There is no war. There is no destruction No rebellion. No protests No tragedy except the one we’re going through No adventure. No death We let the days pass us by And they all look the same to me Nothing to bring us together or tear us apart Nothing to make a memory Here we […]
A toothy tale
Waiting at the dentist’s office is uncomfortable. I am early, light traffic, getting fillings, & 2(!) donut shops in view from window.
Death, taxes, and cavities: 3 certainties in my life. At the very least, rhe dentist i’ve seen for the last 5 years is good. Fish fossils in one room & golf motif in another. Blues, old 60s rock, or old country music & zero musak! And no discomfort. Still the banter is usually one-way though.
In the annual checks I received as a Navy man, I used to think they became dental “monitors”. Say, you ought to get that looked at. And yet years ago the hygienists I recall, painfully, probably had been CIA torturers at one time.
Things you remember.
Go far in life by going far (away)
When I initially joined the Navy in the late 70s, I had already travelled to both coasts of the United States and to Great Britain – Northern Ireland, Scotland and London, England. But as a kid traveling with your parents or with a grandmother, it doesn’t really make for an adventure.
I joined the Navy to see the world. For nearly three years, I trained at various bases – in San Diego, at the Great Lakes Naval Training Center north of Chicago, in Pensacola, Florida and in Georgia. And then I returned to Arizona. I still wanted to see the world. So in between university semesters, paid in part by my military service, I spent several weeks each summer on the eastern shore of the Sea of Cortez, Mexico with a group of scuba divers from Arizona.
I joined the Navy again in 1987 for the adventure – and spent the next three and a half years near Washington, D.C. working as an electronics technician ( a Cryptologic Maintenance Technician specifically). I travelled all over the region from the shores of Lake Erie in the northwest to New York City, and all the historical places from Philadelphia to Annapolis, and then spent some vacation time as far south as Daytona Beach. But it was my decision to specifically request a sea-duty assignment, rare for those in my job specialty, when my world travel really took off.
After training, my orders sent me to San Francisco to board a cruiser, the USS TEXAS. Panama, Ecuador, and then north to and through the Panama Canal to the western Caribbean. I’ve ordered red snapper dinners in Panama, cigars and hotel rooms in Ecuador, and taken pictures of the Galapagos Islands as we sailed past. I’ve lived in the Kitsap peninsula opposite Seattle for a year, travelled to Esquimalt, British Columbia and Vancouver, Canada. (it is where I first learned about micro-brew beer and ales). On different ships and at different times, I enjoyed visiting countries around the Mediterranean, and one of the first American Navy ships to visit Bulgaria in 50 years.
As a kid who joined the Navy out of high school, I had been itching to get away from the desert. I never understood why my old Navy mentors, WWII sailors would have settled in Arizona and not near the sea. “We have had plenty of ocean. I am here because it is all beach”. After eight years of sea-duty, I understood that comment. And I was glad that I had a love of history and foreign languages to complement my technical profession. I’ve met and hung out with Spaniards in Cartagena, Spain. Enjoyed smoky jazz and partying with the French in Toulon and Paris, and sipped cappuccino in Catania, Sicily, Naples and Trieste. By the way, Trieste was also the place I was cussed out, in German, by a shopkeeper with he presumed, a German tourist and his lousy italian!
Whether visiting the historical sites of the Minoan civilization – and a 4000 year old queen’s working toilet, or seeing the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, I was grateful for my teachers from high school and college for fostering my interests.
In wartime, there are often too little focus on the wonder of travel and the opportunities to get to know people. The world is still full of wonderful places and people, but also dangers that sobers an American’s optimism at times. In an age when political forces are talking walls and not tackling the forces that cause people to come to the United States, we have put bandages and temporary dams up. There are forces also that want there to be no restrictions, and yet are unwilling to discuss the restrictions existing in the travelers own countries. And language and education advocates want to change history and eliminate a common language. All of these are just as ignorant as those who have never travelled to faraway places. America used to lead the world in the post-WWII years not solely out of the hubris of a few, but because it defied the hatreds, disunity, and class struggles of ninety percent of the world’s population. When Americans travelled to places outside the US, whether in the military or for other purposes, they would get assurances that we had it pretty wonderful.
