Heinlein Reader's Discussion Group Thursday 06-20-2002 9:00 P.M. EDT Heinlein's Travel

Heinlein Reader’s Discussion Group

Thursday 06-20-2002 9:00 P.M. EDT

Heinlein’s Travel

Here Begin The A.F.H. postings
The topic for the chats for June 20/22 will be Heinlein’s travel writings, particularly Tramp Royale.

Tramp Royale and “‘Pravda’ means ‘Truth'” from Expanded Universe give us a very personal glimpse into the life of the Heinleins as travellers. Tramp has sometimes been criticised as outdated as a travel guide, but in some ways that may be part of it’s charm, as a time capsule of the experience of travel in the 50’s, when to a great extent the ‘tourist industry’ was very limited.

Those of us familiar with some of the places in the book can enjoy the contrasts with our experiences of them in more recent years. Some of us get to see our own hometowns from the point of view of an outsider, and certainly I contemplated whether a tourist couple would find a greater or lesser welcome on our streets today than the thankfully positive experience the Heinleins had in Brisbane in ’53.

Personally, though, apart from seeing some wonderful sights through Heinlein’s eyes, the greatest joy was the autobiographical nature of the works, seeing the dynamics of the Heinlein’s lives together, and the deep respect and friendship that was the basis of their partnership.

[Carolyn Evans]
Carolyn Evans wrote:

>The topic for the chats for June 20/22 will be Heinlein’s travel writings,
>particularly Tramp Royale.
>
>Tramp Royale and “‘Pravda’ means ‘Truth'” from Expanded Universe give us a
>very personal glimpse into the life of the Heinleins as travellers. Tramp
>has sometimes been criticised as outdated as a travel guide, but in some
>ways that may be part of it’s charm, as a time capsule of the experience of
>travel in the 50’s, when to a great extent the ‘tourist industry’ was very
>limited.
>
>Those of us familiar with some of the places in the book can enjoy the
>contrasts with our experiences of them in more recent years. Some of us get
>to see our own hometowns from the point of view of an outsider, and
>certainly I contemplated whether a tourist couple would find a greater or
>lesser welcome on our streets today than the thankfully positive experience
>the Heinleins had in Brisbane in ’53.
>
>Personally, though, apart from seeing some wonderful sights through
>Heinlein’s eyes, the greatest joy was the autobiographical nature of the
>works, seeing the dynamics of the Heinlein’s lives together, and the deep
>respect and friendship that was the basis of their partnership.
>

I’m delighted with this topic. Carolyn deserves thanks for proposing it and agreeing to start the pre-meeting posts. Aside from the items noted by her, there are character portrayals of note and incidents described in Tramp Royale we may find “high-graded” elsewhere into RAH’s writings; and, to those who have it, a chapter in Grumbles From the Grave that describes other Heinlein travels to the far northern and far southern ends of this world we might discuss. There may even be writings elsewhere describing some travel during RAH’s naval service we might be able to note.

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

One thing that interested me is Heinlein’s suggestion that the population of Moscow had been greatly exaggerated by the Russians in the post-war period. Jim Gifford in “Robert A. Heinlein A Reader’s Companion” says “Put simply, Heinlein was wrong on this point. His analysis was apparently based on cultural and social misunderstandings; no serious Sovietologist supports the notion.”

Are there any people here who know more about Moscow in the 50’s/early60’s that could shed light on this? Was Heinlein basing his analysis on a Western standard of living perhaps, overestimating transport requirements for the low consumer good levels in the USSR at the time, or might there be at least an element of truth in a Russian overestimation of population for sake of national pride?

[Carolyn Evans]
David Silver wrote:

>Aside from the items noted
>by her, there are character portrayals of note and incidents described
>in Tramp Royale we may find “high-graded” elsewhere into RAH’s writings;
>and, to those who have it, a chapter in Grumbles From the Grave that
>describes other Heinlein travels to the far northern and far southern
>ends of this world we might discuss. There may even be writings
>elsewhere describing some travel during RAH’s naval service we might be
>able to note.
>

I actually went through TR looking for high graded material and wrote a post about it once. I dug through Google and here it is from January 2000.

“I just read Tramp Royale again. The other two times I just read it but this time I was giving it a keen, eagle eyed once over in search of an on topic thread subject

Heinlein wrote it on his return from a trip around the world in 1953/54 but it didn’t get published and was shelved. In the introduction, Virginia Heinlein says that, “It was then put in the files and sent to the library at the University of california at Santa Cruz and forgotten.”

Maybe, but not by Heinlein. After all, this was a book he had written. No matter how fast he wrote it (I’m thinking of Farnham’s Freehold; first draft in 25 days) it was his baby and no right thinking parent neglects a child. Scattered throughout the book are incidents, names and phrases which all seem very familiar. This is not really a shock; most authors hate wasting words they’ve committed to paper and the material provided by the trip was too good to waste, so naturally he incorporated it into later books. The fun part is spotting the references.

Some I spotted were;

Ticky going through the customs and being asked if she had anything to declare,

“Ticky had looked him in the eye and said, “Two pounds of heroin.”

It was passed off as a joke but Heinlein pointed out to her that he could have kept them and,

” Subjected us and our baggage to a probe search. How would you like to be stripped to the skin?”

Anyone remember Clark trying the same thing but with worse consequences as he leaves Mars in Podkayne of Mars?

” Sure” he piped….”Two kilos of happy dust!”……

“I think we’ll take this smart boy and search him to the skin and X ray him.”

The Dutch ship MV Ruys on which the Heinleins travel turns up as the Konge Knut in Job. The Dutch skipper in Job is similar to the one in Friday if it comes to that. They all seem to share a happy go lucky attitude to life and alcohol.

Being a writer is an ideal way to reward and punish; a friendly owner of a dairy in Santiago, Senor Quirogo, becomes Supreme Minister Quiroga of the Humanity party in Double Star……and on the flip side, Heinlein pays back New Zealand by making Friday’s family there some of the most unsympathetic bunch in his writing. ( Cat killers!!!)

He also works in the Maoris and their history by making Uncle Tom and Poddy have Maori ancestors. Remember Poddy picking her teeth in a very vulgar way?

“We Maori have a very bloodthirsty history and I won’t even hint at what it is we are supposed to be picking out of our teeth.”

In TR he says that the Maori of the past were, ” The mad dog of Polynesian peoples. They were not simply barbarous, they were bloodthirsty savages, perhaps the worst this wicked planet has seen. Physical courage and family loyalty were their only virtues. They exterminated the unwarlike aboriginal inhabitants of New Zealand, then turned their attention to eating each other, a practise to which they were addicted…….” Hmm…Poddy has hidden depths!

In 1957 Heinlein introduced us to Mr Jenkins, a “little grey burro,” one of the imaginary animals in The Man Who Travelled In Elephants. He also says in EU that he wanted to write a Puddin story about a donkey with the same name, who kept, “Looking at me with mournful eyes.”

This is pure guilt because on the trip he wouldn’t let Ticky buy a donkey. They cost 35 cents so he gave her the money and said he’d see her back home, after she’d managed to get the donkey through immigration, quarantine etc. She did what any wife would do; kept the money, refused to spend it and referred to it as “money for the donkey” . Quite right too……

Finally, the pivotal incident in SIASL where Mike watches a bigger monkey steal from a smaller one, who then goes and steals from a tiny one, is presaged in TR where Ticky is amazed that despite her attempts to deal out food equally to a crowd of monkeys, one monkey comes up behind her and steals the lot.

Heinlein, being man not Martian, comments,

“In two years they will have to let those monks vote”; dishonesty being a step up the evolutionary ladder I assume. OK, I’m done; can anyone think of any more? It really is fun seeing how he took real life incidents and fictionalised them. Sorry this seems to be pretty long but I can’t snip *before* I post”

Jane
—

“Jane Davitt” riposte!

Thanks for some ideas on what to look for Jane! I think TR is one Heinlein I have not re-read and am looking forward to reading again. So, I will be pencil and notebook in hand, reading quickly in time for the next chat!

Elizabeth

(happened to have Expanded Universe in the ‘Library’ and bookmarked at “Pravda” Means “Truth” when the new Reader’s Group subject was announced)

[TreeTopAngel]
“Jane Davitt”wrote in message news:…

>David Silver wrote:
>

(snip)

>Ticky going through the customs and being asked if she had anything
>to declare,
>”Ticky had looked him in the eye and said, “Two pounds of heroin.”
>It was passed off as a joke but Heinlein pointed out to her that he
>could have kept them and,
>” Subjected us and our baggage to a probe search. How would you like
>to be stripped to the skin?”
>
>Anyone remember Clark trying the same thing but with worse
>consequences as he leaves Mars in Podkayne of Mars?
>” Sure” he piped….”Two kilos of happy dust!”……
>”I think we’ll take this smart boy and search him to the skin and X
>ray him.”

I also recall the ‘reverse’ of what happened here in NOTB. When they were being scanned by the Lensman, Hilda did an unauthorized return to Martian orbit because she *was* carrying ‘2(?) pounds of extract of Martian Cannabis’ or something to that effect.

David Wright

(snip)
On Mon, 10 Jun 2002 18:15:02 GMT, Jane Davitt wrote:

>Heinlein pays back New Zealand by making Friday’s
>family there some of the most unsympathetic bunch in his writing. (
>Cat killers!!!)
>He also works in the Maoris and their history by making Uncle Tom
>and Poddy have Maori ancestors. Remember Poddy picking her teeth in
>a very vulgar way?
>
>”We Maori have a very bloodthirsty history and I won’t even hint at
>what it is we are supposed to be picking out of our teeth.”
>
>In TR he says that the Maori of the past were,
>” The mad dog of Polynesian peoples. They were not simply barbarous,
>they were bloodthirsty savages, perhaps the worst this wicked planet
>has seen. Physical courage and family loyalty were their only
>virtues. They exterminated the unwarlike aboriginal inhabitants of
>New Zealand, then turned their attention to eating each other, a
>practise to which they were addicted…….”
>Hmm…Poddy has hidden depths!
>

>Jane

Huh? I’m presently ploughing my way through an over-earnest history of New Zealand, it so happens, and it states quite clearly (as I’d always assumed anyway) that the Maori *were* the aboriginal inhabitants.

His assessment of Maori character doesn’t quite gel with what I’m reading, either. Not gentle, cannibal in certain strictly defined circumstances, but quite definitely civilised (like a certain Martian we know;-)).

>From: Jane Davitt

>Finally, the pivotal incident in SIASL where Mike watches a bigger
>monkey steal from a smaller one, who then goes and steals from a
>tiny one, is presaged in TR where Ticky is amazed that despite her
>attempts to deal out food equally to a crowd of monkeys, one monkey
>comes up behind her and steals the lot.

Apropos of nothing:

When I was a kid my family and I visited Sea World in Florida. They had a tourist trap where you could buy fish to feed to two sea lions in a tank. One of them was very agressive and getting all of the fish. We finally saw an opportunity to get at least one fish to the timid one, or at least so we thought. It was directly underneath us while the agressive one was swimming around the other side of the tank. We dropped a fish directly down to the timid one. The other one immediately swept across the tank, leaped over the timid one, and grabbed the fish as it fell.

[LV Poker Player]
—
Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc. – from 1984 by George Orwell

David Silver wrote:

[snip]

If you’ve recently started reading Heinlein, or been away a while, and returned, you might be wondering what books we’re talking about here.

_Tramp Royale_ (Ace Science Fiction/Autobiography, hardbound edition/April 1992, trade edition/November 1996, was published posthumously by arrangement with the author’s estate) trade paper ISBN 0-441-00409-1.

You are as likely to find it in travel sections of the bookstore as in autobiography or shelved with science fiction. In large chains check with the clerk’s computer. They can usually order it in two days or so.

_Expanded Universe_ (full name: The _New_ Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein: Expanded Universe) (Ace Books, @1980, first hardcover printing October 1980, first trade paperback printing February 1981) trade paper ISBN 0-441-21883-0. There is also a mass market paper printing.

Again, you are likely to find it on shelves other than science fiction, although less so than with Tramp Royale, because it contains, also, some short stories. It, probably the mass market paper, can also be ordered in about the same time.

Expanded Universe is an expansion, about twice the size, of the former “The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein,” (G. 160, 1966).

_Grumbles From the Grave_ (edited by Virginia Heinlein, @ 1989 by the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Trust, UDT 20 June 1983, A Del Rey Book, Ballantine Books, first hardcover edition January 1990, first mass market paperback edition December 1990) mass market paper ISBN 0-345-36941-6. This is a collection of letters, photographs, and editorial notes, some by Robert and some by Virginia. It can probably be ordered, used if not new, by various chains and online used sources, and you may yet encounter new (or possibly used) copies in various really good stores, usually in the science-fiction section, but also check autobiography and biography.

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

Philip Brown wrote:

…
>I’m presently ploughing my way through an over-earnest history of
>New Zealand, it so happens, and it states quite clearly (as I’d always
>assumed anyway) that the Maori *were* the aboriginal inhabitants.

I think your book is mistaken. I recall an article some years back, about a particular Maori tribe that claimed to be descended from the pre-Maori inhabitants of New Zealand. DNA testing showed preodminantly Maori genes, but also lots of genes that didn’t turn up anywhere else – enough to convince the researchers that this tribe had assimilated the aboriginals, rather than wiping them out.

>His assessment of Maori character doesn’t quite gel with what I’m
>reading, either. Not gentle, cannibal in certain strictly defined
>circumstances, but quite definitely civilised (like a certain Martian
>we know;-)).

Billy Connolly used to tell a story (supposedly true) that illustrated the Maori character: a pitched battle was being fought between Maori and British troops (both sides had firearms). Eventually, the British stopped shooting, and a Maori popped up to ask them why. “We’ve run out of ammo.”

“That’s no problem” said the Maori, “you can have some of ours.”

And the battle carried on as before.

[Simon Jester]

Jane Davitt wrote:

.Snip comments about TR influences appearing in RAH’s fiction.
>OK, I’m done; can anyone think of any more? It really is fun seeing
>how he took real life incidents and fictionalised them. Sorry this
>seems to be pretty long but I can’t snip *before* I post ”

How about the description of Singapore in GR? *Very* different to today’s Singapore.

[Simon Jester]

I sent the following message to Carolyn: David Silver thought that it should be posted.

Dear Carolyn,

I hope you won’t mind me sending you a peronal reply to your post on AFH.

We were in Moscow in 1960. I asked Robert whether the population figure that the Russians were giving out could possibly be correct? He thought about it and answered that it did not seem possible.

When we got home, a classmate of his called on us. He was a specialist in logistics (supply of materiel and food etc. to where it would be needed). So Robert asked him about our estimates. He thought about the matter for a short while, and then answered that the figures could not possibly be correct, since the transportation system could not suppport that many people. He knew exactly the number of railroad tracks going into the city, and the number of roads for transport of food etc.

He figured the railroads, and trucking routes and decided that there simply weren’t enough of those to feed as many people as the Russians had told us there were in Moscow. I was inclined to take his word for it, because while there were a lot of cars and trucks in Moscow, the roads outside there were not very heavily trafficked, and few in number.

We found that Russians are inclined to exaggerate the size of almost everything when they give you a figure. Perhaps that is because they just don’t know the answer, but for example, the “great department store. GUM” in Moscow is simply a collection of small shops, under one roof.

One thing, I especially noticed was that, at that time, there were not any frozen foods avaiable in most parts of the S. U.; we saw them only in the “captive countries” of the north. Latvia in particular.

So I concluded that our observation was correct–but there is no way of proving it one way or the other.

Ginny
Virginia Heinlein

Jane Davitt wrote:

>David Silver wrote:
>
>Aside from the items noted
>
>>by her, there are character portrayals of note and incidents described
>>in Tramp Royale we may find “high-graded” elsewhere into RAH’s
>>writings; and, to those who have it, a chapter in Grumbles From the
>>Grave that describes other Heinlein travels to the far northern and
>>far southern ends of this world we might discuss. There may even be
>>writings elsewhere describing some travel during RAH’s naval service
>>we might be able to note.
>>
>I actually went through TR looking for high graded material and wrote a post
>
>about it once. [snip]
>OK, I’m done; can anyone think of any more? It really is fun seeing
>how he took real life incidents and fictionalised them. Sorry this
>seems to be pretty long but I can’t snip *before* I post

I think there’s two sorts of mining terminology that can be applied to the author’s-eye view we can see in a work such as _Trampe Royal_. High grading, when the raw ore is transplanted without change, and ore refining, a little more complicated.

One of the later sort may appear in the second chapter, “South to the Southern Cross,” at pages 31-2. Robert and “Ticky,” his “anarchist-individualist” wife we know as Ginny start the trip by train from Colorado Springs to New Orleans, from which they expect to leave by ship, the S.S. Gulf Shipper, to South America. But the departure date of the Gulf Shipper is postponed three days, leaving the Heinleins with a “couple of days to kill” in New Orleans where, among other things, they spend an evening, a long evening, in a nightclub, the Old French Opera House (OFOH) at prices Heinlein assures us results in his having bought and paid for the place, although through “some oversight the deed has not yet been sent to me; however, we have been travelling; it may be awaiting us in the States.”

After one show, while preparing to leave, the Heinleins are joined by the first act’s M.C., his relief having taken over for the second show, who they invite to have a drink. Three hours later they are still buying drinks for him and a “little blonde stripper named Pam.”

Ignore for the moment the portrait of the M.C. who so nicely helped the Heinleins with their Purchase of OFOH. Consider the portrait of Pam:

”

Pam, the little blonde stripper who joined us presently, was suffering from a hangover and love. She and the trap drummer planned to get married, but would have to wait a bit as he was buying a set of traps. She assured us that she could cook. It seemed that everyone in the show was suffering from a hangover, the preceding night (Saturday) having been very drunk out, including among other things, Pam having had her bar bill cut off by the manager and retaliating by taking off her shoes and throwing them at him. One of the girls had threatened suicide and Paul [the M.C.] had had to go into their dressing room and quash it. There was no general agreement as to which girl was threatening suicide but all agreed that someone had.

”

We were supplying the hair of the dog–at house prices.

”

I don’t know how I got out without paying the French War debt as well, but I did, eventually. Actually, both Paul and Pam were nice kids; Ticky and I liked both of them. Pam was 21 and had been a striper since she was 13, at which time her mother used to take her to and from work. Ticky asked her if she wasn’t scared when she started. Oh, yes! but now it was just a job, a better paying job than working in an office. The girls make $75 to $90 a week. There is no real future in it, of course, and it is inclined to turn them all into habitual drinkers, if not alcoholics. I haven’t the slightest idea how many of them end up in bagnios–probably most of them get married. If stripping damages their moral fibre, I was unable to discern it.”

