A Veteran’s Perspective

Entertaining “Shipshape”

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved. -Acts 2:46 (NIV)

As a Navy man, I know the difference between cleanliness and “white glove” clean.  In the ten years since retirement, that is NAVY retirement,  I have not kept up the rigor of four-a-day “sweepers”, field days, and “change of command” – mode painting and sprucing.  With dogs that shed hair hourly, there only just keeping up with the general clean during the week.   0512-0707-1115-1056On those weekend evenings that we entertain – which is something we are doing again now that we have no children at home – my spouse,   and sometimes one of our adult sons – is (are) conscripted in the early afternoon to field day.  While Chiefs supervising junior Sailors prepare official Navy functions – at USS Homestead, Chiefs and indians provide the labor.   But my bride, formerly the Senior Enlisted Leader’s spouse, has got the whole affair managed.   My role subsequently is to take out trash, walk the dogs, put my work-week items away and clean up before guests arrive.  ( I went out to obtain the dessert as my contribution to the evening.)

On a Friday night, we enjoy a home-cooked dinner with friends.  With friends you can relax;   nobody comments on incongruous objects in the dining room – a framed Japanese watercolor cat on rice paper ( hiding a still-to-be sanded hole in the drywall);  a framed hawaiian turtle motif on handmade, dyed paper that eventually will move to a more esthetic location; and a bag of dog food that was overlooked in setting the dinner table.  While the room needs a fresh coat of paint, the house is clean and welcoming.  The dogs are mostly behaved.  The dining table is polished,  scented candles and the dinner-party china are pulled out.

Entertaining has become fashionable again; we may not have granite counters, but we have solar-powered air conditioning.  And games.  Mexican Train, a dominoes game, is quite popular with our friends.  And with our group of friends a late evening is 9 PM.     Best of all,  Saturday is not a work day.  After an early prayer walk with friends, walking dogs, taking out trash, doing yard work, and putting away laundry I will have time to sit and write.

 

Sailors, Cigars and Grog

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

Having a cigar called Post-Embargo reminds me of a deployment in the Caribbean.  14961909287502141989829   In the 1995, the USS PETERSON made a summer counter-narcotics sweep through the Caribbean Sea.  Unexpectedly, ship and crew made an extended port visit to the Dutch Antilles island of Curacao.  We had one of our gas turbine engines fail.  Waiting for shipment of a new engine from the United States allowed me,  as a “topsider”,  extra liberty.  We passed time sampling the locally brewed Carlsberg beer,  enjoying Cuban cigars, sightseeing and taking in a tropical Netherlands.  For “snipes” (Engineering personnel) however,  they spent long hours to remove and replace a major ship system.   As we learned later, the casualty to the engine cooling system was a symptom of an unexpected honor on Memorial Day weekend:  representing the Navy at the re-opening of the Philadelphia Maritime Museum (as the Independence Seaport Museum) .

Curacao4

Two life lessons we learned that summer.   First, some thanked while others cursed the bureaucrats who sent an ocean-dwelling warship into freshwater (the Philadelphia river)  for public relations.  The engine cooling system was fouled by dead marine life.  And second, inexpensive boxes of quality Cuban cigars during deployment were worth spending a month in the tropics. For those who enjoyed cigars, the remaining month at sea was “smoke ’em if you got ’em”;  they were contraband at home.

In the last few years, the end to the Cuban embargo has not meant much to me.  With Cuban seed planted for decades in Central America, obtaining a post-embargo “Cuban” is off my “bucket list”.

A festive deployment

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

shipI am looking forward to going back to sea.  But this time I will not be standing in a dress uniform, “manning the rail”, as we deploy but rather a festive cruise line.   Even the company,  Royal Caribbean Oasis of the Seas, sounds like a festive destination rather than a vessel to get from Point A to Point B.   The scheduled departure is still months in the future, but it is something to look forward in anticipation.   I still have some hesitation about putting to sea.   “Underway. Shift Colors!”, is a phrase all deployed U.S. Navy Sailors know as the moment the ship leaves the mooring and begins to put to sea.  While today’s Sailors may have six  or seven- or even nine- month deployments away from their home,  the routine of everyday blurs the calendar.  Menus define the day of the week –  sliders (hamburgers) Wednesday, spaghetti ( with crumbled sliders for meat sauce) Thursdays,  and so on.  unnamed

