More on The Little Toy Dog

While most of The Little Toy Dog deals with the flyers’ imprisonment in Lubyanka, the part that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end occurred near the end of the book, during their transit back to the United States:

Meanwhile at nine-thirty that morning, the big Constellation from Amsterdam was letting down her landing gear on the approach to snow-covered Goose Bay Field. Bruce Olmstead had slept soundly across the Atlantic since, just before take-off, he had been given a sedative. John McKone had dozed fitfully. When they opened the plane’s door, there by the runway was a cluster of staff cars—in the lead, one flying the flag of a four-star general. For whom could this be? They had no brass like this aboard. At the foot of the ramp the two captains were greeted by the Wing Commander, a smiling bird colonel who told them to pile in, that car was theirs; the Air Force at Goose was giving four-star honors today to its two recovered goslings.

I guess one probably would have to have been in the military to realize the significance of this. Officers above the rank of Colonel are called flag officers because they get their own flags—one-star flags for Brigadier Generals up through four-star flags for Generals. When a flag officer is in his car, the car gets a flag mounted on it; when a car with a flag on it goes past everyone salutes that flag.

The Little Toy Dog

I read The Little Toy Dog this past weekend. It’s the true story of the two surviving crewmembers of a reconnaissance plane that was shot down in the Barents Sea who were imprisoned by the Soviets from July 1960 to January 1961.

I liked the book very much. My favorite part, strangely enough, is from the Preface, where the author talks about the publisher “graciously accepting [the book’s] title against his seasoned judgment,” going on to say:

Anyone in the book trade will realize why he warned us, for our colorless, understated title utterly ignores both the excitement of the shoot-down and the high drama in the interrogations, refers to an utterly unimportant episode in the book, and is meaningless to anyone who has not finished it.

I wonder, though, if the book might not have gotten more notice if the author could have at least settled on a concise subtitle. Instead, there is one subtitle (or no subtitle, but a longer description instead) on the dust jacket, a different subtitle on the half title (which is not supposed to have a subtitle at all), and yet another subtitle on the title page.

And, besides, I wouldn’t call the figurine a little toy dog, anyway. I’d call it a little plastic (or rubber?) dog—or I’d call it a little Snoopy dog. Maybe the publisher couldn’t get permission from Charles Schultz to call it a little Snoopy dog—or maybe Michelle Marie Palm never called it that.

Where is the President on this?

Why isn’t our President speaking out against this lawlessness?
http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=81873

Life is Weird

My recently-graduated-from-college 2nd daughter just officially got engaged. She and her betrothed met at school on the other side of the state (4‐5 hours away) but he and his family live only 1½ hours away from us; we’ve been to his parents’ house and his parents have been to our house. His parents already seem like my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, which feels odd since my mother and my mother-in-law first met on my wedding day and hardly ever saw each other.

When I left home at seventeen, I did not even consider staying close to home—or returning close to home or even living near any of my siblings; it wasn’t until 8‐10 years later, after I’d become a father, that I realized the, um, shall we say, babysitting benefits of living close to family members; I’d be willing to bet that my daughter and her future family will live at least somewhat close to one set of in-laws. What’s more, in this age of e-mail and Facebook, it’s comforting to know that my daughter should also be able to stay in touch with friends from school—something else that at her age I hadn’t really considered important.

Aw, well; at least I can take some comfort from the fact that my daughter does not seem to be repeating all my mistakes.

Best wishes to her.

Will She or Won’t She?

So, will Sarah Palin run or won’t she?

I think she will run. I think it’s stupid to think she could have a stronger role as a “Kingmaker”; I think she would lose all the media attention the moment she announced that she was not going to run.

I think she has to run; the media would have a field day, otherwise, laughing at her and calling her a coward and then ignoring anything else she has to say.

I don’t think she’s a coward. I think she will run and I think she will win.

1984

I just finished reading (re-reading?) 1984. I thought I’d read it before, but what I remembered as my favorite part of the book ... was not even in the book. My new theory is that what I remembered as my favorite part of 1984 is actually a scene from Fahrenheit 451.

George Orwell was a Socialist, in any case. His ideas on Capitalism were seriously flawed.

That is all.