20 December 2006, a noisy Wednesday morning

...as the weed-eaters are roaring away in the neighborhood.  Good, we'll catch the guy and have him do our yard, too.  Did I tell you people who are thinking of moving to Costa Rica to definitely add a weed-eater to your list of family yard tools?  Of course, it's one chore you can easily hire done down here...the entire country probably has 5000 weed-eaters running at any given moment in time. 

(No, that's not counting the thousands of people still doing it by hand with machetes.  I kid you not.)

The price for our rather small but empty side lot is ¢1500 (2.90) and it will take him most of an hour.  I have a small electric weed-eater which would be equal to the task if I did it every four days or so and didn't let things get out of hand (things GROW down here!) but it also would take me most of the morning.  I'd rather do this.

Starting, as always, with the New York Times:

BAGHDAD, Dec. 19 —Iraq’s most venerated Shiite cleric has tentatively approved an American-backed coalition of Shiite, Sunni Arab and Kurdish parties that aims to isolate extremists, particularly the powerful Shiite militia leader Moktada al-Sadr, Iraqi and Western officials say.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein the cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, has been the spiritual custodian of Shiite political dominance in Iraq, corralling the fractious Shiite parties into an alliance to rule the country.

...

Mr. Sadr’s rise to power, mostly on the strength of his Mahdi Army militia, has presented something of a challenge to the authority of Ayatollah Sistani as Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric. In spite of Mr. Sistani’s preaching of tolerance toward Sunni Arabs, the Mahdi Army has been a driving force in the bloody cycle of retributive violence, which is killing more than 100 people a day in Iraq.

So, tell me...we can't figure out what to do about the problem, now that it has been so clearly identified?

I hope that Sistani is as well-guarded as Sadr has to be.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 — President Bush said Tuesday that the United States should expand the size of its armed forces, acknowledging that the military had been strained by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and would need to grow to cope with what he suggested would be a long battle against Islamic extremism.

“I’m inclined to believe it’s important and necessary to do,” Mr. Bush said. He said this was an “accurate reflection that this ideological war we’re in is going to last for a while, and that we’re going to need a military that’s capable of being able to sustain our efforts and help us achieve peace.”

To the extent that I have a bone to pick with Bush it would be that he still isn't really emphasizing enough to the American people about the size and scope of what we're facing.  The "I'm inclined to believe" statement, in particular, irritates me.  True, he has said from the very beginning that the war on terror--not simply the Iraq portion--is going to be long and difficult, but I don't think that really penetrated the American consciousness the way it should have.

For instance, listen to the people characterizing this Iraqi phase as "endless" and saying we need to pull out.  The war is about the age of my son, Tony, and he's not even in pre-school yet..."endless" hasn't even started yet.

The problem is the dumbing-down of the American fast-food me-generation culture...the length and difficulty of this war has to be pounded into their heads by endless (good word) repetition or they won't get it.    

I just read a CBS 'analyst' the other day who wrote that Bush was "finally talking about the fact that [the Iraq war] is going to take a very long time - shifting the focus almost out of Iraq, out of Afghanistan, to the potential of other places in the world."

"Finally", this genius says.  They call those 'analysts' See B.S. men for good reason, because in a speech he gave to the Commonwealth and Churchill Clubs on Apr 30, 2002, speaking only of the 'war on terror' at that pre-Iraq point, he said plainly:  "We are in for a long and difficult war.  It will be conducted on many fronts."

I think maybe Bush thinks that people listen and pay attention, which would be a mistake...he's giving his audience perhaps too much credit, especially the 'analysts' who are finally 'hearing' it for the first time in 2006.  Where was this pundit 4½ years ago?  One hopes he wasn't listening at that time, because if he was it means the rate information penetrates his skull is about an inch a year.

It's too late for him to change now, I suppose, but saying things like "I'm inclined to believe" only makes matters worse.  Maybe he's just trying to soften the bad news, but, hell, he's an admirer of Churchill, he knows about the "nothing to offer you but blood, sweat and tears" speech.  Bush should be giving it, he should have been giving it all along in much stronger fashion that he has.

You know, mentioning Churchill gave me a thought to offer to all of those people who still think Iraq was Bush's war of "choice".  Was WWII Churchill's war of choice?

