Eight Feet Deep

Say what you will about Bob Gates but you would be sorely mistaken to say he is not a very smart individual. Robert Gates, Ph.D., in Russian and Soviet history from Georgetown University and former president of Texas A & M University, had his detractors during his rise  from the ranks after more than a quarter-century to become Central Intelligence Agency director. There were the blemishes on his tenure as a senior agency official and director including ties to Iran-Contra figures and probably the most damaging mole in recent U.S. spy history, Aldrich Ames. Nevertheless, no one can attain such high offices in government for such staggering lengths of time as Gates without becoming collateral damage from psychopaths who work and live on a major scale. Do you ever see that “Col.” Ollie North guy on Fox?

Probably the best memory I have of the G.H.W. Bush administration, other than G.H.W. Bush leaving, was Donald Rumsfeld leaving the Defense secretary post and being replaced with Bob Gates. I told a conservative friend that I thought Gates was the best choice I could think of as Sec Def. I felt so then. I felt so when he was picked by Obama and I continue to feel that way. I don’t agree with all of his decisions or his proposals. There is no way anyone could agree with everything a Defense secretary does without being either a liar or consummate ass kisser.

Though I may not always agree with him I do see a brilliance in the man I do not see in so many other government officials. An example: His message to students this week at Duke University.

He told Duke students this week that they should “earn their freedom.”

While praising the remarkable ability of today’s all-volunteer military, Gates said that the voluntary force has exacted a price from a small portion of society. Despite the public having considerable admiration for the service especially since 9/11 the military “has become something for other people to do,” Gates said. He added that military personnel today are disproportionately from military families and rural areas, especially from the South and Mountain West.

“There is a risk over time of developing a cadre of military leaders that politically, culturally and geographically have less and less in common with the people they have sworn to defend,” Gates said, according to The Duke Chronicle.

Such trends already have proved problematic for the country. One only has to take a look at Congress. The representative body has for a number years been out of touch with the military and when our nation started calling on our military to fight, die and come home mangled from roadside bombs the veterans found a nation unready for their needs. Some ex-military are now seeking office. Unfortunately, some have been recruited for the wrong reasons. All veterans are not war mongers, or civilian killers or gun nuts or just weirdos in general. We thankfully see those, however, who feel like serving in elected office is like serving  in the military. It can be a pain, it can be a marvelous experience but either way, it is something you get your dress blues on for and go out and do what you need to do for your country.

When Gates leaves sometime next year after two very different, and  both very controversial administrations, one can only hope we find a new Sec Def who is half his equal as a government leader. It will be extremely difficult to find one near his equal in intellect.

Happy New Year’s Eve’s Eve. Eve is one of those funny palindromes that you just  want to put another letter up front or in back or somewhere another to let it die a slow, dignified death. Even or never. Tit for tat. Uh hum.

Tomorrow is the last day of the fiscal year for the federal government and probably a few other governments. So as we bid FY 10 farewell what do we do except shiver at the thought of FY 11? If you are a federal employee you might hope that some of the Republican congressional members fail to carry through with their threat of shutting down the government to bargain on the health care reform passed this FY. I suppose it hinges upon how successful the GOP is in taking half or all of Congress in the November elections. That is beginning to look less than a done deal than it was earlier in the “silly season.”

More so than in past election cycles, it seems that, especially the cable news media, have whipped up the polling and the popularity and the disgust into some kind of frenzy that left untouched could result in a self-fulfilling prophecy. There is no doubt Fox News has had a direct hand in this frenzy, being pretty much the sponsor of the Tea Party. Then, the other cable companies had to join in and make the doom and gloom of current government look even  more doomier and gloomier. It is just a thought, all except for Fox. They are responsible for making the Tea Party what it is. They have also given beau coup dollars to the Republicans. That is undisputed. Unless you believe there is a difference between Fox News and its owners News Corp.

But the Republicans are going full tilt ahead. They’ve even got their Contract Blah Blah that they ripped off from the 1994 GOP edition. These were, of course, the same bunch of goobers who shut down the government the last time. These GOP goobers in office and who wannabe elected — real fruitcakes like Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle — mistake conservatism with sloth and a lack of imagination. They feel as if they can get elected or reelected then they don’t have to do anything and they can just tout themselves as Newt II or the Return of Newt, even though it will likely be Boehner or Boner, which seems more apt. When saying the GOP won’t do anything once elected, that means anything except perhaps try to outlaw Islam and perhaps homosexuality.

