Twig and Branch
(Ted N. “Twig” Branch, nominated for the rank of Vice Admiral and duty as the N2/N6 on the OPNAV Staff. Photo USN).
I had not thought about “Twig” Branch in a few years- 2008, in fact.
It was evening then in Arlington, I cooked some dinner in the little kitchen and called a friend to find out about how her dog was doing. No answer.
“Carrier,” the PBS show about life on the USS Nimitz (CVN-68), lead ship of the most powerful warship ever to steam the world ocean. It was on at nine, and I sat resolutely to watch what a six-month deployment in the Fleet was like these days. It is a volunteer Navy, just as mine was. Everyone on the Boat made the choice to be there.
The opening credits have a profile of the Captain, and his face towers above his mighty ship. I thought about how our choices in life had brought us together, rafting down life in the Fleet. His choices had made him the master of USS Nimitz, named for Mac’s favorite boss. Mine had not, and I was OK with that.
Ted’s career was a rich one, and it is getting better. He just was nominated to get a third star and become King of the Spooks in the Naval Service. That is sort of a curious thing, since Twig is a Light Attack pilot- A-7s and F/A-18s, and also a graduate of the Naval Reactor School, and a decorated commander of deep-draft ships of the line.
He commanded the Bulls of VFA-37:
He has been selected to preside over the institutional product of over seventy years of bureaucratic infighting so intense that at one point the turf battle could have cost us victory in the Pacific War. I sincerely wish him the best on that.
The Good Doctor always reminds me that the Service has a sort of collective amnesia about its real history. Not the Public Affairs version it likes to trot out, but the real deal, the one based on budgets, priorities and misunderstandings, and conducted by men and women who carried the fires of Hell with them as part of their daily duties.
I think the amnesia makes it easier to handle, since each class of new Admirals is expected to believe impossible things by whatever flavor Administration happens to have been elected most recently. The institution must survive.
Our pal Mac had the 411 on all that real history, since he lived it. I listened in fascination to the tales of mendacity that went along with the heroism. The Navy has finally had enough of that, and a long slow process of integration has brought us the final few feet around the rosebush, and we are right back to the organizational structure the Navy enjoyed in 1940.
You know, the one that led direct to disaster. Mac would sip his Virgin Bloody Mary and shake his head about it. Those were the days when Richmond Kelly Turner owned radio intelligence and dismissed the considered opinions of the Office of Naval Intelligence. Turner owned the planning process to deal with Japan, and he based those plans on the radio intercepts that he got so desperately wrong.
Turner was a line officer, a battleship sailor with a serene and impermeable sense of himself, and a reputation as a bully. Mac would grin when I called him “Richmond Kelly Fucking Turner,” since he got away from the whole mess with his reputation intact. Not so much for the thousands of Sailors and Marines who died as a direct consequence of his actions.
It helped that he also had a good record in action, leading the Amphibious Force across the Pacific, island hopping in support of Doug MacArthur’s War to retake the Philippines, and Chester Nimitz, who was orchestrating Plan Orange, the attack across the broad Pacific to spear the Home Islands.
When the war was won, the contribution of the Spooks was still a secret so dark that it could not be breathed for another quarter century.
There had been an inquest in the immediate aftermath the Pearl Harbor attack. They had to have scapegoats, and ADM Husband Kimmel and Lt. Gen. Walter Short were the designated fall guys.
If you want the real guy on whom to pin the surprise of Pearl Harbor, it would be Richmond Kelly Fucking Turner. The war years featured great sacrifice, but much work was done to prepare for the real inquiry about how it all came to pass. File were mysteriously shredded, stories coordinated. When Mac’s boss Eddie Layton was summoned to talk to Congress in 1946 about what he knew, the stories were all worked out, and those responsible hid behind classification to ensure that by the time the truth came out, their careers and lives would be over.
It worked.
One of the loose ends was the stark divide between the code-breaking tribe and the intelligence tribe. The code breakers- later known as Cryptologists and now as Information Professionals were always a problem for the Navy, since they had a life-line to an Agency outside the control of the Admirals- the institution we now know as the National Security Agency. NSA had its own funding stream and autonomy from the military departments.
The other tribe- the intelligence weenies- did fairly well, but they too had allegiances and funding outside the control of the Service, and it was an irritation to generations of men who occupied the office of the Chief of Naval Operations. The matter came to a head in the Obama Administration. The Tailhook scandal had marginalized the Aviation tribe within the Navy, and with it the special relationship between pilots and their air intelligence officers.
The Ship Drivers who ran the Navy in the wake of the scandal had little experience with the Intel weenies, and much more with the embedded cryptologic personnel who went with them on collection missions they were rarely cleared to fully understand.
In the end, it was money and billets and flag authorizations that caused a brilliant scheme to be developed. One of the brighter members of one of the warring tribes was empowered with a third star, and a charter to knock heads and consolidate the cats and dogs into a Corps of Information Dominance.
As with many intractable problems, it was a good idea. An intelligence officer presided on the consolidation of the communities, and then the office was turned over to…an amiable helicopter pilot. Lacking only the amiable part, we are now right back to 1940.
