I still miss her

Yesterday I wrote about an old man's dying wish to walk the decks of the destroyer he served on as a young man. Those of you who served in the navy, any navy, understand the emotion involved. Or, at least, can understand it somewhat. I will try to explain it for those who do not have a similar emotional attachment.

Think about your first car or your college or high school. The memories might not be all rosy. There might be some memories you'd like to forget but not all. There's a deep seated attachment formed that is almost impossible to sever. You may have been miserable in high school but you still recall friends you miss and moments you cherish. I didn't go to college except for a few semesters in community colleges so I can't directly relate to that but I would guess a strong bond to it is formed. These are similar.

On the Military and Military History channels, there are little presentations with remembrances by former crew members. All, of late, have been about the U.S.S. Enterprise of WWII. She was decommissioned, reduced to scrap, and replaced by a newer, nuclear-powered, version. The former crew members speak of her as being "home." So, too, do the former crew members of other ships whose stories are told on some of the programs.

My ship was commissioned too late to have seen any action in WWII. She was launched in August of 1945, a year before I was born. She did see some action in the Korean War and then again in the Vietnam War... "my" war... but nothing compared to what those who served during WWII did.

A ship is not simply a vessel, it is home. Even if you live ashore most of the time you are in your home port, it is home. But that feeling takes time. If you are only aboard a year, you probably will not feel it. I think it would take at least two years to develop the kind of feeling I am talking about. It took that much for me, anyway. At around that point in time, I began to realize that I saw her as something I was a part of, something that was a part of me.

You go through good times and bad. You experience frustrations and satisfactions. You know she had flaws (our hull had a crack that resisted repair for a year) but you appreciate her strengths... especially in rough seas. The crew become your "family."

I wrote once about how The ship is "alive" while at sea, the constant vibration of the engines, and from the movement in the water, makes the steel deck feel soft. Once in port, tied up, with the engines shut down and silent, the deck becomes hard as concrete. The ship feels "dead."
 
The human mind is a funny thing... it gives life to inanimate things.

The attachment lingers for more years than you can imagine.

A Sailor's Last Wish

A story I read touched me at the deepest core of my being. I try not to get emotional but this story is one whose reading pushes those buttons.

It is about a man named Gerald Bowman and his dying wish.

An excerpt:

Bowman had no idea his old destroyer was still around. Father and daughter were on the couch one night watching a documentary and there was the Laffey at Patriots Point.

“That’s my ship,” he said. And he began to cry. “I’d love to walk her one more time.”

My old ship, the USS Brinkley Bass DD887, was  decommissioned and sold to Brazil in 1973 then sunk in January of 2000 as a target ship so I will never get the chance Mr. Bowman had to walk her deck one more time.

Puzzlements and Cobwebs

Each day I rise from slumber, put on some clothes, start my computer (and Faye's), stagger out to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of coffee, wander back to the computer, and go through my mental exercises: two solitaire games, one jigsaw puzzle, and at least one crossword puzzle. It has become a ritual of sorts. 7 days a week.

I believe it helps me sweep the cobwebs from my brain but it probably doesn't. On the other hand, it cannot make things worse so it is likely harmless.

For 34 years, I worked for the Bell System (Southern Bell, Pacific Telephone, and AT&T)... solving puzzles for its customers.

I have been reading a book by Michael Connelly of late. The Black Box. A Hieronymus, "Harry", Bosch novel. Harry Bosch is a detective with the LAPD assigned to the Open-Unsolved Unit. He takes new looks at cold cases.

I can relate. One of the things I used to do when I was bored at work (or ran out of current trouble tickets) was to dig up the oldest trouble tickets and try to fix the problems I found. Some had been around so long that the paper of the tickets had become brittle. One of the oldest of these had been around since shortly after the office I was working in at the time (an old SxS* switch) was opened in the 30's. It took me a few days to find the problem, maybe a couple of weeks.

Old troubles get shuffled to the bottom of the pile easily enough and linger there while workers ignore them. Most people I worked with did not want the challenge they represented. I can understand that. They were frustrating. You knew that they had been looked at by many over the years, many who failed to make much headway in solving the problems they represented, and they rarely documented what they did. It was the newbies, mostly, who bothered to even read them. Newbies are still curious, still interested. After a few years most lose their curiosity and begin ignoring the "oldies" also.

I would run out of trouble tickets or just be bored with the "easy ones" that crop up every day. Easily solved troubles didn't interest me so much. At these times, I would happily grab the oldest tickets. In fact, I often worked the oldest tickets first. I knew others had at least scanned them, maybe made a few attempts to resolve them, and put them back in the trouble ticket bin in favor of something more easily cleared. I suppose most feel clearing a lot of troubles is what they are there for and, so, spending more than a hour or so on a trouble would lower their output. Probably true.

