The Road Ahead

When I sat down last night to write this, I had a bunch of thoughts on politics and politicians going around in the old noggin. Started to write one thing, trashed that and started to write something else. Trashed that as well.

Because I can't sit down and rationally discuss or write about politics these days.

All I know is that the last 3 and a half years have been an absolute mess. The people who are supposed to be in charge have no clue. Before the last election I had a sick feeling that the wrong man was going to be elected President. And yes, that's what happened.

A man with zero practical experience in real life had been elected to the highest office in the land. Most of the people around him were also totally unsuited for the jobs they were given.

Now where do we go from here? All I know is that the current occupant of the White House has got to go. He needs to join the ranks of the unemployed, hell he's responsible for most of those folks being unemployed in the first place. Seems he should have a taste of his own medicine. And take that loon of a Vice President with him. What they've offered is NOT working. And it ain't gonna work, not now, not ever.

It's time for America to get back to work.

It's time to look down the road ahead and get things back on track.

It's time for a change.

Lorsque le Digue se Brise

A clue to the title of today's post:

Blog buddy Buck got me going with the French thing over at his place today. (Not casting blame here, just pointing out that it was Buck and his je ne sais quoi that got me started.) And the music? I just enjoy this tune. A lot.

Back in my "young and dumb" days, while stationed at Kadena Air Base, Japan, my buddies and I would listen to this song (and others like it) on stereo systems that would've cost an arm and a leg back here in the States. But over there, pretty doggone cheap.

So every self-respecting airman had a stereo system which could almost drown out an F-4 Phantom during it's take off roll. And folks, that's an F-4 with a full bomb load and a full load of jet fuel. That is, throttles pushed up all the way past the detent, in full afterburner. And that my friends, was LOUD.

It became a ritual of sorts that every Friday night we would gather at Airman First Class Jasbo's room, loaded down with a case of beer (or two) and with a pinochle deck close at hand.

Seats would be taken, that first beer opened and Jasbo would hit the music. Volume all the way up. And to that opening drum beat we'd have our first sip of the weekend.

Now it's not like we just played loud music all night and drank ourselves silly. No, we were not nose pickers (aka crew chiefs - plane captains for you Naval-types). We were not BB stackers (munitions/ordnance loaders). And we were most certainly NOT admin pukes (which needs no translation).

No sir, we were avionics maintenance troops. And not just any old avionics maintenance troops, we were WEAPON CONTROL SYSTEMS! (And yes, we were awfully full of ourselves back in those days.)

So after a couple of iterations of this tune and a couple of cans of beer, we would settle down and break out the cards. Pinochle and beer, that was our Friday night on Okinawa.

Ah, good times.

Geese and Seagulls

Geese, specifically Canada Geese (that big fella on the left), and seagulls, (that rather annoyed looking dude on the right). I see them all the time.

Living in New England I enjoy watching the great Vs of geese winging across the late summer and autumn skies. If they're low enough, you can hear their wings creaking. No, really, their wings make a creaking sound, kind of like my knees do early in the morning as I hobble out of bed.

If you get me away from salt water for any length of time, I get all melancholy. But if I hear the call of a gull, it perks me up and makes me think of the sea. No matter how far away it might be.

Perhaps you're thinking that if you can see or hear a gull, then the ocean must not be too far away. Right?

Actually you'd be wrong. Going to college in Ft Collins, Colorado, one of the first things I noticed was seagulls. Indeed, there was a rather large colony of gulls in the area. A local told me that they'd migrated from the Great Salt Lake in Utah, following (and devouring) a great swarm of locusts. About a century ago.

Don't know if it's true or not. Don't much care. It's a nice story.

So why (you may wonder) is the Old AF Sarge going on about aquatic fowl today? The answer to that one is easy.

Where I work is just a hop, skip and a jump from Narragansett Bay. So there tend to be a lot of seagulls who like to hang out in our parking lot. They particularly like to perch atop the light poles. Also atop some of the larger SUVs.

Also there are lots of Canada Geese in our neck of the woods. My company has a rather expansive lawn surrounding the buildings. Which the geese like to wander about on, consuming whatever it is that geese consume while upon terra firma.

Now guess what we see a lot of in our parking lot?

WARNING - If you have a weak stomach, look away dear reader. Oh lordy, look away!

