Eight Feet Deep

Isn’t there an easier way to do this?

Happy Labor Day. Have you rounded up all your hidden colored eggs yet? Oh, that’s … uh … Easter.

No Labor Day is not a holiday on which we give gifts or shout hosannas or hunt Easter eggs. In fact, many people in the U.S. spend the day doing nothing or at least nothing of major consequence.

That is not to say that having a cook-out or party or a day on the bay or lake aren’t ways to make said day enjoyable. But in the grand scheme of the world, your water skiing or the fact you caught a five-pound bass today hardly ranks up there with fighting a war or working on an ambulance or even washing dishes in the local diner. But what do you care, right? Right. That’s the point.

It is nice to have a day — one which also symbolizes the end of summer — on which we don’t have to tote that barge or lift that bale and you can take a little drink and …

An article I read yesterday reflected upon how closely Americans identify with their jobs and noted how Europeans think it curious upon visiting the U.S. that the first question an American will ask you is: “What do you do?”

Many people work to earn a living while others feel that their job somehow will make them whole. Many love their jobs. Many hate their jobs. While I would not go so far as to say a little hard work never hurt anyone, most people realize what benefits — beyond salary and fringes one may receive from a job — love it or hate it.

The worst job I ever had was moving mobile homes. I did this one summer as an off-duty job when I worked as a firefighter and was not going to college during the summer semester.

Under old mobile homes, especially, all sorts of arachnids and who knows what else can be found. And just because it was “in the shade” under a trailer did it mean a cooler place would be found during that stifling East Texas summer.

One particular odious task was placing concrete block “pads” down on which a trailer would rest. We had one customer who wanted us to take these heavy pads and bury them with the top of the pad level with the ground. It was most difficult moving the pads and digging and placing the pads in the ground because of limited clearance between the bottom of the trailer and the ground.

Once I decided to take some vacation time from both my firefighting job and moving trailers. My now deceased friend Waldo was looking for something to do back then and I managed to get him hired as my substitute with the trailer moving company. It turned out that I quit the mobile home job soon afterwards. Waldo, who had a master’s degree at the time, continued moving pads and other tortuous tasks for several months.

My friend related a story that kind of sums up the work experience in our country. He said he was working on a particularly hot day planting those pads under a trailer. Taking a break, he said he shook his head and told the boss: “There must be an easier way to do this.”

“There is,” his boss replied, “get someone else to do it.”

Greetings one and all. It appears to be or not to be raining outside, which is outside the Barnes & Noble store in Beaumont, Texas. I am sitting in a corner at the Starbucks inside the store but had to pass on any of its coffee or whatever that is they serve. Hey, a lot of people like Starbucks’ coffee and some don’t. I don’t. To me their coffee tastes like the bad medicine I used to take as a kid. I suppose it’s not that bad but enough, you know full well by now my feelings about Starbucks.

Surfing, I found the Wikipedia sites for all three local TV stations: KBTV, Channel 4; KFDM, Channel 6; KBMT, Channel 12.

The entries are interesting, providing histories of the stations and listing present and past “on air personalities.” Need I remind one to take Wikipedia with a grain of salt (or a shot of whiskey, or yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.) Where did that come from?

It was interesting skipping (running, walking, crawling, hopping) down memory lane. Memory Lane runs straight into Blackout Avenue.

This makes me sound incredibly old (gather round children and let granpa fill you full of bulls**t) but I remember the first TV my family ever received. I lived up in the boonies about 60 miles from where I now reside. There were only two TV stations we could receive back then: KFDM and KPAC. KFDM is in Beaumont. KPAC, which was located then in Port Arthur, is now KBTV. Its studio is now in Parkdale Mall, also in Beaumont.

It’s fun to go up to the window during a newscast and make funny faces at the anchors. Or sometimes someone will fake a heart attack and everyone including the anchor and the weather guy will quit what they are doing and call 911. Remember what I said in the first sentence of this paragraph?

I have always found local TV news and, sometimes local TV “on air personalities,” a peculiar institution. Some local TV news is incredibly bad and some is good. I would hesitate to rank the local stations just because I might run into some of these people and they might give me an ass whupping. Ass whupping. Isn’t that a marvelous expression?

Of the three though, I will say Channel 6 is the best even though one of their reporters needs a new ‘do. I won’t say which one.

While we are on the subject of local TV news, what about that new reality show on Fox, “Anchorwoman?” I saw the first episode and it left me scratching my old bald head. What are these people thinking? Taking a model off the streets and turning her into a TV news anchor is a very bad idea. I can’t believe Phil Hurley, the general manager of KYTX in Tyler, Texas, would do something such as this, a move which could eventually devastate local TV news. I mean, reporters aren’t particularly admired in general these days, and I think Hurley has potentially put the local TV news business on the road to ruin. But what can you say, they have a “weather dog” named Stormy. I guess that’s show bidness.

Between Ted Poe and a camera is a dangerous place to be.

Over a period of the past four months, I endured what seemed like a nightmare. I was in the hands of a huge and largely incompetent bureaucracy at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs trying to straighten out a financial mess over my bills for copayments. It all started when the VA, without any warning, started taking money out of some checks I was to receive for expense reimbursements connected with training I had in Washington, D.C., for my part-time federal job.

