Pied a terre is French, I think. Being an illiterate in multiple languages I
\nalways work in context and thought the phrase meant a “piece of earth.” Like you
\nwould have a “piece of earth” in town. That was close enough for Government
\nwork, but I was informed recently that it actually means “a foot on the
\nground.”<\/p>\n
A footprint.<\/p>\n
That is one of the things I have been puzzling about lately, and I will tell
\nyou why in a minute. Vicki Barker told me this morning that a British national
\nof Indian extraction and two others were busted while attempting to import a
\nshoulder-fired surface-to-air missile into the United States. The technical term
\nis Man Portable Air Defense System, or MANPAD, but I am not going to get bogged
\ndown in acronym land. Nor will I bore you with the specifications of the
\nparticular system. This was purported to be an SA-18, a relatively advanced
\nsystem of Russian design. They normally work with an infra-red seeker which
\nallows the shooter to fire and forget, allowing the missile to acquire the
\nhottest target in its field of view and home in on it. The more sensitive the
\nseeker the better, and that drives the price. An SA-18 might go for around $40K.
\nThe ones al Qaida used against the Israeli charter jet in Kenya were an older
\nversion of the SA-18, the model SA-7. The seekers of these infernal machines
\nrely on cooling for target acquisition and the old missiles had expired their
\nshelf-life. Those might sell in the bargain basket at the front of the arms
\nstore for a couple thousand bucks.<\/p>\n
This most recent sale was a set-up by the FBI, thankfully, and there were no
\nactual weapons coming here. But the commentators this morning were moaning about
\nhow vulnerable our commercial airliners are, and helpfully pointed out several
\nlikely footprints for launch positions under the approach to Reagan National
\nAirport here in Washington.<\/p>\n
The commentators make me tired sometimes. So helpful. This particular idiot
\nmentioned that military jets have countermeasures, flares that are ejected on
\nwarning to distract the missiles. Air Force One has them, too. We could equip
\nour commercial air fleet with such counter-measures for only a million or so a
\ncopy. Like the airlines weren’t going broke already and are looking for exciting
\nnew ways to hemorrhage cash. And speaking of airliners, Mohammar Qaddafy is
\nsupposed to send a letter to the UN accepting responsibility for the bombing of
\nPan Am Flight 103, and depositing a significant amount of cash in an account for
\nthe victims. The UN will release him from the sanctions imposed after the world
\nbody was presented the footprints of his complicity. Maybe they should grab the
\nbillions in the account and use it to equip airliners with defensive flares.<\/p>\n
It is the nature of the business, attack and defend. You protect one
\nvulnerability and other pops up. A knight in full plate armor meets the guy with
\nthe match-lock rifle. Presto! Change of equation! We increase baggage
\ninspections or take off our shoes at the airport the Bad Guys will do something
\nelse. Like Anthrax, or the smallpox vulnerability that hasn’t gone away. If I
\nhad a doctor I would go and start the vaccine program for both of them. Or like
\nthe computer worm Microsoft announced was perpetuating itself though all Windows
\nsystems. Nothing lasts forever, except for the memory of evil. I checked the
\nlist and discovered my version- that piece of crap Millenium Edition- was so
\nawful that the hackers did not view it as a challenge. I’m OK. For now,
\nanyway.<\/p>\n
It is the anniversary of the building of the Berlin Wall, back in 1961. I
\nremember it going up, and I remember it coming down. We baby boomers were right
\ndown front for the whole show. We talked about it extensively last night, the
\nwhole strange trip. I met my pal Steve over at the Flat Top Grill last night for
\na couple martinis. The Flat Top is convenient to the Orange Line of the Metro
\nthat runs out to Vienna where he lives. It was a dog day in August Washington,
\nand with the vacations, Steve is the Acting Assistant Administrator for a whole
\nContinent. It was pretty impressive and I whistled over an olive. If the office
\nhadn’t reorganized, I would be the Acting Acting Assistant Secretary for
\nwhatever it is I do.<\/p>\n
We had a rollicking good time and were really thinking about having a third
\nmartini, just for he olives, of course. But we are of a certain age and have
\nresponsibilities. Well, Steve does, anyway. But we marveled at the times we had
\nlived through to get where we are. “O tempore! O More!” which is Latin, I think,
\nmeaning “time for more.”<\/p>\n
Even the rock stars are getting to be old fogies. Mick Jagger is 60. Dan
\nFogleburg turns 52nd today, same age as me and the Acting Assistant
