help, Mr. Peabody!

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In many television shows and movies during my childhood, the idea of using a time machine to travel backward was a solution to many problems and answered many questions. The cartoon “Peabody’s Improbable History” featured the adventures of a genius, Mr. Peabody, and his boy, Sherman. They travelled back in history to visit various people who, but for Mr. Peabody, might not have been immortalized for developing inventions or theories. Did Mr. Peabody visit Pythagoras? A true story about translating a Babylonian clay tablet, discovered a hundred years ago, indicates the “Pythagorean Theorem” and trigonometry were used fifteen hundred years earlier than the Greek we credit.

A movie and several television episodes of Star Trek featured time travel, but one (All Our Yesterdays), has Captain Kirk and crew investigate a planet whose population has vanished ahead of their star about to go nova. In the episode, a timekeeper sent everyone backward in time to live out their lives and avoid obliteration. In our history, myths of ancient civilizations like Atlantis or Homeric tales that proved later to be true, indicates history repeats itself. With nations today always on the verge of destroying one another, nuclear war is more real than our Sun going nova- at least for the next 4 billion years. However, we have just reached the milestone sending human-made inventions beyond our solar system’s limits (Voyager 1 and 2). An achievement a half-million years in the making.

Paleontology and genetic research suggest that modern homo sapiens might have out-competed homo Neanderthalis to inherit the world. In recent years, the discovered remnants of presupposed modern construction techniques nearly a half-million years old suggest we may repeat history over and over again. Discoveries of enormous cities reclaimed by the Amazonian jungles, Bronze Age religious sites drowned by the sea, and Roman roads and aqueducts demonstrate a modern knowledge of science (astronomy) and construction techniques. Perhaps, like the conquering Spanish conquistadors in the Americas, or the Near East Babylonians, Assyrians, Persians, Greeks and Ottomans, might humans repeatedly destroy libraries that housed knowledge it then takes millennia to relearn?

Mr. Peabody, we need you.

On the road

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My wife insists that a road trip I am currently enjoying would make an entertaining video. She was intimating that she should have put a camera in the vehicle, so our friends back home could enjoy colorful jabs we were bound to make during the ride. We have made these at each other’s expense for decades. When I first suggested riding along with Russ, I protested to him and my spouse at game night, “It is not that I want to go so much, as I want to make sure Russ crosses the state line and keeps going.”

“Your wife will enjoy a peaceful week without you around. I’m the giver here,” He retorted.

He and I, two retired Navy Chief Petty Officers, drove fifteen hundred miles together from San Diego to Norman, Oklahoma in April. This would be both my first time RV’ing and first time making a road trip with Russ. I had asked to accompany him back in February, and he had quickly agreed. Together with our wives, we had been close friends for two decades, serving together in our community church, enjoying shows, concerts and other events together. From our earliest days, he would greet me Sundays, “Hey Old Man” and I would retort, “Respect your elders!”. We were exactly six days apart in age. “But you are, and will always be older”, he would say.

That I retired as a Senior Chief Petty Officer, which in the military paygrade was E-8, and he a Chief, or E-7, was always a running source of amusement. “That is exactly what I would expect from an Even Number.” I would generally follow up with something about him being odd. For the last several years, we would only pause our characteristic jabs during church or our small bible group meeting each week. After his wife passed, his neighbors, my wife and I spent Friday evenings playing Mexican Train. (It also could have been an excuse to drink margaritas but we never made excuses.)

Fast forward to this year. With his house sold and a new one under construction in Oklahoma, we were on the road moving him back to his Oklahoma roots, daughter and grandchildren.  Our first stop was to visit his friend during a stopover in Las Vegas. Where many would think casinos, we instead visited the Pin Ball Museum together.

The pinball museum has hundreds of operational machines – and many that need repair. This was sort of a pleasant memory for Russ as he had repaired many of those 1960 -1980s era machines before his Navy career. Playing several games, Russ casually reminded me that I might be dropped off somewhere in Nevada, if I continued to win as handily.

In Las Vegas, it always takes an edge to get into exclusive places. Any good Navy Chief knows how to get things done, in uniform or in retirement. And so we had an “in” to get a table for a great dinner at Top of the World Restaurant at the Strat. (Of course, now that my wife knows, I will have to go the traditional route to make reservations for our next anniversary,) We also had tickets to the Cirque de Soleil Michael Jackson tribute show, One. And now, that my wife also knows this, I will have to scramble to get two tickets for this phenomenal show as well.