Reading Mark Twain’s Innocence Abroad, I would love for us to have some of that innocence again.
Patton can’t wallop away “fatigue”
An article I read online about veterans who are suing the military to upgrade their discharges, indicates an ignored mitigating factor was their Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It was a stigma for soldiers in many conflicts to suffer ‘combat fatigue’ and the military did not have any mental health programs to help their suffering. World War II’s most infamous case of a leader who abused soldiers suffering what we know today as PTSD, was General Patton.
I do know what it is like to live with someone who suffered with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Thirty years ago, I was in a relationship with a woman whom I came to learn was not schizophrenic but rather suffering from PTSD. In the course of dealing with her middle of the night terror attacks, suspicious looks, angry stares, horrible accusations and anorexia, I was not trained, nor was I sufficiently mature enough, emotionally, to help. At the time I was in the Navy, stationed at an installation outside Washington, D.C. Over a period of several weeks everything came into the light. My job performance started to suffer badly. I was exhausted; one Monday, I failed to go to work at all. And then, banging on my door, my supervisor, a Chief Petty Officer in whom I confided my struggles, had come to check on us.
Instead of being brought before NJP – nonjudicial punishment, my supervisor verbally reprimanded me, and took charge- giving me direction about how I should lead my household. In the late 1980s, mental health, counseling – family or marital, and the host of ills that military members succumb to in combat was still in its infancy. And if PTSD was hardly recognized in the civilian population, how much less so for our veterans. I found resources for us to attend counseling. I would love to say that everything turned around and became goodness and light. It did not. Less than ten years later, I learned that she had succumbed to her health problems. For those suffering mental health issues, it is always continuing steps in recovery. But the sufferer has to be as engaged in getting healthy as those around him or her remain committed to helping. It is time for the military – and the VA – to make every effort to alleviate the mental health issues that were aggravated or incurred as a result of military service. It is only right to help warriors with tools and understanding who are suffering.
Thank you for serving, now move along
Yesterday I posted an article I read from the Voice of San Diego to Facebook. Following up an earlier expose on the rejection of a housing project in Poway for low-income veterans, it irritates me to think how my neighbors to the north look on themselves as a privileged class. I think posting the original article is very instructive on the social biases of affluent people who often want the Government to do something to help people but NIMBY (Not In My BackYard). Poway is home to large businesses, Defense contractors, and expensive homes. Sadly, many of these residents depend on the military residents who pay taxes, shop in their businesses, send their children to local schools and attend their churches. With land that is mandated for low-income residential use — home ownership and not a transient rental population is overlooked because of mistrust, ignorance and fear. Is this just an unwilling city to put money where its mouth is? When houses in the county average a half-million and condos $300K, what exactly does low-income veteran housing look like?
We Do Not Owe Them a House in Poway’
Posted By Maya Srikrishnan On December 29, 2016
After the Poway City Council denied a low-income veterans housing project in November, residents opposed to the project rejected suggestions that they were “anti-veteran.”
They are right. The opposition to the Habitat for Humanity veterans project had nothing to do with veterans.
Thanks Pepsi, I’ll still drink Dr. Pepper
One of the bloggers I follow posted on the recent Pepsi ad that features Jenner and scenes that bring up all the controversial issues in the USA today. I appreciate reason and tolerance. Some people are ‘offended’ by everything from colors to messages. As a retired Navy Chief, happily heterosexual man, a disciple of Jesus, and a California-born, social conservative, I probably offend some who have never met me. Though educated by world -travel, technical and university scholarship, and nearly six decades of examining human behavior, I lament the end to civility, tolerance, and nationalism.
The rub is to tolerate differing opinion – without shutting down the one who differs. That’s the real underlying message of the media and school programs which seek uniformity of thought along the guidelines they establish. Pepsi and other companies, will test the wind and see that ‘inclusion’ is the marketing tool of today.