We see this

and this

Disgusting isn't it?

But in our parking lot, imagine the above multiplied a thousand-fold!

Fortunately it is a very large parking lot. But, one needs to be mindful of where one places one's feet while navigating from the car to the building entrance. The asphalt is no place for the unwary.

You know those war movies where the patrol is making their way across a field, and suddenly there is a "click"? Everyone freezes, someone has stepped on a mine.

Well today, returning from lunch, I dismounted my vehicle and was warily making my way across the mine field parking lot. Something moved in my peripheral vision, like most would do I glanced in that direction. Just as I did, I heard a "squoooosh".

My right heel was no longer upon solid asphalt. There was something "smooshy" underneath my shoe. And like those soldiers in the mine field, I froze. Not because any movement on my part would cause an explosive device to discharge underneath me. No, I froze with the following thought in my head, "You have got to be sh!tting me!" (Literally the case, so to speak...)

Yes, there under my right heel was a patch of fresh goose dung. In all it's green and disgusting glory. When I got up the nerve to move my foot away from it, there was my heel print, embedded in the squashed pile of goose crap.

Not wanting to, but needing to. I looked at the underside of my shoe. Yes, indeed, more goose crap. Slowly I moved to the nearest curb, to scrape off the bulk of the goose poop.

Good, the biggest part of the mess is gone. But there's still some of it adhering to the tread.

At that point I remembered an old trick our first cat would use when he had a bad case of, shall we say, the Hershey squirts. Montezuma's revenge. You know, diarrhea. He would drag his soiled butt across the grass. Having no access to toilet paper, and even if he did, he (like all cats) lacked opposable thumbs. Apparently dragging his soiled behind across the lawn worked well for him.

So I headed for a clear patch of lawn (that is a patch sans goose crap) and rubbed the remainder of the dung off of my shoe. Success! No goose poop to be seen upon my footwear!

I passed the true test of shoe cleanliness when I returned home to the family estate this evening. I entered my abode somewhat cautiously, awaiting my two cats to come rushing to the door to say "Hi Dad! Where is Our Food?"

Tentatively I pushed my right foot forward, expecting to see two very intrigued cat noses inspecting my shoe. They sniffed it and then looked at me with a "So what? Where's our supper?"

Now most cats of my acquaintance love the smell of dirty footwear. Not a wink, not a flehmen response did I see. Hunh? Shoes passed the cat scan. I must have got it all. Sweet.

All in all, this really sums up Mondays for me.

Very often a crappy day.

(I know. That was a crappy story. Some day I'll tell you the tail of the bat crapping on my hat, in the wee hours of the night. Yes, I'm full of crap stories.)

D'Oh!

Those who've been at this blog business for a while are no doubt familiar with the "anti-bot" concept as illustrated above.

A couple of days ago, over at Buck's place, blog-buddy Buck was up in arms about this eye watering torture that some bloggers subject their commenters to. While reading that post I said to myself, "Oh yeah, I HATE that crap!"

Then what do I see today in a comment to a recent post? On my very own blog. This:

"THREE attempts at word verification. Just sayin'."

My first reaction was, of course, "Say what?"

Oh no, have I been inflicting this on my commenters?

So I go to my blog and attempt to comment as "Anonymous", and sure enough the frickin' eye chart pops up.

Damn! How do I turn that sh!t off?

So I log in, find the offending setting and promptly disable it. A retest revealed no eye chart popping up.

Whew...

My sincerest apologies, regrets, etc., etc. to those of you who in the past may have wanted to comment but couldn't get past that crap above.

Mea maxima culpa.

I am mortified.

Now the gates have been flung wide to all and sundry.

Hopefully no "bots" wander in off the streets.

I'll take that chance.

Stay thirsty my friends...

Neil Armstrong 1930 - 2012

Astronaut and Naval Aviator Neil Armstrong

High Flight by John Magee

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
 And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
 Sunwards I’ve climbed and joined the tumbling mirth
 Of sun-split clouds – and done a thousand things
 You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
 High in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,
 I’ve chased the shouting wind along and flung
 My eager craft through footless halls of air,
 Up, up the long delirious burning blue
 I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
 Where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
 And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
 The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
 Put out my hand, and touched the face of god.

Another hero, gone from our midst.

Godspeed, Sir.

