Captain's Quarters -

Disney Insanity

By the time I finished the show yesterday and the rest of us shook off the travel fatigue, we didn't make it to the Magic Kingdom park until well after dark. We didn't get a chance to do many rides, but we did see the spectacular fireworks display and get a chance to walk around the park. For someone who grew up around Disneyland in Anaheim, the differences between the parks is impressive -- and the resorts are even more so.

However, there is something particularly obnoxious about receiving your wake-up call from giggling and screaming cartoon characters. Yeesh.

Today we do Epcot, starting with a Princess Breakfast at 9 am ET. The Little Admiral has been almost unable to contain herself waiting for this. This should be prime video material. Speaking of which, we took a little video last night on a ride that came out pretty dark. Can you guess where my sister took this?

We took this with my Aiptek IS-DV2, which I wrote about here. It's the only camera I took on this trip, and so far it seems to be doing fine. I haven't drained the batteries yet, but I only took about five minutes of video. It's not good at night video (as we found out above), but I'd normally be using it in better lighting conditions anyway.

The Best Gift?

We've reached the end of a long Christmas day, one of the better that we've celebrated since moving to Minnesota. We have an honest-to-goodness white Christmas this year, thanks to an early winter and prodigious snowfall this December, the coldest and wettest December in at least ten years. The First Mate and I started celebrating last night, and we've continued to celebrate until now -- and we have just reached the point of exhaustion.

Michelle Malkin asks her readers to identify the best gift they gave this year. I figured I'd share with you a few different award winners along those lines...

The gift most likely to backfire on me was my son's didgeridoo. For some reason, he insisted that he wanted to learn the Australian instrument, and so we looked around for a reasonable, good-quality didge. Even our daughter-in-law seemed enthusiastic -- until he actually got it today and proceeded to play it for the entire time we were at their house. Banished from the living room, he went upstairs to his bathroom, and found it so well-suited to the sound that he spent the evening trying to get someone to come into the bathroom to listen to him play the didge. Did Larry Craig use that line?

His wife has already reached her limit. He may wind up having to practice here -- and hence the risk of backfire.

The gift that brought everyone the most fun was the Little Admiral's first real digital camera. It's surprisingly reasonable, designed for kids, well-protected, and comes with a lot of fun features. Here she's getting her mom to take her picture:

But the gift that gave us the most joy -- the best gift we gave -- was sharing our Christmas Eve with a close family friend who's coming out the other end of some tough times. He's been with us for three years in a row on Christmas Eve, and it's becoming a Christmas tradition. Our son celebrates with his in-laws on that night, and we would otherwise do nothing special. Our friend gives us a reason to get festive, put on a meal, and bring Christmas a little closer to our hearts.

I hope that your Christmas had all the blessings of ours, and more. Merry Christmas once again.

The Little Admiral Discovers Olives

We just returned from our Thanksgiving celebration, exhausted from the food and the fun. Our granddaughter, the Little Admiral, managed to combine the two:

Her big cousin Allie, seen just behind her, taught her that little trick tonight. We were both surprised she didn't know it already! I hope everyone learned a new trick or two today to have fun with their loved ones.

Technical notes: I used my Aiptek IS-DV2+ camera to shoot a few dozen shots of the event. I even let the Little Admiral and her cousin Connor take a few shots. I took this picture without the flash in 8-megapixel mode, and it looks pretty good. It's hard to keep a camera this small still, and the Little Admiral was moving when I snapped the shutter, but it still looks good enough for candid photography. I noticed that the batteries tend to run down fairly soon on this camera, but the two original AAs managed to make it through the day. In the future, though, I'll make sure I bring backups -- preferably rechargeable AAs.

Giving Thanks

Today is the traditional day in which Americans count their blessings and give thanks for them. In reviewing the past year, the biggest blessing I have is the First Mate -- and the donor who saved her life with a kidney transplant in March. Our friend Rich and his wonderful, supportive family has been undoubtedly the biggest blessing in our lives this year, and we thank God for the blessing he has given us.

We have many other blessings, too, in family and friends. While we cannot spend the holiday with our families in California, we get to spend it with our extended family here in Minnesota. They have been a constant blessing to us over the past six years, not just in the love they have shown our son when he joined their family, but in how they have embraced us as family, too.

