A Seemingly Pointless Ramble

     I was sitting in "my spot" (the parking lot at Patwin Park), thinking about the state of my country, wondering how the heck we got to this point.  The so-called "Cancel Culture" claimed another victim yesterday, as Jon Gruden was forced to resign under a hail of criticism for emails he sent out ten years ago.  It got me to thinking about the idea of "forbidden words," and "You're not allowed to say THAT!"  It's only taken 245 years, but we've gone from "Give me liberty, or give me death," to "You said that word, you should die".  What is wrong with this country?

    I remember when speech was highly censored.  George Carlin made a ton of money on "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," playing off television censoring certain "Bad Words".  In fact, that was part of his routine, "There's no such thing as a 'bad word'.  Bad ideas... bad intentions... and WOORRDS." (George Carlin,  "The Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," Album: Class Clown).  The monologue went on to explain how those seven words had legitimate uses, and the utility of words considered "vulgar," by "polite society".  It's still one of my all-time favorite comedy bits, although the seven words have been pared down some by a society that is far from "polite".

    I can remember Lenny Bruce, Carlin, and a few others, who were willing to risk their liberty to take our Constitutional right to "Free Expression" to the next level.  Now we're allowing a mean-spirited, far-left thinking group of morons tell us that we can't express ourselves freely in our, supposedly, private communications, without fear of losing our jobs?  Look, I'm not a Jon Gruden fan, the fact is, I dislike him intensely, but to be forced to resign because of something you said a decade ago?  C'mon man...

    The Left is out of ideas.  They know that it's only a matter of time until people wake up and decide that Progressivism is not sustainable, and realize that all of the Democrats' current ideas lead to socialism.  It's only a matter of time before people realize that ALL of the problems being experienced in our major cities are caused by progressive mayors, and decide to take back their neighborhoods.  It's only a matter of time until people unplug from CNN, MSNBC, FOX News, and all of the other cable outlets, and decide to start thinking for themselves.  Just a matter of time until real scientists confirm that "climate change" has been happening for billions of years, and will continue to happen despite anything people do to try to reverse it.  And it's only a matter of time until people realize that their children aren't being educated anymore, and decide to take back their schools.

    But when?  

    I'm 70 years-old, in my eighth decade on this planet, and  I don't know how much time I have left.   I sure don't want to spend it watching my country being torn apart.  We have people in this country who hate America, most feeding off the government teat.  Why don't they go someplace more amenable to their ideals, or just shut the "F" up.  Why do I have to fear repercussions because I want to freely express MY opinions?  

    African-Americans are seeking "reparations" for ancestors held as slaves.  I ask the following question: "What is the value of US citizenship?"  For many of us, it was worth pledging our lives to protect, defend, and support.  For people seeking the legal means of US Citizenship, many are giving up homes, families, businesses, as a price for citizenship.  I believe in diversity in the workplace; I come from a family of immigrants, who came to this country to have the freedom to choose their own destinies.  They gave up everything to come to this country and become coal miners, steelworkers, railroad workers, people who had a part in making this country from sea-to-shining-sea.  Their sons, grandsons, and great-grandsons fought in wars for this country, and at least one (my grandfather) gave his life for America.  What value can you attach to your citizenship?

   

9/11/2001 - Twenty Years Later

     I will never forget September 11, 2001.  I was 50 years old, and an English teacher at Vacaville High School.  I used to get up early, and it was no different that morning.  I got dressed, hopped in my Miata, and headed for "Hava Java," a local coffee house, run by a couple who were "Jordanian Christians" (by their own description), and was on the way to the campus.  I'd come to know these people over a two year period, most times, I never had to order, my coffee was ready when I walked up.  We chatted, from time to time, and I knew them to be people of dignity, and integrity, who loved having a family business in America, and were proud to be making progress towards US citizenship.