A cruise line does not operate that way.  From what I have been told,  there’s food,  drink, and entertainment twenty-four hours a day, if you pay for it.  (Well,  in the Chiefs’ Mess, we were able to fund some pretty wonderful food, snacks and even ice cream during deployment ).   But today’s cruise liners make the last cruise ship I was on,  the former Cunard Lines , Queen Mary seem tame in comparison.  As a child accompanying my mother, I sailed on the RMS Queen Mary and the  RMS Sylvania between Liverpool and New York in the 1960s.   And in 2016,  my wife and I stayed aboard the now-hotel Queen Mary in the city of Long Beach, California.    Cruise lines,  prior to the heyday of jumbo jets and routine flights to and from Europe, was a great form of travel.  Both movie star Cary Grant and the vacationing nurse traveled in style albeit at substantially different accommodations and traveling companions.

Although manning a Navy ship does not give you many opportunities to enjoy the sea air, wind or waves,  it is still something incredible when looking at the vast ocean.  That is what I will look forward to seeing again.  Along the east coast of North America, the Gulf Stream is a great conduit for whales, dolphins, game fish, and adventurous sailors in sailboats and other craft.  I also know that the sea could be like glass or the gray-black of a squall on the horizon.  But I imagine, instead of chow lines, field day, and drills, it will be cocktails, suntan lotion and enthusiastic support for my wife’s plans for ashore zip-lines and water slides.

DD969

God the Provider: Our Opportunity to Give

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment
JESUS, the PROVIDER
When I was a child, my parents provided for me so that I never had to wonder where I was to sleep at night, what I was going to eat when I got hungry or who would dress my wounded knees and elbows when I fell down at the park climbing trees or on my bicycle. .


But when I grew into manhood, I found that I had to make decisions for my own provisions.  While in military service, my needs were provided for, with the understanding that you trade your obedience and work for those things.  


During a time that I wasn’t in the military, I had little money to stretch between the things I had to have – a place to live,  pay the light bill, and to wash clothes,  I had to decide what was most important.


Only later did I understand that God the Father and Jesus His Son had been watching out for me.  Things that were stressful and difficult – in my career, in my personal situation, with my health, were being kept in check — for a future life that I would have —  provided for by God.   And that is the same that has been done for all of us who now have sanctuary in Christ Jesus.


Those here in this fellowship, may know- or we may not yet realize –  that our rescue from our former life was through Jesus.  But living a new life takes training, changing life choices, and looking at things through spiritual eyes.  I learned & am still learning –  to live on a budget,  to be willing AND able to help those in need, and to provide for my family. – spiritual and physical  


1 Timothy 6:17    (NIV)
17 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment


The refreshing of Living Water that Jesus provides us through his death and resurrection, is a treasure beyond value.  Through our contribution – our tithe —  we have  leaders to  draw us closer to Jesus.    We have a place to meet for worship and for training in our marriages and discipleship.  We have outreach to the poor and to help those in our fellowship.  

Let us be generous in our ability to give back to God.

Whatever became of R. Lee Ermey ?

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

Since 1987 when R. Lee Ermey portrayed the iconic Marine Corps Drill Instructor in Full Metal Jacket, he has been in numerous film and television roles.  And then Hollywood found itself in a situation that rivals the “non-person” erasure of critics of the Soviet system.  Like Charlton Heston before him, John Wayne and other icons who find themselves on the wrong side of revisionist history,  Ermey has no invitations to appear in anything produced in Hollywood.

In publicly disagreeing with then-President Obama in 2010, by expressing the opinion that it was the Administration’s aim and policy to change the United States into a socialist state,  Ermey ran counter to the whole industry.  It was also his association with the NRA, this one-time supposed Liberal ( a Marine Vietnam veteran),  that after a long career, he found himself on Hollywood’s blacklist.   The irony, for those who do not recall it,  in the 1950’s Hollywood actors and producers were being investigated by the House Un-American Activities committee for communist sympathizers within their industry.  The never forgave the Republican party for this. At some point, the campus revolutionaries and anti-war protestors took possession of the cultural institutions, college campuses, bureaucracies and political offices. As both corporate entities and even states have learned during the Obama Presidency,  un-approved views and policies, are subject to commercial asphyxiation and shunning.

