Sea Stories – Page 8 – Truths, Half-truths, and Sea Stories

Pardon me while I gasp for air

June 8, 2017Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

“For, with a ship’s gear, as well as a sailor’s wardrobe, fine weather must be improved to get ready for the bad to come.”
― Richard Henry Dana Jr., Two Years Before the Mast: A Sailor’s Life at Sea

Call me “somewhat concerned” with my deterioration during and after naval service. Thirty years ago, I was prescribed steroids for some medical issues. Twenty years ago, my appendix ruptured at the start of the Labor Day weekend holiday. I was recuperating for a month. I started to put on weight (happily-married weight) ten years ago. And three years ago, after getting too obsessed with cycling exercise, using clipless pedals I fell and broke my wrist in three places. A year ago, I self-diagnosed that an annual or semi-annual trip to the ER ( for ten years) was due to a food allergy to capsaicin. Now that I have sworn off the spicy food or food containing bell peppers I ate for more than 30 years I am not poisoning myself.

This year I seem to have been crushed by flu and colds. First year in three that I didn’t get a flu vaccine. Congestion and nasal drip that chokes me at night will persist for a month, then off for a month or two and then come back just to be annoying. With some of the crazy medical issues I’ve encountered over my life, I don’t understand how I don’t have anemia like my late mother ( and low blood pressure) Nor do I have high blood pressure or a brain tumor like my late father (in his twenties). Instead, I find myself obsessed with breathing.

I always associated breathing problems with asthma, chain-smokers, or the people who live in horribly polluted environments. I visited Samsun, Turkey one winter while in the Navy, and the coal smoke was literally down to waist-level height by the port . (And they were chain smokers as well.) I only in the last couple years started smoking the occasional cigar figuring that after age 50, would take twenty or thirty years to harm me. I probably now have only smoked a half dozen cigars in six months. In the next six months I will quit entirely. I am very aware that my more sedentary life outside of the Navy renders me more susceptible to ills. An article I read online tells me a healthier diet and exercise will counter the phlegm that is making breathing at night a chore.

Of course, I may have to cough up a lung or two exercising in my deteriorated state, to get healthier.

Hurghada by the sea

June 4, 2017June 4, 2017Eric Saretsky1 Comment

When I last saw Hurghada, Egypt, it was at the end of a nineteen- hour series of flights from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My orders had me wait in this port city on the Red Sea until my ship arrived. This was 1993 and our East Coast ships patrolled the Mediterranean, Red Sea and the Gulf of Arabia 249-37-l (Persian Gulf).

While recent images online show a fancy beach resort (!) in Hurghada, I recall then only sand, heat, scorpions, and prickly pear cactus. Hotels were still in a state of construction – apparently as their proprietors were not taxed until construction had complete. To this day I recall the port worker and a shopkeeper who both spoke english. I got to learn a little about the culture and the European visitors. I don’t think americans generally visited along the Red Sea as the ancient Egypt they come to see is along the Nile and in Cairo museums. Back then Hurghada main clientele were German tourists vacationing on the beach. Egypt is also where I presumed America’s contribution to the world must have been the car horn. It certainly was not the turn signal. Perhaps because one hand on the horn and the other gesturing angrily at a pedestrian leaves no hand free?

Egyptian cabbies have a penchant for three things – their vehicles travel at a high rate of speed, they constantly are honk the horn, and at night, headlamps are strictly of optional use. You have to realize how crazy riding in a cab at night is: camels, donkeys, street vendors, and folk fill the streets. None seem ever involved in an accident with these mad drivers. From visits to our New York City on several occasions, I now know where these Egyptians learned to drive. And Turks. And Africans.

