One of the most beautiful sites I’ve ever seen was the night range at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri when I was in basic training. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a tracer round being fired from a rifle in the the pitch black sky, but it is fantastic.

A tracer round is a false bullet that doesn’t pierce anything (I don’t think, but given it’s speed . . .) but just glows orange as it is fired. In our magazines, it was every third round. In the nighttime when you can’t use the black site post, you need to use the tracer rounds to help aim. If you ever see the old Gulf War 1 footage of the orange glowing bullets flying into the sky, these are tracer rounds.

In basic training, they don’t look nearly as threatening as they would in war.

I vividly remember sitting on some old sports bleachers huddled up with fellow soldiers and watching the night range. It was so dark. We sat in the bleachers waiting for our turn to climb into the foxhole and shoot.

Eventually, after about ten minutes or so for the current troops to get ready, a flair would be fired into the air and turn night into day. As the flare was slowly lowered to earth with its tiny parachute, the soldiers start firing.

On the night fire range, the soldiers can’t see the targets until the flair goes up. When they fire, two out of three rounds should hit the target and the third (the tracer) bounces off the target and into the sky. As the flare extinguishes, I remember looking into the air and watching the orange glowing rounds fly into the air as I smelled the discharged gunpowder waft over me.

A beautiful site. I wonder if anyone in war-ravaged Iraq ever thought so.

Originally Posted 27-July-05

On Friday, an electrician from Brazil was shot in the head five times by police who suspected he was a bomber in London. When they tried to stop him, he ran (apparently his Visa has run out). This is surprising for England. There is a general abhorrence of guns that I never saw in the States.

So I walk through London at lunchtime and wonder whether it is likely I would ever be mistaken for a bomber and killed on site. Then I realized that it was unlikely– because I’m white. London is full of Muslims like no US city I’ve ever lived in has been. It must be terrible to have this weighing on Muslim parents minds when their kids go out– will they too be mistaken? This electrician wasn’t even Muslim–he was just brown. What a terrible blunder.

It makes you think– would you rather live in a world with terrorist activity (and risk of death every day) but knowing the authorities are on your side?

Today we traveled to the new Roald Dahl museum in Great Missiden (I think I spelled that right). As well as dedicating his own imagination to the world, looking at his life captures the imagination of everyone who visits the museum.

He was an RAF pilot in the second world war and wrote occasionally after that. Then he launched a series of kids books like the BFG, Charlie and Chocolate Factory, James and Giant peach, etc.

We know the films, they’re all pretty good–but the pace of the books will hold the imagination of my small children.

Anyway. A great day out.