def. Carry water for (someone) 1. To serve, assist, or perform menial or difficult tasks for some person, group, or organization.
Ten years ago, as a retired Navy Senior Chief, the first thing I had to adapt to was my immediate loss of seniority and status. The tradition and status acquired over twenty-five years meant little to the non- military working public. As in most professions, a job in the commercial technical sector is judged only on your performance. Meeting the required output of widgets particularly at the fiscal end of the Quarter when the resources, software, or parts needed to meet the quota finally become available. Packing up an expensive piece of equipment and hustling it to FEDEX, or renting a delivery truck and driving it a hundred miles to another facility, is somewhat like carrying water for my boss.
Unless you have been working in the manufacturing world for a number of years, as an older technician, it seems that adapting to rapid changes – in technology, in workforce culture, and in tasks each employee is asked to perform, is more difficult. In engineering, procedures often lag product development. Cross-training peers is often as much how much they observe as giving them polished instructions. For some, it is jarring to be hindered by processes or lack of information, or age, or when she has been willing to “come out of retirement”, but is feeling her contribution is wasted.
Additional study, asking specific questions, and bringing one’s strengths to the job is necessary. Willing to do whatever is required, despite not being in a “job description”, helps the overall mission of the company. Working with a curmudgeon is difficult.
I have found that courtesy, whether toward peers, couriers, janitors, IT support, or supply clerks is repaid in kind. With more than a quarter-century of military service, working initially with folks cleaning toilets, and later reporting to Admirals and senior Government executives, character and a dedication to excellence count toward career success.
Mention grinders to an older Navy veteran, generally brings to mind the large parade ground we marched around in Bootcamp. But “grinder” also means a particular type of sandwich. In Southern California, while there are different names: submarine sandwiches, hoagies, and grinders, there are some places that are vastly different than the franchises that pop up everywhere. And in El Cajon, California, not far from my home, is an institution 50 years in the making, The Grinder.
I actually only stopped in Thursday night at the request of my son, a Vocational Nurse working the evening shift, for a sub specifically made there. It might have been my first visit though I have lived in the area twenty years. After a long workday and a long, rainy evening commute, but I would drive an extra few miles for a sandwich.
It was not a fancy place. A video game table of the sort I had not seen in thirty years was against the wall. On the walls, were Navy-themed art, a Bible quote, articles on the history of this deli, a plaque honoring fifty years, and pictures of local kids. But the one I noted just before ordering was the image of the late Chief John Finn, Medal of Honor recipient (Pearl Harbor) on the wall. The kids working there know whose picture it is. San Diego County is a military community, and El Cajon in the part known as “East County” is home to a large population of veterans going back to the Second World War.
“where do we eat and what show do we go to?”
On date night, quickly planned, even the retired Senior Chief’s understanding wife may have felt a grinder was sub-expectations. The mall was packed with Friday-night families. As it turned out, a little pastry and coffee with live music at a coffee house we like was perfect. We knew the music and lyrics; the acoustics were okay, and probably because the band and their fans are all about the same ages, they concluded at a reasonable hour on a Friday night. 7:30 is almost bedtime.
So much for foodies partying into the wee hours (7:30PM)
What was your biggest accomplishment when you were a teenager? When I was fourteen, I was responsible enough to arrive at my assigned work at 4:45 AM daily, load a hay wagon, and then feed 80 horses. And in the late afternoon, repeat it all again. I was determined to trade labor for horseback riding lessons. That was on a dude ranch in Arizona where I learned responsibility, animal psychology, ranch operations, and customer service. That was forty years ago. Every generation hears how their predecessors “walked uphill in the snow, both ways, to school and back”. In an age where many are fixated on social media, feel subject to hardship and discrimination without government mandates, and may be emotionally scarred because of others’ contrary views, it is not universal. It may only be a minority opinion.
