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Dogs don’t shoot people. Chickens shoot people.

For some reason I feel as if I should explain why I missed writing a few days during the latter part of last week although I cannot think of too many rational reasons for or against. I suppose someone might wonder if I am sick or whether my arthritic and diabetic infirmities have taken tight hold against me. Then again, most people who know me can find out that is probably not the case by looking at my Facebook page. Pardon me, I’m just thinking out loud. I was busy last week with work. Every now and then I have to work evenings and it so happened I had to work two evenings in a row, which pretty much bites.

To round out my personal life, this weekend I attended the 50th wedding anniversary celebration for my oldest brother and his wife. I find that a remarkable achievement this day and age, thus I likewise declare myself very proud of the couple for their accomplishment. I also spent the night at the next brother in age — I have four brothers, all older — who is the only to live in my hometown. I even slept in what was my room during my high school years, a wonderful room it is though a bit different than during my tenure there.

I am very fond of my hometown, a small East Texas former sawmill town, with a population of near 2,500. The number of folks living there has not changed too terribly much since I grew up and left for the Navy — and more or less for good — in the mid-1970s. It’s, as some folks like to say, a great place to be from. That means it is nice. It is full of fond memories and good people. I am not very big on everyone knowing my business though and that is something you get everywhere but most especially in a small town. Nonetheless, I suppose if a place popped up for next-to-nothing in the country near there it might be a place where I could retire. I mean retire retire and not play-like retired as I sometimes find myself doing.

Dogs dig trucks. Even this one in Louisiana parked next to me.

One thing for certain, when I do move again it will be to a place where I can have an animal or two. That would be a dog for certain and maybe a cat as well as a pet aardvark or llama. That is jest on the latter two, as in jest fooling. I certainly wouldn’t want to keep a llama. They can be amiable but I have just had one too many llama spit at, though luckily not on, me. Just as I would not want a dog to bite a visitor — an intruder is a different story — I would not want me llama es Llama to spit on someone who came calling.

I really would like a dog. It’s been about 25 years since one lived with me, the last being the remarkable Cochise. I say remarkable in that it was remarkable he, it, didn’t injure someone. Cochise, as I have spoke of this wonderful dog in the past, was a half-Doberman and half-great Dane. He was a beautiful animal with the Dane size and mostly Dobie features. He didn’t have a docked tail nor did he have cropped ears. A college friend gave him to me since I lived on a cow pasture. I sometimes call it a farm but nothing was raised except cattle. The place was a couple hundred acres in size but certainly it wouldn’t pass in Texas for a ranch.

Cochise liked running the fields and chasing a tennis ball or retrieving a tree limb bigger than the both of us. He was well-trained for a number of feats such as jumping up in my pickup bed on the command of “mount” and the opposite “dismount” to get the dog out of the truck. Once, I drove up to the little convenience/liquor store about a mile from the house. I didn’t take Cochise and he followed me all the way to the store.

I was horrified to see Cochise had “mounted” but in the bed of a pickup belonging to my grumpy neighbor. I got him out of the neighbor’s bed just as the man was coming out of the store. I couldn’t do much more than apologize. This was the neighbor who didn’t like me too much because we would do some shooting up where I lived. You know the usual, shooting cans, targets, beer bottles, watermelons, couches … This fellow was uptight about that sort of thing, concerned his cows might get shot. He also had a general worry about firearms due — according to the man’s account — to his getting shot in the ass by a chicken in a German farm yard on the last day of World War II. The soldier had laid his sub-machine gun on top of a chicken coop and the chicken jumped up and triggered the gun, giving this fellow the distinction of earning a Purple Heart earned in combat with a fowl German. Or maybe that was a German fowl. Oh hell’s bells.

If there is a point to be made here — maybe there is and maybe not — it is that it is nice to have a dog around the house, or a cat, even a llama if you can keep it from spitting.  Chickens have their place as well, but it certainly isn’t around a firearm.

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My Dad at 97. What he saw. What he would have seen.

My Dad would have been 97 years old tomorrow. Quite often I wonder what he would have thought of events and developments had he lived beyond what I see as a premature death, just a month after I graduated from college in 1984.

The nearly 70 years Pop lived certainly provided quite an odyssey full of monumental persons, places and things, as is the simple version I learned of the word “noun.” From Pop I likewise picked up quite a menagerie of nouns, not to mention pronouns, adjectives and exclamations, such as his famous line: “A whole flock of bird dogs flew over!”

