Who gave...for the land

Today we pause to recall the sacrifice of all who gave their lives for the land we love and live in; for the men and women who have served and are proudly called veterans and for those serving in our Armed Forces around the world today.

Our family is proud to call Mom and Dad (USAF) and sons Frankie (USMC) and James (USAF) "Veterans." A grandson, Trey Turner is serving in the USMC.

Anne's Kids - Reunion 2006

On Mother’s Day I left my wife and mother of our five children behind and headed off from Charleston to Maine for a reunion with my four siblings. It wasn’t planned that way but my wife opted out of making the trip and I flew off totally oblivious to what was happening in New England. By Tuesday, after almost three days of rain, the papers reported the area was having the third worst rain storm since they began keeping records back somewhere in the middle of the nineteenth century. In our home town of Lowell, MA, about 3,000 people were evacuated from homes along the banks of the Merrimack River. Only the 1936 flood that caused the Merrimack to overflow its banks and put much of Lowell under water was worst than last week's rain storm.
We gathered in Wells Beach, ME, and had a grand time. One brother, coming by car from Staten Island, was unable to get to the reunion because of the weather. He was missed, and we told him by phone that we faulted him for all our youthful misfortunes. Somehow, although he was only three or four, we said he caused an older brother to fall off the top of a bridge across a canal near our home. Similarly, in his absence, he was at fault when a bus threw a board up from the street breaking a sister’s leg. He accepted all this with good humor, although I suspect when he got to yakking it up later with his friends we would be somehow responsible for his youthful injuries and ailments.
I had planned to stop in on a few friends and e-mail acquaintances unannounced but once on the ground in Maine the weather made all that impossible. Maybe some day soon.
This was the first time we got together since our mother died four years ago. Families get caught up in what they do and times passes ever so swiftly, especially, it seems, as people age. I suggested the gathering last December and it turned out to be a happy time for catching up, reminiscing, updating on the kids whereabouts and accomplishments, and discussing future plans. We ate a lot of fresh fish, especially haddock and lobster. Fresh cold water fish is the best eating, I believe, and difficult to come by in South Carolina. My sisters had some fig squares, also not readily found in Charleston, when I arrived and to take home with me. I ate them in the airports at Portland, LaGuardia and Raleigh Durham. None made it to Charleston.
It was a good time for all and although about 12 inches of rain fell on Wells Beach during the storm we minded it not a wit. After all, we four on hand had survived the ’36 flood.

Fantasy (or insanity)

In a moment of fantasy (or insanity) I was attracted to a car ad in The Wall Street Journal today by the price: $3,995 per month. This is for 35 months at 7.75% APR, one final payment of $215,000 with $42,648 down. The car: A Rolls-Royce Phantom offered by Rolls-Royce Motor Cars Miami. My wife came into the kitchen where I was reading the paper and sipping coffee and she broke the spell bringing me back to the real world, "the truck needs to be filled up with gas."

Why I'm in the Gulag

Ran across this old Soviet Union joke earlier today: Three guys in the Gulag are talking about why they are there. The first man says, "I came to work five minutes late every day and they charged me with sabotage." The second prisoner says, "I came to work five minutes early every day and they charged me with spying." The third, "I came to work on time every day and they charged me with owning a western watch."

Wal-Mart Parking Lot

Add this to your list of strange behavior in Wal-Mart parking lots. Someone apparently bought a pair of shoes, sandals, slippers, or some kind of footwear at the Wal-Mart in North Charleston, SC, and changed into them in the parking lot. Evidence: The saddest looking pair of beat up, worn out tennis shoes were set side-by-side in one of the shopping cart corrals. These shoes had more miles on them than hairs on a gorilla. My late mother thought wearing new footwear out of the store was gauche; what would she think of putting them on in the parking lot.

Red Sox Slugger Breaks Car Window; no arrest

Last night (May 6, 2006) at Fenway Park, Manny Ramirez broke the rear window of a sedan parked on a garage roof across the street from the Green Monster when he belted a tape-measure home run in the fourth inning of a game against Baltimore, according to the Boston Globe this morning. (Photo from http://www.RedSox.com)

A giant has fallen

“He remained optimistic about the ability of government to improve the lot of the less fortunate. ‘Let there be a coalition of the concerned,’ he urged. ‘The affluent would still be affluent, the comfortable still comfortable, but the poor would be part of the political system.’

“John Kenneth Galbraith, the iconoclastic economist, teacher and diplomat and an unapologetically liberal member of the political and academic establishment that he needled in prolific writings for more than half a century, died yesterday at a hospital in Cambridge, Mass. He was 97.”

(Excerpted from an obituary by Holcomb B. Noble and Douglas Martin, The New York Times, April 30, 2006, web edition. Photo from the obit is by Brian Snyder/Reuters.)