Becoming an entrepreneur at the age of ten, Noa Mintz, at age sixteen founded a New York City childcare agency, (vetting nannies)and was among those entrepreneurs under age 18 featured in Fortune magazine (2016). Eugenie de Silva, starting at the University of Leicester (UK) in 2015, graduated age 16, from Harvard, through distance learning, with a Masters in Liberal Arts. A pilot, Mason Andrews, completed a circumnavigation of the globe in 2018, as the youngest to do so – at age 18.
And then there is the young Dutch woman, Laura Dekker, who at 14 set off in a sailboat to circumnavigate -solo- the world in 2011. She had been born to a sailing family, and had been dreaming of sailing the world since the age of ten. She had the support of her parents, but had to fight the Dutch authorities in court to be permitted to get underway. For more than five hundred days she navigated and explored the places along her route. A film produced by National Geographic presents her video record of her travels.
And finally, there is Jordan Romero, who at age 13, with his father, reached the summit of Mount Everest, in 2009, and by the age of 15 years, 5 months , became the youngest person to climb the Seven Summits (the highest peaks in each of the seven continents).
From circumnavigating the globe, climbing mountain peaks, graduating from a most prestigious university, or becoming a successful entrepreneur, children who attempt the difficult, and refuse to have their dreams quashed, demonstrate that if you have a dream and are determined to succeed, you can. Leave the participation trophy to others.
One of the major issues in North America and European countries today is immigration. Politics and basic economics drive the debate, regardless of which side one supports. Perhaps it is worth considering – by all parties – for thousands of years, new arrivals brought talent, art, foodstuffs, and skills in navigation, or farming, or just hardiness. There were no aid agencies or politicians, and the adaptable survived. Across vast distances and different continents, it is no wonder that these were first undertaken by sailors, military men, and adventurers.
Long before I became a Sailor, I recall reading the adventure of Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian zoological researcher and explorer. It was then twenty-five years after an impressive 1947 voyage his team made across the Pacific Ocean. Compared to the modern warships in which I traversed the Pacific Ocean, Heyerdahl – and by experiment, pre-Inca natives, constructed a thirty-foot boat, of reed and balsa-wood. With a banana-leafed thatch cabin and a single-mast, six men departed South America. If modern man, in a post-war world might feel exposed – a hundred miles at sea, no sign of land and no birds in the sky, what were the first explorers possibly thinking. I thought this with experience of riding a ship 530 feet (161m) at the waterline, feeling the speck he was in comparison to the ocean.
Thor Heyerdahl’s point in the mid-Twentieth Century was to test that people might have settled Polynesia not from Asia, but from the east – South America – fifteen hundred years ago. A second settling might then have come from North America- British Columbia – by way of Hawaii, five hundred years later. Through radio-carbon dating, sweet potatoes which originate in Central and South America, were subsequently (1991) found by archaeologists in thousand-year old sites in Polynesia. (Since 2005, scholars debate which group came first – Polynesians to Hawaii or Hawaiians into Polynesia).
If you have not read Thor Heyerdahl’s account, Kon-Tiki, and you have a bit of the ocean-adventuring spirit, I suggest adding this to your list. I intend to revisit his story. Perhaps while eating a sweet potato.
I started to think about Mark Twain this week, how I am at the same age when he began writing some of his most biting satire about politics, religious hypocrisy, bigotry and the nature of people. Whatever he was as a critic of Government, he always believed in supporting the nation and his writing made people think. While I still see the fundamental good in people and role of a loving God to help change flawed humanity, I am sorely disappointed by and feel a powerless spectator to, the downward spiral caused by politics and politicians. What can a journalist do?
expose arrogance of power
A Senator chastised schoolchildren visiting the Congress who urged her to support legislation proposed by a ‘socialist’ Freshman Congressman and one of her colleagues. It could have been a moment to explain that legislation needs to be carefully studied as to the impact on the governed. But she would not be dictated to. In prior years, letters I sent her as a constituent in the Senator’s district, specifically urging support for issues she opposes, generated form-letter responses. A one-time Political Science graduate, I am angry that important issues are not often acted upon by our elected representatives. Increasingly, actions are opposed ideologically, becoming a test of wills between Legislature members and the Executive Branch. While many support “Progressive”national politics and condemn “capitalists” or “conservatives”, there are no substantive debates of the merits and the failings of policies, but often incoherent and confusing ‘sound bites’.