Entertaining “Shipshape”

June 3, 2017June 3, 2017Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

⁴⁶Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, ⁴⁷praising 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. 0512-0707-1115-1056 On 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

May 30, 2017May 30, 2017Eric 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

May 28, 2017May 29, 2017Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

ship I 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

May memories

May 25, 2017Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

A lot changes in forty years. In May, 1977, prior to my departure for Boot Camp at Naval Training Center, San Diego in October, I was graduating high school. Jimmy Carter was President, a fact that I thought, being a former naval submariner officer, would make him an excellent leader. People didn’t want Gerald Ford as he had pardoned ‘criminal’ Richard Nixon, but I remember him for sending in Marines to retrieve the Mayaguez, which had been seized by the Khmer Rouge a month after the last battle involving U.S. troops of the Vietnam War.

In those last two years of the Seventies, the Zumwalt-era of loosened grooming standards – longer hair, mustaches and beards worn by Sailors were okay. Dungarees (bell-bottom style) and dixie cups, were the working uniform. Pot was a problem on military bases including San Diego. A community that now is marked by the upwardly-mobile, well-heeled beach crowd, Ocean Beach, was then a place where druggies and ex-military, tattoo parlors and bars were less restrictive than up the coast near the UCSD campus.

A visit over the Coronado Bridge to the Naval Station Coronado, where carriers were berthed was my first view of a ship – the USS Recruit was a wood and metal reproduction on the Recruit Training Command, to introduce us to naming convention, etc – so did not count. The ‘aroma’ of the interior of the USS Kitty Hawk was the first ‘knock out’ that I will never forget. Jet fuel, grease, human sweat, urinals and generally, the stink of at times, 3500 men (no women then) wafted fresh new sailors who had more recently been accustomed to PINE SOL clean scent.

At the time, I was a student learning to work on complex electronics and mechanical maintenance of teletypes. Where I now cannot see without at least one or two orders of magnitude, I was able then to discern two from three centimeters adjustments. The instructor was quite ADAMANT about that ability before graduation. We had Iranian military students – this was prior to the Iranian Revolution – and when they were recalled by their government, we were relieved. Suffice it to say that American and Iranian hygiene were on different tracks.

In May of 1982, with several of my fellow Russian Language students and the professor – I was able to travel to Russia – prior to the end of the USSR (1989) – visiting cities – St Petersburg, Moscow, Kiev and Tbilisi. If only for all but one – a socialist- the trip was very informative and probably saved them and their future families from the ‘snowflake’ sensibilities, the mantra of “coexistence” and “socialism’s great”. The people may have been interesting and interested, but the economy was a shambles. Ambition was reserved for the underground economy — some of whom are today’s Russian millionaires and billionaires.

In May of 1984, I had been out of the Navy four years, attending the university in Tucson, Arizona. Four three of those four years I had been actively involved in the Veteran students organization on campus, and while peers were pursuing commissioning programs, I was looking toward a government job after graduation. Strangely, in my second year after graduation, when my graduate school plans went unfunded – I re-enlisted in the Navy -Reserve – that is. The entreaties of one of my friends finally had me join his unit, only to see him quit!

After petitioning to resume an Active Duty career in 1987, the next major May milestone I recall was May of 1997 when I was transferred from Norfolk, Virginia to San Diego, California. 1970 Dodge Chargers, if you could find one in decent shape were then ten thousand dollars or more, homes which had been an unheard of, eighty thousand dollars – for an ocean view, were nearly eight hundred thousand, and NTC was closed but for a few administrative medical functions.

And in the twenty years since that time, friends and mentors went to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Soviets became Russian trade partners, the Chinese became the world’s second-most powerful economy, the Islamic world tried to separate the economic need for the non-Islamic world – from the ideology that wants to reduce infidels to ashes, and we are again at some form of odds over military preparedness against the adversaries that were no longer adversaries?

if Jonah had a Spanish accent

May 9, 2017Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

15 Then they took Jonah and threw him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm. – Jonah 1:15 (NIV)

At sea, even on a Navy warship, when the storm is raging, you feel very small and vulnerable. In eight years, on three different ships, I have been through squalls, gales, and hurricanes. It is truly awe-inspiring – and foolhardy – to venture out on the upper weatherdeck when a destroyer is rolling 30 – 35 degrees port and starboard. The churning, foamy grey and black sea is so different from the steel blue calm water of several hours earlier. The power of the sea to bash in metal plates is also that same ocean that can leave sailboats without a breath of wind to move them. In either condition, I never want to be at the mercy of the ocean.