I could no doubt write a book on my Dad, his wit, and all his complexities. But I will limit myself here to a few events through time that my Dad witnessed and those he missed after his passing.

My father was born John — and died as well — as his father before him. Pop described his birthplace in the East Texas sawmill town of Pollok as a rail car in which his family was living at the time. The great virgin pine forests of the time were being leveled by big-city tycoons about as fast as their impoverished minions could do so with a crosscut saw and teams of oxen. At the time, “The War to End All Wars” was underway across the Atlantic, a land which must have seemed as distant as the moon to the East Texans who barely scraped by on the sweat and aching muscles from a long day’s toil in the Pineywoods. Our country would not send its young to what became known as World War I until a couple of years later, with that entrance providing the impetus for the armistice. That wouldn’t happen until 35 million civilians and soldiers were dead or wounded. More than 116,000 Americans died. Another 205,000 suffered wounds including the horrific effects of nerve gas.

The automobile began to take off in my Dad’s infant days. Commercial flight was still some years to come. He did his long-distance travel by train and ship. He probably hopped more freight trains than rode on fare. Growing up in the days of the Depression, he would use his thumb as a means of travel probably most of all. Pop got to drive, or ride in, some of the fastest cars of the time in his youngest of adult years, as an ambulance attendant as part of his duties at a Lufkin funeral home. I was certified though worked very little as an EMT in the 70s and 80s. In those days we spoke of “patient management.” I will always remember the Old Man talking of a patient they picked up in the boonies who had tried to do herself in by swallowing lye. He said the woman “acted crazy as hell” until he finally found a thermos bottle and controlled her by a whack to the head. There you have his patient management. Oh well, whatever works.

Then came World War II. Pop had served in one of Mr. F.D. Roosevelt’s Depression-Era make work programs called the Civilian Military Training Corps. During summers in his late teens he would hop a freight from East Texas and make his way to San Antonio for training. Upon completion of the camp he was commissioned a second lieutenant in the Texas Guard and worked for awhile as a National Guard recruiter. When the war broke out he found his fate would be that of a dogface infantry officer. In what to me seems a very wise choice he resigned his commission and joined the Merchant Marine, becoming a steward, or a cook’s helper.

Pop got to see a little bit of the world: both coasts, Cuba, Aruba, Alaska, Russia. He didn’t get to see Vladivostok until his ship fought off a Japanese — he called them “Japs” — air attack. Of course, we all know how the war ended, with the atomic bomb used two and — so far — only two times.

When he was young, Pop built “crystal” radios and made himself a broadcaster. He would eventually see large radio sets with tubes give way to tiny transistor ones. He was likewise there for the beginning of broadcast TV. I can remember when an aunt and uncle brought us our first television. He remembered Jack Benny and all the other funny men of those days when he listened to them on the radio. We shared a lot, my Mom, Dad and I, on television. Mother was working and Pop was at home when he heard John Kennedy was shot. It was raining that day and I usually walked the couple of blocks home. I don’t know how he knew to pick me up at school early, other than having watched TV, but he was there.

My Dad and I would go on to watch “Green Acres” as well as Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.

He grew up without air conditioning. So did I. My parents never had A/C until late in life, when a brother and his wife bought them one.

My Dad talked when I was a kid about Halley’s comet. It was visible where he lived only months after he died. A friend sat up a telescope in the field surrounding the farm house I rented back then. Halley’s turned out to be a bust. But I bet Pop would have loved Hale-Bopp. I think he would have equally loved the young lady I was seeing around that time.

After Pop died came the computer and telecommunication explosion. I was probably in puberty when we got our first camera. It was a Polaroid Swinger, instant black and white. Later would come a Kodak Instamatic. I don’t know what he would say about cell phones, much less ones that take a picture you can send instantly almost anywhere in the world. I have no idea what he’d say about the Internet. I think I know what he’d say about modern customer service by phone and elsewhere. That utterance would be peppered with one of the colorful phrases he could use.

