Men…and the Weather
(Screen capture of the intense tornado that scoured Moore, OK, and Oklahoma City yesterday. Screen capture from weather@aol.com)
“Vast Oklahoma Tornado Kills at Least 91”
-NICK OXFORD and MICHAEL SCHWITZ writing in the New York Times
It is Spring, finally, which is good, but of course what comes with the change of season is unsettled air, and that includes Tornedo Alley, the swath of the central plains that gets ripped up with regularity. This string of twisters was nasty: it ripped across parts of Oklahoma City, flattening two schools, throwing cars around and causing real, immediate and personal tragedy to Oklahomans.
Almost a hundred died. It is awful.
Thank God the proliferation of technology that includes Doppler radar, improved communications and the proliferation of shelter preparation helped ameliorate the tragic impact of Mother Nature’s sometime heavy hand.
I wanted to do something to help, and did something I could afford. Donations may be made online at www.unitedwayokc.org or by mail to United Way of Central Oklahoma, P.O. Box 837, Oklahoma City, OK 73101 with notation for “May Tornado Relief.”
I waited for the predictable response from the powers that be, and it was not long in coming. It is not like this is more visceral an event that the slow-motion spinners that pass for cyclones in Washington.
“Extreme weather!” scolded Senator Sheldon Whitehouse on the floor of what used to pass as the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. “Wake up!”
Duh.
I have mentioned before that climate and weather are not the same thing. The people who woke up in May 1999, after twisters with rotational wind speeds that hit 300 miles an hour probably felt the same way. Not to mention what happened in 1925.
Senator Whitehouse didn’t mention The Great Tri-State Tornado of Wednesday, March 18, 1925, which was the deadliest and most powerful storm ever to rip through the Heartland. Maybe it was before he woke up. That storm was an F5, as best they can tell, since those classifications did not exist then. It was the most powerful twister ever experienced and it killed 695 citizens. Remember, this was in a time when the population was half of what it is now.
The Tri-State event (Missouri, Illinois and Indiana) doubled the number of casualties of the previous most amazing storm, the Great Natchez Tornado, which killed 300 people in the Spring of 1840. Which is to say, it is always time to wake up in the spring in Tornado Alley.
This morning it is time to do something for the people of Moore, Oklahoma. I am not going to panic about extreme weather, though. I am just thankful I am waking up in 2013, and not 1925 or 1840 in the Heartland.
This is emotional. Let’s remember the people of Oklahoma this morning, and I will set aside the other issues for now.
I was going to tell you about how Mr. and Mrs. Snow, aptly named, won the $318,000 grand prize for naming the date and hour when the ice of the Tanana River finally broke up in Nenana, Alaska. It is the latest time in the Spring the breakup has happened since the railroad men started to keep records 97 years ago.
Someone who didn’t know that things are cyclical, and that weather is not climate, might rush to say that the ice age is coming back. That is nonsense, though it has been said before. I think the global temperature went up about .8 degrees (C) since the Great Natchez Tornado, and things seem to be cooling a bit lately.
Or talk about the depletion of the great aquifer in the Plains that is pressing farmers to desperation this season. But of course, those reports were days ago, and the news cycle has moved on for now.
Not as far away as the Dirty 1930s, when the Dust Bowl forced the Okies into their trucks and on the road to California. The winds blew the soil as far as Washington, DC, they say, and dirtied the town.
These days I am not sure you could tell.
(Senator Sheldon Whitehouse addresses the Senate, warning us it is time to wake up. Screen capture from CSPAN2).
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
The Merry Month of May
Peter, the leonine aquatic magnate who services the pool has been busy. The deck is power-washed, the gunk of the long long winter has been vacuumed out, the blue water is pristine once more, and the tables and chairs have emerged from storage down in the life-guard office in the basement.
A tipping point in the season.
That is not the only one. I got back from the farm and realized I would rather still be there.
The center of gravity has changed- lurched, really. The unit in Big Pink is no longer really mine. The farm is where my crap is. Oh, not all of it, but there is no television here, since it is wrapped in plastic, and by Friday the movers will come to clear things out in accordance with the stern admonition of The Stager.
Then, I will be living in a Potemkin Village in the Merry Month of May, an artificial environment in which my incorrect life and career are not on display.
There is a bunch more stuff that needs to get out of here that can’t go to storage, for one reason or another, and I will have to deal with that as the bedroom is swathed in plastic and sanded and primed and painted. Then the tipping point will have been reached, at least for the near term, until the place sells, or it doesn’t.
If it is the latter, I will not fill this up with crap again. I swear.
Course, you should see the Farm. I think I need to commission Don-the-Builder to construct a museum annex. Hahaha.
The pool opens on Saturday, ten o’clock sharp. Another tipping point- and one that is not unpleasant in the slightest.
And the rain held off in Arlington, and “A Taste of Arlington” was a success in more ways than one. Willow owner Tracy O’Grady and her Special Flatbread won the prestigious Harris Teeter Supermarket Golden Plate.
We know what the special will be this week. And not a single political polemic in it.
(Tracy O’Grady with the Golden Plate at “A Taste of Arlington.” Photo Willow)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Damned Lies
(Chanteuse Mary goes for a square of Tracy O’Grady’s Philly Phlatbread she is whipping up for the crowd at the food festival of “A Taste of Arlington” on Sunday. Odds are that it is going to rain. Photo Socotra).
Mark Twain famously observed that “There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
My statistical chance of winning the PowerBall jackpot tonight is negligible, though I had a good time at Willow deciding how to spend it. I am giving a million to Raf, who went down to the 7-11 to stand in line to get the ticket with ten computer-generated numbers, and a bathroom upgrade to Old Jim and Mary, and something for Tinkerbell’s new daughter Nola- maybe a ward in New Orleans.
