Flicker of Interest

(Russian ground forces redeploy near Iran’s Northern Border.)

 

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, said the Chinese wise man.

 

Today I can feel the results of those first few tentative movements toward a distant horizon. Interest flickered as I read of the Russian troop build-up on their border with Azerbaijan. A flicker, as for the first time in days I thought about what the implications might be for something larger than where the phones might have been left impossibly far away in the vastness of the little apartment.

 

Unreachable as the stars.

 

It is different this morning, and I feel buoyed. Not that it is good, but it is good to be thinking again. The radio has been a soothing babble the last week, since the drugs and surgery addled me. The bizarre campaign rhetoric is impenetrable, and the mixed economic numbers are adding to the desperation of those who have been in charge of this mess for the last four years.

 

I don’t envy their position. This is a tough nut to crack. I was looking up, deep in the night, half-awake.  I realized something had changed on the journey. I could have slept again, I realized, and recalled with amazement that I had maintained consciousness after dinner for a few precious hours.

 

This morning I ticked off the metrics by which one judges progress from the surgeon’s knife. One is pain, the pure and simple interface with existence and the lack of it. Stepping (and I can only say that metaphorically) backward from the pain itself- and it is still there, of course- is coming a distinct sense of well-being.

 

I must have been feeling it last night, I thought, but there was a major issue of whether all on-board body systems were functioning.

 

Sight, hearing and taste have been abundantly present. Motion is still restricted, of course, but trial and error efforts since the return to Big Pink have outlined the dimensions of the cage in which I am confined, and each day brings efficiencies of motion and routine- muscle memory in wheelchair and crutches.

 

The last direct link to the operating theater was whether the digestive system still worked. That is a topic of major interest to professional staff: “Have you….?”

 

“Urinated like a big dog,” I said. “Sorry about the other thing.”

 

The proximate flicker of interest was not caused by that, per se, but perhaps enabled by it. The wild card of events overseas. Syria and the continuing massacres of women and children along with the occasional adult male are stark in their horror. This is way beyond anything that happened in Libya, and yet…

 

And yet.

 

The Syrians- or at least their government- have powerful friends in the Kremlin and in Beijing. The prospect of major conflict with either is anathema to an Administration already under severe pressure- and so the killing goes on.

 

What does it mean? What are the portents for the summer?

 

I am expecting the Israelis to act against the Iranian machine at some point. They have shown all the indications-and-warnings in the restructuring of their government to assume a war footing. Something is going to happen. The Russians expect it, too, and re re-deploying forces along the border with Azerbaijan and muttering about the consequences of what might happen if there is intervention in either place by anyone.

 

I had not thought about the consequences of war with Russia, inaugurated by independent actors, and with direct repercussions to our national interest.

 

Like I said, it caused a flicker of interest. The nice thing about that- from a very minor personal perspective is that it must mean that I am starting to heal.

 

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

 

Hallucinations

 

(Persistence of Memory- Salvador Dali.)

So, the last thing I remember was looking at the Ultrasound of the femoral sponge in my left leg. The sun out the window of the triage bay was high. Goofing with the anesthesia team was fun, I suppose, if you like science projects being carried out on the frail vessel wherein you live, and then the hallucinations came as consciousness began to return in the Post-Op department at Walter Reed. It was not so much the melted pocket watches of a Dali oil; it was much more like alternate universes in which I had done, or not done, the things that brought me to this strange place, all of them marching off into a hall of mirrors.

 

I was introduced to my brain’s reptilian core first, I imagine, since I recalled talking to my folks first, and then thinking that the whole surgical thing was an illusion. Exchanging one reality slowly for another, I found the regional anesthetic was performing as advertised- the place that was going to screw up my guts in pain in a few hours was just fine, and other parts of my life began to float back.

 

Interesting, in a vague way, like the movement of the rolling bed back up to Ward Five Central, and floor space in room 16, spot “B.”

 

I like the fact that today’s medicine does not view pain as something useful in the healing process. The staff was solicitous in getting me narcotics as desired to combat pain. And then began the struggle to escape from the clutches of the United States Military, something that is much easier in concept than execution.

 

See, they had attached these two plastic bulbs to shunts placed deep in the recently-opened wounds in the knee. They appeared very similar to those plastic limes that are sold to liven up our Vodka Tonics, and uncomfortably like the contents of the V8 juice they brought me with ice chips to attempt to re-hydrate. The bulbs filled up every four hours like clockwork with an ominous viscous red fluid they told me consisted of white cells and blood and fat.

 

They were letting me go nowhere until the flow diminished, and so we were off on a long fevered dream interrupted by the regular taking of vital signs, the administering of Percocet and a couple other drugs, and whatever happened to be showing on the television screen that hung suspended by the bed.

 

On and off, the hallucinations continued. Some were cool, others weird, and some were just challenges to the nature of my reality string. I enjoyed it, for the most part, except for the dramatic change in post-op instructions. First report from Staff was that weight bearing on the reconstructed leg was fine, and would be over the six weeks of recovery and physical therapy. I vowed to comply, and hobbled with some astonishing twinges up my leg and thorax to the bathroom a few times as my body tried to shed the chemicals that had sealed it up while on the table.

