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Memorial Day. Celebrate, but find the cost of freedom

Have fun this Memorial Day Weekend. Just remember what Memorial Day is all about.

The Battle for  Iwo Jima lasted 36 days and resulted in 25,851 US casualties. Of these, 6,825 Americans were killed. Practically all of the 22,000 Japanese combatants died.

Hundreds of Marine and corpsman dog tags hang from the Marine Corps Monument on top of Mount Suribachi, a volcano at Iwo Jima. Hundreds of Marine and corpsman dog tags hang from the Marine Corps Monument on top of Mount Suribachi, a volcano at Iwo Jima. U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer Third Class Joshua Millage
Hundreds of Marine and corpsman dog tags hang from the Marine Corps Monument on top of Mount Suribachi, a volcano at Iwo Jima.
U.S. Navy photo by Petty Officer Third Class Joshua Millage

This nation has a history colored in blood, from the Revolutionary War to the Present. As of 9 a.m., this May 24, 2013:

OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM

U.S. Military Casualties  —  4,409

U.S. Civilian Casualties  —       13

KIA

U.S. Military   —   3,480

U.S. Civilians  —          9

NON-HOSTILE

U.S. Military  —   929

U.S. Civilian  —     10

WOUNDED IN ACTION

U.S. Military  —   31,927

OPERATION NEW DAWN

U.S. Military   —   66

KIA   —   38

Non-Hostile   —   28

Wounded in Action   —   295

OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM

Total U.S. Military Casualties (Afghanistan)

Deaths   —   2,093

KIA   —   1,734

Non-Hostile   —   355

Pending   —   4

Wounded in Action   —   18,584

U.S. Military Casualties (Other locations )

Total Deaths   —   124

KIA   —  11

Non-Hostile   —   113

OEF U.S. Civilian Casualties

Total Deaths   —   3

KIA   —   1

Non-Hostile   —   2

OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM includes casualties that occurred between March 19, 2003, and August 31, 2010, in the Arabian Sea, Bahrain, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Persian Gulf, Qatar, Red Sea, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. Prior to March 19, 2003, casualties in these countries were considered OEF. Personnel injured in OIF who die after 1 September 2010 will be included in OIF statistics.

OPERATION NEW DAWN includes casualties that occurred between September 1, 2010, and December 31, 2011, in the Arabian Sea, Bahrain, Gulf of Aden, Gulf of Oman, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Persian Gulf, Qatar, Red Sea, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. Personnel injured in OND who die after 31 December 2011 will be included in OND statistics. (Post Iraq War casualties.)

OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM (Afghanistan & Other Locations), includes casualties that occurred in Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Philippines,Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.

(Statistical information from Department of Defense)

Read closely, my friends. And for those of you who can, remember those lyrics to that chilling anti-war song of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young:

“Find the cost of freedom, lying in the ground. Mother Earth will swallow you, lay your body down … ”

Happy Memorial Day.

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A visit to the clinic with an art showing on the side

“Lo and behold!” That is what I said this afternoon while awaiting my meds from the pharmacy at our local Veterans Affairs outpatient clinic. No epiphanies usually jump up and slap the heart-worm medicine out of the dog that is my soul. I have been accused of being a sick puppy. If that is so, I would figure the illness which would be dogging me (sorry) might run toward some psychiatric affliction.

I don’t know what the hell I am talking about, in reality. I am not a dog. I don’t have heart-worm. And I don’t have canine psychosis. I have enough on the health end of the spectrum to keep me too busy to sit around making up imaginary dog diseases. Poor sick puppy.

Back to hold and below or whatever. Parked out under the clinic portico was about the coolest car I have seen since my friend Blake drove his father’s Rolls Royce through the bumpy and manure-littered cow pasture road leading to the farmhouse I rented in the East Texas countryside. And that was a while ago.

Watch out! Art on wheels!
Watch out! Art on wheels!

I don’t know what one would call it. Well, “Honda Accord” for a start. But the toil and trouble put into this plastered and painted auto made it some kind of keen collage of rolling steel. From the “Hot-rod Era” to the 50s sex-kittens such as Monroe, for this “Hollywood Daddy-O” (Sorry, I haven’t mastered my iPhone camera and plus it was a day in which my essential tremors were shakin’ harder than Ol’ Pop down at the corner malt shop.) Even local sights from our fair city’s American Graffiti past were represented, as below.

Rolling history of Southeast Texas.
Rolling history of Southeast Texas.

I have to mention here that the photos (from top to bottom) of the Calder Avenue Pig Stand in Beaumont (Texas), now closed, and the sights from Vidor and Beaumont’s, may be copyrighted. I am sharing these pictures here under the Fair Use Doctrine. Look it up if you so desire. You really should read it if you are going to post pictures online. Oh, sorry for the headlight or whatever that is at the Pig Stand. That’s the photo though.

Studying the exhibition, I linked up with the artist. He turned out to be a 64-year-old Air Force veteran although he looked somewhat younger, even with whitish shoulder-length hair and beard to match. I believe his name was Dave. Sorry, I could just say I have problem remembering names. But I was so taken with his work that the car art overtook any profundity the artist might have exclaimed. It wasn’t a boring conversation, I really enjoyed the talk. But art is where you find it.

I happened to have found it at the VA. And it was free and close up and cool.

 

 

 

 

 

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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.

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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.”

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My un-April Fool’s Day joke: I give you Kim Jong Un

Here it is 1 April and I haven’t got a fool anywhere. Well, that’s a fool itself because plenty of fools exist around me and sometimes I think I am the biggest fool of all.

Practical jokes, as opposed to impractical jokes, have never really been my forte. Oh I can write funny lines, at times. I can tell funny jokes, although I confess to having a terrible memory for anything but absolutely nasty jokes that you wouldn’t want to tell just anyone.

But the type of joke that raises to the occasion of the great “April Fools!” Uh-uh.

“Hey,” my mother said. “Wake up. You don’t have to go to school today.”

“Huh?”

“April Fool!’ Momma said.

My parents were great April Fool pranksters. Their jokes were not the grand but the ones just close enough to reality to turn into a classic fool-tommery. Something, like tom-foolery. Already.

What kind of April Fool joke would this news be: The revelation that North Korea has Austin, Texas, in its nuclear sites? I mean, Austin can be a rather pretentious city at times, you know, hipper-than-thou? The traffic probably could use an explosion to blow it up and start all over again. Kids, don’t try this at home. Or in Austin.

I don’t need that ol’ “Keep Austin Weird” jive. Believe me, I’ve been to much weirder places than Austin.

Austin is a lovely town with its roller-coaster streets. The old “Pink Dome” of the State Capitol stands out for the world to see driving south on I-35, even with Darrel K. Royal and God-knows-who-else Memorial Stadium almost blocking the seat of state government out. Then there is Barton Springs Pool with its “just-right” temperatures year-round and nekkid bodies here and there.

I mean, that isn’t even a good April Fool joke, what the idiots running the communist North Korea government have suggested. It’s sick.

See what I am talking about. I never could do an April Fool’s prank for all the non-existent food in North Korea.