The Wisdom of the Great Khan

(Genghis Khan, born Temujin, was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his demise. He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia).

 

I have been up long enough this morning to be agitated, but I am not going to burden you with the topic that got me going initially. I did not purchase a fuel efficient vehicle, though I do love the Panzer, and there is other gas spewing into the atmosphere. As much as I try to distance myself from the circus that is in progress in this Great Nation, it intrudes on my zen-like tranquility.

 

I am listening to some idiot on NPR telling me that early voting is “bad,” and we should “wait until everything is heard” before we should be allowed into the polling booth.

 

Considering that PBS stands to lose 12% of its funding if the challenger wins the election, I am confident that journalistic integrity is running at fever pitch. Wait: don’t accuse me of being anti-PBS. I actually listen to the Pledge Drives and would make up the shortfall through my monthly contribution to Big Bird and Car Talk and all my pet rock shows.

 

I must say that I resent the implication of the commentator. I think I have heard everything I need to hear to have justified voting already.

 

There are worse things than suffering through the campaign. I got a note from a pal in the mid-Pacific who is gripped by the ongoing crisis we do not hear much about, even though we have made the “pivot” to the Pacific in strategic orientation.

 

It is often said that “the enemy gets a vote,” like they did in Benghazi three weeks ago. In this case, regardless of what we want, China is asserting itself by deploying a variety of ships to the disputed waters of the Shenkaku (if you are Japanese) or Diaoyu islets (if you are Chinese).

 

The whole thing would be much ado about nothing, except when you start to append exclusive economic zones from the shores of the barren and uninhabited rocks. They are located roughly due east of the PRC, northeast of the other Chinese on Taiwan, west of Okinawa and north of the southwestern end of the Ryukyu Islands.

 

I have steamed by them all one time or another, and the Shenkakus would only have been noted as a hazard to navigation if it were not for all that oil and gas beneath the blue waters of East and South China seas. What is in a name, you know? What is in a line drawn on a map.

 

Anyway, the Chinese are taking a break this weekend to celebrate their Italian heritage- wait, it is actually National Day, which is a three day-festival that runs 1-3 October. So they are just getting back to things as we take off for Columbus Day.

 

My pal is taking a break to re-charge, since he and his comrades are watching the PRC deploy a small squadron of ships to the waters near the disputed islands.

 

Eight Chinese patrol ships entered the contiguous zones surrounding the islands- considered Japanese territorial waters since 1895, late last week. Four State Oceanic Administration ships entered and departed, being replaced by four ships of the PRC Fisheries Service.

 

Oh, yeah, the fishing thing is part of this, too, though perhaps not  The Japanese Coast Guard is looking on with alarm, and the very sincere desire by the more sane among us is that everyone would take a chill-pill and not have a miscalculation mushroom into something really ugly.

 

China may need that, and Japan might as well, for perfectly rational domestic political reasons.  Just like here.

 (Things can happen. A boat crewed by Hong Kong activists (center) is surrounded by Japanese patrol boats near the Senkaku Islands on August 15, 2012. Photo JMSDF).

 

If the Chinese economy really is just a gigantic Ponzi Scheme, and if the Japanese Yen is about to take a severe nose-dive, it is possible that a surge in some jingoistic patriotism might make things more comfortable for the current regimes.

 

It is hard to tell. I don’t know what is really going on in our experiment in Democracy, much less what is really happening behind the Great Firewall of China.  It is tough for the folks who are watching with all the nerve synapses firing. My pal made a comment about some of the leadership’s approach being slightly more intense that that of Genghis Khan.

 

I wrote back immediately, saying his comment about the Great Khan being not completely off the mark. Granted, some “mistakes were made” in the Genghis Administration, but he was, after all, in the business of consolidating a world empire. Sometimes you need to break eggs to make an omelet.

 

Which I did this morning, with a marvelous filling of cheese and Versatile Veggies Southwest Pico with corn and black beans.