 

Then in the morning, a slight change. “No weight on the leg whatsoever, and that is twelve weeks, Buster.” I did not appear to have damaged the recent repairs, and I adjusted accordingly.

 

The Marine came by to de-brief me on The Process at Rounds the next morning. Really a cool guy, I thought, and I was interested to learn that the surgical procedure had taken an hour or more longer than anticipated. Papa Doc had to get his fingers way up under the musculature of the quads to fish out the ruptured tendons, which were healing up in a manner that would have left the knee unattached to anything else in particular.

 

“No shit,” I said in wonder. “So then what?”

 

“Four holes drilled in the patella, and some shoe-lace thingies to connect the quads back through the knee and anchor it below the joint.”

 

“Those must be the technical terms,” I said. “Cool,” I said. “Did it work?”

 

He nodded. “Seems to. But no motion and no weight on it. Follow instructions. Relax and heal. We will get to the therapy part when things are stable.” I waved goodbye, marveling at a process in which The Marine, Baby Doc and Papa Doc had shared such a profound intimacy with my body, me unaware the whole time.

 

He waved back as he turned to get back to the business of fixing warriors to go back to active duty, or to some role in the wider world.

 

All things pass away eventually, including us, and I was with immeasurable relief that Dr. Kim reached down to the shunts and said “this is going to feel weird” as he gently tugged and in response, my genitals retreated to the comfort and privacy of my body cavity.

 

I had to agree with him. It was weird.

Just as weird as having someone so young be so confident about the handling of your body.

Then they let me escape. Rolling down the Beltway later, sprawled across the back seat of an efficient SUV, in the company of friends who had agreed to enable my liberation, I realized I had left the hospital too early.

But c’est la vie. Freedom ain’t free, is it?

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

Oh, I signed up for a monthly donation to the Wounded Warrior Project a while back. I am not one, but I sure did see some kids close up whose courage inspires me. If you want to help a member of another extraordinary generation of Americans, think about doing the same. You can learn more here.

 

 

 

Regional Engagement

Commander Lisa personally wheeled me down from Walter Reed’s Ward 5C to the post-op recovery room as part of the final insertion into The Process. It was an honor. The silver band with the sanscrit inscription had been bent off my wrist for the first time since it went on in Delhi a decade ago.

The piercings had been vacated for the first time ever. I was metal-free except for the fillings and caps on my teeth, and there was nothing I could do about that (I hoped) any more than I could about the tattoo on my arm- but there was enough ink on the arms and peeks at the flash of staff torsos that it did not appear to be an insurmountable problem.

I was passed off from post-op to pre-op by two competent Corpsmen and wheeled up one corridor and down another. We entered a space marked “Post Operative Recovery,” or something like that. Traveling on my bed was a disorienting process- the words and titles of the things I saw from the horizontal position were mysterious.

Apparently, anesthesia is not as straightforward as it used to be. Nurse Lisa explained it to me this way: “So, they are going to do two things. First, they will plant two drains in your leg, then target the area of surgical intervention with a specific drug that will numb it for as little as twelve hours, and still provide access if the pain is substantial. They can even send you home with a little pump to give additional relief.”

“And then there is the General Anesthetic as Round Two?” I asked. She nodded down on me, after introducing me to the duty nurse in Post-Op. She was a brisk, efficient lady who gave me a sense of confidence, except that she explained I needed to be in “Regional,” and that I would be back here later.

“Hope to see you then,” I said, remembering the fine print on the acknowledgment-of-risk form that helpfully reminds you that while the chances are small, in any surgical adventure you might not wake up from dreamland.

“Nope. I am almost off shift and I am a reservist,” she said. “I get to go back to Maine when this one is done.”

“What do you do Down East?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Surgical nurse,” she said. “But you have to serve, you know?”

I thanked her for her service as the two Corpsmen unlocked the wheels on my bed, and rolled me out into the corridor again.

We arrived at another double door that had letters that seemed to spell out “Regional Anesthetic Department.”

Other beds and their occupants were rolling in and out. I looked on with resignation. I was committed now, no escape, and the only way forward was through the veil of unconsciousness, hopefully on a temporary basis.

“It is going to be hot in here,” said a tall young man in green scrubs and matching surgical cap. He gestured toward a triage room where two Corpsmen wrestled the hospital bed into a space parallel with the window. It was hot- there was a standing fan next to me, but I was stripped down to only the inadequate coverage of the hospital gown, and did not mind that much.

The Team did, though, and turned on the fan. There was a no-nonsense African American lady who hooked up some electrodes to the contact points glued to my torso and upper arms from the EKG they ran on me back in the ward, a process that involved some frank talk about the goofy 0-6 with the wild tattoo and the piercings in bed 16B I overheard.