The helo driver, in turn, will be relieved by Twig, the Hornet guy with nuclear credentials. I like Twig, and have a history with him. I think he is a good guy, a smart guy, and a talented guy. He has done it all, from launch and recovery on a pitching deck on a black-ass night to driving a nuclear-powered Supercarrier. Twig is the man.
I will have to tell you about the times we shared tomorrow- they were fun, and given the times, this is probably as good as it gets for the Community of which I was part.
I wish Mac was still alive. I would ask him what they thought about that in 1941.
(ADM Richmond Kelly Turner on one of his better days. Photo USN).
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Playing Offense
(Think you are having a bad day? Lt. Col. Krusinski’s mug shot. Photo Arlington County Police via AP).
I think the Wings lost in OT, and that is it for the truncated season and post-season quest for Lord Stanley’s Cup. I don’t know if the Wings lacked offense, I wasn’t awake.
I could have been at the Nat’s game in which their offense triumphed over the Tigers, 3-1, but I think I hurt my leg again horsing around furniture in the unit and did not want to risk the walk up the ramps at the fancy new stadium. I didn’t hear anything about the PowerBall jackpot. I threw a $20 bill at some numbers while sitting with Old Jim at the bar, but I didn’t hear any news that I had won. Pity. We had pretty much made plans to spend the whole $222 million.
Maybe that is why I was awake way too early, and what awaited me was more analysis from the media. For me, that starts with the BBC content delivered in the hours of darkness on NPR, since they can’t support a real 24-hour news cycle, and instead give us one of the world’s most respected purveyors of News.
This morning I was stumped by the time we got around to the hours when Americans talk about America. What are we to make of incidents like Cleveland and the kidnapping, serial rapes and the rest that played out over a decade?
That is a hard one.
Take an easier one. What are we to make of the drunken assault perpetrated by an active duty Lieutenant Colonel named Jeffrey Krusinski? It was right here in my Blue Arlington, VA. He was arrested and charged with sexual battery by local law enforcement.
So far, so good, but it gets much better. Krusinski, in his day job, was the officer in charge of sexual assault prevention programs for the Air Force. He had just completed his annual sexual assault victim training. Maureen Dowd had one of her hit-it-out-of-the-park essays in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/opinion/dowd-americas-military-injustice.html?hp&_r=0
One of my pals in an adjacent country wrote to ask me what I thought about it, since my active service spanned the pre-and-post Tailhook universes in the Navy.
I wrote back at some length, trying to work through the fact that criminal behavior is criminal behavior, that sexual assault should be punished, and that I generally have no truck with violence in the larger society, much less the small sub-set of the military. But there is more to this, of course.
I live in a town where people sit around and game these things out. I was talking to Chanteuse Mary at Willow last night. She works for one of the industry groups in town.
My progressive media input, NPR, had a great story about the sheer number of professional lobbyists. They mentioned Mary’s organization as having nearly two hundred well-paid people who knock on doors, generate point papers and talking points, and generally influence how this ponderous beast of a government really works with ideas and money.
Mary said that they did.
Which led me to a minor epiphany about media and narrative. I am such a chump. I listen to what is presented and accept it, sort of at face value, just like everyone else.
What I had not considered was the Unifying Field Theory. Since the interests in this town are so narrowly balanced, and all sides so well funded, it takes a defining moment to change the calculus of the balance of power.
The old saying here parallels Harry Truman’s advise about having a friend in Washington. Some people get dogs. The other one is that “if you are explaining, you are losing.”
It is always better to play offense than difference. What we see as the News is actually just the offense being played out in a really serious game of hard-ball. Much more seriously than the Detroit Tigers or the Detroit Red Wings.
No revelation there, and I am not going to play defense this morning on any particular issue. For one that does not have raw visceral emotion, take the bill wending its way through the Congress about taxing everything sold on the Internet.
Governments at all levels want more revenue. One of the talking points probably generated by the brick-and-mortar stores is that it is only fair for competition. I flinch instinctively when I hear the word “fairness,” since that normally is followed by a tug on my back pocket, but the countervailing talking point is that it would make Socotra Industries LLC subject to 9,600 tax jurisdictions if I decided to sell coffee cups on the site.
I have no idea what is true, and I think that probably goes for my elected idiots as well. Why not just leave it alone?
Oh, forgot. There are lobbyists involved. And it would not be “fair.”
I am not going to tick off the litany of cases that illustrate my larger point. Sometimes the defense actually wins, but by the time the tattered truth eventually plops out, the party is over and moved on to the next indefensible horror.
I think that might be why the GOP always seems to be losing. They only have the one network, after all.
For what it is worth, I agree with Maureen Dowd on this particularly grotesque event, at least for the most part. But of course, she is one of the ones who gets to play offense all the time.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vocsocotra.com
Big Ticket Items
(F-35 in flight. You don’t want to know what they cost, or that pilots report the airplane is a dog. Photo USAF.)
I should be happy. The Dow-Jones is over 15,000, and my meager investments are doing pretty well. Of course, there is no other place for money to go, and why would I think that the smart guys are just pumping up another bubble, just like the one in housing they are inflating again.
There is a hint of blue in the cotton-wool sky. I am hoping that means the long trudge from the Commissary lot to the visitor’s entrance of the Big Aluminum Bread Box on Joint Base Bolling-Anacostia will be dry.
There is a video teleconference with an activity overseas someplace and we will get to ask questions about a complex bit of business that appears wired to be won by a competitor.