    It was, I think, The Mark and Brian Radio Show, that was on my car radio.  The show was a morning comedic look at life and the news, often bringing obscure items from areas outside of metropolitan influence.  I'd listen to the show to get ideas for warm-up writing for my classes.  I'd put a question, or topic from current affairs, and my students would come in, and write a paragraph based on the question/topic.  That gave me five minutes to do the daily, administrative duties of being a high school teacher, and a time for them to open their minds, a little, to the things going on in the world outside of high school, outside of Vacaville, out in the world.

    On September 11, I went into the "Hava Java," to get my cup of "Joe," and the husband was standing in the middle of the lobby, gesturing towards the TV, which had a picture of the smoking husk of the first tower to be hit.  He kept saying, "They've ruined everything!"  His wife gave me my coffee, and shooed me out the door.  When I got back to my car, I turned to a news station, and heard the news that we'd been attacked, and that innocent Americans were dying.  I normally sat in a parking lot, reading the newspaper, drinking my coffee, and listening to Mark and Brian.  I decided, instead, to go directly to the school that morning, and turn put the news on in my classroom.   I was so early, I tripped the alarm, causing a police response, but before they could get there, half-a-dozen, or so, students had come in, and were watching the news with me.

    The morning bells rang, but no one moved out of my classroom.  By the time the actual school day began, I had somewhere between 40 and 50 students in my classroom, about half of which were members of my 1st Period class.  I had a TA, and sent him to the office to get guidance on what to do.  In my room, you could hear a pin drop.  We watched when the second tower was hit, and were stunned watching the first tower fall, then the other.

    The TA came back with instructions to just keep everyone where they were, until we could get some kind of morning attendance put together, and that further instructions would come on the school-wide PA system.  As the actual news slowed down, and the respective news channels digressed into speculation about who, or why this had happened, so did the students in my classroom.  A young lady in the group raised her hand and asked, "What do we do now?"  

    We spent 30 minutes, or so, talking about what the assembled group was feeling, seeing the things they'd just seen.  Most were afraid, some were concerned about our school's proximity to a major military air hub, and some had just seen everything they'd come to know and love about their country viciously attacked.  I've never seen teenagers ever agree on much of anything, but they were agreed that such an attack should never occur on our shores again.  A couple of my students, who knew I was retired Navy, asked me if there was any chance I'd be called up again.  I told them that my 30 year commitment to the government had been met seven months earlier, and I was "officially retired," no longer subject to recall.  They were pleased by that.

    Finally, the school's PA came on, and our Principal announced that the bell would ring, in a couple of minutes, and everyone was to go to their 3rd Period class, and that the day would proceed as normal from there.  

    Third Period was my lively bunch.  They were usually full of "[spit] and vinegar," as the saying goes.  Third Period had some of my best thinkers, kids who could work things out, in their minds, and draw conclusions.  They looked like robots, or worse, zombies, coming into the classroom.  It was obvious, to me, that they didn't know what to make of the attacks, they'd either been shielded from it, or worse, got the news from MSNBC.  We talked about their feelings, just as we did before, and they didn't let me down.  Before long, I had a list of young men who were ready to join the military, as soon as they graduated, we talked about what the response should be, and started to joke about how to treat the people who were behind the attacks, and we released a lot of tensions.

    Fourth Period was my "prep period," which was followed by lunch, so I usually took off for "lunch" (another cup of coffee and chain-smoking cigarettes) during 4th, coming back sometime before 5th Period.  Usually I'd listen to CD's, or The Eagle (KSEG 96.9FM), or, if I was especially bored, the daytime talk-radio shows, like Rush Limbaugh, or someone like that.  It's the time I used to bulk up on nicotine, gulp down some coffee, and relax.  I didn't do any of that on 9/11/01.

    Instead, I stayed on campus, wandering around, listening to our students.  Answering questions when asked for an opinion, and then visited with the Navy recruiters who were on campus that day.  Fifth and 6th Periods were much of the same, although the number of students who didn't show up to class was growing.  Not so much in my classes, a few, maybe, but my students knew I'd give them the freedom to vent their frustrations, and wouldn't judge them on what came out.  We did more talking than I can remember on any other single day.  