 

Anyway, modern times may cause today’s managers to eschew rolling employees into carpet rolls and allowing them to starve to death on the watch floor. Plus, progressive OSHA rules clearly have made the catapult launch of other employees a sub-optimal solution to work-force strife. But think of the up side. What were the management secrets of Genghis Khan?

 

1. Leadership: Mongol officers were chosen based on merit, rather than class, in contrast to most armies of the Middle Ages.

 

2. Lean Organization: The Mongol “horde” was anything but disorganized. The organizational structure of the Mongols had many of the attributes 21st-century companies: disciplined, efficient, flexible and capable of efficient communication.

 

3. Lean Technology: Each Mongol soldier had two, three or even four ponies so that he could spell them on a march and save them from exhaustion.

 

4. Technology Transfer: The Mongols were not intimidated or fearful of societies that had capabilities they did not. Instead they quickly assimilated the expertise of the societies they conquered, particularly China.

 

5. Aggressive Process: The combination of organizational self-discipline, flexibility and aggressiveness allowed the Mongols to defeat larger armies of that era that were rigidly organized, and whose discipline was superficial.

 

So, I wrote, we can learn a lot from The Great Khan.

 

Be strong. Get some sleep. Even Genghis dismounted periodically.

 

What will be most interesting is the possibility that the Chinese may need a great distraction, and now that they are back from their holiday, they are rested, and presumably ready.

 

I wonder if we are?

(The lovely, if barren, Shenkaku islands).

 

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Nimitz Day

It is the anniversary of Nimitz Day this morning, sixty-eight years since the phalanx of motorcycles escorted Chest Nimitz down Pennsylvania Avenue.

The Fleet Admiral is one of the great leaders in American military history, but there are only two things in public service that remain dedicated to his memory. One is the lead ship of the USS Nimitz-class (CVN-68) supercarriers.

The other is the Nimitz Operational Intelligence Center at Suitland, Maryland, a fact which came as a great surprise to the Nimitz family. Some visionary people in the Center, dedicated to the all-source analysis methodology that cracked the Japanese Naval Codes and enabled the five minutes of triumph at the battle of Midway, which changed the world.

Nimitz Day at the Office of Naval Intelligence is intended to link the New Navy- the one that has been so transformed, to the one that won wars long ago.

There is a strand to the great conflict in the Pacific that we do not recall so well these days. By the beginning of 1945, Victory in Europe had become inevitable. Nine months later the Japanese threw in the towel, but planning was already well underway for the new world that was going to be born.

(Fleet Admiral Nimitz is joined by Admiral Forrest Sherman in the open car. on Pennsylvania Avenue in 1945. Sherman suggested Mac become part of the new cadre of professional intelligence officers after the war).

The original Nimitz Day was actually the opening shot in a prototypical Information Operations campaign that included “Victory at Sea,” and the public reminder that Ike and the Army had won the Crusade in Europe, but Navy Blue and Gold had won the War across the Pacific.

The Big Parade for Chester Nimitz was which was originally celebrated in 1945 as part of the post-war period that began before the war itself was over. There were briefings to FDR, the withered giant of a President, that went along the lines of:  “Sir, if we continue the building program we could have a hundred aircraft carriers in the Pacific by 1947….”

Mac had a story about that- one of many, but this one was about the business executives who were sent forward in 1945 to tour the battle areas and begin the planning to dismantle the war machine, even as the planners labored on Operation OLYMPIC and others were moving pieces of the Wonder Weapons to see if they might work to actually end the thing.

One such businessman was stranded on Guam due to aircraft malfunction and became an inadvertent guest of Admiral Nimitz for the night. He was treated so kindly that he felt compelled to offer a gift to his host. Traveling light, he offered up the only thing he had: a pair of five-star devices intended for everyone’s favorite Rock-star General, Douglas MacArthur.

They were Army style, with a metallic wreath around the lower portion of the pentagonal arrangement of stars. Although Doug’s date-of-rank would always be a day ahead of his, Chester Nimitz had Doug’s stars.

The planning that was underway to shut down the war ran in parallel with the planning to ramp it up into full-scale invasion- but Mac remembers. I drove him out to Suitland yesterday for Nimitz Day at the Nimitz OPINTEL Center.