I’m taking nominations for how many times Pam appears in later stories written by RAH. And how refined she becomes. I think I see her three times in IWFNE alone. Any others?

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

On Tue, 11 Jun 2002 11:33:25 +0100, “Simon Jester”

held forth, saying:

>Jane Davitt wrote:
>.Snip comments about TR influences appearing in RAH’s fiction.
>>OK, I’m done; can anyone think of any more? It really is fun seeing
>>how he took real life incidents and fictionalised them. Sorry this
>>seems to be pretty long but I can’t snip *before* I post ”
>
>How about the description of Singapore in GR? *Very* different to today’s
>Singapore.

GR was written how many decades ago?

–aside: can you imagine RAH’s reaction to a soccer riot in Red Square?

—
-denny-
nocturnal curmudgeon, editor

Never try to outstubborn a cat. – Lazarus Long

On Tue, 11 Jun 2002 11:29:50 +0100, “Simon Jester”

wrote:

>Philip Brown wrote:
>…
>>I’m presently ploughing my way through an over-earnest history of
>>New Zealand, it so happens, and it states quite clearly (as I’d always
>>assumed anyway) that the Maori *were* the aboriginal inhabitants.
>
>I think your book is mistaken. I recall an article some years back, about a
>particular Maori tribe that claimed to be descended from the pre-Maori
>inhabitants of New Zealand. DNA testing showed preodminantly Maori genes,
>but also lots of genes that didn’t turn up anywhere else – enough to
>convince the researchers that this tribe had assimilated the aboriginals,
>rather than wiping them out.
>

According to my Googling this evening, the academic consensus is that there is no worthwhile evidence for pre-Maori inhabitants of New Zealand. The notion goes back to a 19th-century misunderstanding of Maori myth and a coincidence in tribal names with inhabitants of the Chatham Islands…

http://www.culture.co.nz/moriori/moriori5.htm

The mainstream verdict is that it was a handy way for the British to excuse their appalling treatment of the Maori (they were no better themselves, you see…)

On the other hand, there are some truly bizarre websites out there devoted to the idea that there were indeed pre-Maoris. These sites denounce the Politically Correct Academic fear of upsetting the Maori and call up a splendid jumble of evidence (Velikovsky is in there somewhere).

One or two such go beyond fruitcake to plain racist, but my favourite has to be the one which insists that the pre-Maori were Ancient Celts.

I kid you not….

http://www.celticnz.co.nz/

Philip Brownwrote in news::

snip
>One or two such go beyond fruitcake to plain racist, but my favourite
>has to be the one which insists that the pre-Maori were Ancient Celts.
>
>I kid you not….
>http://www.celticnz.co.nz/
>

Musta been those Welsh after they left Mobile….. David Silver wrote:

[snip]
>
>I think there’s two sorts of mining terminology that can be applied to
>the author’s-eye view we can see in a work such as _Trampe Royal_. High
>grading, when the raw ore is transplanted without change, and ore
>refining, a little more complicated.
>
[snip the excerpt about Pam the stripper]
>
>I’m taking nominations for how many times Pam appears in later stories
>written by RAH. And how refined she becomes. I think I see her three
>times in IWFNE alone. Any others?
>

Here’s maybe another example: In _Tramp Royale_, Chapter IV, “The Land of ‘Papá’,” at pg. 105:

The Heinleins are in Buenos Aires, Argentina (remember in 1953, General Perón is still Dictator, er, President), and the Heinleins are being shown the sites by a paid individual guide recommended by their hotel whose name is Herman.

”
That afternoon Herman took us to see a very special sort of school,
Escuela Pedro de Mendoza. It is the home and studio of Maestro Benito
Quinquela Martín, possibly the greatest living Argentino painter; it is
also an art museum, a grammar school, and an art school. Señor Quinquela
was a very poor boy in the waterfront neighborhood where he grew up. The
_escuela_ is a beautiful modern six-story building by the water; the
Maestro owns it, pays the expenses, pays the salaries of the staff of
teachers. The poor children of the neighborhood attend free.
”
A child who attends is not especially likely to bcome an artist; it is
in most respects simply a well-run grammar school. But a pupil there who
happens to display artistic talent has every opportunity to study under
a renowed master. Señor Quinquela named the school for the artist who
gae him his chance, Maestro Pedro de Mendoza.
”

[I’ll omit the rest of the passage pertaining to this artist for you to read yourself] . . . .”

Heinlein was quite impressed by what this artist had done, even though he never met the man who was out of the city when the Heinleins visited.

The thing is: if you are an Arthor you can take a person, age him or reduce his age, give him attributes you admire or detest to fit with what you know about him even if you’ve never met him, and put him in a book.

I’ve suggested elsewhere that Joe Branca in IWFNE is the sympathetic portrait of an “artist as a young man,” and I’ll suggest here that some of Joe Branca is a tribute to an “artist as a much older man” whom the Author found evidence of in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1953.

What do you think? Anyone see any more of these ‘characters’ in Tramp Royale, or the other travel writings?

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

“David Silver”wrote in message news:…

>Jane Davitt wrote:
>

(snip)

>I think there’s two sorts of mining terminology that can be applied to
>the author’s-eye view we can see in a work such as _Trampe Royal_. High
>grading, when the raw ore is transplanted without change, and ore
>refining, a little more complicated.
>

Tramp Royale – p. 108

We heard of one other custom much more wildly exotic. I was not able to
check on it as it referred to Paraguay, a country we were not able to visit.
But here it is: it is alleged that Paraguay has no law against murder,
killing being considered a private matter; either the deceased is a no-good
and everyone is glad he is dead, or the friends and relatives of the
departed can be depended on to avenge the matter themselves.

TMIAHM – p. 168

“Mannie, you’re telling me that I can murder a man here and settle the
matter merely with money?”
“Oh, not at all! But eliminating isn’t against some law; are no laws-except
Warden’s regulations-and Warden doesn’t care what one Loonie does to
another. But we figure this way: If a man is killed, either he had it coming
and everybody knows it
-usual case-or his friends will take care of it by eliminating man who did
it. Either way, no problem. Nor many eliminations. Even set duels aren’t
common.”

David Wright
I wrote:

>I think there’s two sorts of mining terminology that can be applied to
>the author’s-eye view we can see in a work such as _Tramp Royale_. High
>grading, when the raw ore is transplanted without change, and ore
>refining, a little more complicated.
>

Here’s another for you, skipping over a few since the last two noted by David the Elder and me:

The Heinleins are now in the Union of South Africa, Cp. VIII, “The
Country With a Problem,” pp. 151, ff, at 163-4:

”
After we left the factory at Sam’s firm he dropped us downtown; we set
out to do some sightseeing. Time being limited I hired a taxi–a
licensed guide and tour car seemed unnecessary since this was an
English-speaking city. Taxis park in the middle of the street in Cape
Town; I located one and asked the driver for a rate by the hour.
”
The was no rate by the hour, only by the mile . . . so I told him what
we wanted to do and asked approximately how much it would cost by the
hour. His answer indicated it would probably cover twenty to thirty
miles in the city driving in an hour, which seemed reasonable, so I
hired, telling him to drive us around the city and point out the sights
to us.
”
Thereafter we got just one piece of ‘information’ out of him; I asked
him how many people there were in Cape Town. He said he didn’t know
exactly but it was somewhere between eight and nine million. I did not
agree but contemplated the beauty of it. Cape Town is actually a little
over half a million and looks smaller, as much of the city is spread out
down the Cape peninsula in formerly independent communities. The
downtown part in front of Table Mountain has a lazy, sleepy quality more
suited to a much smaller community, and the suburbs are garden
villages–the whole city is lovely.
”
Our driver immediately thereafter lost all command of the English
language. Instead of driving us inside the main city he hunched over his
wheel and tooled his car out into the open country as quickly as
possible; once on the open road he stepped his speed up to about sixty
or better and held it there. Protests had no effect.
* * * * *
. . . having accomplished the maximum mileage possible without a fatal
accident. I paid the exact amount without a tip. But I was unable to be
really angry at the trick he had played on us; by pouring on the gas and
running up the mileage he had managed to take us all around Table
Mountain and far down the Cape on a tour we had reluctantly decided to
forgo through lack of time. As it was we saw almost everything usually
covered in a leisurely full-day tour.
”
But the scenery certainly whizzed past.”

Compare, of course:

”
I told the driver in English what landing I wanted, repeated it in
memorized Cantonese (not too well; it’s a nine-toned language, and
French and German are all I had in school), and showed him a map with
the landing marked and its name printed in English and drawn in Chinese.
* * * * *
”
My cabbie listened, glanced at the map, and said, ‘Okay, Mac. I dig it,’
and took off and rounded the corner with tires squealing while shouting
at peddle cabs, coolies, children, dogs. I relaxed, happy at having
found this cabbie among thousands.
”
Suddenly I sat up and shouted for him to stop.
”
I must explain something: I can’t get lost.
* * * * *
“I had shouted because the driver had swung right when he should have
swung left and was about to cut back on his own track.
”
He speeded up.
”
I yelled again. He no longer dug English. . . . ”
–Glory Road, of course. Cp. I, pp. 21-2 [hardbound edition].

Hi, Evelyn Cyril. Meet Bob.

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

wrote:

>On Tue, 11 Jun 2002 11:33:25 +0100, “Simon Jester”
>held forth, saying:
>
>
>>Jane Davitt wrote:
[snip]
>>How about the description of Singapore in GR? *Very* different to today’s
>>Singapore.
>>
>
>GR was written how many decades ago?
>
>–aside: can you imagine RAH’s reaction to a soccer riot in Red
>Square?
>

Dunno. Ginny? There was a riot in Red Square after Japan defeated Russia in the World Cup Soccer tournament, a couple days ago. Soccer holligans, not apparently political, although they went looking for oriental restaurants, among other things. The Russian police evidentally did not expect one, anticipating only around 8,000 soccer fans, instead of a substantial multiple of that which is what they got and sufficient reinforcements didn’t arrived until two hours after it started.

What would you say: cynicism or a bewildered elation — the tolitarian regime has loosened the screw so much that it’s not ready to control the mob even when, presumably, it would wish affirmatively to do so — mixed with a little sadness that holliganism is everywhere?

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

Carolyn Evans wrote:

>The topic for the chats for June 20/22 will be Heinlein’s travel writings,
>particularly Tramp Royale.
>

There’s a very interesting passage contained in the last five pages of Tramp Royale, beginning at page 366, with:

”
The most important thing that I believe I learned from a trip around our
planet . . . ”

What follows is an essay containing several points, noteably among them Heinlein’s stated that the trip “cured me of One-Worldism.” But there are other points to it.

Anyone wish to discuss these most important thing[s] learned?

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

David Silver wrote:

>
>There’s a very interesting passage contained in the last five pages of
>Tramp Royale, beginning at page 366, with:
>
>” The most important thing that I believe I learned from a trip around
>our planet . . . ”
>
>What follows is an essay containing several points, noteably among them
>Heinlein’s [statement] that the trip “cured me of One-Worldism.” But there
>are other points to it.
>
>Anyone wish to discuss these most important thing[s] learned?

Aw, com’on, I promise I won’t bite. ;-)=

It contains such nuggets as:

”
. . . no progress whatsoever is being made on the prime problem facing
the human race, that the problem is bigger than I had dreamed, and that,
most tragically, it probably has no solution.
* * * * *
”
. . . [the following is in all italics] The only place left for the
billion people in China and the Indian subcontinent to spill over is
into areas already occupied by the white Western nations. [end italics]”

And there follow predictions of World War III [who said it had to be
with Soviet Russia? I ask]. And various questions about whether we are
our brother’s keepers, intermixed with the Mathusian Solution, the
inadvisability of paying Danegeld, England’s example “in the days of her
strength” and the note that even if the game is rigged “it is the only
game in town.”

Finally, a conclusion that we, as the United States, should not be
afraid of choosing from among the various unsafe courses, “not even of
our friends.”

Does all of that possibly have some application today?

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

“David Silver”wrote in message news:…

>David Silver wrote:
>
>
>>
>>There’s a very interesting passage contained in the last five pages of
>>Tramp Royale, beginning at page 366, with:
>>
>>” The most important thing that I believe I learned from a trip around
>>our planet . . . ”
>>
>>What follows is an essay containing several points, noteably among them
>>Heinlein’s [statement] that the trip “cured me of One-Worldism.” But
there
>>are other points to it.
>>
>>Anyone wish to discuss these most important thing[s] learned?
>
>
>Aw, com’on, I promise I won’t bite. ;-)= . . . [the following is in all italics] The only place left for the
>billion people in China and the Indian subcontinent to spill over is
>into areas already occupied by the white Western nations. [end italics]”

As for the India question, we’ve seen a slightly different answer, religious partition, nationalism, and Indian politicians suggesting that the loss of 25 million Indians in a nuclear exchange wouldn’t hurt the country at all. I truly fear that within 25 years, either we will see a glow in the dark subcontinent, or Pakistan (and possibly Bangladesh) will simply cease to exist as an independent nation. One way or another.

The interesting question for “the white Western nations” is what we intend to do when refugee/economic migrant flight from war zones and totalitarian regimes becomes a wholesale rather than retail phenomenon. At the moment, we have enough angst about a few boats of Afghanis and Iraqis, and in the case of the US Haitians and Cubans. But what could/would we do if say China loaded up a few freighters with tens of thousands of their people from a famine zone, plus assorted gunboats to ensure their safe passage, and simply dumped them here or in say Alaska. Or Canada.

The problem is the same Heinlein saw in the 50’s but much greater numbers are involved now, and so far no solutions have been found.

>
>–
> David M. Silver
> https://www.heinleinsociety.org
> http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
> “The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
> Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
> Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)
>

[Carolyn Evans] cmaj7dmin7 wrote:

>”David Silver” wrote in message
>news:…
>[snip]
>>
>>It contains such nuggets as:
>>
>>”. . . no progress whatsoever is being made on the prime problem facing
>>the human race, that the problem is bigger than I had dreamed, and that,
>>most tragically, it probably has no solution.
>>* * * * *
>>
>
>An old man’s handwringing’s not all that exciting a topic, Dave. So, he goes
>to Asia and sees the magnitude of the Yellow Peril and all hope is lost. Big
>deal. He was out of touch then and it’s a non-issue now. Further, it smacks
>of Slobodan Milosovic’s ethnic cleansing more than just a little.
>

Which is a problem even discussing it. Yet I think he faces up to the problem as when he writes:

”
. . . My own ancestors came to this continent, pushed the Indians
aside–or killed them–and made far better use of the land for far more
people. I feel no special qualms about it now. But suppose the teeming
crowds of Asia now give us the same treatment, seeing that we are making
something less than maximum use of the land for maximum population. Have
I a right to feel indignant?
”
I will not duck the issue. I have always believed that a man who accepts
capital punishment should not be too squeamish to serve his term as
hangman. The tail goes with the hide. I have not been able to find a
moral answer which pleases me; nevertheless I know my answer–precisely
that of Australians. I’ll fight before I’ll let the spawning millions of
Asia roll over Colorado and turn it into the sort of horizontal slum
that Java is. Maybe this decision damns my soul; if so, so must it be. I
don’t see any solution to the problem of Asia at all, for they won’t
stop breeding … in fact, the psychological truth is almost certainly
they _can’t_. But I am not willing to move over and give them room here
to breed another hundred million–or half a billion. We have a pretty
good nation, at least for the time being; I will not willingly see it
turned into a slum.”
_Tramp Royale_ at 367-8

Earlier, in what I have abovethread called “the essay” he writes he believes the Anzacs will fight themselves, “to the last digger, to the last Kiwi,” before they similiarly turn over their continent; and they, of course, are first in line geographically.

The trip took place in ’53-’54. The next year, the novel _Tunnel in the Sky_ was published; and it begins with the chapter, “The Marching Hoards.”

So if we’re looking for thematic inspiration, here it is: or rather we can supplement our look in the chapter on Java he referred to, Chapter X, “The Underside of the Orient,” where the density of population then was one thousand to a square mile. Djakarta’s canal best exemplified what the Heinlein’s saw there:

”
Our guide pointed out the swarms of people bathing in the canal and said
proudly that people here were very clean; they were likely to come down
to the canal for a bath three or four times a day. I could understand
how it could be an endless process, since bathing in that filth would
leave a person dirtier than ever. The so-called bath was rendered less
efficient for females by the fact that they bathed with their sarongs
on, whereas the men just stripped naked and went in–through I don’t
suppose it mattered either way; filth is filth.
”
People stopped to drink, housewives dipped up pans from it to take home
for cooking, and at one point we saw a woman dipping a toothbrush in the
canal to scrub her teeth–an unexpected refinement. Just upstream of her
the canal was currently being put to use in its aspect as a sewer; the
guide glanced at both activities and said happily, ‘People never get any
disease from the canal. The sunlight, beating down all day, kills the
germs.'”
_Tramp Royale_, at 235

I dunno, L.N.; for I see the same hint of Spenglerism, the sort of things Teddy Roosevelt and Rudyard Kipling believed, about so-called ‘white’ nations; and we all know just as well as we know our hands where the excess of that belief led. I don’t need to be Albanian to know about what we call today ethnic cleansing; sixty-two of sixty-three of my father’s European relatives–in the so-called ‘Russian Pale,’ cousins, uncles, aunts, and in-laws vanished into the camps circa 1939-45. Lucky my grandmother and grandfather got on that boat in Danzig in 1884, eh?

Yet, is it excessive, or is it racism, simply to note:

”
Nevertheless that minority of the human race called loosely the Western
democratic peoples and consisting mostly of Caucausians even though not
identical with the Caucausian race has added twenty, eighty, a hundred
times as much to human wealth, human knowledge, human dignity and
freedom, as all the rest of the human race put together. Sanitation,
scientific farming, mass production, civil liberties–these are _our_
inventions, not theirs. We have shared them, what they would accept, and
that is good–but we _do_ _not_ owe the teeming rest of the world a living!”
_Tramp Royale_, at 368

>>”
>>. . . [the following is in all italics] The only place left for the
>>billion people in China and the Indian subcontinent to spill over is
>>into areas already occupied by the white Western nations. [end italics]”
>>
>
>So, what? They pour over the borders, marry our daughters and after thirty
>years you won’t be able to find a competent caucasian septegenarian
>doomsayer anywhere? What a loss.
>
>

That’s one scenario. But what makes you think “we want to marry your daughters, kemo sabe?” I don’t particularly care whether Asians marry our daughters. My daughter already is one-quarter Asian, her mother is half-Filipina, as a matter of fact. I’m not particularly worried about her grandfather who came here in 1927 or so and spent his life serving train passengers on the Great Northern.