Other bloggers at work

I was roaming through some blogs this morning when I came across a recipe that began with "1 head of cauliflower" and I instinctively knew it was not for me; another blogger discussed job turnover and recommended management look at the supervisor of any unit with high employee turnover - he/she may be the problem; and then there is a web site HollaBackNYC where people can report and highlight street harassers. My favorite is the lady who was flashed on the subway and who had the chutzpah to take a video phone picture of the flasher, and later put it on the website. The flasher was eventually caught and he reportedly lamented that being reported to the cops was one thing, but being posted on the Internet was unfair.

Can take a joke

I certainly don’t want to get all the Catholics in the world, or even in Charleston, upset.

However, I saw a painting recently in the Charleston room at the end of the long hallway on the first floor in The Gibbes Art Gallery that has all the potential for an uprising parallel to the tumult in Islam over those cartoons in the Danish newspaper.

At first glance it appears to be a painting of the late Pope John Paul II, whom I had the supreme pleasure of seeing up close three times while he was among us.

At second glance it is a portrait that looks like the Piggly Wiggly pig. I don’t know what this school of painting is called and I failed to note the name of the artist, but she/he ought to be happy I can take a joke, and I believe John Paul would have smiled himself.

Of course he might have given a penance of one Our Father and one Hail Mary.

(Published as a Letter to the Editor, The Post & Courier, Charleston SC, Apr.5, 2006)

Full bloom

Our back yard is in full bloom today as temperatures soared to almost 85 degrees at noon in Hanahan, SC. "A beautiful day in the neighborhood," isn't that what Mr. Rogers
usually said? (Thanks to the half-dozen readers who correctly identified the source of the quote. I originally credited Captain Kangaroo.)

Water almost ruins bridge run

A four-foot water main (that’s what they call a big one) broke last night in Hanahan a couple of blocks from our house and for more than a couple of hours some 400,000 people in Charleston and the surrounding area were without water. This threatened to put a real damper on the crowd pouring into Charleston for the First Annual Ravenel Bridge Run this morning but the water people got it fixed in good time and all is well. The same people recommend we boil water at least through Sunday morning to be on the safe side. Personally, I have always found in my travels that a double Scotch is sufficient to ward off any contaminants in the local water.

The bridge run is the 29th running of this 10K spring event and the Ravenel Bridge (opened in July 2005) will be the third bridge featured. About 45,500 runners and walkers are registered, although more than half will likely not show, not run/walk nor finish if they do participate. I was an entrant in 2000 in the walkers division and although I enjoyed the experience I have not returned. There is no benefit in the second kick of a mule.

Shoes, runners and lawnmowers

I read recently in The Washington Post on-line edition about a girl who broke up with a guy who opined that her choice of (weird to him) shoes was not appropriate to wear for a job interview. The girl finished her sushi lunch, stood up and told the guy not to call her again. He never did.
In Charleston, SC, the first annual Ravenel Bridge Run (replacing the old Cooper River Bridge run) will be this weekend and some racers from Nigeria will undoubtedly be on hand. They have an unfair training advantage over local runners. The Nigerians train against leopards, the locals work out against guys they meet in bars or at the office.
What are the odds that the two lawnmowers you own will go belly up on the same day within minutes of each other? That happened to me yesterday and I walked up the street and contracted to have my lawn cut regularly during the season. I am expecting a potential buyer to come today and give me some beer money in exchange for the two lawnmowers.

"Complete security" - my view

A friend and former co-worker e-mailed recently that Hutchinson Whampoa Ltd. "is controlled by/part of the Chinese Govt/PLA and is now up for operating/running a US radiation detector at Freeport in the Bahamas. I also believe they operate 2 terminals at the Port of Long Beach, operate terminals at both ends of the Panama Canal, were involved with smuggling illegal weapons about 10 years ago at the Port of Oakland and operate terminals at other ports around the world. What are your thoughts about our 'security'?"

To which I replied: First off, M......, I would have to caveat that I have not been in the loop for 25 years. It has been a long time since I had responsibility for even a small part of the DOD/Air Force/Navy security programs. As a citizen-observer, however, I see "complete security" today as I did throughout my 28 years of investigative/security management service: Impossible to obtain and maintain in our great country with its freedoms, opportunities and challenges. I once told one of our commanding officers, Navy Captain (later Admiral) Dick Curtis, that security was about managing risks. He stood up from the chair in my office and shouted at me that he did not manage risks, he eliminated them. We never did hit it off completely during his tour. Security in a Republic is about risk management and despite some glaring gaffs from time to time, I continue to believe the men and women who do this job on a daily basis do commendable work and we ought to be grateful to them for it.