That is fine, and that is the way things work, except that no one at the moment seems to know how things work. This is a learning experience for all of us- contractors and Government officials alike.
Sources on the inside say there is a “big audit” coming, something directed by the Office of Management and Budget through the Defense Contract Audit Agency, an outfit I hope you have never heard of, but one that can put the Fear of God into bureaucrats and contract personnel alike.
The prospect of some green-eyeshade types drinking weak government coffee and scrutinizing the books is enough to put anyone off, but also is causing an excess of caution, something that the Government has been notoriously short on over the last decade of wars and waste.
The people who administer contracts, be they the working-level government officials that I deal with all the time, aren’t the direct problem. They just do what they are told. The Big Chill seems to radiate from the executive suite, where the government lawyers have layered the senior officials away. No one wants to look like they are too cozy with the contractor community.
I would say there is a tinge of paranoia in all this. I don’t work with the folks at the Department of Energy, so I don’t know if the millions and millions of TARP funds sprinkled over the renewable power industry ever got the same level of scrutiny. I would certainly hope so- that would imply that a wave of accountability is breaking out across the government, but I am not holding my breath.
Instead, I am betting that this is more likely a concerted effort to pluck the Big Goose in the President’s discretionary budget. I sympathize with Mr. Obama- one of his second term issues clearly was to establish his budget priorities outside of the dizzying and urgent framework of war and necessity. I assume that is why maverick Republican Chuck Hagel is now Secretary- he is supposed to break china and free up bucks for other things.
I enjoyed Leon Panetta’s tenure at the Department- he is my kind of politician. They loved him at CIA. He bought into the agenda of the Directorate for Operations there, a tricky bit of work, and openly defied a couple Directors of National Intelligence, essentially neutering the new structure put in place by the 9/11 Commission.
You remember that, right? The issue where the Intelligence Community and Law Enforcement didn’t tell each other about foreign nationals taking flight training, overstaying their visas, and being involved in jihadi politics?
Yeah, nothing there resonates after Boston.
A couple fun reads about what is going on in the real war- the one between the Administration, the Pentagon and the people at Langley- include “Legacy of Ashes,” Tim Weiner’s attempt at an unclassified history of the Central Intelligence Agency, and “The Way of the Knife,” Mark Mazetti’s landmark hatchet job on how the CIA provided a deadly and effective scalpel for the Executive Branch.
Both are political works- no surprise there- but there is enough that is absolutely true in my personal experience that I can recommend both to contextualize what is going on in your National Security Establishment.
But of course there is much more. The awful stories about sexual abuse in the military establishment is big news this week, as it should be, but it is hardly a new issue and the knowledge that there are lingering social problems in the Department should come as no surprise to anyone.
The only question is, “Why now?” One answer is that it is time. Another might be that the necessity to be supportive of the established order by our leaders is past, and there is something else going on.
Watch along with me as this plays out. Sexual assault is criminal behavior. The Administration is outraged, as it should be. Though why this week, with this Secretary, is something of a mystery. But the idea that now that the wars are over and al Qaida is on the ropes is necessary to dial back military spending. That is why that narrative- and I think the jury ought to be rightly out on that- produces official statements that Maj. Hassan’s murderous rampage at Fort Hood was “workplace violence,” or that six months in Dagestan was just a way for some lost and troubled kid to find the URLs to bomb-making texts on the Web.
Forgive me if I voice the suspicion that something else is going on. There are no coincidences in this town, and all these scandals appear to be hanging, fully tailored, in a closet somewhere to be trotted out when the time is right.
(The fine M1A2 Abrams main battle tank that doesn’t quite fit in any prospective war plans, but which are being inserted into the Army budget. Photo US Army).
I need to insert another disclaimer here: There is plenty of evidence that that the Big Ticket acquisition programs- the place that industry makes the real bucks off the Department- have failed. The Army is being told to buy tanks it claims it does not need. The once-affordable F-35 Joint strike fighter program has got real and significant problems. The navy’s Littoral Combat Ship is under-manned, under-gunned, and not ready for prime time.
All those programs have entrenched constituencies. Against them, the needs of the people who have deployed again and again and again in conflicts against implacable foes matter little, you know? I think you know where the cuts are going to be found, but to do that effectively, you need to undermine faith in the institution.
My pals- women and men- had faith. I did, too.
Now watch what they do. I am betting the Big Ticket stuff does just fine. The people ought to be ready to take cover. They do not appear to matter nearly as much.
(The Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship- LCS- that is not ready for any discernible or likely mission. Photo USN.)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Through a Glass, Darkly
(A Senior Executive and attorney discuss important technological advances at the Amen Corner of the Willow Bar. Photo Socotra).
Monday. The skies were gray, and fritzed pensively through the morning. I had a load of Goodwill crap- stuff I had purchased, without memory, and dropped it off on the way to work. Despite the rain, it was time to get the sticky yellow pollen off the Panzer, and see how bad the dent on the liftgate really was.
The first dent is sort of liberating. The vehicle is still shiny, most places, but now it is mine, complete with screw-ups.
I decided to go to Willow. The Tigers are in town this week for a rare inter-league appearance, and there is the real possibility of actually going to a game. Grant-the-Realtor was scheduled for Tuesday evening with a contractor to replace the vanities in the baths, and the Maids, for that matter, during the day.