May I use pitbull dogs as a metaphor for the messages in that ad? Some will hate that breed regardless of evidence. If there are a million dogs that have some Staffordshire Terrier in whole or part, perhaps ten thousand have been exposed to dog-fighting abuse. Some people will examine each animal individually, to see what they were exposed to and whether they can be placed with children or other pets. Some want to exploit fear and doubt of the breed for power. Some will see dogs abused to kill and maim as misunderstood. Some will adopt pitties and then neglect them. And if a community legally forces everyone to adapt by banning ‘pitbull’ ownership; by fining disobedience and by teaching that anyone who believes differently is maladjusted, can we still sing of “land of the free, and home of the brave”?
And so corporations – Pepsi, NCAA, NBA, and socialist governments- especially, the California legislature — do not try to force my thinking or my life into your determination of ‘inclusion’. While I will render to Caesar what is Caesars, I will not spend discretionary money on you. I will follow Thoreau and Civil Disobedience. I will join like-minded voters and oppose policies by the process we initiated in 1789 and worked well for 230 years.
Impressionable
When Al Qaeda terrorists attacked on September 11, 2001, I was a 42 year old reservist; I was absolutely willing to go if called up. One of my mentors while I was on Commander, Third Fleet staff (1997-99), had been killed when the Pentagon was attacked. While my unit’s signals analysts were mobilized, as an electronics maintenance supervisor, I was not. As the war continued, members of our larger community went into harm’s way and some died in combat.
While many young Americans today have been conditioned to think we are aggressors in many places, they have no firsthand experience with people or places outside North America. My peers and I have firsthand experience of the difficult, dirty, dangerous and often violent world people live in. Twenty years ago, I had conversations and developed acquaintances while traveling around the Mediterranean, Bulgaria, Russia, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Central America, South America, and Asia. Most of these relationships may have lapsed but people I know who still travel to those places know that the same struggles continue. Every week we are witness to violence that occurs in the name of a religion or a faction that Westerners want to blame on secular causes. Military members have been often marginalized by critics including academics and journalists for behavior or biases that may be exacerbated by tours in those regions. I trust military service members understand better than noisy college protesters and Facebook ranters who complain from the comfort of the United States.
I’m first to admit that I don’t have boots on the ground exposure to the war in Afghanistan or Iraq. My service in the operational theater aboard a Spruance -class destroyer occurred over 20 years ago following the combat phase of the Gulf War. I was there when we launched 15 Tomahawks to destroy Saddam’s Intel center; it was retaliation for plotting to kill former President G.H.W. Bush. But every IED, every homicide attacker against our troops and against civilians since the 1990s has been funded and armed, directly or through proxies, by the Iranians. Some terrorists have used US arms we stupidly provided to extremists because the “enemy of my enemy is my friend”. Today we are rejuvenating a relationship with the one democracy there – Israel. Those politicians will not admit that just about every Islamic group we have given arms to in the past 40 years has at one time or another been used against civilians or against us. When the terrorists were not Sunnis killing Shia or Shia killing Sunnis, they were blowing up soldiers, sailors, contractors, police and aid workers. Only through constant training and force was any semblance of peace being fostered there. And today, while we consider adding to the presence in that region, the entire Western European and Arab worlds are succumbing to a misguided and poorly implemented influx of refugees. In the 1990s, we named the breakdown into factions and groups unwilling to assimilate into the culture of the host countries “Balkanization”. This has certainly been seen to exist in many nations where the influx of Islamists have not assimilated.
Combat veterans have a unique position to support, refute, or respond to policies of the United States that engage us in conflict; however, I think all veterans have a moral duty to protest when policies or bureaucrats fail to support those who returned from a conflict. For more than thirty years, my friendship with a Vietnam combat veteran and scholar, whose acerbic commentary on all things involving politicians, military affairs & particularly anything that can be ascribed to failures of the Republican Party – has continued as I respect someone who has been at the “pointy end of the spear”. Another veteran, a retired USMC Colonel also has acerbic commentary, but would likely be diametrically in opposition to the other combat veteran. This continues to keep me mentally sharp to engage in debate.
