![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/010323-e1672779849955.jpg\")
\nThey say when you are over the hill you pick up speed.<\/p>\n
\nThey say when you are over the hill you pick up speed.<\/p>\n
Maybe that is true. Certainly, the visibility improves as you roll over the crest. Some of us are over the great divide of the Holidays. Kevin McCarthy is not, at least until noon when the new Congress is sworn in. One of the crucial indications was over in the land war currently in progress in what we are still calling \u201cUkraine.\u201d To celebrate the New Year, the people in the western part of the that nation launched a bunch of shiny new weapons on what used to be the eastern part. They used a system called \u201cHIMARS.\u201d That is a way of saying the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, a neat truck-mounted contraption designed by the humanitarians over at the Lockheed-Martin corporation.<\/p>\n
There was a litany of other New Year’s stuff to report. Rockets were launched shortly after the chime of New Years, on the Gregorian calendar, anyway. That accounts for some of the confusion here at Big Pink. The other one on the Julian calendar contributes to the uncertainty.\u00a0As you may recall, the\u00a0Julian\u00a0calendar\u00a0was used in Europe before the Gregorian\u00a0calendar\u00a0was adopted in 1582. There had been a dispute about the length of time contained in one revolution of our planet around the sun.<\/p>\n
As we have all discovered, the decimal dust left after \u201c365 days\u201d mounts up. It accounts for the argument this morning about what day of Christmas it is. We are getting to the end of it, or at least near it. This morning the productive taxpaying version of the social order is back to work. There isn\u2019t another holiday coming before Doctor King\u2019s on the 16th, though there is an opportunity to honor the 15th\u00a0of January with Holiday Rules. That is when Russia ceded Livonia and Estonia to Poland. We knew Livonia as a Detroit suburb along with the Polish one, Hamtramck, and they had been at peace for quite a while.<\/p>\n
We are not worried about that, although we understand there are some Russians, or at least one of them, who is\u00a0still\u00a0concerned. In response, there appear to be others. Here at Big Pink, we now look at the slope of the month of January, ready to fly down into this strange new year.\u00a0\u00a0Many people are sitting blankly at their desks, wondering what it was they were engaged in before the week between Christmas and the New Year. Splash and Loma were arguing about whether the 3rd\u00a0of January was the ninth or tenth day of Christmas.<\/p>\n
There is an ecclesiastic dispute about whether to count Christmas Day as the first. Others claim it<\/p>\n
would be rational to\u00a0not\u00a0count the actual Nativity. They prefer to begin the dozen days on<\/p>\n
December 26th. But by the time we get to the long end of the holiday, with all those maids doing<\/p>\n
something productive and the Lords Leaping around, we understand a bit of confusion is also part<\/p>\n
of the continuing celebration.<\/p>\n
Which goes for two or three more days. We suspect it will be three, if Splash gets to count. But<\/p>\n
the rest of us, a bae majority, think that getting back to the notion of \u201cHappy Hour,\u201d capitalized or<\/p>\n
not, is the way to swing into the spirit of the New Year, which is already starting to show some<\/p>\n
routine wear and tear.
\nWe have been at it for almost 72 hours, which at the 67,000 miles per hour our spinning globe<\/p>\n
travels is already a bunch.<\/p>\n
Here in 2023, now that it is real, we have adopted Splash\u2019s holiday philosophy.\u00a0Since we are no<\/p>\n
longer \u201con the clock,\u201d we decided to take care of some personal business. I bade farewell to the<\/p>\n
Writer\u2019s Section just after lunch. \u201cI came in a little late today\u201d I told them. \u201cSo, I am going to take<\/p>\n
off a little early to compensate.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was necessary time, since we were going back to The Base. If you don\u2019t live near a military<\/p>\n
installation, or have reason to go on one, you would be surprised at the process. Twenty years ago<\/p>\n
they briefly stopped having guards altogether. We understood it was a \u2018cost saving\u2019 initiative.<\/p>\n
Then came the 9\/11 attacks and what followed. The GWOT, as we learned to call it, was our<\/p>\n
longest nation conflict. which was alleged to be a war on terror. Like the brief absence of guards,<\/p>\n
the Base briefly bristled with squat green all-terrain Hummers filled with watching soldiers<\/p>\n
holding machine guns.<\/p>\n
Given those extremes, the drive to the base had an amount of anxiety. We had lost it altogether in<\/p>\n
the transition from town to Farm. Our first attempt to visit resulted in a scenic tour of most of<\/p>\n
Arlington, that bit of left-over District of Columbia viewed as ungovernable on the left side of the<\/p>\n
Potomac River. In fact, it was so unruly that it resulted in a different war. It was shorter than the<\/p>\n
GWOT and probably cheaper. But in terms of casualties, it set a standard not equaled until one<\/p>\n
they took to calling The Great War.<\/p>\n
You know how these things go. The current war- the one in Ukraine- seems to be an attempt at<\/p>\n
recreating the horror of others and is succeeding.<\/p>\n
We set that aside, concentrating on finding the Army Post at Fort Myer. They have changed the<\/p>\n
name. The new one has a \u2018hyphen\u2019 as well, and could even merit two of them. They stopped at<\/p>\n
Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall, though since they also rolled Ft. McNair into the agglomeration<\/p>\n
created in 2005. The original hyphen came since the same place was carved out of the Custis-Lee<\/p>\n
Plantation during the Civil War. The latter part of the hyphenated owner was Robert Edward Lee.<\/p>\n
He happened to be leading an Army in opposition to the other Army he had been offered to<\/p>\n
command. With the obligations of his post, he was out of town and his property seemed to be a<\/p>\n
logical place for the dead of the Army he chose not to command to be buried. Some of us have<\/p>\n
that plan as well, unless they run out of plots sooner.<\/p>\n
DC being what it is, Union dead were interred in General Lee\u2019s garden to ensure that the<\/p>\n
Commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia could not come home again without a<\/p>\n
few reminders of incorrect thinking. Fort Myer gets first mention, since it supports the Old Guard,<\/p>\n
the Third U.S. Infantry, protectors of Arlington Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknowns.<\/p>\n
There are ceremonial reasons to visit, of course, but also practical ones. The \u201cJB\u201d is also home of<\/p>\n
the Commissary and Exchange complex, the gas station and the Class Six Store, the home of<\/p>\n
discount, tax-free beer, wine and spirits. These could be hyphenated as well, since they are critical<\/p>\n
services for the active and retired communities. The occasion of this visit demonstrated how long<\/p>\n
it has been since we shed the uniform of our nation. We were approaching the expiration of<\/p>\n
tobacco supplies.<\/p>\n
Down at The Farm there is no alternative to the Commonwealth system of regulated sale for both<\/p>\n
tobacco and wine, conveniently located five miles from our property line. In two separate chains<\/p>\n
of\u00a0distribution. Many places they are located in adjacent spaces in strip malls. The military<\/p>\n
establishment was much more efficient, and they are conveniently in the same place. Regrettably,<\/p>\n
we ran out of tobacco products on the very same day the liquor sales reach a seasonal high on<\/p>\n
New Year\u2019s Eve.<\/p>\n
There were some new aspects of the ritual of access. The guard- only one of him\/her, they\/them-<\/p>\n
has no interest in the photo embossed on the identification card. The back of the card has nothing<\/p>\n
that could connect the rightful owner of the plastic rectangle to the owner, but does have the<\/p>\n
ability to be scanned. So as we cruised the route the computer had recommended. The Sentry just<\/p>\n
wanted to scan it. We do not question the various manifestations of the institutions we served. The<\/p>\n
card was turned around, the hand-held scanner was presented, and we were waved through the<\/p>\n
gate and past the lane that flags vehicles and presumably drivers for further search. We have<\/p>\n
already made that mistake.<\/p>\n
They do other things on Post, too, things unique to the military. A Dispensary. A modest Dental<\/p>\n
Clinic. And a grab-bag of other personnel support activities. The Pass and ID Unit is one we<\/p>\n
probably could have left behind years ago, expect for regular re-provisioning of controlled<\/p>\n
substances. It is hidden back behind the Officer\u2019s Club swimming pool in a quaint turn-of-the-<\/p>\n
century brick structure typical of those on the Post.<\/p>\n
The whole base enterprise is designated a National Historic Site. It is an operation run with a<\/p>\n
leisurely pace completely in keeping with the historic designation and the efficiency we have<\/p>\n
come to expect from the non-combat components of the Army. We were pleased we did not<\/p>\n
require renewed identification, although we did possess sufficient identification to prove whom<\/p>\n
we wished to identify, in case the clerk at the Class SIX store chose to \u201ccard\u201d us, using either side<\/p>\n
of the \u201ccard.\u201d Quite outside those possibilities was the challenge of having all the consumables we<\/p>\n
wished to purchase in a facility that combined all of them.<\/p>\n
Which meant the line at the cash register included Active Duty young people (they\/them) in<\/p>\n
uniform and civilian garb, retired men still with erect bearing and shopping carts filled with<\/p>\n
bottles of various colors and sizes, and perhaps a dozen vigorous women each of whom held<\/p>\n
exactly two bottles of decent wine, one for each hand.<\/p>\n
We may have missed some pronouns in that first adventure of 2023, and may have got a start on I-<\/p>\n
395 , but one\u00a0thing we remembered suddenly and clearly. Never go to a Class SIX store on the<\/p>\n
afternoon before<\/p>\n
a holiday, unless you have plenty of time to chat in the line that snakes past the racks of beef jerky<\/p>\n
and whatever that other stuff is. We were only in for 27 years, so there wasn\u2019t time to learn<\/p>\n
everything. We should have remembered about New Years Eve, though. At least the part at the<\/p>\n
Class SIX Store.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
\nwww.vicsocotra.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
They say when you are over the hill you pick up speed. Maybe that is true. Certainly, the visibility improves as you roll over the crest. Some of us are over the great divide of the Holidays. Kevin McCarthy is not, at least until noon when the new Congress is sworn in. One of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25122"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25125,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25122\/revisions\/25125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}