I think I may buy the island nation of Grenada, too, or at least that was the plan until John-with-an-H recommended St. Barts instead. I had to borrow a twenty from Old Jim to finance my retirement plan, but that is OK. I will be good for it.
It was a perfectly delightful afternoon, mellow and sunny. Warm enough not enough to sweat, just right for the periodic trips to the elevator to try to keep the knees from locking up at the desk. I listened with interest to the coverage of the myriad of Administration problems in between conference calls.
David Brooks and E,J. Dionne gave us a fairly balanced account of what was significant. I don’t agree with either of them, but I do enjoy the fact that the two face the political aspect of all this with a certain bipartisan equanimity- I mean, of course this is all politics.
They rated the talking points debacle about Benghazi as having no legs as a scandal, but thought that the IRS thing was a pretty big deal. I think there is another scandal in progress, but I forget- it can’t be the Secretary of Health and Human Services violating the Hatch Act, or shaking down Big Medicine for million-dollar donations to fund the implementation of the Affordable Care adventure.
The Hatch Act? That is the one where public officials are not supposed to use their offices for overtly political purposes. Hahaha. But that is what we do here. Old Jim said it best at the bar while we were waiting for a sneak preview of Tracy O’Grady’s special sampler flat-bread she is going to roll out for A Taste of Arlington on Sunday. “No one gives a shit outside the Beltway,” he growled. “They have to get by, and it is not until something directly affects them that they are going to pay any attention.”
“So you are saying that it isn’t until the Health Care thing kicks in this Fall that anyone will give a rat’s butt? Do you suppose that people know our elected idiots just gave us the equivalent of a national ID card with everything about you filed in it?”
“It will just be there before people know it,” he said. “Done deal.” He looked skeptically at the can of Budweiser Raf slid in front of him to replace the brown Long Neck bottle. “Place is going to hell in a hand-basket.”
Tracey herself brought out the flatbread- a sort of Philly take with spicy relish she made herself and onions and a zesty sauce. “I am concerned about the rain they are predicting for Sunday,” she said. “I have 2,000 portions of the Philly Phlatbread to give away, and I don’t want to get stuck with them.”
“I think I am sensing what the special is going to be next week if it rains,” I said, taking a sip of the Happy Hour White. It was good, in both the Chardonnay flavor and whatever the other grapefruity-Spanish thing they were pouring. “Figures, though. A glorious day to be at the office and then a drenched weekend.”
“Statistically, they are calling for a sixty percent chance of rain,” said John-with. “That means there is almost a half chance it won’t be a rainout.”
“That is as optimistic an assessment as anyone could make,” said Chanteuse Mary.
“No shit,” said Jim.
“I believe in the odds,” I said. “It is 100% certain that all this crap is politically motivated. It was politics that drove the talking points, and the story that al-Qaida was on the run, and the Arab Spring was a great idea, and the IRS surprise audits of the conservatives before the election. And all the rest of the shady stuff- propping up Medicare so the seniors wouldn’t realize what was happening to their benefits, and the free phones in Ohio and every other damned trick to ensure that the President got re-elected.”
“Reminds me of CREEP,” said Jim, darkly.
“Nixon’s Committee to Re-Elect the President?” I said. “I haven’t thought about that list of dirty tricks in a while.”
“I was in the Nixon White House. I know about this shit. All politics. That is not relativism, by the way, just because both sides do it. It is just about power, and some people are more ruthless than others in the pursuit of it.”
“Odds are that you are right,” I said. “This bunch seems pretty relentless about it.”
John-with laughed. “If you really believed in the odds, you would have saved yourself twenty bucks on the lottery.”
“That is completely different,” I said primly, looking at the little slip of paper. “This is an investment in Hope and Change.”
“Fools and their money,” growled Jim. “Or in this case, my money.”
“That is the way it works here in Washington,” I said. “You can take that to the bank.”
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Just When You Thought…
(Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius. Photo AP).
There is the troika of alleged scandals in progress in town. It is quite remarkable, since the media has been trance-like for so long on the wonderful stuff that has been going on, the roaring economy and falling unemployment and all that stuff.
Wait…oh never mind. Those were problems back when we got the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
I still don’t get that, but I read at the time that the signature progressive agenda items was examined by the politicos in the West Wing, and that looked like it was achievable, barely, and so we got a law that neither protects patients nor is particularly affordable.
Don’t get me wrong. I am vaguely supportive of a single-payer health system, but I view any such scheme with a jaundiced eye. It will, inevitably, lead to rationing of care, just as it does in Britain and Canada, two perfectly fine societies. And yes, there are panels of experts- not all of them medical people- who determine who is likely to benefit more from the allocation of those resources and apportion them accordingly.
I have been a single payer subscriber of military medicine for 37 years, and it has always been there, even if not particularly convenient to access, and always a pain in the butt to deal with. If something like that is the answer to a system that seemed to work for most people, and provided for the rest with the safety-net of the Emergency Rooms that cannot, by law, turn anyone away…well, I didn’t think that was the crisis that needed to be fixed.
No, no, I am not going to go into a rant about Madam Pelosi or the collective lunacy that gave us “you have to pass it to find out what’s in it.” There are so many impossible things to believe these days that I will just chalk that one up to some kind of collective madness that sweeps over groups of people in stressful situations.
It happens at Big Pink. There have been periodic mass delusions here. One famous one was that the balconies were all weakening and we would be plunged to our deaths in the parking lot, or drown in the pool if we managed to leap from the falling concrete and re-bar.
Engineers were called in to consult on the matter, and it was nonsense.