This was interesting. The Anesthesiologists are the comedians of surgery, the dispensers of the mind candy that enables us to bear the intrusion of alien hands within the confines of our earthly flesh. The first man to speak kept up a running tutorial, which I found fascinating. He had a name, as did the other two Docs who introduced themselves. I cannot retrieve them from the curtain that came down on me presently, but I was very much with them as they brought out the ultrasound gun and began to examine my upper thigh. I could see the screen from where I lay.

“What do you think you are looking at?” said Doc One.

“Looks like the femoral artery, if I had a guess,” I responded with interest. “I don’t know about the other structures.”

“Right you are,” he responded. “We are going into this thing here, the femoral sponge.”

“I had no idea I had one.”

Something that looked a lot like a catheter appeared in my peripheral vision and then appeared on the screen, accompanied by a tug in a place you normally are not lucky enough to get one. I asked about the flavors of candy they were going to give me, and that if possible I would prefer the twelve-hour version, rather than implantation of any appliance more complex. “I would like to get out of here as quickly as possible.”

Over his mask, Doc One crinkled his eyes and looked dubious. “Sure thing. Customer is always right,” and laughed.

“Do you want to stay with us as we do the regional?” he asked.

I thought for a moment and laughed myself. “If I am going, I may as well be gone,” I said. There was no counting back from a hundred or anything like that I recall. Instead, the world disappeared, just like that.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

In Living Memory

 

(Wounded Warriors. Photo Washington Post).

On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

– Second Stanza of a song set to the melody of a British bar-room anthem you may have heard somewhere.

I meant to get this out earlier, but am still woozy on Day Four of The Process. I was going to tell you about military medicine today, and about the interesting process of triage, prep, anesthetic, surgery and post op in the military tradition. It got my attention, anyway, and I was lucky enough to have had just had the one encounter last week. Some of the kids in the Cast Room were on their fifth or sixth iteration under the knife to get to a stable stump platform on which they could have their prosthetic limbs fitted.
To be in The Process with them at Walter Reed is both inspirational and humbling. It is no place to feel sorry for yourself, nor to feel the sting of the injustice of fate. These young people are taking it in stride- or will, when rehab has proceeded far enough to get them upright again.

Some will not make it. The wounds to the flesh in many of the Warriors is dwarfed by the consequences of blast-concussion to the mind. If anything shook me to the very bone it was the sight of a tall husky young man- a beef-fed Iowa interior lineman type with a thousand yard stare- being led by his Mom down the passageway in front of the Cast Room.

The majority appear determined to do it. For some it will be the challenge of getting back to something like a normal life. For others, it will be the daunting task of getting fit on the new limbs and getting back to active duty.

I got a challenge the other day to come up with a name for the Generation those volunteers who have given so much, as America famously “went to the Mall” to keep the economy rolling along.

I thought of something like The Real One Percent, though of course that whole thing comes with a lot of baggage. The Occupy Movement claims they are the 99% and the 1% needs to step up to the plate and take care of them. They want a bunch of stuff-  forgiveness of the students loans they took out, affordable housing provided by the government so they don’t have to live in the basements of their parents, that sort of shit. They are of course kids of the Boomers and the grandchildren of the Greatest Generation that is leaving us.

Finding a name for the ones who served with such distinction is not about politics, of course, and that is why I think we need something new. It is about selfless service and sacrifice, none of which the OWS loonies have much of a clue.

Statistically, though, it is tempting to think about the percentages. In 2010 there were 1.4 million American kids under arms. That is out of a total population (2011) of 311.591,917. You know how numbers lie, since the total population does not equate to the total military-age cohort. Not that many of today’s mass population meets the physical requirements for what needs to be done.

Sad, really.

The percent of kids on active duty amounts to less than half of one percent of the population. The whole enchilada has been borne by that few. England had The Few in their desperate struggle with the Nazi Luftwaffe. We have ours, too.

I would welcome your thoughts on what to call this remarkable generation. This isn’t about politics and they need a name to describe and honor what they have done for all of us.

I won’t be able to go to Arlington and check in on Dan and Vince and the others, who paid the ultimate sacrifice. They are in my thoughts every day, but particularly on this one.

And whether or not our fathers and mothers are really the Greatest Generation is irrelevant. They answered the call, and everyone contributed to Victory. It is the last time we had that sort of unity. So, I will leave you with those who are close to me, who have left this year, those who linger, and those who still face the dawn’s early light with rueful mirth. Here are Raven, Big Bill and Mac, and a member of the generation yet to be named.

(My Dad, Raven, in 2011. Navy Attack Pilot. 1923-2012).

(Big Bill, US Armed Merchant Marine, from the Murmansk Run. 2011)

(Mac and ENS Socotra. 2011. Long may they wave.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

 

The Company of Eagles

I have been plotting how to get out of bed this morning since about three. I had to get up and pee, of court, a big deal, and that is the toughest part of the drill. I probably came home too soon, but dammit, I wasn’t ready to have surgery, not the day it went down, anyway. But maybe you never are, and this gave me a lot less time to fret about it. No one else I saw at the hospital had been ready either.