highlight ethical and unethical governance
Government agencies specifically charged with protecting the safety and sanctity of the nation’s citizens respond instead to political power brokers, lobbyists and vocal opponents of the nation’s fundamental principles. Elected representatives and un-elected bureaucrats refuse to operate on Constitutional and nationally-unifying principles, but at other times defend their positions using the same principles they previously refuted. Most unsettling, is that some politicians will use the formerly apolitical agencies of Government to investigate opponents or enhance political agendas, and when opposed, conclude that the victorious majority must either be “deplorable” and bigoted, clinging to outmoded ideas and philosophies, or have colluded with extra-national agents.
train people to “think” and debate
Public education over fifty years has steadily replaced literature, debate, and ‘controversial’, i.e. unpopular, topics like physical education, wood shop, and trades-based career preparation, for gender and sexual identity accommodation, activism, and uniformity. Children who are raised to question classroom stances on topics that contravene their parents beliefs (prayer, football, ‘binary’ genders, or other ‘conservative’-supported subjects) are subject to administrative penalties and peer abuse. Colleges, once institutions that provided the foundations for an educated population in everything from arts to zoology, produce impoverished liberal service-industry workers with billions of dollars in student loan-indebtedness. But teachers, professors, and college coaches have wealth and comfort regardless of student success.
expose incompetence and waste
Local and state government may demand revenue (taxes and ‘fees’) for actions that do not materially benefits those taxed. Transportation projects that incur billions in wasted dollars for “trains to nowhere”. Bureaucrats demand ‘carbon credits’ exchanged those who use personal transportation to go to work. They charge higher fees for delivering power and water to residents, due at first to ‘climate change’ which others perceive historically as periodic drought. But then the government raises fees when residents conserve too much. In the intervening years, there are no projects to collect additional water or energy.
Courts rule against voter-supported legislation that a minority oppose. Or they issue injunctions that increase the cost and delivery time of a particular resource for years. Politicians and bureaucrats deliberately obstruct law enforcement officers, both state and federal, when executing their duties. Others release dangerous criminals into the community based on alleged racial bias at sentencing, only to have them offend and be re-incarcerated.
journalism: be not a tool of politics
What, if anything, can journalists do to help expose the failures of politics and Government? Ideally, journalists are the agents of the governed, investigating and exposing fraud, incompetence, and abuse of power. Journalists must elevate their craft, to withhold biases and favoritism toward a politician, an ideology, or ‘sacred’ conclusions, and report everything that may support or refute the subject. Of course, the twenty-four hour media business is a profit-driven business, and ego, power, and prestige are just as driving influences for journalists as is determining fact from fiction. When actors create false scenarios, or others rush to attack (like the MAGA hat student and the native American) that became widespread calls for violence and condemnation, the lack of proper investigation fortunately only resulted in embarrassment and lack of journalistic credibility. It may still result in a civil judgement in favor of a maligned victim. Journalism as the vanguard of the public suffer a loss of integrity in reaching conclusions before investigating the facts.
use of Mark Twain’s image: no copyright infringement is intended
“Lies, damn lies, and statistics”, popularized by Mark Twain, was his restatement of the quote by the Nineteenth Century English Parliamentarian, Benjamin Disraeli
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.” Abraham Lincoln
As you sip a latte at Starbucks, feeling outraged by a President who apparently does not share your social conscience, you wonder how the country has become so brazenly racist and homophobic. While you have not seen any negative impact to your paycheck nor fewer clients to your business, the economy is horribly worse because others are earning significantly more. You did not vote in the Presidential election, though you like what you hear about the new Congress: a Muslim woman and a Green social media-savvy gadfly. When not supporting gender-equality pastry shops, you purchase organic, locally-grown produce at Trader Joe’s. You buy Emerging Markets coffee beans online from a group that supports Guatemalan children. And you truly believe your Tesla, Prius, or Audi lessens your carbon footprint.
