The drone, built by Vanguard Defense Industries in nearby Spring, Texas, can be used in military and public safety settings. Or, so it would seem, both. But one use for the now water-logged craft not used is surveillance, said a law enforcement spokesman. It is used for “operation overwatch” such as in SWAT operations. That wouldn’t be surveillance now would it?
The sheriff’s agency headquartered in Conroe created quite a controversy, a.k.a. “shit storm,” after it was purchased about two years ago. One must now wonder if the department will hold a fried egg sandwich sale as a way to dispose of all that egg which must be accumulating on their collective faces?
Okay, you may have guessed by now I am not a big drone fan. At least I don’t care much for drones outside of a military setting. I am likewise not so sure the unmanned aircraft should be used as widely as they are in defense and intelligence. I am concerned about potential abuses by law enforcement and other government agencies such as with spying.
Also, I just plain don’t want the sky filled with the damn things.
Businesses have said they want to use drones for home delivery of products. What? And do away with all those great legs in UPS and postal service shorts?
It just seems the potential for a lot of nuisance, like swatting mosquitoes.
Looks like my friend, Paul in Tokyo, did some updating on this Word Press program or whatever it’s called. As far as I know there are no obvious outside changes but there are a number on my side. For instance, there are more than a dozen platforms from which I can embed videos.
I apologize, to myself mostly, for being neglectful of my blog as of late. Part of the excuse is that I now and, have been for some time, on a 32-hour per week work schedule. That isn’t just Monday-Thursday and three days off. My schedule can be seven hours Monday through Wednesday, six hours on Thursday and five hours on Friday. Crazy man. Like way out there, as some former president in the 20th century would say. Yes, I’m talking about George Herbert Walker Rodney Andrew Jackson Gamaliel Harding Bush Sr. Wow, that Warren G. Harding was a character.
I mean, I like Obama although he has certainly disappointed at times. But the real Obama haters out there are almost as bad as all the Gee Dubya Bush haters. And I wasn’t one of the latter, as I have said in the past, I talked to him before he was even running for governor and had no one accompanying him, and I found him to be pleasant enough. I guess where I really got crossways with him was Iraq. I’m beginning to think Afghanistan as well but I haven’t made up my mind yet. I also shouldn’t have to remind folks but the subject deserves a caveat that I didn’t like the war or wars. But I was for the military men and women.
You may say hating war but liking the warriors isn’t possible. I say it is. Hey, the conservative Christians say it is possible to hate the sin but love the sinner, when speaking of homosexuality. That is a whole bucket of fishing worms where I shall not stick my hand. That may also be a thin analogy. At least I’m writing something.
Oh, and the other reason for my neglect of the blog has been my damned knee. There was a little more to it than a simple meniscus tear. No, it also involved the dreaded Jimmy leg. Nonetheless, I have probably another month of physical therapy and several more weeks of light duty at work. This doesn’t count the number of days I lost since my knee first began to act up in January. By the end of it, when I hopefully am back in acceptable condition, I will have spent 4-to-5 months tied up in one way or the other because of this knee. How ’bout those Jimmy Legs?
Thanks Paul, for updating my system. My fellow J-school friend moves in stealth these days, free from Facebook. I envy him.
Another trip to the knee surgeon this morning means another month of little doing. After surgery last week I now am prescribed a knee brace to wear while doing relatively nothing until yet the next doctor’s appointment in about another month. I can start light duty again at work next week, so at least I will have some people with whom to speak.
Days like today make me wish there was a decent pub nearby. Actually, there is a decent hotel bar not far away but one can rack up quite a tab even at happy hour. I don’t know what the price of a bar beer was back in the day in which I drank beer in a bar. It doesn’t seem draft beer was all that expensive but you definitely got what you paid for drinking draft.
These days I drink beer vary sparingly, to the point that a brew tastes pretty good after you’ve not had one in awhile. Just as when I would go a week or two at sea without a cold one.
Marines shift American colors to Philippine as Subic Bay Naval Station is handed over back to its host country in 1992.
