First leg of my leave was Biloxi/Gulfport in coastal Mississippi. The first two years or more of my Navy years were here in Harrison County, Miss. This was just one place I frequented. I will write more when the spirit moves me!
UPDATE: A U.S. Coast Guard panel found Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Richard M. Clark innocent of all charges with the exception of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. The information on a sentence was not immediately known.
(Note: As happens sometimes, I edited after a previous version was published accidentally. If you are confused, well, sorry.)
“It suffices to add “military” to a word for it to lose its meaning. Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.” Georges Clemenceau.
Whether area Coast Guard Chief Warrant Officer Richard M. Clark will feel that way in eventual proceedings remain to be seen.
The above quote was attributed to Clemenceau, who was twice elected as French Prime Minister during the first bloody 20 years of the 20th century. The total saying is perhaps more important than its latter sentence part, which came to “modern” usage during the Vietnam War.
The late journalist Robert Sherill penned a book named for that latter sentence of the French leader’s quote. I bought “Military Justice Is To Justice, As Military Music Is To Music” in a bargain book bin most likely in Mississippi during my first Navy assignment. The book explored a number of military justice cases which were widely seen as unjust if not abominable. It was a book I kept in mind as I worked in my second assignment which was a legal yeoman on a destroyer based in San Diego. It is a book I would recommend for any young person who is joining or has recently joined the armed forces.
I was what today would be seen as a “paralegal” in civilian terms. I only saw so-called “non-judicial punishments” which could land one in some hot water, but mostly the hearings which were conducted by a unit or ship commander is similar to misdemeanors in the non-military world. It would be some 30 years later before I saw a court martial. I was then a newspaper reporter and those accused were Army soldiers tried at Fort Hood, Texas. One military court was that of Spc. Charles Graner, who was allegedly the ringleader of abuses that took place at Abu Ghraid in Iraq.
Clark, now serving in Galveston, might indeed see hard time if convicted for the charges he faces. His sentence might possibly even eclipse the six and a half years of a 10-year sentence Graner served in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Certainly, any victims in the Clark case might hope so. But one never knows what a court martial panel, the military jury, will hand out.
The charges against Clark allegedly happened while he was stationed in Port Arthur, Texas, in my county and about 15 miles from where I live. The warrant officer faces:
The specifications, as the above mentioned counts of an article, included in an updating of Article 120, Rape, in the “Uniformed Code of Military Justice.” The definitions of the article now incorporate more widely used terms in the civilian justice system such as aggravated assault. The areas of sexual assault are also broadened, or are more specific. This includes touching and what is known in the civilian world as “date rape.”
A particularly quaint definition of “sexual act” has also been broadened. The definition during my time read: “Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.” Today, the definition of a sexual act is:
(A) contact between the penis and the vulva or anus or mouth, and for purposes of this subparagraph contact involving the penis occurs upon penetration, however slight; or
(B) the penetration, however slight, of the vulva or anus or mouth, of another by any part of the body or by any object, with an intent to abuse, humiliate, harass, or degrade any person or to arouse or gratify the sexual desire of any person.
Some days are just meant for a meaningful tune. The problem is, I am not sure why the tune I think of, Jimi Hendrix’s “If 6 Was 9” is so meaningful. I think to myself why is it meaningful to me?
“If the sun refuse to shine
I don’t mind, I don’t mind …
If the mountains, fell in the sea
let it be, it ain’t me
Alright, ‘cos I got my own world to look through
And I ain’t gonna copy you.”
Okay. But here I am and why am I copying Jimi? Ya dig?
” If 6 turned out to be 9
I don’t mind, I don’t mind
If all the hippies
Cut off all their hair
I don’t care, I don’t care … “
It is a quirky song that is simple in its lyrics. The form and fashion of a loud grinding hard rock song pounded out on guitar by a young black dude who had no equal. No copy.
It’s just a simple thought of a song that is simple in its lyrics but it is, like, heavy. Ya dig?
“Sing on brother, play on drummer.”
“What it is?”
Man, I hadn’t heard that in a long while. I push my cart seemingly nowhere. I don’t catch full conversations. Oh, I am grocery shopping, by the way. I hear the music.
“Don’t you worry about a thing, he-eng, he-eng … “ Stevie Wonder. I bought “Innervisions” when I was a junior in high school.
Stevie has some good tunes. Some of Innervision were like the blues wrapped up in jazz wrapped up in rock and roll. The songs like “Living For the City,” that’s what I’m talking about.
“A boy is born, in hard time Mississippi/Surrounded by four walls that ain’t so pretty … Living just enough, just enough for the city.”
Poetry of poverty turned to poetry for profits. Poetry for profits was an idea of mine that never came to fruition. It was kind of in the same category of “Mechanical Bullshit.” Yeah, that was actually an idea I had back in the 80s.
I wasn’t a big fan of “Urban Cowboy” — neither the movie nor the fad that came behind or along it. It was one of those movies I would have never paid to see if it wasn’t for a girlfriend. You all understand that, don’t cha?
Up until John Travolta came to the screen to dance again — remember “Saturday Night Fever?” — I used to pretty much dress in Western-style garb. A Western-style shirt, pressed jeans and cowboy boots. No hat, usually. I wasn’t in the cow business even though I lived in a farm-house that I rented. My only roomies were a herd of cattle on the nearly 100-acre spread.