(Part of the 1,000-plane flyover on Nimitz Day. Other aircraft spelled out the rest of the Admiral’s name).

The Command has a “History and Heritage” program to engage the young people in what has been accomplished in the wide world with critical thinking, hard work, and what one of my favorite Directors of Naval Intelligence Admiral Bill Studeman called “deep penetration of the enemy” in the 1980s. Bill remembered the lessons of an earlier time, and so does Mac.

The Navy did that “deep penetration” it in the ’20s and ’30s by developing the immersion program that sent Naval Officers to Japan to study language, and incidentally, culture. They were not sent to spy, but to understand the nature of the likely adversary.

Among them were Mac’s seniors at Station HYPO in Pearl, and on the staff of Chest Nimitz. That included Eddie Layton, Joe Rochefort and Tom Dyer. They were the ones who handed Nimitz the key to victory, if he was bold enough to turn it.

Five minutes that changed a world resulted, or at least it changed the word for a while. The bubbling crisis of a rising China versus an emboldened Japan adds to the interest and to the relevance of a Naval presence in the western Pacific.

Mac and I were waiting in the lobby of the fine Cold War building in Suitland, and the Admiral looked up and noticed a huge, dramatic oil painting hung in the upper reaches of the soaring atrium of an SBD Dauntless dive-bomber rolling out over a smoking Japanese aircraft carrier- the IJN Akagi.

He stared at it as the super squared-away Command Senior Chief ran to get him a bottled water to wait for the official unveiling of a portrait (from the 1960s, one of the last) of the Fleet Admiral he had served so well, so long ago.

The Marquee players at Nimitz Day 2012 were Mac, of course, the Last Man Standing, and Chester “Chet” Nimitz Lay, the grandson of the Fleet Admiral. He is a very nice man with courtly manner and a distinct resemblance to the phlegmatic Texan who had the courage to act.

The stories about the Nimitz Family flew in the CO’s office, where CAPT Pollard hosted us pending the start of the official ceremony. There was a picture on the wall of FDR, Nimitz and MacArthur. The Admiral was briefing the President in shades of gray.

Mac gestured at the historical image and commented, “The President and MacArthur came down to the mess afterward, the president in a wheelchair. That was the time I met the General. I met all the five star officers in person.”

Chet contributed family stories- where the various portraits of his grandfather were currently located, and the heroic busts. One of them was used to frighten the Nimitz grand kids who on sleep-overs were told that the one in the basement could come alive if they behaved badly. There were stories about the Nimitz girls and their children, and who was where and who had died.

At the ceremony itself, there was a marvelous slideshow about the original Nimitz Day and its significance in the pantheon of heroes of an institution that produced the first professional intelligence organization remaining in the U.S. Government: the Office of Naval Intelligence, in the Hoyer Foyer, the auditorium named for the Maryland Representative who hijacked the building project from the District and placed it just across the line from Washington proper. Though he had been redistricted out of Suitland, his portrait hangs in the hall without irony.

There was likewise no irony in the resurrection of Nimitz Day. As part of the scheme to shut down the largest war machine ever assembled, partisans of the Air Corps and Army were arguing about Service Consolidation. The A-bomb had made navies irrelevant, went the argument, and logically the Army should be in charge of a unified force.

Navy Secretary James Forrestal fought back. A little over a month after the formal signing of the instruments of surrender in Tokyo Bay, the Admiral was here in Washington. October 5th, 1945 was declared “Nimitz Day.” But it was not for the ego of one Five-star Admiral: he had little of that. It was a public celebration of the fact that his Fleet had beaten Japan, and that protection of the sea lines of communication were as relevant in the Atomic Age as it was in the time of Alfred Thayer Mahan.

A thousand aircraft flew down Pennsylvania Avenue. The Admiral himself, along with Mac’s mentor Admiral Forrest Sherman road in an open limousine past the Old post Office behind a flying V of DC police motorcycles. A procession of a dozen Medal of Honor recipients followed in jeeps. It was pretty amazing, and at least partially effective.