 

Once Papa Doc Anderson told me how bad things were, I realized I just had to have it done and I am glad I had a chance. I am very grateful to Walter Reed. When I was last in the Cast Room at the old location in 2006 I had no idea I would be in the company of heroes again, and completely engaged.

 

So, Baby Doc looks at the leg and says she will go get the Papa Doc. Doc Anderson- distinguished older gent in a sea of young people looks at the knee and says: “We will get you admitted now. Surgery tomorrow,. He drew a finger down from north of my kneecap to south We will drill four holes in the patella and connect everything again.”

 

“Crap. OK.”

 

Knee injuries are very common among runners and cyclists, and these days, increasingly among soldiers and Marines who get blown up by IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Iran, if things come to that this summer. Those accursed devices are part of something called “asymmetric warfare,” a concept by which the technically challenged bury big pieces of explosive under the roads, contaminated with chicken-guano and trash and detonate them below the HUmVees and other vehicles. The result is some really nasty contaminated wounds and shredded limbs and the only thing worse than the loss of limbs- the family jewels.

 

Mine? Stupid. Theirs? Terrifying, and something they deal with every day. It is the defining act of courage just to go outside the wire. Most of our kids do not die that way, but way way too many have been hit. I saw them at the Cast Room , like mine, were instantaneous though I was a victim of my own stupidity rather . However, they don’t usually occur in an instant, like a hamstring strain or groin pull, but commonly starts off as a twinge or niggle, and progress quickly to a debilitating sports injury that can sideline the best of us for weeks.

 

(The patella- knee cap- floats over the knee joint and connects things- you know, “Da knee bone connected to de Thigh bone.” Mine was ruptured just north of the patella. The Marine said Papa Doc had to reach up under the facia lata way further then they expected because I ignored the problem, and the strands of remaining tendon still attached were starting to fail, while the rest had pulled up like a window roller-blind and healed that way).

 

For those who aren’t familiar with Iliotibial Band Syndrome, let’s start by having a look at the muscle responsible for the problem.

The iliotibial band is actually a thick tendon-like portion of another muscle called the tensor fasciae latae. This band passes down the outside of the thigh and inserts just below the knee. That is what I ruptured, and that is what Papa Doc proposed to fix.

 

That is also how I found myself checked in to Ward 5 Central, room 16, bed B, in the old building adjacent to the ER, just before 1900 hours that night. I had to report to the Cast Room to be fitted for a brace that would go on the leg after the surgery, and would be part of me for three months. It was there that I was nearly overcome with emotion.

 

The Cast Room does mundane things like provide braces, but this is Walter Reed, after all, and thus the ultimate provider of prosthetic devices for the kids most badly wounded in our wars. It was not the first time I had been to rehab at Walter Reed. A pal used to write for the Traverse City Record-Eagle, and she asked me to look in on a local solider who had been maimed in Iraq. I visited him and his wife, who was living in the guest house on the old Walter Reed campus on Georgia Avenue. I was in awe then of his progress in rehab, but also of the tough bunch of amputees who were also in the room, viewing their wounds as something to be vanquished as thoroughly and completely as the dirt-bag insurgents of Falluja.

 

(Nick and Maria of Traverse City at the old Walter Reed in 2006. Photo Socotra.)

 

I sat in growing awe and embarrassment, waiting my turn. There were kids who were going about the business of betting better, or at least getting fixed to the extent that medical science can. Determined? You bet. Single, double and triple amputees filled the waiting area. I was embarrassed to be in the company of the greatest Americans you can imagine, on the edge of Memorial Day.

 

You hear a lot about the Greatest Generation as they pass into history. I am here to tell you that there is not one of those- this Generation is a proud successor to their grandfathers. You would be amazed, and I could feel the tears coming when I saw some of the wounds, or the image of spouses or parents leading a big kid who took the blast full on, rending limbs and senses in the massive concussion.

 

My problems? Zip nada in comparison, but when the nice lady in the Cast Room was done with me there was not enough time to get home and back before check-in, and considering what I had just seen, and the emotion and pride that I saw in these Wounded Warriors, I decided to just go with it. The enemy did not give them time, so my problem was so minuscule as to be irrelevant.

 

No dop kit, razor or change of clothes? So what. I wasn’t ready, and took the hour or two to fill up the Bluesmobile with regular, have a couple guilty cheeseburgers at the Mickey Dee’s drive through on base, and suck down some Marlboros in the parking structure across from the five-story surgical wing. Parking was easy, late in the day, and friends rallied to take care of me.

 

Damn, it is good to have friends.

 

The Team that was going to scrub and do the procedure was composed of Papa Doc, Baby Doc and The Marine. He came in to visit at rounds the day before the operation and introduced himself. Ladies, he is a young doctor to die for. Dark eyes, boyish smile, trim physique. He was wearing one of those goofy surf-print OR caps over his blue scrubs with a badge lanyard in Marine red with the letters “USMC” repeated over and over. I asked about it. He smiled. “Twelve years enlisted Marine, got out and went to Med school. There is nothing I would rather be doing than this.”

 

“Rifleman?” I asked. He nodded. “God bless you,” I said.