Russians in the War Room - Part II

"In 1989 and 1990, after the Berlin Wall fell, we all wanted to light candles and sing 'Kumbaya' and wait for the peace dividends to role in," said James Casey, chief of the Eurasia section of the FBI's counterintelligence division. "But things haven't changed as much as we thought they were going to change in 1989." (“Despite partnership, Russia spying on U.S.,” Douglas Birch, Sun Foreign Staff, The Baltimore Sun, originally published 3/23/2006.)

A friend e-mailed to say that “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” was “Absolutely my all time favorite movie. Scott said it was his all time favorite part. Only Slim Pickens was better in that flick!! -- He had the best part.” (Pickens, movie fans will recall, piloted the American bomber and rode the bomb down waving his cowboy hat after breaking it loose from the bomb bay.)

Russians in the War Room

A report out of Washington today reflects that Russians admitted to the American Central Command collected invasion plans data and passed it to Saddam Hussein before the war began. Because the Cold War has ended we have Russians in the heart of the American Command responsible for planning the Iraq War. The Russians told us early on they would not back any military force against Saddam, so why the hell were they still admitted to the planning rooms? Why were they and any representatives of other countries opposed to the war not asked to leave temporarily?

Hollywood got it right, why can’t Washington? For example, General Buck Turgidson said Russians are basically spies who cannot be trusted and was absolutely correct to express outrage to President Merkin Muffley about one being admitted to the war room.

In case you don’t recall Turgidson, he was the Air Force Chief of Staff (portrayed by George C. Scott, who morphed into Patton in 1970) in the 1964 movie, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

President Merkin Muffley (one of three characters played by the late Peter Sellers in the film) invited the Russian Ambassador Alexi de Sadesky (Peter Bull) into the American War Room deep in the bowels of the Pentagon to discuss ways to stop the American bomber wing dispatched to destroy the Soviet Union by an utterly mad U.S. Air Force Colonel Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden, who commanded an OSS boat in the Adriatic Sea during WWII).

If Hollywood can get it right, why can’t Washington? Where are the Turgidson’s in this day and age?

Reasons to stay the course

President Bush and a majority of other Republicans, and a large number of Democrats as well, got us into Iraq and now we are riding the tiger. We are damned if we stay and will be damned if we cut and run. The original premises for going to war in Iraq have been shown to be largely bogus and a lot of legislators who voted for the war now complain they got suckered. (On that point, I, as a former State legislator myself, say they should have done their homework before voting.) Many Americans feel the same way. We did not have access to the pre-war intelligence and could only trust our elected leaders. Nevertheless, we got rid of one SOB dictator and started a popular move to democracy. That has to count for something. With all of this, the lead editorial in The Wall Street Journal today (March 22, 2006) identifies the following consequences if we "cut and run before giving Iraqis the time and support to establish a stable, democratic government that can stand on its own."

The U.S. would loose all credibility on weapons proliferation.

Broader Mideast instability.

We would loose all credibility with Muslim reformers.

We would invite more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

Time and space do not permit reprinting the entire Journal editorial but it may be seen in your local library after today. I will e-mail a copy to you at your request (unless WSJ lawyers tell me to stop). Contact me at archinsc@knology.net. It is worthwhile reading and remembering.

Select extracts from readers' comments on earlier blogs

When I sent the flag as a test of the picture capture capability I heard from a friend who said: Old Glory flies on my newly created flagpole at a home depot parts price of $28 and my very own design. How's that for thriftiness?

Write your own obituary brought four replies: I am sending to you by regular mail two obituaries that I have kept because I couldn't stand to discard them. I agree with you on the subject and feel the same way about the coverage of weddings. I always loved reading about what the bride and her entourage wore and where they held the reception and all that good stuff. My husband fought under Patton but never talked about his experiences. I didn't meet him until after the war. When he died in 1972 I started to piece his military life together and have been a student of WWII ever since. I have put "write obituary" on my list of things-to-do. There are a lot of more intriguing things ahead of it, I must say.

I think it is a great idea. Also, guess I'll always remember (deleted) wanting to write his. I wish I had listened to him.

Thanks. I've been thinking of doing this but have not gotten off the mark yet.

I always want to know cause of death - I think the NYT (The New York Times) does that. Seems we need to know if cancer is felling people, or drunk drivers run into them or something. The NYT says "according to family members ..." or some kind of attribution.

The root canal inspired this on the medical profession: Why can’t we charge for the time we sit waiting on them not only in the waiting room but in the examination room?

“Eight Below” brought forth this from a minister: A member of my church had China cups that were on Byrd’s expedition to Antarctica. (Byrd’s first expedition occurred in 1928-30 and he participated in at least six others until his death in 1957.)

On the Ernest Hemingway exhibit and his suicide there were four reactions: Two e-mails told me of the recent suicides of two young men I did not personally know and the tumultuous affect on survivors.