A couple years ago the routine replacement of the uptake pipes for the hot water system was begun. It was intended to be a measured response, doing sectors of the building to manage costs. At the annual meeting one of the ladies of a certain age revealed that she had gathered up her furniture into a mound in the center of her living room so she could have a place to stay dry against the coming flood when the old pipes burst.
We all got quite hysterical about the hypothetical, and of course the Board decided to replace all the pipes at once, because no one wanted anyone to drown up on the seventh floor.
Several prominent people have observed that there are some minor problems involved with the implementation of the new health system. We have to lunge into the belly of the vast law to see what is coming.
I used to work- briefly- as an acting Deputy Assistant Secretary in the bureaucracy there. I manage to survive my service unindicted, and learned a lot. But the poor Department has a lot on its plate at the moment, and there are a series of scandals involving beleaguered Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that no one is really looking at- yet, anyway- as she struggles to implement the stand-up of the new system that will oversee 20% of the largest economy on the planet.
Kathleen has given the states until mid-December to make their health insurance exchange decisions, in or out, and state regulators are hoping to navigate the rapids with a minimum of turbulence. They are not likely to get their wish. Among some of the obvious issues- like, young healthy people who don’t have any particular need for health care at the moment- there are a host of less visible ones.
How is this one? Will states that are jointly running their health exchanges link their information technology systems to the newly established Federally Managed Data Services Hub?
HHS is busily setting up the Hub. I won’t go into whether this is best agency to be doing that, it being the law, after all. And with that, it appears that the states will have to connect to the Hub, regardless of whether their exchange is state-based, a partnership or federally-facilitated.
That made me curious. We just went through a discussion of IT and liberty on the gun thing, so my ears perked up on what is coming. By October of this year, the Hub is expected to be “a streamlined application and eligibility system for people buying health plans through state exchanges and for people applying for public health plans like Medicaid and CHIP.”
This is fantastic. The Hub will be able to verify all sorts of cool things: Social Security Number identity, citizenship, income information, tax credit eligibility and public minimum essential coverage eligibility.
This is, as you might imagine, the largest personal information database ever attempted. I am very excited about this. HHS has never really been a compliance organization, and since there has got to be a hammer in here someplace to ensure that people go along with something they might normally eschew, the rose for that has been pinned on the IRS.
You know we can rely on their impartiality and fairness.
According to what the IT geeks are planning, the Hub will be able to do a sort of “instant background check” to enable verification of the complex subsidy formula against all personal information of the citizen.
All insurers, self-insured businesses and government health programs will have to submit reports to the IRS about the individuals they cover, which the IRS will cross-check against tax returns, just as they do with those goddamn 1099s people send me each year.
Like I said, I am delighted at the unholy alliance of the tax dudes and the health care mafia and complete access to my health information and bank accounts. I mean really, as the President said at commencement at Ohio State, “You’ll hear voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s the root of all our problems, even as they do their best to gum up the works; or that tyranny always lurks just around the corner. You should reject these voices.”
I will grant the President his view that Government can be the answer, even we may not be sure what the question was. I think perhaps he might have been more circumspect in his remarks if they had been given after the IRS Inspector General’s report came out.
“We have never been a people who place all our faith in government to solve our problems, nor do we want it to. But we don’t think the government is the source of all our problems, either,” the president said.
Nope. Not all of them. Oh, there have been several senior IRS officials who have got the boot over the scandal, including the acting director who wasn’t there when the abuses were going on. Sarah Hall Ingram, commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations, 2009-2012, has quietly moved on, too.
You will be comforted to know that she is now the director of the IRS’s Affordable Care Act office.
It almost makes me feel like Chris Matthews, you know? With that warm tingle up the leg?
(Sarah Hall Ingram. Image capture CSPAN.)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Big Pink Condom
(President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder at the National Peace Officer’s Memorial Day in the District. Photo White House).
I stopped at Willow last night after work. Yeah, no big revelation, but I wanted to kill a little time and ensure that the Bulgarians were out of the unit. I did not want to think too hard about what I was going to find when I got there.
It had turned into a glorious afternoon when I emerged from the office tower and ambled along Fairfax Drive toward the restaurant. Jon-without was at the apex of the Amen Corner next to Old Jim at the bar when I came in from the brightness. I handed him a copy of the map and directions to the original Boundary Stones of the District of Columbia which had surfaced in the whirlwind that hit the unit, and a web address to a site that locates stock of ammunition by caliber and vendor. Useful stuff, you know?
Anyway, we drank for a while as I looked at my phone on the bar, waiting for it to go off. The Bulgarians called about five thirty, and said they were clearing the unit. They asked me to leave it open in the morning, and I told them I would. There is a bunch of crap left, but nothing that I wouldn’t actually be thankful to have disappear all on its own.
We drank for a while longer, but it was not nearly as raucous at our end of the bar as it was for the Fish and Wildlife Service, who packed the front cocktail nook. Apparently the Fish Head was hosting a reception for the Honor Guard of the sworn officers in the Service who were in town for the National Peace Officers Memorial Day, where the President and Attorney General Holder presided earlier in the day.
You don’t think of the Fish & Wildlife Service as being a law enforcement element, but of course it is. President Kennedy proclaimed National Police Week in 1962, with the 15th being the day for the big ceremony downtown at the memorial to fallen officers.
Police were here from as far away as the UK. It is a pretty impressive event, very solemn, and then the AG had to go up and trade barbs with Chairman Issa about all the things in the Justice Department he had no idea about.
It was on CSPAN, where the commentators don’t tell you what you just heard.
I listen on the radio, sometimes. Chanteuse Mary stopped in for a glass of wine and then went home to walk the dog, Jon-without had an errand to run, and with the Bulgarians gone, I decided to go home and check out what happened during the day.