In “The Marching Hoardes,” Chapter I, in _Tunnel in the Sky_, esp. at pp. 14-18 [Scribner’s hardbound edition], our attention is directed to Gate Five on forty-eight hour loan to the “Australasian Republic” where hyperfolded to a point in central Australia in the Arunta Desert, a great encampment for emigration has been mounting for the past several weeks, in excess of two million people to pass through in forty-eight hours, more than forty thousand per hour.

And our attention is directed to the “removal of the remnants of the former Australian population to New Zealand, pursuant to the Peiping Peace Treaty” etc. . . .

Ever figure out how you get that many doggies to march into the chute, let alone how you get them to keep moving out there in the Arunta Desert to keep entering the chute? After a while I imagine the sand was turned to red mud.

>>And there follow predictions of World War III [who said it had to be
>>with Soviet Russia? I ask]. And various questions about whether we are
>>our brother’s keepers, intermixed with the Mathusian Solution, the
>>inadvisability of paying Danegeld, England’s example “in the days of her
>>strength” and the note that even if the game is rigged “it is the only
>>game in town.”
>>
>
>Even if the old man’s glib, it doesn’t hide that he wants to play politics
>with his prejudices. I don’t see the problem. To me, it’s a chance to learn
>Mandarin or Cantonese or Spanish, things I should have learned years ago
>anyway.
>
>

What is politics? A substitute for a real war? What would you rather have? In Korean, the year before, they were using jeep-mounted quad fifties, designed to shoot at aircraft, in ‘weapons platoons’ on the so-called 38th parallel, to stop CCA human wave attacks, and often they were unsuccessful.

>>Finally, a conclusion that we, as the United States, should not be
>>afraid of choosing from among the various unsafe courses, “not even of
>>our friends.”
>>
>
>Here, the old man really loses it. What, team up with the other white guys,
>even if they’re commies, so the coloreds won’t outnumber us?

Read it again. What he says is he doubts whether the U.S. will get any support from Europe, the ‘other white guys’ as you call them.

He urges emulation of England, “in the days of her strengh” as England stood alone in her own best interests and ignorned world opinion. Have you read it indeed?

>Really, Dave,
>the lesson is “no matter who you are and how many people think you can write
>real nice and how much homespun, plaintalking, space-opera situated
>cracker-barrelling you can do, you’re still just the stiff-necked ShowMe
>bigot they raised you.”
>

I’m afraid you’re not ‘showing me’ anything other than an assumption you’ve made arguendo.

>>Does all of that possibly have some application today?
>>
>
>Yes. It’s business as usual behind a facade of pretend individualism. He’s
>full of high-sounding, fictional ideals–when they sell. He’s a boy who
>hates a critic because he wants you not to look at the cup under which he’s
>hiding the ball but the critic’s pointing at it.
>

But I think I’m a critic fairly looking at the words, not what I infer to be behind them. There’s no substantial evidence of what you argue you see on the record as a whole; and, even though I appreciate your argument techniques, I have to say you’re trying to make a large quantity of soup out of the very small amount of library bindery paste that holds this book together. I think you’ll need to call upon a much more substantial supplement from your cousin L.C., L.N. And a lot more potatoes to thicken it. Nothing in there about ganging up with the rest of the white guys against the Yellow Peril. There was an awful lot about standing alone, however.

>They say travel broadens the mind. Apparently, not always.
>

I wonder if anyone has recently been to Djakarta. Is the canal still used the same way? That was fifty years ago. What’s the population density per square mile today?

[Someone has noted the changes in Singapore . . . .]

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

“David Silver”wrote in message news:…

>cmaj7dmin7 wrote:
>
>>”David Silver” wrote in message
>>news:…
>>[snip]
>>>
>>>It contains such nuggets as:
>>>
>>>”. . . no progress whatsoever is being made on the prime problem facing
>>>the human race, that the problem is bigger than I had dreamed, and that,
>>>most tragically, it probably has no solution.
>>>* * * * *
>>>
>>
>>An old man’s handwringing’s not all that exciting a topic, Dave. So, he goes
>>to Asia and sees the magnitude of the Yellow Peril and all hope is lost Big
>>deal. He was out of touch then and it’s a non-issue now. Further, it smacks
>>of Slobodan Milosovic’s ethnic cleansing more than just a little.
>>
>
>
>Which is a problem even discussing it. Yet I think he faces up to the
>problem as when he writes:
>
>”
>. . . My own ancestors came to this continent, pushed the Indians
>aside–or killed them–and made far better use of the land for far more
>people. I feel no special qualms about it now. But suppose the teeming
>crowds of Asia now give us the same treatment, seeing that we are making
>something less than maximum use of the land for maximum population. Have
>I a right to feel indignant?
>”
>I will not duck the issue. I have always believed that a man who accepts
>capital punishment should not be too squeamish to serve his term as
>hangman. The tail goes with the hide. I have not been able to find a
>moral answer which pleases me; nevertheless I know my answer–precisely
>that of Australians. I’ll fight before I’ll let the spawning millions of
>Asia roll over Colorado and turn it into the sort of horizontal slum
>that Java is. Maybe this decision damns my soul; if so, so must it be. I
>don’t see any solution to the problem of Asia at all, for they won’t
>stop breeding … in fact, the psychological truth is almost certainly
>they _can’t_. But I am not willing to move over and give them room here
>to breed another hundred million–or half a billion. We have a pretty
>good nation, at least for the time being; I will not willingly see it
>turned into a slum.”
>_Tramp Royale_ at 367-8
>
>Earlier, in what I have abovethread called “the essay” he writes he
>believes the Anzacs will fight themselves, “to the last digger, to the
>last Kiwi,” before they similiarly turn over their continent; and they,
>of course, are first in line geographically.
>
>The trip took place in ’53-’54. The next year, the novel _Tunnel in the
>Sky_ was published; and it begins with the chapter, “The Marching Hoards.”
>
> So if we’re looking for thematic inspiration, here it is: or rather we
>can supplement our look in the chapter on Java he referred to, Chapter
>X, “The Underside of the Orient,” where the density of population then
>was one thousand to a square mile. Djakarta’s canal best exemplified
>what the Heinlein’s saw there:
>
>”
>Our guide pointed out the swarms of people bathing in the canal and said
>proudly that people here were very clean; they were likely to come down
>to the canal for a bath three or four times a day. I could understand
>how it could be an endless process, since bathing in that filth would
>leave a person dirtier than ever. The so-called bath was rendered less
>efficient for females by the fact that they bathed with their sarongs
>on, whereas the men just stripped naked and went in–through I don’t
>suppose it mattered either way; filth is filth.
>”
>People stopped to drink, housewives dipped up pans from it to take home
>for cooking, and at one point we saw a woman dipping a toothbrush in the
>canal to scrub her teeth–an unexpected refinement. Just upstream of her
>the canal was currently being put to use in its aspect as a sewer; the
>guide glanced at both activities and said happily, ‘People never get any
>disease from the canal. The sunlight, beating down all day, kills the
>germs.'”
>_Tramp Royale_, at 235
>
>I dunno, L.N.; for I see the same hint of Spenglerism, the sort of
>things Teddy Roosevelt and Rudyard Kipling believed, about so-called
>’white’ nations; and we all know just as well as we know our hands where
>the excess of that belief led. I don’t need to be Albanian to know about
> what we call today ethnic cleansing; sixty-two of sixty-three of my
>father’s European relatives–in the so-called ‘Russian Pale,’ cousins,
>uncles, aunts, and in-laws vanished into the camps circa 1939-45. Lucky
>my grandmother and grandfather got on that boat in Danzig in 1884, eh?
>
>Yet, is it excessive, or is it racism, simply to note:
>
>”
>Nevertheless that minority of the human race called loosely the Western
>democratic peoples and consisting mostly of Caucausians even though not
>identical with the Caucausian race has added twenty, eighty, a hundred
>times as much to human wealth, human knowledge, human dignity and
>freedom, as all the rest of the human race put together. Sanitation,
>scientific farming, mass production, civil liberties–these are _our_
>inventions, not theirs. We have shared them, what they would accept, and
>that is good–but we _do_ _not_ owe the teeming rest of the world a
living!”
>_Tramp Royale_, at 368
>
>
>
>>>”
>>>. . . [the following is in all italics] The only place left for the
>>>billion people in China and the Indian subcontinent to spill over is
>>>into areas already occupied by the white Western nations. [end italics]”
>>>
>>
>>So, what? They pour over the borders, marry our daughters and after thirty
>>years you won’t be able to find a competent caucasian septegenarian
>>doomsayer anywhere? What a loss.
>>
>>
>
>
>That’s one scenario. But what makes you think “we want to marry your
>daughters, kemo sabe?” I don’t particularly care whether Asians marry
>our daughters. My daughter already is one-quarter Asian, her mother is
>half-Filipina, as a matter of fact. I’m not particularly worried about
>her grandfather who came here in 1927 or so and spent his life serving
>train passengers on the Great Northern.
>
>In “The Marching Hoardes,” Chapter I, in _Tunnel in the Sky_, esp. at
>pp. 14-18 [Scribner’s hardbound edition], our attention is directed to
>Gate Five on forty-eight hour loan to the “Australasian Republic” where
>hyperfolded to a point in central Australia in the Arunta Desert, a
>great encampment for emigration has been mounting for the past several
>weeks, in excess of two million people to pass through in forty-eight
>hours, more than forty thousand per hour.
>
>And our attention is directed to the “removal of the remnants of the
>former Australian population to New Zealand, pursuant to the Peiping
>Peace Treaty” etc. . . .
>
>Ever figure out how you get that many doggies to march into the chute,
>let alone how you get them to keep moving out there in the Arunta Desert
>to keep entering the chute? After a while I imagine the sand was turned
>to red mud.
>
>
>>>And there follow predictions of World War III [who said it had to be
>>>with Soviet Russia? I ask]. And various questions about whether we are
>>>our brother’s keepers, intermixed with the Mathusian Solution, the
>>>inadvisability of paying Danegeld, England’s example “in the days of her
>>>strength” and the note that even if the game is rigged “it is the only
>>>game in town.”
>>>
>>
>>Even if the old man’s glib, it doesn’t hide that he wants to play politics
>>with his prejudices. I don’t see the problem. To me, it’s a chance to learn
>>Mandarin or Cantonese or Spanish, things I should have learned years ago
>>anyway.
>>
>>
>
>
>What is politics? A substitute for a real war? What would you rather
>have? In Korean, the year before, they were using jeep-mounted quad
>fifties, designed to shoot at aircraft, in ‘weapons platoons’ on the
>so-called 38th parallel, to stop CCA human wave attacks, and often they
>were unsuccessful.
>
>
>>>Finally, a conclusion that we, as the United States, should not be
>>>afraid of choosing from among the various unsafe courses, “not even of
>>>our friends.”
>>>
>>
>>Here, the old man really loses it. What, team up with the other white guys,
>>even if they’re commies, so the coloreds won’t outnumber us?
>
>
>Read it again. What he says is he doubts whether the U.S. will get any
>support from Europe, the ‘other white guys’ as you call them.
>
>He urges emulation of England, “in the days of her strengh” as England
>stood alone in her own best interests and ignorned world opinion. Have
>you read it indeed?
>
>>Really, Dave,
>>the lesson is “no matter who you are and how many people think you can write
>>real nice and how much homespun, plaintalking, space-opera situated
>>cracker-barrelling you can do, you’re still just the stiff-necked ShowMe
>>bigot they raised you.”
>>
>
>
>I’m afraid you’re not ‘showing me’ anything other than an assumption
>you’ve made arguendo.
>
>
>>>Does all of that possibly have some application today?
>>>
>>
>>Yes. It’s business as usual behind a facade of pretend individualism. He’s
>>full of high-sounding, fictional ideals–when they sell. He’s a boy who
>>hates a critic because he wants you not to look at the cup under which he’s
>>hiding the ball but the critic’s pointing at it.
>>
>
>
>But I think I’m a critic fairly looking at the words, not what I infer
>to be behind them. There’s no substantial evidence of what you argue you
>see on the record as a whole; and, even though I appreciate your
>argument techniques, I have to say you’re trying to make a large
>quantity of soup out of the very small amount of library bindery paste
>that holds this book together. I think you’ll need to call upon a much
>more substantial supplement from your cousin L.C., L.N. And a lot more
>potatoes to thicken it. Nothing in there about ganging up with the rest
>of the white guys against the Yellow Peril. There was an awful lot about
>standing alone, however.
>
>
>>They say travel broadens the mind. Apparently, not always.
>>
>
>
>I wonder if anyone has recently been to Djakarta. Is the canal still
>used the same way? That was fifty years ago. What’s the population
>density per square mile today?
>
>[Someone has noted the changes in Singapore . . . .]
>
>–
> David M. Silver
> https://www.heinleinsociety.org
> http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
> “The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
> Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
> Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)
>

http://www.demographia.com/db-intluadens-rank.htm gives some demographics on Jakarta. It is the 4th most populous nation in the world at 180 million, though it seems to get much less attention from the US and Europe in particular than would be expected from it’s size.

The population of Jakarta is over 8 million, and the population density is over 44000/sq mile. Say to compare Tokyo at 18000, and New York at 5400.

The Asia Times from this year says of Jakarta “Governor Sutiyoso controls a city that swims in filth every year during the wet season, from October to February. ”

http://www.atimes.com/se-asia/DB02Ae01.html, so it doesn’t seem the problems there are quite under control yet.

http://www.environmentprobe.org/enviroprobe/pubs/ev542.html#Asiasays of Indonesia as a whole “Only 50 per cent of urban residents have a safe source of water, and only 20 per cent have it piped to their homes. Of the remaining city dwellers, 44 per cent draw their water straight from unprotected wells while 10 per cent resort to water vendors. Water losses, primarily due to leaky pipes, are as high as 40 per cent nationwide. The sewage system is even worse, reaching only 5 per cent of urban residents. No more than 40 per cent have any sort of on-site sanitation facility, such as a drainage pit or a septic tank. The rest discharge their raw wastes directly into surface drainage systems.” These data relate to the 1990 census.

[Carolyn Evans]

Carolyn Evans wrote to supplement this following:

>”David Silver” wrote in message
[snip]
>>The trip took place in ’53-’54. The next year, the novel _Tunnel in the
>>Sky_ was published; and it begins with the chapter, “The Marching Hoards.”
>>
>>So if we’re looking for thematic inspiration, here it is: or rather we
>>can supplement our look in the chapter on Java he referred to, Chapter
>>X, “The Underside of the Orient,” where the density of population then
>>was one thousand to a square mile. Djakarta’s canal best exemplified
>>what the Heinlein’s saw there:
>>
>>”
>>Our guide pointed out the swarms of people bathing in the canal and said
>>proudly that people here were very clean; they were likely to come down
>>to the canal for a bath three or four times a day. I could understand
>>how it could be an endless process, since bathing in that filth would
>>leave a person dirtier than ever. The so-called bath was rendered less
>>efficient for females by the fact that they bathed with their sarongs
>>on, whereas the men just stripped naked and went in–through I don’t
>>suppose it mattered either way; filth is filth.
>>”
>>People stopped to drink, housewives dipped up pans from it to take home
>>for cooking, and at one point we saw a woman dipping a toothbrush in the
>>canal to scrub her teeth–an unexpected refinement. Just upstream of her
>>the canal was currently being put to use in its aspect as a sewer; the
>>guide glanced at both activities and said happily, ‘People never get any
>>disease from the canal. The sunlight, beating down all day, kills the
>>germs.'”
>>_Tramp Royale_, at 235
>>
[snip]
>>I wonder if anyone has recently been to Djakarta. Is the canal still
>>used the same way? That was fifty years ago. What’s the population
>>density per square mile today?
>>
>>[Someone has noted the changes in Singapore . . . .]

In light of what’s below, I really was whistling while passing through the cemetary, wasn’t I?

>>
>>
>http://www.demographia.com/db-intluadens-rank.htm
>gives some demographics on Jakarta. It is the 4th most populous nation in
>the world at 180 million, though it seems to get much less attention from
>the US and Europe in particular than would be expected from it’s size.
>
>The population of Jakarta is over 8 million, and the population density is
>over 44000/sq mile. Say to compare Tokyo at 18000, and New York at 5400.
>

That’s what? A forty-four fold increase in fifty years. Graph that curve! I wonder if it’s still three stories high, most everywhere. Couldn’t be, could it? I keep thinking about that “chinee” representative who told Mannie, in Moon, that engineers can be reeducated so they *do* understand ice. Can’t say I appreciate him much more, but I understand him pretty clearly. Wouldn’t want to be an engineer being reeducated, however. Failing an exam could be a real downer.

>The Asia Times from this year says of Jakarta “Governor Sutiyoso controls a
>city that swims in filth every year during the wet season, from October to
>February. ”
>http://www.atimes.com/se-asia/DB02Ae01.html , so it doesn’t seem the
>problems there are quite under control yet.
>

Shame on you for the understatement! lol, almost . . . educate us, a bit will you, Carolyn. How far away is Jakarta from the island that Aussie and Ghurka peace-keeping troops were sent last year?

>http://www.environmentprobe.org/enviroprobe/pubs/ev542.html#Asia says of
>Indonesia as a whole “Only 50 per cent of urban residents have a safe source
>of water, and only 20 per cent have it piped to their homes. Of the
>remaining city dwellers, 44 per cent draw their water straight from
>unprotected wells while 10 per cent resort to water vendors.

What does that mean? Half the unprotected wells are polluted? During what times of the year, between October and February? I wish I’d reread this book a couple years ago. Delightfully bright young lady from Indonesia spent about three years living with a friend of ours while studying here in Southern California. She’s taking graduate work now back east [at Princeton]. I would have loved to have a conversation with her about these problems, now.

>Water losses,
>primarily due to leaky pipes, are as high as 40 per cent nationwide. The
>sewage system is even worse, reaching only 5 per cent of urban residents. No
>more than 40 per cent have any sort of on-site sanitation facility, such as
>a drainage pit or a septic tank. The rest discharge their raw wastes
>directly into surface drainage systems.”

The same canals I suppose. Thanks, Carolyn. [Hint: please snip the heck out of my verbiage, next

time, even if I think it’s brilliant, reading it a second time palls.]

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

“David Silver”wrote in message news:…

🙂

>Shame on you for the understatement! lol, almost . . . educate us, a bit
>will you, Carolyn. How far away is Jakarta from the island that Aussie
>and Ghurka peace-keeping troops were sent last year?