Also: I've known some suicides where I just had to say, they were so miserable that they couldn't see another way out. But I've known some others that were really an act of violence against those left behind. Who knows?

And, finally: We want to see visit the exhibit. Maybe tomorrow when we are in Charleston.

Old Glory

I uploaded this image today to test the process and expect to put some photos on my blog from time to time. For now, a simple salute to Old Glory.

Write your own obituary

Marilyn Johnson, who also edited three major magazines in her 28 year career as a journalist, has written a book about obits. I haven’t yet read the book, “The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries” (Harper Collins, $24.95), but she talked about it with Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg of The Wall Street Journal, (online WSJ, March 14, 2006). Ms. Johnson makes the excellent point that obits written in England top the list.

Thanks to the Internet and the time to roam, I have read many obits in English newspapers and have to agree with Ms. Johnson, who says, “They let them go on. And they let them entertain.” Some English obits make fascinating, enjoyable, smiling reading. They bring the dead to life and tell the good, the bad and the ugly. Snide remarks, peccadilloes, failures and successes and whatever else it takes to make the reader aware of whom and what the deceased was is fair game. The writers include journalists, relatives, friends, colleagues, enemies or even the deceased who anticipated his death and wanted the last word.

Here in the United States, and you can see this in your local daily paper, we are accustomed to reading where and when the deceased was born, his ancestors and descendants are listed as are his major life accomplishments. Most obits we read in our local papers are written by Funeral Directors based on information hurriedly gathered up immediately following the death. They are bland and devoid of anything that brings the deceased to life. The directors who write these usually lack the insight to portray the deceased as the hero or the scoundrel s/he was. The family pays to have them printed in the paper, based on the number of column inches.

Some newspapers will have a reporter write an occasional short piece about a dead politician, a business leader, senior church official (especially one convicted of sexual crimes) or an executed criminal. But they leave the rest of the dead alone and to the inadequacies of sorrowing families and funeral directors. Occasionally a letter to the editor will follow an obit by several days, and all of these are complimentary. No one discusses the warts.

What is the solution? Write your obit now and put it away with your funeral papers if you have such a file, or put it where your spouse or significant other will be able to find it if you die. You can study the outline of the obit formula by reading your daily newspaper. Do this for a week or two and then take up pen and paper and go to work. Put down who you were and what you did that makes you proud. If a life incident is everlasting enjoyable or otherwise significant to you, put it down and share it with the readers. Recently, I read obits where the deceased served with General Patton in the glorious march of the Third Army across France, and the relief of beleaguered American troops in the Battle of the Bulge. Now this belongs in an obit. It doesn’t matter if the deceased was a private who only saw General Patton for a few minutes at a time, he was proud to be in that Third Army and people ought to know it a hundred years from now when they look at old obits on yellowing pages, on microfilm or discs or whatever the storage device is in the future. If you love gardening and want to say something about some darn flower, put it down. If you lived your adult life with a same-sex partner go out the same way, put it in the obit. If you made a fortune or lost one, tell the readers. If you bagged a tiger hunting in Nepal but lost its skin in a poker game later, share the agony of victory and defeat. Let posterity know who and what you really were. Write your own obituary

The Week (Feb 19-26) in Review

We had some good days and some not so good last week. We had some good friends in for lunch and saw a popular movie. A restaurant manager surprised us, we went to a birthday party for a 90-year old woman, and I had a root canal. Cold weather slowed down work on the renovation of the porch.

We saw Eight Below, the story about Antarctica explorers returning there to recover sled dogs left behind because there was no room on the plane when the people left in a blinding snowstorm. I agree with the movie critics who say the best thing about the movie is (are?) the dogs. Other parts leave you wondering: why don’t viewers see the actor’s breath while they talk out of doors at the bottom of the world. (Football fans will note this occurs frequently in Green Bay.) And as for flying off in that storm in that small plane which sets up the movie, believing it is a stretch. You don’t have to be a dog lover to enjoy this film. It is that good.

I ordered a chocolate cake for dessert while at Sunday brunch and when the waitress asked how it was I told her the cake was old, dry and not moist. The manager came by shortly after and said she had taken the cake off our bill. “I never order desert in a restaurant,” she said, “because it is usually undersized, overpriced and stale.”  For this frankness I omit the name of the restaurant. Would not want that manager fired.

The lunch with long-time friends from Columbia, S.C., opened the week enjoyably and the birthday party closed it in the same manner. I told the elderly lady she has a way to go to catch up with our neighbor who is 99 and currently off on a cross-country trip to visit a daughter in Southern California.

As for the root canal, what is there to say other than the Endodonist did a good job on three roots in about 90 minutes with a minimum of pain. I now, emphasis on now, believe my anxiety was worse than the actual event. But, what the hell, I have never been praised by nurses (as has my wife) for being “a good patient.”