Yrena
As an immigrant who saved up the required fees, filed for the visas and immigration forms, and emigrated to her new country according to the laws and practices of each nation, you are diligently working to learn the language, customs and history of your new home. You know your ethnic community in the area you have settled have members – family and extended family perhaps- who live in violation of the law. Some overstayed their student visas, and other came across hiding in a van or in leaky boats that beached one moonless night. You are working two jobs to pay for your daughter to attend community college. She will become the first college-educated member of your family. Your son is learning to be a mechanic after school. When the television, newspapers and the Internet declare that you support wholeheartedly the new ‘migrants’ and see them being pandered to by politicians and journalists, you are conflicted, upset, or angry. And your family are not “hyphen” Americans. You are American.
Cole
As an Iraq War veteran, you do not understand people who hate you sharing your opinions, and do not financially support veteran suicide-prevention projects but pay to hear activists demean America at college campuses. You are irritated by people who do not remember what happened on 9/11 or tell you how the current Administration is working with the Russians. Like your father before you, you are teaching your son or daughter firearm safety and how to hunt for deer, elk, or boar. You may not be religious, yet you assert your rights as parents to approve what they are taught as curriculum. You know when you are being played by b.s. artists in government, the media and education – that was one of the skills learned from military service and especially from time in a war zone. You don’t trust politicians or bureaucrats. Not from any party.
Politics and personal loyalties based on ideology fluctuate over time. Human nature is flawed and subject to the same weaknesses. Politicians acquire power from citizens, and get more corrupt as the citizens get more aloof. Without unity, a house divided cannot stand. And observing all the past civilizations collapsed in the dust of history, the lack of unity of a people accelerate the incoming tide.
I think everyone who has a cell phone, computer, or an Apple Watch is aware that he or she is being tracked, analyzed, and being “sold” routinely. An Internet search of shoes on a particular website leads to ads following you every time you go online regardless of the website. Anyone notice that a search for a place to eat lunch leads to advertising or suggestions online? Or your phone asks you to review a place where you recently dined, drove nearby, or even talked about – and your watch recorded it?
What if all that data collected on millions of consumers was being routinely analyzed, sorted into patterns, and used with other data to “sell” you – specifically directing you to a target. A blogger I follow shared a TED talk posted on YouTube, where the marketer described how the same technology and techniques are used by businesses, political candidates, lobbyists, foreign governments and even terrorists to target people.
What if the “balkanization” of America, into groups of polarized opponents are being manipulated to remain antagonistic? They are likely using the same process described in the YouTube video.
It is beyond irritating. Your thoughts are not necessarily your own. Fox News, CNN, the Chinese, the Russians, and Google may all use our digital life to their profit. It’s nothing we can do now to escape our digital data, but I am doing my best to confuse the algorithms.
These days I click on hardcore Rap, FoxNews, and shop at JC Penneys. Also, I contribute to Change.org, frequent businesses that serve steak and others for vegetarian lifestyles. I click on diesel trucks and subscribe to solar initiatives. If that is not enough to confuse the data aggregate, I “like” animal charities, firearm education, and Republicans.
The basic needs of any person are food, shelter, and clothing. In modern society, people have expectations that needs include healthcare, education and sanitation. But people also have emotional needs: safety, security, comfort, and significance. In the Twenty First Century, many people are willing to sacrifice personal freedom for the sake of “needs” provided by Government. Of course, people who demand a king and assume “their side” will benefit, have historically been oppressed.
When the American nation’s founders established the basic framework in the Constitution, they knew their history: those subjugated by a king had little control in how they lived (general welfare); little experience of equity or fairness between the governing and the governed (justice); and few limits on role of Government in people’s lives ( safeguard of domestic tranquility and common defense). Because they understood that people given a taste of power and access to others’ money, always want more, they were deliberate in creating a balancing act.