As the crow flies, about 1200 miles to East Timor from Jakarta. Culturally, much greater distance than that. East Timor was one of the most neglected provinces, with hardly any people with more than a basic education, and what services there were mostly didn’t survive the independence war. The people are an unusual mix of Melanesian and Portuguese mostly, except for recent Indonesian immigrants. The religion is mostly Roman Catholic with an animist flavour. In fact they have next to nothing in common with the Javan people.

Still, Indonesia may yet become a much smaller nation. The independence movement in Irian Jaya (West Papua) in particular seems like it has a good chance of success in the long term, and West Timor is by no means dedicated to national unity. Unless the economy holds together, we could see a massive USSR style disintegration there.

[Carolyn Evans]
“David Silver”wrote in message news:…

>David Silver wrote:
>
>
>>
>>There’s a very interesting passage contained in the last five pages of
>>Tramp Royale, beginning at page 366, with:
>>
>>” The most important thing that I believe I learned from a trip around
>>our planet . . . ”
>>
>>What follows is an essay containing several points, noteably among them
>>Heinlein’s [statement] that the trip “cured me of One-Worldism.” But there
>>are other points to it.
>>
>>Anyone wish to discuss these most important thing[s] learned?
>
>
>Aw, com’on, I promise I won’t bite. ;-)=
>It contains such nuggets as:
>
>”
>. . . no progress whatsoever is being made on the prime problem facing
>the human race, that the problem is bigger than I had dreamed, and that,
>most tragically, it probably has no solution.
>* * * * *

An old man’s handwringing’s not all that exciting a topic, Dave. So, he goes to Asia and sees the magnitude of the Yellow Peril and all hope is lost. Big deal. He was out of touch then and it’s a non-issue now. Further, it smacks of Slobodan Milosovic’s ethnic cleansing more than just a little.

>”
>. . . [the following is in all italics] The only place left for the
>billion people in China and the Indian subcontinent to spill over is
>into areas already occupied by the white Western nations. [end italics]”

So, what? They pour over the borders, marry our daughters and after thirty years you won’t be able to find a competent caucasian septegenarian doomsayer anywhere? What a loss.

>
>And there follow predictions of World War III [who said it had to be
>with Soviet Russia? I ask]. And various questions about whether we are
>our brother’s keepers, intermixed with the Mathusian Solution, the
>inadvisability of paying Danegeld, England’s example “in the days of her
>strength” and the note that even if the game is rigged “it is the only
>game in town.”

Even if the old man’s glib, it doesn’t hide that he wants to play politics with his prejudices. I don’t see the problem. To me, it’s a chance to learn Mandarin or Cantonese or Spanish, things I should have learned years ago anyway.

>
>Finally, a conclusion that we, as the United States, should not be
>afraid of choosing from among the various unsafe courses, “not even of
>our friends.”

Here, the old man really loses it. What, team up with the other white guys, even if they’re commies, so the coloreds won’t outnumber us? Really, Dave, the lesson is “no matter who you are and how many people think you can write real nice and how much homespun, plaintalking, space-opera situated cracker-barrelling you can do, you’re still just the stiff-necked ShowMe bigot they raised you.”

>
>Does all of that possibly have some application today?

Yes. It’s business as usual behind a facade of pretend individualism. He’s full of high-sounding, fictional ideals–when they sell. He’s a boy who hates a critic because he wants you not to look at the cup under which he’s hiding the ball but the critic’s pointing at it.

>
>
>–
> David M. Silver
> https://www.heinleinsociety.org

They say travel broadens the mind. Apparently, not always.

LNC >From: “cmaj7dmin7″

>>. . . [the following is in all italics] The only place left for the
>>billion people in China and the Indian subcontinent to spill over is
>>into areas already occupied by the white Western nations. [end italics]”
>
>So, what? They pour over the borders, marry our daughters and after thirty
>years you won’t be able to find a competent caucasian septegenarian
>doomsayer anywhere? What a loss.

Well…maybe. It could work the other way too. I think Asian women are among the most beutiful in the world, and I certainly would not object to marrying one.

It does not always work this way when too cultures clash though. The Europeans spilling over into the Americas did not quite work out the way you describe. The Romans spilling over into North Africa also did not work out exactly that way.

[LV Poker Player]
—
Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc. – from 1984 by George Orwell

On Wed, 19 Jun 2002 13:10:52 +1000, “Carolyn Evans”held forth, saying:

>Hmm, we’re being trampled in the rush on this one. 🙂 I wonder if it’s a
>lack of familiarity with the books by the group,

I’ve not only not read “Tramp Royale”–I’ve never seen a copy. Makes it kinda out of my grasp to try discussing it. (also, I don’t do the AIM chats)

—
-denny-
nocturnal curmudgeon, editor

Never try to outstubborn a cat. – Lazarus Long

wrote:

>On Wed, 19 Jun 2002 13:10:52 +1000, “Carolyn Evans”
>held forth, saying:
>
>
>>Hmm, we’re being trampled in the rush on this one. 🙂 I wonder if it’s a
>>lack of familiarity with the books by the group,
>>
>
>I’ve not only not read “Tramp Royale”–I’ve never seen a copy.

It’s pretty easy to order, Denny; and not too bad a read.

>Makes
>it kinda out of my grasp to try discussing it.

I’m trying rather hard to fix that by a few ‘cherce’ quotations, and perhaps if you’re here to keep me on the ball I’ll remember to spell hordes some way other than h-o-a-r-d-s.

>(also, I don’t do the AIM chats)
>–
>-denny-
>nocturnal curmudgeon, editor

Perhaps you oughta. We allow all sorts of curmudgeons, even including me 😉

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

I don’t recall whether this was in that book or not, but I started to run a bath for myself at the hotel in Bangkok, only to find it a pale brown. The water must have come directly out of the klongs there.

That day and thereafter, we took “showers” by ordering in cases of drinking water. We would soap ourselves down using one bottle and soap and then the other would “rinse” him/her by sprinkling on more bottles of fresh clean drinking water. The waiter who delivered each case would snicker when he delivered it.

Ginny
Virginia Heinlein

On 19 Jun 2002 14:15:42 GMT, in alt.fan.heinlein, (Astyanax12) meowed:

>I don’t recall whether this was in that book or not, but I started to run a
>bath for myself at the hotel in Bangkok, only to find it a pale brown. The
>water must have come directly out of the klongs there.
>
>That day and thereafter, we took “showers” by ordering in cases of drinking
>water. We would soap ourselves down using one bottle and soap and then the
>other would “rinse” him/her by sprinkling on more bottles of fresh clean
>drinking water. The waiter who delivered each case would snicker when he
>delivered it.

I can just hear it now: “Stoopid furriners. Bathe in water meant to *drink*. Heehee!”

I don’t know what a “klong” is, but brown water out of the tap would drive me to do exactly what you did, if “klong” is what I *think* it is. Bleeh.

—
~teresa~

^..^ “Never try to outstubborn a cat.” Robert A. Heinlein ^..^
http://rahbooks.virtualave.net/ https://www.heinleinsociety.org/
msn messenger: AIM: pixelmeow

This is why nobody can afford to play with you, Dave. You come back with enough material that it takes a day to read it and another to dream up some extrapolation of previously half-formed opinion; but I’ll give it a shot…

“David Silver”wrote in message news:…

Fine rhetoric, Dave. Damn fine rhetoric and rationalized isolationism. I particularly like the “sharing” part. He makes it sound like through the generosity of our hearts we invented the horseless carriage and rushed over to Thailand to give them to them. Whoever “we” are. Oh, yeah, the white boys. The white boys over here who are about the only nation of white boys still killing criminals. That’s us. The “inventors” of civil liberties. The ones who invented the damn notion but can’t decide whether executions are consistent with it or not.

No, nobody’s owed a living (what I tell my late-paying clie notwithstanding) but it’s only a mark who’ll swallow that we ever “gave” anything to anybody, gratis.

Here, we’ll show you how to farm scientifically. All we want are your souls. Repeat after me: “Hail Mary” or pick your missionary’s central figure. Want some modern sanitation, well, just take this container-load of old 486dx’s and reclaim the mercury for us and we’ll show you how to buy your own. Mass production, apparently we don’t need to teach you that anymore: Honda’s not an import but Ford is. Finally, you want to turn downtown Colorado into a highrise slum? More power to you. We’ve been trying for 200 years to get the building permits to do it but couldn’t. There are those among us who wouldn’t flinch at using caribou bones as bits if it’d suck more oil out of the tundra. You’re just like we are, aren’t you?

>>>”
>>>. . . [the following is in all italics] The only place left for the
>>>billion people in China and the Indian subcontinent to spill over is
>>>into areas already occupied by the white Western nations. [end italics]”
>>>
>>
>>So, what? They pour over the borders, marry our daughters and after
thirty
>>years you won’t be able to find a competent caucasian septegenarian
>>doomsayer anywhere? What a loss.
>
>That’s one scenario. But what makes you think “we want to marry your
>daughters, kemo sabe?” I don’t particularly care whether Asians marry
>our daughters. My daughter already is one-quarter Asian, her mother is
>half-Filipina, as a matter of fact. I’m not particularly worried about
>her grandfather who came here in 1927 or so and spent his life serving
>train passengers on the Great Northern.

We agree. This is a non-issue. People are people. The Bell Curvers can whine until the cowed go home.

>In “The Marching Hoardes,” Chapter I, in _Tunnel in the Sky_, esp. at
>pp. 14-18 [Scribner’s hardbound edition], our attention is directed to
>Gate Five on forty-eight hour loan to the “Australasian Republic” where
>hyperfolded to a point in central Australia in the Arunta Desert, a
>great encampment for emigration has been mounting for the past several
>weeks, in excess of two million people to pass through in forty-eight
>hours, more than forty thousand per hour.
>
>And our attention is directed to the “removal of the remnants of the
>former Australian population to New Zealand, pursuant to the Peiping
>Peace Treaty” etc. . . .
>
>Ever figure out how you get that many doggies to march into the chute,
>let alone how you get them to keep moving out there in the Arunta Desert
>to keep entering the chute? After a while I imagine the sand was turned
>to red mud.

Who were the trail hands on this drive? Gil Favor and Rowdy Yates with Frankie Lane crooning in the background? All white boys roping strays and shooting the ones holding up the slow lope to Abilene? Yeah, but the thing is in Bob’s vision they’re not going to market; they’re being herded out because of his hysterical imagining of a fictional treaty struck to appease the residential needs of a huge population you could proverbially march ten abreast into the ocean and the first billion would build a highway for the last two billion to walk across and swarm over you.

Look, I’m not really impressed with the word pictures he paints of the ignorant and uneducated gargling with feces instead of Listerine down on the banks of the Ganges. By and large, they’re just like us but with a higher infant mortality rate. (See, http://www.bartleby.com/151/a28.html ) He could be describing a visit to parts of Kansas not that long ago. Yes, overpopulation’s a problem as are famine and disease which, if you remedy them, leaves you with a healthy overabundance of people poised to procreate. So, why’d we heal them in the first place if we’re afraid they’ll turn on us and demand we give them Death Valley? It’s schizo. It’s almost enough to drive you to complete isolationism but then you start to get antsy about what they’re doing on the other side of the wall and how many there are now and maybe whether you should start the Zyclon B works up just in case…?

>
>
>>>And there follow predictions of World War III [who said it had to be
>>>with Soviet Russia? I ask]. And various questions about whether we are
>>>our brother’s keepers, intermixed with the Mathusian Solution, the
>>>inadvisability of paying Danegeld, England’s example “in the days of her
>>>strength” and the note that even if the game is rigged “it is the only
>>>game in town.”
>>>
>>
>>Even if the old man’s glib, it doesn’t hide that he wants to play politics
>>with his prejudices. I don’t see the problem. To me, it’s a chance to learn
>>Mandarin or Cantonese or Spanish, things I should have learned years ago
>>anyway.
>
>What is politics? A substitute for a real war? What would you rather
>have? In Korean, the year before, they were using jeep-mounted quad
>fifties, designed to shoot at aircraft, in ‘weapons platoons’ on the
>so-called 38th parallel, to stop CCA human wave attacks, and often they
>were unsuccessful.

I just can’t imagine why those people would be mad at the poor old U. S. of A. Nowadays, the domino theory is “thirty minutes deliver or it’s free.” Now is when it’s pretty clear that we’ve seen the enemy and he is us. Communism is the laughing stock and sham it always was: just another name for social organization of a sort that fell flat on its face when the real merits of capitalism became clear. Chinese slave labor making plastic geegaws sold in WalMarts in Bumfuck, Egypt to people who throw them away faster than human gestation takes to articulate and the “Party” leaders masterminding the purest form of rapacious capitalism ever conceived, fueled by a limitless supply of labor. All the while, over here, we’re whining about not being able to get this and how much more that costs than when I was a kid and look where it’s being made, too. It’s like the two old ladies in the Catskills and the one says, “The food here is terrible.” The other’s reply, “yeah, and the portions are so small,” whooshes over the heads of the listeners, too busy doing their own agreeing with the absurd.

>>>Finally, a conclusion that we, as the United States, should not be
>>>afraid of choosing from among the various unsafe courses, “not even of
>>>our friends.”
>>>
>>
>>Here, the old man really loses it. What, team up with the other white
guys,
>>even if they’re commies, so the coloreds won’t outnumber us?
>
>
>Read it again. What he says is he doubts whether the U.S. will get any
>support from Europe, the ‘other white guys’ as you call them.
>
>He urges emulation of England, “in the days of her strengh” as England
>stood alone in her own best interests and ignorned world opinion. Have
>you read it indeed?

It’s been years since I’ve opened the book and don’t remember any more than you graciously word-processed for me. I remember, picking it up, thinking about the title and how it ought to be homage to Twain if he’s going to swipe trampism, then being chagrinned at his grim, comparatively humorless, paternalistic reporting. Oh, well. An actor’s life for me.

>
>>Really, Dave,
>>the lesson is “no matter who you are and how many people think you can
write
>>real nice and how much homespun, plaintalking, space-opera situated
>>cracker-barrelling you can do, you’re still just the stiff-necked ShowMe
>>bigot they raised you.”
>>
>
>
>I’m afraid you’re not ‘showing me’ anything other than an assumption
>you’ve made arguendo.

I’ll repeat the competing versions of how Missouri got that name: one, the one Missouians prefer, is that they’re called that because of their native skepticism and requiring proof; the other is that during the California gold rush, when midwesterners flocked to Sutter’s Mill, the plain, flat dumbest were from Missouri. They didn’t know how to do squat and their repeated entreaties of “show me this and show me that” got them the appellation. Now, it’s “show me how to manufacture methamphetimine” but Kansas has the same problem. Ad astra per ammonium hydrate et pseudophed.

My assuming’s predicated on being raised in the same geographic area and reading what you typed that he wrote. Even he, Lazarus Long himself, admitted repeatedly in his fictional musings that he still carried the taint of that place and those times. I’d cite but I don’t have the time to dig through pages. Maybe I will later.

>
>
>>>Does all of that possibly have some application today?
>>>
>>
>>Yes. It’s business as usual behind a facade of pretend individualism. He’s
>>full of high-sounding, fictional ideals–when they sell. He’s a boy who
>>hates a critic because he wants you not to look at the cup under which he’s
>>hiding the ball but the critic’s pointing at it.
>>
>
>
>But I think I’m a critic fairly looking at the words, not what I infer
>to be behind them. There’s no substantial evidence of what you argue you
>see on the record as a whole; and, even though I appreciate your
>argument techniques, I have to say you’re trying to make a large
>quantity of soup out of the very small amount of library bindery paste
>that holds this book together. I think you’ll need to call upon a much
>more substantial supplement from your cousin L.C., L.N. And a lot more
>potatoes to thicken it. Nothing in there about ganging up with the rest
>of the white guys against the Yellow Peril. There was an awful lot about
>standing alone, however.

If I read it through and put in context the quotes you provided and if I agreed with your conclusion does that make him right? Didn’t I at least lob back the serve you got in the court? Go ahead, smash that overhead into the corner. 15-love or 5-love, as we used to say. If you’re looking for definitve answers out of me or anybody, though, Usenet’s not where it’s at. Nobody believes anything they don’t pay too much to get.

>
>
>>They say travel broadens the mind. Apparently, not always.

>I wonder if anyone has recently been to Djakarta. Is the canal still
>used the same way? That was fifty years ago. What’s the population
>density per square mile today?
>
>[Someone has noted the changes in Singapore . . . .]
>
>–
> David M. Silver
> https://www.heinleinsociety.org

I was in Juarez in November and it was huge and it was densely populated and it looked like here but in Spanish in most places and a sprinkling of snow absolutely cleared even the busiest streets. I say control the weather, make it hail if the invaders show up. Tornados. They’ll never have seen such a thing and will leave in pure disgust that we could have ever populated such an area. Give them some of that Missouri weather that if you don’t like it, stick around and it’ll change in ten minutes. If that doesn’t put a damper on your procreation I don’t know what will.

LNC

pixelmeowwrote in news::

>
>
>I can just hear it now: “Stoopid furriners. Bathe in water meant to
>*drink*. Heehee!”
>
>I don’t know what a “klong” is, but brown water out of the tap would
>drive me to do exactly what you did, if “klong” is what I *think* it
>is. Bleeh.
>

klong = canal The canals usually (surely in that time) double as sewers.

Bleeh is right.

[Dave Jennings]
cmaj7dmin7 wrote:

>This is why nobody can afford to play with you, Dave. You come back with
>enough material that it takes a day to read it and another to dream up some
>extrapolation of previously half-formed opinion; but I’ll give it a shot…
>

Sorry, bad habits are hard to break. You shoulda seen some Rule 65 motions I useta file. Shudder. I’ll try to be briefer. And, as usual, your ‘shot’ isn’t wholly, or even largely, misdirected. I’m going to break up replies into different categories — priority on what I really think ought to be noted before the chat, first.

> “David Silver” wrote in message
> news:…
>[snip mucho]
>
>It’s been years since I’ve opened the book and don’t remember any more than
>you graciously word-processed for me. I remember, picking it up, thinking
>about the title and how it ought to be homage to Twain if he’s going to
>swipe trampism, then being chagrinned at his grim, comparatively humorless,
>paternalistic reporting. Oh, well. An actor’s life for me.
>
[snip]

Actually, I’d *really* hoped to find someone to discuss and point out the similiarities and dissimiliarities between Tramp Royale and Twain’s Tramp Abroad (as well as the other writings of other authors who have tried the ‘travel’ genre, e.g., Dickens, Stevenson, Kipling, to name a few). I’ve some thoughts on it that you’ll find in a bit in another post downthread. I hope others who might be thinking along those lines chime in without waiting for my poor musings.