I was going to college when this whole drugstore cowboy thing exploded, thanks to Bud and Sissy. So I quit wearing cowboy chic and started dressing, well, not-so Western. I also became pretty damn antagonistic to the fad. Thus came mechanical bullshit.
One night I stayed past closing at a favorite nightclub in town. It went through the Urban Cowboy fad, although country-western was a fact of life in Texas then as now. A friend, who is now a big city TV news reporter, was a bartender. This friend let me ride the mechanical bull as the night’s crowd left and club folks began cleaning up. Now this was not THE mechanical bull at Gilley’s, of Urban Cowboy fame, which was the Houston-area honky-tonk owned by country singer Mickey Gilley.
I must confess to having a few adult beverages. The drinks were gratis courtesy of my friend the bartender. With all of that in mind, I got on that ol’ plastic bull or of whatever it was made. I stayed on the contraption at least 16 seconds — or four, or two, at the lowest bucking level available.
Now since surviving a mechanical bull ride, a plan came busting out of my potential business idea like a bull bucking out its chute.
I devised this plan to encase a variety of nuts and bolts into a clear acrylic block, Ta da … I didn’t think long and hard about this idea because I believed the more I thought, the more I would screw up. Sorry, that was an accidental pun. But come to think about it, screws would also work as the mechanical bull scat.
I ran this idea past friend who got excited about it. We just never acted on it. You know how things go sometime.
The same girlfriend I mentioned earlier also made me see “Saturday Night Fever.” Of course, this movie brought about a “disco fever.” Well, you know, fever most often is applied to a high body temperature and that’s not usually something to tout. Still there were some decent songs from the movie’s soundtrack. I liked “More Than a Woman,” by the Bee Gees okay. Like so many songs it reminds me of a particular time in life. I recall this song upon returning from sea duty in the Pacific. I was back only a few months before leaving the Navy. We didn’t do a whole lot once our ship returned to San Diego.
I loved those few months I was on the ship in home port. I had the world ahead of me. I had a loose plan but it turned out vastly different during the following years. But for the time, I was loving California, the Pacific and the mountains. There was plenty of scenery and adventure. Included was all the fun and zest for life when you are 22 years old, and world really is your egg.
All of a sudden, I’m in the grocery store shopping and turning 60 in a few weeks.
Before checking out, I head to the aisle for razors. At the end of the aisle was a rather large woman on a motorized cart. I hear the woman on the cart ask me something but her voice is soft and I do not understand her. I have to ask a couple more times, the last with my ear cupped with my hand as if I am hard of hearing.
“What’s good for pink eye?” she asked. “Is breast milk?” She adds, saying that she was from Louisiana. Perhaps she is explaining why she comes up such an odd remedy.
“Well,” I said, thoughtfully. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”
Suddenly, the woman who was standing and the one who was sitting burst out laughing. I give a puzzling look, then laugh, before pushing my shopping car toward the cashiers.
So much of my life gets examined in the 30 minutes of shopping. It’s like a time machine — or maybe psychoanalysis. And it only cost me $45.
Some news for the day. Or, some news for the day. It always depends on how you say it and how you interpret it.
Donald Trump unleashes his “Republican” tax plan. Donald Trump is about as Republican as Joe Lieberman was a Democrat. Regardless, Trump is pulling out smoke and mirrors to lessen the tax burden on the rich, as he is. People making $24,000 a year or less per year or $30,000 for a family would pay no taxes. Some argue they already pay no taxes. If he is talking about cutting withholding taxes then that would qualify for a tax cut. But he should go beyond that 24K limit. I just learned today of a pay increase which raises my pay to $43,000. I would call that a pretty good amount for me, who has barely made it beyond $30,000 over 40 years. However, I would only receive 43K by working 40 hours a week. And over the past year I have worked 32 hours a week.
So my salary really amounts to “Trump change” if you take away that extra day of work and withholding, Social Security, Medicare, Retirement, etc. The rich? The rich get rich and the poor get poorer — under Uncle Donald and probably any other plan Republican or Democrat.
Russian leader Vladimir Putin on 60 Minutes last night said, in so many words, everything is cool man. Yeah, I am a sleaze ball spy-turned politician, but I’m cool as a Siberian fireman. It seems like Putin is trying to out-cool President Obama. That’s not happening though.
Putin, in an answer to a question by CBS anchor Charlie Rose, said he hopes that Russia is a major power because it possesses nuclear weapons.
“Otherwise, why do we have nuclear weapons at all?”
Well, isn’t he the big kid on the block? Russians love him, or so it is said. Who knows how far this former KGB agent will go to make all of the news favor his point of view. I bet Obama would whip his ass shooting hoops and Putin would come away black and blue, while Obama, well …
The Iranian President Hassan Rouhani provided some “bulletin board” material for Republicans after speaking with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. Rouhani said he has watched GOP live on television and found the candidates “quite laughable.” The Iranian leader said he doubted that these wannabes could even find his country on the map or could distinguish the difference between Iran and Tehran.
One can be sure Rouhani must have been smoking a large bowl of Afghani hash to find humorous the U.S. Republican presidential campaign.
“Dude, let’s go to White Castle,” Rouhani says while gigiling. “Get the jet ready.”
Enough news for the day. Any more and I will gain some knowledge. I don’t want to do that. As for you, well, you got a mouse?