Talks about bars and drinking kind of go hand-in-hand, I suppose, since I feel somewhat melancholy about life in general. I started listening to the Eagles on the computer but I realized how blue some of the birds’ songs can be. “After The Thrill Is Gone,” for example.
“What can you do when your dreams come true and it’s not quite like you planned?/What have you done to be losing the one/You held it so tight in your hand./Time passes and you must move on, half the distance takes you twice as long/So you keep on singing for the sake of the song/After the thrill is gone.
Who cares if one doesn’t hear iambic pentameter in the lyrics? The harmonious vocals and e-lec-tric-i-cal guitars all seem to work.
If you keep listening to the Eagles you may hear something more sad and pensive or perhaps you might even run into something funny whether it’s meant to be or not. The late 1970s hit and title track of the album “Hotel California” spawns several funny thoughts that have less to do with the song so much as it does the title.
Several hit songs from “Hotel California,” including the title track were hitting the airwaves in Southern California in July 1977, just as I got there to board my old destroyer for a year of Western and Southern Pacific duty. “Life In The Fast Lane,” a particularly fitting song for driving the freeways from L.A. to San Diego, was popular just as I arrived in San Pedro/Long Beach, where my ship was in drydock. A month or two later we sailed down to our homeport of San Diego. I stored my car in Long Beach because we were only to stay in San Diego for a couple of weeks. An aside, I was worried my Corolla would be a solid rust bucket upon returning because the car was in a gated, but exposed, area seaward on Terminal Island. Luckily, all the then-3-year-old Toyota needed upon returning was a jump from some battery cables.
One thing that could definitely be said for “Hotel California” is that it travels well. It seemed as if hardly a day went by when you couldn’t hear the song played on a juke box or by a local Filipino band in one of the clubs fronting Magsaysay Drive in beautiful downtown Olangapo, Republic of the Philippines. Olangapo is the city that was outside the main gate to the then Subic Bay Naval Station. The U.S. relinquished control of the large naval station and adjacent Cubi Point Naval Air Station in 1992 due to a call among the Filipino people to close it. The control by the Philippines was hastened, as was nearby Clark Air Force Base in Manilla, when the area was engulfed in volcanic dust from the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in 1991.
In the days I visited Olangapo on and off from September 1977 to April 1978, I had learned of the intensity and dedication Filipino musical groups gave to their work. It was not unheard of for bands to practice eight hours in the day only to go on and perform just afterwards in the evenings. Sometimes, one might think the bands that recorded the popular rock tunes heard in the U.S. were the original bands. But it seemed many groups in Olangapo had one small flaw when it came to playing the Eagles’ hit, “Hotel California.” That would be the pronunciation of “California” itself. The local bands to a man (mostly) sang: “Welcome to the Hotel Cal-i-porn-ya.”
Some afternoons when were let go from work with early liberty, one might sit in a bar alone with his thoughts, with no “Calipornia.” One might then enjoy a cold San Miguel, and wonder what life was to bring. I never thought I would still ponder those times 36 years later, still with a bit of melancholy even though I’ve seen enough to make probably dozens of people happy.
Such is life. Those Filipino dudes sounded great, whether they mispronounced “California”or not. Nothing or no one is perfect. Life would be pretty damned dull if it was.
Here is a toast to imperfection and its restorative powers!
These fiery whirling dervishes of nature are more akin to dust devils than to real tornadoes which can cause nine kinds of hell in practically every part of the United States. This partial explanation from Wikipediacomes pretty close to explaining these whirlwinds:
“Dust devils form when hot air near the surface rises quickly through a small pocket of cooler, low- pressure air above it. If conditions are just right, the air may begin to rotate. As the air rapidly rises, the column of hot air is stretched vertically, thereby moving mass closer to the axis of rotation, which causes intensification of the spinning effect … “
Most dust devils that form here in Southeast Texas are generally small in size. The same applies, though not always, for tornadoes. I would guess that the size has to do with the humid air we normally have here on the coast. I did see some larger whirlwinds when I have visited Colorado, where this fire tornado takes place. I have never seen a fire tornado although I have seen and been through a few tornadoes. I have seen firestorms as well. Or rather, I have seen at least one firestorm. This is a phenomenon which takes place when a fire is so large that it sustains its own wind system. This can occur naturally, as in a large wildfire, or in other instances such as happened most notably in the massive fire bombing of Dresden, Germany, in World War II.
