Monthly Archives: October 2004

Call for Help

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Blackfive has the contact information to help this guy and his family:

Sergeant Joseph Bozik, an Airborne Soldier with the 118th MP Company (Airborne) from Ft. Bragg, was recently wounded. He has lost both legs and an arm from a landmine, is not not conscious and has many medical complications. On Monday, Sergeant Bozik will be flown into Walter Reed from Landstuhl (Germany).

Unfortunately, the family doesn’t have enough money to maintain themselves in a hotel (let alone buy food) for an extended period. The Army paid for airfare for 2 family members and Soldiers’ Angels paid for airfare for 2 two more. The Angels can cover hotel expenses for only three days. Fisher House is full so they have to stay at a hotel.

Give if you got it.

After the Election…

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Glenn Reynolds is back from his trip and links to an article by Michael Barone. It’s your basic analysis of how, if elected, John Kerry is going to have a hard time governing since the Democrats, more than the Republicans have been (officially would be my qualifier) more uncivil this campaign than in any other. How does he think he’s going to unify the country? Yadda yadda yadda. Go ahead and read their opinions, that’s not what I want to talk about.

There are a lot peace activists and war protestors who honestly believe they’re doing good work by trying to stop war. For them there’s no higher calling. Peace is the answer, always, there is no good reason for war…ever. I get it. I don’t agree with it, but I understand it.

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Random Rants for the Weekend

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If I’m watching the President and Governor Schwarzenegger during a campaign event and I think to myself, “These guys need new material.” does that mean that the President has become a celebrity or that Arnie has become a politician? Or is this part of some greater disillusionment or alieanation leading me to believe that maybe Al Franken was in reality funny more often than “Deep Thoughts?”

Let’s take that further, if Jon Bon Jovi and John Edwards are on the same stage, which one’s going to win the commercial hair care contract when this gig’s over? Will Jackson Brown sing The Loadout?

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A Brief Introduction

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I though I’d go ahead and tell you all just a bit about me. Up until last night I was writing over at Digital Warfighter. Thanks to Stryker for letting me figure out if I really wanted to do this blogging thing or not.

Sgt Stryker’s Daily Briefing was one of the first blogs I ever read. I’m very happy to be here.
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Early voting

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The General and I took advantage of early voting in NC and cast our votes for our candidates today. Here are some of my thoughts on the process:

1) I have mixed emotions about voting early. After spending twenty years voting by Absentee (because I maintained residency in one state as I moved around the country with the Air Force), I have really looked forward to heading into the voting booth on Election Day each year I have that opportunity. Early voting at least allowed me the option of voting at my polling place in a booth, but there’s something to be said for having an Election Day (as opposed to an Election Week or Election Month, or whatever we’ve effectively had this year).

I agree with Tony Snow, who wondered whether we have gone overboard in making it so convenient to vote. Voting may be a right, but it’s one that should be taken seriously. I went out of my way while in the military to request Absentee Ballots, to fill them out appropriately, to obtain the appropriate signatures, and to get them in on time. The more “convenient” we make it, the less people will take it seriously. And this doesn’t even touch on how it increases the risk of voter fraud. (Another subject, another day, but #4 below).

I’m not saying that we should deny any eligible citizen the right to vote, but really, it’s just about as convenient as it’s gonna get. Folks should be willing to invest a bit of effort in registering properly, finding out about the candidates and issues, and finding out where and when they can vote. It’s not that hard.

So anyway, I took advantage of this convenience. I’ll try to reconcile whatever moral quandary I have about early voting after the dust has settled.

2) I had the option of voting straight party — that is, touching one button to vote for all Democrat (yeah, right!) or all Republican candidates on the state slate (judicial races and the Presidential race still had to be voted for separately). I was tempted, since I planned to vote straight party, but I guess it’s that convenience thing again. I went through and voted for each candidate individually. It just feels right to me.

