000 pages of Pulitzer Prize winningoverview of Western Civilization.

Got them for $1 a book.  Yes, I am a nerd.

I've gotten through volume IX, The Age Of Voltaire.  Nine down, and two to go.  Unexpectedly, I've started to run down.  I cruised through the first four with relish, and Volume 3 saw me through the convalescence from the motorcycle accident.  The nurses thought I was a little unusual bringing a book like this to the daily hour long antibiotic infusions, but you can make some progress when you're stuck in a chair.  Unless you forget the damn book.  The volume on the Renaissance surprised me at how interesting it was, but that was sort of peak interest.

Since then, it's been slower going, and it's been harder to keep myself focused.  I found myself skipping over a fair amount in volume IX.  I think that it's because the earlier books covered a lot more time, and so were more of a survey - and this is why I got them.  The more recent the time period, the more detail there is.  Quite frankly, a lot of the detail isn't particularly interesting.

I guess this means that I've taken the measure of my nerdiness, and have found my limits.  I think I'm going to take a hiatus on the last two volumes for a bit.  Just not up to wading through 800 pages on Rousseau.

Happy Birthday to the Royal Air Force

100 years old today.  There are a great many great stories from that century of daring-do, but this is one I just ran across:

Just after midday on 5 April 1968 RAF pilot Alan Pollock, senior operational flight commander on No. 1 (Fighter) Squadron, flew Hawker Hunter FGA.9 jet XF442 through the span of Tower Bridge in London. The unauthorised action - which cost him his air force career - was part of a personal protest against the RAF's decision not to celebrate its 50th anniversary with a flypast over the capital.

Here's a mockup of what it would have looked like, although eye witnesses said that the plane was even closer to the top span than shown here:

Angels and Ministers of Grace, defend us.  Click through to read the amazing story, which is very well told.

Hat tip: Samizdata.

Thoughts on the Kid's march