So, Monday was the off night until the end of the week and I went for it.
So did the Johns- with and without- and Old Jim, of course, and my boss and her boss and Senior Executive Jeff and in a surprise Monday appearance, Liz-with-an-S stopped by to brighten a gray day.
There was not a single mention of politics, the hearings coming up, the coming train-wreck (name your train) or Syria or anything else recent. Given the all-star line-up at the bar, I slipped my iPad out of my back-back and clicked a couple pics, including the exotic Sabrina the Gypsy behind the bar.
“Good thing people don’t mind you doing that,” growled Jim. “You know the next big thing is about here.”
“You mean the Chinese Army hacking all our computer shit?”
“No, the fact that we are all going paparazzi.” I looked at him, puzzled.
“What do you mean? I just take pictures of food and the people at the Amen Corner.”
“That may be OK, but there is a time coming when everything is going to be imaged, wherever you are.”
“We knew public surveillance cameras were going to be coming all over,” said John-with, trying desperately to complete a competing anecdote about the five top prep schools in the nation, one of which he was a proud alumni, and who actually run the world, just like the Illuminati.
“My school has landscape design by Frederick Law Olmstead.”
“Yeah, yeah. But increased surveillance just makes sense after Boston.”
Jim did not want to talk about the various cradles of WASP power. He was more interested in the technology. “Google Glass,” he said firmly and put his long neck Bud on the bar firmly. “It is a pair of glasses that you can wear all the time, and which can do everything your smart phone can do.”
“So, let me get this straight. A pair of glasses that takes pictures? So what. We already carry around cameras on our phones.”
“No, Glass is more like a wearable smartphone. It is a “hands-free” application that is worn around the head, just like normal glasses.”
I pulled out my iPad and Googled it, clicking on the “images” tab. There were dozens of pictures of a decidedly geekie device on an ugly wire frame. I passed the iPad down the bar. “They look stupid,” I said. “And that wearable computer shit has been around forever. The Army used to boast that every solider would be a sensor.”
“If this was an idea, or a budget gimmick, that would be one thing. These are here, now, just about to hit the market. And they will not look stupid. They are working with the high-end frame manufacturers. You will be able to wear a pair of Ray-Ban Wayfarers and no one will know you are taping and recording their every move.”
“That sounds creepie. Plus, it will end most bar-room discussions, at least the interesting ones.”
“You aren’t getting it,” said Jon-without in his quiet manner. “This takes everything to the next level. It won’t be cell-phones or texting while driving. It will be everything all the time, people watching videos, making videos, we will be so in the moment all the time that we won’t really be here at all.”
“That ought to be illegal,” I said. “I mean the driving part. I can’t imagine wanting to record real life. I think that is why the video camera died. Who has the time.”
Liz-S shook her fine mane of chestnut hair. “No, and that is not all. Google is already in preliminary production for an operating system that drives your car, all by itself. The technology is being proven now.”
“Does it park the car, too? That could enable me to spend a lot more time here.”
(Some of the really cool apps that no one is going to be able to live without this year. Look out. Photo Google via High-Tech Post.com)
“Las Vegas has already banned them. The capability is so far beyond card counting that the House may not always have the odds on its side.”
“Wait, so this is just about taking capabilities that exist now and packaging them in a different manner?”
“That is the future, Vic. It doesn’t just appear full-blown from the forehead of Zeus. It is all how it is packaged, and then how it changes how we act. These trial versions are obvious. They will not be obvious when they are actually on the market. You will not know who you are talking to, ever.”
I took a picture of Jim as he glowered at me from the apex of the Amen Corner. “So when will the world and everything in it change. Not a date, but generally?” I asked.
Liz-S said “They plan to introduce them this year, and the prediction is that we will all be wearing them soon.”
“Well, this is going to distract drivers, upend relationships and strip people of what little privacy they still have in public.”
“Right. What was your point?”
I waved at Sabrina. I knew the car was not going to drive me home, but another glass of happy hour white seemed suddenly like an excellent idea.
“Google takes the attitude that people should have nothing to hide from intrusive technology,” continued Liz-S, and as an attorney, I had to weigh her words carefully.
“So, “ I said. “What they say is if you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place?”
“Fuck that,” said old Jim.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Ancient History
The cicadas are here. They were crawling up out of the ground after seventeen patient years, drying their wings on the new beehives the Russians have installed. Mattski brought one over on his forefinger, and it was as spectacular a specimen as the ones from 1996: dark husky body and harmless, though menacing, bright red eyes.
Their last arrival is now ancient history, and I feel bad about the bugs that went to ground that since has been paved over. Still, most will rise from the earth and I expect the sound of their mating ritual will swell over the next few weeks, when it is finally time to get those pesky (so far) imaginary tomatoes in the ground.
The Russians already have the potatoes and cabbage in, and they grown their plants from seed, the old fashioned way.
All that- and the reminder to plant marigolds with the vegetables for pest avoidance- was the last thing to be done before slogging back north to put the weekend- and me- to bed.
The cicadas and the planting put me in a contemplative mood about the nature of time. I remember the splash that happened back in October of last year.