I hope to add my voice and watchful eyes to call the Government to account for many shabby incidents of treatment for honorably serving veterans. I am hopeful that a website for combat veterans, The War Horse, started by a combat veteran of this most recent conflict will help veterans. I have a son serving in the Army today and know that the culture in the military often puts the military family at odds with young people who have not experienced military service. I am also leery of the biases and motivations of journalists and academics who generally have been critical on all things American, who now promote a combat veteran’s experience toward journalism and academics. Yet I will add this to my reading list on conflict, coping with the aftermath, and the promises kept and broken by the nation that sent them to war.
Gunsmoke
What influence on your future career and life choices did neighbors , teachers or other mentors have when you were in high school? I can only recall that my Junior and Senior year of high school were most influential in my future; the first two I spent at a different school 1500 miles away from Tucson, Arizona. Those first two were more of a battleground with a few toughs at school whom I eventually stood up to, beat and embarrassed.
During the last two years I worked hard at school; rode seven miles on my bicycle every school day so I could remain in the same district for my Senior year; Being in Arizona, it was only proper for a city slicker to learn to ride horseback. Before and after high school, i traded labor for riding lessons at a dude ranch near my home. I was more of a ranch hand in those days than many of the kids in their cowboy hats, big belt buckles and pickup trucks. I learned to operate farm equipment and drive a jeep. While I was eventually to find my career path in the engineering world, at that time I loved history, Spanish and French languages. Some afternoons I visited a nursing home where my mom worked, spending time listening to the adventures of mule skinners, WWI and WWII veterans.
Two of my favorite teachers were World War II Army veterans. One history teacher, had been a driver for General Patton in Sicily. Another, Mr. Davis, spoke of military units and battles of the Revolutionary War as though he had been part of them. But more interesting to me and to a few of my buddies, is that he had a black powder shooting club; It was there that we learned to load, clean and shoot muskets. As it was the Bicentennial year (1976), a couple of us were introduced to a group of enthusiasts who participated in both an Indian Wars U.S. Cavalry re-enactment group and those forming a Revolutionary War Connecticut militia unit. Everything was period dress, arms, slings, powder bags and the like. I never actually mastered the fife, but I kept that tri-corner hat for probably fifteen years.
It was so odd for me, two years later, when I enlisted in the Navy and was sent to San Diego for bootcamp, that we NEVER touched a pistol nor a rifle for marksmanship training. Only in the final weeks of bootcamp, did we actually see rifles — ceremonial rifles – as my company was a Drill unit. The ones who marched in parades, at football game halftime ceremonies and the like.
Through a series of events, it would be more than ten years later in a second stint in the Navy, where I obtained military marksmanship training, qualified to shoot rifle, pistol ( 45 S&W) and shotgun as member of a shipboard Quick Reaction Force. Since retiring from the military, the only shooting I do these days is with a camera. But then, California would probably NOT license me for a 50 cal deck gun, and I have difficulty justifying 500 dollars for a plinking pistol. Dear me, I’ve become a liberal!
40, 7 and 2: lucky numbers
I moved my first attempt at blogging from Blogger to WordPress today. My other blog are observations of daily life mostly reflected in adventures and sometimes misadventures of my two dogs. This blog, Truths, Half-truths and Sea Stories, I hope you will find entertaining and thought-provoking. It is my second blog hosted on WordPress, and expresses more salty insight into daily events.
I retired in April 2010 ( 7 years ago), after combined Active, Retired, and Inactive service of more than 32 years in the United States Navy. I took my initial ASVAB aptitude test while the Vietnam War was all but ended ( 1975), entered bootcamp when Jimmy Carter was President (1977), and then re-enlisted into Active Duty after George H. W. Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan as President. Since I retired as a Reservist, I am eligible to claim a pension starting at age 60 ( 2 years from now).
God the Provider: Our Opportunity to Give
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.
Taxation but poor representation
On April 6th, 2017 the California Legislature narrowly approved an additional fuel and car registration tax and fees to make up for a “budget shortfall”. I did not approve.