(Curl up and watch some TV?)
I walked in and was impressed. And depressed. The place resembled nothing less than a complete condomization of the front room. Nice and sanitary, I will grant, but nothing was going to be quite right for a long while. I began to think that a long drive in the country might be just what I needed.
I poured a drink and tried to figure out how I was going to live on the balcony for the duration.
(The usual place this blog is produced. Not for a while, apparently. Photo Socotra)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Bulgarians and Tempura
(When the filing cabinets are gone, where do the files go? Photo Socotra).
The Bulgarians are coming to work on the unit at ten. I am as screwed as Jay “Baghdad Bob” Carney trying to explain how the Administration was blameless in the new scandal-a-day second term of Hope and Change.
This is really screwed up. I should have come home from work yesterday and got to work again, taking down pictures and pulling nails out of the walls. Instead, I went to Willow to confer with Old Jim and LTJG Socotra over the issues of continental and trans-continental moves. The Lieutenant’s will be much further, of course, though he has less crap to sort through, and the Government will pick up the tab.
By way of contrast, I am trying to do it on the cheap, and not succeeding that well.
He is starting to engage in the thoughts of disengaging from America, and I am sort of in the same boat. I want the best for this nation and this ain’t it. It is positively Nixonian, only I recall liking Ron Zeigler, Tricky Dick’s press secretary, better than Baghdad Bob. I wonder how long Mr. Carney is going to last before he really needs to spend more time with his family?
Willow featured a really cool five dollar internet special this week: tempura battered asparagus and tomatoes and something that could have been fennel. As the Lieutenant observed, “if it is fried, it has to be good,” and I succumbed.
(This week’s internet special at Willow. The Lieutenant was right. Photo Socotra.)
I am not going to go into the weird shit going on here. There is too much of it already and there is going to be a lot more.
The drip-drip-drip of who-knew-what-when and who-told-who about it going to come out, just like it did for Mr. Nixon, and Mr. Clinton and Mr. W. Bush. Is there something about getting that second term that hopelessly compromises the occupants of the Oval Office?
I don’t know much, but I do know that I have painters coming, and the skilled craftsman who leads this crack unit is from Bulgaria.
I don’t know if the souvenirs of the Cold War triumph offend him or not. I have arranged with the lady at Interstate Moving and Storage to get the crap out of here, but that will not happen for another week or so. This is hopelessly out of phase, as I am sure Mr. Carney would agree, but just like the relentless news cycle, Plammer-the-Bulgarian is going to go ahead and paint over everything just as it is.
We started off on the wrong foot when I thought he said “plumber” and I cleaned out the bathroom instead of the living room and wasted one of his precious days.
I would be lying if I told you that I am more than a little flipped out about what I have set in motion. There is a lot of that going on in town. I was layering t-shirts around pottery kimchi pots and packing up the fragile and high-value items this morning in between checking the scandals.
I wonder how long it will be until Baghdad Bob decides it is time to spend more time with his family? If he does, I recommend he take them to Willow for the special. I have to move another couple boxes down to the Panzer before the East Block arrives, so this is going to be have to be short and sweet.
Well, short, anyway. The Bulgarians looked positively sour the last time I saw them.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Fly-Over
(Schematic of the Rt 29- RT 17 Flyover interchange that will make everything better. In the meantime, it is making things worse. But I have high hopes and boundless optimism. Photo VDOT.)
I was pinned in traffic on Route 29 North. They started doing something at the junction between that major State Road South and Rt 17 coming north out of Fredericksburg. I was listening to Prime Minister David Cameron of the United Kingdom and President Barack Obama on a curious little press opportunity that went along with a prep session for the G-8 meeting in Northern Ireland coming up in a few weeks.
I gather that is a Big Deal- with the Central Banks of Europe, the US and Japan printing money are breakneck tempo, the Keynesians among us are confident that just a few more turns of the crank will do the trick. I don’t understand any of this well enough to judge. The bubble being created in housing is one from which I intend to profit- or at least limit my losses from the last time the housing market fell apart- and I am stuck with what is happening to my 401k in the stock market.
That one will pop soon enough, since they always do, and I am resigned to taking a beating at some point. Hey, I am lucky to have anything to worry about, right? It is interesting to have that sort of fatalism at this age. Sadder but wiser, I guess.
Anyway, I was headed north toward DC, so naturally the drivers were a little squirrely. The left lane was closed, approaching the junction of 29 and 17- the routes north from North Carolina and northwest from Fredericksburg that join for a while into Warrenton.
President Obama made a brief introductory set of remarks on the radio as I braked for the construction zone. I know now what is going on. For a couple years there has been some sort of site-prep going on- this must be one of those shovel-ready projects we heard so much about in the days of the Big Stimulus.
I was afraid that it was another major shopping plaza with Big Boxes that would screw up the commute to the farm, but as great swathes in the trees began to open up, I realized it was a massive interchange in the making, intended to eliminate the two-left turn lanes that begin just beyond Clark’s and adjacent to the Mickey Dee’s restaurant-gas station complex.
They started with road-work signage, temporary silt fencing, huge storm-drainage pipes, clearing and grubbing the site, and constructing service roads to get to the locations of the concrete pours.
The site preps and dynamite did not disrupt things as much as you would think. But now it is crunch time, and crunch us they are. One of the two northbound lanes is closed, which gave me plenty of time to listen to the curious press conference.
First, I was surprised at the fulsome praise the President gave to Dame Margaret Thatcher- I hadn’t realized anyone from official Washington had been in London for the funeral. And his remarks of praise for the special relationship between the two great English-speaking nations were inspirational.
