Military Parades • U.S. Army 250th Anniversary Parade

I’ve been watching the annual Russian Victory Day parades for five years or so now, beginning-to-end. As someone who is actively interested in military history, it is fascinating to contemplate the logistics of putting such a precise performance with so many moving parts, with so many things that could go wrong. And they do it every year. And being a former marching band member (A-West High School), their 1,100-person marching band performance at the end is very impressive to witness.

Also, when I see photos or old newsreel of parades from as far back as World War I, these Russian parades are a frame of reference as to what it was like, similar to how Saving Private Ryan brought out some of the realism of grainy black and white World War II footage and photos in my mind’s eye.

There was criticism of the idea of the U.S. having a military parade, and all of it seems to be from people who didn’t think through how we’ve done this before, the last time was in 1991 after the first Gulf War. We do it a bit differently than Russia or North Korea, but it isn’t unusual. I did expect something more similar to the Russian parade, but some of their motivations for a parade are different, and they do it every year, so they have all of the repetitive logistics worked out over time, as where ours was a one-off for a 250th anniversary. A big difference I noticed is that the Russians are very precise with their marching in their parades, whereas our guys were very casual, many of them were more walking than marching. I would encourage anybody reading this to watch some of the Russian parades, they are quite different. Those have an additional purpose to show off their power to their “friends”, aka, “don’t mess with us, here is a sample of what we have and how precise we are”. Putin had all of his allies at the last parade, (And Fat Steven Segal, too!) and that was part of why they were there… to be warned that Russia is still strong and not to be messed with.

Our parade was more of a basic, narrated history lesson about the U.S. Army, with marching examples of the different uniforms from the major conflicts, and some examples of vehicles and equipment. The scale of the units involved were far smaller than the Russians’ parade, and the marching was VERY casual, and the parade street width was far narrower. A totally different kind of parade, but still a good one for such a big anniversary.

I did like how we had twice as many Abrams tanks as the Russians had T-90s this year, that couldn’t have been by accident. If I read this right, they got away with having 70-ton tanks on city streets by putting a different kind of track on them, but I’m not sure if that was all they did. I think the T-90s are about 50-tons or so, if not less.

In the days running up to the parade, there were also some neat boot-camp challenges, and opportunities for people to post near, on, or in Abrams tanks, Strykers, Bradleys, and choppers, as well as with various hand-held weapons. I would really have liked to have done that! (I did get to pose on a S-7 Priest 105mm Howitzer Motor Carriage self-propelled gun back in 1980, though, that was cool.)

Unfortunately, the Spanish-American war and the War of 1812 weren’t represented in the parade due to difficulties in getting the right uniforms. Something that doesn’t happen when you do this every year like the Russians do.

A lot of people are going to politicize this and try to paste-and-cut the idea that any military parade is exactly like parades put on by regimes throughout the world, but I would go ahead and disagree with that. The U.S. Army is celebrating its 250th anniversary, and armies do parade as part of being… well, armies. We did it at the end of all of our wars, and to some extent in parades across the country every year. We have a military as every other country does, and it is okay to have some parades every once in a while. The Army deserve a big celebration for everything they’ve done for this country over 250 years, and I would argue this parade should have been bigger than it was because of all the sacrifice that has been done on our behalf over the existence of our country.

It is also nice that although the Russians have a far bigger and more precise parade, and do it every year, we get to show off how our equipment is far better than theirs. That’s a smaller point of parades like this. There’s no way a little T-90 would hold up against a big Abrams, and we rolled out twice as many for our little parade than they had for their annual parade. And Abrams tanks look cooler, too. And don’t pop their tops with ammunition cook-offs.

Anyway. When reading history, especially military history, it is a good thing to recognize all the different facets of it: empathy for what it must be like in military life, and to be in battle. The logistics, the strategy, how things are made, how they work, the politics, foreign policy, the actual history and effects of outcomes, alternate possibilities, and of course, the human side of it, including the horrors of war for soldiers and citizens alike. And there are many lessons to be learned from history.