The attack on the Embassy in Benghazi was still fresh and raw, and the truth, which shall set you free, was one of those things that seemed completely mutable. The murder of a US Ambassador- a position I recall from my time dealing with protocol weenies is the equivalent of a Four Star General or Admiral- and three other brave kids had almost instantly become a political football, and I marveled at the time- and now, for that matter, that the deaths of good Americans could so swiftly be turned into something so banal and disrespectful.
We are unhinged, it would seem. The Administration was desperate to ensure that the voting public would accept that the murders were just a sort of “shit happens” sort of incident, not the act of an implacable and well-organized foe. That the story should now be about the Republican-ruled House versus the lap-dog Senate and the Administration also fills me with something near to despair about the state of the discourse in this great land.
I remember Secretary Clinton’s astonishing performance in those Groucho Marx glasses, her voice rising in outrage about “what does it matter” about who did it or why the murders were committed. Presidential Press Secretary Jay Carney piled on with something unique to jurisprudence this past week, when the statute of limitations for murder appeared to be dramatically truncated: “Benghazi was a long time ago,” was how he began one of his signature dismissive responses to a question from the Press Corps.
I used to be one of those chumps assigned overseas, which may be why I take these political matters personally. Eight months is now ancient history. Well, perhaps. We will see how that works out as the civil war in Syria spins out of control.
I gather the approach will be the usual one- we will dither our way out of poor options until there are only truly awful ones remaining.
Meanwhile, the Israelis have taken an active role in striking targets inside their neighbor to the north, apparently putting to rest the idea that the Syrian air defense network would provide a deterrent to an air campaign. I have no idea which of the extremists jihadi groups we will wind up supporting, except I can only hope it is not one of the ones that is actively at war with us, except they all are.
Anyway, no one on the radio seemed to have a better idea, and I had to make a run to the store for supplies once I got the Panzer down to the farm. Croftburn Farms was out of free-range eggs, and the farmer’s market would be shutting down by the time I could get there, so off to the actual supermarket it was. I decided to try the plaza on the south end of town- I thought I had seen a supermarket there when investigating the health club I joined, but could not recall if it was a Food Lion (ugh) or a Safeway (ick).
It turned out to be a Safeway, and I had my best compromise with organic eggs in short order. There was only one cashier working, so I had plenty of time in the check-out line to look at the magazines.
You know the ones: ten tips to a better life in the bedroom, creating the perfect six-pack, the continuing Kardashian train-wreck, La Lohan’s latest arrest and the Last Print Issue of the venerable newsmagazine Newsweek.
This wasn’t quite as ancient a bit of history as Benghazi, though almost. Editor Tina Brown boldly declared last October“an important development at Newsweek and The Daily Beast. Newsweek will transition to an all-digital format in early 2013. As part of this transition, the last print edition in the United States will be our Dec. 31 issue.”
That date has a hell of a shelf life, since The Last Print Issue is still in the rack at the check-out line.
Having plenty of time on my hands, I looked through the retrospective articles about the great day of print, when Time and Newsweek and US News and World Report drove the political discussion. That was back in the day when Congress worked more than a couple days a week and murders were treated…well, you know.
Anyway, I bought a copy of that last issue because I have been tasked with transitioning my own little magazine- the Quarterly publication I put out twice a year- to an all digital format. Things are moving too fast these days, and content is obsolete as swiftly as the Benghazi attack, regardless of who is stirring up the pot.
Tina Brown helpfully commented the “Newsweek will expand its rapidly growing tablet and online presence, as well as its successful global partnerships and events business.”
I guess that is the line I am going to take. Anything else is ancient history and not worth thinking about, right?
(Ancient History: some Greatest Hits from a now-irrelevant icon. Photo Daily Beast).
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Cinco de Mayo and The Cup
Image of the bookish-appearing General Ignacio Zargoza. Courtesy of the Museo Nacional De Historia, INAH)
There is no gunfire this morning at Refuge Farm- at least not yet- to commemorate the 1862 Battle of Puebla, and the unlikely victory of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguin over the professional soldiers of the Emperor of France, Napoleon Trois.
Don’t confuse this holiday with Mexican Independence Day, which is in September sometime. This is an important holiday, naturally, and as usual we have taken it to our bosom here in America as another opportunity for public displays of excessive alcohol consumption.
What with the Derby last night, I already got that out of my system. The Russians came by to witness the most exciting two minutes in sports- which is akin to a long suffering lover with a chronic case of premature conclusion, but watching the race was a fun (if brief) time.
We turned off the television and went back to the satellite radio once Orb had cooled down and been blanketed in roses. I am skeptical about the racing game. I did not think about it much in the past, but the rash of doping cases and evident institutional cruelty in the industry- the enterprise can only be called that, not the sport of Napoleons anymore- makes me leery of all the hoopla.
(The 86th Running of the Virginia Gold Cup yesterday at Great Meadow in Loudoun County. Photo Washington Post).
But I had a Julep or two anyway, just for the triple coincidence of Ignacio’s victory, the Derby and the event at Great Meadow up in Loudoun County.
You can feel the horse world getting the late arrival of Spring behind it. The rigs are rumbling down our little farm lane, headed for Rosemary’s Summerduck Run Barn and the first events of the season. Virginia’s Gold Cup at Great Meadow was this weekend as well, and they were predicting 50,000 stylishly dressed race fans to show up and man the rail.