3) As I was writing this, we got a campaign phone call. I was able to cut the caller off by saying “We’ve already voted.” I guess this early voting thing isn’t so bad after all.

4) As in earlier elections, neither of us was required to show any form of ID. This continues to disturb me. It was probably my greatest motivation for voting early. In case someone decided to vote in my place, I wanted to have a few days to try to straighten it out. I’m just paranoid that way. I know we don’t have national ID cards, and I know all the reasons why, but really, shouldn’t you be required to prove who you are when you’re doing something so important? At the very least, couldn’t they ask for my voter registration card?

I could go on, but that’s probably enough.

Trickertreat!

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When in the name of all that’s unholy, did Halloween turn into an extravaganza of coffins and mock gravestones set up in suburban lawns, and formations of witches plastered onto tree trunks and garage doors, great glowing hanging jack o lanterns, and ghosts and witches and skeletons and huge ass spiders (shudder!) and monstrous webs, and life-sized skeletons? When did decorating the house for the benefit of small children in dime-store costumes or something cobbled together from a stack of torn sheets and some Rit dye, panhandling door to door for packets of candy corn and little pastel rolls of sweettarts become almost as much a collective pain as Christmas? It probably happened about the same time that the pattern catalogue for costumes (costumes for all ages, yet!!!) at the yardage store became as thick as the Simplicity seasonal catalogue and stayed on the pattern table year around. I just know that Martha Stewart had something to do with it, the overachieving beotch, and it must have happened while I was out of the country during the 1980ies.

It used to be an innocent, home-made, modest little affair. Mom bought us each a pumpkin, and in the early days Dad helped us carve them with a kitchen knife and scrape out the mooshy tangle of seeds and stringy orange fibers. By the time JP and I were in junior high, we conducted the ritual pumpkin butchery ourselves, and assisted Pippy with marking out a scary face in straight-angled cuts. Fit the pumpkins with candle-ends, saved for this purpose in the drawer with the silverware, set them out on the front porch, and there we were, all set. Of all the neighbors around Hilltop house, only Wayne got ambitious, rigging a ghost of cheesecloth to fly silently down a wire running from the trees by their gate to just above the front door.

We made our own costumes, mostly, although Alan’s mother had made some elaborate ones for his older sisters, which I borrowed a couple of times. Mom’s contribution to our costumes mostly was to turn over the whole thing over to us, along with any sheets which had ripped down the center. With a couple of sheets and whatever we could scrounge around the house in the way of props, we’d have something that would hold up for a couple of hours of tricker-treating, and for the Halloween carnival at school. .
“Mom, can I dye in the bathtub?” I asked.
”Sure, but don’t expect to be buried in it.” She shot back. I was an artist with packets of Rit dye from the grocery store. I couldn’t do it in the washing machine after the first time we tried that— the dye stayed in the pipes for a couple of loads.

I outfitted Pippy that year as Mary Poppins, in a long dress and straw hat, carrying an old tapestry handbag of Moms’ and an umbrella. The handbag did double duty as a bag for treats. The year that I had read the entire Lord of the Rings to Sander, he wanted to dress as a hobbit— again with a tunic and cloak of dyed sheets, and a sword and shield that Dad roughed out of wood, and that I painted with semi-Celtic motifs. Another year, the sheets were worked into a long grey dress, and a white pinafore and headscarf with a red cross in grosgrain ribbon on the front—
“A Grey Lady!” said Great-Aunt Nan in delight, when she saw Pippy dressed up like a WWI nurse, holding Sander’s hand. Sander was a flying ace, in his ordinary school clothes and windbreaker jacket zipped up the front, with a long white silk scarf borrowed from Mom, and a canvas flier’s helmet and pair of goggles from the surplus store. The helmet fit him perfectly, leaving us to wonder when in history, exactly, were they recruiting dwarf aircrew.