Poor California. Run by men and women who steal from the working people of the state to fund everything but quality of life in the Golden State. The bureaucracy in California, from the local planning commissions, to the Air Quality boards, the education administration and a thousand jobs, bureaus, and committees that take money out of our pockets. They fund “trains to nowhere” around the state. They put bicycle lanes in existing roads that diminish the utility for motorists. They approve Public transit projects that do not provide an adequate ridership.
There are few streets or highways in the state that are maintained in suitable condition. In Los Angeles, there are hundreds of miles of highway that are a patchwork of potholes, filled potholes, patches, barriers, cones and flashing signs. In San Diego, one of the more recent projects did nothing to alleviate a congestion problem of merging lanes but to move the congestion three miles to the west of the original problem. And the local planning board approved an additional neighborhood development to funnel another five or six hundred cars at any given time into the present congested highway merge point.
In every municipality there have been bond measures – robbing from Peter to pay Paul for school improvements, fire stations and so forth, but the roads still don’t have improved traffic control and signal lights, street lights do not get bulbs replaced. Abandoned and broken down cars in neighbor hoods are the last item law enforcement investigates due to few resources.
But we continually hear the drumbeat of how the state of California is so progressive. Democrats — and it is the Democrats, or at least the socialist fringe Democrats who push through legislation or policy and regulations. There have never been sufficient numbers anywhere in the other 75 percent of the state to express a different viewpoint. Democrats and their Union/ ethnic/ LGBT lobbyist masters are the ones to blame for all the ills in the state. Not bad living at an average of $95,000 a year to make others lives miserable. And the Republicans, Greens, Socialists, and Libertarians are no better at any significant improvement in the management of our state. The state would be run far better if high school students could run things. The last generally-equipped-with-common-sense and not (yet) beholden to social justice warriors for opinions and direction.
The California education system loves to implement new methods for teaching but year after year the children in the state come out functionally disadvantaged, indoctrinated in all things to do with gender equality and green technology, but unable to hold responsible working – high paying jobs – because they have to pursue social justice protests and activist politics.
Everyone expects there to be blame assigned and subsequent REMORSE on the part of the worst offenders. But the social warriors have no delusions about this. Despite the huge numbers of people who do not HAVE to acquire a working knowledge of the English language, nor a skill to sustain them, nor an understanding of budgets, health care, and other common sense skills that the residents of this state enjoyed up until the 1960s. we have huge numbers that follow vapid entertainment personalities who present themselves as paragons of virtues, experts in sexual persuasions, proper roles of religion in society (none) and absolutely have no regard for Government — that does not follow the continued moral and social decline so favored by the socialists.
In California, the reason that we have rain and the inability to store water for the state in times of drought, is not because of weather patterns existing for millions of years, but because the political policy wonks find money can be leveraged for public-valued works to pet projects. What hampers growth in the economy – businesses and people- are favored academics who have conclusions FIRST and who then find or create evidence to support their grant money.
When millions of people stream into the state without the education, ability or desire to improve the state community as a whole but look to the state to care for them, the state – we who fund from our labor – has a problem. When we cannot discuss it for fear of reprisals, from the very same critics who demand we change everything to suit them – that do not tolerate dissent.
It’s a crazy, crazy place to live, California.
Oh, dear state legislators and bureaucrats, Soon, I will not afford to drive, the roads are already impassable, the trains don’t come my way; I still am expected to pay my bills and taxes. Maybe you can send every state retiree a vacation package for swimming with sharks, hot-air ballooning, skydiving lessons, or other means to decrease the number of pensioners in the state. I need YOUR optimism for California – and maybe a solar-powered car to get around.
For further study:
http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/5DDB79194769C2BF852574D5003C28D5?OpenDocument
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/26/us/two-votes-show-public-is-wary-of-tax-increases.html
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/la-oew-greene3sep03-story.html
Whatever became of R. Lee Ermey ?
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.
Truths, Half-truths, and Sea Stories 