I rather thought it might have been a while since you’d read it; and for that reason, and the fact that I know most habitees of this newsgroup may not have ever seen the book, I quoted some relevant to discussion portions, extensively. The problem is: taking one topic out of the book results in an overview a bit like one of the proverbial blind men describing the elephant.

>>
>>But I think I’m a critic fairly looking at the words, not what I infer
>>to be behind them. There’s no substantial evidence of what you argue you
>>see on the record as a whole; and, even though I appreciate your
>>argument techniques, I have to say you’re trying to make a large
>>quantity of soup out of the very small amount of library bindery paste
>>that holds this book together. I think you’ll need to call upon a much
>>more substantial supplement from your cousin L.C., L.N. And a lot more
>>potatoes to thicken it. Nothing in there about ganging up with the rest
>>of the white guys against the Yellow Peril. There was an awful lot about
>>standing alone, however.
>>
>
>If I read it through and put in context the quotes you provided and if I
>agreed with your conclusion does that make him right?

I think we both agree history’s jury is still out on that view. How long can this planet dodge Malthus’ bullets? Or even, is Malthus shooting blanks?

>Didn’t I at least lob
>back the serve you got in the court? Go ahead, smash that overhead into the
>corner. 15-love or 5-love, as we used to say. If you’re looking for
>definitve answers out of me or anybody, though, Usenet’s not where it’s at.
>Nobody believes anything they don’t pay too much to get.
>

Actually, I greatfully appreciated the response which I noted was tempered to permit discussion of what are, for Heinlein, rather strident statements, important ones which I was afraid might go undiscussed pre-chat. I think there are several interesting reasons discernible from the text for this tone. More later, elsewhere in this thread. Thank you.

The search for definitive answers from this book is a bit vague as well. He admits he’s not satisfied morally with his answers on the issue we’ve been discussing. Overhead smashes are something I used to try when I filed Rule 65 motions. I’m retired from that, thankfully; and I’ve noticed I haven’t had any sharp pains in my upper left arm in years.

But, with respect to your assessment of whether this author ever rose above the curious notions on race and racial superiority of his time and community, I’d note others from the same rearing have: noteably Twain, of course. And, you might refresh your reading on the chapter in Tramp Royale on South Africa in assessing overall the author’s viewpoints on the alleged superiority of the white race. More on why I think we find a jarring tone on the so-called “yellow peril” elsethread.

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

I wrote:

> cmaj7dmin7 wrote:
>
>>[snip] I remember, picking it up, thinking
>>about the title and how it ought to be homage to Twain if he’s going to
>>swipe trampism, then being chagrinned at his grim, comparatively
>>humorless,
>>paternalistic reporting. Oh, well. An actor’s life for me.
>>
> [snip]
>
>
>Actually, I’d *really* hoped to find someone to discuss and point out
>the similiarities and dissimiliarities between Tramp Royale and Twain’s
>Tramp Abroad (as well as the other writings of other authors who have
>tried the ‘travel’ genre, e.g., Dickens, Stevenson, Kipling, to name a
>few). I’ve some thoughts on it that you’ll find in a bit in another post
>downthread. I hope others who might be thinking along those lines chime
>in without waiting for my poor musings.
>

I hope what follows isn’t too long.

Travel writings are usually dull writings. For example, from the 1880 Scranton Free Press, in a review of Twain’s _A Tramp Abroad_ this: “People do not like to read a volume of travels because it is dry and prosy, but when all this knowledge is combined with sparkling wit the reading becomes a pleasure instead of a task.” Closer to Sam Clemens’ home, from the Tolland County Leader [I think this paper is mentioned To Sail by Maureen, btw], echoes its 1880 opinion on Tramp Abroad that factual material “which if given by other writers would be dry and uninteresting is here fairly ‘sugar-coated,’ as none by Clemens knows how to do.

I think we’ve seen a pattern in Heinlein’s writing before, when he approached new forms, e.g., when writing his first juvenile, he looked to models such as Appleton’s Tom Swift or the Rover Boys [whoever wrote them], or the boy goes away to boarding school sort of story, such as Hughes’ Tom Brown or Kipling’s Stakley & Co, or the Light That Failed, etc., or possibly the old Dick Prescott goes to West Point, Dave Dawson goes to Annapolis series, as a model for his first efforts (_Rocket Ship Galileo_ and _Space Cadet_). Heinlein obviously improved after these imitative first efforts.

Kipling wrote some travel writings as well, particularly the issues he wrote on visiting the U.S. (in which, incidently, he paid a visit to pay homage to Twain). More on them later.

I am indebted to the introduction [Robert Gray Bruce and Hamlin Hill, Texas A & M] to my copy of A Tramp Abroad [Penguin Classics, 1997] for much of which follows:

Twain’s _A Tramp Abroad_ wasn’t his first travel effort, _Innocents Abroad_ ten years earlier in 1870 was; but by the 1880 Twain had formulated and firmed up his technique for travel narratives. He considered writing them as an analogy to crafting a plank or board for the reader, just as he crafted lectures, writing to his wife in 1871, for example:

“Any lecture of mine ought to be a running narrative plank with square
holes in it, six inches apart, all the length of it, & then in my mental
shop I ought to have plugs (half marked ‘serious’ and the other half
marked ‘humorous’) to select from & jam into these holes according to
the temper of the audience.”

He wrote newspaper friend William Wright that the duller the material used in the running narrative, the better, because the reader would more appreciate the humorous plugs when they arrived in his walk down the plank.

Twain’s ‘humorous plugs’ were notoriously exaggerated. Sometimes the ‘humor’ was so incredibly vicious that the reader gapes while reading it. Consider one well known humorous plug in A Tramp Abroad, often anthologized in secondary texts, until at least recently. It is incredibly ‘incorrect’ politically, as we say, today. I refer to his essay “The Awful German Language.” You all probably at least glanced at it once. It’s damned funny; but it’s also damned insulting to Germany and German speakers. Only Twain, in English, could write this. And it’s terribly hard to emulate.

And has anyone read “The French and the Comanches,” a humorous plug omitted from the published A Tramp Abroad? [see, DeVoto’s Mark Twain: Letters from the Earth, 1962]. It is so vile an insult that Twain, had it been published during his lifetime, should have been well-advised to avoid French restaurants forever.

Whether Heinlein was aware of Twain’s written analysis or not, I think he generally perceived its form. In Tramp Royal, the serious plugs alternate with humorous ones.

The question to examine is how well did Heinlein emulate Twain’s success in this first effort. What do we (anyone) think?

And we might compare Kipling’s efforts. It’s pretty plain both Kipling and Heinlein admired Twain.

—
David M. Silver

http://www.readinggroupsonline.com/groups/heinlein.htm
“The Lieutenant expects your names to shine!”
Robert Anson Heinlein, USNA ’29
Lt (jg)., USN R’td (1907-1988)

“David Silver” writes:

>I hope what follows isn’t too long.

I don’t think any of your posts are too long. “Informative, well thought out and occasionally funny” now that’s a description I can live with. You are a TEACHER, at least that is what you have been to me and I appreciate it!

Thanks David!

Elizabeth
(agplusone sending me on another search for things to read)

Go To Postings

Here Begins The Discussion Log

You have just entered room “Heinlein Readers Group chat.”

AGplusone has entered the room.

AGplusone: Hello, Dave

DavidWrightSr: Greetings

AGplusone: Nice to see you today.

DavidWrightSr: Same Here. I have to apologize again. Meant to get a notice out this morning and all of the afh messages posted prior to tonight, but had problems with computer and didn’t get it out.

AGplusone: Don’t worry about it. How have you been otherwise?

DavidWrightSr: Good. Snowed under. It’s end of Fiscal Year and there is always a ton of work to do, besides having to deal with all of our budget cuts.

AGplusone: I know the feeling, fortunately, haven’t known it personally for a few years, although I was getting there for a while when Ginny got sick earlier this year.

AGplusone: When does the end come for your office, Dave?

DavidWrightSr: 6/30. We are a state agency and the state has cut our money seriously.

AGplusone: That’s a tough thing to get around. This year, in California, because of the loss of the budget surplus to the energy thieves, every one of ours is really in the same crunch. I don’t envy anyone of you guys this year.

AGplusone: How’s your son and wife?

DavidWrightSr: We’ll squeak by. All doing well. My second son was here a couple of weeks ago with his fiance and my oldest son just arrived in Felton, CA day before yesterday. We are hoping that he will do well there.

DavidWrightSr: I know things are not the best in CA also, but I would prefer him being there as opposed to New York city where he was going to go.

AGplusone: I thought you had too, 1. the teacher, and 2. the young boy whose photo you sent me, but I wasn’t sure I wasn’t looking at just one kid (with an old photo you sent me).

AGplusone: I’m happy he’s going to be in Cal … where’s Felton?

AGplusone: too = two

DavidWrightSr: Neither are precisely young anymore. Constantine, my oldest, is 35 and John is 33.

AGplusone: Okay, which is the teacher. I’ll get it straight.

DavidWrightSr: Felton is on north side of Monterey bay near Santa Cruz, I believe

AGplusone: Oh, that’s great! Any chance he might be interested in a visit around Labor Day?

DavidWrightSr: They both had stints as teachers. John taught in Pasadena at Westbridge School for Girls, before he went to work on his Ph.D and Constantine taught a couple of years in public high schools.

AGplusone: And which is in Felton? John?

AGplusone: No, that’s gotta be Constantine, the oldest

DavidWrightSr: Labor Day might be possible. I’ll talk to him. No it’s Constantine who is Felton, John is in Baton Rouge, LA at LSU

DavidWrightSr: Constantine is the MAC user of the family. Has an original and a powerbook

AGplusone: He’s the one that went back to school. Okay, got it now. John’s the one whose photo you sent me.

AGplusone: Constantine have any interest in sci-fi?

DavidWrightSr: Did I?. I must be getting senile. Don’t remember. All of our photos are on our web page under Family Photos. www.alltel.net/~dwrighsr/

Copycat669 has entered the room.

Copycat669: hiya

AGplusone: Yeah, I kept it. Looked like a little boy about to have a bar mitzvah

DavidWrightSr: Both like SF. and Heinlein Naturally.

AGplusone: Hi, Tam

DavidWrightSr: Hi Tam.

AGplusone: Nice photo …

Copycat669: I’m officially moved but half my stuff’s in CR and half’s here. But I have INTERNET! Anything can be tolerated with access, right?

AGplusone: brb

AGplusone: right

Copycat669: What photo?

DavidWrightSr: Both want to write. John writes plays and Constantine writes religious stuff.

DavidWrightSr: David and I were talking about my sons

Copycat669: ah. cool. 🙂

DavidWrightSr: I had sent him a photo of my younger son a while back.

AGplusone: That’s a great web page. I’ve got to take the time to go over it.

DavidWrightSr: Thanks. I haven’t had time to update it lately.

AGplusone: Where’s CR, Tam

Copycat669: Cedar Rapids Iowa

AGplusone: Ah,

AGplusone: Move within the state?

AGplusone: I hope ….

Copycat669: Yeah. Newton is about 20 minutes outside of Des Moines. I’m about 1 and a half hours from Cedar RApids.

AGplusone: I dunno what I’d do with all the junk we’ve acquired in the past 30 years if we had to move.

Keythong has entered the room.

Copycat669: I had to find out quickly. 🙂

AGplusone: G’evening Keythong

Keythong: evening

Doc4Kidz has entered the room.

Copycat669: So I checked Job out of the library. New town, no fines at the libary. hehehe

AGplusone: Hi, Barry

Copycat669: Job is FREAKING me out

Doc4Kidz: hello group

mertide has entered the room.

Keythong: I don’t recall anything from Job

AGplusone: nice to see you, Barry, ltnc

AGplusone: Keythong, I’m David too, but you can call me AG to avoid confusing me and Dave Wright

Doc4Kidz: yeah, ditto

Keythong: ok AG, I’m a mike, but I answer to KEY

AGplusone: welcome!

Keythong: thank you

fgherman has entered the room.

AGplusone: Hi, Felicia

Doc4Kidz: you know the one about the one-armed paperhanger…?

Doc4Kidz: what;s the topic?

fgherman: Hi all

KultsiKN has entered the room.

mertide: Hi everyone

DavidWrightSr: Hi Felicia, Kultsi, and all

AGplusone: Yeah, Dave Wright was just telling me. His office is preparing its budget for year end

AGplusone: ‘lo Kultsi

KultsiKN: Good morning, all!

Copycat669: hi all

AGplusone: We had a series of posts on Tramp Royal, Doc

AGplusone: but generally on any of the Heinleins travel

fgherman: Ginny is welcome in Minneapolis anytime.

AGplusone: such as the bit to Russia in Expanded Universe, the trip to Anartica in Grumbles, or whatever.

Doc4Kidz: My son loves maps and globes, and I always look for Tristan de Cunha

Copycat669: Hey! She can stop off in Newton Iowa on her way to Minn

Doc4Kidz: because of TR

Doc4Kidz: BTW, no one told me she had been ill. She had to tell me herself, recently

AGplusone: That was one of the more interesting parts of TRoyale. Did you see the PBS special a couple years back about the British government evacuating the islands?

Doc4Kidz: no, I didn’t

Keythong: ginn

Keythong: Ginny has been ill?

Keythong: Nothing too serious I hope?

Doc4Kidz: she says she’s fine

fgherman: Movie night here

fgherman: Gotta go.

DavidWrightSr: She sounds like she is a lot better, but still gets tired, I understand

fgherman has left the room.

DavidWrightSr: AG, did they evacuate T Da Cunha?

Keythong: That’s good

AGplusone: yes

mertide: The evacuation in 1961?

DavidWrightSr: Did they get to go back or was it permanent?

mertide: They all went back in 196 if we’re talking about the same thing

mertide: 1963

DavidWrightSr: Going by what RAH said, that must have been some cultural shock to them.

Areopagan has entered the room.

mertide: I’d say so, might have brought a different world view for them

DavidWrightSr: Wonder where Carolyn is. Hope she is able to make it.

mertide: It’s quite popular with stamp collectors

mertide: I’m Carolyn

DavidWrightSr: Sorry. Forgot your screen name

mertide: I really have to get a different AIM handle for this 🙂

DavidWrightSr: That’s my only major complaint with AIM, (except for controlling colors). I just can’t remember some of the weird 🙂 names

DavidWrightSr: And it’s sometimes very picky about letting you choose names O:-)

AGplusone: It was quite a dislocation shock for most of them, Dave. The little kids are doing better, of course, than the adults.

DavidWrightSr: “How you gonna get them back on the farm after they’ve seen paree?”

AGplusone: Most of them wound up in London, originally, … and that was culture shock!

DavidWrightSr: The kids I mean. I imagine most of the adults were happy to get back.

mertide: It seems they weren’t too impressed with Paree, nearly a unanimous vote to return ASAP

DavidWrightSr: Of course, as you say that was in what 1963, almost 30 years ago. Wonder how they are now?

AGplusone: No, this was a recent pull the support plug. My impression was the 1990s.

DavidWrightSr: Oh, I must have read that wrong.

AGplusone: I think it was optional, but only a couple families stayed … and the rest agreed to go back to England.

AGplusone: The ones who stayed were told by HM G not to expect anything further, however.

AGplusone: Really, a rather sad program.

DavidWrightSr: My impression from TR was that they didn’t get much before.

AGplusone: Yeah.

mertide: It’s still showing a 2002 population of 270, same as in the 80’s and 90’s in the world gazette

AGplusone: Incredible that they’d been there since the 18th century … without outside contact.

mertide: Not the most populous state in the world, of course

AGplusone: Like Pitcarin

Doc4Kidz: really in the middle of nowhere

AGplusone: Only more inapproachable

AGplusone: I’ll see if I can track down a PBS website page on the program and send it to you, Carolyn, or post it in a followup to the chat thread.

mertide: I wonder if the lack of dental problems there might have been from the population actually not carrying the dental caries bug

mertide: I’d like that, David

AGplusone: Heinlein noted that vocabulary had reduced itself so much … makes you wonder about what might happen to a colony of survivors from Orphans of the Sky, and how fast. Only a couple three hundred years, here.

AGplusone: They could hardly hold conversations with those who came on board the Heinlein ship in 53.

AGplusone: Nothin to talk about with them.

DavidWrightSr: Nothing in common

mertide: I wonder how many words you need to talk within a family, which is what they basically are

AGplusone: apparantly not too many

AGplusone: ently

mertide: In one of the books, I can’t remember where, prob Extended Univ, the Heinleins mentioned having done a world circle several times. Anyone know much about the later trips?

Copycat669: nope. but it IS EU.

Copycat669: he describes in detail a trip to Russia

Areopagan has left the room.

mertide: Did they ever get back to New Zealand anyone know, after throwing such asparaguses in TR? Seeing some of Friday is set there?

AGplusone: The Anartica trip was the one I’d like to talk Ginny into describing. There’s a little of it in Grumbles, and a bit about a trip through the Northwest Passage from Seattle to Alaska, also

mertide: And more positively mentioned as a place too

AGplusone: Anarctic (I’m having a lot of trouble with spelling tonight … what else is new?)

mertide: A friend was telling me she went on a boat trip a couple of years ago, and was dropped into the water instead of the shore boat, quite a shock

mertide: to Antarctica that is

AGplusone: I think they did, or at least to Australia, and noted changes … favorable changes.

DavidWrightSr: Ginny wrote the section in Grumbles about anarctic. She sent me a copy of the original draft.

mertide: Couldn’t have got all that much worse 🙂

AGplusone: Was it larger?

DavidWrightSr: antarctic ….There 🙂

DavidWrightSr: A bit larger. Some of the original was cut for the book.

AGplusone: whew … I’ll keep saying a-n-t-a-r-c-t-i-c, thanks.

mertide: That’s another one with variable pronunciation, In Aus we pronounce both c’s

Doc4Kidz: I have to log off folks. David, thanks for reminding me about the chats.

AGplusone: What shocked me was that requirement for income tax filing that tied them down to one city, basically, while they waited for it to be accepted.

Doc4Kidz: good night, all

DavidWrightSr: Us southern boys have trouble spelling that, since we pronounce it an-art-ic. Just like Atlana.

AGplusone: Night Doc

mertide: Good night

Doc4Kidz has left the room.

AGplusone: Yes. Not southern, but I pronounce the “t” silently too.

mertide: You wouldn’t see that now, I have no idea when it finished, but we’re quite tourist friendly these days. Charge you to leave, but hey, who’d want to go? 🙂

mertide: an-ar-ic?