I hope your day is as filled with blessings as ours is. We're having our first real snowfall today, and hopefully I can bring back pictures later of the celebration. The CapQ community is one of my own biggest blessings -- and I give thanks for you as well.

UPDATE: Okay, I've managed to survive a couple of meltdowns from Windows Movie Maker to create this short video of the snowfall. I've included a portion of The Four Seasons by Vivaldi (the Largo from the Winter suite, of course). I used my new Aiptek IS-DV2+ camera for the video and saved it in VHS format for better uploading speed to YouTube. It comes out rather nicely, I think, although my Sony DV camcorder would have had better quality. I'll be using it today to take holiday pictures and video, and we'll see how it performs.

Better Than Blogging

When I write a post title like that, you know I spent time with the First Mate, the Little Admiral, and my son and daughter-in-law. Last year we took our granddaughter to a pumpkin patch in Wisconsin to celebrate Halloween. This year we found another farm closer to us, Pinehaven Farm, in Wyoming, MN. It has everything to delight small children, and to wear them down in about four hours or so. She perked up when we joined Mommy and Daddy for a nice Italian dinner. It's a great way to avoid the roofers that showed up at 8:15 this morning to repair the damage we had in August ....

Chris Muir Returns

Chris Muir sent me a short note this morning thanking us all for our thoughts and prayers, and announcing his early return to business. Day by Day will return tomorrow, I presume, as Chris starts the process of production again. Keep an eye on this space for new Day by Day cartoons, and keep Chris and his family in his prayers after the loss of his beloved sister.

UPDATE: He's back today, as you can see above. If you don't see the new strip, reload the page to refresh the DBD feed.

Moving Back To The Twin Cities Offices

My two-week visit to my West Coast offices have come to an end, and I'm moving the operation back to the Twin Cities in time for business tomorrow. It will be a busy week; at Heading Right Radio tomorrow, I'll have Governor Mike Huckabee on a recorded interview and Rep. Tom Cole from the NRCC live. The show will air at the special time of 1 pm CT, one hour earlier than usual, so be sure to adjust your schedules!

Speaking of which, I've finally gotten the correct URL for the iTunes subscription. You can now find that here:

We had a great time visiting with good friends like Hugh Hewitt, Duane Patterson, NZ Bear, and everyone at Investors Business Daily. I had a great visit with Pajamas Media, and they have a video interview of me which will be released soon at their website. Next time, we'll leave some time to visit with more of our friends.

On The Road Again

The First Mate and I will head to Southern California for the next two weeks to catch up with family and make some business contacts. It's not a vacation, but more a move to my West Coast offices. I'll be working my normal jobs from the road, and still doing my normal Heading Right shows. That's one of the exciting features of working in the New Media -- I can be at the office anywhere that has high-speed Internet access.

I may decide to take weekends mostly off during this time, but do check in as I'll probably want one or two threads each day just to keep the blog warm. I'll be sure to post some pictures of SoCal on the blog -- and maybe we'll arrange a get-together with local Captain's Quarters readers while we're here!

Me And My Big Mouth

Last night, the First Mate and I went to dinner with old friends of ours from Marriage Encounter, longtime Minnesota residents who moved to Florida a couple of years ago. As Minnesotans often do, we started discussing the weather differences between here and there, and they told us that they live in a part of Florida that rarely gets hit by hurricanes, although they get strong winds from them as they dissipate. I remarked that we hadn't seen any damaging straight-line wind storms here in the Twin Cities since they'd left, knocking on the wood table for luck.

Well, we didn't get it. Mere hours later, around 3:15 this morning, we woke up to a pounding at the house -- a real, honest-to-goodness Midwestern thunderstorm, complete with lightning and torrential winds and rain. Storm alarms rang all through the city, so we went downstairs to the basement and watched the television (and thank goodness we switched away from satellite service, which would have been useless). The storm lasted for a couple of hours, but the worst of it passed in 30 minutes or so. We went to bed, and I wondered what we'd find in the morning.

As you can see, we didn't come through completely unscathed, but this was the worst of it. We lost a few shingles off the roof, too, but the real damage is the loss of this fine tree. It provided shade for our deck and, ironically, some screening for the back of the house during thunderstorms. It'll have to go, as it's split all the way to the trunk.

Still, it could have been worse. Reports have lines down throughout the metro, and word is that Bloomington got hit pretty hard by the storm. My tree will only be one of dozens or hundreds that will have been lost. Power is out to 45,000 homes this morning. Fortunately, we didn't get any tornadoes spawned from it.