 

“Papa Doc told me to scrub for you. Said it might be educational for seeing a wound that had healed wrong.”

 

“Like if it doesn’t get fixed I won’t walk again?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“A chance to cut is a chance to cure!” I said, laughing, and The Marine was off to complete his rounds.

 

I lay back on the hospital bed, and wondered exactly how this was going to go. One thing was for sure, I was in the company of eagles. I was not sure that I was worthy of the company.

 

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

 

The Streak

(Thanks to Dr. Anderson, I get to keep use of mine. This one is for a Wounded Warrior who wants a competitive alternative to his utility/walking prosthetic.)

 

I can hear the merriment down at poolside- for the first time in a decade, the pool opened without without a plunge by yours truly.

 

“Marco!”

 

“Polo!”

 

I will get to how this all happened presently- I did not plan it like this, but no one outside the cast/brace/prosthetics desk at Walter Reed National Military Hospital would have had it this way. I was there by mischance. Many of the others were there because of war.

 

I can’t get to that today, since I am woozy from the drugs that got me through surgery and just pleased to be home. Perhaps tomorrow we can get a start at describing The Process for what it is like to be in the blur of the New Walter Reed, a glimpse of kids who displayed real heroism in combat, and every day since, and will do so every day of the rest of their lives.

 

I need to tell you about some amazing medical professionals at work in a sprawling facility that is ingesting kids no more than a few dozen hours from combat trauma half a world away.

 

I stand in awe. These are real Pros who make a real difference in the basic fabric of life every day.

 

I will try to convey, succinctly, the measure of claustrophobia that comes with the hospital bed, and how nuts it made me after only 72 hours. Imagine confronting the idea of the rest of your life in one.

 

Unless you choose to get up and fight again each morning.

 

I will try to tell you of something magical I observed- about the power of friendship and love, and of the fragility of this existence we share, however briefly.

 

What a week it was. Damn, what a week it was.

 

Some of you have pointed out that it was long past the time to take this all seriously, and some of my choices were ill chosen. I agreed, even if I could not quite bring myself to do the right thing.

 

I tried last Wednesday. I flogged the Bluesmobile up the parkway and across the American Legion Bridge in the direction of Bethesda. Ten weeks since the accident and things were not getting better. They were getting worse. I was determined to see an actual Orthopedic physician, and the question was whether I could bend the system to my will. After all, I had tried before, and then been swept away in other matters.

 

I had no idea that what was about to transpire would both uplift me spiritually and cast me down physically. Yet what I saw on the faces of those young Vets who have had their bodies blown to pieces and who are, matter-of-factly, putting themselves back together, marching up the passageway on their walking legs, carrying the their sleek competition legs for sprinting.

 

For me? The cost is only a little inconvenience, but I had access to what is unquestionably the most experienced combat orthopedic physicians in the world. For the heroes, it is about the rest of their lives. I wish you could come with me next week when the staples come out and take a look at what heroes look like.

 

I will be an a wheelchair for a while, not long, and the Docs say no full immersion in the shower, much less the cooling, soothing waters of the deep end of the Big Pink pool for at least four weeks, eight more of them to something like recovery.

 

The streak is done, gone the sun. That is all fine. I will tell you more about the adventure later. In the meantime, I hear the sounds of: “Marco?”

 

Thus starts the summer of healing. More on The Process tomorrow.

 

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

 

 

 

 

The Middle Man

(US Airways Boeing 767ER en route the Continental United States.)

The warm air mass seems to have prevailed against the chill wind from the North: the rain has been banished but now we feel- dare I say it? Summery?

It is muggy in the bright sun. Time for the pool am considering the flight next week to distance Honolulu, a sparkling destination in the mid-Pacific. I think about commercial air travel a lot less than I did in my salad days, when a quick jaunt across the Atlantic or Pacific were not uncommon events.

Things are a lot different today, of course. I really prefer to drive on any transit that will take less than twelve hours, since that is what even the most routine domestic flight seems to take these days. I mean, think about it. Beyond the indignity of a middle seat, full flight, and reduced leg room, there is that pervasive, intrusive and unpleasant security crap.

Back in the day, the conventional wisdom was to plan to arrive at the airport an hour before flight time, two hours if you are going overseas. These days it is wise to bump it up. Two hours is my comfort level of domestic flights and three is there are any passport or visa issues to be negotiated with the implacable apparatchiks of the Transportation Security Administration.

Take yesterday. Please.

US Airways Flight 787, a slick Boeing 767, was headed from Paris en route Charlotte, NC. Accounts say a passenger began acting strangely, prompting concerns for the safety of the two-hundred-odd travelers. A Cameroon-born French citizen who was headed to the United States for a 10-day visit passed a note to a flight attendant on a US Airways flight out of Charles de Gaul yesterday. She claimed she had a “device” surgically implanted in her body.

I have no idea what the woman was thinking. Could it have been confusion or panic when she was presented the CBP I-94 Arrival-Departure Record for Nonimmigrant Visitors with a Visa for the U.S.?