In the third decade of the third century since the Constitution was established, the nation is losing the respect for the differences that made it unique in world history. Unity as an American, with a common language, culture, and history is all but extinct. Respect for civil authority, freedom to worship as one pleases, and hold differing opinions, is rarely exhibited today. Contempt for opponents, and ever-increasing Government control is common. Worse still, officials who have publicly-stated intent to abrogate the fundamental balance provided by an Executive, Legislative and Judicial separation of powers, and personal liberties guaranteed in our Constitution – have been appointed (not elected), elected and re-elected. As Benjamin Franklin once said, the USA is a constitutional republic, which he understood, to keep in check, its citizens would have to be informed and involved in its affairs whether local or international. In contrast to other forms of government, the citizens can (when exercised) direct our representatives to compromise and cooperate to get things done.
One can only mentor, teach and ultimately, hope, people who now believe that anyone who arrives – by whatever means – in the territory should be a citizen, that “socialism” despite many aspects that indicate fallibility, is superior to capitalism, and in distribution of other’s wealth, will pause to reflect. No social construct is perfect. And those who achieve power, wealth and influence, in the post-Constitution world, may not tolerate any disruption to “domestic tranquility”.
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
One of the hottest political debates regarding military service in the United States during the last thirty years is the role for women. In my previous post, Ask the Chief: veteran is gender-neutral, I explore several issues that need to be raised more often in the national conscience: how does America support the veteran; does society, particularly other women, comprehend their co-workers and peers, (as reservists or on Active Duty) left their families, civilian jobs or school behind, and went to war particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq? In popular culture, the news, movies, cable and television, veteran conjures up both the warrior, and the sometimes addicted, sometimes homeless, conflicted man. Women too, are combat veterans, and have challenges with Government benefits, health and welfare issues no different than many other veterans.
A fascinating book that I began reading, is It’s My Country Too: Women’s Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan. Editors Jerri Bell and Tray Crow, have compiled a fascinating history, a page-turner, and relevant to today’s armed forces. Women whose recollections, memoirs, and diaries of service during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries are few. Some heroines who did pass their recollections during depositions or speeches, often were edited or marginalized via male authors and editors. Modern research in archives and historical documents subsequently discerns fact from fiction. This book retells some fascinating accounts and implies many other women served as spies, employed in military units, came under fire, and were injured or killed in battles. At the time, and up through the early Twentieth Century, women would masquerade as men, with poor or nonexistent medical screenings for enlistment, and were only detected and discharged – or reassigned – when injured.
Those who had received military pensions, honors, and military burials from past conflicts paved the way for our female warriors and veterans today. And during the last ten years, attitudes and policies on the sexual orientation of service members and recruits has also changed. But the dialogue that inflames so many military members, veterans, policy wonks and Generation Y activists, distracts from the real stories and real problems: women have been serving in the defense of the nation since the Revolutionary War. And both their contributions and sacrifice has more often than not, been minimized, glamorized, or forgotten in history. And just as has been the case for decades, the mental and physical care of injured veterans, promised by the US Government over the centuries has been slower to respond to the female veteran.
In the next chapters yet to be read, the authors, veterans of the Marines, and Army, tell the stories of women in combat from the First World War through the War in Afghanistan.
Reading some of my old letters my late mother kept in her scrapbook, I appreciate jogging memories of my initial service in the Navy forty years ago. At the time, I was stuck in limbo, waiting on orders, waiting on a medical evaluation, and bored. I had spent eighteen months training for a career as an electronics technician in San Diego, in Illinois, in Florida and again in San Diego. When I had received an opportunity to attend the Naval Academy, a medical evaluation accompanying the selection board was possibly going to prevent that. In the meantime, I was assigned to support a correctional unit on Naval Training Center San Diego, to guard and escort sailors confined and others pending transfer to the Naval Brig.
“January 13 1978
I was paid this morning and I have finally got some money in my pocket after being in the depths of poverty for the last week. I’ve been keeping a budget book to account for every penny. Setting aside a $120 to send to you to save for me, I spent most of my last paycheck on a stereo receiver and headphones. I got a great deal as the stereo store said it was a trade-in and not brand-new.