DavidWrightSr: He seemed to be much more favorable towards NZ in Friday, (except for some of the twerps).

AGplusone: an-ar-tic-a

Copycat669: ant-arc-tic-ah for me.

AGplusone: first ‘t’ silent

mertide: ah, that makes sense 🙂

AGplusone: Everyone knows Iowa has the purest pronounciation, Tam

AGplusone: probably true that …

Copycat669: 😛

mertide: I think the mutton concept horrified them, I get the impression Americans still don’t eat much sheep meat in any form

AGplusone: less slurring in the mid-west than out here.

Copycat669: or :-Pfor the horizontally challenged.

AGplusone: I always did. Love ‘lamb’ and mutton is fine in soup.

Keythong: well I got to go folks

Keythong has left the room.

mertide: Bye

DavidWrightSr: I don’t believe that I have ever eaten mutton, or even seen it eaten for that matter

AGplusone: Never knew what gamey meant until someone mentioned it.

mertide: This is getting to be quite the intimate chat 🙂

AGplusone: Problem is how few have the book.

Copycat669: I wouldn’t know how to get ahold of sheep meat, frankly.

mertide: Interestingly you rarely see it in the city, but when we lived in the country it was much more common

mertide: Lamb is still sold everywhere of course, just not hogget or mutton

AGplusone: That was the thing. In Ohio when I was little, we always visited aunt and uncle who had small ‘farm’ and they raised rabbits, goats, and we ate them.

Copycat669: ah. I don’t believe my butchers have it. 😉 I could be wrong.

Copycat669: Oh, I LOVE rabbit

Copycat669: and pheasant

Copycat669: and frog

Copycat669: and turtle

AGplusone: and goats as just as gamey as mutton

mertide: Sorry, everywhere in Australia

Copycat669: quail is the best

AGplusone: You just use more spices on the meat

DavidWrightSr: Tam, you sound like a southerner 🙂

mertide: You won’t find much rabbit sold here, the shotgun pellets play havoc with your fillings 🙂

AGplusone: use to drink goat milk

Copycat669: Eh. WE can’t buy it. We have to hunt it ourselves.

AGplusone: another thing they don’t sell in supermarkets

Copycat669: And I haven’t had any of those things since I was a teenager, actually.

mertide: Are you vegan?

Copycat669: VEGAN? OMG, I’m NOT. I suppose you weren’t asking me that, right?

mertide: Well, yes, but now I know better 🙂

Copycat669: if god didn’t want me to eat animals, he wouldn’t have made them out of meat.

AGplusone: or made barbeque taste so good

AGplusone: May I ask a question?

mertide: I’d say lamb would come pretty close to beef and chicken here by volume, pork and veal much less in the supermarket

AGplusone: Generally?

mertide: I don’t know, may he?

mertide: 🙂

AGplusone: about Tramp Royale?

KultsiKN: GA, AG

DavidWrightSr: Why certainly, that is the topic after all 🙂

Copycat669: ask any question if you are asking that of me…

AGplusone: Do you all think the end of the trip, the disappointment about Australia and New Zealand affected how Heinlein viewed Indonesia.

AGplusone: Made him more than a little mad?

AGplusone: They seemed to really look forward to Australia and NZ, and then were really disappointed.

AGplusone: Just a feeling I had.

mertide: I felt they were just plain horrified and disgusted by Indonesia at the time, they thought ANZACs were rude and crass, but Indonesians were filthy – my reading

AGplusone: Because I think L.N. is right, a little, that “yellow peril” is just a little over the top. [I agree about the filthy, btw, but . . . ]

mertide: Australia certainly wasn’t wealthy after the war though, we did lose quite a lot of men, after the best part of a generation in WW1

AGplusone: He’s right of course, the Malthusian problem is coming eventually do what we will ….

AGplusone: I thought that was a factor, Carolyn. Plus the overpaid, oversexed, over here thing.

mertide: My husband remembers in Brisbane in the 60’s having the sewerage connected, before that it was the night soil collection man, that was a suburb about 4 miles from the centre of town

Copycat669: oh ick

mertide: I doubt you have heard of the Battle of Brisbane – between Aus and Yank soldiers

AGplusone: but that’s not unusual in the states either … maybe now, it is, but forty years ago, sixties, we had a lot of septic tanks ever in Southern California.

mertide: My father was lucky enough to have been a small boy living a few hundred yards from McArthur’s headquarters – it was like heaven to someone who’s idea of sweets was raw sugar cane

AGplusone: [actually I have, but no, it’s not a well-known item]

DavidWrightSr: I am on septic now. Pesky thing clogged up over Christmas holidays and had to be pumped.

AGplusone: I imagine Iowa has its share too.

mertide: Septic tanks would have been an improvement, these were outdoor dunnies with a tin collection service daily

DavidWrightSr: Wow!

AGplusone: I know I’ve helped clean septic tanks in Los Angeles, some old parts, of my friends when they bought their first homes, in the 1966-70 period.

mertide: Perhaps an example of Heinlein’s theory about Aussies accepting hardships as facts of life rather than problems to be fixed

DavidWrightSr: Tell us about the Battle, Carolyn

AGplusone: Yes, please. I’d like more details

Copycat669: We have some septic tanks here on farms and things, but I’ve never in 33 years (in 6 more days anyway) had anything to do with them.

mertide: Started as most do with some drinking, ended with one dead Oz serviceman, stabbed by a yank, and quite a few injuries, it’s a long story – led to segregation of the troops

mertide: It was partly racial too, our guys weren’t that happy with how your guys treated the black servicemen, but mostly weren’t happy with how you treated the white local girls

AGplusone: Sounds familiar. The Pachuco riots in Los Angeles in 43?

AGplusone: Our own black servicemen?

mertide: http://home.st.net.au/~dunn/ozatwar/bob.htm

mertide: Yes, they weren’t allowed across the river to mix with the white servicemen’s canteen I think

mertide: The final totals -” 1 Australian killed- 8 minor gunshot wounds- 6 baton injuries- 100’s with black eyes, split lips, swollen cheeks, broken noses and various abrasions”

mertide: All before 10pm 🙂

mertide: The second night “21 Americans were injured”. 11 of these had to be hospitalised. The numbers included 8 MP’s and 4 officers.”

AGplusone: It’s interesting that when they talk about how poorly black servicemen were treated the focus is always on Europe, but never on the Pacific. MacA treated them worse than Clark, or Eisenhower. He never even let them into combat ….

mertide: It was a different world then, drinking brawls were not exactly foreign to the culture, a good punch up was normal evening entertainment

Copycat669 has left the room.

AGplusone: and, in Korea, the allowed tremendous slanders about the one black regiment that was rolled over early in the war along with everything and everyone else in Korea then.

mertide: Not with weapons though, barefist fighting

AGplusone: “the” – MacArthur’s command

mertide: It was a very hard time, a lot of our guys were fighting for the empire, and ended up in Singapore death camps

AGplusone: far different world so far as bigotry then

AGplusone: Very touchy time

mertide: And the 51 trip wasn’t so long afterwards

AGplusone: a bunch of 18 year olds have problems understanding that … they just want to get drunk and laid … and usually succeed in getting drunk only.

Reilloc has entered the room.

DavidWrightSr: Binge drinking is still a major problem in colleges.

AGplusone: Evening, L.N.

Reilloc: Hi, Dave

DavidWrightSr: among girls as well as boys, I understand

mertide: I don’t know how easy it was to get laid in Brisbane, a lot of the girls married US servicemen and went home with them after the war, often to have successful marriages

AGplusone: We were talking about things affecting the attitude of Autralians toward Americans just after the second World War.

Reilloc: Marsupiaphobia figured prominently

mertide: My impression is that half the guys were quite happy to have some female companionship, some chat, dancing, dinner, with a view to relationship

AGplusone: The ‘oversexed, overhere’ thing coupled with Aussies in North Africa and in Japanese POW camps, or up fighting in Borneo.

mertide: I might have got the clean version though 🙂

DavidWrightSr: I know from experience one thing not to do with a bunch of Australians. Ask them if they are English 😀 I did that by mistake in a hotel in Vienna. I was quickly but politely corrected.

AGplusone: And how that may have affected the reception of tourists in ’53

mertide: You can always taunt Canadians by asking if they’re American 🙂

jilyd has entered the room.

AGplusone: You can always taunt California by asking if they’re American

RMLWJ1 has entered the room.

AGplusone: Hi, Dee

RMLWJ1: Good evening.

mertide: We had quite a segregated society before the war, the Yank servicemen shook things up a bit

RMLWJ1: I trust all are well?

AGplusone: I think so … tired from a long week, maybe, but still taking one step forward, after two steps back … etc.

DavidWrightSr: Good to see you back. It’s been a while hasn’t it?

AGplusone: Been a while.

mertide: And their uniforms were much smarter, and they had nylons, and chocolates, and hired taxis, and were sweet talkers, you can see why the girls liked to go out with them and the Oz soldiers despaired

mertide: Hello, I’m Carolyn, I don’t think we’ve met?

jilyd: Hi, all, and thanks to DW for the invote. I was just trying to find my way in. RMLWJ1, do I already know you? and do you have a more convenient name?

jilyd: invite.

RMLWJ1: I’m Leon, I show up on occasion. When the computer is working, amongst other occasions.

DavidWrightSr: You are welcome. I try to keep my eye out for people in case they have trouble getting in

jilyd: Hi, Leon, I’m Dee.

AGplusone: Well, thank the Computer God for tonight!

RMLWJ1: lol

mertide: Hello Leon

DavidWrightSr: My brother’s name was Leon. Welcome back.

mertide: Does anyone know if Mrs Heinlein still smokes? It seems like a great deal of time was spent smuggling US cigarettes around the world

jilyd: On the pold Prodigy HF, we used to make jokes about sacrificing chickens to the *P gods. Then Angel came up with stomping on bouillion cubes. So stomp a few, tonite, Leon.

AGplusone: I’m remembering an incident in a novel by a fellow I read for fun. About a Marine who marries an Aussie Wren almost immediately after her husband is KIA in North Africa, and how her family disowned her.

AGplusone: She still does.

AGplusone: Hooked for life.

mertide: Be a pity to give it up after going to all that trouble 🙂

RMLWJ1: I’m the one that sacrifices the black goat at midnight and lays the entrails on the keyboard of the computer god.

mertide: Maybe how she kept her sylph-like figure 🙂

jilyd: Lol, Leon.

AGplusone: possibly that and skating too. she really regrets she cannot skate anymore

DavidWrightSr: Well, I know when I gave it up, I put on 50 lbs.

jilyd: Carolyn, I promise you that cigarettes are not enough. Trust me on this one. 😉

mertide: Well, I never could skate, unless you call sliding on your bum skating

RMLWJ1:: Ah. That was me on my butt across the rink, Carolyn.

AGplusone: She was on our Olympic Skating committee for years, when they were in Colo Sps

mertide: I love to watch it, just can’t do it

AGplusone: back when the little girl, who was it, whose daddy died the night she won that championship …

jilyd: One of my bum knees is a result of that sort of skating.

jilyd: Olimpic Skating committee? Wow!

AGplusone: Yes. She was really into skating.

jilyd: That was a typo, but it fits my sort of skating. Olympic.

mertide: As to Ice dancing, I think that’s trick photography. No-one can stay up and lift their feet at the same time can they?

AGplusone: She told me about rinks they had here in Los Angeles that I’d long forgotten.

DavidWrightSr: Didn’t they mostly do Ice Dancing, didn’t they?

DavidWrightSr: bad syntax 🙂

AGplusone: She knew them all, including some I’d never heard of.

DennEditor has entered the room.

AGplusone: And you have to remember she only was here from about 46 until what, 50

mertide: There is only one is the Brisbane area, coincidentally where the guy who beat your speed skaters the easy way trains

DennEditor: Howdy folks

AGplusone: Hi, Bill

jilyd: My two left feet are all thumbs–I never really mastered walking. Forget Ice dancing.

KultsiKN: Hello, Bill

RMLWJ1: Evening, Bill.

jilyd: Hi, Bill.

DennEditor: So what is the topic tonight

mertide: Hi Bill

DennEditor: Hello all.

mertide: Travel, WWII, skating, cigarettes…

AGplusone: Ginny. Tramp Royale

RMLWJ1: Don’t have travel and cigarettes like they used to. Anyone remember Chesterfields and English Ovals?

mertide: No 😉

AGplusone: Mother smoked Chesterfields. I stole a few from her.

RMLWJ1: Dining cars on the Evening Congressional. Best meal on the East coast.

DennEditor: They still sold Chesterfields not that long ago.

DavidWrightSr: And Lucky Strikes?

RMLWJ1: Yeah. Greens.

jilyd: AG, I.m going to take your recommendation on Tramp Abroad, next time I go to the lib.

AGplusone: Still getting Lucky Strike Green in C rations when I was in the Army in the 60s.

jilyd: I remember Chesterfields and “LS/MFT”

mertide: I don’t know about anyone else, but apart from anything else I thought it was really funny, snort out loud funny in places

DavidWrightSr: Caaalll For Philip Morris!!

RMLWJ1: You don’t want to know how old the LS/Greens were.

AGplusone: and Willie the Penguin

AGplusone: I knew. They were stale as hell.

DavidWrightSr: What was funny Carolyn?

DavidWrightSr: TR?

DavidWrightSr: or Tramp Abroad?

RMLWJ1: Got a friend in ‘Nam to send over a bunch, we sold them to collectors for a bundle.

mertide: Particularly the beginning, yes, TR, not Lucky STrikes

jilyd: Robert mentioned the Phillip Morris guy in Job, didn’t he?

RMLWJ1: Maybe in No. of the Beast also.

RMLWJ1: Been a while.

mertide: They must have been a hoot to travel with, all that repartee back and forth, like “The Thin Man”

AGplusone: In Job, yes. The nymph looks just like a female version of the little boy

DavidWrightSr: One thing I wanted to ask Ginny. Robert always called her Ticky in TR, but Ginny in all of the Soviet stuff. Wonder why. Actually none of my business, but curious.

AGplusone: bellboy

jilyd: Ifrit, AG.

RMLWJ1: Never really cottoned onto JOB.

AGplusone: yes

mertide: And I suppose the sudden flashes of recognition of people, or places, or attitudes

mertide: Very acute observations

AGplusone: I’m oblivious to sensitivity as you all know. Asked Ginny: “Ticky” is from Riki-Tiki-Tavi … her attitude about things.

AGplusone: They teased each other a lot, I infer

DavidWrightSr: They really seemed to make very good friends with a lot of people even in places they didn’t particularly like

DennEditor has left the room.

AGplusone: Yes, that South African for example.

DavidWrightSr: I knew that AG, I just wondered why the change.

DavidWrightSr: About Riki-Tiki-Tavi

DavidWrightSr: I mean

mertide: I wonder if things have changed too much. I remember in the 70’s often we’d have “friend of a friend” visitors from OS we’d drive all over Tasmania

AGplusone: Maybe they decided not to publish the real pet name. The manuscript just sat there.

AGplusone: Guessing

DavidWrightSr: Is any of that kind of travel on cargo-liners still possible?

AGplusone: I wish

AGplusone: Maybe still on foreign lines. We don’t have any shipping any more.

DavidWrightSr: I seem to recall seeing and hearing about it in the 60’s, but not since then.

AGplusone: Are there cargo liners any more? Is it all huge container ships?

DavidWrightSr: You are probably right. I doubt that they could compete, except maybe on smaller runs.

mertide: I think not, my parents went to Japan in a cargo liner in the mid60’s, but I don’t think they’re around now since airfares got so cheap

AGplusone: I hope I’m not right, actually. I suppose there are still small cargo ships local runs … but, wonder about crews, etc.

RMLWJ1: Liners are in the upper range luxury now, I guess.

mertide: When you consider the air travel prices quoted in TR, they were amazing counted for inflation, like travelling on the QEII

RMLWJ1: yes.

AGplusone: Yes. Was a report on Sunday Morning last week. Lady paying $15,000 monthly to live permanently in a suite on the QU2 I think.

RMLWJ1: Egad

AGplusone: She’s retired, active, and would probably pay that much for a retirement condo.

AGplusone: At the range of luxury she’s evidently become accustomed to

RMLWJ1: Heh. Not if she worked for my company.

Reedman1956 has entered the room.

DavidWrightSr: She doesn’t work for the state of Georgia either 🙂

AGplusone: Hi, Reedman, welcome

Reedman1956: hi to all

DavidWrightSr: Welcome.

AGplusone: I didn’t get that impression looking at her, either, Dave.

AGplusone: Husband was a NYC stockbroker iirc

AGplusone: And she gets to sail all over the world. Sold the old Mansion ’cause the kids told her they had enough and to enjoy.

Reedman1956: i haven’t read much heinlein and i’m no expert. how did you get my name?

mertide: ANyone done much travelling to Uruguay lately? Is it still heaven on earth?

RMLWJ1: Not me.

AGplusone: Who?

AGplusone: to Reedman: Who?

DavidWrightSr: I invited him in. He was on my buddy list. Don’t remember where I got it, but I keep all of them

AGplusone: I asked Ginny. She said Robert never figured it out, either.

mertide: My mother in law dreams of that, she has the resources, but my father in law won’t leave the house, did his travelling in WWII (and I’m not kidding, he hasn’t moved more than 50 miles from home since)

AGplusone: And, sadly, they never went back.

Reedman1956: david, how do we know each other

Reedman1956: heinlein the science fiction writer

AGplusone: Music?

AGplusone: Do you know Panther505, Reedman?

DavidWrightSr: Yes. I don’t know. Your name has been around for a long time, but I don’t remember where I saw it. Have you ever been in our discussion group?

DavidWrightSr: Yes, Robert Heinlein, the sf writer.

AGplusone: Or the Baen discussion group?

Reedman1956: no i don’t

AGplusone: what I’m saying is: we used to be visited periodically by some of them, general sci-fi discussions … and your name may have come in then.

Reedman1956: do you know Doc4kidz?

AGplusone: Barry, sure.

mertide: I loved the concepts of travelling with barbiturates and amphetamines, you can’t even get them here any more legally

DavidWrightSr: Yes He was just here

RMLWJ1: This and Baen, myself.

Reedman1956: that is very possible

AGplusone: That’s it then.

Reedman1956: yes it is. we are linked by doc

AGplusone: The Rocket Society?

Reedman1956: no, we used to play in a band together some years ago

AGplusone: Yeah, that too. Seen all his photos … or at least some of them.

AGplusone: mystery solved

Reedman1956: the redhead with the sax is me

Reedman1956: decided to rattle my cage, eh?

