Posted on

Hold the presses! Now get those puppies underway!!!

Work looms ahead in an hour-and-a-half. This is another night to work until 8 p.m. and earn an extra two hours in “premium pay.” It’s not as good as overtime but getting paid for nine hours when in actuality working seven is not terrible.

Since I have a few tasks to accomplish before work — shaving my head among those tasks — this will be short.

A matter of little import except to perhaps English teachers and copy editors today with changes in “The Associated Press Stylebook” which includes using the word “underway” for all uses. The journalism word from upon high previously used two words except ” … when used as an adjective before a noun in a nautical sense … ” During my stint in the Navy I sometimes composed correspondence or military jurisprudence forms as well as the “Plan of the Day.” I would have the occasion during such cases to use the one-word word “underway.” This is Navy style, in no small part, because ships or units getting “underway” is a big deal. After all, ships are a big deal to the Navy for some strange reason.

During my time as a journalist I often continued the naval practice of writing “underway” as one word. Lazy? Yes, but also practical. Editors and journalism teachers always preached the doctrine of simplicity so I bought into this dogma — which is NOT a dog’s mother — by utilizing the pragmatism of writing one word for under way instead of two. That would get a story sent back by an editor, depending on pressing deadlines, in order that I might use the space bar between the two words. So, perhaps it was lazy. It was definitely force of habit that continued from the Navy although I seldom use “port and starboard” in conversation or writing these days.

I suppose a bit vindicated and perhaps a smidgen petty. But then again, I was a Navy petty officer.

So there you are.

Posted on

We know “the British are coming,” so don’t sweat what we don’t know.

A Facebook friend whom I’ve never met but would like to one day sent me one of these You Tube clips that gets zapped around the Internet to sow seeds of discontent.

This particular one showed rail flat car upon flat car of up-armored, desert-painted military trucks. The fear spread by this clip was that these were military personnel carriers FEMA was sending out for a war to disarm Americans. Or something equally as silly. My friend wasn’t making those claims. She was just merely looking for the truth which often gets lost this day and age of Internet conspiracies.

I explained to her how FEMA doesn’t have a black budget to purchase secret weapons plus conspiracy after conspiracy spread around on the emergency agency has repeatedly proven untrue. FEMA may not have done a jam-up job in the wake of the early 21st century hurricanes of the Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas coasts, or perhaps even since. But no one has ever cast one iota of evidence that the agency is building concentration camps for housing the “right-thinking.”

My friend, after my explanation, thanked me for putting her mind a little more at ease.

Why should people fear or embrace or even believe the first thing they see come across in their e-mail or Facebook or Twitter? There is real stuff to get scared about.

The U.S. is moving anti-missile weapons to Guam in case the idiot leader of North Korea decides to launch something. Not that we should particularly be worried about the power of the Peoples Republic forces. We should be concerned about the stupid logic and likely bad counsel received by the young dictator of North Korea. The worry should be that Kim does something stupid ridiculously dangerous. Let’s say he launches a missile towards an island and it hits near Seoul, perhaps even near the thousands of American troops. Even something more benign could result in the flattening of what was North Korea. We should worry for all those innocent folks in North Korea as well as our troops and the Korea they protect across the 38th Parallel.

We should be concerned for the vigilant folks who keep the peace in the homeland. Some folks have decided it is open season on officers of the law. An assistant district prosecutor in Texas, a Colorado prison warden, the assistant DA’s boss who was the district attorney in Kaufman County, Texas, along with his wife, and today a sheriff in West Virginia have all been killed within the last two months. Is there a string there? Maybe. Maybe not. The carnage shouldn’t particularly keep the normal citizen up at night. But all those folks affected by this savagery and those who are paid to prevent it all could use some good thoughts, even prayers if you are so inclined.

Plenty of worry finds us everywhere, it seems, in this Internet age. And it is a time we are more informed than ever that “The British are coming.” Sorry, my Brit friends, just a metaphor or perhaps simile. I won’t say: “Don’t worry. Be happy.” But perhaps, “Don’t sweat that which just as easily could be bullshit. Be happy as you have a right to such happiness.”

Posted on

Duct tape: Dandy bandage and more

An old high school friend who I am happy to have reconnected with through Facebook is a cattle farmer in East Texas. Now I am not here to get into a discussion on the difference between a cattle farmer and rancher. Some would say there is a difference, that people who raise cattle are ranchers. Others would say half-a-dozen of two and screw the other 10. Nevertheless, Bobby raises longhorn cattle and does so on his cattle farm.