I have been chugging away at BE & E. My Learning Supervisor is better at getting the material across to me than reading the book. And I am frustrated at the computer based training – that I am taking remedial tests every time.
Next weekend I am thinking of the YMCA’s military special to Disneyland – everything including bus ride and ticket, for $14.75…. “
When I read these letters I recall that my focus was split between very difficult technical training, spending money slower than earning it, having a good time, and the things a sailor thinks about: cars, girls, staying out of trouble, and so on. And taking care of my mom.
“February 18, 1978
…it’s been a week since I was home for that short visit…. I’m expecting to finish BE and E School (Basic Electricity and Electronics) in seven working days and then ice and snow! (I was scheduled to transfer for further training at the Great Lakes NTC north of Chicago) I have been trying to spend money and save it at the same time….
I bought two books ” How to Buy Stocks” and “How to Build a Fortune Investing in Land””
“July 3 1978
Class 7825C, ET/A school Bldg 520, Great Lakes Training Center: Thunder and lightning this weekend. Thank you for the ever-increasing moral support. It helps this “screw-up” when I seem to be trying and trying over these multiple -choice tests and I miss the question because I don’t put down my first choice but over think them! Why can’t I learn! Some solace in that I got my PO3 raise today. A whole $10.
Congratulations on your new friend and you both seem to be on the same “astral plane”. And my little sister has a boyfriend! She is growing up fast. I ran into a friend who is very close to a bachelors degree having taking a lot of courses through the CLEP tests. He’s looking at Officer Candidate School and making some career-connections with several officers involved in the program. He’s shared with me several of the courses and tests to take should the Annapolis thing not get accepted. Studying electronics harder will give me a mental breakdown. I need some thing different.
I looked at that Naval Academy application. I think they want someone who is a cross between O.J. Simpson and Albert Einstein, not me!”
In the year between my initial training in San Diego, and returning back to San Diego, I had been undergoing technical training and screening for a government security clearance. Between the training, standing watches, and liberty in Chicago and Milwaukee, I was also trying to figure out if I could afford a TransAm like one in the movie Smokey and the Bandit. It was nearly eleven thousand dollars. I couldn’t. I did learn a lot about weather. Playing pool in the barracks. Guys who were playing some role-playing fantasy called Dungeons and Dragons. A summer music festival at the Navy Pier in Chicago. And working on cars. Being in the best physical shape of my life while in Pensacola, Florida. Running several miles a few times a week that started from a dare between roommates in the barracks while attending CT – school. A circuit of the base, inside the fence was about four miles. We would run it twice a night.
“Letter dated August 2 – 5, and 8, 1979
Dear Mother,
It’s the second day of August, and in one day following the
most insane twenty-four hours I have yet spent at TPU (ed: Transient Personnel Unit), I think I shall be ready for the funny
farm very soon.
Let me tell you some of the the goings-on at our “Hotel California”. Yesterday, we got a new boatload of lunies (sic) plus one who is trying to put one over on us that he’s nuts, and he is getting my goat.
Another case is my boss Chief Heller. His retiring soon and he continues to drop in
on Bldg 23 if only to holler and cuss everyone.
It is just as if he’s giving out a daily dose of castor oil.
Still another example was last night’s supposed-to-work-flawlessly relief of the day watch. A PO1(Petty Officer First Class) who knew he had duty never showed up, and despite all my efforts couldn’t be found anywhere on-base. No one knew who I was looking for- even though he was supposedly assigned to the same working area! So, as a result, an overworked PO2, a good friend of mine, was forced to stay all night as well as his morning workday.
In addition, I was forced to work late (a 13-hour day) which
it turns out shall be my regular working hours.
It was either that or work 10 hours plus have an extra watch in TPU
every three days.
August 3rd
Today was continued insanity when, in the early afternoon, one of our “mental” cases went berserk and smashed a wood-covered (barricaded) window with a chair. He demanded to go to the brig or he would do more damage! It’s a good thing I don’t sleep there- I don’t know if some night I might get my throat cut by one of these scumbags.