The next day we got out of Las Vegas a little later than planned. I had to walk our other passenger on this road trip first. Our other passenger, Karma, is Russ’ dog, the sweetest roly-poly pittie dogs any . Oh, and we had a little electrical problem that needed attention. Though we had made an art of good-natured ribbing each other at every opportunity, we barely traded a barb, “You doddering old man. Can I get your walker?”

Instead, the twenty-something hours of driving across three states was spent with the fictional adventures of Mike Rabb, a former CIA special operator, as he tracked down megalomaniacs and world-destabilizing villains. These audio books kept us focused while we drove through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and then into the Sooner state.

We arrived in Norman in time to catch a little nap, meet Russ’s family and catch a rare celestial event over this specific part of the country, a total solar eclipse across the central U.S.

So this week is a vacation and perhaps an opportunity to invest in some property. And catch up with a little sarcastic bombasts.

for amusement only

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Any discussion today about the future of society, in peace or in wartime, or the future of art and entertainment, or scientific discoveries seem to include Artificial Intelligence or AI. Yet just as the ancient Greek story of Prometheus, punished for eternity by giving the secret of fire to mortals, we mortals are hell-bent on discovering and distributing ever-more sophisticated means to curb our curiosity, intellect, creativity, and human interaction.

I read online that AI can now deliver various sorts of creative solutions, including drawings and even blog posts. I decided to make a simple test. These drawings were produced by a web application in response to test queries I made using Microsoft Copilot. For the first drawing, I gave Copilot a few parameters such as the blog name on a scroll and sea-god Poseidon. After being a bit more structured in my defining parameters, Copilot returned the latter drawing.

I do not think I will be amused if Copilot starts to independently publish posts on this blog based on my Internet history.

Remembrance

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Twenty-two years ago, we watched in horror when terrorists killed thousands, using airliners as weapons. I lost a former shipmate and mentor, CDR Dan Shanower, at the Pentagon that morning. As a Navy Reservist, several of my unit members were recalled to Active Duty that first month, beginning a campaign involving thousands of servicemembers -the Global War On Terror – that concluded twenty years later. What veterans look upon as “moral injury”, that the bloodshed over decades conclude in a wasted effort of politics and trillions of dollars spent, we must reassure ourselves. As veterans we did our duty honorably. Our fellow veterans -Americans, Allies, Afghan and Iraqi partners, Kurds, and others helped squash terrorism globally. All of us suffered loss. The lesson we all should learn is that conflict between differing politics, cultures and ideologies has always and will continue, to fester. Only unity creates a strong defense against hatred and tyranny.

Yesterday, September 10th, was national Suicide Awareness Day, and I volunteered to help the organizers of a Remembrance Walk in San Diego. Hundreds of people who have lost loved ones, colleagues, or friends come together annually to support one another, and to help spread awareness so that others will have tools and resources to help those contemplating suicide. There were groups and agencies present, informing us that aid is available to the suffering. As many know, the horrors of war, horrific accidents, murder, physical and mental abuse, addiction and apathy are conditions for veterans, family members, school children and First Responders to contemplate suicide. As many have learned, painfully, those who seem to be strongest under such conditions, are themselves suffering and in need of support. Only an engaged, educated and empathetic community creates a strong defense against self-harm.

Ed. A future post will publish various San Diego, as well as national, resources for veterans and others to obtain emotional and physical help, help prevent suicide, and to build community.

Leave No one Behind

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Reprinted, with permission, from Lt Col. (Ret) Scott Mann’s post on LinkedIn, 22 August 2023

In the fall of 2004, a handful of Green Berets volunteered to risk their lives and recover an Army Air Crew that had crashed their small aircraft in the Hindu Kush. Pushing the chopper to its altitude threshold envelope, they landed near the crash site well above 13,000 feet.

Sadly, the crew had succumbed to the elements and didn’t survive.

Storms started to roll in. The SF team stayed on station and battled severe altitude sickness. They extracted every single crew member and their personal effects so that they could be returned to their families for closure.

It mattered.