Well, mostly English-speaking. For his part, the PM was low key but resolute. The commentators informed me that there would only be two questions permitted, one from an American correspondent and the other from a British journalist.
The orange cones appeared, eventually, narrowing the two lanes to one, and predictably the north-bound Type ‘A’ drivers wouldn’t just do the zipper merge, but barged ahead until their fenders raked the cones to gain advantage. I refrained from hand-gestures though I did point out to one aggressive motorist that he might have certain anti-social tendencies.
Creeping under the new overpass, the dimensions of the project became evident. In the words of VDOT, the construction will replace the current at-grade left-turn movements from Route 29 southbound onto Route 17 south with a grade-separated flyover interchange.
I wished I could fly right over this mess. It makes the commute to the farm a crap shoot.
They claim that the new interchange “will improve safety and traffic flow at this high-volume location. The current dual left-turn lanes on Route 29 south often overflow onto the southbound travel lanes during periods of peak volume. This condition creates a safety issue since southbound through traffic traveling at highway speed must stop until the left-turning traffic clears the travel lane.”
All I want them to do is get on with it. This is currently a drag.
That seemed to be the consensus between me and the President, since the sole American journalist who got to ask a question when the prepared remarks were done made it a three-part excursion into the murky Benghazi matter, the IRS scandal and, of course, the bloody Syria mess.
The President waxed indignant about the IRS scrutiny of right wing groups and their tax-exempt status. “Right on,” I thought, swerving off onto the verge to let an ambulance cut through the mess with its lights flashing. “They should not get away with that. I am sure they are going to get right to the bottom of this one.”
Once the first responders were past and we got back to regular vehicular infighting, the President took a different tack on the Benghazi thing. Long time ago, no cover up, all political, a non-event.
He and the PM agreed that the Syria thing was bad, and something needed to be done.
That was pretty much it. Two multi-part questions and we all get on with life. The brief press conference lasted me until I was abreast of the Sheetz gas and convenience plaza on the SE corner of the intersection, and then it was just a couple cycles of the light and I was on my way north again.
I imagine the White House was happy that the news about the collection of phone records on AP reporters didn’t break until after the press opportunity was over. That would really have snarled things, and frankly, I have enough gridlock and snarling in my life as it is.
I wonder sometimes why people run for second terms. They seem like they are more trouble than they are worth sometimes.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Out
(Clark’s gun shop in rural Opal, the gateway to the South. Photo Clark Bos.)
I thought about Mom yesterday- disconcerting not to have to send flowers or make the call to wish her the best returns of the day. This is the second one without her, and not being numb, or in the hospital, it struck me much harder than last year.
RIP, Mom, I was thinking of you.
Monday? Crap! I woke up at the farm. I should run the Bluesmobile to keep the battery charged, and ought to drive the World’s Fastest Production Pick Up Truck back up north and have some routine maintenance done that did not happen last year. Not going to happen, probably, maybe next week.
Jon-without-an-H showed up at Big Pink on Saturday at ten sharp and we moved filing cabinets and crap down to his red Ranger and came down to the Farm to continue stacking my life in the garage. Part of the deal was that he had come into a modest inheritance that included some nice firearms. He was interested in a stop at Clark’s, the all-purpose gun shop on Route 29 in beautiful Opal, VA.
I had my handicapped placard in the backpack, since that is the only way to get anywhere near the store, given the crowds that pack the place on the weekends, trying to stock up on sanity or madness. We got out I-66 without event and got past the Dulles turnoff and the speed-trap State Patrol operates right where the gridlock stops and anxious people jump on the accelerator, and to the bypass around Gainesville on Rt 15 to Rt -29 and the spot on the road where George Armstrong Custer almost got smoked by Confederate cannon fire, and the place a little further on in Warrenton where “Little Mac” McClellan was relieved by President Lincoln, and where the little General of the Army of the Potomac threw himself a parade that stretched a mile-and-half and on to the junction of Route 17 and the turn-off to the parking lot of the gun shop.
It was not as frantic as it has been- there where two handicapped spots open and Jon-without swung into one of them. He had some questions about the firearms and walked into the shop with one of them- a Browning Hi-power in his hand. No one blinked.
The staff is always courteous, which may be a function of a bunch of heavily armed people wandering the aisles, and of course the staff is packing to a man. Anyway, Kurt confirmed that Jon-without had indeed come into possession of a 9mm handgun of high quality.
Jon-without took out a list of ammunition calibers for the other weapons and asked for a couple boxes of each.
“9mm?” he asked.
“Out,” said Kurt.
“.357?”
“Out.”
“38 Special?”
“Out.”
“.22 Long Rifle?”
“Out.”
“.30 caliber carbine?” My ears perked up- that was an unusual cartridge for a handgun- basically a rifle round suitable for medium range shooting and pretty good stopping power.
“I can let you have one box a day, 50 rounds.”
“That’s it?”
Kurt nodded. “That’s it.”
“Can I back order?” Kurt shook his head. “We are only doing that with a weapons purchase. Otherwise, check back daily and see what has come in.”
I was lucky- I found a couple boxes of odd-ball calibers I can always use more of, and when the purchasing was complete, we walked back out to the truck. “That is unbelievable,” said Jon-without. “How did this situation come about?”
I buckled my seat belt. “Might have something with that billion rounds of ammunition the Feds bought, or maybe it is people just panicking and clearing the shelves in case Congress does something.”
“But they won’t, will they?”
I looked out the window at the Park-and-Eat drive-in at the junction. “They are never going to stop trying. In the meantime, the Second Amendment says that the right to keep guns shall not be infringed. The Founders didn’t say anything about ammunition.”