Properly I should say Chamberlain, since he was the prime minister who finally declared war against Hitler after Hitler had invaded Austria, Czechoslovakia and finally Poland.  By that time, of course, as we all know, Hitler had become virtually unstoppable...he came within a whisker of winning WWII.

Churchill's war of choice, if you would like to call it such a thing, would have been to stop Hitler BEFORE those invasions happened.

Of course, when you stop things before they happen you don't have any way of knowing they were going to happen, not really, only suspicions.

This is why I don't really fault President Billy for taking Osama into custody the several times he was offered up to the U.S. during his presidency--namely, Osama hadn't brought down the Twin Towers yet and nobody really and truly believed that he could.  Sure there's evidence to be interpreted now--but afterwards. 

Take another case, the guy who tried to assassinate Reagan.  Or the guy who killed Kennedy.  There was evidence in both cases that they might try something like that...but it wasn't until afterwards that the crime had actually been committed, and then suddenly it wasn't just speculation any longer.

This is why I see Iraq the way that Bush does, and why you can count on me to be one of the 30% or so who remain his loyal supporters.  Bush saw Iraq as PART of the greater war on terror--he said so ahead of time, you can Google it up--and he took the Churchill route rather than the Chamberlain route. 

Oddly enough, the people who now mock Chamberlain for being an appeaser too long are also likely to be the same people complaining about Bush acting too soon.

Yeah, I know.  Slow learners.

Some readers complain that I support Bush blindly, themselves apparently blindly oblivious to what I just pointed out, so if you want me to make you happy by making a critical comment at him, here it is:

"Dear George, listen up.  You are taking the Chamberlain route with respect to Iran.  Ahmadinejad is like Hitler, he isn't going to stop.  George, I'd like you to go to this site and read these words and stop screwing around.

When (Chamberlain) had taken office in May, 1937, his focus was on a European solution to German expansionism. He attempted to convince Hitler that war was not worth winning because British re-armament and the weak German economy would make Germany vulnerable to a British economic blockade. Chamberlain also felt that Hitler would set his sites on the East, an opinion that helped him in his decision to abandon Czechoslovakia during the Munich Crisis.

But ultimately, Hitler would have none of it. And so, with the invasion of Poland, a sadly reluctant Chamberlain announced that England was at war with Germany.

First Austria, then Czechoslovakia and finally Poland. On the German march into Danzig, Hitler said "For half a millenium (sic) longer this soil has been German, and has remained German, and it will, you can rest assured, remain German." With this invasion, Chamberlain had no choice but to honor his agreement with Poland and move toward war. Hitler, it seemed, was not to be deterred.

Does any of that sound familiar to you, George?  It should.  It describes how the Muslims regard the previous rule of the caliphate in Europe.  It describes how the E.U. and the U.N. are trying to deal with Iran.  Stop trying to appease either Ahmadinejad or the Democrats, it won't work.  Stop playing the Chamberlain role, you are only encouraging our enemies.  If you persist then Ahmadinejad is going to make the nuclear bombing of Israel your invasion of Poland moment.  You will go down in history as Chamberlain, your friend McCain will likely become Churchill.  Yours truly, Gregg"

Back to Iraq...

He said that he had asked his new defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to bring him a proposal, and that the budget he unveils at the beginning of February would seek approval for the plan from Congress, where many members of both parties have been urging an increase in the military’s size.

Don't worry--the Democrats will change their mind as soon as Bush actually proposes something concrete.

In interviews on Tuesday, administration officials said the president was speaking generally about the broader campaign against terrorism and was not foreshadowing a decision on whether to send additional troops into Iraq in coming months in an effort to stabilize Baghdad. Any big change in the size of the American military would take years to accomplish.

That's presuming we have years left, too.  And Democrats always, always slash the military budget.

Mr. Bush’s comments indicated that the administration was breaking abruptly with the stance taken by Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former Pentagon chief, who championed the view that better intelligence and technological advancements could substitute for a bigger military.

It can, too.  But that's taking the quote out of context because it doesn't follow that if only he had enough intelligence and technology that one man could fight all of the country's wars, all by himself, does it?  Of course not, that would be silly.

While better intelligence and technological advancements will, in fact, substitute for a bigger military to some extent, that does not mean that the military is big enough today to meet future needs which may reasonably be anticipated.  Sooner or later you need enough bodies to employ the intelligence and the technology.  How many is enough?  Ah, good question.