I Just Don't Fit In

The Way I'm Feeling

Well, I'm back at the home office. No more long commute to the banks of the Merrimack River. I can look out the window of my office building and see Narragansett Bay. I now work ten miles from home as opposed to 100. So why do I keep thinking "Be careful what you wish for..."?

Perhaps it's going to take longer than a week to get back into the swing of things. Perhaps it will just take me some time to get used to the "old reality" (of what I used to do) as opposed to the "new reality" of the past two and a half years.

Or maybe, just maybe, I've re-discovered something about myself.

Back in the day, after my first year of college, I went out to seek employment. Found a summer job which, when it was time to go back to school, I decided to keep, rather than go back to school. I was toying with the idea of enlisting at the time. But needed to do some growing up. So I went to join the ranks of the employed.

First job was a handy-man kind of thing. Fairly typical entry level thing with nothing better than a high school diploma hanging on the wall at home.

That lasted about 8 months. My immediate supervisor was, shall we say, not that bright. But hey, we emptied the trash, painted stuff and lifted heavy things. There was no need for my boss to be smarter than a bag of hammers. But the intellectual stimulation of that job was sorely lacking.

So I moved on, to work in a factory. It was a bit of a step up from the handy-man job. But not much.

I worked in the stock room at first. Unloading pallets of small parts and such and stocking large racks of bins  with that stuff. Loads of fun, perhaps the most boring job I've ever had. (At least in the handy-man gig I got to spend a lot of time outdoors.)

From the stock room I moved up to become a machinist. Turns out this, while interesting at first, was even more boring than the stock room. Once you get the machine set up to do its thing, you're just feeding stuff to the machine.

Both I and the company realized that I was not a very good machinist. After that I worked in the receiving department. This was actually interesting work. After the goobers unloaded the truck, we had to inventory the shipments and then route them to the proper department. Downside was that this typically could be completed by lunchtime. The rest of the day we all sort of scattered and tried to look busy.

My innovation in that area was subsequently copied by my colleagues after I'd left the company to join the USAF (so my sources told me). That was to carry a clipboard with official looking paperwork on it. Then I would roam the plant "studying" things. Anything on a rack or in some sort of storage area was fair game. Everyone assumed that I was doing something official.

This activity did have some benefit to the company however. One day while exploring one of our two warehouses, I found an entire rack of stuff similar to stuff we'd received the previous week. So I went to my boss and asked him about the stuff. He said he had no idea why if we had the stuff in the warehouse, we would order more. He said to go see one of the purchasing agents. So I did.

Turns out some knucklehead had sent the stuff I had found to the warehouse the previous month. Had forgotten about it and then when the job needed it, ordered some more. The purchasing agent dude was both ecstatic and furious. Ecstatic that I'd found the stuff and furious at the guy who'd stashed the parts and then forgotten about it. Bottom line was that we were able to send the newly ordered batch back to the shipper and probably saved a few thousand bucks (which was serious money back in the early '70s).

That was all interesting and such, but I did not see myself doing this kind of work until I was old and gray. So into the Air Force I went.

And found my place in life. Order and discipline. Immediately knowing who you were dealing with by the markings on the uniforms we all wore. Very little ambiguity in my line of work there. I was given things to do and resources to accomplish those taskings. I fit right in.

Then eventually it was time to retire and (as a buddy of put it) "get a real job". Which I did.

The civilian world does not suit me very well. There isn't much of a clear hierarchy, at least not in my company. Here we use a matrix management system. Basically means you have multiple people in charge of various things regarding a project but no one who will actually take responsibility for getting things done.

If, heaven forbid, something goes wrong, there is a lot of finger pointing and hand waving over who should have taken care of it. Everyone is in charge, no one is willing to make an actual decision. Everything carries on according to "the process". I rather imagine the old Soviet Union being like this. Oh and one other thing, "ass kissing" or "drinking the Koolaid" is a prized skill in my company. Oh, and being diverse. Especially being diverse. I'll just say that and leave it alone.

So I've come to realize that I just don't fit in this civilian world. It's one of the things which drove me to enlist and leave all that crap behind. Should have known that I would have to come back to it at some point in time.

I need to win the lottery and retire. I am really tired of being a civilian.