For years, it was an event I loved. I would grab my camera and donned straw hat and seersucker suit for the event, and take the bus to hang on the rail, but my heart wasn’t in it this year. I do like to look at the lady’s hats, and the pounding of the hooves when the horses come by does thrill the heart.
It would not have worked. There was a full Panzer full of crap to be conveyed to the Farm, and a dozen complications I won’t bore you with, except that the freight elevator had been reserved for the move-in of a unit on the 7th Floor, and I was in a surly mood by the time I had crossed off one item on The Stager’s significant list of tasks.
Unloading at the farm made me appreciate how nice it is to be able to walk again, unassisted, and hanging on the rail for the six races leading up to the Gold Cup would not have been practical. Not that practicality has much to do with the world these days. The poor word has been abused almost as much as the term “common sense,” which normally now precedes some notion that isn’t.
Like when a political commentator starts out with the phrase “The fact of the matter is….”
But I am down on the farm and won’t have to deal with the idiots inside the Beltway until cocktail hour tonight. The interesting thing about moving is what surfaces. Objects are distributed in a certain sedimentary layering, and one of the things that fell out of the pile I was shifting from one dark place to another was a little blue box.
There was something in it, though I could not recall what it might be. I opened it up and discovered a butane lighter I purchase in Shanghai a long time ago. When opened, it plays China’s national anthem “March of the Volunteers” in a spectacularly tinny and irritating fashion.
I tried the button and the thing worked, after a fashion, and I slipped it into the pocket of my shorts with a shrug and got on with the day. Now it is at the farm, and still irritating, though the Great Helmsman’s steady gaze gives a certain gravitas to the breakfast table.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
The Stager
(Admiral Rex’s women are going. China girl made the cut. The Salukis are toast. Forward! All photos Socotra).
I knew the harem girls were going to have to go. That was a given, and the really cool etching of the Hungarian Princess being seduced by the Gypsy girl in the back room, or the Charlotte Rampling topless image in the SS hat and gloves from the back bathroom.
I also knew the stained glass maize-and-blue Block M would have to come down- I mean, I wouldn’t buy a property from a known Buckeye, right? And I totally understand about the Christmas lights, though leaving them up year-round has been an enormous time saver.
One has to be sensitive to regional sensibilities, I know, but the depths of the depersonalization of the living space that was directed was a little breathtaking. We were in Proposal Hell at the office when I first met with Grant-the-Realtor, and I didn’t completely process what he was saying. He had been blunt enough when he observed at our first meeting “you certainly seem to have had a colorful career.”
What I think he meant was that there was certainly a lot of quirky junk filling up every corner of the unit, and what he needed, from a sales perspective, was some space in which potential buyers could imagine their crap without being overwhelmed by mine.
Fine, I thought. It had been a while since I moved- longer than most of my life, considering that Big Pink has been my primary residence for nearly a dozen years.
And the crap was indeed piling up. Time to lean it down, but first there was a consultation with a mysterious creature called a Stager. I took that sanity day Thursday and ran a big steamer trunk filled with picture frames and once precious memories down to the farm, and the Shippensburg Box, the wooden crate that might once have held silver ingots liberated by the enterprising Socotra boys who left Pennsylvania to aid in the relief of Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871.
According to the local historians, the Socotras found the ruins of a bank, and helped themselves to the shiny stuff in the ashes.
I have no idea if that is really true, but the box has sentimental value in and of itself, though I doubt if anyone else in the world could dredge up any interest. The crate sits with the golf clubs, filled with bayonets from some other wars in other times, and the golf bag has a full set of irons and two civil war sabers.
Quirky lot, and this was not helped by the pile of bric-a-brac from The Little Town By the Bay. I am thinking that the real project, once this part of it is done, is to document all this crap- take a picture and write the story of it all. That will take time and probably will not happen, I know. It is a curse to operate a private museum dedicated to…hell, I don’t know.
Anyway, Grant brought The Stager to see me the evening after I got back from the run to fill up the garage with assorted wonders. It was Spring, finally, first day in shorts, and the sun was still high in the sky at 1800 when they arrived.
Grant is a plump and energetic young man about the age of my sons. He appears to be a go-getter, and familiar with mining the resources of Big Pink, which is why I selected him. The Stager was something else. She was a lady of a certain age, close-cropped salt and pepper hair, and a forthright gaze from deep blue eyes. She wore a safari vest, as if she was going to go birding after getting done with me, and was kind enough in a brusque way as she dismissed the detritus of my life and those of the Socotras who have gone before.
I listened in resignation, understanding completely what she was saying. Fatigued as I was, my shoulders sagged with the realization of the loads of books I am going to be humping to the elevator.
We started in the front room and moved around the walls. Then into the second bedroom and the main bath, then finally into the master bedroom, walk-in closet and the back bath.
(Gone, gone, gone. Don’t lose the wallet in the shuffle.)
She did not take notes, and made pronouncements with a businesslike approach. Once she had dismissed the German picklehaube spiked helmets and the coal-scuttle buckets that have followed me around most of my life, she went after filing cabinets and the contents of the closets.