We rolled on through Remington and Brandy Station, where the Spite House borrods on the hill where J.E.B. Stuart’s headquarters once stood and the north exit to Culpeper’s Big Box stores peels off, and past the new Highs School, and got off the big road at Rt 3, where Grant set off for the Wilderness after the winter he spent with his army in town.
We swung under the brow of Mt. Pony and the Cold War bunker where the Federal Reserve stored a few billion in small bills to re-start the economy after disaster or nuclear exchange. The Farm looked pretty good when we swung onto the gravel drive and backed up to the garage to unload the crap.
I entered the code to make the doors work and looked at the other crap stacked up in the shadows under the metal roof next to the silent black pick-up truck.
I saw a few of the lizards scuttling around on the walls when I pried open the door to the office as we unloaded, which did not take long. “Do geckos eat paper?” I mused aloud.
“I think they eat bugs,” replied Jon-wthout, unlocking the back window of the camper top.
“I think that is right,” I said. “I had a buddy who had geckoes sent to him in Vietnam from the Philippines,” I said, hopefully. “They seemed to keep some of the critters down in his hooch.”
“He lived in a hooch?” asked Jon. He was attired in coveralls and steel-toed boots, fully prepared for any moving contingency. All he needed was an embroidered “Jon” on his breast to be a complete working man. Funny the costumes we can assume- like the going-to-work grownups suits and bow ties.
“Yeah,” I said. “And the big adventure was to go to the Ville, diddy-mau.” Jon-without looked at me quizzically. I shrugged. “Different war, different times.”
We did some shooting with the Russians later, with the only ammunition Jon-without had been able to purchase, and then headed back to the city. I figured I could make another load move itself down the next day in the Panzer, but I was going to stay over Sunday night and have drinks with the Russians and sit out and watch their bees, and listen to the cicadas.
It was a solid plan, and well executed- except it is Monday, and I have to get my butt back Up North.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twig and Branch, In the Fleet
(USS Forrestal (CV-59) on the hook off Toulon, 1989. Anchored out, contract ferries and ship’s utility boats got us to the bright lights of France. Photo USN.)
It was November, 1989, in Toulon, France. It was first night in port, and I had the fever. I made a significant tactical error leaving the boat, having got hooked up with the Grownups. for them meant the first liberty boat was out of the question. The Air Group Commander- the CAG- and his Deputy had many decisions to make. There was a detachment of people and airplanes on the ground at the airfield at Hyeres, preparing for an exercise with the French. That in turn meant decisions on how to support the maintenance troops, spare parts to transport and communications to establish.
We rode in the launch toward shore, past the moonlit white cliffs, past the breakwater and the fortress and finally to Fleet Landing. We exited the Utility-boat and walked across a vast parking lot to the old port.
CAG’s car was located at the Naval Base across the harbor, so we walked past the sidewalk cafes of the old port and around the corner to Naval Headquarters. In the parking lot was a Peugeot with some baffling mechanism that connected the key-fob to the door locks. It took about ten minutes for the group of skilled professionals to figure it out.
Life with the Grownups is a challenge. The Kids wanted bright lights, music and alcohol; regrettably, it looked like we were headed for a Staff Dinner in a little place the Deputy remembered from a previous cruise, where we could dine as formally as in the wardroom.
We rocketed along the main drag and down the coast until we were very nearly parallel to where the ship lay at anchor. We had a couple beers in a roadside bistro before discovering the cute restaurant the Deputy had selected was closed for the season. We wound up back in town, and ate something incomprehensible in a bistro.
Later, ambling back along the waterfront to Fleet Landing, we saw all manner of extraordinary sights.
One of my finest young intelligence officers was passed out at a sidewalk cafe. I walked over and shook his shoulder hard. After a moment or two I got an opened eye that rolled around the orbit and closed again. He had some squadron mates with him, and I estimated he would make it back to the ship.
“It’s OK, CAG. This man is in possession of the Nation’s most sensitive military secrets. We can count on his discretion.”
Along the street the whores beckoned in their fur coats, opening them to reveal satin baby-dolls underneath. At length the dichotomy between the Grownup and the Children’s program became overwhelming. CAG and DCAG headed on to Fleet Landing and the Kids went uptown to The Gut, where we drank till closing.
The boat ride home is long, chilly and damp. One thing you can always say is that a chilly damp time ashore is always better than a warm dry one underway.
Pleased to be back to the ship alive and in one piece, I climbed the accom ladder to the fantail. I produced my ID card and started to walk away when one of the Master at Arms said: “Please step over here, Sir, so we can frisk you.”
I kept my cool even though I was seething inside. “Not a problem” I responded “let’s just find a Lieutenant Commander or above to do it.”
It was my choice to stand on the regulation. There is indignity enough on the bird farm, and the regulations state that it is the prerogative of an officer to be searched only by another of the same rank or senior. I had nothing to hide, having only my ID card and some rumpled franc notes.
The MAAs declined, and started to jack me around. Cops are cops, whether in the Fleet or on the beat, and they like nothing better than to bring the powerful low. “Twig” Branch was a LCDR too at the time, a light attack pilot doing his ship’s company tour as Navigator on Forrestal. He had the misfortune to have the deck as Officer of the Day- or night, as the case may be.
They kept me waiting for about ten minutes. My anger was rising, and I struggled to retain my composure. I wasn’t going to take it out on the troops, who were just doing what they had been ordered, and a scene, naturally enough, would turn into what they had begun calling an “alcohol-related incident” those days. I cooled my heels and held my temper.
Finally Twig came over and leaned close. “Well, you know, Vic, you’re right. Enlisted can’t search Officers, but that is just the way it is. You know Shakey Jacobsen, the Bull’s XO? He made a big deal out of it last cruise and he wound up as permanent Search Officer.”