AGplusone: Shame major oz isn’t here tonight.

DavidWrightSr: Doesn’t explain how I got the name. I normally only add names I see here.

AGplusone: Musta visited here once with Barry.

mertide: Do any of the Americans here find when travelling the degree of blatant anti-Americanism in TR is still around?, if we’re still talking about that 🙂

AGplusone: I haven’t traveled recently. It was present in France in the -60s

mertide: The French hate everybody though 🙂

RMLWJ1: Mutual.

DavidWrightSr: I found very little of it in Germany in the 60’s

Reedman1956: haven’t been out of the continent. but yes there are many reports of anti-americanism throughout the world..

AGplusone: None in Germany that I saw, but you gotta remember what Churchill said about back or throats

mertide: back or throats?

RMLWJ1: We’re still welcome north of the border.

AGplusone: “Germans will either be at your back (supporting you wholeheartedly) or at your throats”

Reedman1956: canada is america lite. 😉

mertide: oh, OK

RMLWJ1: With Habanas. 😀

DavidWrightSr: They just don’t pay taxes to Washington up there 🙂

Reedman1956: =-O

AGplusone: And I think they’re getting tired of being told that.

mertide: Australia had it’s anti-American feelings during Vietnam, but I think it was aimed more at the government than individual travellers

jilyd: I was in France in the early 70s and was treated very well. One pair of rude and dishonest taxi drivers. But then I was travelling as a student, and the French were, at least at that time, exceptionally kind to students.

Reedman1956: true they are. i was on the west coast some time ago. really beautiful country and lovely people

AGplusone: I encountered some nice people in France, but you had to make an effort to speak to them in French and avoid English.

RMLWJ1: My daughter went to Paris a couple of years ago, wasn’t thrilled.

mertide: Pretty much aimed at our government as much as yours for pulling us into that quagmire, All The Way with LBJ

AGplusone: Helped pick grapes in 61

RMLWJ1: How many troops did Oz and NZ have there, do you recall?

RMLWJ1: I just recall that they were there.

mertide: I got on OK in France speaking French, my husband who didn’t couldn’t even buy a breadroll for our little boy

jilyd: And in at least two different places, we were complimented specifically as Americans, compared to German tourists. One waiter led an entire restaurant in loudly singing “Dixie” (without words) in our honor.

RMLWJ1: wow.

mertide: Some tens of thousands, have to check

AGplusone: At least on Special Services Regiment and lots of ‘advisors’ … or ‘observers’

mertide: more than enough came home in bodybags though

RMLWJ1: I know that the Maori Bn. was there.

AGplusone: We compromised. I spoke Spanish and they listened to me amused and used their poor Spanish on me.

RMLWJ1: Other than that, the RAAF was all I knew from Oz.

mertide: My husband’s brother was eligible for the draft, never so glad not to win a lottery – they picked birth dates out of a bowl, the lucky 19 year olds went

RMLWJ1: Remember that one.

jilyd: Well, at that time, my French was fairly good. When our stdent group had to split up into smaller groups, I always ended up “in charge” of one, for that reason.

AGplusone: of course I was down by the Spanish border when I was there

AGplusone: Ste. Marie Eglise

RMLWJ1: Aquitaine, or is my geography off?

jilyd: But people were very kind to those who only spoke a few words, with terrible accents, if they at least tried with hello, goodbye, please, thank you. In all but the smallest towns, there were lots of English speakers around.

mertide: We were mostly there for a quid pro quo for US protection from an Indonesian attack, echos of Tramp Royale again

AGplusone: Near Rochefort

AGplusone: La Rochelle

AGplusone: Your geography’s on

RMLWJ1: k

RMLWJ1: Only a few hundred years old.

AGplusone: Fontenet sub-post… big ordnance depot

DavidWrightSr: Ste Marie Eglise was prominent in the invasion if I remember The Longest Day correctly

Reedman1956: must be going. thanks for the invite.

Reedman1956 has left the room.

AGplusone: I’ve got it wrong. Sorry Ste. Marie d’Angeli

jilyd: Carolyn, I have a friend who has very fond memories of the Australians in Korea! Saved his life, he says.

AGplusone: Eglise is in Normandy

DavidWrightSr: Yep. That’s the one I remember

AGplusone: forty five year old memory is failing

mertide: That’s our foreign policy, same as it used to be for the Empire. “Yep”

jilyd: Hey, AG, I thought it was supposed to fail on recent events, and retain the distant past with crystal clarity. 😉

AGplusone: but the ’60 grape harvest was goood

mertide: You want troops in Afghanistan? “Yep”

SageMerlin has entered the room.

AGplusone: don’t always work that way … ain’t senile yet, just stoopid

DavidWrightSr: Hi Alan

AGplusone: Evenin’ alan

SageMerlin: what’s up guys

RMLWJ1: You all have some good folks there.

jilyd: Hi, Alan. I’m Dee.

SageMerlin: Did I miss a meeting or something….I just woke up

RMLWJ1: Leon here.

AGplusone: chat on Tramp Royale and everything else under the sun

AGplusone: round the world with the Heinleins

SageMerlin: You, I hate to say it but I’ve never read it

mertide: They’re doing a pretty spiffy job, I just wish they could come home, it’s a bloody long way away to die

jilyd: Kultsi and LN have been rearkabbly silent. Gone to sleep on us, Guys?

jilyd: remarkably.

Reilloc: I liked “rearkabbly”

jilyd: Damned illiterate fingers.

AGplusone: Well, it’s 3 AM or later for Kultsi. What time for you Carolyn.

Reilloc: Went with the tw0-by-two of us

mertide: Vietnam figures for Aus – 46000 served, 3000 wounded, 500 died. Total population at the time would have been around 10million

KultsiKN: 5:30

mertide: 12.30 pm Friday

AGplusone: they are awake!

jilyd: Yeay!

Reilloc: Sorry, I was playing bridge and watching a Hitchcock movie

mertide: excuses excuses

AGplusone: That was a very active Special Services Regiment … originally a battalion that was grouped with the 173d Airborne to form a full brigade.

jilyd: Who says males cannot multi-task?

AGplusone: Made the first helicopter assaults.

Reilloc: Hey, Dave…I was reading Tramp Abroad online this afternoon.

AGplusone: Plus they had a lot of ‘observers’ who served with the Special Forces groups as Heinlein observed in Glory Road.

DavidWrightSr: Where?

Reilloc: Uhhh…

AGplusone: So was I, L.N.

RMLWJ1: IIRC, my graduating class in high school lost 12-15 out of ~200.

DavidWrightSr: What’s the URL?

Reilloc: I’d have to find it again…it’s all there, though.

AGplusone: What do you think: I don’t think Heinlein can write the burlesque humor Twain can. Way too serious, and they never would allow him to publish it if he could.

Reilloc: http://www.mastertexts.com/Twain_Mark/A_Tramp_Abroad/Index.htm

DavidWrightSr: Suggest a 10 minute break. Thanks LN

jilyd: Same friend I with memories of Korea is the one who introduced me to “And the Band Payed Waltzing Matilda” that I mentioned on the ng. And thanks to the person who linked me to the lyrics. Very moving.

mertide: Long Tan is holy land to us, like Gallipoli. Difference is we won that battle. 18 Aus soldiers died, 245 Viet Cong

Reilloc: Burlesque?

AGplusone: Why don’t we?

AGplusone: Over the top ….

AGplusone: scathing …

DavidWrightSr: 33 after the hour. what say meet back at 45 after the hour? Ok with you Carolyn?

AGplusone: Heinlein’s forte is irony …

Reilloc: I think he’s quite reserved in a way intended intentionally to shock the Victorian without becoming off color

AGplusone: at best

SageMerlin: I am not going to be rude so I have to say that I need to to work. I beat the entire market today and I have business pouring in that has to be attended to.

mertide: ok with me

AGplusone: ‘kay, alan. Give me a call.

AGplusone: Twain? Off-color isn’t what I see in him. If that’s in burlesque then my term is misapplied

SageMerlin has left the room.

AGplusone: By burlesque I mean something a little different.

AGplusone: Outrageous maybe

jilyd: I seem to have frozen AIM up. May disappear for a while.

AGplusone: Not exactly farce, but close

mertide: I find Twain more of an effort to read

Reilloc: I found an essay he wrote on the humorous, the comic and the witty.

AGplusone: URL?

Reilloc: Uhhh…geez…

Reilloc: sec…

jilyd has left the room.

AGplusone: Lemme blow thru it while we’re on break for ten … and we’ll talk

KultsiKN: Ahhh… Summer solstice… We are in for some heavy drinkin’ today…

AGplusone: I need a drink … another thing to do during the ten minutes

mertide: Thank God, winter solstice, the days have been way too short lately

KultsiKN: How short?

RMLWJ1: Iced tea for me. I’m on call.

AGplusone: MD?

RMLWJ1: Radiographer

Reilloc: http://www.boondocksnet.com/twaintexts/how_story.html

AGplusone: we need some help on Internet blood drives, mebbe, if you are

jilyd has entered the room.

Reilloc: How to tell a story.

AGplusone: Okay, L.N I’ll look while I open a small bottle of plonk

AGplusone: thanks

jilyd: Thanks, DW. I missed a chunk, there, will have to catch up form the log alter.

RMLWJ1: Have a wee dram for me. Just don’t tell me how good it is.

mertide: sorry, got a drink, about 10 hours

mertide: hard to get kids up for school

mertide: We’re in the subtropics.

mertide: sunrise 6.38, sunset 5.02pm today

RMLWJ1: 05:30, 21:00 or so here.

mertide: We don’t get twilight, I miss Tasmanian and English summers, not their winters though

KultsiKN: Still quite long — we get down to something like 6 hours in December

RMLWJ1: Same here.

KultsiKN: What latitude, Leon?

mertide: Hobart had daylight between 7.42 and 4.43 pm today, I remember going to school in the dark there

AGplusone: Read the essay.

AGplusone: It’s an actor technique … but true in a way of Twain’s writing.

mertide: We’re 27 degrees south here

AGplusone: If he’s at all serious in the essay, which I’m not too sure of …

jilyd: Is there a lot of SAD in the winter in the far north or South places?

KultsiKN: SAD?

RMLWJ1: Yeah. My ex-wife has it.

RMLWJ1: Seasonally Affected Depression.

mertide: I know I got depressed in one English winter where the sun didn’t shine once

jilyd: Seasonal Affect Disorder–depression supposedly caused by light deprivation.

mertide: Has anyone here ever seen the Heinlein’s California house? The circular house?

AGplusone: ” the rambling and disjointed humorous story finishes with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it”

jilyd: Leon, hah, we remembered slightly different wording, but amounts to the same thing.

AGplusone: sounds like Twain’s writing …

Reilloc: Back…

RMLWJ1: Different psych teachers, maybe.

AGplusone: I think Heinlein had trouble in Tramp Royal doing that. He couldn’t ramble, disjointedly

Reilloc: He couldn’t ramble and make it look natural

AGplusone: like Twain does in A Tramp Abroad to see up the punch line. We agree I think

AGplusone: to set up

Reilloc: The appendix on the German language is brilliant.

AGplusone: And by the time he got to Australia and NZ, he was too disappointed to really try … they read like a tirade

jilyd: No, carolyn, but one of the hospitals in the city I grew up in built a small circular unit. Seemed to work fairly well for a semi ICU–Wedge-shaped rooms with teh nurses station in the center.

Reilloc: I’ve never seen Heinlein use the language like Twain can.

AGplusone: I think so. You *MUST* read the French and Comanches

Reilloc: Is it online?

RMLWJ1: We’ve got a similar unit. Half, maybe three-quarters circle.

AGplusone: I’ll try to find it. If not, I’ll xerox it and mail it to you. It’s in DeVoto’s Twain:Letters from the Earth which you can still get.

mertide: I can imagine that for an ICU, like that jail designed in a circle – have to look that up

Reilloc: Years ago, I read his grilling of J.F. Cooper and go back to it a couple of time a year, still.

AGplusone: the big slew of unpublished shocking stuff DeVoto came out with in 62 hat was a best seller

Reilloc: He was merciless

AGplusone: He was.

Reilloc: I used to have “Letters”

Reilloc: It got lost about 938498 moves ago

mertide: Does the Australia/NZ stuff shock you because it feels exagerated? Because I don’t think it was

RMLWJ1: Gods, I remember reading that in the late sixties.

mertide: You see it as satire maybe, when I think it was straight reporting

AGplusone: I don’t think Heinlein could have tried that in 1953 and ever expected it to sell. After ’62, maybe.

Reilloc: Maybe that’s a difference, to a degree; but, still, Twain couldn’t publish everything he wrote.

AGplusone: Doesn’t shock me. It depresses me. I think it depressed Heinlein and set up his “yellow peril” reaction when he hit Java

mertide: He was in Java first though surely

jilyd: AG, you ran out of shock years ago.

AGplusone: Yes, and if DeVoto hadn’t talked his daughter into letting him finally get his hooks on them, we’d never have seen Letters or half the other stuff we have. But RAH had bootlegged copies of some of that stuff.

mertide: after Aus and NZ they skedaddled home

AGplusone: So did some of my older friends here. There was a very quiet market of exchange of those things before DeVoto every finally got permission to publish them

KultsiKN has left the room.

Reilloc: I wonder how much mental comparison he did of himself and Twain?

AGplusone: Some I think …

AGplusone: there’s that story about Haley’s passing over

AGplusone: and him in the backyard with his older brother

Reilloc: My dad was born in 1910 and always said he’d die in ’72 when it appeared next.

Reilloc: He overstayed.

AGplusone: Good

KultsiKN has entered the room.

Reilloc: He finally left but he missed that.

AGplusone: wb Kultsi

KultsiKN: Thx.

AGplusone: I think Heinlein was probably disappointed in Tramp Royale

mertide: That it didn’t sell, or the work itself?

jilyd: At the very least, one of his models, I think. I wonder what he hought of his own maturing as a writer, compared to Twain’s?

AGplusone: He was good enough to know he wasn’t cutting it as well as A Tramp Abroad

AGplusone: and I think he decided to forget the genre

mertide: I’ll have to go too, fun chat y’all. 🙂

AGplusone: Even if he writes the Russian visit into EU for another purpose

mertide has left the room.

Reilloc: I was stuck, reading today, by the anecdotes Twain told as compared with what I remember about Heinlein’s.

AGplusone: Night Carolyn. Thanks for the suggestion we read this thing!!!

Reilloc: Twain focused on the quirks of individual people more, if I’m remembering Heinlein right.

jilyd: Grumbles leaves me with the impression that he was very unsentimental about the craft of writing.

Reilloc: I don’t know how to feel about that, jilyd

AGplusone: yeah, he just ‘wrote to put groceries on the table’ and if you believe that …

jilyd: LN, do you suppose the military background was an influence on that difference?

AGplusone: I have some Spanish Prisoners to tell you about

Reilloc: It seems almost inexcusable not to cherish your craft unless you’re only doing it to put groceries on the table and feel somewhat like a poser

Reilloc: I’m doubtful the military factored into it.

mertide has entered the room.

AGplusone: I think he did cherish it. I disagee about the military

mertide: False alarm 🙂

AGplusone: wb

Reilloc: I think taking it up late and being surprised at his success had something to do with it.

AGplusone: btw

Reilloc: brb…pizza’s burning…

AGplusone: Night Carolyn. Thanks for the suggestion we read this thing!!!

mertide: Night!

AGplusone: You ducked out before I got that out!

mertide: Thought I had kitchen duty, but it disappeared

Reilloc: You trying to drive her off?

AGplusone: Good, stick around. Not at all.

Reilloc: So, what’s the military background factor play into this, Dave or jil?

AGplusone: I think the Naval Academy made him just a little too much the “true believer” to employ Twain’s techniques.

AGplusone: He was just too damned serious about things.

Reilloc: True believer in what?

Reilloc: What was his religion?

jilyd: No, Ag, I was unclear. I mean that he didd’t seem the sort to have a huge ego investment in his every sparkling word as eternal poetry. He seemed to be honing his skills in the craft of writing, learning the techniques and

AGplusone: Everything: Americanism, individualism, etc.

AGplusone: Raised Methodist.

Reilloc: Theist, though?

Reilloc: Attended church and such?

Reilloc: I remember no reference in reverence to the almighty in his fiction.

jilyd: exploring new ones, and a craftsman’s pride in a job well done.

AGplusone: Ginny’s very close about it, but impression I get is he was a believer but own thing. Maybe an agnostic, maybe something else. Very private about it.

AGplusone: tolerant of others but private about self

Reilloc: Jil, I still say he felt like he’d be “found out” about his writing.

jilyd: An admirable policy, I think. (re: religion)

Reilloc: I know a lot of writers feel that way and they’re loved by their fans.

AGplusone: I think theist is possible. He’d have had to be at least that to consider American Masonry

mertide: Perhaps we shouldn’t do Take Back Your Government any time soon

Reilloc: I know Twain wasn’t conceited about his and still loved the language and his craft.

RMLWJ1: Good point on the Masons.

jilyd: I know a lot of people that feel that way about all kinds of things, and are well thought of in their fields. Even lawyers.

AGplusone:

RMLWJ1: Twain also was a newspaperman for a while. And he set type.

AGplusone: PM

Reilloc: Especially lawyers since we sell only spoken words some of the time.

jilyd: LN–I think I missed a step, conceited about his what?

Reilloc: I know little about the Masons except that my grandfather was one and I have a ceremonial sword with my name on it because it was his.

AGplusone: Probably a York rite sword.

Reilloc: Jil, I mean Twain never thought he, himself, was the be all and end all of letters.

jilyd: Former OES,here, AG, and my mom is a PM.

Reilloc: He thought James Witcombe Riley was close, though.

Reilloc: When the frost is on the pumpkin…

mertide: Twain was first a genius, and second a part of a whole genre of American episodic, highly conversational humour. Not Heinlein’s genre at all

AGplusone:daughter is former Grand Musician, GB Cal

jilyd: Do you think RAH did? (BTW, I’m Dee froom the ng.)

Reilloc: Twain was a genius.

AGplusone: Twain was sui generis

jilyd: We call it Grand Organist here.

RMLWJ1: NG???

Reilloc: Twain was Hawthorne plus Poe at a minstrel show

DavidWrightSr: Newsgroup

RMLWJ1: k

DavidWrightSr: alt.fan.heinlein

AGplusone: compare Kipling’s efforts at travel stories. Boring.

RMLWJ1: Thanks.

AGplusone: Interesting, but boring.

jilyd: I mean, do you perceive RAH as having that kind of conceit?