The fire storm I witnessed happened during a fire that destroyed a plywood mill. It was what you would call a “massive” blaze. I could see the currents inside the heat and fire that drifted across the street and caught a wood yard on fire. A few hours later I went home, about 10 miles in the country from the fire. I found ashes up to a foot long and nearly as wide in the cow pasture. Had it not been spring and the area fair with rain, half the countryside could have been burned.
Nature can play all kinds of tricks with you and your surroundings. When that happens. You need to be elsewhere.
It was nice, if only for a short time, to view something on TV news other than blatant speculation over what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. I speak of the somewhat solemn ceremony that is taking place in the White House as I write this. Of course, the airing of the ceremony on CNN didn’t last long because Jake Tapper had to come in and talk and talk some more. The White House to do is honoring 24 soldiers from World War II, Korea and Vietnam with the Medal of Honor. These were Black, Hispanic and Jewish soldiers — the majority awarded posthumously — who were originally presented the Distinguished Service Cross. A congressional review upgraded the awards from the nation’s second highest for valor to the top decoration. It isn’t stated on the special “microsite” but because these brave soldiers were Black, Hispanic and Jewish is why they were not originally awarded the Medal of Honor.
First U.S. WWII hero. Dorris Miller, remains without Medal of Honor
It is always a glimpse at a real hero to read the citations for the MOH dating back to the Civil War. Well, some may argue that certain ones didn’t deserve the award. Read the citations and make your mind up on your own. And, it’s certainly not to say that a few of the awards are, shall we say, unusual, such as the Unknown Soldiers of Rumania (now spelled Romania) and Italy, both from World War I.
Speaking of unrewarded heroes, which we were, I see there is a development in getting additional recognition for perhaps the first American hero of World War II. I wrote a story more than a decade ago as to how locals in the Waco, Texas, area had made a push to upgrade a Navy Cross — now the Navy’s second highest — to the Medal of Honor. The award was third highest behind the MOH and the Navy Distinguished Service Medal when Cook Third Class Doris Millerreceived the medal.
Miller was a Black farm hand from the Waco area when he joined the Navy in 1939 and ended up as a mess attendant and cook, one of the few jobs open to African Americans back then. Miller, called “Dorie” by his shipmates, was stationed on the battleship U.S.S. West Virginia berthed in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Miller responded to the attack along with shipmates. Miller helped move the ship’s captain, whose wounds proved mortal, to a place of greater safety on the bridge. Although he had not been trained to fire anti-aircraft weapons, Miller took over such a gun battery and began shooting at Japanese planes. Stories passed down through the years say Miller even shot down one of the planes, though it was never proven. Miller was portrayed in the 2001 movie “Pearl Harbor” by Cuba Gooding Jr.
There remains a long-held notion that Miller would have been a Medal of Honor recipient had he have been white. To the day, the effort to have Miller nominated for the MOH has failed. It is most fitting, though not a substitute for a Medal of Honor, that the Republican U.S. House member, Rep. Bill Flores, who represents that area of Central Texas, is leading an effort to have the Waco Department of Veterans Affairs Hospital named after Dorie Miller. I used that facility for my VA primary care for some seven years. And I believe that I played a pretty major role as a journalist in keeping the facility from closure. I know that sounds conceited and probably is. But it is nevertheless the truth. The publication I wrote for back then has the hardware to prove it . That isn’t taking anything from them. Papers like rewards and they got recognition for my work and that of a couple of others.
Okay, so now what? We go back to endless coverage of Flight 370? It is a mystery, though one wonders how long it will sustain the coverage cable news is giving it? Only fate and the suits know for sure. So until next time, … “All Right. Good night.”