    A few days later, a suspension of school athletics was lifted, and we took our Girl's Golf Team to Chardonnay Country Club for a match with Napa High.  As we were standing on the first tee, watching the groups begin, it struck me that there was no air traffic.  We were a few miles away from a major Air Force Base, traffic from local airports, SFO, OAK, SMF, and SAC were always in the air, except for that day.  Nothing was in the air, not even a helium balloon.  

A Weird Week Indeed

     This has, indeed, been a weird week.  Let's say two weeks; although being in the hospital is always weird.  I lived  to the ripe old age of 19-years-old before I ever spent more than several hours in waiting rooms, and was actually admitted as a patient.  I got tonsillitis in Navy Boot Camp as a reaction to a massive penicillin shot (1.5 million units) we received on the Wednesday of our fourth week of training.  I tried to slog my way through it, but fell behind in marches, had bed sweats every night, until the final straw dropped when my Company Commander demanded I perform twice the Company number (we were Company 106, so 212) in Jumping Jacks, carrying two 8.5 pound M1 rifles, tied together with clothes stops (a small piece of braded strings, with metal clips on both ends, to keep them from unravelling).  It was some minor thing, otherwise I'd have been found in a small pile in the showers, I wasn't performing (really I shouldn't have been trying), but I managed to get through the entire fourth week of Recruit Training,  and 212 Jumping Jacks before my throat closed up, and I passed out in the barracks. 

    When I came to, I was in the Dispensary at NTC San Diego, in a bed, being fed fluids intravenously, in a ward with 20 other guys, and my CC at my elbow telling me he didn't mean to push me that hard, particularly when I was really sick, but I wasn't going to have to go to another Company, repeating the 4th week, and falling a week behind in graduation.  Week 5 was "Service Week," and the Company would help out in the galley, mess decks, and other places around the base where warm bodies were required, and there was no real training going on, so the week I spent in the Dispensary didn't hurt my "Training Days," something required for graduation.  This was mid-April, 1971.

    I never spent another night in the hospital until August 6, 2002, when I suffered a stroke, which proved to be my second such event.  Five days there.  Had to learn to walk again, write my name again, and a bunch of other things before they'd let me leave.

    Eleven years later (notice that the time between is growing shorter), I was in to get a left upper lobectomy, where they removed 20% of my lungs.  Another five days.

    2015, twice I'm admitted for being severely dehydrated, to the point where my kidneys are failing.  Five more for each of them. 

    2020, I am admitted to  NorthBay Hospital, two more times, due to bleeding in my GI tract.  Four days the first time, eight days the second.  Bleeding stopped, I   got 6 pints of blood, and every antibiotic available to the common man.  The eight days for my second stay was mostly concerned with sepsis and C-Diff issues than the GI Bleed, even though my hemoglobin levels had dropped to below half of normal.

    2021, I am admitted to NorthBay, for the third time in 13-months, for GI bleeding.  Seven days this time, and I'm still no closer to knowing why my body wants to go nuts annually.

Scared Shirtless (I added the "r" to keep it PG)

     The F. Edward Hebert Federal Complex is located at the intersection of Royal and Poland Avenues, in the city of New Orleans, Louisiana.  The compound takes up about a half-mile of the East Bank of the Mississippi River, and is made up of five seven-story buildings, two of which are used as parking garages.  In 1978, after losing a battle to stay in a teaching position at Fleet Combat Training Center, Pacific, I moved my small family to Slidell, LA, a sort-of suburb of New Orleans, to take a position as a "Scheduler" at the Enlisted Personnel Management and Accounting Center (EPMAC), located on the 5th floor of Building 1.

    I really didn't want to leave my teaching post, my Division Officer and Chief didn't want me to leave, but someone else had orders cut, effectively nullifying any attempt, on my part, to stay.  The only thing that excited me about the assignment was that I would be working with an IBM-360 computer, one of the top-of-the-line computers of the time.  That computer, and it's peripheral gear took up half of the 5th floor of Building 1.  I ended up working in the other half.