Whether FY ’11 turns out to be a great year for the Empire and for its federal peons remains to be seen. It all depends on whether the electorate decides to let the present majorities continue their work or to replace them with a bunch of lazy goobers led by (Heaven Help Us) Speaker Boner and Majority Leader Mitch (You Can Tell I’m Lying Because My Mouth Is Moving) McConnell. Hap hap happy new yeeeeaaaar!!!

Amazing what a little curiosity will do. In my case, it saved me time and perhaps allowed me an extra hour’s sleep in the morning.

I was picked yesterday for a jury panel that was supposed to convene tomorrow morning. I called the court a bit ago to inquire how long the case might last should I be picked. The nice lady told me, after giving her my name, that I don’t even have to show up in the morning. Hmm, I guess there goes my $40. Oh well, I will get $6 for yesterday, that will buy me, what,  a bottle of water?

As I remarked last week, I had hoped to get picked for a jury. I was right at the end of all the more than 100 who got sent to different courts yesterday morning. My case was supposed to in be drug court. That  would have been interesting but I would never have been picked, that is, if the attorneys had asked me any questions more piercing than my name. There are a number of reasons why I don’t believe I would have been picked. But then I can’t say with certainty I would have been dismissed. I have seem some jury picks that seemed very odd to me. I mean, I’m not a lawyer, but I don’t play one on TV. A probation officer in a child molestation case! Doesn’t that seem like an odd person to pick for a criminal jury? I saw that once.  All in all,  I’ve seen some strange people called upon to be a jury of one’s peers. It can make you wish you had different peers.

Some of the folks I talked with while waiting on the wheels of justice to slowly turn told me that once you are called around these parts for jury duty, you are usually called again sometime in the near future. So I guess I have that to look forward to, or maybe not. Lady Justice is not only blind, but she is also somewhat capricious and a bit persnickety. However, the Grand Lady is known to be fond of an unfiltered Camel and a shot of tequila, after which she is much calmer and her scale-twirling becomes much less a frightening exhibition.

This does not compute

So much happening so quickly. Within three hours I have picked up, started up and something-upped a new (replacement) laptop. This is the third Dell and the second replacement from Dell. I restarted my computer a short while ago to see if I had properly restored my backup bookmarks and I get a completely different look for my desktop and font. I see this keyboard also cannot tolerate speed typing.  Or maybe it is the tremors in my hands. Oh well. I wish these laptop keyboards would handle like an old IBM Selectric or a Smith-Corona. Electronic typewriters. Man, they were cat’s pajamas!

Being cautious for justice’s (and my) sake

I didn’t get picked for court, yet. I am part of a panel for one day this week. I don’t think it would be proper to write about it because I have been sworn in. I’d say my chances are very low at being picked although stranger things have happened.

Next week I will pick soccer matches

My games didn’t go as I  had hoped. Sure, Stephen F. Austin beat Lamar but I didn’t expect it to be a 70-point massacre. The Texans-Cowboys game. I knew that could have happened and I said so. It still sucks.

If there’s a Football Heaven (Then there must be a hell of a coaching staff)

This was a rather odd and also somewhat sad weekend for football in my neck of the woods. Only a week ago Southeast Texans learned that 17-year-old Reggie Garrett, a star quarterback for West Orange-Stark High School collapsed and died shortly after throwing his second touchdown in a game with Jasper. The cause of his death is still unknown. On Friday night, Texas high school football coaching legend Curtis Barbay fell ill during a game his Newton Eagles were playing at Buna. (Geography lesson forthcoming). Barbay, 68, died the next evening of a heart attack in a Beaumont hospital. (Beaumont, for those who don’t know southeastern Texas, is about 90 miles east of Houston. West Orange-Stark is in Orange, on the Texas-Louisiana line, about 20 miles east of Beaumont. Newton is a small town about 60 miles north of Orange and about the same number of miles northeast of Beaumont. Finally, Buna is about 30 miles north of Beaumont. Give yourself an A after taking this open-book test.)

Coach Barbay, as I always called him, was the fourth most winning high school football  coach in Texas. In his more than 40 years as a coach, he led Newton to three state championships over Spearman, Daingerfield and Argyle. His teams were runner-ups for state titles also with Daingerfield and with Boyd. In his more than 30 years as head coach, seasons without playoffs were pretty much as rare as East Texas springs without a yellow coating of pine pollen. I have written about Coach here before, particularly as it relates to his special place in my butt’s history. He was the last teacher every to paddle me. He did so, after I had initially intended to forego it. However, good old Mr. John Singletary, our principal, said either I got a paddling or I would be suspended for three days.