It did not take her long to dismiss my life, and really, having gone through this emptying process recently for Raven and Big Mama, I realized there was a lot to dismiss and it could be done in fairly short order. I walked her down to the elevator to see her on her way, while Grant-the-Realtor took measurements of the vanities that need to be replaced in the bathrooms. It is going to cost some money to get out of here, but it is time.
After I returned, and he was done getting the specs to take to Home Depot- I told you he was energetic- I offered him a cocktail. He took me up on it, and we sat out on the balcony. The cover is off the pool, and the dirty water of winter looked grim from above. Soon enough it will be blue, and with luck, the unit will be painted and antiseptically clean.
But there is some significant work that needs to be done. I got a note the next morning that contained The Stagers mental notes. I read through them, unsurprised, though the memories associated with each dismissed item stole up on me:
Remove plants and buffet table they are sitting on
Remove Desk in dining room
Remove small and large upholstered chairs in living room
Remove small bookshelves in master bedroom and office bedroom
Remove items from top of bookshelves in all rooms (some items can be kept to incorporate into shelves, i.e. black and white photos, memorial flags)
Remove piece in living room to right of bookshelves and lamp sitting on it
Remove file cabinet in office
Remove “futon” in office
Remove “file cabinet dresser” in master bedroom
Remove large painting in dining room, all hanging items in foyer, large painting in hall bath, red wood aspens in MBR, “Bar Harbor” painting over video cabinet, grandma’s landscape, all artwork in office
Remove as many books as possible so there will be a mix of books and art objects on bookshelves
Thin out clothing, shoes, etc. in closets
There was not a lot that would be staying, though some of it passed The Stager’s muster:
Artwork to be kept or moved and rehung:
(The plants must move. I don’t think the elephant ears are going to make it.)
Portrait in entryway, Chinese girl in window, 2 smaller pieces in dining room, 2 pieces on either side of wall unit in living room, dragon artwork in hallway, pencil architectural pencil drawing and one other piece that were on floor in front of master bedroom bookshelves, mirror and father’s drawings, 2 small pieces on either side of “Horses.”
On kitchen counter….keep coffee maker, utensil holder, salt and pepper shakers, Haitian art, microwave. See if knives can be put in cupboard. All other art should be taken down. No magnets on refrigerator. Nothing on top of refrigerator.
Painting recommended in foyer, hallway, both bathrooms, master bedroom near window and crack over closet door.
Deep clean recommended before first Open House.
(Sky Girl made the cut. I am glad. I like her a lot).
It is time. I could tell you the story of all of the junk- where the plants came from, the portrait of the woman who greeted me each morning at the Department of Health and Human Services when we were fighting the anthrax wars and the SARS epidemic- but as I said, that is another project altogether, and in the end, who cares.
I will start with things I can deal with today- books and bookcases. I hope they are going to be happy in the garage down in Culpeper. At some point, I suspect a Bonfire of the Vanities- in fact, that is one of the books that is going to travel today- may be in the cards.
And I definitely need to talk to Vicky the Maid and see if she is willing to come a little more often until this high finance crap is done.
(This goes today. Anyone need a 1969 high school year book?)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Sanity Day
(Kris Kross, a rap duo famed for wearing their clothes backwards, is in the news this morning. Photo Acey Harper, Getty Images.)
I sat down at the computer, bleary, to discover that half of Kris Kross is dead. Chris Kelly, who is on the right, above, was known either as Mac Daddy or Daddy Mac, I forget. He was found unresponsive in his home in Atlanta. He was 34.
I vaguely remember him. They say it is an OD. For someone who became one of those peculiar creatures known as “celebrities” at the age of 13, I guess it was a pretty good run. But 34? That is 21 years from lightning strike of fame to being room temperature. That is like, insane.
Man, that makes me feel lucky and old simultaneously. I took a steaming sip of Dazbog Russian-roast coffee, thought briefly about eternity and gave up.
It was much easier to think about something finite, like what the last two eggs in the fridge were going to look like, and if they would scramble themselves, appear sunny-side up, or whisk themselves into an omelet with sautéed onions, mushrooms and some delicate frommage from a artisan cheese-maker in northern Michigan.
The eggs did not seem to have that much energy. Sunny-side up it is, I thought and reached for the handle of the side-by-side fridge to let them come to room temperature before cooking.
I glanced at the flier stuck by magnet on the naked white refrigerator. The appliance is bare and unadorned now, as I am in the process of making the unit anonymous to enable someone else to imagine their things in this place and scribble their dreams upon it.
Accordingly, the memo from building management stuck out, not precisely like a sore thumb, but close enough.
I looked at the date. “02 May.” Crap- it is today! I nearly spilled my coffee.
The memo had appeared in the box at the concierge desk a couple days ago, informing us that Leo the Engineer is going to chop the power at 0900 to work on the two main bus boards that supply the East and West wings of the building.
This is as close to being in the West Wing of anything as I am likely to get at this late date in life and career, and the power will stay out until 1700, the memo said curtly.
So, no Internet at the residence, no hot water, no lights, no heat, no nothing. I thought about the day. There is nothing on the schedule after the frantic activity of the last ten days, generating a professional-looking proposal to seek some government work.
The hell with it, I thought. I am going to take the day and load up the Panzer and make a junk run to the farm and throw it in the garage.
There is no point in coming back until the power is back, so the best and most productive use of the day will be to not be here.