I know that a lot of people are going to knee-jerk react due to their politics, but I hope that this can be put aside for a day in order to recognize how fortunate we are to have had a military such as the U.S. Army, for the past 250 years. Plus, Abrams tanks are really cool!

Zoom Conference?

I think this is a scam to get someone to click on their link; very clever. I never looked at the links that zoom conferences came from, when I used to use Zoom, but I doubt that “tinyurl” is legitimate. If somebody’s mailbox is full of these, it would be easy to click on it, leading to who-knows-where.

The Ugliest Building Ever

Driving to downtown on Colfax, I came across the ugliest building I’ve ever seen. They could have at least created something that would blend in, if they weren’t going to make the effort to build with a beautiful design, something uplifting, but no. We get a melted-plastic look.

I have read comments about the building, exclaiming that “at least it is different”. Just because something is different, doesn’t automatically make it good. Also, nearby, there is a courthouse that couldn’t be more cold and dystopian, as opposed to the one by the Capitol which is based more on Roman/Greek architecture.

This only makes me appreciate beautiful buildings that much more, as this monstrosity is the most shocking contrast between good, and bad. What they could have done with the money poured into this horrible idea is a missed opportunity to do something good for the millions of people who will pass by this building over its future.

More: This is the Populus Hotel, with 265 rooms. It is supposed to look like an aspen tree. I don’t have anything against the hotel itself, and don’t know if it is excellent or not, just that it is really ugly on the outside. I never thought for a moment of an aspen tree when looking at it.

Artists with Degrees

Too Good To Be True

When I see something advertised that is neat, or just a good deal, I take a snapshot, label the file, and save it in a folder. Recently I have had the need for some new shirts, so, I went to my Folder of Deals. In the time since I saved these (pictured) deals a few years ago, they have disappeared from the internet because they turned out to be scams. They would have taken my money for nothing, or given me some low-quality shirts. (According to posts I found about these “companies”.)

Also:

– Years ago I purchased a pack of six Apple-compatible charging cords; the quality of which was really, really bad. Eventually threw them into the trash.

– Last year I almost bought a VCR-DVD player that was advertised as able to record DVDs from VCR tapes. I researched that a little bit and it turns out it was a scam, but I was close to getting that. Too close.

– I few years ago I bought a USB stick that was claimed to hold 2TB of data, when in reality it just continuously overwrites existing data to give off that impression. It works, but putting too much on it is a bad idea.

However:

I’ve found some fantastic things out there as well; My Baerskin Tactical Hoodie is fantastic, my ReadFive Designs Star Wars Toy Guide is one of my most valuable (and rare) books, my Pale Blue Rechargeable Batteries are fantastic and my ZSA Moonlander keyboards have been outstanding. There are so many great products out there, but it pays to listen to your Spider-Sense when it starts going off. Suspicion and paranoia aren’t always bad things!

Why Is Modern Art So Bad?

QuarkXPress 3.2

I’m a sedimental kind of guy; Also, I paid six-hundred dollars for this copy of QuarkXPress back in 1993, so I’m probably never going to get rid of it! This was my primary software for years, and actually was worth the price in the end. A great program. Far better than Corel Ventura, which I experienced a few years later.

Coming from manual and electric typewriters when I was a kid, (I found one in a trash pile once and used it until it fell apart!) these programs feel like science fiction and I still appreciate them more than most people do, although it is understandable why everybody takes these amazing programs for granted. Remembering those correction tapes for my typewriters gives me very bad memories! The first time I experienced the ability to just use different fonts, sizes, or spell-check, much less go back and easily edit anything, it was clear that typesetting had changed forever!

Long live InDesign! (And, XPress. Why not?)

Woodstock

Ten, maybe fifteen years ago, my Mom saw this framed Woodstock at a thrift store, and asked me if we should get it. I knew she liked Woodstock and bought it for her. It has been on a wall at home since then, and every time I see it, I’ve wanted to recreate it in Adobe Illustrator, it is really neat and represents my Mom pretty well. Also, to preserve it, and have the ability to recreate it if necessary. Every house should have Peanuts in it.