I know I have panicked with the idea that my pen is in the overhead bin and I am trapped in a middle seat. Did she wonder if surgical devices need be declared at their implanted cost? What about personal massage therapy appliances?

Anyway, it strikes me that any device should have been detected by the scanners in Paris, but maybe people are freaked out by the new non-metallic bomb technology that lunatic in Yemen is deploying. Still, the war of terror is no laughing matter (under penalty of law) and the Captain, secure behind his armored cockpit door, did the right thing.

He contacted ground control as his airplane arced Down East past Canada’s Maritime Provinces toward America. Control was definitely having no mischief on their watch, and the FAA contracted the North American Aerospace Defense watch at the Mountain in Colorado Springs.

(Entrance to The Mountain. I first walked through these doors in 1978. Pretty cool for an antique.)

Ever alert, and still stinging about NORAD’s so-so performance during the events of 9/11, the Command flashed the “launch the alert” message to two F-15Cs Eagle fighters on the strip at Barnes Air National Guard Base in south-central Massachusetts.

(F-15C Eagles on strip alert at Barnes Air National Guard Base.)

The Eagle drivers were vectored to the US Air flight, one taking position to engage from the stern hemisphere with the A-61 Vulcan gun mounted in the wing, while the other took up a position where the Captain of the commercial jet could see the fighter present.

Rather than permit the airliner to proceed to the intended destination, the fighters escorted it to Bangor International, the nearest CONUS airport. Federal officials, TSA, CBP and TSA, boarded the aircraft and removed the woman for questioning.

Reports this morning indicate there were no evident scars on her body, and presumably no “device.” That will have to wait for further analysis, I imagine, but I was wondering how comforted I would be to look out the window from seat 13A and see the Air Force off the left wing, armed with AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles and that Gatling gun.

What exactly were they going to do? Shoot it down?

OK: I know what you are thinking. It is better to have the Air Force on station and able to act, just in case. But let’s see: The woman did not claim she had a bomb. The bomb- if there was one- was not in the cockpit. And with the FAA alerted, they could route the jet over water so that even if the worst happened, it would not happen over a populated area.

Forgive me if I am less than comforted. I mean, I will still go to Reagan International next week and get on the plane. But this beyond surreal. You get on an airplane to try to go someplace and the next thing you know a deranged person with a possible vibrator has prompted the Department of Homeland Security to stick an A-61 Gatling gun up your butt.

Ah, air travel. I started plotting on how to incapacitate my seatmates ten years ago, should the need arise, but the Department of Homeland Security seems determined to take out the middleman.

(F-15C A-61 Vulcan Cannon in anti-terror mode.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Elisabeth in White

(Liz-S and Old Jim at the Amen Corner. Liz-S is in white and Jim is not commenting on what happened in Vegas. Photo Socotra.)

 

I stopped by Willow on the way home- duh, you know? The crew was reassembled. I can’t tell you what Old Jim and Mary did in Vegas- I wouldn’t ask and naturally he wouldn’t tell- but he was once more at his accustomed seat. He has had a haircut and the travel (and whatever) in Vegas seemed to agree with him.

 

He was filled with piss-and-vinegar, recharged and reloaded. I was relegated to the stool three places down from the apex of the Amen Corner on the long side of the bar.

 

Liz-S was in a white blouse, a remarkable change from the black leotard top in which management likes to have the bar staff attired. “You look great,” I said. “Sometimes I can’t tell if I am at a bar or a dance recital. Congratulations- what was the first day like at a real job?”

 

“Well, I had to try hard to look interested.”

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Death by PowerPoint,” she said. “And the other people at orientation were stunned, too, but they responded by going to sleep.”

 

“At least you can wear what you want,” I said. “So long as it is professional.”

 

Jon-without-H looked a little embarrassed as he sat next to The Lovely Bea. “You noticed that I have no bow-tie,” he said. “I was professional all day.”

 

“Some of them were distinctly casual,” said Liz-S. “I just tried to look businesslike and engaged. It was hard though.”

 

“What do you mean?” growled Jim.

 

“Well, first they handed out paper copies of all the briefings.” She handed over a copy, printed out in the PowerPoint format that enables you to take notes on each slide.

 

“It looks like you could copy the whole briefing in the notes section verbatim,” I said.

 

“Yeah. That was bad enough, but then they read each slide to us.”

 

“Ugh. I hate that,” I said, looking happily at the white wine that had appeared before me. Jerry the Barrister came in and sat next to me. I greeted him, and shouted over John-with-and-H to Liz-S. “Did you hear Jerry’s story about the LSAT?”

 

“No, what was it?”

 

Jerry chuckled and looked at the Willow Menu. “Well, he was in Saigon, and starting to make his plans for returning to civilian life. He thought he would take the legal aptitude test and signed up for a session on the 30th of January, 1968.”

 

“So?”

 

Jim guffawed. “He took the LSAT during the Vietnamese Tet Offensive?”

 

“Yeah,” said Jerry. “I didn’t do so well. They were running airstrikes on VC positions a couple blocks away.”