Blogging may be a little sparse today as we clean up, and count a few blessings while we're at it. In the future, I think I'll hold my dinner conversation to the Twins.

Legal Bleg

I just got off the phone with a friend of mine from my teen-age years and who reads CQ on a regular basis. Unfortunately, she has had to start divorce proceedings, but has no representation. Her husband won't pay support for their several children unless she asks him for it, and she's had to go on public assistance in the meantime. Hopefully, one or more of our CQ friends in Utah can give her a hand in accessing legal resources in Utah so that she can make sure she protects her interests and the interests of her children.

Please e-mail me anything I can forward to her, with the subject line, "Legal assistance". She can also use your prayers, and thanks in advance for either.

Happy 231st Birthday, America

Note: This post will stay at the top all day. Newer posts will be below.

Today we celebrate the birth of our nation, as conceived by a group of men in a Pennsylvania hall who many considered at the time as traitors. They dared to imagine a nation whose leaders would not be derived from notions of royalty nor from the power of arms, but chosen by free people as leaders accountable to the populace. They took the ethereal notions that sprang from the Enlightenment and dared to make them a reality -- hoping that this radical experiment would take root in the North American continent, but having no clue that it would become a shining beacon for the entire world over the next two centuries.

It wasn't a model of perfection, and indeed, our birth has resembled our journey ever since. Dissent over the nature of a representative democracy appeared from the very start. The first structure of the government would have to be scrapped and re-imagined from scratch just a few years later. It would take decades more before the nation finally dealt with the inherent contradiction in the Declaration of Independence and its assertion that "all men are created equal," and the detestable institution of slavery -- and another century after that before the government finally took action to ensure that those words prevailed. Arguments about the division of power between the states and the federal government have continued from the first moments until this moment.

We have been far from perfect, but we have recognized our failures and prevailed over them in the fullness of time. Winston Churchill once said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others -- and we have been the model for that, for better and worse. America has been a beacon of hope for the world for centuries, not just because of the words in our Declaration and Constitution, but because we as a people try our best to live up to them.

Conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, independents and centrists, and those who cringe when they hear any of those labels -- they want America to live up to its best ideals, our best selves, each in their own way. Happy Independence Day to all of us, and may we continue in our efforts as our ancestors have to continue to keep America as the shining city on the hill.

In 1981, three months after surviving an assassin's bullet, Ronald Reagan talked about our nation's birth in his Independence Day speech:

Thomas Jefferson wrote that on that day of America's birth, in the little hall in Philadelphia, debate raged for hours, but the issue remained in doubt. These were honorable men; still, to sign a Declaration of Independence seemed such an irretrievable act that the walls resounded with cries of "treason'' and "the headsman's axe.''

Then, it is said, one unknown man rose to speak. He was neither young, nor strong in voice; yet, he spoke with such conviction that he mesmerized the hall. He cited the grievances that had brought them to this moment. Then, his voice failing, he said: "They may turn every tree into a gallows, every hole into a grave, and yet the words of that parchment can never die. To the mechanic in the workshop, they will speak hope, to the slave in the mines, freedom. Sign that parchment. Sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck, for that parchment will be the textbook of freedom, the bible of the rights of man forever.'' And sign they did.

What makes our revolution unique and so exciting, then, is that it changed the very concept of government. Here was a new nation telling the world that it was conceived in liberty; that all men are created equal with God-given rights, and that power ultimately resides in "We the people.''

We sometimes forget this great truth, and we never should, because putting people first has always been America's secret weapon. It's the way we've kept the spirit of our revolution alive -- a spirit that drives us to dream and dare, and take great risks for a greater good. It's the spirit of Fulton and Ford, the Wright brothers and Lindbergh, and of all our astronauts. It's the spirit of Joe Louis, Babe Ruth, and a million others who may have been born poor, but who would not be denied their day in the Sun.

The men without the words would have been little more than mutineers. The words without the men would have been long forgotten, if ever remembered at all. On the Fourth of July, we honor them all, and all those who came after to preserve and promote the Union.