I finally got around to doing this, and while it would have been easier to take it out of the frame and scan it, I did the recreation from a simple iPhone photo.

Image Trace was used, but still had to create another layer for the larger yellow areas. Not the most intensive Illustrator project, but absolutely a worthwhile one.

Best Concert Ever

The view from my seat; just perfect! I could see her hands fly over the keys!

So, my favorite pianist, Hélène Grimaud, is in Denver for a concert. To my knowledge, this is pretty rare, so I got a ticket as soon as I found out. I got a third-row ticket, which in my experience hadn’t been a thing I could get before. Third row, center, an aisle seat.

The day starts off pretty good, as I took it off from work and slept in.

Then, Hélène’s latest release that I had pre-ordered months ago, showed up. On the day I’m going to her concert, the only concert I’ll ever get to see her at.

So, I get to Boettcher Concert Hall early as recommended by the Colorado Symphony web site, and I have a nice conversation with two other earlybirds, who as it turns out, drove from the east coast just for this concert. I’m not the only Grimaud fan!

I get in, go to my seat, and I had to triple-check it, and then check with an usher, because my seat turned out to be first row. The two rows in front of me were covered by the stage, as the stage can be brought it a bit for other kinds of performances. On the online seating chart, those rows were listed as being sold out, but in reality, they just didn’t exist for this concert. I’m front row!

The concert started out with the Star Spangled Banner, of all things, and that was totally unexpected. The conductor, Peter Oundjian, said a few words, and then caught everybody but the orchestra off guard by jumping into the anthem. People didn’t even realize they should stand up for the first fifteen seconds or so! But it was great, it sounded good, and a nice way to start things off. I really enjoyed that!

So the first piece was not Hélène playing the Brahms Concerto, but rather the orchestra playing a newly written piece by a modern composer. (Carlos Simon: Fate Now Conquers) Most modern composers I’ve heard are hit-and-miss, so I wasn’t really thinking it would be any good, but it was really good. I genuinely liked it a lot! The entire piece is great, but there is a cello solo (for the section) that sealed the deal.

That’s something I’ve taken away from a lot of classical concerts, they’ll introduce one to some great pieces one might not ever hear before by piggy-backing them to the main event. I was introduced to “The Great” Symphony, and Shostakovich’s Eleventh Symphony this way, among others.

And then I realized; where’s the piano? Because I was so close, and sitting so low, I could only see the first row or two of the orchestra. Luckily, right when I was starting to panic a little bit, they roll it out. But here’s the thing: I didn’t just have a first row seat, which could have been to my right, where I’d be able to see the piano and no Hélène, or to my left, where I just see her from her back, so, no hands, but she was literally ten feet in front of me. Part of watching a piano concert is seeing the hands, and I had the perfect spot. It was like the concert was just for me! The two seats next to me, which, according to the online seating chart, were sold… those people never showed up. So I had the aisle seat, front row, Hélène ten feet in front of me, and nobody on the right of me. Just perfect!

And, since I’ve heard the recorded versions of this many, many times, hearing her play it live was amazing. I had no appreciation for what those hands have to do on those keys.

I couldn’t take any photos or videos, as the rules state that there is no flash photography (no flash is needed there anyway) and if the conductor is on stage, no phone cameras. So, I have some shots of the setup and the warmup, but that is it. And that is okay, it’s nice to not see phones everywhere. It’s about enjoying the live music. But I wish I could have taken a few shots though. It’s what I do.

I won’t get into what the Brahms concerto is like, why it is so great, why Hélène is such a great pianist, etc. That is something that has to be experienced to be accurately understood. The program they handed out tries to describe the pieces and how they sound and they make a good go of it. But of course, it’s better to hear these works and not just read about them.

After the concerto was done, there was the intermission. Time had already gone by faster than I had anticipated. The symphony starts up Beethoven’s Fifth (the best symphony ever, except maybe for the Ninth. If you don’t know the difference, that is a shame!)

So, the Fifth Symphony, front row. Amazing. And I really do like this conductor, whereas going in, I didn’t really care who it was!