Our men and women warriors deserve to be remembered. Teach these stories of courage and sacrifice to those too young to remember. And teach them to every generation who come afterwards, that we are a people willing to help the vulnerable against the oppressor. -Editor

Lt. Col. (Ret) Scott Mann, U.S. Army Green Beret, served multiple tours in Afghanistan. Author, veterans advocate, keynote speaker, and leadership coach, has testified before Congress on behalf of our combat veterans, Afghan coalition partners and their families. Author of the play Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret, is helping to heal the moral injury to thousands of veterans inflicted on them by 20 years of war and America’s ignominious withdrawal at the end of August, 2021.

sea stories and the Costco connection

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For a veteran’s spouse, a trip to get groceries may take a little longer than planned. It has become de rigueur for me on casual outings to wear one of my Navy veteran ballcap collection or t-shirts that recall a 25-year career. Several of my friends today are veterans; however, among millions of San Diego residents there are only a few with whom I share a specific place, time and mutual acquaintances where we served.

I added another last week.

During a shopping trip at Costco, when I excused myself passing a “Shipmate” wearing an “AD-19 Yosemite” ballcap, it started us swapping sea stories. He served at sea on that destroyer tender. I recalled a Machinery Repairman at the Transient barracks who was waiting on orders for that tender. Then we talked about bootcamp. A few years my senior, he was a Recruit Training Company Commander in San Diego at the time I went to Boot Camp here in 1977 and knew my “CC”. As we talked, I was reminded of several others I last talked with decades ago from those early years in my career. But this was the first time in more than forty years, I talked with someone from that period of my life, who knew the first Sailor who shaped my Navy career, Company 941Company Commander, ABE1 Robert Walsh.

Advocating for the homeless veteran

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Homelessness. The word itself conjures up all sorts of desperate images. Many who have not experienced homelessness are often one paycheck away (layoff or an economic recession) from such a fate. Some of these veterans whom I have encountered in the past, did not expect to be homeless, but due to marital issues, mental health challenges, the high cost of living, or addiction ended up in shelters or on the streets. Help, for those who want it, requires diligence and patience to navigate the bureaucracy. Finding an advocate to help is not easy, and often there are many seeking assistance who require a time-consuming process to provide needed services. For a volunteer not employed in the social services public sector, it means lots of research. Judging by the number of veteran outreach programs started by veterans, we take care of our own.

One such case I have been seeking to help has been “identity-less” for a very long time. In his words, he lost all his identification, military separation papers (DD-214), social security card, state identification, and personal papers, leaving him unable to easily re-engage into society. Twenty years later he reached out to me, finding my business card where he gets mail. In a close circle of friends, and the kindness of a homeless shelter, he was encouraged to take steps to recover. As a veteran, he was originally input in the VA medical system, and yet, without a government-issued document, he cannot prove that the record is his. To verify his identity, a military or VA identity card, social security card, utility bills, or a certified birth certificate are steps to obtaining a state identification card. He will need to have financial means to meet required payment of fees through check or money orders. Even though initially contacted to obtain a personal criminal background check – as a means to confirm his identity, the Department of Justice requires a government-furnish identity card (at minimum an social security card) to submit fingerprints.

As he was once married, even though his spouse has since deceased, he may request a certified copy of a marriage license from the state where it was performed, as a document to confirm identity. However, as he claims he is a native of California, regaining his identity can begin with an application, notarized, to request a certified birth certificate from the Department of Public Health. From there, he can apply at a Veterans Administration office or through a veteran service organization, to request his DD-214. With these government documents, he can request a replacement Social Security card through the local government office, and a state identity card.

Steps to identity recovery in California:

  • VS-113A Obtaining a certified marriage license, for a marriage performed in California (other states have their own processes) as a form of identification
  • VS-111. Obtaining a certified birth certificate . Submit notarized statement from a recognized family member See application, pg 5. Also, an authorized member of a government agency can request the registrant’s birth certificate.
  • If the requestor knows his or her Social Security Number, he may use the government website to request a replacement Social Security card online. Certified copies of other identity documents can be uploaded to the request. These have to bear an official stamp and not be photocopies nor a notarized one. If the SSN is unknown, a visit to a local Social Security office is necessary.
  • For a DD-214, the official Release from Active Duty, visiting a Veterans Administration office may be necessary, unless the former service member has taken the steps to enroll in milConnect. An advocate, or next of kin, may, with the veteran’s permission in writing, request the veteran’s military record or DD-214. Here are the instructions. Noted in the instructions, “Certain basic information needed to locate military service records, includes: the veteran’s complete name as used in service; service number; Social Security Number (if applicable); branch of service; dates of service; date and place of birth. For records affected by the 1973 Fire, additional information, such as place of discharge; last assigned unit; and place of entry into service may be useful.”

