Pillow talk. Real women. Fighting men. Russian logistics

20220913

As Oksana and I lay in bed last night, she asked me why I love her. She puts this question to me just about every day. It keeps me on my toes trying to think of novel ways to answer it.

Last night’s was a variation on a very common them. She is a natural woman. Sometimes illogical, but self-aware and unapologetic about it. Loves her children.  They love her. Willing to trust external affairs such as finances, investments, legal issues and so on to her husband – even when I wish she would take a more active role.  Caring and affectionate.  Good looking, but not obsessed with her looks. Spends money foolishly, but recognizes that fact and only does it in a small way.

As the matron of the household she is in her “environment of evolutionary adaptedness.”  She cares for her bedridden father, attempts (not very successfully) to calm her anxious mother, makes sure that the children are where they should be when they should be in dressed as they should be, and so on.

I mentioned in my recent article “wild type woman” that Oksana has never taken artificial birth control. Her hormones follow the natural swings that accompany the cycles of the moon, pregnancy and nursing. It occurred to me that birth control had been a common topic of conversation in the United States. My former wife and all of her friends accepted as an article of faith that babies must be planned and must fit in with career, education and other life goals.  Mary Ann had been adamant that our daughters start when they hit their teens. So I asked “Oksana, what do your friends do about birth control?”

The question surprised her. The topic never comes up, but if any of her acquaintances take the pill, she doesn’t know about it. It is none of her business. I don’t see advertisements for birth control pills. Condoms are on display in every pharmacy, and my guess is that they are the primary mechanism. Although Cosmo magazine is sold here, I don’t think that the Helen Gurley Brown lifestyle has caught on.

While they readily talk about their relationships, conversation does not include intimate details.  The young women I meet are discrete. Unlike Western women, they don’t punctuate their conversation with curse words. If they have been going with a guy for several months it is assumed that they are sleeping together, but nobody talks about it. As you can see in the group photos of our Toastmasters club, their dress is flattering while remaining tasteful.

The women’s pride in their femininity and their willingness to let men be men could be a decisive factor in winning this war. Ukraine does not have women in foxholes. It has had a few in combat positions as pilots and so on, but for the most part the war is a man’s business. As in any large group of men I am sure there are homosexuals. This was certainly the case in Vietnam.  However, just as in Vietnam they don’t make an issue of it.  My comrade in arms in a church squabble in 1993, Air Force Colonel and Vietnam vet Bill Oyler, looked the picture of the clean-cut American flyboy.  The military here doesn’t allow gender and sexuality questions to hinder their effectiveness.

American Thinker magazine breaks the taboo against even talking about biological differences between men and women, writing that “educated liberal females, or "ELFs" for short, are the women who will proudly vote Democrat regardless of soaring inflation, rising gas prices, rampant crime in the streets, the unchecked flood of illegal aliens, and oppressive COVID policies that have irreparably damaged all children, the poor most notably. He compounds the sin by writing “Everywhere and always, men have performed better on political knowledge tests than women.”

I sin by just repeating what he wrote. However, I have cynically noted for years that an easy way to get rich would be to short companies that appoint female CEOs. That would include my former employer IBM, Yahoo, Hewlett-Packard and now General Motors. Conversely, there never has been a female equivalent to Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, or Andy Grove. The closest one can recall is Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. The difference is that she was a total fraud.

Years ago there were a few outstanding women in politics: Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir and Indira Gandhi. There have been none of that calibre for a long time. Angela Merkel, Jacinda Ardern, Michelle Bachelet and Christina Fernandez have been disastrous for their subjects, who remain variously jabbed, locked down, starving, getting mugged and freezing in the dark on account of these women’s kindhearted brand of politics. I invite you, dear readers, to first identify as male or female (my readership is such that I am sure you can do this) and then tell me who knows who these four people are. Aha! The guys have it.

To return to my point of departure, Oksana is happy being a woman, doing a good job of what women have evolved to do. I contrast this with my previous wives. Josée was sucked reflexively into the feminist maelstrom of the 1970s and became convinced she did not need me. Last I saw of her, 40 years ago, she didn’t look the better for wear and needed a copy of our divorce decree so she could go off and marry a Syrian.  Mary Ann likewise concluded that it was too risky to rely on a man for her support. She resolved to be totally independent. Which she is, at the cost of a divorce, two unhappy, unmarried daughters and a son nobody has heard from for years.

Oksana is dependent on me. But that’s only fair – I depend on her. Our children and her parents depend on us. Though we have small disagreements every day, we hug and kiss just as frequently.  I think that is kind of how it’s supposed to be.

Ukraine seems to be on a roll. Reflecting on what I’ve written over the past eight months, I think I’ve prognosticated pretty well. I did not think that Putin would be foolish enough to start a war. On the other hand, I was right that it was foolish. I have been pleased but not surprised at the way the Ukrainians have stood up.  As a people they have not gotten the respect they deserve. Conservatives in the United States joined Putin in calling them Ukrnazis, scoundrels and thieves. The evidence is in that we are a proud and resourceful people. It takes many things to win a war, but morale, which heads the list, has been high since the dark days at the very beginning.

I was pleased that Bob Homans included the link on Russian logistics that I sent him yesterday.  Forty five years ago reader Ron Glidden and I put together what became a standard Army logistics software system running on a distant precursor to the PC, a programmable work station powered by a 4K Intel 4004 chip.  I have been grateful to Ron and his brilliant noncommissioned officers for the outstanding logistics education they provided.

There are some great wordsmiths among the people I follow.  John Derbyshire wrote: …Truth is truth none the less, and we should honor those who speak the truth against mighty headwinds of social disapproval. Magna est veritas et praevalebit: “the truth is great and shall prevail.”  A fictional schoolboy once mis-translated the Latin original as “the truth is great and shall prevail a bit.”  Wish it luck when it comes to talking about the sexes. Oops. Genders.

As I wrote this there were a bunch of happy moms and children enjoying our environment of evolutionary adaptedness.  They had come for a music lesson and stayed for lunch.  I also include a couple that Zoriana insisted I snap just because I had the camera out the other night.

That’s the news from Lake WeBeGone, where the twenty first century has been slow to arrive.  The strong man is content with his good looking woman and we are both fond of the children we produced.  Amazing for this day and age, they seem content to grow up being like us.

Graham