Tonight I went to the PO Club with two friends, George, who works in the NTC Police/Decal Office, and June who also works there. We all had a good time. But what occurred later is interesting. Well, June got very drunk, I was sober and George nearly so. June had to be talked into being escorted to her barracks. George (who went with her) in her car and I followed behind in mine. June wandered all over the road at speed and I sped up to catch her. And out of the dark an NTC (Naval Training Center) police vehicle pulled ME over. Luckily, he was a friend but since I was “rocketing along” at 20 or 30 MPH, he wouldn’t let me drive back to TPU. A quarter-mile walk later I was sober; June was the one all over the road – I’m sure the cop saw her. That will be the last of my “good Samaritan” gestures.
August 5, 1979
Yesterday I finally bought the 10-speed bicycle I was [going to get you] shopping two weeks. I’m sure you will love it, as a matter of fact I wanted to buy one for myself from the same people. Now I have only one detail to work out and that is how to get it home. Two possibilities are open to me, but I don’t know how much it will cost me to ship it, so if you don’t mind I am going to wait till I hand-deliver it.
In other news I have been heartened by a lot of mail, especially yours and from Nana, but I’m going through a lot of ups and downs. I’m almost at the end of my rope as far as this Restriction/ CC (Correctional Custody) “babysitter” job goes. Today I got yelled at for these a@#$@#$ goofing off even as I have been trying to imitate Attila the Hun with them .
August 8th
I’m starting another entry in the ‘journal’ after putting the
pen down for two days. I am just putting down thoughts as they come to mind. My
mind is awfully screwed being run ragged.
I think I will drop this topic in favor of other topics to ramble on
about.
Tomorrow I’ll begin packing a few things for the trip to San Francisco and I’m going to hopefully make a weekend out of it. What is your reaction to the earthquake this week? It think it is about time for the city to fall into the sea?
It’s all a bit tedious. I’ll hopefully be home sooner or later. “
Jerry Reed, Chicago Navy Pier; BEE barracks; Sears Tower, Chicago; New Orleans French Quarter; Gulf beach near Panama City, FL
These letters bring back some of the missing names – and the memory -recalling the faces of those Chiefs at TPU. These memories seem as fresh as having occurred yesterday. The more I recall of those months in school, in training, and time at the transient barracks, I am amused by the complaining, angst, self-righteousness, stubbornness, and shock of having to work long hours. In this particular letter, the reference to “Hotel California” my mother probably would have missed – her musical taste was stuck in the early 1960s and she never heard of the Eagles. But I was fortunate that my mother, who pursued a second career as a college English teacher around that time, and worked a full-time nursing job, never pointed out my ‘overworked’ complaints. As I look back after forty years of military and civilian jobs – on my youngest co-workers and their peers – their complaints about fairness, working conditions, and emotional safe-spaces are more their age than something “we” never did.
Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God. Franklin D. Roosevelt
Every generation has those who believe morally (spiritually) or intellectually in “world peace”. That coexistence of disparate ideologies are obtainable goals for mankind. Others believe that economic interdependence among nations is the key. Redistribution of wealth -generally that of political and social opponents – to those who have much less – by a paternalistic governing authority is a popular theme. And still others believe that superior military firepower will thwart aggression. In the last decades of the Twentieth Century and through the first two of the new Millennium, people have thought that accommodation, neutral stances and open-mindedness on everything from language to social services, gender and religion would bring about “coexistence”.
It doesn’t matter what the topic is, but what is disturbing to someone raised in the last years of the American post-WWII “Baby Boomer” generation, that discernment, wisdom, dialogue, and critical thinking have been tossed away. Feelings and hypersensitivity to the possibility that people may encounter ideas and attitudes that run counter to what they have been taught, have resulted in redefining “free speech”. And in an age where the leader of our country is hypersensitive to criticism, narcissistic and uses social media to incessantly comment on his political adversaries, we have other elected representatives refusing to obey legal statute, convention or address public safety concerns. These highly insulated folks pander to an audience who are not citizens of the nation. Judges do not rule on the merits of a statute based on the founding documents of the nation, but on interpretation and personal feelings. In Government, universities, public education (K – 12), and almost all information and entertainment mediums, the end goals of the broadcaster are fixed and unwaverable – with supporting data, “expert opinion”, and “statistics” found and scrubbed to present support for the “conclusion” reached. Dissent is met with ridicule and occasional violence.