In my mind, my reluctance to get my ass whacked was more principle than fear. Or so I imagined. Coach Barbay was then and still was at the time of his death a pretty big fellow. He delivered a pretty massive wallop when it was all said and done and perhaps I would have been wise to have feared it, though that would have accomplished nothing just as my trying to buck the system was all for naught. Oh, my offense? Talking in class. I think as I mentioned here before, it school was to help prepare for the workplace, then it should terrify the hell out of you if you are going to get your ass beat for talking when you shouldn’t.  I did feel like beating the hell out of some co-workers at times when they were gabbing or shouting at each other and throwing a beach ball around the office. This while I tried to concentrate on something or other for deadline.

The fall of 2005 presented a challenge for a lot of folks around Southeast Texas after Hurricane Rita. Newton, where I grew up and hung out with my brother and his family during Rita, was hit pretty hard for being more than 70 miles from the Gulf. Many houses hit in that storm included those of young Newton football players. Coach Barbay was able to both rally his young players and eventually the community, in short and the Eagles went to their third state title ever that year. I had mentioned here that if Newton was to pull off a championship that year I would finally give up the grudge I had against Coach Barbay for whipping my butt for talking in his World History class so many years ago.

That was all just some sort of hyperbole though. If I ever had a grudge against Curtis Barbay I had lost it long ago because I came to admire the man for both his coaching genius and the fact that he really cared for the people and his kids there in Newton. He wasn’t one of those high-paid coaches you hear about in Texas that make six figures.  I was looking at some of my friends and relatives pages on Facebook who had either been coached, teached or just knew Coach. Those people loved him and it was more than he just turned out great football teams each year, although winning certainly helps.

I never really thought about it until later on, but I guess you could say in a rather ridiculous way that I was “touched by greatness” with the heavy whack of a  paddle when the coach whipped me that day. People of Curtis Barbay’s ilk don’t come along every day.  Some people gather their remembrances by autographs, or by a fly ball that knocks them out and leaves them with 20 stitches, others who are knuckleheads like me end up getting paddled. I guess the lucky people just get their touch of greatness the easy way, by just learning from those who have something to teach them.

In the end, no pun intended, we all learn something. Rest in peace Coach Barbay.

Jury duty awaits me next week. I think for many this exercise in citizenship would seem something to endure, like a dentist’s visit or perhaps a colonoscopy. Such feelings, I would like to think, pervade not so much because those called aren’t patriotic but instead have many things they need to do in their work or lives.

I look forward to jury duty and, regardless of the case, hope that I am picked. I feel that jury duty is one of the most important obligations a citizen has in this great nation. Of course, I also like courtrooms and courts and the oftentimes drama such a setting brings.

My guess is that I probably spent three-to-four years covering courts when I worked full-time as a journalist. These cases didn’t happen, usually at least, in a big-city setting although that didn’t make the drama and the community that was the courthouse no less interesting. For example,  I once had a huge chair thrown in my direction during court. I was once sued for something that I heard on the record in court and later wrote about it. I saw a court packed with uniformed police officers once in a show of solidarity, or force depending on who you believed, in a case in which a man was on trial for decking a state trooper and a deputy sheriff during a traffic stop. I have had judges wink at me to acknowledge an inside joke, or so I hope that was why they winked.

I also served on a jury — a worker’s compensation case — before my journalistic career began in earnest or East Texas, to be exact.

All above and other reasons are why it is highly unlikely I will be picked for this jury. I have been called four times previously and served once. Those who have served or even watch TV shows about court all know that in selecting a jury the lawyers on both sides will ask fairly standard questions which reveal any prejudice that the potential juror might have toward a defendant or plaintiff or prosecutor. Some examples:

Do you know or are you related to any police officers: Yes

Have you or a family member ever been in jail: Yes

Have you or a family member ever experienced any mistreatment or mishandling of a situation by the police: Yes

Do you generally like police officers: Yes

Have you ever been a plaintiff or a defendant in a civil trial: Yes

And so it goes. “Questions 67 and 68,” as a band once known as “Chicago Transit Authority” once sang.

My answers to these questions are no different than millions of other Americans. Since I covered both police and courts, I probably have more of an inside track on what really goes on from the time of a crime until the time a defendant is convicted or released. I say that, not meaning I have more knowledge than those who work in those systems, or that I know more than anyone else in particular. I am just saying that, for an outsider, I probably know a little more about those worlds that the average person. It is exactly for that and all of the above that I predict I will be excused from the jury Monday.

But you never know. I have seen some strange picks on the jury. If I am not on here during the early part of next week, you can figure that I was wrong about my prediction. And let me tell you, I have been really, really wrong about some matters in my life. We shall see what we shall see.