Ask the Chief: steps in getting your life back

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Privacy, in its purest sense, is impossible. All of us at one time or another require some good or service from the world. I once mocked a friend who declared he wanted to “drop off the radar” and therefore, not be surveilled by big business, targeted by advertising on the Internet, to cease getting spam mail and email, and not have “Big Brother” know his movements. Exactly, in this totally-connected, iPhone- and Amazon-connected generation, would anyone manage that? From my earliest years, and particularly once I joined the military, I was DNA-catalogued, fingerprinted, listed in voluminous credit bureau and bank records, and school files going back more than 40 years. In almost any setting, we exchange information that is tracked and personally-identified. Retail and ATM transactions, recordings on store surveillance cameras, hospital records, Netflix accounts, school IDs, drivers licenses, and social security numbers are just a few records we all know about. For the last twenty-five years, our daily lives have become an interwoven record of billions of data points, such that a native-born person’s identity is rarely questioned.

What happens when someone dropped out of the “mainstream” and has spent decades in the “fringe” of society? We have hundreds of thousands of homeless people in the United States, many of whom might want to live as many of us do, with jobs, safe conditions, and self-respect. What if you do not have anything that identifies you, as you? No photo identification, no credit card, bank statement, social security card, or birth certificate that can be readily produced. Assuming someone has not been incarcerated, what records can they produce – to get a job, a government id card, or SSN card? The homeless often suffer since many of their belongings may be lost or stolen, and family members may be unwilling to help.

Recently, I was asked about a service I provide, live scan fingerprinting, as to whether it would help get someone assistance in obtaining identification. The person on the other end of the call was reportedly a military veteran who had been homeless for twenty years. And at the urging of a family member, was seeking assistance to start moving his life back in the right direction. Namely, to obtain identification documents to help transition from a homeless shelter.

It begs the question, how does anyone begin to piece your life, in 2023, together? What little I know of government processes, indicate that someone has to show some government-furnished document – an identity card, drivers license, visa, or at minimum some bills that indicate your identity is recognized. In the absence of these, or to begin the process of obtaining identification, a person needs to request a copy of their birth certificate (which may be difficult without “proof” of identity). As a veteran, one’s military records or Veterans Administration medical files should be accessible, but these take some effort to obtain. Organizations that serve specific groups, such as Veteran Service Organizations (American Legion, VFW, DAV, and so forth), the VA, and local community resources may be able to help guide someone to regain identification. However, it often requires someone trustworthy and willing to help. And time and money, to petition agencies and courts, obtain certified records, and more than likely, a willingness to be an agent or advocate for the person seeking his or her “identity”.

I am motivated to help this veteran. As a veteran advocate I follow on social media, Lt Col Scott Mann states in the case of our veterans, “it is up to us”. I have asked the vet I spoke with today to keep my number tucked away. In the meantime, I will do some research to see whether the avenues I consider in this post will help guide this individual forward. If you have any experience in such things, I will welcome your feedback.

Lessons from Manzanar, part 2

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Human Rights and the public good

At the visitor center at Manzanar National Monument, my wife and I spoke with a docent about a book of images available at their store There were images that Ansel Adams, the famous photographer of landscapes, had taken of internees over the years. Apparently, another famous portraitist, Dorothea Lange, also had taken a series of images that captured the human pain more succinctly (only such images that reflected positively were published; the others, subsequently, were not released publicly by the Government). Forty years later, after incremental policy reversals and President Ronald Reagan publicly apologizing to survivors and descendants, these sites were turned into monuments to make future Americans remember.  However, racism finds other targets.