The latest examples of how improbable it is to coexist, except on the bumpers of socially conscious Western Europeans and North Americans vehicles, is the perpetual state of violence: against Jews, Kurds, Ukrainians, Syrians, people in the Horn of Africa, Central Asia, and the Central and South America. With warlords, drug cartels, extremists, zealots, and criminal gangsters, there has been only violence, sex trafficking, child slavery, murder and anarchy, but no peaceful coexistence. International groups bring relief to hurting or starving refugees, risk being kidnapped, murdered, raped, or at best, had their aid looted and mission closed. There are nation-states like Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, who support groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban, or the now-splintered Al Qaeda and ISIS.
Sixty years after the world went to war over geopolitical ideology, and rallied to oppose and end genocide in the process,, an ideology that has in its core tenets, an open hostility and warfare with Jews, Christians and – infidels, executes a malevolent plan against the United States, resulting in the deaths of nearly three thousand people. Whether the barbarism of a faction or yet another example of how people cannot coexist with differing ideologies, this was only the last of several attacks prior to September 11th which killed numerous military members and civilians of many nations, carried out under the banner of “fundamentalists”. And even as recently as today, more funerals, more anguish and more antagonism between rivals indicate that peaceful coexistence is as difficult to obtain unless one side is being buried and the other, performing the eulogy.
I think, in the wake of Sept. 11, it’s important for the American public to understand that to the extent that there are individuals within the United States who would undertake terrorist attacks, that we are doing something to address that. Robert Mueller
No method of procedure has ever been devised by which liberty could be divorced from local self-government. No plan of centralization has ever been adopted which did not result in bureaucracy, tyranny, inflexibility, reaction, and decline. Of all forms of government, those administered by bureaus are about the least satisfactory to an enlightened and progressive people. ….. –Calvin Coolidge
According to information I gleaned from a thorough scrub of several websites, a Reservist who has retired from military service under the normal circumstances (not a disability retirement) has to request payment of retirement pay beginning at age 60.
Now I am the old Salt
For someone who has a current DOD identification card, this may be less of an exercise than I have encountered to date. But for a “gray-area Reservist”, a member who received retirement orders pending receipt of pay after age sixty, this posed questions I thought best to get answered before I made some errors and had to resubmit.
You may never have dealt with a bureaucracy the size of the Department of Defense or the Veterans Administration. But if you have ever dealt with a local planning board or other agency, you may have some idea. Prior experience online directed me to look at the official Bureau of Naval Personnel (BUPERS). When I found the proper sub-department for Reserve retirees it directed me to another website. And a third. I used the telephone at last and actually reached a live person quickly. While the representative was able to locate my record, she could not tell me other than what I already knew. When I did find a couple forms online, editions more than sixteen years old, it seemed this information was what they already had on file.
Re-enlist, get a check. Retire: who are you?
The BUPERS website directed me to solicit assistance with retirement questions from the local military support office; I drove over to the military office that had served me while in the Navy Reserve nine years earlier. After a lovely chat with a senior enlisted personnel clerk, I spoke with a career counselor for a “package” that would include material needed for retirement pay requests. After waiting in a line, I found that all “retired” reservists like myself had to go through, yes, BUPERS, for these retirement pay questions.
I did catch one tidbit of information. The Department of the Navy is about a month late in a reported ten-month window prior to the member’s sixtieth birthday, sending a package of everything the bureaucracy needs before making payment. I will make another call to BUPERS this week to find out whether this “package” has been mailed. I probably will go back to the VA for a disability re-assessment. When dealing with a Government bureaucracy, blood pressure, headaches, dizziness, and muscle fatigue are common. That’s gotta be worth something?
Truths, Half-truths, and Sea Stories 