Forrestal would be eased up to become the first Secretary of Defense. Nimitz would be the next Chief of Naval Operations, and help set the stage for the Revolt of the Admirals as the bloodless struggle over the nature of Defense in the Atomic Age raged on.

It was a magical morning. I was pushing Mac’s wheelchair, marveling that I had been in one myself just a few months ago. There was Texas BBQ under the canopy in the grove of trees behind the new wing of ONI.

Life is good. Happy Nimitz Day.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The Great Debate

Great taste? Less filling?

hahaha.

I may look for the whole debate on the web when I get back to the office this afternoon. I am escorting Mac to the dedication of the intelligence center named for his former Commanding Officer, Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, and I have no idea what the command is going to put him through. I am going along to provide wheels and wheelchair pushing.

Accordingly, I am awake, moderately alert, and ready to get him at 0800 sharp. That is putting the squeeze on the morning, but that is fine. I don’t know how many more of these sorts of visits he has in him, and whatever he wants to do, I will certainly support it.

I did not make it to the encounter between Mitt and President Obama- my take on the debate I did not see (I think that qualifies me to be a pundit) is based on the spin of the media this morning. I was anticipating some intense spin, but it didn’t turn out that way. When I finally got the courage to turn on the computer early this morning the conservative sites were jubilant and having a field day with Mr. Obama, who looked, in their words, “tired, professorial and unprepared.”

Even the New York times gave it to Mitt on style points, so I think that makes it unanimous, not that it is going to matter. There is so much else going on that these little set pieces may not have the sort of impact that the partisans so desperately want.

The NY Times, in an aside, quoted a MSNBC commentator as saying “no one had talked to the president like that in four years,” and that he seemed a little “offended” by the tone.

In the midst of the greatest economic dislocation in nearly a century, I suppose somebody should have. Having the press working so hard for him must have led to some overconfidence. Mr. Obama’s comfort bubble fostered in Air Force One and those ominous Darth Vader buses clearly was jolted.

I hope something gets shaken up, regardless of who ekes out a victory in this thing.

Being an independent voter- or make that “voted,” I am implacably opposed to the Taliban Republican wing’s opinion on the social issues. Gay marriage, women’s reproductive rights, the War on Drugs, all that stuff. I cannot stomach some bureaucrat telling me what I may or may not do in my private life- and both these candidates have not been shy about telling people what to do “in their best interests.”

Screw that. I am mostly off in Ron Paul land on the social stuff, but wary of the bastards on Wall Street and filled with loathing of the banks, the latter two being the only ones who made out in this crisis.

I have said it before, but at the risk of becoming a bore, there is no viable candidate who espouses both sound economic policy and moderation in social affairs, leaning toward liberty where there is a question. There used to be a party like that, but Nelson Rockefeller is dead and Colin Powell won’t run.

This is one of those deals where I had to hold my nose and vote for what is best for the pocketbook.

All other things being equal, I would prefer to have a dollar that is not poised on the brink of collapse, and the uncertainty of what this crushing deficit is going to do to my job and the pitiful savings I have managed to hang on to in the immediate future.

It occurs to me I ought to be better prepared for the trip this morning, and I need to get on with real life, not the hype-filled Continuing Crisis. It occurs to me I should get some emergency numbers and be ready for the unexpected as we roll across the District. I will ask Mac for contacts to enter into my phone, just in case.

Be a Scout, I guess: “Be prepared.”

I can do that on a personal level, though I have no idea how that can be translated into national policy. Those two guys tried last night, and I am not sure what it means. Forty-three days to go until we find out.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Fortune Tellers

For our gentle readers in Fly Over Country, I think you can take a certain amount of satisfaction in the fact that our Beltway Cloud Cuckoo Land is about to crash to ground and join the rest of the country. I am not going to whine about it. We have had an excellent decade in the Global War Against Whatever It Was, and unfortunately, now the Piper is hanging around like he wants to get paid and he doesn’t seem to be particularly willing to continue to play unless we come up with the dough.