My friend wrote that a limb snapped while he was clearing a fence row, causing some barbed wire to puncture a vein in his arm. His first aid consisted of wrapping it in a bandanna and using duct tape for a bandage. I wrote Bobby that one time I had a similar mishap. My friend Waldo and I was fencing some 200-something acres of his country land up in Cherokee County, Texas, one summer. The barbed wire snapped from the spool and poked me with one of its barbs right into my right-armed median vein. I think that’s what the vein is called. It is the one opposite your elbow. The one in might right arm is fairly prominent and has always drawn positive comments from the many nurses and phlebotomists who have poked the vein for assorted reasons over the years.

I had nothing practical that day to stop the bleeding except my shirt. We were out in the middle of the country and I was hot and sweaty. It was no big deal. I’m pretty certain some duct tape was around somewhere in Waldo’s truck. But it never occurred to me to wrap it around my shirt for a bandage. I think I was still licensed as an emergency medical technician back then, though I wasn’t a “practicing” one. Still, why I didn’t think of using duct tape to stop my oozing, red blood is beyond me.

Maybe I was not, back in the day, fully bought into the duct tape culture. That would come in time, when I first started in the newspaper business.

My beginning newspaper job was in a small East Texas town at an equally small circulation newspaper. We had not yet started using personal computers for all of our varied  tasks. I used a weird-looking box with a tiny screen, or video display terminal, as a word processor. The text was then copied onto a floppy disk. I think the disk was known as a “5 1/4-inch minifloppy.” The hell if I know.

The disk was later put into a machine which printed the “cold type” or text that would be pasted up on a dummy sheet. Eventually a camera-ready page was produced, and turned into a plate for the presses. The rest is history and more work, work, work.

This machine which printed out the text was huge and worn-looking. It appeared as if it would fall apart any minute. But my publisher wasn’t about to let that happen. He would seem to magically appear out of nowhere with his handy roll of duct tape and patch up that or any machine in need of adhesion. His prolific use of duct tape even became a thing of legend with the staff. Each year during the Christmas party he would get a nicely-adorned package in which the supposed “gift” turned out to be duct tape.

I have since learned myriad uses for perhaps the handiest man-made item in existence next to the flush toilet. I have even seen flush toilets patched up with duct tape. I have seen duct tape used for Halloween costumes. I personally use duct tape to patch my steering wheel.

If the Wikipedia entry on “duck tape” and its evolution into “Ductape” is to be believed then it is a rather interesting story. The wonderful tape is certainly an interesting item and one of many uses. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that duct tape has probably saved lives at some time or the other. But please remember, if you plan on using duct tape as a bandage some day be sure and have something non-adhesive for use as a dressing. Do this because, if duct tape can hold half the earth together, it will as likely relieve you of hair and perhaps a layer of skin.

Powerful stuff, that duct tape.

 

Posted on

Say goodbye to football. Hello to hand-shaking sock puppets!

Football season is over. The Houston Texans, my team, got drubbed by the New England Patriots. A drubbing is only slightly better than getting beaten like a rented mule, a fate that befell the Texans last month when they likewise traveled to Foxboro to take on the Pats. Perhaps the Texans should have dwelt upon their last thrashing.

Plenty has been said about last evening’s game, that both spoken and written by professional homers and haters alike. Those of us, like me, who don’t know their ass from third and long about football have their opinions as well. We all know what they say about opinions.

I was hoping a team would be left that I could root for but it didn’t happen this time. I hate both the Patriots and the Ravens equally. I liked the 49ers once upon a time, but under the West Coast Harbaugh, no more. I have nothing against the East Coast Harbaugh. I also know big media is salivating over the possibility of the Harbaugh Brothers matching up, the 49ers and Ravens, for a Super Bowl match. I wonder if the San Fran coach would shake his bro’s hand after the game?

One might suppose I should root for Hot-lanta since a couple of local kids are playing — DE Johnathan Babineaux of Port Arthur and linebacker Sean Weatherspoon from my birthplace of Jasper, Texas. Nothing personal, I just hate Atlanta teams. I went to Atlanta once when I was in the Navy. Don’t remember a whole lot about it except getting lost and hearing an AM radio band the next morning, a Sunday, full of more Holy Rollin’ preachers than you could shake a spared rod at. But Atlanta sports teams just piss me off. I think “Chipper” (Don’t Call Me ‘Larry’) Jones of the Braves baseball team is to blame. I never really liked that boy.

