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Noralee Frankel is the Assistant Director, Women, Minorities, and Teaching at the American Historical Association.  Her new book, Stripping Gypsy: The Life of Gypsy Rose Lee, is the biography of a woman who was constantly torn about her choices as a beautiful and intelligent woman immersed in the burlesque world.  In the original post below Frankel looks at Gypsy’s patriotism.

Gypsy’s greatest triumph as an entertainer was not her performance at Minsky’s, at the World’s Fair, or even on Broadway; but her tours of military bases beginning during World War II. In December 1943, she hitched up her trailer to her car and drove from New York to places like Fort Bragg, North Carolina, haggling with gas rationers along the way.

Gypsy encouraged soldiers’ participation in her act, even though their contribution brought more rehearsals and a less polished show. One Friday night, Gypsy performed for Army Air Force pilots in training at Gunther Field, Alabama. Her number “Gimme a Little Kiss” depended on at least three volunteers. Another number, “I Don’t Get It,” included Gypsy and the Gunther Field Rockettes. With Gypsy supplying the costumes, soldiers dressed as strippers. The program indicated that Gypsy’s performance with the enlisted men was the first time the post had staged their own show. At Bergstrom Field in Austin, Texas, the male chorus line wore costumes with heart motifs and GI mops for wigs. Gypsy donated one of her outfits to a soldier who impersonated her amazingly well in a show entitled “This Is the Army.”

Gypsy also liked to parody gender roles in these skits and acted as the sexual predator against a poor, helpless enlisted man. In the scene, Gypsy took a soldier out on a date and then she would try to convince the soldier to let her come into his home. The soldier demurred, remarking on the lateness of the hour. When Gypsy tried to kiss him, he exclaimed, “Certainly not! I’m not that kind of boy!” He insisted, “I’d hate myself in the morning.” Gypsy responded that she loved him “like a sister.” The soldier retorted, “My sister never looked at me like that.” A military police officer misreading the situation once assumed the soldier had been bothering Gypsy. He ordered the soldier to move along.

In 1951, Gypsy wanted to perform for troops stationed in Germany while she was touring Europe, but the army refused, probably because she was blacklisted from TV and radio for her political views a year earlier. By the mid-1960’s, Gypsy was back in good graces and off she went to entertain soldiers, as she had 25 years earlier, only this time in Vietnam.

In her fifties, she no longer performed, but still thought of herself as a “sexy grandmother.”

CJ Ray has tagged me with a most creative meme: I must grab the closest book with more than 123 pages, turn to page 123, go five sentences down, and provide the next three sentences here.

How fortuitous that Bartlett's tome sits nearby; a book on bodily functions occupied a nearer space yesterday.

Here are the words from the required quadrant:

Modestus said of Regulus that he was "the biggest rascal that walks upon two legs."

There is nothing to write about, you say. Well then, write and let me know just this--that there is nothing to write about; or tell me in the good old style if you are well. That's right, I am quite well.

On January 29, 7:30pm the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas will host a panel on “Military Blogging and America’s Wars.” The guests will include John Donovan, one of America’s leading milbloggers (who was invited to meet President Bush in the White House); Ward Carroll, a retired Navy Commander who flew F-14s and editor of www.Military.com; and Charles J. “Jack” Holt, chief of New Media Operations for the Department of Defense. David D. Perlmutter, a professor in the KU School of Journalism & Mass Communications , and author of Blogwars, will moderate the session.

In Blogwars Perlmutter examines the rapidly burgeoning phenomenon of blogs and questions the degree to which blog influence–or fail to influence–American political life. In the post below Perlmutter introduces us to Military Blogs.

The Greek philosopher Heraclitus is supposed to have said that “war is the father of all things.” It is absolutely true that where we live, the language we speak, the flags we fly, the beliefs we hold, the land we live on, and even our genetic heritage have been affected by who won and lost wars. Likewise, much of our technology was created for or improved toward making war. (more…)

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National Geo has a list of the 100 greatest adventure books of all time.

It's a pretty comprehensive list, but it omits two of the my favorites: On the Border with Crook by John Gregory Bourke and Albert Dean Richardson's The Secret Service, the Field, the Dungeon, and the Escape and Beyond the Mississippi, From the Great River to the Great Ocean.

Bourke was a captain in the Third Cavalry, and ADC to General George Crook; On the Border details their experiences in Arizona, the Dakotas and the Battle of the Rosebud, among other adventures. Bourke had an excellent eye for the trivial, and his descriptions of every-day life in dusty Arizona garrisons is unmatched elsewhere. His descriptions of 1870s Tucson are particularly priceless.