\nAdministrator. We are all turning to old farts these days, but I remember
\nlistening to Fogleburg’s song Power of Gold real loud in my four-man stateroom
\non the USS Midway before going up to the 0-7 level on top of the Island for the
\ndaily ritual of Prime Ray Time. PRT was always around noon, flight schedule
\npermitting, and we would bake under the blazing equatorial sun on the little
\nopen area in back of the square turret of the derelict gun-director. There were
\na couple dozen regulars in the sun worshipping crowd and this hobby seemed
\nharmless. We competed to see how black we could get, George Hamilton being the
\ngold (or bronze) standard of the perfect tan.<\/p>\n
The ballet of men and machines would continue down on the flight deck,
\nairplanes launching regularly off the two catapults on the bow. Midway only had
\nthe two of them, as old as she was, and with the wind down straight down the
\ndeck the jet blast swirled over the black deck and rolled boiling aft over the
\nround-down. After several months of this we were inured to the noise and the
\ncrash of the water-break after the catapults fired. We just lay there on our
\ntowels on the steel and sizzled. Until one day something odd happened. The ship
\nhad to change course for some reason with an airplane on the catapult, engines
\nrunning. The jet exhaust from the two J-79 engines rolled and swirled back
\nagainst the skin of the island and then rose up, enveloping our little aerie in
\na sudden ascent to hundreds of degrees. It was a paralyzing, pain, abrupt and
\nunexpected. It was impossible to breathe and our eyes bulged as we tried to
\ncover our naked skin. If it had gone on much longer our eyes would have cooked
\nlike eggs.<\/p>\n
Thankfully the ship fell off that course and the exhaust once more blew down
\nthe deck. The little group sat upright on our towels, hearts racing. And then we
\nlay down again to submit to the sun. Nowadays we know that probably is not good
\nfor you, analogous to placing your palm flat on a hot griddle. But damn we
\nlooked good. I was looking at my chest in the mirror the other day. There is a
\nmole that has changed its aspect, darkened. I think I will go get it checked
\nout, if I can find a doctor, that is.<\/p>\n
Which is the reason I am leaving my little footprint at the Department at the
\nend of the month. It is an amicable parting, and it has been a wonderful
\nexperience being one of the Department\u2019s Senior Executives. But personnel
\nconstraints dictated a temporary arrangement as a private government employee at
\na handsome rate of pay. But without the benefit package which includes health
\ncare. As a veteran, I can still go to the military hospitals and wait with the
\nother retirees, but the active force comes first, as it should, and I don’t have
\nthe time to wait. There is a company that is offering all of that, and it
\nappears to be time after 27 years of Federal Service to strike out into the
\nprivate sector and see how I fare. Something with health and dental
\ncoverage.<\/p>\n
I am buying a little efficiency here in the building, just off the pool. It
\nis a way to guarantee me a footprint in this town, close in and comfortable. I
\nintend to equip it like a sailboat, with a Murphey Bed and a folding dining
\ntable, both of which having small footprints when stowed away, neat and
\nshipshape. A small footprint, but one that is reliable and mine alone. No
\nlandlord to change their mind if I am gallivanting around the country. With no
\nlawn and no shrubbery to mind, a simple turn of the key and I am gone when I
\nwant.<\/p>\n
That leaves the question of The Winter. I will have to figure out a roosting
\nplace for the months of January through March, and am thinking a pied a terre
\nnear Santa Fe might work. Maybe with an Airstream trailer, the kind that looks
\nlike a B-29. I don’t know about that yet, but there is no particular hurry once
\nI get out of the footprint of the major target area downtown. I can figure that
\nall out later.<\/p>\n
It is, after all, a matter of one foot in front of the other.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2003 Vic Socotra<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Pied a terre is French, I think. Being an illiterate in multiple languages I always work in context and thought the phrase meant a “piece of earth.” Like you would have a “piece of earth” in town. That was close enough for Government work, but I was informed recently that it actually means “a foot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-socotra"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28948","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28950,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28948\/revisions\/28950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicsocotra.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}