If one is to be stranded at sea, there are some more preferable spots than others. Shipping lanes are well-traveled and charted, like marked highways around the globe. And then there are those when outside those lanes, who if they become stranded, rely on the grace of God, or Neptune, or whales, dolphins or whatnot will send help their way. The ocean, out of sight of land is a very lonely place, even in a part of the ocean that is well-traveled.

I was aboard the TEXAS, one of the last great nuclear-powered cruisers about eight hours southwest of the Panama Canal on a bright, sunny day. I was performing some routine maintenance near the forecastle ( pronounced foc’sill”) when an announcement over the ship’s 1MC, its intercom, that we were rendering aid to a small boat off our starboard bow.

“Boat” was an approximation as I recall. It was more like a dugout, with two Panamanian men, and a couple of chickens – roosters, actually, in small cages in between the two men. In the first minutes, I was the only person on the deck who spoke Spanish and the deck officer asked me to translate some questions and directions for them to be brought aboard. Apparently, they were traveling from one of the islands off Panama to another – the birds were to be in a contest – and the motor started to have problems. In starting to work on it – the motor clamp dislodged and motor and all fell into the depths. They had been drifting with the currents for a day.

We were fortunate to be at that place and time to rescue the men and return them to Panama with only a delay in our schedule. Oh, as for schedules, sometimes they can be a pain in the neck with military precision. At the moment we had the small boat along side, and were preparing to bring them aboard, they happened to be under a bilge valve. Yes. Engineering began pumping waste overboard at that exact moment. Furious calls over the radio, straining on ropes and a few dozen choice expletives succeeded in halting the pumps, getting the men – and roosters, and their boat on board.

I wonder if those men recall the day the “americanos” rescued them. And do they tell their children, when you are going to a cock-fight, be sure to bring a lot of rope for lashing, maybe have all your shots updated, and most importantly, get a bigger boat.

night at the museum

May 6, 2017Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

USS_Coronado_04AUG1999 — USS CORONADO, AGF-11

Looking at old mementos this evening, of my days in the Navy makes me feel, well “Well-seasoned”. As I look back, the ships where I was a crewmember are all now dismantled, and sunk to the depths of the ocean.

The USS TEXAS, a nuclear -powered missile cruiser was several firsts for me: first year at sea; designation as an Enlisted Surface Warfare Specialist (in 1991); and Shellback. I did enjoy living near Seattle for nearly a year – the ship was in drydock – before I was transferred at its decommissioning. It was decommissioned, dismantled and scrapped at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in the late 1990s.

I first fell in love with Canada – Esquimalt, B.C, and Vancouver aboard the TEXAS. I visited, Ecuador, Panama and cruised through the Panama Canal on that ship.

The USS PETERSON, a Spruance-class Guided Missile Destroyer, where I made friendships still strong twenty five years later, was decommissioned and sunk in the Atlantic. But that’s the ship where I got the opportunity to visit Europe – Spain, France, Italy, Greece, and Turkey, Bulgaria, Israel, Egypt, and island nations of Crete and Cyprus. On the USS PETERSON, I visited Panama and Ecuador a second time – was based out of the East Coast. (That has to be a first two-coast, two ship and back-to-back visits for any Sailor since that time!) On another PETERSON deployment, we visited Nova Scotia. Halifax has a friendliness towards seafarers of all sorts.

And from San Diego, the USS CORONADO, a special projects testbed, and command ship for the U.S. THIRD FLEET, took me to Japan, Korea and Alaska ( and Honolulu a number of times) was decommissioned and sunk in the western Pacific.

Equipment I used to maintain I found in a museum a decade ago. Uniforms I wore when I first enlisted and then subsequently through 3 uniform changes have been sent to resale and thrift stores. Occasionally, I see a homeless person with one of the old pattern utilities and foul weather gear.

