Sipsey Street Irregulars: What the Vanderboeghs got for Christmas gifts.

Monday, December 26, 2011

What the Vanderboeghs got for Christmas gifts.

I have been asked what I gave and got for Christmas this year enough times that I guess I'll just post it here. And no, it wasn't ammo. This Christmas, like most folks everywhere, we didn't have a whole lot of gift-giving going on, just mostly enjoyed the time together, for the girls haven't been home long enough for anybody to be stir-crazy and edgy yet. (Anybody who has female progeny, especially soon-to-be adult and testing-the-limits sisters, you know what I mean.) I got my wife Rosey a modest gift certificate for some new shoes 'cause I'm sure not dumb enough to be going out on that limb to buy them myself. In return, she found a copy of the DVD set, The Pacific, which I've never seen and she did darn good to find one left in the store as well as doing great on the price. The girls got me a new wallet to replace the one I've had for at least 10 years by our best reckoning. (I guess they got embarrassed every time I pulled it out, it was pretty threadbare.) Rosey got the girls some clothes and such. I play no part in that process other than forking over my contribution to buy them. (I try my darnedest to stay out of chick stores like Target, so it is a good trade.) Other than a box I'm working on for Matt, Nicole and Gabriel, that's about it. In return, they are about to present me with my first granddaughter, who will likely be born this week and will be named Olivia. Pretty name. Gabriel is pretty excited about getting a sister. I'll post a picture here when Olivia arrives. Let's hope she looks more like her beautiful mother than any of us male Vanderboegh mugs, or, worse, Matt's grandfather on his mother's side. Ouch! It would be terrible to be born with an innate purchase order for cosmetic surgery that drastic!

In any case, a wonderful time was had by all. So thanks for all the good wishes we had in the mail and email. As you can see, they all came true.

6 comments:

Jimmy said...: Congratulations on the granddaughter, Mike. And thanks for writing this blog; it's part of my daily read.

May God give you all his blessings through his Son this Christmas season.; December 26, 2011 at 8:58 PM
Anonymous said...: Glad to hear that Christmas was good for you and your family. Looking forward to the release of ABSOLVED and hope to see you at Knob Creek in the Spring.; December 26, 2011 at 9:17 PM
ParaPacem said...: That is wonderful; I am so happy for you all. God bless you all, and may He in His mercy, give all of us a better year in 2012. And if the Mayans were right and 2012 is the end of whatever, I say let it roll... about enjoyed all I can stand of this world & this life.
PS - Olivia is one of my favorite names - long story but it brings a happy, sweet memory of a wonderful time in my life gone by.
- j -; December 26, 2011 at 10:53 PM
Anonymous said...: Glad you had a terrific Christmas. Congratulations on your granddaughter, I have 3 and they are truly a joy. Best wishes for the New Year.
Kevin III; December 27, 2011 at 8:56 AM
Anonymous said...: My middle son, in the Army, got me a new wallet, too. He gave me the present and said, "Dad, how long have you had your wallet?" When I had to take off my shoes to count that high, he said "Here".

Gunner; December 27, 2011 at 9:04 PM
Anonymous said...: Mike,
It seems you've had the "best Christmas" of all ! >MW; December 27, 2011 at 9:15 PM

"Progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress."

I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman's club is false progress, and of no permanent value. I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave. -- H.L. Mencken

"The Fate of Unborn Millions. . ."

"The time is now near at hand which must probably determine, whether Americans are to be, Freemen, or Slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their Houses, and Farms, are to be pillaged and destroyed, and they consigned to a State of Wretchedness from which no human efforts will probably deliver them. The fate of unborn Millions will now depend, under God, on the Courage and Conduct of this army-Our cruel and unrelenting Enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance, or the most abject submission; that is all we can expect-We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die." -- George Washington to his troops before the Battle of Long Island.

"We will not go gently . . ."

This is no small thing, to restore a republic after it has fallen into corruption. I have studied history for years and I cannot recall it ever happening. It may be that our task is impossible. Yet, if we do not try then how will we know it can't be done? And if we do not try, it most certainly won't be done. The Founders' Republic, and the larger war for western civilization, will be lost.

But I tell you this: We will not go gently into that bloody collectivist good night. Indeed, we will make with our defiance such a sound as ALL history from that day forward will be forced to note, even if they despise us in the writing of it.

And when we are gone, the scattered, free survivors hiding in the ruins of our once-great republic will sing of our deeds in forbidden songs, tending the flickering flame of individual liberty until it bursts forth again, as it must, generations later. We will live forever, like the Spartans at Thermopylae, in sacred memory.

-- Mike Vanderboegh, The Lessons of Mumbai:Death Cults, the "Socialism of Imbeciles" and Refusing to Submit, 1 December 2008

"A common language of resistance . . ."

"Colonial rebellions throughout the modern world have been acts of shared political imagination. Unless unhappy people develop the capacity to trust other unhappy people, protest remains a local affair easily silenced by traditional authority. Usually, however, a moment arrives when large numbers of men and women realize for the first time that they enjoy the support of strangers, ordinary people much like themselves who happen to live in distant places and whom under normal circumstances they would never meet. It is an intoxicating discovery. A common language of resistance suddenly opens to those who are most vulnerable to painful retribution the possibility of creating a new community. As the conviction of solidarity grows, parochial issues and aspirations merge imperceptibly with a compelling national agenda which only a short time before may have been the dream of only a few. For many Americans colonists this moment occurred late in the spring of 1774." -- T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, Oxford University Press, 2004, p.1.

Sipsey Street Irregulars

Monday, December 26, 2011

What the Vanderboeghs got for Christmas gifts.

6 comments:

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