I took it as a direct threat. So angry I was quivering, I submitted to the search by the MAA Master Chief. There was nothing for him to find, of course, but I felt degraded and violated. The issue wasn’t being searched. It was who over who had the right to do it.
When it was done, I was so pissed I could barely see straight. I walked through the hangar bay with Moose. He had hung back to observe the scene just in case things went to shit. He listened to the first installment of my outraged harangue in the stateroom on the 0-2 level forward, and said good night.
I fell asleep wondering why Twig hadn’t just done the pat down himself and saved everyone embarrassment and trouble?
I awoke in the brown chair, almost twenty years later. The Carrier show had cycled through the first run and was on the encore version, playing at just the same moment in episode three when I had dropped off. The former Strike Group Sailor of the Year was talking about the bad choice he made on liberty that had just cost him his career.
I yawned and shut everything down. I padded back down the hall to try to get to sleep again. As I did, I remembered the morning long ago. I had a hangover, and decided it could have been a lot worse; I could have let my anger get out of control. Choosing to submit had been the right thing to do, since the system is a lot bigger than the individual.
That next morning, years ago, I was up early to read the message boards down in Mission Planning and felt miserable for a couple hours. The Wing Ops Officer called and laid some DCAG-level tasking on me. I went through target files and collated kneeboard cards for about half the targets we are going to fly against in company with the French, and looked at the traffic about the Summit that was going to be held with President Bush and Secretary Gorbachev at Malta.
(DCAG on inspection. Photo USN).
I saw Moose out in the passageway. He is an Academy type and political, like Twig. He recommended that I brief DCAG about the scene on the fantail last night. I realized pre-emption was a really good idea, and rapped on the door and got ready to take a blast. My fine sensibilities didn’t seem quite as clean cut as they did the night before, and I was thinking maybe I should have sold my principles down the river and gone along, sheep-like, with the program.
The Deputy yelled out for me to come in. I contritely told my tale of anguish and he laughed.
“So you were the one. That was quite a topic at the Morning Meeting. The Ship was saying some Airwing Officer wouldn’t cooperate with the MAA’s.”
The Ship’s XO had twisted the story around, and he claimed I had refused to be searched at all. “DCAG, I stood still for that. I just asked for my right to be searched by a fellow officer of the appropriate grade.”
I waited to be placed in House Arrest, Confined to Quarters for the rest of the port visit. Shit. Nothing good ever happens after midnight.
The Deputy laughed. “There are only two people on the ship qualified to search me, and I’d freeze in hell before I let anyone else do it.” He dismissed me with a chuckle, and said there might be a Staff Dinner ashore that night, and to brush up on my French before we got ashore.
I wandered away, relieved that my choice had not cost more. I ate lunch down in Wardroom Two; fried fish, wax beans and possibly the worst macaroni and cheese I had ever tasted.
Turning out the lights in 2008, I marveled at the whole thing. The Deputy wound up getting four stars out his career, and Twig has one already. In 2013, he is getting a third and I am betting he is in the running for another one after that. Of course, he will have to navigate the rocks and shoals of his new Corps of Information Dominance, but I am confident that he is up to the task. He has certainly dealt with us before.
You never know how these things are going to turn out, do you? It is all in the nature of the choices, twig and branch, all the way to the end.
(Leaving town, a little sadder and a little wiser. Photo USN.)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twig and Branch, Pt. 2
Then-Captain Ted N. Branch at the Change of Command in USS Nimitz (CVN-68). Photo USN).
Rear Admiral- soon to be Vice Admiral- “Twig” Branch is a great guy, emblematic of a class of American with a tradition of military service. He is trim and fit and smart, and he has Tom Wolf’s Right Stuff in spades.
He hails from Long Beach, Mississippi, on the little sliver of the Magnolia State that fronts the Gulf, and with the long string of beaches that run from the Florida Panhandle through lower Alabama and on to Louisiana: the Red Neck Riviera.
Twig is a real Naval officer, not a 90-day wonder like me or Mac in the generations before. Twig is a ring-knocker, graduating from Annapolis in 1979 as an Ensign, heading back to the Gulf Coast for primary flight training at Pensacola, the Cradle of Naval Aviation.
To that degree, our careers had their first intersection, since I had completed the ground school phase of flight training as an Aviation Officer Candidate that was deemed necessary for officers heading for Air Intelligence jobs support Fleet tactical aviation the year before.
I was ordered to Denver, to AFAITC (I won’t bore you with explaining all the gobblety-gook acronyms) where I was indoctrinated into the mysteries of national technical means of intelligence collection and the basics of photo interpretation, and when the background investigations were complete, how SIGINT and the other exotic stuff fit in the all-source , and the selection process began. The path was well-established and the milestones plain.
We were supposed to perform well in the Fleet, go ashore and learn our trade and compete with other intelligence specialists and see if we “broke out of the pack” for positions of greater responsibility.
Rinse and repeat for nearly thirty years, and voila, a great career. Unless, of course, you got weeded out through some misstep. It happens to good people. I won’t bore you with the nature of those- you can imagine, I think.
This story is not about intelligence career paths, except that Twig’s career progression is directly related to the careers of all the fractious information communities in the Navy, from the weather-guessers through public affairs, to code-breakers and the ubiquitous intel folks who are supposed to make sense of it all.
As I mentioned yesterday, Twig is being elevated to command them all.
You might imagine there is some wailing and gnashing of teeth about that- there always is when someone gets picked and someone else is told it is time to “go home.” There is at least one exceptional officer who is, and I feel for him. I used to observe that there was only one officer who went all the way to the end of the process, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and at some point everyone else was told to retire.