At the time I had written a request to Congressman Ted Poe, my representative in the U.S. House, to see if something could be done to straighten out the mess. About three weeks ago I called his office in Beaumont to see if anything had been done in my case. But alas, the case worker in Poe’s office couldn’t find my request.

I finally got this exasperating situation straightened out to my satisfaction. But it took a lot of yelling and screaming at VA employees who acted as if they had been lobotimzed. And this mess was not solved by the person and his staff who one usually turns to for such problems — my congressman.

Last night and once before, I had seen Poe on Lou Dobb’s CNN show which should be named “Lou Dobbs Hates Those Damned Illegal Immigrants.” Last evening Poe was talking to border patrol officers near El Paso. What’s wrong with that you might ask?

The problem is that El Paso has its own congressman. Poe represents an area in Southeast Texas which includes where I live.

Here is another little matter. On Poe’s Web page I found a list of his committee assignments which are:

House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade
Subcommittee on Europe

House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
Subcommittee on Highways and Transit
Subcommittee on Aviation
Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation

Well, I guess border issues are discussed in Foreign Affairs. And the story on Lou Dobbs last evening was on the prospect of Mexican truckers taking the roads in our country so I suppose that falls under Transportation.

But the fact is that Poe was on television discussing illegal aliens because he likes having his face on TV and in the newspaper. It doesn’t hurt, of course, that illegal immigration is a hot-button issue with so much of the country including Poe’s ethnocentric right-wing base.

Poe has always been a publicity hound. He routinely made national news as a criminal court judge in Houston for his self-described “poetic justice” in handing out sentences. For example, he would order a guilty defendant to carry a sign outside a store from which he had stolen.

No doubt exists in my mind that something needs to be done about immigration. I’m not totally sure what the answer might be. But I do wonder if the reason Ted Poe’s staff cannot help out a veteran in distress is that they are too wrapped up in his quest to be a big shot when he is more like what my daddy called “a big shot, dot the ‘o’.”

It is wonderful having my laptop back and operational after some sort of problems with backlighting, or perhaps it had to have its dilithium crystals replaced. Who knows.

Sitting comfortably in Barnes and Noble (and yes, regrettably Starbucks)I am able to check some various sites on the computer that time had kept me from for awhile due to a lack of access to my own computer. No, I’m not talking about those kind of sites. Also, I checked all the links on my blogroll just now to make sure those Web places are still there. Many sites look different since I last saw them. Perhaps I should consider giving EFD a face lift after more than two years (and one hurricane)since I started this darn thing.

It, EFD the blog, is a darn thing. But as I have pointed out on a number of occasions, the blog is an outlet for me to exercise my craft as a writer. Sometimes the pieces fall in place and sometimes not. Even though I have been a)homeless and b)continue to be part-time government employee this year, I still consider my main occupation as being a freelance writer. Perhaps I could have struggled on to get more freelance gigs this year but a number of matters — like not having my own computer working and living in a motel room — have been minor hindrances.

Thus, I plan to seek more work as a writer now that my machine is fired up and actually works as it should. Sometime soon I must breakdown and get a wireless Internet plan, for paying $4 bucks for two hours at B & N or 8 cents a minute at the Internet cafe adds up. But that is another matter for another time.

Meanwhile I will beat the bushes for more work and then perhaps play with a little twine if a few minutes are mine to spare.

Unlike her superior officers, Pfc. Lynndie England was sentenced to prison for abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

For anyone who knows how the military — and life — works it should be no big surprise to see the only commissioned officer punished in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison scandal received a light tap on the wrist.

Lt. Col. Steven Jordan was acquitted on charges he did not properly train guards at the Iraq prison. He was given a reprimand for a lesser charge of disobeying an order not to talk about the case.

In terms of his career, it’s most likely toast. But had he stood trial on a myriad of other charges of which his subordinates stood and were convicted, his career would not only be toast but he might have jail time as well. But probably not.

It seems that in military justice, the amount of punishment one receives for a crime is in direct proportion to the rank of the individual. As the excellent Robert Sherrill book proclaims: “Military Justice Is To Justice As Military Music Is To Music.” For instance, Lynndie England (above) received three years in prison for conspiracy, maltreatment of subordinates, and indecent acts. Her lover and the purported ring leader of the miscreants at Abu Ghraib, Pvt. Charles Graner, was handed a 10-year sentence in 2005 for conspiracy, dereliction of duty, maltreatment of detainees, assault and committing indecent acts.

I covered Graner’s court martial as a reporter. If the world was fair, everyone from the lowest enlisted person to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsefeld should have been given prison time for their parts in this disgrace. But who said the Army is fair? And who said life was fair? So there.

Some might see the punishment handed the lower enlisteds in the case such as Graner and England as minimal. I don’t particularly see it that way. I feel like for the circumstances the sentences were just.

But I certainly don’t feel that way about the reprimand given Jordan although the military has always given the enlisted guys the shaft when it came to crime and punishment. Perhaps there have been exceptions such as certain captains of naval vessels being handed more punishment than their subordinates. But then, the hallmark of a ship captain’s responsibility is that he (or she but mostly he)is responsible for all that happens on board.

So have we closed the book on Abu Ghraib? Perhaps so when it comes to meting out punishment for what happened. How badly these cowboys and idiots damaged the reputation of our country by their deeds remains for historical reflection.