 “After the attacks of 9/11, when people angrily singled out people wearing Muslim headscarf”, she said, “it was the Nisei – the children of those who had been in the relocation camps, who defended Americans of Mid-eastern decent.” They did not want the painful lessons of the past to be repeated.  She identified a child’s photograph on display there in the center, from the Manzanar camp, as one who defended a Muslim woman after September 11th. Like the refugees of the last few years who fled civil wars in Libya, from ISIS in Syria, crossing the Mediterranean and interdicted in Greece and Italy, Ukrainian women and children fled the Russian invasion there. With these emigrants joining those who have been resettled in several countries including the United States, the competition for services only gets more competitive. However, these recent immigrants are learning valuable skills to support themselves, notably in healthcare, which after the global COVID pandemic have seen a large need but few new workers among the native born. In the fifty years since Vietnam, Americans of Vietnamese ancestry hold public office. Americans of Philippine ancestry serve in the military and in public services. Americans of Middle Eastern ancestry hold public office. Americans have elected and reelected a black President, Vice President, congressmen and mayors. However, the public is still being persuaded through government institutions and media conglomerates that racism is the single most prevalent problem in America.

Lessons from Manzanar

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For what they “might do”

A road trip north of Los Angeles on Highway 395 went past a monument to one of the ugly chapters in Twentieth Century history: the Manzanar War Relocation Camp where eleven thousand Americans were imprisoned during World War II for what they ‘might do’. It was one of ten such concentration camps in the American West incarcerating 110,000 men, women and children. Here, in the Owens Valley of California, the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains present a stark contrast of geologic beauty and human shamefulness. The United States Government, abetted by local politicians and the media, unconstitutionally deprived Americans of their rights without due process. With racist laws in western states, particularly in California, people of Asian ancestry were prohibited from owning real estate or businesses.  While incarcerated in these camps, these men, women and children were publicly humiliated, lost property (through unpaid leases and property taxes), and forced to live in dusty, cheaply constructed conditions.  During the war, these people were subjected to “loyalty interviews” and eligible men were expected to accept being enlisted in the military to prove themselves. Once FDR realized that the Supreme Court was going to hear a case that would publicly shame him and the policy of internment, the Government initiated a plan to release the internees, comprising $25 payment and a bus ticket to another inner part of the country.

To be continued

540 acres housing 11000 people
memorial created by internee, 1943
plaque dedicated to those in America’s concentration camps -for Americans

Information on Pensions, Disability & Annuities

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One of the tools any recruit, officer candidate, enlistee or veteran should develop is financial planning. Married or single, at age 19 or 39, we all need solid finances. Whether the military is only for a few years, a career, or the member has been injured and receives a disability pension, becoming educated and then disciplined about finances will help individuals and families plan for and respond to changing economic conditions. An organization, annuity.org, based in Florida reached out to us last month to include the linked newsletter article in that theme of planning your career and post-military years to remain fiscally strong.

VA Retirement Benefits: Pensions, Disability & Annuities

Editor’s note: This information is provided for self-education only. Truth, Half-Truths and Sea Stories has received no compensation from annuity.org for hosting them.

Port o’ Call: Cape Canaveral, Florida

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Performing a maintenance routine for equipment topside on the USS PETERSON as it arrived in port on a sunny Spring morning thirty years ago was actually fortunate timing. We were just tying up at the naval pier not far from the launch site where NASA’s missions to the moon had flown. But that morning was an unexpected treat. At nearly the same time as we moored, a Space Shuttle roared off the launch pad.

I had been a fan of space flight ever since I the middle Sixties when I had watched the Gemini and Apollo launches on a television wheeled into our elementary school classroom. In the 1980s, I had been with a group of college students touring the Johnson Spaceflight Center near Houston during a national convention of the Theta Tau engineering fraternity. Living in Tucson, Arizona in the early Eighties, I also saw an early Shuttle (the Enterprise(?)) being flown piggyback on its modified 747 airline as it routed through Davis-Monthan AFB on the way back to the Cape. And in four years prior to my assignment aboard the PETERSON, I was stationed in the Washington DC area, where one of the tasks our department performed was to install a mobile van with equipment to communicate with the Shuttle as it orbited the Earth during a particular mission. Being in the Capitol region also gave me opportunities to visit the Air and Space Museum where visitors could walk into a mockup of the first orbiting space station, SkyLab, and to see many exhibits, including items returned from the Apollo Moon missions.

With my grandchildren not yet old enough to appreciate the excitement I felt watching spacecraft launching toward the Moon, I am glad that the first ARTEMIS mission to the Moon is still a few years away. Perhaps when they are my age, they will not have thirty- or fifty-year old memories to recall when we reached for space.