How 9/11 would phase Pop and the following wars, I think I know how he would feel. He would support those fighting the wars no matter what. Some of my brothers said my Dad probably would not have taken kindly to the first black president. He came from a different time and place, even though I think my father was a little more tolerant than my brothers give him credit. Like me, he respected the office even if he didn’t respect the man. I think he would have cheered that Osama bin Laden got it, no matter which president was in office. And as my friend, Bruce points out, we know for a fact Osama is dead: ” … he turned up on the voter rolls in Chicago this spring. Voted in the democratic primary,”

A snippet of other developments Bruce mentioned that Pop missed: Robot vacuum cleaners, texting, sexting, social media, widespread e-mail, LED television. Plus, from me: “Reality” television shows, 24-hour cable news, celebrity worship, the diversity of food and beverage, and its availability, $4-gas, $10-hamburgers, “The Most Interesting Man in the World,” the AFLAC Duck, the GEICO gecko … And on and on.

You’d have marveled at it Pop, if you were here. And yeah, a lot of it would piss you off as it does me. I miss you.

 

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National Moment of Remembrance: A thought inside a thought

“Ten,” “nine” “eight …”

I have been counting down the minutes to the National Moment of Remembrance this Memorial Day. Not familiar with the National Moment of Remembrance? I wasn’t until some 11, no make that 13 minutes ago. The minutes now quickly pass until this nationwide observance is set to take place. That time is 3 p.m. Eastern time each Memorial Day. I even found a countdown clock to help me watch the minutes tick, tick, tick away. Passed by Congress — “Two minutes, 11 seconds, 10 seconds … ” — and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 2000 the national moment:

Department of Defense photo

  ” … was established to remind Americans of the sacrifices made by members of the Armed Forces as well as others who have died as a result of service to this nation. Americans around the world should pause and remember these heroes in a symbolic act of unity.”

“54 seconds, 53 … 29, 28 … ” Okay, enough. It’s officially here.

Bang a gong, blow a horn, be pensive, let loose a rebel yell, drink a shot of Rebel Yell, do whatever you want to do but remember. That’s the purpose of Memorial Day and the moment: to remember.

The Web site for the organization “No Greater Love” (NGL) — the one with the countdown clock — explains that the remembrance to remember event came about when NGL founder Carmella LaSpada received a unsettling answer to a question about the meaning of Memorial Day.

A group of school kids were touring Washington, D.C., in 1996 and one of the children replied to LaSpada’s question: “That’s the day the pool opens.”

That called for a moment of silence, if you ask me.

Then again, most of the population these days hardly know anyone who has served in uniform much less a service member who was killed in the line of duty. Even I, who grew up during the Vietnam War and served in the military at the tail end of the conflict, fortunately have known few who made that ultimate sacrifice in the nation’s wars. In fact, I only remember having met one of several guys from my small school who were killed in Vietnam. I also covered two military funerals as a reporter. One was for a helicopter pilot who was killed shortly after the end of Gulf War I. The other honored a Marine who had been missing for more than 30 years in Vietnam and whose remains were returned to his east Central Texas soil.

Any act that sparks thoughts of our fellow Americans concerning war and its unrecoverable costs is worthwhile, I suppose. But it is as well sad on some level that we have to be reminded the reason for the holiday we are celebrating with a remembrance on that day, don’t you think?

I would imagine that family and friends of those who were killed in America’s battles whom I have known or, at least, knew their families pause to think of that person more than once or twice a year. And I am not preaching from some high horse here. There are as many practical reasons as many as sentimental ones why John Doe or Jane Doe or little Johnny Doe should think about those who fight and die in the name of our country and its qualities. One only has to think of the great numbers of young American lives that were lost — some thousands or tens of thousands in the Civil War — in the name of liberty. As well we must remember those who died in our questionable uses of force.

These thoughts should guide our collective conscience as a freedom-loving and civilized society. For, once we fully realize the true, agonizingly sorrowful cost of war, we as well have to give our leaders their full support for or steadfast opposition against the use of force and our most beloved resource.

Think about it.

 

 

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What do you do with a fired ship captain?

“What will we do with a drunken sailor?” asks the old sea shanty.

Well, if it is the ship’s captain and he or she perpetrates some incident or even soberly otherwise screws up those COs may find themselves tossed out on their hallowed keisters.