 

“OMG,” said Liz-S. “That is a challenge to the mental process needed to think through tough legal problems.”

 

“Great excuse for not doing very well. The Professor at Case Western Reserve said it was the best he ever heard. Much better than the dog and homework.”

 

“Hah!” laughed Liz-S. “That is certainly better than mine. Speaking of dogs, they taught us how to deal with Service Animals in our orientation today.” She fished in the large portfolio marked with the official logo of the Inspector General’s Office at the Government Association of Office and Associations. She handed me a brochure.

 

I looked at it in wonder. It was a fancy tri-fold titled ‘Guide to Etiquette and Behavior for Communicating and Working with Individuals With Disabilities at the GAofO&A.’

 

“Impressive,” I said. “They have an Office of Diversity and Inclusion?”

 

Liz-S nodded. “It is comprehensive, and shows you how to act with compassion even if you don’t have any.”

 

“That is my government, all right,” I said reading along.

 

“Mine too,” Said John-with. “Sadistic bastards.”

 

I read down the column of bullets on how to deal with our fellow citizens. “Do not be overly concerned about your usage of common and accepted expressions such as “See you later,” or, “did you hear about that.”

 

“Well, if you wrote it the vision-challenged wouldn’t be offended,” growled Jim.

 

“And if you said it, the aurally-challenged probably wouldn’t mind,” I concluded. “This is pretty amazing stuff.”

 

“It is through the looking glass sometimes,” said Jerry, ordering an Alpine flatbread.

 

“It’s an homage to the old Alpine restaurant up at Glebe and Lee Highway,” I said. “They are closed now. It has calamari on it. It’s good.”

 

“Did you see the part about Service Dogs? You are not supposed to touch a Service Dog without permission.”

 

“It is easy to get rattled. Remember when all those blind people came to dinner last week? That was pretty amazing. I tried to help one guy up the stairs outside and he about bit my head off.”

 

“People are sensitive. Service Animals are working animals and you shouldn’t distract them.”

 

“They are not pets, you know,” said Liz-S. “Maybe you should think about a Service Animal while you have the bad leg.”

 

“I would like a Service Pony,” I said. “One of those little guys that I could ride around on at the office.”

 

“Be respectful.”

 

“I am still amazed at you having an Office of Inclusion,” I said. “That seems to be the perfect definition of non-essential personnel. You know, the ones who are not supposed to report to the office when the idiots in the Executive Branch and Congress shut down the government again this summer.”

 

“Yeah. I often wondered about that,” said John-With. “Doesn’t it mean by definition that they are non-essential? Why are they on the payroll to begin with?”

 

“Be nice,” I said. “If you are, I might let you touch my Service Pony.”

 

When the Alpine flatbread arrived, the Barrister allowed as how it was too spicy. Liz-S ordered a Willow Burger, and specified it be cooked ‘well done.’

 

It was. And by the time she picked her way through it, I realized I was, too.

(Jerry-the-B thought the Alpine was too spicy. The rest of us thought it was pretty good. This is the last slice.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

 

The War Without a Name

(USS Vincennes (CG-49) launches an SM-1 guided missile on sea trials. She was scrapped in 2006. Photo MSHennessee.)

 

They would have been playing Bee Gees tunes at La Belle, the nightclub in the former West Berlin that night in 1986. A lot of troopers from the Berlin Brigade were in the crowd, America’s overt military presence in the still-occupied former capital of the Reich, and they undoubtedly would have been playing Donna Summers as well.

 

It is weird. I mean, Disco still sucks, in the words of Bob Seeger, but the whole 1980s thing is back because of the untimely passing last week of the Diva of the pulsing beat, and yesterday’s passing of Robin Gibb, one third of the Bee Gees yesterday.

 

This is way too close for comfort. Robin was 62. Donna was 63.

 

I have one of those small calendar events coming up that will put me in the heart of the envelope that the two inhabited until just a few days ago. It is uncomfortable territory- I mean, the sixties are supposed to be the new fifties, right? I suspect it is all bullshit, and this phase of life does not have a decent name.

 

“Middle Age” doesn’t hack it. Whatever this is, I don’t think I am on track to be 120. We need a name for it to put it in context, like “The Age of Disco.”

 

Now, by 1986 you can argue that both singers were over-the-hill already, with their best work was done a decade earlier, but Disco as an institution survived longer overseas than it did Stateside, and I was finishing up a decade out of the country that year. When the bomb went off in La Belle that night, hundreds were injured, and two Americans were killed, with a third succumbing to injuries

 

Someone else flashed in the news, too, and he represented the dark side of the disco age, and the kinetic war that was being waged on the West.  You know, the one the Iranians have been conducting for more than thirty years.

 

Honestly, they talk about Afghanistan as the nation’s longest war, but that is absurd. There have been Iranians on the prowl to kill innocents for as long as I was in uniform, and loopy Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and I were low-level functionaries of our respective ideologies.