Richardson was a true adventurer; prior to the War for Southern Secession, he traveled across the Trans-Mississippi West, dodging Indians, thirst, Sodbusters and um, those troublesome guys in Kansas who had a colorful nickname I can not at this moment remember. During the War, he was a journalist who got himself captured by the Rebs, ended up in Libby Prison (I think it was), from which he made the daring escape referred to in his title. Then, after the War, Richardson got caught up in a love-triangle that resulted in his murder by a jealous husband, who, after a sensationalistic trial, was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

And it's impossible to take any such list seriously when it omits the two most important adventure books ever written. I mean, of course, Across the Andes by Frog and There and Back Again.

Now, personally, I think that perhaps the sight of a giant robot bear coming across the battlefield to rescue me would be a less than reassuring sight, but perhaps I guess you don' t really know for sure until you've been there. There are no atheists in fox-holes; also everyone in foxholes loves giant robo-bears.

Fort Gehenna, Arivaipa Territory, is a month from Podunk, a week from Nowhere and two days from Wherethehell. From a distance the fort looks like a conglomeration of mud huts melting under a sky hot enough to smelt iron. Not at all does it look like the outpost of civilization on a wild untamed frontier that it is. An outpost Gehenna may be, but lacking in most of the trappings that make civilization civilized. What Gehenna has is: three bored officers, their various bored dependents, sixty-five bored soldiers, a herd of scabby horses and fractious mules, a hell of a lot of dogs, and one canny cat. What it lacks is a long list but to start: no ice, no grass, no trees, no hope. The heat doesn't help matters either. It's high summer in Gehenna and it's hot. Hot enough to melt metal, hot enough to burn leather, hot enough to curdle a soldier's brains right in her skull. The heat sucks all moisture, all vigour, all life right out of a body. At Gehenna, daylight is not so very far from death.

In theory, Fort Gehenna guards the border between Arivaipa Territory, a client of the Republic of Califa, and the ominous Huitzil Empire, with which Califa is currently at war. But in practice, there is no true border, only a haze of hot sand and prickly cactus that no one can cross and expect to live. The glory of war is being gained elsewhere, and the sweating soldiers at Gehenna are mostly bored, hot, and nostalgic for home.

To the west of Gehenna the Stoneman Road ruts its way across the Sandy River (more of a trickle than an actual flow) to Calo Res, Toronado and Civilization Beyond. To the east the Abrazas Mountain looms, its snowy heights a distant tantalizing vision of clarity and coolness. To the north, unnamed mountains bristle with cactii. To the south, raw desert, sandy and barren, beyond which lies the Huitzil Empire. And everywhere above: the blue burning sky.

I was so busy with the last day of Wiscon that I didn't have a chance to memorialize Memorial Day--tho' in my defense, not a day goes by without me thinking about the sacrifices that so many men and women (and dogs too!) have made to our great country.

It's a bit of cliche to say that freedom ain't free, but it's true.

So in the words of the old Army song:

"Raise a cup to the dead already
And hurrah for the next to die!"

And hurrah for those still living, too!

Happy Memorial Day!

A somewhat urgent sounding post from FreeGovInfo: “[A]t a time when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are greatly ramping up the need for evidence-based medicine in the military, the Pentagon seems to be choosing to gut their medical information resources.”

The Alacran Regiment is the only regiment in the Army of Califa which does not wear black uniforms. In keeping with their reputation, their regimentals are sangyn colored. What color is sangyn?

Sangyn is red. But not just any red--a good true bluish blood red.

The word sangyn, of course, is a derivation or alternative spelling of sanguine, which the OED defines as "blood red." The first written record of its usage as a color came in 1500, but in 1386 Chaucer described a character "In sangwyn...he clad was al." These usages all come from a time before spelling was standardized, and people tended to write words out phonetically (how they sounded.) Different accents resulted in different spellings.

The particular spelling that I use comes from the Elizabethan era. This was a great time period for color names. The Elizabethan Costume website has a long list of fabulous colors, including popinjay, incarnate, puke, dead spaniard, and the delightfully named goose turd. (Gee--wonder what color that is?)

The Alacran Regimental uniform has argent (silver) facings, and argent aigulettes, and looks a little like this. The skirts are shorter, of course, and the weskit not so tightly cinched. The dress wig is also sangyn, and the gorget is argent, and embossed with a stylized scorpion, the animal, from which, of course, the Alacran take their name.