How big are we willing to admit the problem is?  Nancy Pelosi says the war on terror is only in Afghanistan, remember, and Osama bin Laden is the only terrorist leader.

At least this guy spells it out about the length of the conflict in a little more detail:

General Abizaid is credited with coining the phrase, “the long war,” to describe the challenge of combating terrorism, especially radical Islamic terrorism. He still uses, but no longer favors, the label, according to his aides, because too many people focused only on “war” and a military solution.

He says the United States government is inadequately organized for the new type of threat, and that success in the counterterrorism mission, in Afghanistan, Iraq and beyond, requires all of the government to go to war, and not just the military.

“I think our structures for 21st-century security challenges need to adapt to this type of an enemy,” he said. “The 21st century really requires that we figure out how to get economic, diplomatic, political and military elements of power synchronized and coordinated against specific problems wherever they exist.”

In other words: Congress, start pulling together, not apart, and recognize the seriousness of the threat for a change.  Quit playing politics.

Washington Post headline:

U.S. Not Winning In Iraq, Bush Says For First Time

Inside:

"We're not winning, we're not losing," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post.

The headline writer probably only had room for the first half of the sentence.  Oddly enough, the article writer did not have room enough to include either the question which provoked this response or any additional comments Bush might have said amplifying his response.  Well, they're short of space, I guess.

I wonder about some of these pundits, I really do:

» David Ignatius: | America's security interests are not served by remaining indefinitely as an occupying power in Iraq

I mean, this is a discovery?  Did anyone, including Bush, ever intend to stay indefinitely?  Does refusing to set some "date certain" imply the alternative is forever?  Here's a better question: is the U.S. currently actually an occupying power?  Or is it another one of those frequently misused or redefined words like "empire"?

Bush has said that we are in Iraq right now at the request of the elected Iraqi government and will leave whenever they tell us to leave, they're a sovereign state.  You may wonder if he really means this, that's your privilege, but so far they've asked us to remain there.

So are we now really an occupying force?

Wes Pruden on a funnier and perhaps lighter subject (it depends):

Once upon a time, Baptists were regarded as the most contentious of the religious denominations, full of earthly fire and doctrinal fury, so eager to fight among themselves they hardly had time for secular politics.

Lately, the Baptists have turned some of their attention to the grit of secular politics, and church fights are no longer encouraged. Times change. Four of our last five presidents have been evangelicals. Two were Baptists, one with lust in his heart and the other with lust all over the neighborhood.

Funny how only Bush gets blamed for religion in politics, isn't it?  You watch how fast Hillary gets religion a couple of years from now.

Actually, Wes' editorial is about the Episcopalian break-up, my excerpts were only part of his lead-in, and the whole thing is quite amusing...well, maybe not if you are an Episcopalian, or even gay, but otherwise.

I'm of the opinion that religion is something you should take seriously in private yet be able to see the humor about in public, rather than the other way around.  God will know the difference, in either case.

Tony Blankley, an excellent columnist:

  In fast succession mass and long-distance communication was advanced by the general availability of telephones (1870s), linotype-fast newspapers (1880s), radios (1920s), televisions (1950s), computers (1970s), the Internet (1990s) and cellular text, audio and now video devices (2000s).
    Over those centuries we have gone from ignorance of the events of the world due to the absence of information to today's condition of confusion and ignorance due to an unending glut of information. We are living out the truth of Sherlock Holmes' insight that to hide something, surround it in plain sight with many similar items. In his fictional case, a criminal hid an incriminating broken piece of porcelain in a room filled with broken porcelain. Which was the piece that mattered? Today, as snippets of news flash past our consciousness at a rate and volume greater than our capacity to absorb, we don't know what to know and what to ignore. And of the information we decide to notice and absorb, there are so many versions of it that we don't know what is true and what is false or distorted.

How true.  The internet is full of people providing "information", but not all of them possess the requisite qualifications for scholarship beyond the ability to read and type, and some of the sites are, to my way of thinking, obviously whacky.

Of course, it's easy to forget that there are (were?) lots of newspapers like that, and magazines, too, with a longer shelf-life capable of influencing a lot of people over time if not quite as rapidly.

The advantage the internet has is that if you find something you question on one site you can quickly skip around to a number of others and hope to come up with a better grip on the reality.  You also have more ability to check up on the qualifications of the writers. 