I knew a retired three star line officer (different service) who was deeply bitter that he had never been to be his Service’s Chief, and had a real tail-spin after a life of success. Go figure.
For me, I knew the precise moment when it was time for me to go, and it was just at the time when all this consolidation process began, when the Navy decided to end the Radio Wars between the Cryptologists and Communicators and the Intel folks.
But that has now all come to pass. One of my pals, still on active duty, notes that we may have just buried more than the earthly remains of our shipmate Admiral Mac last month. A lot more.
But anyway, Twig and I started off for the Fleet about the same time, and it being a very small universe, it is not unusual that our paths crossed down through the years, but the path to become a Vice Admiral of the Unrestricted Line is mind-boggling in its complexity.
Twig’s career path was much more intricate, with points of critical evaluation and the possibility of failure at every level. Fortunately, Twig had luck and skill, and he never failed to meet the challenge at hand. This is an up-or-out institution, for good or ill, and the point is not to be the best Attack pilot in the world- it is to be the best officer under any circumstances.
Which is not to say that luck does not have a major component. Are you a talented officer in a warfare community whose aircraft is being retired from the inventory? A Non-nuclear trained General Submarine Officer? Sorry. A brilliant officer groomed for command of a conventionally powered aircraft carrier? Sorry, we are going all nuke. Thanks for your service. Don’t let the screen door hit you in the ass on the way out.
Add in the requirements for a Joint Duty tour that came with Goldwater-Nichols and there is not enough time in the day to accomplish everything, though somehow it all has to be shoe-horned into an operational career. It is a brutal process, often leads to “ticket punching,” and is completely without sympathy.
Twig’s record of advanced education- that is mandatory, too- doesn’t tell the story. He has a master’s degree in International Relations from the Naval War College at Newport, RI. The harder one is the cram-course for deep draft command coupled with the requirement to successfully complete nuclear power school.
Only a select few officers ever have a chance to become a commanding officer of any ship, much less a nuclear powered carrier. They select about six officers a year to enter the training pipeline for that duty. Twig learned a lot about ships, nuclear power and leadership during a 20-month process that will take him all around the country. Some of the schools he will take include Nuclear Power School, Nuclear Prototype, Nuclear Reactors and Surface Warfare Officer School.
Then, command of a real ship to gain experience. In Twig’s case it was AGF-11, the famous Coronado, in whose steel belly I spent two glorious years. The Navy just torpedoed her for training and she rests at the bottom of the ocean, rest her steel.
(USS Coronado, before she became an artificial reef. Photo USN).
He got Nimitz upon successful completion of that tour, and the Public Broadcasting people did a television series on what it was like to deploy under his command. He was photogenic, and the very image of the Captain we would all like to have at sea: firm but just, smart and savvy, and able to understand the problems and needs of the thousands of Sailors in his ship.
This is what it took for Twig to get here: XO in John C. Stennis (CVN 74), CO of Coronado (AGF 11) and Nimitz (CVN 68), commander as a boot one-star of Carrier Strike Group One in Carl Vinson Strike Group. During those tours, Twig deployed from both coasts to places so far away that they met in the middle. Green Ink (combat time in his pilot’s log book) included Grenada, Lebanon, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Iraq in a variety of operations both well and ill-considered by the National Command Authority: Urgent Fury, Earnest Will, Southern Watch, Deliberate Force, Iraqi Freedom, and a stab at humanitarian relief in Unified Response.
At the moment, Twig is AIRLANT, once a mighty assignment that has come down over the years as the Baronates of Air, Surface and Submarines were downgraded and streamlined. With his new selection, Twig will return to the OPNAV Staff where he previously had served as Director of Operations and Plans (N31), the same job held by Richmond Kelly Turner long ago.
On the resume, I challenge anyone to have bullets that include the trifecta of Ops/Plans (N31), N2 (Intel) and N6 (Communications). At least, that is, since the time of “Terrible” Turner.
That is some of the baggage that will be waiting in the outer office of N2/N6 when he gets here from Norfolk.
I first met Twig when he was doing his disassociated ship’s company tour on the good ship Forrestal, named for the former SECNAV James V. Forrestal, and the first Secretary of Defense, during which tour he felt himself compelled to hurl himself to his death from the tower of the Bethesda Naval Hospital.
In FID (“First in Defense!”) Twig was Navigator, and as a ship’s company officer, was eligible for all the myriad of watch-bills afloat and ashore.
It is the way the Navy works. There is no break in the 24-hour day of a living ship, with four or five thousand citizens and a hundred thousand pounds of steel headed somewhere with urgency, or just tied up alongside the pier in a foreign port with the Liberty Party off getting into assorted trouble.
As an intel bean-bag, I wasn’t subject to all of the watches- we were “restricted” line officers, and not eligible for command at sea, the holy grail for line officers. We intel folks were able to concentrate on one thing, or maybe better said, several sequential and directly related things. I liked my life, and always marveled at the number of things that the people who were being groomed for Big Things had to do.
At some point, most rational folks give up the struggle and concentrate on something specialized. Not Twig. He is expected to take over the portfolio of a unified SIGINT/Intel community with several major agendas he is expected to not countenance. I wish him well- the challenges he has faced before will pale in comparison with the implacable interests of the old communities.
I don’t know how this is going to work itself out. There are those who have major concerns, and others, like myself, who look back at the history and marvel that I had the chance to be a part of it.
To that end, I will take you back to a day- or a night- in the life of a ship deployed by a Navy before it turned itself inside out.
(A FID patch from the locker of fabric from former ships and squadrons. Photo Socotra.)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com