 

Not that Libyan Dictator Moammar Gadhafi wasn’t in it up to the braided collar of his comic-opera uniforms. He is dead, too, of course, though his death was appropriately not of natural causes. He was a vocal supporter of the terror groups of the time, the Red Brigades and the Red Army Faction and the IRA. The Irish were striking the hated Brits, while the Reds had attacked the airports in Rome and Vienna in 1985.

 

It was a mess. Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi died yesterday as well. He will never have the lingering legacy of the madcap dictator for whom he worked. But he is the only person who convicted in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland. That incident might have been a big part of what killed Pan Am itself, the iconic airborne face of America shown around the world.

 

That public face is what made the big Boeing a target for whoever brought it down.

 

The conventional narrative, the one used by prosecutors in the trial against al-Megrahi, is that the La Belle bombing prompted Ronald Reagan’s dramatic Operation ELDORADO CANYON, the strike against coastal Libyan targets, which in turn prompted the tit-for-tat that brought down the 747.

 

That was the line, anyway, and evidence was produced to link some electronic components and clothing allegedly purchased on the island of Malta. Personally, I thought the tit-for-tat came from another direction, the nexus of bad stuff that had been happening since the American Embassy was seized in Tehran in 1979.

 

The Iranians had been using surrogates and cash in their war against the Great Satan, and even if we didn’t know it, they were happy to smack us any way they could. My personal opinion was that Lockerbie was the response for something else altogether- the shoot-down of Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988 by the famed Robo Cruiser, USS Vincennes.

 

The Aegis cruiser had been deployed to provide air defense coverage for the removal from the Persian Gulf of USS Samuel B. Roberts, which had struck an Iranian Mine in the tanker war we called Operation EARNEST WILL.

 

CAPT Will Rogers was the quintessential aggressive ship-driver. The mistaken belief that his SPY-1 phased array radar had detected an Iranian F-14 inbound while in the midst of a running gun-battle with Revolutionary Guard small boats caused him to direct engagement of the target.

I

(Impromptu memorial to Iran Air 655 on the beach near the Strait of Hormuz. Photo Sean Hennessee).

 

A couple hundred civilians died in that incident, and privately, that was the dot I connected back to the Mercedes Mullahs and their campaign against the United States.

 

The Scottish government released al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds in 2009. Whether it was, or whether it was really about oil and gas issues I will leave to you. Gaddafi eventually came around to the idea that his campaign to acquire Weapons of Mass Destruction was counter-productive, and he paid reparations for everything he had been blamed for in the West, including Lockerbie.

 

I reached a differing conclusion from the international tribunal that convicted al-Megrahi. I believe it was the PFL-PGC from Syria, in cahoots with the Iranians, who were responsible, and I like the way the colorful bow ties it up in one neat package.

 

This is about the actions of a state that is at war with the West, has been since 1979, and apparently is determined to acquire their very own nuclear arsenal soon.

 

Megrahi got a hero’s welcome on his return to Tripoli. The reception irritated a lot of people who thought the victims of Lockerbie deserved better justice than one low-level operative’s eight years in the slammer. His prostate cancer finally ran its course to kill him at the age of 60, with nearly three years home with his family.

 

But if it was the Iranians who bankrolled the Palestinians who actually planted the bomb, the murderers walked away scot-free, so to speak.

 

It is all sort of interesting, don’t you think? Particularly this year, when the real target of all this- the State of Israel- may feel like they need to act on their own to derail the Iranian nuclear program. I am not sure that they think anyone “has their back.”

 

Jeeze, this has been going on for 33 years, and it might just be starting to get really interesting. I wonder what sort of music they will be listening to when it is over? Or if there will be justice for anyone who has died in this war without a name.

روحالل

(Some guy we knew in 1979. Photo Wikipedia.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Connectivity

(Refuge Farm viewed from the lower pasture. Photo Socotra.)

The Internet is always a bit of a crap shoot down at Refuge Farm. But it is OK.  The sun is shining and the temperature is good on the skin and the critters are happy in the fields below the little house.

I managed to get a couple things done- fixed the gate to the back of the fenced-in part of the property. It had fallen down and required a stop at the big box Lowe’s on the business route into town. Finding a strange assortment of Raven’s tools- the Sears Craftsman metal case had all sorts of things I had not seen in years.

Carriage bolts did the trick- I have no idea why the fencing people had used the squat short bolts to hang the hardware on. A little rot and the drying of the pressure treated lumber had caused them to pull out of the wood.

The drill bits are in Arlington, of course, but the phenomenal news was that a disassociated ¼ inch bit was in the bottom of the old ammunition case in the garage. Horsing the gates around to get access to the top and bottom was a challenge, but not a large one and I was filled with the well-being of actually solving a problem.

I was going to work on the Dwarf next: I got the fine-grade sandpaper to clean up the mended metal of his black boot, and have an idea of how to replace the fixture of his ancient electrical light, but I was bathed in sweat by the time the gate was done, and that was just enough for the afternoon.

I looked out over the fields this morning, dewy and green. The silence was broken by the call of the birds. So what if the internet is spotty?

The question, I guess, is about what you are connected to, rather than what it is you are hooked up with.

(Maybe next trip for the Dwarf.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com