In an item titled  Climate Ideology Control author Paul Driessen writes:

America's vital traditions of free speech, association and debate are under assault.
    Al Gore bristles at anyone who raises inconvenient truths about climate alarmism. Greenpeace calls us "climate criminals." Grist magazine wants "Nuremberg-style war crimes trials" for climate disaster skeptics, probably followed by hangings, since burning at the stake would release greenhouse gases.
    Climate catastrophist Ross Gelbspan told a Washington, D.C., audience: "Not only do journalists not have a responsibility to report what skeptical scientists have to say about global warming. They have a responsibility not to report what those scientists say."
    Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, shamefully treated physician-scientist-author Michael Crichton like a child molester during a congressional hearing, for suggesting climate change theories be reviewed by double-blind studies and evidentiary standards akin to what the Food and Drug Administration uses for new medicine. And Sens. Olympia Snowe of Maine and Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia have issued a "gag order" against ExxonMobil. "Its message: Start toeing the senators' line on climate change, or else," said the Wall Street Journal.

I've said this before but I'll say it again, no true scientist, with the only goal being the determination of truth, ever restricts research or debate.

People who do are typically politicians, with other axes to grind and other fish to fry...usually with public funds.

This part caught my eye:

If we emphasize intermittent, unreliable wind and solar, will brownouts and outages become routine for offices, factories, schools and operating rooms? If utilities have to sequester CO2 at $40-50 a ton, will they follow Britain's lead, and tell parents who can no longer afford to heat their homes adequately they can just send their children to bed with hats, mittens, sox -- and bags of rice warmed in microwaves? What will bureaucrats tell families of elderly folks who die in summer heat waves, because they can't afford air conditioning -- or AC has been banned as "polluting and unnecessary"?

I don't know about microwaved bags of rice, but when I was a kid (groans, here he goes again, the old fart) we went to bed with heavy pajamas and not because we were prudes or because we wanted to get up early and start blogging before we got dressed...houses were much colder then and during the night the furnace got turned down.

I went to high school in southern Utah in 1948-51 in a little town called Tropic.  It was called that because it was so much warmer than where I actually lived, 8 miles away and up on top of the Bryce Canyon rim, where winter temperatures could reach 40 below on occasion.  In Tropic, by contract, winter temperatures rarely went below zero.

My father worked for the CAA and we lived in government quarters, which meant they were relatively modern compared to the homes my friends lived in down in the town, some of which had been built by the original Utah pioneers of the previous century.  As in wood stoves for heat, often also for cooking, and electric lighting typically consisted of one bulb in the middle of the ceiling, no floor lamps or even table lamps in all rooms.  By comparison we lived a life of luxury with a gas wall furnace in the center of the house and lights all around the place.  My Dad had his "ham" rig set up in the front room.

The first winter that I overnighted with a friend in his house down in Tropic, when we woke up in the morning there was ice on the window.  On the inside.  The linoleum floor was so cold I couldn't stand to walk on it barefooted.  We had gone to bed the night before with a hot brick warmed on the wood stove.  No, it didn't last all night long but it made the bed bearable to get into...it went in first.

As for air conditioning in the summers, let's not get ridiculous!

My point?  My point is that at least some of the heating and air conditioning which Americans have come to take for granted as necessities should really fall into the category of luxuries.  Millions, probably billions of people in the world don't even have them at all.  The American West was won without them.

Creature comforts are nice, to be sure, but they shouldn't get confused with necessities.

Ben Stein, on a scary Russian bear:

Here is a terrifying thought. Europe is now dependent on Russian energy exports for about 40 percent of its daily needs. Europe gets more energy products from Russia than from OPEC, by far. This kind of dependence on Russia would have been unthinkable in Stalin's day or Brezhnev's day. Sensible people would have considered that Red Russia was an unreliable supplier and would use its energy exports to control and subjugate Europe.

Western Europe is now subservient to Russia on a scale unimaginable in the days of the cold war. Even Tony Blair, toughest of the tough, bravest of the brave, cannot bring himself to confront Russia seriously about the murder of a political refugee with official refugee status on British soil by Russian secret police. The UK needs Russian gas too much to openly fight with Russia about this grave insult to British dignity and law. If Tony Blair can't stand up to Putin, no one in Europe can. Russia now calls the shots from Warsaw to Madrid.