Close to sundown, we would light the candles in the pumpkins— it was really, truly only tricker-treating, after it was at least decently dark, with smothered giggles coming from the front porch, and children in twos and threes working up their nerve to ring a strange doorbell. Usually, there was a parent or older sib outside the circle of porch-light, cuing the chorus of “Tricker-treat!” and reminders to say “thank-you” before they romped away, clutching their brown-paper grocery bags of treats.

Home-made, kid-made costumes, simple pumpkins, and brown-paper bags— all very simple in comparison, as shapeless and disorganized as a scratch softball game on an empty lot on a summer morning when school is out. Now that Halloween is all elaborate, and organized, like Little League, with uniforms and coaches and formal rules, it may be more spectacular, but I have a sneaking suspicion it may have been more pure fun for the kids then.

A Nerd’s Tale

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I was talking with a guy at the JAC about a year ago, and noticed he had some new photos up from his latest visit to a Sci Fi convention. I noticed in the background of one was a picture of Corin Nemec, and say “Hey, that’s my husband’s nephew.” A few weeks later the guy hands me a flyer for Collector Mania 5, which is held twice a year at The Centre in Milton Keynes. Corin was scheduled to be there, and Milton Keynes is only about an hour away from where we lived then. Corin’s dad is my husband’s oldest brother. I won’t go into details as it would take up too much space, but my husband only knew one sister growing up due to his parent’s divorce when he was 3. Next time he saw any of his Nemec siblings was when their father passed away, about 16 years later.

I had met Corin’s dad, Joe III, right after we moved to Tinker. Joe & his wife were working on the movie Twister at the time, and we all got together in Oklahoma City. May Day weekend, 2004, was when Collector Mania 5 was happening. It’s a 4-day weekend for the Brits. I took off a little early that Friday so we could get there before closing. It was my first time in Milton Keynes, and I was going off Map Quest UK directions, which I trust about as little as US Map Quest. I had a map of The Centre (which is a mall), so I knew which store was at the end where Collector Mania was set up. However, I was still uncertain we were at the right place as we started walking towards the entrance. About that time a really tall goofy looking guy with a “Staff badge” came walking out. He was the walking epitome of a Sci Fi geek, so we decided this was the right place. Well, we were still too late, although Robert England was still there signing autographs. We decided to give it another go in the morning.

Saturday morning we headed down, and beat Corin there, along with almost every other star. My husband had brought along the one hard-copy photo we had with us that was made with Joe III in OKC, just so Corin wouldn’t think he was some kook stalking him and pretending to be a relative. Once Corin arrived, we got in the “queue” and waited our turn. When it was our turn, my husband shook his hand, told him how proud he was of him, and handed him the picture saying, “I’m that man’s youngest brother.” Corin looked at the picture, rather stunned, looked at my husband again, got this big grin and said, “So you’re my uncle?” Then he gave him a hug, and told us he wanted to at least have dinner together over the weekend. He took our number, and we moved on. Now, I have to admit, I was thinking, “What if that was just a big blow off?” But just as he said he would, he gave my husband a call that night.

We met him again Sunday afternoon. At closing time, we met to head over to the hotel together. Now, he didn’t really know how to get to the hotel, and I sure as heck didn’t, so he said he would ride with us and we could just follow the van there. The van arrived and Corin told the driver he would be riding with us, and to please not lose us. Since I had been driving in the UK for 5 years, I wasn’t going to let them lose me. J During the drive, I remember thinking “Holy cow! Parker Lewis is sitting right beside me!” That was followed by “Wow, he has the same mannerisms and personality as my husband. I guess it runs in the family.”

We made it to the hotel and hung out in his room for a while. James was going to get a hotel room there and stay overnight while I went home with the kids. I still had to work Monday, and the kids still had school. As we were leaving, we decided to take a picture. So Corin walked over to one of the tables in the hotel courtyard and asked if one of them would take our picture, and the guy took a couple of us (with our son making a face in both). James & Corin walked off toward town to find a place to eat and I got in the car with the kids. As I was leaving the parking lot, I glanced back at the table those people were sitting at, and Denise Crosby (Lt Tasha Yar) was sitting at that table. I nearly soiled myself.