From several of the Marines I served with and got to know during my 25 years in the military,  I know that all of them might have different views on politics, leadership and our role in the world,  but have first and foremost been champions of their fellow Marines and the services,    Though I have known and respect certain men and women who pursue a career in Hollywood,  I also know that as a Christian, that environment, so much about image, appearance  and so little based on substance and tolerance -to differing views -would be toxic.

Itching to Explore Again

Eric Saretsky1 Comment

Yosemite National Park (2016)

Until 2016, I had never visited Yosemite National Park.   Over the course of several days, my friends and I camped – in tents – during the last warm days of the year. 
 I got my year’s worth of hiking and camping in that week. 
Nevada Falls

In the late Fall of 2015, my wife and I visited New York where my father was born, and both a maternal and a paternal aunt still call home.  We visited the memorial to the victims of September 11, 2001.

new World Trade Center, NYC

New York City (2015)

We walked much of Manhattan, and spent hours with each aunt.
Spent time away from work, email, text messages and stress.    And we only just are ramping up our plans as retirement approaches.

The Bull of Wall Street

Northern Ireland,  United Kingdom (2015)

\

Belfast, N. Ireland
Ruins of 11th C. monastery, Northern Ireland

In the summer of 2015, we visited Northern Ireland where my late mother and aunts grew up.  Made acquaintance of their friends and folks I had not seen since childhood.  Fell in love with the people and particularly members of our international church fellowship

Grand Canyon National Park (2014)
Grand Canyon, South Rim trail

In the Spring of 2014, I visited the Grand Canyon for only the third time in my life.  On this occasion I joined several very athletic, enthusiastic and acclimated hikers from my home church hiking down into the canyon to the river and back up the other South Rim trail – during the same day. It was a grueling 14 hours, but I emerged healthy and victorious.

view from the South Rim, Grand Canyon

Where do we go this year?

Government UnHealthcare

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment
Once again, I feel incumbent on me to urge that every citizen take responsibility to become educated in the affairs of government.  Whether it is the quality of your drinking water, the state of polluted coastal waters after a rainstorm, or the money being spent to upgrade your neighborhood schools and street, we all need to pay more attention.  Assuming one political party or bureaucrat had got your family’s best interest in mind is ignorant misplaced trust. 
I’m thinking today about health care and particularly – with a new crown cemented in – dental health.   My dentist, a great guy and a top professional,  mentions to me that in 2017 his business advisors tell him that the reimbursement rates for treating his military and dependent patients are going to fall below profitability.    He knows that these patients – who don’t have a lot of money anyway – may have to pay more to continue receiving care through his practice.   He knows that lower fees mean the best practitioners may drop patients.  
My dental experience over two decades ago was stellar.  But by the end of my military career,  the universal health care I received was poor,  took a long time to be treated and then was triaged and sent on my way.  By the end,   I paid for private dental and health care through my new employer’s  PPO plan.  It took me a half-century, but I know now that dental health is as, if not more important to one’s well-being. And that’s where, Medicaid, ObamaCare, and probably this new Trump initiative fall down.   Dental care is just not a priority – not to politicians,  not to many of the middle class – otherwise I would have taken better care of my teeth over fifty years – and probably not to those who rely on Government aid.  Research on the web bears this out.    
This is the sort of thing that people need to impress on the bureaucrats and the legislatures.  Multi-gender bathrooms,  naming post offices,  renaming schools with offensive Civil War general names, and changing the responsibility for education to the local and state level have all sorts of emotional attachment.   What about basic values?  Upholding the promises made both to the military veteran and to the less fortunate.  And to the self-employed business owner like the dentist who wants to use his formidable talent to treat patients -until the Government forces him out of business.

You Cannot Feel a Pumice Stone via SnapChat

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

After 57 years,  I have collected a lot of random stuff,  Over the years it has been easier not to go through the storage bins  in the garage.  My wife and I make Spring Cleaning “dates” when the settled dust is thick on lids.