So, after all of that, I stuck around for the question-and-answer with Peter Oundjian and Hélène. (front row, again!) And this is one of the great things about Hélène Grimaud, the way she talks about music, or just anything. She is very thoughtful, and insightful. Every time I see some mainstream music artist talk about what they do, it really contrasts things for me.

And there were some funny things in the question and answer session too, such as the question about the way Hélène sees colors (synesthesia) when certain sounds occur, I forget the rest of the context, but Oundjian said something when Hélène mentioned the color orange, he piped up and said something about a part of the concerto that was in F-Sharp, must have been written about the Broncos. I wish I had recorded this! But also, the way she answered the question, one just has to hear it. Eloquence. I don’t have that, and most people don’t. Now that I think about it, it’s kind of rare, which is why it stands out to me.

I had some questions lined up, but one of the early questions from someone else was really, really good, and my questions were definitely nowhere near that caliber. For the good of everybody, I just stayed quiet, because most of the questions were actually interesting. Sometimes, it’s best to just listen!

I got to talk that couple I met before the concert as I left, they are going again tomorrow, as they had a hotel room across the street. Lucky!

This is definitely the best concert of my life. A can’t think of a concert that could possibly be better than what I experienced tonight. Any concert at Boettcher is going to be really good, especially if they do works by the right composers. The talent of the symphony and the featured artists is never going to disappoint. But I’m not likely to get a seat like that, in front of my number-one favorite artist ever, under those conditions and with those pieces being played.

Watch a War Movie.

“When good people see evil raise its head anywhere in the world, and do nothing about it, and become indifferent to it, that’s the consequence, because evil, conquers. Evil triumphs.”

– Survivor of the holocaust, from this video.

I get asked the question of “How can you like that movie?” when I talk about something I’ve seen lately, such as “All Quiet on the Western Front”, or “1917”.

I never get my point across very well, in part because I am always confused as to why someone wouldn’t want to see these attempts to recreate the past in a way that we can today get a view of what it might have been like to go through these events.

Anybody who reads history for a decent amount of time will see that we actually don’t know that much about the past, and of course, the further back we go, the less recorded history there is. There is far more history lost to time, than there is recorded. When you see something on television about how amazing it is that the Pyramids in Egypt were built, or some other puzzling ancient accomplishment, that is just a really obvious example of how little history has been preserved.

Actual recording of history didn’t become much of a thing until the time of Henry VIII, due to logistics, social and physical. And as far as humankind is concerned, that is relatively recent.

I saw these “Man-on-the-street” interviews in Hiroshima on the anniversary of the bomb dropped there in 1945. Actual citizens of that city had no idea what the significance of that day was.

Most Americans are the same way. Zero understanding of important events, so many of them in regard to war. And a total avoidance of anything, book or film, that might remind them of such.

The most difficult book I’ve ever read, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners“, gets detailed into the reasons of how one of, if not the most advanced society in Europe at the time, could descend into such a barbaric state. To think that we, today, are automatically so much better than the Germans of the early 20th century is total hubris. It very much could happen again, and in our country. It comes at us in other ways which would hide the obvious, like it did in Germany. Which is why avoiding anything resembling something that could possibly educate us about our past, is a mistake.

How are we as a society going to avoid wars and holocausts if we don’t understand how they happen? That is what ignorance is, and in this case, completely willing ignorance. Because there’s another popcorn movie or television show to go watch. And I like those too, of course. But historical topics are just as, if not more interesting, because they are based on actual people and events that can be looked into, there is more depth to the topic of the film. So much to be learned, and most of it very interesting.

Wars aren’t just battles and horrific events. They are logistics, politics, psychology, humanity, examples of selfishness and selflessness, strategy, and on and on. To just avoid the topic because there was the obvious horror of it, is not a good thing.

There is a guy who lives near us who fought on Iwo Jima. He’s in his 90’s. I’ve talked to him a little bit, and it was fascinating. I didn’t run away because it might be about war. I have to think he’s really disappointed that most people couldn’t name ten battles, places, events, or people, related to that massive event he experienced. Something that made the world we live in today.

Go watch a war movie. Then read about it. It’s fascinating and worthwhile.