I left out early Monday afternoon again, and we headed back down to Milton Keynes, as it was the last day of Collector Mania. Corin was just about to leave as we arrived, so he got back in the car with us. Lo and behold, I got lost heading back to the hotel, and we managed to take the long scenic route there. Once we got there, Corin went to email his wife, and we just hung out in the lobby. The kids found another kid playing in the courtyard around the duck pond, so the 3 of them were running around. I picked out who seemed to be the boy’s dad, and wondered if he was a star. Didn’t recognize him though. I would have to go out every 5 minutes or so and remind my kids to stay out of the water. During that time several Sci Fi stars were milling around the lobby, and us. It was so cool! I noticed some people walking up from the parking lot. One of them was Denise Crosby. She walked over to one of the tables and sat down…with the kid’s dad. I looked at James and said, “What if that’s her kid ours are playing with?” Then my youngest nearly fell in the water. So I had to go remind him AGAIN to stay back from the water. As I was walking back, Denise Crosby said to me “I think it is so great that there are other kids here for him to play with.” I say, “Yeah, the kids are all having a blast.” Then she sticks out her hand and says “Hi, I’m Denise.” I’m thinking, “Like you have to tell me who you are,” but I just shook her hand and said “Hi, I’m Martha.” Had a great conversation just chatting about why we were there, and talking about our kids. I can only imagine the goofy grin I had.

Once Corin was ready, we went to eat. About half way through the meal I noticed that we were getting really good service. That was very unusual for us, not to say we got bad service at English restaurants/pubs, but, well, it’s just a cultural difference from American restaurant service. And that’s about as close to politically correct as I will ever get. Anyway, once we finished, Corin headed towards the lounge area with the kids, while I gathered our stuff, and James paid the check. As I walked out, I overheard the cashier ask James, “Is that guy famous?” AHA! That’s why we got good service. I almost laughed out loud.

It was such an exciting weekend for me. My co-workers told me I was absolutely giddy. It’s all about perspective though. See, I grew up in very rural Arkansas…dirt-road country. So, it was a big deal for me. Not as big a deal as getting to see the pyramids in Egypt, but still up there.

A Thousand Words are Worth a Picture

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It doesn’t look like much. A name scratched into concrete before it dried. But sometimes looks aren’t everything.

concrete_jo

It’s 40 years old, most likely, although the picture was taken less than a year ago. It’s much more than a name. In fact, it used to be several names, but only one remains.

Sometimes the physical is nothing more than a portal to the memories, and a familiar sight can bring back the blazing heat of the sun, the memory of standing out behind the garage eating watermelon, and spitting the seeds into the alley.

The picture doesn’t show you the Ohio summer sun beating down on the frustrated worker, or the passle of kids crowded around clamoring “Whatcha doing Daddy? Are you done yet? Can I touch it?” The picture doesn’t show you anything except a patch of concrete with a name scratched into it.

Sometimes it takes words to make a picture come alive.

I was 4 or 5 years old, and my dad decided it was time to get rid of the gravelled area behind our garage. The basketball hoop was out there, attached to the garage roof where it peaked, and the sandbox was back there, as well. Common sense declared that gravel was not the best type of surface for the kids’ playground, and he wanted us to stay off the grass long enough for it to have a chance to grow.

So Dad prepared the area, called the cement mixer folks, and poured us a concrete slab. I remember being fascinated by the forms, and by Dad’s ability to know exactly what he was doing without any instructions. I was less fascinated by his constant admonitions to keep out of his way.

When the pad had been poured, he smoothed it out, using the tools and experience he had gathered over the years. Then one by one, we stood beside him, and he dusted off the soles of our shoes on his pants-leg, and we got to set our footprint in the concrete, and then write our name. Just like the stars did at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, except we didn’t use handprints, just footprints (Mom might have had something to do with that particular decision).