Sheepdogs

With a tip of the hat to long time reader (and prominent member of the Commentariat) Tuna. He gave me the link to this article in one of his comments and I liked it so much that I decided to reproduce it here, in its entirety. (Another note: The book by LTC Grossman noted below? An excellent work and I highly recommend it to people who wish to understand war and what our brave fighting men and women have to go through.)

On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs - Dave Grossman
By LTC (RET) Dave Grossman, author of "On Killing."

Honor never grows old, and honor rejoices the heart of age. It does so because honor is, finally, about defending those noble and worthy things that deserve defending, even if it comes at a high cost. In our time, that may mean social disapproval, public scorn, hardship, persecution, or as always,even death itself. The question remains: What is worth defending? What is worth dying for? What is worth living for? - William J. Bennett - in a lecture to the United States Naval Academy November 24, 1997

One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me:

"Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident." This is true. Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year. What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another. Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year. Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.

Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation. They are sheep.

I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep. To me it is like the pretty, blue robin's egg. Inside it is soft and gooey but someday it will grow into something wonderful. But the egg cannot survive without its hard blue shell. Police officers, soldiers, and other warriors are like that shell, and someday the civilization they protect will grow into something wonderful.? For now, though, they need warriors to protect them from the predators.

"Then there are the wolves," the old war veteran said, "and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy." Do you believe there are wolves out there who will feed on the flock without mercy? You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become a sheep. There is no safety in denial.

"Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf."

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep. If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf. But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then? A sheepdog, a warrior, someone who is walking the hero's path. Someone who can walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.

Let me expand on this old soldier's excellent model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, that is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids' schools.

But many of them are outraged at the idea of putting an armed police officer in their kid's school. Our children are thousands of times more likely to be killed or seriously injured by school violence than fire, but the sheep's only response to the possibility of violence is denial. The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their child is just too hard, and so they chose the path of denial.

The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence. The difference, though, is that the sheepdog must not, can not and will not ever harm the sheep. Any sheep dog who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb will be punished and removed. The world cannot work any other way, at least not in a representative democracy or a republic such as ours.

Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep. He is a constant reminder that there are wolves in the land. They would prefer that he didn't tell them where to go, or give them traffic tickets, or stand at the ready in our airports in camouflage fatigues holding an M-16. The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baa."

Until the wolf shows up. Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.

The students, the victims, at Columbine High School were big, tough high school students, and under ordinary circumstances they would not have had the time of day for a police officer. They were not bad kids; they just had nothing to say to a cop. When the school was under attack, however, and SWAT teams were clearing the rooms and hallways, the officers had to physically peel those clinging, sobbing kids off of them. This is how the little lambs feel about their sheepdog when the wolf is at the door.

Look at what happened after September 11, 2001 when the wolf pounded hard on the door. Remember how America, more than ever before, felt differently about their law enforcement officers and military personnel? Remember how many times you heard the word hero?

Understand that there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is just what you choose to be. Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter: He is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle. That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle. The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed right along with the young ones.

Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for that day. After the attacks on September 11, 2001, most of the sheep, that is, most citizens in America said, "Thank God I wasn't on one of those planes." The sheepdogs, the warriors, said, "Dear God, I wish I could have been on one of those planes. Maybe I could have made a difference." When you are truly transformed into a warrior and have truly invested yourself into warriorhood, you want to be there. You want to be able to make a difference.

There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, the warrior, but he does have one real advantage. Only one. And that is that he is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population. There was research conducted a few years ago with individuals convicted of violent crimes. These cons were in prison for serious, predatory crimes of violence: assaults, murders and killing law enforcement officers. The vast majority said that they specifically targeted victims by body language: slumped walk, passive behavior and lack of awareness. They chose their victims like big cats do in Africa, when they select one out of the herd that is least able to protect itself.

Some people may be destined to be sheep and others might be genetically primed to be wolves or sheepdogs. But I believe that most people can choose which one they want to be, and I'm proud to say that more and more Americans are choosing to become sheepdogs.

Seven months after the attack on September 11, 2001, Todd Beamer was honored in his hometown of Cranbury, New Jersey. Todd, as you recall, was the man on Flight 93 over Pennsylvania who called on his cell phone to alert an operator from United Airlines about the hijacking. When he learned of the other three passenger planes that had been used as weapons, Todd dropped his phone and uttered the words, "Let's roll," which authorities believe was a signal to the other passengers to confront the terrorist hijackers. In one hour, a transformation occurred among the passengers - athletes, business people and parents. -- from sheep to sheepdogs and together they fought the wolves, ultimately saving an unknown number of lives on the ground.