 

It is only fair we should find ourselves here, I suppose. You may have seen that the counties around the Federal District have done pretty well. I saw the stats the other day: of the top five Counties in revenue and average income nationwide, three of them are right here, and three of them (Arlington, Fairfax and Loudoun) are in that lofty position.

 

My own Blue Arlington is still home to tall construction cranes. High rises are going up on the Smart Growth Corridor above the Orange Line of the Metro. Around Big Pink, the luxury town homes are rising to flank the two vast new medium-height apartment complexes.

 

You would not be far wrong in thinking that despite the housing bubble and all the rest, this area has done pretty damn well in a perfectly lousy decade.

 

Old Jim and I were commenting on that at the Amen Corner of Willow’s Bar last night. John-with-anH was drinking Happy Red, and we were all over the map, topic-wise. We did not get far into current events before finding some rabbit holes to duck down. I had come across Fairfax Drive from The Madison and a visit to our 93-year-old drinking buddy Mac. I was trying to go over the notes of the last two visits that bracket his intelligence career. I was back in the 1950s at the moment, when he was making Commander and I was still in short pants.

 

That is the beauty of our ongoing dialogue- we can pick up just about anywhere and go from there and wind up wherever. Jim wanted to talk about something else, which we did not get to, but will at some point. We didn’t talk about the Presidential debates or anything else. We got onto Halloween, since Tracy had the decorations strewn along the bar- crystal cats and skulls and candlesticks and witches.

 

“My vote, having been cast, will not be influenced by anything except its theft,” I said firmly.

 

“Wouldn’t want the truth to influence your decision,” Jim growled.

 

“I made up my mind in 2008,” I said. “But have you seen what is going to happen here? I just read a report by the Bloomberg organization that is pretty scary.”

 

“About what in particular?” Jim said, waving at Sabrina, who was trying to figure out what her costume should be for the big Halloween party Tracy is going to throw at the end of the month. Dark-haired and dark-eyed Sabrina is going to have a Fortune Teller tent set up in one of the private dining rooms in the back to interview the paying customer and reveal their futures. She saw Jim’s gesture and a Budweiser long-neck appeared magically in his beefy mitt. “You have that dark Gypsy beauty thing going, my dear. Whatever you wear will be perfect.”

 

“I was thinking some fake facial tattoos and jewels studding my eyebrows.”

 

“Devastating,” I said, taking a sip of Happy Hour White.

 

“I can’t think of an appropriate theme for the costume this year. Bloomberg says that 14% of Virginia’s gross revenues are out of Defense. Maybe a pickle barrel and a sign that says ‘will work for contracts….”

 

“You might want to check out likely highway overpasses for quality living. Sequestration is going to gut the contracting business,” said Jim, not unkindly. Both of us rely on the decimal dust of the grand river of clinking nickels that constitutes the Federal budget, and unless something changes, the automatic cuts that will kick in on the second of January are going to be crippling.

 

“Maybe something will change,” I said. “This is starting to look kind of personal.” Jim took a long pull on his Budweiser. John-with-and-H looked on with a certain amount of detachment as a Federal employee.

 

“Don’t look disinterested,” I said. “They are talking about furloughs for the government folks, too. You could even wind up with contractors on the job and government folks being sent home.”

 

“Well, whatever. Nothing is going to get any clearer until after November 6th.”

 

We talked about what could happen: unified Congress, incumbent administration, change of this and change of that. We couldn’t come to any conclusions and all the possibilities came with branches and sequels of consequences we could

 

Meanwhile, the debate will go tonight as Recession appears destined to visit the Rich Counties around the Federal enclave that thus far have not seen bad times. We still have cranes towering over the Wilson Boulevard Corridor, but maybe not for long.

 

I took out my binder that contained notes from my meetings with Mac, and scrawled a note: “Consult with Fortune Teller on 31 Oct.” Then I closed the book and took a sip of happy hour white.

 

“Wonder what is going to happen?” I mused.

 

Jim scowled. “Ask Sabrina,” he said.

 

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Why Weight?

(Pat Caddell outlines the shape of a rigged game. Photo AIM.)

I already voted. Why wait?