Near record numbers of Navy skippers have been relieved of duty in the past couple of years for a variety of infractions ranging from poor leadership to alcohol-related incidents. Firing of the very top dogs in business causes hardly a blink of the eye these days in the civilian world. But bosses of multimillion and even billion-dollar Navy ships and commands are something totally different. When leaders of ships with city-like populations such as aircraft carriers — considered more war platform these days than just ships — are stripped of their command it is indeed a totally different prospect.

Just as recently as Tuesday the commanding officer of the destroyer USS The Sullivans was relieved of command “due to loss of confidence in his ability to command,” said a press release on behalf of Vice Adm. Frank C. Pandolfe, U.S. Sixth Fleet Commander. “Cmdr. Derick Armstrong was relieved as a result of an unprofessional command climate that was contrary to good order and discipline.”

Armstrong was the 10th commanding officer sacked by the Navy so far this year and the third on The Sullivans to be fired in the past two years, according to Navy Times.

It is often the case that specifics are vague when the military announces any kind of infraction to the public of its personnel. But some of the circumstances brought to light through the media indicate the senior officers and top enlisted relieved of duty were replaced for a variety of transgressions.

In 2011, the widely-publicized firing of a female ship captain took place in which that CO was replaced for dereliction of duty, unprofessional conduct, favoritism and hostile command climate.

Cdr. Etta Jones of the amphibious transport dock vessel USS Ponce was relieved for cause after the U.S. Fleet Forces Command inspector general hotline received an anonymous call in April 2011 alleging “administrative and operational misconduct that included creating a hostile command climate, preferential treatment, safety and navigation violations, and manipulating reports/withholding facts to preclude outside investigation,” according to a blog post by the Fleet Forces Commander Adm. J.C. Harvey.

The Ponce was on station off Libya as part of the NATO effort to prevent weapons and “other material” from flowing into that country after the uprisings that eventually led to the overthrow of dictator Col. Mummar Gaddafi. An Admiral’s Mast held by then-Sixth Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Harry Harris found:

 “Cdr. Jones failed to report and take proper corrective action for hazing and for poor judgment during a security drill where she endangered two Sailors with a loaded (Condition 1) weapon,” according to Forces Commander Harvey. “Upon conclusion of the Mast, Vice Adm. Harris relieved Cdr. Jones of her command due to loss of confidence stemming from the aforementioned Mast, unprofessional conduct, rendering her chain-of-command largely ineffective by marginalizing her senior leaders and displaying blatant favoritism to select junior officers, and for cultivating a hostile work environment permeated by verbal abuse, fear, and intimidation.”

The “Condition 1” weapon referred to an incident during a ship’s security alert in which Jones allegedly waved around a loaded 9-mm pistol with its safety off while in the same room as two sailors before handing the firearm over. Security alerts are either drills or actual breaches in shipboard security when a ship is in port. I took part in security alerts as a petty officer of the watch on a destroyer. When a security alert was sounded I would be tasked with standing watch over the ship’s brow with a a cocked .45-caliber pistol. Since these were meant for threats to any potential nuclear weapons we had on board — which we always could “never confirm nor deny” — my orders were to shoot anyone who threatened our security. I never did even though we did have one actual “breach” which turned out to be a sleeping Philippine shipyard worker. Knowing the Navy in those post-Vietnam days, if I had fired my .45, I probably  would have been toast even if I was in the right.

In the case of Jones, the former amphibious ship captain was allowed by a three-captain panel to retire at one grade below, as a commander.

A debate has been touched off as a result of the high number of skippers, XOs and senior enlisteds being fired. Some say it is a crisis in leadership. One very frank and illuminating paper penned by a captain for the Navy War College suggests the cause is a complex set of cultural factors which include the power itself that is given to a Navy commanding officer. Although these factors cited by Capt. Mark Light in the war college paper includes a prevalence of sexual harassment and inappropriate relationships in the transgressions committed by COs, the causes interestingly enough have nothing to do with mixed male-female crews on ships.

Some unfamiliar with the Navy or its intricacies may either shrug or mouth defensively at why the numbers of CO sackings are news. The reasons are that the Navy has traditionally and continues to place an enormous responsibility on commanding officers. Harking back to an aircraft carrier — the USS Enterprise skipper was fired for showing his crew raunchy videos while serving as XO — the captain has the ability to launch attacks that can decimate many nations. Traditionally, and no sacrilege meant here, the captain is God as far as a ship and its crew is concerned.