Everyone is worrying like mad about the Moslems taking over Europe. It may well be that Russia has beaten them to the punch. Europe is now in chains of oil and gas, marked "Made in Putin's Russia." NATO is meaningless. The pride of France and Germany and Italy is in vain. Energy trumps all else, and Putin sure looks like he has won a very, very big prize.

Note to Europe: this time you are on your own.

Kathleen Parker tickles my funny bone on this one about Hillary:

The coulda-shoulda-woulda chorus just added a new soprano. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton says she wouldn't have voted for the Iraq War if she'd known then what she knows now.

Clinton was one of the last holdouts among the probable 2008 Democratic presidential candidates to embrace hindsight regarding her vote in 2002 on a resolution approving the invasion of Iraq to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

As a woman, she's worked hard to establish herself as not soft on foreign policy. She serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee, held her ground on the war, and even visited the troops in Iraq.

Thus on Monday, she joined others, including John Edwards and John Kerry, in declaring the stupendously obvious:

"Obviously,'' she said, "if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote ... and I certainly wouldn't have voted that way.''

She certainly proved her manly credentials with me, I've gotta say that.  I'd like to have a buck, or even a quarter, for every time my buddies and I have sat over a drink at the bar and sighed, heavily, "oh, man, if only I'd-a-known then what I know now..."

I think that has to be man's theme song...or at least his dirge.

Some nights we men admit to each other, when deep in our cups of mellow fellow melancholy, we can't get to sleep and spend hours and hours reviewing all of the things we woulda done differently if only we had known how they were going to turn out. 

Sinatra sang "regrets, I've had a few, but then again, too few to mention" and we all laughed our asses off--or maybe we cried, I can't remember.

Come on, guys, I don't really want you to risk telling me and thereby risk getting caught, but just hark back to the things you did and/or didn't do with your first three girlfriends...

See what I mean?

The truth is, most everybody didn't know the same things at the same time. When the Iraq resolution came up for a vote, the U.S. Congress had more hawks than a falconers' convention. A review of statements made prior to the invasion reveals a nearly universal lack of ambivalence.

The humorous part about this is that later they claimed that Bush, often referred to otherwise as a moron if not actually an idiot, fooled them!  However, many of these remarks were put on record during the Clinton administration, when nobody even dreamed Bush would become president in the future!

A few dissenters seemed to know more than the rest, though they opted not to share until Iraq was coming apart. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., wrote in The Washington Post one week after Edwards (do you suppose they chatted?) that a classified report to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee -- on which both he and Edwards served -- included "vigorous dissents'' about whether Iraq had WMD and whether, if they existed, Saddam would use them.

I rather enjoy the idea that even though there are vigorous dissenters about whether Iraq had WMD, there were still among them people who nevertheless weren't quite sure enough that they couldn't admit the possibility and then argue that he wouldn't use them.

I don't believe in ghosts!  But if I did, then I don't think they would be scary.  But if I did, I don't believe they could hurt me...  Sounds like a vigorous dissent to me.

I mean, if you are for sure absolutely certain he didn't have them, why would you even wonder about what he might or might not have done with them?

Hillary, who was not on the intelligence committee, may have known less. Or, as the wife of a former president, perhaps she knew more. In July 2003, Bill Clinton told Larry King:

"People can quarrel with whether we should have more troops in Afghanistan or internationalize Iraq or whatever, but it is incontestable that on the day I left office, there were unaccounted for stocks of biological and chemical weapons.''

There's no dishonor in not being prescient. No one can predict a war's outcome, especially not in the midst of it. But if things were going differently in Iraq today -- and they might have under better management -- we can be sure the woulda-coulda-shouldas would be singing a different song.

Not "If I'da known ... '' but, "Who didn't know?''

I'd like to remind you now so I don't have to do it again later (although I'll be happy to do so), but should the war in Iraq suddenly take a turn for the best between now and October of 2008, Kerry et al will be elbowing each other away from the head of the line to remind voters that they were FOR the war in Iraq all along!  Hillary will slug him from behind with her purse and stand proudly athwart his story (with apologies to Buckley and NRO) to claim first place...right of primogeniture.  She knew when she was the president's wife, she will say, as far back as that.  Then she will proudly recall Clinton's Public Law courageously calling for regime change in Iraq, the overthrow of Saddam, to be replaced by a representative democracy.