My Two Fathers

Today is Father's Day, and Americans will celebrate with their families. Some are fortunate enough to spend the day with their fathers and grandfathers, while others only have memories to recall today. My good friend Joe Gandelman, for instance, just lost his father three weeks ago. Dr. Helen also points out that there are plenty of fathers for whom today serves as a reminder of the children who don't want to remain in contact with them.

I'm fortunate today, because I get to celebrate two fathers in my life. The Admiral Emeritus is still hale and hearty at 75, but he's 1500 miles away today. Normally, he's even farther away than that, because he's spending his retirement traveling the world. We catch up with Dad between trips, with plenty of new stories and adventures to recall.

Even so, Dad's always near enough to lean on when necessary. When I hurt my back last year, he and his wife flew out to Minneapolis on a couple of days' notice to spend the first two weeks after my surgery to take care of me and the First Mate. He's a great sounding board when I need advice, and that's been often. He's had my back in more than one way for 44 years, and he's been a rock for me.

The other father in my life is, actually, my son. Fatherhood came early for him, and motherhood for my daughter-in-law, but both of them immediately transformed into two wonderful and responsible parents overnight. I sometimes get a sense of vertigo trying to reconcile the teenager that he had been with the father he has become, a fairly common experience among grandparents, I have been told.

My son has been a blessing in my life that I'm certain I have not earned, but for which I am grateful. We had our share of difficulties, but we've also had many more good memories and good times with each other. He gave me my fatherhood, a role that I value just below husband, and one that allows me all the joy of being a grandfather.

Today, I'll celebrate both fathers in my life, even though both are elsewhere. I hope CQ readers have as much fortune as I do in celebrating today.

Happy Mother's Day!

To my own mother, my mother-in-law, the mother of my granddaughter, and all of the mothers and grandmothers in the CQ community, the First Mate and I wish all of you a happy Mother's Day!

Mother's Day is a splendid American tradition. One man who recognized the crucial role of mothers in American society was Theodore Roosevelt, an early prototype of the modern masculine man. Roosevelt gave this speech over 100 years ago on motherhood. He gave this speech to a gathering of women, and while the societal roles have broadened (thankfully) for women, his emphasis on motherhood for the sake of the next generation still resonates:

Inasmuch as I am speaking to an assemblage of mothers, I shall have nothing whatever to say in praise of an easy life. Yours is the work which is never ended. No mother has an easy time, the most mothers have very hard times; and yet what true mother would barter her experience of joy and sorrow in exchange for a life of cold selfishness, which insists upon perpetual amusement and the avoidance of care, and which often finds its fit dwelling place in some flat designed to furnish with the least possible expenditure of effort the maximum of comfort and of luxury, but in which there is literally no place for children?

The woman who is a good wife, a good mother, is entitled to our respect as is no one else; but she is entitled to it only because, and so long as, she is worthy of it. Effort and self-sacrifice are the law of worthy life for the man as for the woman; tho neither the effort nor the self-sacrifice may be the same for the one as for the other. I do not in the least believe in the patient Griselda type of woman, in the woman who submits to gross and long continued ill treatment, any more than I believe in a man who tamely submits to wrongful aggression. No wrong-doing is so abhorrent as wrong-doing by a man toward the wife and children who should arouse every tender feeling in his nature. Selfishness toward them, lack of tenderness toward them, lack of consideration for them, above all, brutality in any form toward them, should arouse the heartiest scorn and indignation in every upright soul.

I believe in the woman keeping her self-respect just as I believe in the man doing so. I believe in her rights just as much as I believe in the man’s, and indeed a little more; and I regard marriage as a partnership, in which each partner is in honor bound to think of the rights of the other as well as of his or her own. But I think that the duties are even more important than the rights; and in the long run I think that the reward is ampler and greater for duty well done, than for the insistence upon individual rights, necessary tho this, too, must often be. Your duty is hard, your responsibility great; but greatest of all is your reward. I do not pity you in the least. On the contrary, I feel respect and admiration for you.