Memories are now appearing regularly on EBAY and other second-hand online stores. But I have a few things that are still worth keeping. shopping One of the last USS TEXAS calendars, postcards issued by the USS PETERSON, and pictures and challenge coins given to me by CINCPACFLT for earning Sailor of the Year for THIRD FLEET in 1998. And my retirement shadow box lists installations that have either disappeared or been revamped, remodeled, and redesignated.

So in some future yard sale, should you, dear reader, happen upon a bunch of trinkets from an old Sailor’s box of mementos, enjoy them. We can now Pinterest and Twitter and Facebook around the whole world. But, trinkets, salt air and ocean waves are still analog.

Treading water

May 5, 2017April 16, 2020Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

As I get older, I wonder what has become of my military-physique – the early one, not the rounder one of my last year – and what became of the ‘forego the mission, clean the position!” fanatical routine with cleanliness. Not that I don’t love the smell of PINESOL in the morning, but leaving the house all day with two big hair-shedding dogs results in a truce between the advance of dirt and actual boot-camp standards of clean.

Attitudes that once were socially and fiscally conservative, I generally vote in every election, hold ‘personal responsibility’ in high esteem — welfare is for the most-desperate and least able to work, and believe military service is beneficial to everyone between 18 and 50 years old. Now, I hold fast to my church family, my spouse, and keep my personal values fairly close to the chest — outside the street I live on. Fortunately, I have neighbors who were also military or police, and are now retired. A neighbor on a street where I walk the dogs has a “DON’T TREAD ON ME” flag above his door. Another proudly has a TRUMP sign. Both have pickup trucks with Marine and Army stickers on the former. Then again, I wear “VFW Life Member” and Navy Chief t-shirts to work. But I am mellowed with aging.

I have YOSEMITE, bicycling, and Grand Canyon hiking stickers on my car, a VFW license frame and a Nature Conservancy brochure on my car seat – I contribute to purchasing wildland around San Diego to preserve it. What happened to the guy who owned firearms, enjoyed target plinking, and was a fan of talk radio? Gone.

I need to get out of California. I’m starting to love it here.

http://www.gadsden.info/history.html

Knossos, but no bull

May 1, 2017May 1, 2017Eric Saretsky1 Comment

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4000 years ago, the Minoan civilization, on what is now the island of Crete, was a thriving, sea-going people. The Classic Greek legend of the Minotaur, a half-man, half bull-like beast which is still being taught in universities today, was a story set in the Palace of King Minos at Knossos on Crete. In the 19th Century, archaeologists began excavating this site; some of the buildings were partially reconstructed to show the amazing art and technology that they developed. in 1994, I had the opportunity to see this site with fellow crew members of the USS PETERSON during a port visit. One of the highlights for me was the world’s first flushing toilet, in the queen’s chambers.

I still laugh at one of the comments made by a young sailor on that trip. ‘What a bunch of crap, everything is in pieces”, he said.

“Well, this entire site was buried in the ground for FOUR THOUSAND years”. someone responded. “I wouldn’t expect it to be all standing at all.”

“Oh, wow.”

Who knows what history would have recorded about the Minoans had not a little environmental disaster overtaken them. Four thousand years ago, in one of the largest volcanic eruptions ever, the island of Thera, about a hundred miles to the north of Crete, vaporized. The resulting tidal wave obliterated the Minoans. According to history, the Bible, and other records, elsewhere around the Mediterranean, the Etruscans – who were the forerunners of Romans, the Egyptians, Israelite tribes all were impacted by the Minoans.

Sailors get around. And that ain’t no bulls…”

No, I did not sail with Noah

April 30, 2017April 29, 2017Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

“Memories which someday will become all beautiful when the last annoyance that encumbers them shall have faded out of our minds.”
― Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

I am reading my letters written in boot camp forty years ago. As an eighteen year old enlisted sailor, I entered the training gate by military bus at four in the morning of 3 October, 1977. This was my first real separation from family. I wanted to share my adventures. It is not gripping prose.