    Supposedly, I was working with the Programming Office.  They gave me books.  They gave me videos.  They gave me the "Weekend Scheduler" position which meant that I would sit and watch a screen from 3-11 pm Friday night, 11 am to 11 pm on Saturday night, and 11 am until the Naval Personnel Center in Washington D.C. stopped for maintenance (usually about 9pm CT) on Sunday.  The rest of the week I had off, Monday through Friday at 3 pm, while learning to master FORTRAN.  Basically I had too much time off, so I didn't learn much about FORTRAN programming, but I did hone my alcoholism to a really fine edge.

    I worked in a bowling alley, for most of my time off, doing machine maintenance, and being a "counterman," the guy who has his finger on the pulse of any bowling center, and made enough for us to squeak-by.  I'd work days, and bowl in leagues at night, and got pretty good at the sport.

    In the other job, my Navy duties were very un-demanding.  I watched a screen, checked the jobs running against a list, make sure they ended "normally," and called the programmer if it didn't.  While I waited for progress updates to pop up on my display, I did a lot of reading.  I had stages of reading, like a Stephen King Stage, where I read everything he'd written up through 1980, and a Vampire Stage, where I read Dracula, by Mary Shelley, Interview With a Vampire, by Ann Rule, and, of course, Salem's Lot, by the aforementioned Mr. King.  Salem's Lot was actually the book that kicked-off my Stephen King Stage.

    On my end of the 5th Floor, most of the lights were turned off, except in the office I was working in, and all of the other offices were locked-up.  There were four, double-door entrances to the office I worked in, but one was blocked in as part of a cubicle for one of the Chief Petty Officers that worked in Scheduling.  I was sitting in this cubicle, reading Stephen King's The Shining one normal, boring evening.

    This cubicle, actually, had two desks in it, one which would, in a short period of time, become mine.  It was set up so that it had an opening into an 10 X 10' area with two desks, one of which blocked one of the double-doors from opening, the other facing the fake wall that formed the fourth side of our cube.  Sitting at "my" desk, I was leaned back in my chair, my head just inches from the door handles to the former entrance one evening, reading a chapter in The Shining called "Room 217".  Those of you familiar with the book have probably leaped to a conclusion, but stick with me...

    "Room 217" is, perhaps, one of the finest chapters Mr. King ever wrote.  It draws you in, and hooks you.  I knew I was being drawn into something really scary, but I couldn't put the book down.  The main character goes into the room where, years before, a woman committed suicide in the bathtub.  He goes into the bath room, pulls the shower curtain back, and sees the beautiful young woman, newly dead.  He turns to flee, but hears the shower curtain being pulled closed, and stops to turn back.  The shower curtain is closed again, and when he pulls it back, he sees a bloated corpse in black water, that starts to get up.  He backs out of the bathroom, and out of Room 217, shutting the door, and flattening himself against the wall opposite the door.  He hears the sound of someone rattling the door handle, and closes his eyes, because he knows that if he looks, and sees the handles are moving, he'll go insane.  The suspense is built so well, that I was right there, up against the wall with the protagonist, my heart was pumping fast, my blood pressure went up...

    Back in the F. Edward Hebert Federal Complex, one of our "Security Guards" (see: "Rent-A-Cop) was actually doing his job, walking around the building, checking to make sure everything was secure, so he comes by, exactly as I'm still panting from my reading, and shakes the door handle that's six inches from my head.

    Owing to my desire to keep this a PG-13 blog, I cannot tell you what I screamed, nor what I screamed in the face of the Security Guard, as I told him that my office was open 24/7, and we didn't need to have some idiot jiggling the door handles, thank you very much.

    He was as scared by my reaction, as I was to his action.  He had his gun out (which really angered me), so I lit into him like gang-busters.  The guy had been in the job for a number of years, and he didn't know that people worked in that building on weekends?  A simple wall with an arch separated two sets of doors, the one in the cubicle, and the one that stood open, with lights on in the office...  But noooo.  This Einstein had to go and jiggle the door handle, just inches from my ear.

    However long I live now, it's going to be ten years less that it could have been.