The only thing on the calendar is a meeting with a lady the Realtor calls the “stager,” a professional decorator who intends to arrange the unit to show most effectively for “the sale.”
I am removing all weapons, edged and otherwise, except one. I am taking down the cool erotic art and anything else that marks this place as mine.
The changes begin. We will see how it goes, I guess.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
Heroes of Labor & Broken Arrows
(The vanguard of the Workers is depicted in this cartoon as carrying on the legacy of those slain in the Haymarket Affair, which was a Chicago labor demonstration that turned violent in the face of a police crackdown on Tuesday May 4, 1886. Anarchists turned the peaceful demonstration supporting the eight-hour work-day into a bomb attack that provoked gunfire by authorities. The blast and firefight resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; scores of others were wounded. The workers to the rear are demanding the 30-hour work-week, a goal which apparently has been met. Unfortunately, it is the product of large and small business owners seeking to avoid the more onerous provisions of the Affordable Care Act).
It is May Day, the holiday celebrating the triumph of labor and the dignity of all those who toil in the interest of the State. Or something. We don’t do much of that around here, except of course, go to work and be thankful there is an office to go to.
Vlad Putin is bringing back the concept in Russia: he awarded a bunch of “Heroes of Labor” awards, the post-imperial equivalent of those who milked the most cows, or forged the most steel. We have no equivalent here. We just work, and these days consider ourselves lucky to be doing so.
I was going to follow the events of Major Chuck Sweeney’s second combat mission to Nagasaki with some fun-and-games in the new Atomic Age. I may as well do that, since the news this morning is dribbling out more details of where the Boston Bombers were, and who told us about them without apparent response from American Authorities.
The first thing you hear is wrong, of course, so I was going to leave all that alone until things got a little clearer. Instead, having been thinking about The Bomb the last few days, I collected a list of “Broken Arrow” events, from the 1950s forward. The term refers to events in which an atomic device is seriously damaged or lost- and there are more of them than you would think.
I am gratified that the Air Force has two of the Greatest Hits for misplacing nuclear weapons, bookends for the darkest days of the Cold War. I will not dwell on the stranger and most recent one, but here are the simple facts: in 2007, six AGM-129 cruise missiles, each with a “dial a yield” warhead, were mistakenly loaded on a B-52H Stratofortress and the aircraft flew to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.
Not knowing the Real Deal was on the wings, the weapons were left unaccounted for a day and a half. Heads rolled, or the peacetime equivalent, but that probably was the biggest indicator that the Cold War really was over.
The colder days were much scarier.
(A rack of four B-28 nuclear bombs. Photo USAF.)
In January of 1966, a B-52 Stratofortress had a mid-air collision with a KC-1135 tanker. Four B-28 thermonuclear bombs were onboard.The bomber was attempting its third refueling over the village of Palomares, Spain, when the nozzle of the tanker’s boom struck the Fort and ripped open the fuselage. The ensuing breakup of the bomber caused the tanker’s payload of fuel to go up, killing the crew onboard. The debris was scattered over a hundred square miles, with one B-28 coming to rest with minor damage on land, and another falling into the sea.
The search for that “Broken Arrow” consumed three months and the commitment of 33 Navy ships to the ultimately successful search.
The remaining two bombs had their high explosive cases detonate impact, spreading radioactive material without a fissionable event. 28,000 pounds of contaminated soil were ultimately collected and transported to the United States for safekeeping.
The Air Force is not alone in misplacing weapons of mass destruction. My own beloved Navy has, for sure.
Talking about the misadventures of the B-29 Bockscar on the Nagasaki strike got some of the old stories got my Fleet pals reminiscing about their Vietnam and Cold War days when we slept with the weapons.
Our Pater Familia Vinnie recalled the day in early December when an A-4E Skyhawk attack jet rolled off the deck of the USS Ticonderoga.
That sort of thing used to happen with a sad regularity- carrier aviation is an intrinsically dangerous line of work, and pilot and aircraft were never found. The thing that made this particular tragic loss more memorable was what Vinnie recalled succinctly.
He wrote me back, saying the event happened in World Famous Attack Squadron 56 just a few months before he reported to the ready room in USS Ticonderoga (CV-14).
Vinnie actually wound up taking the lost aviator’s bunk, if you can imagine how spooky that was. The word in “The Champs” ready room was that TICO had been transiting out of the South China Sea when it happened.
“In those days,” he said, “you went thru constant drills for proficiency, particularly after a period on the line off Vietnam. Some of the drills involved mission planning, others involved loading simulated (dummy) weapons, and some involved the actual movement of the real deal escorted by Marines who had absolutely no sense of humor.
(Mk 43 Nuclear bomb in transport carriage. USG photo.)
In this case, the B-43 gravity bomb was actually loaded on the Skyhawk- we called them Scooters- and the aircraft was moved to the elevator to be raised and spotted on the flight deck for simulated launch.
So, Vinnie recalls the old guys saying, “the pilot was in his A4, weapon on, and the ship took a roll in heavy seas. It was deep water there- maybe 14,000 feet deep, and the ship took a roll, and off the elevator and over the side he went. I recall it was open ocean…and very scary…”
As far as anyone knows, the Scooter, pilot and weapon are still down there.
One hopes, anyway.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com