I tried to stay away from it, but the weight of the evidence this morning is that something is very, very wrong. It is almost overwhelming.

I am NOT a Republican- I am way “left” of them on every conceivable social issue, though I don’t consider that to be a matter of ideology as much as adherence to the perfectly serviceable Constitution that served us pretty well over the last couple centuries.

Wait, there is more. I find the rise of the National Security State that began on the Bush watch to be extremely troubling, and now, taken to an entirely new level on virtually every front- including the social level that is no business of Government.

I don’t know why I feel obligated to say that I am not a member of what Mr. Pat Caddell, former Jimmy Carter advisor calls “the Stupid Party,” except for the steady drumbeat of managed facts from the organs of the other one- what Pat calls “the Corrupt Party.”

We already know what will come with the debates, and can already write the headlines, if the media hasn’t already filed their copy prior to the actual debate tomorrow.

The encounter in Denver will feature that cerebral man who occupies the White House and his strange diction- the one where his  “g” sounds disappear, depending on which audience to which he is pandering.

It is staggering when you look at what is laying around waiting to be reported. Did you know that a million free cell phones have been distributed to the residents of “battleground” Ohio?

They call them Obamaphones. Before anyone screams at me that the idea that welfare should include telecommunications was actually a bi-partisan program originated in the Reagan Administration, I would note that no one before has ever given free communications to one-out-of-four of the 4.5 million households in the must-have Buckeye electoral votes.

I have issues with my kids still being on my “Friends and Families” phone plan. I can’t imagine why we are subsidizing a quarter of the homes in Ohio.

Or the patent nonsense from the Labor Department yesterday, calmly directing that lay-off notices should not be sent (as law requires) by the Defense Contracting Community to those who are soon going to be out of work due to the looming Sequestration disaster.

Forgive me if I take it personally. Defense companies had said with massive budget cuts slated to take effect Jan. 2, they are obligated to send out notices notifying employees of potential layoffs 60 days in advance, under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or the WARN Act.
Instead of notifying people- I can’t use the word “folks” with a straight face anymore- that they are facing job termination, Government will make everything all right if the law is ignored and nothing troubling shows up in the mailbox before election day.

This is breathtaking. Oh, hell, it is not. It is business as usual.

Pat Caddell presented a matter-of-fact discussion of the media’s butcher’s thumb on the scale of public debate the other day at the Accuracy in Media conference here in DC. He had some revelations regarding the content of the drumbeat of positive news for the Administration. Sorry, it set me off.

Mr. Obama jetting to Las Vegas when terrorists are murdering American diplomats? Bush Katrina moment, but ignored.

Senior White House advisor David Plouffe and his hundred grand honorarium from a terrorist front organization for two speeches. Check it out. He should be dismissed and prosecuted.

Serious negotiations with the Egyptians about the release of the Blind Sheikh who masterminded the first bombing of the World Trade Center. It is more appalling- more visceral- than the debate over that worm Jonathan Pollard. Outrageous.
Secret Service protection for senior White House advisor Valerie Jarrett? WTF? This is the equivalent of Karl Rove getting a security detail from Mr. Bush. The press would have been all over it.

Tom Donilon, National Security Advisor and leaker-in-chief. I have said right along that the worthless flack was a PAO officer, not a freaking national security expert. Everyone, including the Attorney General and the New York Times, knows who the leakers are. Maybe we will find out officially sometime when it no longer matters.

Shoot, that is just this morning.

I am betting the media outlets are all over whatever is said by Mitt tomorrow, and Mr. Obama will get another pass.

As I have tried (and largely failed) to articulate, I do not have a candidate in this race, only the choice between lesser or greater disappointments. I think Mr. Romney is a decent fellow. He is a bit tone deaf at times, but likable enough when not the target of an orchestrated smear campaign, just as his father was.

I remember the “brainwashing” thing that sunk George’s run for the White House in 1968. His comment was a perfectly accurate assessment of General Westmoreland’s Vietnam Wonderland tour for visiting VIPs.

George Romney was right. I think his son is a competent man, and we might want to try that for a while and see what happens.