It is probably easier to catalog my collection:

Childhood

  • program from my elementary school musical singing days
  • picture  – collared shirt, bowl haircut
  • blue “participation” ribbons (california!)
  • clay rabbit I made at  4 years old
  • a letter from my Grampa (“man”) to me before he died in 1966

High School

  • transcript copies:   two years in Cape Cod, MA ;  two years in Tucson, AZ
  • picture of me in a Revolutionary War uniform  (We got to carry and shoot black powder muskets!)
  • A few polished stones and pumice (rock collection)
  • Stamp collection of USA and foreign stamps
  • pocket knives

Navy (first time)

  • bootcamp yearbook
  • pictures of friends from the technical school at Great Lakes and Pensacola

1980s

  • college pictures with two groups of friends
  • sample of toilet paper, sugar, and wrapping paper from a college Soviet Union trip
  • ticket stub  from the Los Angeles PINK FLOYD concert (the Wall)
  • A scuba mask from scuba diving days

Navy (second time)

  • pictures in my cracker jacks re-enlisting at the new Navy Memorial (Plankowner)
  • certificates, several framed of ceremonies (Shellback, Golden Shellback, Panama Canal)
  • trinkets, cigarette lighters, jewelry and perfume bottles from Egypt, Japan, Greece, France and every point in between

Married life and family (2001 -)

  • youngest son’s baseball items from Little League All-Star selection
  • more random, but expensive,  trinkets – “ART”
  • travel mementos , mugs, coins, crafts

Elon Musk’s Martian dream

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

A thousand years from now, two beings will be having a conversation over Starbucks looking out at a lush green Martian golf course. The latest Iphone- made from a diamond will be all everyone talks about. The newest Premier is broadcasting on social media about the despised “free-thinkers”. But that is too strong a word for our friends conversing today. Independence is a clinical disease, so the appropriate term is antisocial disorder.
Everyone with a post-doctoral specialization in environmental scence- which is everyone except for a small group of technologists- knows that in vitro laboratories has eliminated all non-conforming personality in the human race.  Everything necessary for life is provide in the automated home.
 Only a few million rebels still on Earth, the Trumpians,  raise infrequent disorder.  This group rejects transgender-trans-genus science. They reject Pacification. They actually continue to use hydrocarbons in vehicles and consume illegal tacos and alcohol; for entertainment they participate in illegal  physical contests once called football.
The official pronouncements from the Martian Neutral Party state the obvious: a thousand years of adherence to some religion called “constitution” has made these unfortunate beings ungovernable.
But the Martian patrons of scientific ethics has studied the issue in committees for 500 years now. It seems the earth people do not know they are suffering from oxygen and solar abundance.
On Mars everyone agrees that it is better to be safe than to tolerate such fools in their midst. After all, Lord Musk wants us all to be comfortable and live Green
Then I awoke from my slumber. Just a nightmare.  This morning,  Bernie Sanders is on the TV wishing SpaceX Mars travellers, “Bon voyage!”
 I need to get to work.  And I need coffee. Time enough to get to 7-eleven. Now where are my car keys?

Music Man-ly

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

It may ” take a tough man to make a tender bird ” per Frank Perdue.  But I’m no chicken – to go to a kids musical performance on Friday night. Catching up with a dear friend over good cigars, or an evening with my wife, her friend and her little boy. I chose wisely.
My wife knew I would.
Suessical is a sold-out show for every performance. And I do like Green eggs n ham — it’s a military thing.

Lessons for a Thriving Marriage:

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment
the author and his beautiful wif
Long before I made Jesus Lord, and before I married the woman I adore,  I was married before.  In my late twenties, before I made the Navy a career,  I was married and divorced for a complex history of unpleasantness.  Unlike today,   I  then had few positive role models and no spiritual understanding of the marital relationship.
But at the age of 41, after three years of dating “pure” (that is, guarding her honor with  no intimate contact) and a fundamental shift in my character,  I married the love of my life. It was work from the very beginning.   With both of us previously married, we knew how difficult and painful a lazy, un-spiritual and self-centered marriage might be.
anything worthwhile takes training and effort
Christian marriages will not fare better than relationships that are not Christ-centered without Christ remaining at the heart of our relationship.  But every endeavor needs role-models and training.  And that is the same with our marriages. which brings me to the subject today of a wonderful Marriage Workshop: Let Love Grow.
The couple that spoke to us that afternoon have been married thirty-three years and have counseled hundreds of Christian marriages.  Without a Jesus-centered life,  the lessons they shared – some basically were lessons derived from the mistakes they made – would be difficult to understand absent a faith-based approach.  As two people who form a union from two individuals with different experiences, habits, expectations, and upbringing, to be successful requires work, compassion, adaptability, and selflessness.
Here are some points made today:
Great marriages take faith, forgiveness, selflessness and prayer
Most of us did not have good role models from our parents’ marriage to build upon.  Marriage is not innately something we can go from self-serving, complicated individuals to a union of two thriving as one.  
Marriage is more than compatibility,  and more than a human invention for financial or domestic stability.    When spouses commit God as our authority, the Bible is treated as living and active; we seek improvement through study and application, and husband and wife have as a main purpose to help the other to get to Heaven.   
A FOOL’S MARRIAGE TIP:   If it’s Wednesday.  it’s”business time” .
Learn from others’ mistakes about marriage.   Marriage cannot be ‘winged’ successfully. Get a lot of advice from those who have had spiritually strong, long-term marriage. And learn to put these observations into practice:
  • NO reaction is BETTER than a BAD REACTION.  “Watch your tongue and keep your mouth shut, and you will stay out of trouble”. Proverbs 21:23 (NLT) 
  • Increase your GRATITUDE FOR YOUR SPOUSE.   ” Moreover, when God  gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil – this is a gift of God.  They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart.” Ecclesiastes 3: 19-20 
  • Look for the GOOD and SHARE it generously. “Fix your thoughts on what is true and good and right, Think about things that are pure and lovely and dwell on the fine, good things in others. Think about all you can praise God for and be glad about.” Philippians 4:8 (TLB)
  • Examine your EXPECTATIONS. “Because of the Lord’s great love, we are not consumed, for his compassion never fails. They are new every morning, great is your faithfulness.  I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” Lamentations 3:22 -24
  • Learn to PRAY for wisdom first in the (heated) moment. “Pray with all prayers and with all desires always in the Spirit and be watching with him in prayer every moment as you pray constantly and make supplications for the sake of all the Holy Ones.”  Ephesians 6:18  (ABPE)  
  • Seek to UNDERSTAND more than to be UNDERSTOOD. “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.” James 1:19 -20  
  • HIDDEN anger can be just as bad as anger EXPRESSED. “A man with hate in his heart may sound pleasant enough, bo don’t believe him for he is cursing you in his heart. Though he pretends to be so kind, his hatred will finally come to light for all to see.” Proverbs 26: 24 -26 (TLB)
  • Learn from older, more experienced role models.  “ Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to  much wine, but to teach what is good.”   Titus 2: 3 -5
With a renewed understanding of marriage and how to avoid the pitfalls described above,  the sexual relationship is the glue which binds a thriving marriage.   Giving to one another in a positive, loving and fun marital bed has been fundamental to healthy marriages.  If a married couple, however long they have been married, can seek to understand and apply these life lessons  and have a foundation such as described here,  how many marriages would be thriving !

Speakers: Bob and Barb Harpole, Los Angeles Church of Christ
Recommended reading: The Marriage Go-Round by Andrew J, Cherlin

Squirrels underfoot

Eric SaretskyLeave a comment


SQUIRRELS UNDERFOOT

Finding peace in the nut-house

DSC_0241.JPG

When is it Camping Season again?
It is not safe to hold political, social, or religious opinions in the United States anymore.  Unless you know you are among like-minded people.    A hundred times, I started to put down my ideas in a blog as to the nature of one polarized camp’s arguments, but with each review, I realize that either the ones holding contrary views will get offended, hurt, angry or recalcitrant.   
It was good to put the misgivings, concerns and questions about the social, economic, religious and constitutional future of this country to ‘paper’.  I got it out of my system – unless I know I am among like-minded people, it will only create disharmony.
Camping is not for everybody
No one has come to blows, had families stop seeing one another, marched in the streets or called for politicians to be thrown out, over camping.   Spouses may choose to remain home or find comfortable accommodations rather than share a tent. but rare for divorce to occur over it — At least I am unaware of this. 

Go Camping
Go out in the fresh air,  the altitude, the granite cliffs, and among the trees older that the arguments that people wrestle with since our country’s founding.    Trees, assuming fire or disease does not destroy them ,outlast the petty squabbles of humanity.   The water falling over the cliffs at Yosemite may have started as a mist in Japan flowing into the sea, Near California that same droplets evaporate and are blown over the Sierra to fall as snow at the source of the Merced.   This may have gone on for ten thousand years regardless of drought policy and endangered species acts.  It makes camping awe-inspiring and people’s squabbles less significant.