Into the woman’s keeping is committed the destiny of the generations to come after us. In bringing up your children you mothers must remember that while it is essential to be loving and tender it is no less essential to be wise and firm. Foolishness and affection must not be treated as interchangeable terms; and besides training your sons and daughters in the softer and milder virtues, you must seek to give them those stern and hardy qualities which in after life they will surely need. Some children will go wrong in spite of the best training; and some will go right even when their surroundings are most unfortunate; nevertheless an immense amount depends upon the family training. If you mothers through weakness bring up your sons to be selfish and to think only of themselves, you will be responsible for much sadness among the women who are to be their wives in the future. If you let your daughters grow up idle, perhaps under the mistaken impression that as you yourselves have had to work hard they shall know only enjoyment, you are preparing them to be useless to others and burdens to themselves. Teach boys and girls alike that they are not to look forward to lives spent in avoiding difficulties, but to lives spent in overcoming difficulties. Teach them that work, for themselves and also for others, is not a curse but a blessing; seek to make them happy, to make them enjoy life, but seek also to make them face life with the steadfast resolution to wrest success from labor and adversity, and to do their whole duty before God and to man. Surely she who can thus train her sons and her daughters is thrice fortunate among women. ...

To sum up, then, the whole matter is simple enough. If either a race or an individual prefers the pleasure of more effortless ease, of self-indulgence, to the infinitely deeper, the infinitely higher pleasures that come to those who know the toil and the weariness, but also the joy, of hard duty well done, why, that race or that individual must inevitably in the end pay the penalty of leading a life both vapid and ignoble. No man and no woman really worthy of the name can care for the life spent solely or chiefly in the avoidance of risk and trouble and labor. Save in exceptional cases the prizes worth having in life must be paid for, and the life worth living must be a life of work for a worthy end, and ordinarily of work more for others than for one’s self.

The woman’s task is not easy—no task worth doing is easy—but in doing it, and when she has done it, there shall come to her the highest and holiest joy known to mankind; and having done it, she shall have the reward prophesied in Scripture; for her husband and her children, yes, and all people who realize that her work lies at the foundation of all national happiness and greatness, shall rise up and call her blessed.

I will be back later. Please note that the Typekey functions have been completely disabled, but comments now have to be moderated -- and I will look into an alternative later today.

How To Freak Out Your Family When You're An Obsessive

It's been a slow morning today, as I spent most of last night fighting insomnia and decided to sleep later than usual when I finally got my 40 winks. I dragged myself out of bed and had just began to eat when I heard my cell phone alert me to a new message. My father, the Admiral Emeritus, had left me a terse "call me back when you get this" voicemail, so I immediately called him back. This was the conversation:

AE: What's going on?

Me: Huh?

AE: Is there a problem? Is everyone OK?

Me: I'm tired, I didn't sleep well, but that's it.

AE: Oh, OK. I thought something was wrong.

Me: Why?

AE: Because by this time in the morning, you usually have a half a dozen posts up on your blog.

I guess I usually do ... so it's difficult to blame him for being worried. I'm just feeling lazy today, but it's good to know he's keeping an eye on me.

Duke Bandy, RIP (Update: Also Clint Thrasher, RIP)

I received an e-mail message from a CQ reader, Lee Bandy, who earlier had offered to assist me with my Gateway computer problems. I had replied that the problems seemed related to the hardware, but that I'd let him know if I needed anything else. Lee wrote me back this evening, and agreed to let me share this with all of you:

I want to apologize for not getting back to you.

I never actually expected you to respond. I was genuinely tickled when you responded, and called my father, as Captains Quarters is his favorite blog. I figured he would get a huge kick out of it.

That was the phone call no child ever wants to be a part of: LT Col Maurice ‘Duke’ Bandy USAF (Ret) 1930-2007

However, I would like to thank you for providing years worth of father/son conversations. Dad was a huge fan of “the blogs” and we would talk daily about the latest posts and news. Yours was always first on the list. It may seem like just another blog, but it meant much more to us.

Blogging is an odd business. One writes and writes about those items that provoke a reaction, in what seems like a relentlessly solitary effort. It isn't until people comment or e-mail that one knows a connection has been made with an audience, and sometimes the blogger never understands the depth of those connections. Hearing this from his son is a touching and humbling moment for me, and I'm blessed that Lee chose to share this story with me -- and allowed me to share it with you.

We have lost a member of our family here. Godspeed, Maurice "Duke" Bandy. Thank you for honoring us with your service and your presence. Please keep the Bandy family in your prayers, and send them your condolences in the comments section.

UPDATE: And we have another loss in the CQ family. The cousin of SoldiersMom, Clint Thrasher, was killed in a plane crash while serving in the Border Patrol. Please also add the Thrasher family to your prayers while they try to get more details, and offer thanks that the nation has fine men like Clint to protect us.