News of such actions that get captains fired and the news that they are indeed “out of here” are as well buoyed by the prevalence of the Internet and social media these days. This was something not seen not so many years ago but rather were whispered about by crews or from ship-to-ship.

Even the greatest “dirt bag” on board knows that while a slack captain might be fun, one wants the Old Man — do they call women captains the “Old Woman” (and survive) these days? — to be an adult. As is the case in any job, there is play time and there is serious time.

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Wake up Veterans Affairs, before you die a death by 8.5 million paper cuts!

When one hears an opinion on the efficacy of the nation’s veterans health care system it is usually a discussion of components.

Right now mental health is the portion of the Department of Veterans Affairs medical system that is the “daily special” in terms of widespread interest due to media exposure and congressional oversight. A major sub-particle is that veterans are complaining that it takes too long to get mental health appointments. Growing numbers of young veterans with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries from national engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan make this a particularly topical subject.

There is no doubt that the VA — which sees about 6 million patients each year — is more than capable of what some medical experts have called “the best care available.” One may also forgive the VA, one of the government’s largest agencies, for tooting its own horn over its accomplishments

But like any large organization or bureaucracy the VA also faces its own undoing at times by what most would see as “the minor things” in the bigger picture. It is an expected flaw though treacherous when it comes to caring for a system with the total enrollment slightly more populous than New York City. In bureaucratic lingo, the VA must tackle the constant concern of “death by a million paper cuts.” Or, perhaps, let’s make that 8.5 million paper cuts, the aforementioned number enrolled for VA care.

Just today I was about to use the VA Web page for its patients, called “Myhealthevet.” Yes, that’s an “e” in there. I have now since forgotten what I was going to do on the site. But over the years that the site has been around it has grown in capabilities. Only, the growth has not been fast, nor on an even keel, and to be honest, it has frustrated the hell out of me.

Veterans who are enrolled in VA health care may join this site and have access to his or her prescription medicine information. Refills may be ordered from the site. This capability has been around for awhile. At times, one would only be given the prescription number and not the name of the drug. That isn’t particularly helpful say, you just happen to remember at work or while waiting to eat in a restaurant that your metformin needs to be refilled.

Likewise, the site has been unreliable when it comes to receiving medicines you ordered. I once ran out of meds after ordering them online and that is all it took for me to say, “No thanks.” As if an afterthought, a VA pharmacy person told me, “Oh yeah, don’t order them off the Web site.”

The ability to send secure e-mail to your medical professionals has in recent times been made available. One has to show up in person and see a video before opting in. Once through those “rigors” you may e-mail your medical team and perhaps even your doctor in some regional health systems. That is perhaps the most promising development out of the entire site, so far, at least. However, the real utility of secure messaging to communicate with your medical “team” comes from the fact that most VA hospitals and clinics I have encountered have massive difficulties with telephones.

Call the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Medical Center in Houston. During the day, you will likely get a recording and can wait from here to yon until you get an operator. Then, the operator transfers you and the phone rings and rings and rings and rings. If you are lucky you will get a voice mail. If you are luckier you will get a voice mail that doesn’t say this voice mail is filled. Ordering prescriptions is the main reason I call the VA. I have learned to bypass all the “blah, blah, blah” and head strait to “Option 8” where you can hear recordings of your appointments or reorder prescriptions using your keypad by entering your Social Security Number and then the prescription number.

Great promise lies in the Web access to your medical needs. Veterans may download or view their entire medical record eventually. Well, not the notes where the doctor says you are a sociopath and don’t wash behind your ears. But otherwise, Myhealthevet has already shown its use. However, such a system fails miserably in reaching its potential when one needs to use it for something only to find it is shut down for maintenance. This has happened to me more times now than I am able to count.

The chaotic phone exercises, the Internet in a perpetual state of maintenance along with long waits for specialists or appointments help build from bottom up just where the VA medical system reaches a bundled package of failures. The system has its larger problems as well, money being the generically prevalent one. I speak of funding which may result in the socioeconomic triage where, sometimes, having insurance bodes well for those seeking better veterans health care.

This is not to say the VA health care system is bad and certainly I am not speaking ill of the employees in any general way. Rather, it is my personal wake-up call for an organization that performs miracles every day. I could go on. But all I am saying is that the VA should try harder at healing these millions of paper cuts. This system is all that is keeping many of us alive and healthy.