I was more than happy to grab the old, repeat, and chronic troubles to work on. I rarely had to have help with them and I could work on my own (which I preferred) most of the time. Some of these required getting assistance from other work groups or offices. That was ok, too, though it was often tough to get more than cursory attention from those folks. But I was persistent... and tenacious... and probably seen as a PITA because of it. And I cleared everything I could. I don't recall leaving any behind when I left an office to go elsewhere.

Maybe I could have been a good detective.

*Step by Step

Oh Look! Another Kerfuffle

 Just a thought: If you or I lie to the federal government, it's a felony. If the government lies to us, it's called "politics" and completely legal.

Bob Woodward is in the news this week. It seems he had the audacity to to do two things: point the finger at Obama over sequestration and to take a comment by Gene Sperling (Obama economic advisor) as a threat.

In an email after a testy exchange between Woodward and Sperling, Sperling apologized for raising his voice and said that Woodward would regret saying that Obama was "moving the goalpost" in relation to the possibility of a deal regarding the sequestration. Sperling's actual words are: "I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim."

This is a non-issue, a distraction, something to divert attention. I don't see it as a threat at all but more as a suggestion that the White House will be able to avoid blame and that Woodward might feel some embarrassment in having made the claim. As the youths of today say, "meh", it isn't a big deal, not even newsworthy.

The White House's take on sequestration is that they thought it up, perhaps, but never intended for it to go this far and that it is all the Republican's fault. Maybe. But actions often do have consequences and most of them are unintended.

I think what the White House wanted was for Republicans to fold completely under the threat of sequestration and wimp out on demanding cuts while accepting tax increases. They did initially but suffered a backlash for doing so. And when part II of the sequestration drama began to play out, they have decided to call Obama's bluff.

I also think the public is supportive of that tactic.

When the average American does not get the raise he expected, he doesn't go to his boss and demand the raise he wanted. He goes home and tightens his belt; he adjusts his budget to suit the reality of his paycheck. And he doesn't understand why Washington doesn't do the same.

Remember, sequestration does not mean that budgets will actually be cut. That is, it does not mean there will be less money spent in the next year than has been spent this year. It means that the increase in the amount of spending will be lower than what is desired by Washington.

All this crying of late that the danger of sequestration is in the lack of discretionary control over the reductions in the growth of spending is also simply a diversion. A red herring, if you will. So that blame can be put on the Republicans for not acting (meaning "not caving"). There was nothing preventing the Defense Department and all others potentially affected from moving money around in preparation of the pending sequestration. Instead, it was "business as usual" as the assumption was that the Republicans would cave (as they have for decades) and spending would continue as before.

I think the public is truly fed up with these games that Washington plays and is ready to see this played out and the bluff called.

Are we finally on our way?

I am intrigued and hopeful after reading this. After years of childhood movies about men from Mars and a fascination with science fiction that began in my twenties, I may just live long enough to see humans reach that planet. Unlike some, I didn't see the moon missions as anything more breakthrough-ish than  Sir Edmund Hillary's climbing to the summit of Mt. Everest in 1953. It was a feat, for sure, and an important one, but it didn't have the magic of real space travel. The moon is just a hunk of rock trapped by Earth's gravity. It is not  especially far away in relation to planets. And we knew it did not hold life.

When I was young, people still spoke of the "canals" of Mars and life there was thought possible. Heck, some still hold out hope that one of the rovers will find evidence of past life if not current life. Maybe microbes... if we can't have alien creatures wandering about the vast deserts of that planet. The more we learned, as technology advanced, the more we have come to realize just how inhospitable Mars is to life today. Disappointing me and so many others who grew up wondering if Martians might one day drop in for a visit.

Yes, Mars is an inhospitable place and seemingly quite barren of life and water. The "canals" turned out to be an illusion, instead of forests of red trees... rocks and sand. Yet... it is still a planet, and has an atmosphere (a thin one, to be sure, and insufficient to support humans) and we have the technology to build a colony of sorts there. Sure, we have the technology to allow us to do much the same on the moon but why? We have come to realize it is simply a chunk of good old Mother Earth that was blasted away by some big old planetoid that slammed into us a few billion years ago. So what is there that isn't already here?

Maybe we will find that Mars, too, is not so different from Earth. Maybe we will find that the debris of the solar system of which Earth is made is is pretty much all that Mars is also. And we'll be disappointed. Because, after Mars, there are just gas giants without much hope of life or even solid ground on which to wander about. Until we are capable of interstellar travel.