I went back to the old neighborhood last winter, when I was home for Mom’s funeral. It had been 20 years or so since I’d been around there. We drove down by the old swimming pool, and it had moved. It was still there in the same vicinity, just in a totally different location, which really messed with my kinetic memory. If I had been walking instead of driving, I know I’d have walked right up to where the pool had originally been. There were condos there now.

We drove by my old elementary school, and the asphalt playground where we played softball and stood outside for Memorial Day Assembly was covered with grass. It startled me to see, but at the same time, it was pleasant, and I’m sure it was much more comfortable for playing on than the asphalt had been.

We drove by the house I grew up in, that we moved out of 30 years ago next spring. The folks bought it in 1962, for the grand sum of $12,000, and sold it in 1975 for $25,000. I looked it up in the tax rolls when I got home that day – it’s now worth over $100 grand, and has been owned by the same family for 20 years or so. I hope they’ve enjoyed it as much as we did. I’ll be writing more about that house, I’m sure. I did notice that it looked smaller than I remembered, and was surprised when I looked online and found that it was only about 1800 square feet. It must have been expandable, to hold the energy and dreams of so many families through the years.

My cousin drove up the alley, behind the house, and we stopped and looked at the concrete pad my dad had poured so many years ago. My sisters’ name was all that remained. That, and a million memories.

It doesn’t look like much, but sometimes looks aren’t everything.

Memo: A Matter of Trust

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To: The Small Group of Readers of TDB Who Have Never Had Anything to Do With the Military
From: Sgt Mom
Re: Trust Issues

1. More than anything else, the military runs on trust. It is axiomatic (a bit of a cliché, even) that members of a squad/unit/team/crew trust each other implicitly. Every sort of military training, from the basic up to the most sophisticated war-gaming at command level instills and reinforces the notion of trusting those who are in the stuff with you— practically every military movie ever made addresses this on some level, so the concept is very familiar to the general public.

2. The less familiar sort of trust, appearing very occasionally in comparison, is that two way trust between the commander and the commanded. On the surface of it, this would look like a fairly straightforward thing, enforced by the articles of the UCMJ, and by long established custom as outlined in the folksong;

Over the hills and o’er the main.
To Flanders, Portugal, and Spain,
Queen Anne commands and we’ll obey.
Over the hills and far away.

But there is a two-way trust involved here, and in most situations it must be nurtured as carefully as the team-building sort. It took me a couple of months to develop that level of implicit trust with the best commander I ever worked for. At the beginning, I would walk into his office saying “There is a problem, the solutions are A, B, C and D, I prefer Solution C for these reasons, which one do you recommend, Sir?” After a while, he would say “Well, do what you think best, Sergeant,” and after another while I could only get up to “Sir there is a problem,” before he said, “Deal with it, brief me later.” Delegating that sort of responsibility implied a great deal of trust ; the commander is confident that the troops will actually go out and do as he asks, to the best of their ability and last drop of blood, to risk their lives and sometimes lose them. And the troops must trust in their commander, be assured that their lives will not be thrown away for a bad purpose or no purpose at all.

3. I could be assured that my commander would back me, in whatever solution I chose to sort out a problem, that I would not be hung out to dry for doing my job and exercising the authority delegated to me. A commander who trusts the troops, and whose troops return that trust can make mistakes, can muddle through, can take casualties, can work with an imperfect plan that needs to be carried out now and not wait for that perfect plan to be put into place too late to do any good. That sort of commander can achieve much, and those in the command can at least feel proud of having contributed. We are even trusted enough to blog about it, on our own time and own dime.

4. Just too as there was that best commander, I had experience at a distance with the other sort; the ambitious, square filling user, who looked at the command only as a means of climbing to the next level…. And believe me, people, I can tell the difference. By tomorrow a week, we’ll know how well the voting public can.

Sincerely, Sgt Mom