Reilloc: No.

Reilloc: Just the opposite

Reilloc: Apprehension about it, in fact, I think.

AGplusone: Stevensons are interesting, the South Pacific ones, but nothing like anyone else.

mertide: A top exponent of the genre, and bigger than it, but of it surely?

RMLWJ1: South Pacific always reminds me of Mitchner.

Reilloc: The merry-go-round just crashed in “Strangers on a Train”

AGplusone: Thinking about Twain and humor, and today, the best we can come up with is Dave Barry and Art Buchwald … Twain would never have gotten published.

Reilloc: Disagree.

jilyd: Some do, I know. I don’t, but I haven’t noticed any signs of “imposter syndrome” either.

AGplusone: Maybe PJ O’Roarke

Reilloc: gag

RMLWJ1: Buchwald’s stuff from Paris was great.

Reilloc: Pick another arch-conservative, please.

AGplusone: Yeah, but look at what happened to Mahrer

AGplusone: O’Roarke is talented. Don’t think like him, but …

AGplusone: he’s clever

Reilloc: O’Roarke is second generation National Lampoon and a pale copy of the originals

mertide: I think he’s clever too, worth reading, not always worth re-reading though 🙂

AGplusone: I think Heinlein was betting into a stacked deck in trying to emulate A Tramp Abroad. something about eras

RMLWJ1: Anyone remember when O’Rourke was the Military Affairs correspondent for Car & Driver ?

AGplusone: Molly Irvins!

Reilloc: Kennedy, Beard, O’Donoughue and the others were closer to what Twain wrote and a lot funnier.

jilyd: Ivins.

Reilloc: Ivins rules

AGplusone: Ivins, right.

AGplusone: She can do Twain.

Reilloc: She can do Ivins

RMLWJ1: I like Ivin’s columns.

jilyd: Molly is even better on tape, reading her own stuff, than in print.

AGplusone: fair enough

mertide: I don’t know if anyone wants a modern Twain

Reilloc: Fannie Flagg

AGplusone: Well, not too bad … I liked Green Tomatoes

Reilloc: I liked it a lot.

Reilloc: It was brilliant in places

AGplusone: I’d rather she’d put the recipe for barbeque in the back too

AGplusone: maybe I’ll write her and ask she do in the next edition

Reilloc: The secret’s not in the sauce

mertide: There’s a lot of other ways of being creative now than writing for weekly journals and collections

RMLWJ1: Now that’s a subject of a tad of controversy.

AGplusone: Yah

jilyd: I love Molly’s introduction in Molly Ivins Can’t Say that, Can She, where she talks about moving away and having intellectual conversations.

mertide: Would Twain do Twain today, or would he be a movie producer/writer?

Reilloc: Blasphemy

mertide: Or a documentary maker?

AGplusone: hmph

AGplusone: documentary

mertide: He was cutting edge in his techniques and his interests in technology

AGplusone: You gotta realize that Twain got to blow off a lot of bile in his newspaper columes

AGplusone: Sitting in the Darkness

RMLWJ1: that he did.

mertide: He told stories, I don’t know if the written word is the best way to do that these days

AGplusone: And his stuff on how Roosevelt repaid the Ninth Cav for saving his ass up San Juan Hill

Reilloc: Name a good movie with a bad script

RMLWJ1: Ladies, gentlemen, it’s been a pleasure. I’ve got to turn in, in case the OR heats up later. Be well.

AGplusone: Mertide. You might be interested in that story

mertide: GOod night

mertide: Where would I find it?

AGplusone: Much like the thing about the segregated troops in Oz.

AGplusone: Let me tell it to you now.

jilyd: Some stories can only be told through the written or spoken word, I suspect. Film doesn’t suit every story.

mertide: I’ll sit back and listen 🙂

jilyd: Nitte, Leon.

AGplusone: Ninth Cav were black troopers.

jilyd: Nite.

KultsiKN: Cya, Leon!

AGplusone: At the Battle of San Juan Hill, teddy and his 1st US Vol Cav started up the hill without orders basically. Ninth Cav saw it and came after him

RMLWJ1 has left the room.

AGplusone: Picked up the pieces and took the hill.

AGplusone: They were regulars.

AGplusone: Rough Riders were college boys and cowboys

AGplusone: So Teddy became a hero and a President

Reilloc: Twain was might pissed about the treaty outcome of the SA War.

AGplusone: While he was Prez, the Ninth was assigned to Brownsville, Tex

mertide: South African?

AGplusone: Black troopers just back from winning the SA war and the Phil insurrection

jilyd: AG, Sherman Rose was a Dothanite, and one of the city’s murals is an homage to the Tuskegee Airmen. It’s nicely done.

AGplusone: Just like South Africa.

Reilloc: I read that he characterized the $20M payment for the Philipines as buying our way into disgrace in the world.

AGplusone: Somebody beat up a black trooper when he went into town. Oil field town.

jilyd: Spanish-American, don’t you mean, AG?

mertide: Ah, that SA war 🙂

Reilloc: REmember the Maine?

AGplusone: So the Ninth went looking for crackers. Cowed the entire town.

AGplusone: Big scandle.

AGplusone: scandal

mertide: I was thinking Boer war, different time, different place

AGplusone: So Teddy dishonorable discharged half of the entire regiment.

mertide: Crackers?

AGplusone: Twain went ballastic.

AGplusone: Bigots

mertide: ok

mertide: What year would this have been?

AGplusone: There’s an essay among his collected essays about it. About 1903

AGplusone: thereabotus

AGplusone: thereabouts

mertide: Not so far from the Boer war then

AGplusone: no

jilyd: Comes from the sound of whips cracking when the rednecks came to town on horsedrawn wagons.

mertide: The world’s moved a long way

Reilloc: Who remarked about Twain’s attraction to contemporary modern gadgetry?

AGplusone: thank god

mertide: Might have been me?

DavidWrightSr: He lost a bundle on that type setting machine

jilyd: That was carolyn, I believe.

Reilloc: He had it, Will Rogers had it, Heinlein had it, too.

jilyd: He would have loved the word processor, I think.

Reilloc: It really didn’t change the nature of their fiction a lot, though, except for Heinlein’s settings.

KultsiKN: Heinlein did, too.

mertide: Some of the attitudes in TR seem bizarre too, but count half way from there to here and it seems more understandable

KultsiKN: Love the w.p., that is

mertide: I still have patients who will never forgive the Japanese, ex-POW’s, but they’re passing now

jilyd: Well, those of us who remember “colored” water fountains have some appreciation of how the world has changed.

DavidWrightSr: You said it

AGplusone: When I was at OCS, in 1962, at Ft. Benning I was shocked that the bus station, water fountains, etc. were all segregated. Couldn’t believe it.

mertide: Not my experience ever, but I know some pubs wouldn’t sell to aboriginals in the last decades, can’t get awway with it anymore

mertide: Never seen anything that formal though, never seen signs

AGplusone: Blacks couldn’t even hitch hike at the same spot.

Reilloc: This is the American town where Brown vs. The Topeka Board of Ed. happened.

jilyd: It astounds me, looking back, how it seemed like the natural order of things. I ask myself, “was that insufferable little bigot really me?”

AGplusone: And I don’t remember one black Officer Candidate in my class.

jilyd: I was born that year, LN, and first integrated school when I was 12.

Reilloc: I’m 4 years older than you, then

AGplusone: Or even a black TAC NCO, let alone an officer

mertide: Our racism was more paternalistic neglect mostly this century, but it ran deep, just never as formally designated as the US south, but then our cities rarely had many aboriginal residents

mertide: There were rural towns with white only swimming pools though

AGplusone: Carolyn: Benning is in Georgia.

jilyd: Reader’s Digest this month has a story about the adopting out of aboriginals–I saw it, but haven’t read it yet.

mertide: You might take some with a grain of salt, most of the kids who were taken would have been killed otherwise

jilyd: They shut down a park in montgomery, and filled in the pool, to keep from integrating.

mertide: half caste kids weren’t that popular in tribal situations

jilyd: Yeah, it’s never simple, is it? Killed how?

jilyd: Never mind, you answered before I asked.

mertide: One who brought a case against the gov for being stolen had been rescued from a rabbit hole his mother put him down

AGplusone: But here’s the scary thing: little white boy from the north and California. I decided to marry a Norwegian-Filipina American, and my mother asked me to consider: What will your children look like in ’66

AGplusone: [in 66]

mertide: Gloriously tanned I’d say

mertide: wish I had their pigment

jilyd: In ’66 in Alabama, your mother might not have spoken to you to ask.

AGplusone: She’s white skinned and burns as quickly as her grandmother and Ginny

AGplusone: freckles

mertide: Unlucky!

AGplusone: yeah … it’s those bog-trotting Irish

jilyd: My grandmother told me about visiting a private school for the “colored” daughters of rich white men. Said she had never seen so many beauties in one place.

mertide: We have a lot of part Filipinas here, and they have glorious skin mostly, first generation at least

AGplusone: so’s my wife

mertide: stunning looks too generally

jilyd: Maybe it’s “hybrid vigor” but most multiracial children are gorgeous, IMO.

AGplusone: As I said, L.N. “what makes you think we want to marry your daughters.” j/teasing

AGplusone: Remember Mitchners Hawaii?

AGplusone: The Golden Race

Reilloc: I think my point was, I don’t care if you do want to marry my daughter as long as she wants to marry you.

AGplusone: Sounds fine to me.

AGplusone: My rule exactly.

AGplusone: Except … you better not harm her …

AGplusone: or beat her.

Reilloc: YOu’re a little long in the tooth for her but what the hell.

AGplusone: You might die early.

mertide: Or you kill him?

mertide: Fathers are the same the world over

AGplusone: no, a mere accident, unfortuate

Reilloc: Harming, beating, and killing got to propensities of individual not to races of people, I think

AGplusone: yes

mertide: In so far as they’re common enough in all races, yes

Reilloc: Damn cat wants my pizza

AGplusone: Got anchovies on it?

mertide: It’s human behavior, war, fighting, killing, the way we became what we are

AGplusone: What’s your cat look like, L.N.?

jilyd: My husband absolutely detests Michener. Says if was going to write a story about WWII, the first words would be “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” and he would have to cover every day from there on.

Reilloc: No, just food and that’s all she’s interested in since I had her ovaries removed.

Reilloc: My cat’s black and white and named Generic

Reilloc: Ginny for short

AGplusone: A pizza without anchovies is like a morning without napalm

Reilloc: It doesn’t matter what you call them, they ignore it

jilyd: Hah, didn’t train her right. Mu used to come when I whistled. (mostly.)

AGplusone: Back when my ancestors invented pizza, they were olive oil and anchovies only

Reilloc: Whistling isn’t a name unless you speak Venusian

mertide: You have to whistle “anchovies, anchovies”

AGplusone: really … in Naples

AGplusone: nuthin’ else

mertide: I thought they were tomato and bread and oil, more like a bruschetta today

AGplusone: [my other ancestors … ]

AGplusone: originally just oil and little left over fish, then they went to tomato like a bruschetta

jilyd: Re: marrying daughters, when Joe and I married, he was a “long-haired hippe freak.” Some of my mother’s friends made remarks, and she told them that as long as he continued to treat me like he did,

mertide has left the room.

jilyd: he could grow it to his ass for all she cared. And that she preferred to judge a person by what was in their head, not on it. Yeay, Mom.

AGplusone: . . . and after that it was all downhill for the pizza, pineapple and toostie rolls

mertide has entered the room.

jilyd: Lillte dead fish. Yuck.

AGplusone: crunchy …

mertide: Thanks, one of those system crashes Win XP doesn’t have 🙂

Reilloc: Pineapple’s okay with Canadian bacon but tootsie rolls only go with other tootsie rolls.

AGplusone: use it instead of salt

mertide: What is a tootsie roll?

AGplusone: Like caesar salad?

Reilloc: An American candy

Reilloc: Hard, chocolate and mostly hydrocarbon

mertide: big?

jilyd: Pineapple on pizza is even yuckier than litlle dead fish, and that’s going some.

Reilloc: The rest is plastic

AGplusone: I was looking for something the yuppies put on Pizza that was totally disgusting, and my mind blanked.

Reilloc: The classic tootsie’s about 2.5″, tubular and 3/8th inch in diameter

mertide: We get pineapple and ham for the kids on pizza, vege for us mostly

AGplusone: tastes a little like chocolate

Reilloc: Vaguely…

AGplusone: My daughter, the traitor, likes pineapple and ham.

mertide: not choc coated? I think I’d have to see one to understand better

AGplusone: But she usually orders two … one with pizza for her unreconstructed dad.

jilyd: It’s sui generis. Chewey, chocolate, but not like any other chocolate, seems to be like an uniced devil’s food cake with rubber added. Comes in large with scoring to break off, or bite sized. Paper wrapped in a twist.

Reilloc: You know chocolate taffy?

AGplusone: one with anchovies

AGplusone: I meant

mertide: no, I’ve never seen it

jilyd: DON’T ask what it looks like.

mertide: chocolate taffy that is

AGplusone: E-mail me an address. It’s like that thing: wazzit? Bon-something you guys use to make a soup.

mertide: By the way, is Jane OK? Just got an email that she’s resigning from the library committee too

AGplusone: I don’t know. Was shocked to receive it. she’s obviously under some stress.

mertide: bon something? Like stock cubes?

AGplusone: Yeah.

AGplusone: Bonvril?

jilyd: I think Jane’s trip is coming up, isn’t it?

mertide: I’m not eating stock cubes as candy any time soon 🙁

AGplusone: Some patent thing that is advertised in Ox

mertide: Bovril?

Reilloc: back in a sec…

AGplusone: Oz … yeah, that one.

mertide: That’s pommy stuff

AGplusone: Really don’t know what it is …

mertide: beef tea concentrate

AGplusone: ah

jilyd: Is htat the same as what we call bouillion cubes?

mertide: More like black grease, bovril, sticky like Vegemite

AGplusone: the story about the Marine in WWII who married the Aussie girl mentioned it. None of the Marines could figure out what it was.

mertide: we use stock cubes/bouillon cubes much more

mertide: I’ve seen it, never used it in my life

AGplusone: Tootsie Rolls are our version of it. Nobody knows what they are until you eat one.

mertide: Taste like beef?

jilyd: I have always wondered what Vegemite was, since that old top 40’s song about a vegemite sandwich.

AGplusone: [and nobody knows what they are after either] But I loved them as a kid.

mertide: Vegemite is yeast extract concentrate heavily salted. Yummo! 🙂

jilyd: No, it’s a sweet, AG just means that you cannot describe it adequately.

AGplusone: okay, I’ll accept that

jilyd: Yummy? If you say so. It doen’t sound right.

mertide: Tastes a bit like soy sauce kinda

AGplusone: STill give them away to trick or treaters on Halloween

Reilloc: Think of a petrified piece of chocolate with all the nutrition leeched out

mertide: I’ll have to get over and eat one myself, food is too hard to describe

jilyd: The only way you can leach the nutrition out of chocolate is –not enough chocolate.

Reilloc: Bingo

AGplusone: I’ll mail you a bunch. Still got some stale ones left over from Halloween

mertide: So kind. I’ll mail you some stale Christmas cake back

mertide: 🙂

jilyd: How can you tell when a tootsie roll is stale? More like hard plastic than rubber?

AGplusone: I’ll put ’em in your CD rom and membership card packet

AGplusone: save postage

Reilloc: Okay, what’s it cost to join the Society?

AGplusone: $35

mertide: No, you need to try Tim Tams, our genuine contribution to chocolate heaven

Reilloc: Not a charter, lifetime membership, Dave.

AGplusone: you fly, L.N. We could play some mean bridge at San Jose.

AGplusone: $35 annual

mertide: Chocolate biscuits sandwiched with chocolate cream coated in chocolate

Reilloc: Play me online.

AGplusone: I’m on a Mac

jilyd: yeah, I guess I better find out before next May, since youand Mike gave me a job and I’m not even a member.

Reilloc: There might be MSN Zone software downloadable.

AGplusone: Zim is evil that way, Dee.

AGplusone: You guys are new. On AOL I was HostBNZim for obvious reasons

mertide: Anyway, this time I really have to go, so it has definitely been fun today. Are we going on on Saturday with the topic?

AGplusone: but I’m really a nice guy

jilyd: I never saw the point of all those bidding convention. Struck me as a complicated way to legalize table-talk. But then, I’m no card player.

AGplusone: Yeah, why not, or we’ll prattle about something interesting.

jilyd: Nite, carolyn.

Reilloc: Later, mer

DavidWrightSr: AG. I may not be here Saturday, so make sure I get the log.

AGplusone: Ginny will be there. She’s got to get her strenghth while she recovers.

mertide: sounds fine, goodnight all.

mertide has left the room.

AGplusone: so Thursday is a little late for her these days

jilyd: Yeah, well, I shoulda joined sooner. Fastest way to get volunteered is to miss a meeting, eh, Zim?

AGplusone: I will, dave

DavidWrightSr: Thanks

AGplusone: Exactly

AGplusone: The conventions are just tools

Reilloc: They’re the only legal table talk

AGplusone: exactly … but have you ever read Hornblower playing whist?

Reilloc: I played whist once.

AGplusone: How did they make contracts?

AGplusone: So did I.

jilyd: Damn, I will hate missing her, but Field Day is 1900 Sat. – 1900 Sun, UTC.

Reilloc: The greatest aggravation known to mankind is playing bridge with your in-laws.

AGplusone: Be careful around that antenna, Dee.

AGplusone: Or wife. You have to be werry, werry careful … or you turn celebate

AGplusone: Well, it’s 9 PM out here in LA-LA land … Goodnight from New York, David.

jilyd: Gotta finish the connections tonight so I can tune it tomorrow. If it works, it will be a miracle. MY most advanced electric projct up to now is rewiring a lmap.

Reilloc: People who are used to bidding, “…a club–no, one club–no, wait, yeah, A diamond..” and can’t understand it when you sigh.

DavidWrightSr: Good Night Chet

jilyd: Yeah, I would have thought spouse was worst.

AGplusone: No, they can’t

jilyd: Nite David.

AGplusone: Nite Dee. L.N. nice to have all of you. Kultsi, I really appreciate your patience.

Reilloc: Thanks, all.

AGplusone: Log coming up? Dave, or do you need one?

DavidWrightSr: Log officially closed at 12:02 P.M. EDT. Got it all. Thanks Dave
Final End Of Discussion Log

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by The Heinlein Society
on February 15, 2013

Heinlein Reader’s Discussion Group Thursday 06-20-2002 9:00 P.M. EDT Heinlein’s Travel