27 October, 1977

Dear Mom,

Payday! I went to cash my paycheck. After deductions for the ditty bag ( personal items, toiletries and shave kit, $65) and taxes, I have $173 for two weeks. I am sending you $163 in a money order. Use it for bills or put it in the bank for me.

We got big news today which made our Company Commander very happy: we earned a 4.0 mark on our barracks inspection which means the inspectors found nothing to report. And we began a competition between companies which will mean a lot in the coming weeks. After the barracks inspection, we had a personal inspection – uniforms, gear, shave and such. In our third week, we took a test that I had been worried about. It was very easy and I nearly aced it.

At our classification interview – to select which career I would follow, I went for the CRYPTOLOGIC TECHNICIAN, MAINTENANCE …….. It seems I have been preliminary accepted into this field – part of the Advanced Electronics Field I signed up for. But it means a COMPLETE security check as I would be dealing with ….. equipment. I will be sending home a document to for you to completely fill out and return to me as soon as possible. I hope I can get into this “hush, hush” rating. I sure hope that the investigators will not dig up anything to disqualify me. …. the Navy will spend five months investigating me. They will uncover everything and find and talk to everyone I was in contact with. And five months of schooling. According to the classification brief, school will pack two weeks of high school electronics training into a single 8-hour day! If I should fail school I will be screwing up a six-year commitment and become a barnacle-scrubber!

Please thank Nana and Robin for their letters. They help a lot. I will write again, probably on 4- 4 day next week when we cross the bridge into advanced training. Movies, recreation room, and a Baskin-Robbins and hamburger joint available to us on our liberty time. The hitch is that the Company Commander decides whether we earn a pass to visit these things. Tell Senorita I miss her and not to bug Buttercup too much.

P.S. Please send postage stamps as it is hard to obtain them here in RTC and I like to keep up a running commentary. After all the physical training, you will see a definite change when you come here for my graduation.

I miss you a lot. Tons of love,

Last humanist standing?

April 27, 2017April 30, 2017Eric SaretskyLeave a comment

Tonight, it was during a television show that I found some time for reflection. Tim Allen’s comic touch on his TV series, Last Man Standing, is very engaging. While we generally are spending time after work with our church family, working on chores at home, and writing (my wife and I both have blogs), this was a moment to enjoy a little quiet time.

Over the last decade, television in the United States has really turned me off, but for a couple of shows that both my wife and I like to watch together. Television exaggerates stereotypes, current events, criminal behavior, and sexuality to capture viewers. Yet with Last Man Standing, I think it is great that this show can portray the timeless interplay of parents and children – who are not children but grown into fledgling adults. And depicts topics with a touch of humor that also makes a point. In tonight’s episode, a scene where black neighbors and Tim’s character and wife meet for a barbecue, the wife constantly is making references to “show how ‘colorblind’ she is”. The husband, Tim’s character, pokes fun at how she sounds, and then makes a comment that the wife says “sounds racist”.

“I’m not racist. I’m a humanist. I hate everyone equally.”

Families are depicted as we actually are – sometimes we do sound ignorant, or a little too blunt towards each other, and at other times say things that are “politically incorrect”. In 2017, people in the United States have split into opposing camps, those who yearn for ‘how it used to be’ and those who want everyone to conform to the “new normal”. Where has humor, civility, disagreement, and free expression gone?

I look back fondly to my military service. I understood the military as the conversion of the willing into a homogeneous offensive or defensive unit. It was also my conversion to educated citizen of the world. Each culture has advantages and disadvantages, with different ideas, customs and history. As a result of a military uniform, I was able to see the benefits of living in America come into sharper focus despite the nation’s ills.

That is why I am becoming fond of family comedy of the sort that Tim Allen’s show represents. It allows a little relief from contemplating all the challenges around the globe. I am a different sort of humanist. I love people individually. I am learning to have an open mind toward the rest.