Still working on the "Frontiers 1914" piece(s), so that's ongoing. The issue right now is that the next section needs to be about the French war plans. We've looked at Germany and the evolution of what became the "Schlieffen Plan". The bookend for that needs to be France and the evolution of "Plan XVII".
That's...being kind of a pain in the ass.
There's a shit-ton of scholarship (popular and otherwise) about the seventeenth of the French war plans.
The lead-up to it, though?
Not so much.
We'll get there when I finally post it, but the tl:dr is that from about 1870 to about 1911 the French planning was centered around 1) the fortress belt of the "Sere de Rivieres" system in NE France as a 2) defense-first-and-counterattack overall scheme.
But in the second decade of the 20th Century the French military hierarchy - led by the then Chief of the General Staff Joseph Joffre - changed this focus to a more aggressive offensive-first plan.
Supposedly this began with the revision of Plan XVI in September 1911, and came in force in full with the adoption of Plan XVII in the winter and spring of 1914.
There seems to be some major politico-military stuff associated with the changes that came before that, though, beginning with Plan XII in 1888 and especially involving Plan XV in 1904-06. I want details of this period, but all I can find on the Internet is pretty generic. I may have to run down some sort of dead-tree sources, and that takes time and more hand-work. I'm pushing it along.
(Update: Turns out there's a pretty important secondary source - the 1985 "War Plans of the Great Powers 1880-1914" - in the Portland State Library that is...wait for it...fucking closed because the fucking Gaza protests got out of hand and then the fucking Portland coppers swarmed in and completed the fucking destruction. So...not fucking good.)
The other "pushing-along" thing is divorce.
My soon-to-be-ex and I met with our financial planner. That went well, and she's working on the asset division the mediator recommended. We need to regroup with the mediator to move towards a settlement and, eventually, a final decree.
That's...saddening.
It's the final defeat for me, the admission of failure. The end of twenty-two years of marriage, and in that the loss of my lover, wife, and best friend. I grieve for that, and her. I wish I'd had the chance to repair the faults that resulted in the failure. I always will.
Meanwhile I'm hootched up in a mother-in-law apartment in the far edge of Northeast Portland. It's a very weird little mid-Century Ozzie-and-Harriet middle-class neighborhood in one of the most fucked-up parts of the sprawling blight that is East Portland. At some point I'll have to do a tour of this area. It's very much NOT "Portlandia".
The surrounding area is poor and I'd say "rundown" but in all likelihood it wasn't ever very far up from where it is today. It probably went from farm fields to suburban slum to semi-urban slum.
We probably don't have more skeevy homeless people than I did in North Portland. But here they feel more visible and frankly scarier; there seems to be more visibly-crazy and dangerous-looking gomers out here.
I'll have to post some photos from the truly bizarre NE 122nd Avenue Motorboat Graveyard, too. THAT's a real NE Portland oddity.
The hardest part of this move?
It's lonely.
I'm alone in a small apartment, with ex-best-friend, kids, even the fuckin' cat back in the Little House. I miss them all, even the cat waking me at oh-dark-thirty. I miss all the little interactions, the little kindnesses and gentleness of daily meetings and crossings. Waiting alongside the coffee brewing for a frowsy and sleep-soft woman to emerge from the bathroom. Passing snark from a busy daughter on her way, monosyllabic grunts from a son taking a gaming break.
It is what it is, I suppose.
I've signed up to volunteer at the local humane society to get my pet fix (lease says; no pets...). I've signed up for some sort of Post-60 political action organization ("Third Act"), though they don't seem to be doing much acting lately.
I’d do more political stuff if I wasn’t in Deep Blue Portland. We don’t really have a need to get out the Democratic vote; the Oregon GOP is so fucking looney – they were MAGAts before there were MAGAts – that they don’t have an electoral chance outside the yik-a-hoo parts of rural Oregon. And our four Electoral votes are likewise solid.
So I don’t feel like I can do much in the national races. I’ve got time but not money, and they can’t use my time.
I’m still pretty chapped that the race is as close as it is. Tubby is what we know he is, a gross, bloated, lying, psychopathic crook. He’s no better than he was eight years ago, and that he gets as much love from the wingnuts says more about them than him. But his new siderunner?
Jesus wept, could you have invented a more creepy, loathsome, spineless weirdo than Couchfucker Vance? What the hell does he offer that Tubby doesn’t? His weird breeding fetish that the press tries to sell as “caring for families”? The fuck..? He doesn’t give a shit about “families” any more than the rest of his Party of Personal Enrichment.
But I don’t expect the press to call him or any of them on that.
It's really worth pursuing how, as the current Harris campaign messaging points out, how deeply weird, creepy, and radical these "conservative" fucksticks are.
From their obsessive panty-sniffing of all kinds (from female reproduction to transgender bathroom business) to their bizarre fixation on "masculinity" to the intensity of their drive to shackle sex with breeding the wingnut politics of genitalia is, well...weird. Deeply, madly, truly strange.
I expect these fuckers to be politically and economically pro-Gilded-Age. They've always wanted to party like it's 1929.
But the culture war stuff?
It's borderline insane. And that it's not constantly derided as such is a massive failure on the part of the press (and any and everyone else who doesn't point it out). It should make everyone associated with it as popular as genital herpes.
I'm glad it's finally being at least marginally recognized and pointed to.
I guess I’m trying to be hopeful…but prepared to be disappointed. If the US public is willing to let these scum get away with their little Plutocracy Project 2025? Well…maybe I end up my post-divorce days in prison for rebellion.
I sure as hell hope not; I’m too creaky to make a good rebel.
Hope this finds you and yours busy and well enough. I had to laugh; on the way out of the grocery today the rent-a-cop asked me how it was going and without thinking I replied: “So far so good. But it’s early yet – lots of time for things to go wrong.”
That’s kind of my standard reply to that question and has been for years, which says a LOT about my outlook on life.
Maybe it’s an old sergeant thing.
I'll be back with more war plans in a bit.
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