Nor am I spooked by the strange religion of which the Romneys are members. The virtues of the LDS church marginally outweigh the demonstrably bizarre mythos that underlies it.

Wait- if I say something about religion does that mean a mob of outraged Mormons will come over to Big Pink and set the place alight and murder me? Never mind, I forgot. There is only one group of people who get that privilege. We can bash the LDS folks with impunity. Freedom of speech and all that.

I do know this: a good LDS family would never come over to your house, rummage around in your refrigerator and pronounce upon what you may- or may not- eat.

They would, instead, ask if you had enough dry foodstuffs to get through a tough year. Then, they would offer to help you out if you did not.

Here is what some kids in Kansas think of the new food regulations, passed in the lame duck session of the Congress in 2010, with Madam Speaker Pelosi still in charge of the House:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IB7NDUSBOo

“Let them not eat cake!” and “Off with their fat!” This is madness.

(President Obama signs the Healthy, Hunger-free Kids Act that seems to have irritated the kids, who are hungry. Photo C-SPAN.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Oh, the Pat Caddell video and transcript is available at:
http://hillbuzz.org/pat-caddell-the-media-has-become-a-threat-to-democracy-48228

Mirror Mirror

This was a weekend for projects on the farm. It was supposed to rain, and it did, like gangbusters on Friday night, complete with wild electrical flashes. But Saturday dawned crisp and clear and new-washed, and it was time to get back down to the farm and see what the Autumn had dragged in.

It was delightful to see the place, and daunting to pick up the mail and see four issues of the local mullet-wrapper stuffed into the mailbox. I had an ambitious scheme to go through all the assorted paper and dispose of it. I did not reckon it would be hard, since most of appeared to be solicitations to refinance the place on a special one-time good deal from a variety of companies masquerading as the Veteran’s Administration.

I sighed and prepared to go through a month’s worth of waste-paper, but that is what passes for mail these days. The news that the Post Office was going to default the next day made me optimistic that the junk would not be coming on Saturdays any more.

I got the cushions out of the closet and set up camp on the back deck to look at the trees around the pastures. The tips of some were just going orange, and I saw the first of several tasks that were definitely going to go on a list, right after all those plastic tubs of precious family records were removed from the back of the Panzer and placed in the garage-office. Two hawks, one in low orbit and another wheeling majestically high above the trees on Combat Air Patrol station, provided top cover against daylight rodent attack.

When I was about half-way through I saw a black shadow dart out of the barn. Heckle the feral cat had not only survived the last winter, and this past summer, but apparently had taken up digs in the hayloft of the barn. Good news. Between the raptors in the daylight sky and the tactical feline capability, the rodents don’t stand a chance.

I made plans to continue to feed him from the dry-stores in the office garage.

Add to list. Crap, I thought. I needed to actually make a list.

When I got to that moment of decision after the mail about what to do next, get to work or open the bar and continue to gaze on the splendor of the season around the green fields below, I split the difference. I made two piles of mail, the stuff that could be trashed immediately and the stuff that could be trashed later. I took the shopping supplements out of the Culpeper Star-Exponent and decided to pour a glass of the Old House Chardonnay I purchased at the winery last month. On the way I got a pad of Post-It notes and actually start to collate all the deferred projects for action, and actually have it at the vast Howe’s Home Improvement Center to help me stay oriented in the vast and quite overwhelming sea of good ideas.

Cleaning gutters requires a ladder. So, on the list goes “ladder.” That means the truck has to be prepped and oil changed- it has been a year, right? Replace the grill that got crushed by the tree in Snowmaggedon two years ago. Replace the log-round circles that mark the nature walk with masonry pavers. Truck again, and isn’t there a fuze or something burned out? “Find honest mechanic” went on a Post-It, along with “bed,” since the steep staircase to the master bedroom is still daunting on the bad leg, and I am going to convert the television lounge back into the master bedroom. That means clearing out the room, so “move a bunch of crap” went on the list.

This was exhausting to the point that I decided to have another glass of wine.