"They said it couldn't be done!" she will proclaim, holding up the Nixonian "V" with both hands, but we DID it!

"As always, victory finds a hundred fathers but defeat is an orphan." -- Count Galeazzo Ciana

evening

I'm the son of my father.  My Dad saved things...everything that might be useful, someday.  A short piece of board, some string, wire (his biggest weakness), whatever had been found useful in the past, or maybe even never yet but might possibly happen in the future.

His garage in the Newberry Springs desert was loaded with odds and ends, nuts and bolts, scraps of wood, half-empty cans of 20-year-old paint, you name it.  My biggest regret now is that we didn't bring every last scrap of it.

I don't have a garage so I'm not doing quite as well as Dad did, our left-over construction materials are stored here and there on our tiny lots, under eaves and behind walls., mostly.  It is junk to keep yet too good to throw away.  Who knows when you might need it?

Tony's "big" present this year is a plastic playhouse the perfect size for one or two 3-year-olds.  We'll set it up indoors so he can watch television from his window and eat breakfast from his own table inside, he'll love it.  The problem is that it will occupy a big chunk of the room that used to be Dad's bedroom and now is a sort-of family room...we don't live a "normal" lifestyle and thus we don't live in a normal house...so what to do?

I got to thinking the other night...I have enough structural steel and sand and gravel left to build him a nice elevated "tree" house in the garden lot.  We have a welding machine, and Luis to run it, so with a few sacks of concrete we could build a platform up about 8' off of the ground and then set his plastic house on top of it.  I could put a slide down one corner, a rope ladder up the other, and hang a swing underneath.  We even have some extra tile, so I could make the platform large enough (a 4x8 sheet would do) to serve as a nice veranda around his house.

Later, after he outgrows the small plastic house, I can enlarge the structure with some siding and windows, but that's later.  For now all I need is a sheet of marine plywood, or maybe some material that will not rust or absorb water, and a few sacks of concrete to set the piers.

For that matter, it wouldn't be a bad idea to go all the way up to the eventual roof right now, while I'm erecting the structural steel, and attach the left-over sheet-metal roofing from our own roof.  The plastic playhouse can still be under that, while he's small enough to fit inside, with the roof overhead sheltering his veranda.

On the other hand, he just might want to keep his plastic house indoors. for a while  One thing for sure: he'll have an opinion on the subject.  In fact, he might even have a selection of opinions to choose from.

Christmas is going to be very different this year, that's for sure.  We thought we would celebrate it with Tony last year but the child protection services, in whose care he legally was although temporarily residing with us, came and took him away from us just before Christmas.  It was very painful because they did it abruptly, on very short notice, and poor Tony was here one minute and then, like Forrest Gump says in bewildered acceptance, just like that he was gone.

As a result, at age 3½ he has never had a Christmas at home that he remembers.

And we haven't had a young child at home for Christmas for much, much longer than that...I can only dimly remember what it was like, it has been so long.

I can hardly wait!  The plastic playhouse needs to be assembled, although it is a fairly simple procedure with about two dozen screws involved.  I was impressed, really, with the quality of the work and the simplicity.

I was going to set it up the night before and let him discover it in the morning, but then I started thinking about what Tony would really like on Christmas morning...and that made it pretty clear to me, he'd like to HELP put it together.  In fact, I'm going to show him how to run the electric screw-driver and stand back.  This kid is a natural helper and an even more natural take-charge guy, as soon as he figures that he knows what to do.  He'll ask for help (unlike me), but only when he figures he needs it.

He's lived a lot of his early life under his own steam, he's learned that in the end he's the only one left standing there, and I admire the hell out of him for that.  Knowing that he can rely on us is coming to him with some difficulty. 

Putting this house together is going to be the best part of Christmas morning.  I need to paint him a sign for over the door: Tony Calkins.  He loves his name, even if he can't say it.  I have to laugh, I can remember going for years and years trying to decide whether my last name was pronounced 'CALL-kins' or 'COCK-ins' or 'CAWL-kins'.  I remember being very embarrassed about that for years, the fact that I didn't know and didn't want to ask my Dad, isn't that funny?  I listened carefully to the people who talked to him but I still couldn't tell, he answered to all of the various pronunciations.

It's CAWL-kins, I guess, but I answer to a lot of things.  As a child I was led to believe my name was 'Billystopthat'.