Oh, I probably will watch the Super Bowl for the commercials, although the ads have gone into a downward spiral lately. Maybe I will just find a good book instead or perhaps put on a sock puppet show. Yes, John and Jim Harbaugh starring in: “There are no shaking hands at the OK Corral!!”

Posted on

Are today’s veterans being “dissed” on campus?

An article on the online version of Stars and Stripes brought back some memories recently. The staff-written story on the “independent” Department of Defense-run newspaper told of veterans incurring anti-military attitudes on college campuses. Such a piece sparks an interest in me because I have long followed veterans issues and the fact that I am a veteran who is a college graduate in part due to the GI Bill.

First though, a little about the quotation marks surrounding the word “independent.” Stars and Stripes first published in 1861 when a Union regiment found an abandoned newspaper office in Missouri and gave today’s paper its name.

Stripes became well-known during the first and second world wars among soldiers overseas, featuring journalists who are now considered among the greatest talents of the 20th century. Among them, the great sports writer Grantland Rice and noted drama critic Alexander Woollcott from the WWI era. The World War II staff included Andy Rooney and cartoonist Bill Mauldin of “Willie and Joe” fame.

For all the restrictions on journalists through wars during the last 90 years Stars and Stripes has published, I have to say it is a very good newspaper. The civilian writers certainly have unique office politics as well.

A reporter I knew who covered military issues for a metro-sized Texas paper went to work for Stripes. She called it the “world’s largest PR firm,” or words to that effect. Nonetheless, she could for the most part experience and write about what any other battlefield journalist could. Combat news coverage has never been perfect even though the best practitioners of journalism have given it hell over time.

Okay, perhaps a little more than you might want to know about Stars and Stripes, but I am just trying to give the story a little context. This isn’t The New York Times, but Stripes also isn’t MSNBC or Fox News. The writer in the linked story gives only limited anecdotal evidence that today’s veterans are being “dissed” on campus and that professors are overtly antagonistic toward ex-military. That isn’t to say that such feelings do not get displayed on college campuses today, especially given the divided religious and political viewpoints in our society which are egged on by talking-heads in media.

Given, 1980 — when I matriculated — on an East Texas college campus with a large portion of its student body hailing from Houston and Dallas suburbs is different from 2013 at a school such as UC-Berkeley. But one factor we had in common is age. We were young then. These vets, who may have experiences that have made the grow up way too fast, nevertheless are for the most part also young men and women.

Now I believed what many told me about former military folks who attended college. That was, they were more serious about studies and generally more responsible. That is true. I worked full time as a firefighter during most of that time as well. As I have said before, the monthly GI Bill payment was mostly gravy. But looking back, I mistook a quasi-cosmopolitan attitude from my service and world travels for wisdom. And though I started school at 25, I quickly felt at ease with the majority of those 18-to-21-year-olds who made up most of the student body.

I remembering engaging with certain professors with whom I disagreed. I found for the most part that they dug it. I actually ended up more liberal when I left the military than when I enlisted. Thus, the “left-leaning” professors, which absolutely were in a minority where I went to college, were all right by me. I also enjoyed being engaged and made to think as well as learning so very much that I didn’t know, not that it has always stuck!

Members of the military are treated better nowadays by the public than anytime I can remember. Though the extent of hostility toward military personnel during the Vietnam War has been questioned, those in uniform during that entire Vietnam Era could easily encounter prejudice. Such hostility wasn’t just from long-haired “peaceniks” either. I once talked to several Vietnam vets who avoided service organizations such as the VFW or American Legion toward the end of the war because the majority World War II membership saw that day’s serviceman as a “loser.”

Former Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey Jr., said in the Stars and Stripes article that veterans attending college should be open to others and walk away from scholars whose minds you will not change. I certainly agree with the first part of that. But I think the vets need to engage those they do not agree with as well, whether professor or student. It contributes to a richer learning atmosphere which is just as much a major portion of college as books and lectures. All of this also doesn’t have to happen in a classroom. Who knows how many theories I discussed around a keg or in the bar.

I can’t help but have kind of mixed feelings on the case made by the news article. Yes, there are a great number of people against the war in Afghanistan and our adventure into Iraq. But the outward show of support military people get today makes it difficult to believe, minus greater evidence, that campus animosity toward veterans is as rampant as the story suggests.