Almost all the projects required getting back into one of the vehicles to go to the big-box store end of town, and the last thing I wanted to do was get back on the road.  The one thing I thought was going to be possible this weekend was to install something that might save my life. I was pretty sure that whatever killed Ronald and Dave, whose first names are on the little cross where County Road dumps into the Zachary Taylor Highway.

I confess that I have been apprehensive about the end-of-the-driveway issue. The little country lane in front of the property leads down to Summerduck Run Farm, where Rosemary the Owner has several dozen ponies and a lot of weekend equestrian activity. The trucks hauling horses in for the weekend begin flying down the road early on Saturday, and reverse course Sunday afternoon.

More than once I have edged the nose of the Bluesmobile out far enough that I could see what was roaring down the lane toward me. Regrettably, that means that the first third of the venerable police cruiser is in ongoing traffic, and the first real knowledge of what was coming was liable to be in the front seat with me at higher velocity than I would like.

There is hard evidence about that. The Russians next door have some spectacular skid marks where the same creeping out had nearly caused catastrophe.

I vowed that I would never blink in horror at how close the steep sides of an F-250 or Ram pickup truck were to my windshield, and in the car this trip was a box containing a 30-inch concave mirror that would solve my problems.

Well, I hoped so, anyway. All I needed, I realized, was a charged battery for the DeWalt cordless drill, which in turn, required the drill bits which were in Arlington (damn) and some appropriate mounting wood screws. And a wrench.

I decided to drink wine and talk to the cat instead, and it was a fine choice that devolved into campfires and an outdoor meal with the neighbors.

(This is the largest rock I have ever owned. Photo Socotra).

Since I was going to blow off the afternoon, I caught up on Culpeper’s month and let the cat rub my leg and purr in satisfaction that the meal ticket was still good.

They say life is quiet in the country. I am here to tell you it isn’t necessarily true. First up in the Star Exponent was news that eleven citizens on the special investigative jury handed down four indictments- including murder- against the Culpeper Town Police officer who shot and killed an unarmed 54-year-old woman in downtown Culpeper last winter.

That was too weird when it happened, and it being murder and here, the story ran through all four issues of the paper. The story got stranger and stranger.

Daniel Wayne Harmon-Wright, formerly Daniel Wayne Sullivan, of Gainesville, is accused of first degree murder in the malicious shooting of unarmed Patricia Ann Cook.  The paper reported he turned himself in last week- the shooting happened in February, so this is a long drawn-out process- and it turns out that his mother was the former administrative secretary to the Culpeper chief of police. Apparently one of the things she was into down here was forging public records to purge Harmon-Wright’s personnel file of negative information.

Apparently young Daniel was a bit of a loose cannon, and he screwed up before in ways that did not quite make it to Murder One. It occurred to me that he might have been the officer I saw acting really agitated on foot on the highway bridge over Rt. 29 when I first moved down to the shoulder of Mount Pony. I made a note and checked it off.

Yeah, I know, but sometimes you put things on the list just to make it look like you got something done.

I am glad I didn’t have an encounter with Officer Harmon-Wright-Sullivan. He supposedly shot Ms Cook in broad daylight after getting his arm caught in her window. The circus will go on for a while. Cook’s husband is pressing a five million dollar wrongful death suit against the now-suspended without pay cop.

It was purely in the interest of public safety that I dragged my butt out of bed after first light the next day and mounted the convex mirror on the mailbox. It only took two shims to firm up the mail box, one axe, a hammer, a nail, in lieu of drill, three screwdrivers and a perplexed look. Then I stood for a moment to admire my handiwork, not to mention my gaze in the fish-eye of the reflection.

A project completed. What a delight. It is completely different than the administration of justice to criminal conduct, the latter of which can happen in the blink of an eye, and former play out across the seasons.

I wonder if the cop can go for manslaughter. I am glad he is not still driving around armed and angry. But I was able to cross something off the list besides running into him. And now I can see what is hurtling down the road toward me and that has to be a good thing.

I wish there were concave mirrors for other things in life, too. I may have to put that on the list.

(Side Yard.)

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com