There is no safety for honest men except by believing all possible evil of evil men. - Edmund Burke

Here is the point I like to emphasize, especially to the thousands of police officers and soldiers I speak to each year. In nature the sheep, real sheep, are born as sheep. Sheepdogs are born that way, and so are wolves. They didn't have a choice. But you are not a critter. As a human being, you can be whatever you want to be. It is a conscious, moral decision.

If you want to be a sheep, then you can be a sheep and that is okay, but you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog there to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust or love. But if you want to be a sheepdog and walk the warrior's path, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door.

For example, many officers carry their weapons in church.? They are well concealed in ankle holsters, shoulder holsters or inside-the-belt holsters tucked into the small of their backs.? Anytime you go to some form of religious service, there is a very good chance that a police officer in your congregation is carrying. You will never know if there is such an individual in your place of worship, until the wolf appears to massacre you and your loved ones.

I was training a group of police officers in Texas, and during the break, one officer asked his friend if he carried his weapon in church. The other cop replied, "I will never be caught without my gun in church." I asked why he felt so strongly about this, and he told me about a cop he knew who was at a church massacre in Ft. Worth, Texas in 1999. In that incident, a mentally deranged individual came into the church and opened fire, gunning down fourteen people. He said that officer believed he could have saved every life that day if he had been carrying his gun. His own son was shot, and all he could do was throw himself on the boy's body and wait to die. That cop looked me in the eye and said, "Do you have any idea how hard it would be to live with yourself after that?"

Some individuals would be horrified if they knew this police officer was carrying a weapon in church. They might call him paranoid and would probably scorn him. Yet these same individuals would be enraged and would call for "heads to roll" if they found out that the airbags in their cars were defective, or that the fire extinguisher and fire sprinklers in their kids' school did not work. They can accept the fact that fires and traffic accidents can happen and that there must be safeguards against them.

Their only response to the wolf, though, is denial, and all too often their response to the sheepdog is scorn and disdain. But the sheepdog quietly asks himself, "Do you have and idea how hard it would be to live with yourself if your loved ones attacked and killed, and you had to stand there helplessly because you were unprepared for that day?"

It is denial that turns people into sheep. Sheep are psychologically destroyed by combat because their only defense is denial, which is counterproductive and destructive, resulting in fear, helplessness and horror when the wolf shows up.

Denial kills you twice. It kills you once, at your moment of truth when you are not physically prepared: you didn't bring your gun, you didn't train. Your only defense was wishful thinking. Hope is not a strategy. Denial kills you a second time because even if you do physically survive, you are psychologically shattered by your fear helplessness and horror at your moment of truth.

Gavin de Becker puts it like this in Fear Less, his superb post-9/11 book, which should be required reading for anyone trying to come to terms with our current world situation: "...denial can be seductive, but it has an insidious side effect. For all the peace of mind deniers think they get by saying it isn't so, the fall they take when faced with new violence is all the more unsettling."

Denial is a save-now-pay-later scheme, a contract written entirely in small print, for in the long run, the denying person knows the truth on some level.

And so the warrior must strive to confront denial in all aspects of his life, and prepare himself for the day when evil comes. If you are warrior who is legally authorized to carry a weapon and you step outside without that weapon, then you become a sheep, pretending that the bad man will not come today. No one can be "on" 24/7, for a lifetime. Everyone needs down time. But if you are authorized to carry a weapon, and you walk outside without it, just take a deep breath, and say this to yourself...

"Baa."

This business of being a sheep or a sheep dog is not a yes-no dichotomy. It is not an all-or-nothing, either-or choice. It is a matter of degrees, a continuum. On one end is an abject, head-in-the-sand-sheep and on the other end is the ultimate warrior. Few people exist completely on one end or the other. Most of us live somewhere in between.

Since 9-11 almost everyone in America took a step up that continuum, away from denial. The sheep took a few steps toward accepting and appreciating their warriors, and the warriors started taking their job more seriously. The degree to which you move up that continuum, away from sheephood and denial, is the degree to which you and your loved ones will survive, physically and psychologically at your moment of truth.

Sound wisdom.