Tag: military

Wenzda’s Theme Music

Sunshine tangoed in. Then clouds waltzed in, batting the sunshine out. No rain is falling but it’s still early. With a temperature of 39 F, we should be safe from snow for a few hours, though ‘they’ say it feels lie 27. S’posed to top off in the low 50s this afternoon. No word on what it’ll feel like. All this is as expected on the horn of spring as winter fades out in Ashlandia on Wenzda, March 19, 2025.

Boy, this week has been a crazy month, right? You never know what new insult Trump and his minions will levy on We The People. This time, the Trusk Regime has decided that the Code Talkers so invaluably employed during World War II were DEI hires.

“Were it not for the Navajos,” Major Howard Connor said, “the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.”

Today, Erin Alberty of Axios reported that at least ten articles about the Code Talkers have disappeared from U.S. military websites. Broken URLs are now labeled “DEI,” an abbreviation for “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”

That’s right. Under Trump’s ‘leadership’, the Trusk Regime and the GOTP continue to spit on the honor and bravery of the people who fought for this nation. Someone should remind Trump and his regime that if it weren’t for the Code Talkers’ help, we might all be speaking Japanese.

Trump always claims he loves the military but look what he’s doing to it. Also claims to love the Constitution, and look what he’s doing to it. Ditto the nation. Who will rid us of the pestilence called Donald Trump before our world is destroyed?

The Neurons are playing the 1982 Culture Club song, “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me, in the morning mental music stream. This came about because I read that in many polls, Trump voters support the Trusk Regime’s actions…until they’re personally affected. Then they’re often swearing and crying about what Trump is doing. Like the Miami Venezuelans who supported Trump during the elections.

Venezuelan migrants in South Florida say they feel betrayed by a Trump administration decision to end legal protections for hundreds of thousands of people who fled dictatorships and sought refuge in the U.S.

The move by the Trump administration is a turnabout of a long-standing U.S. policy that has extended TPS to more than a half-million Venezuelans.

Come on, man, betrayal is Trump’s middle name. So, yep, now those Venezuelan Trump supporters are hurting as fellow Venezuelans are returned to the conditions they tried to escape in their country so that they could pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit fof happiness. They stand alongside thousands of farmers, ranchers, bankers, VA employees, veterans, FBI agents, and firefighters shocked to learn that Trump doesn’t care about them. Once they voted for him, it was one and done.

So this song, “Do You Really Want to Hear Me” and its plaintive refrain, is perfect for them. I mean, it’s not like they couldn’t see what Trump did before as POTUS, as a businessman, as a husband, or as a person. He’s always been all about himself. His voters were fools to think otherwise.

Coffee is again soothing my troubled breast. I’m ready to launch one more time. Hope you have a solid, satisfying day. And awaaayyy we goooo. Cheers

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It’s Embarrassing…

Daily writing prompt
What was the best compliment you’ve received?
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I kind of cringe and debate about answering this. It feels like bragging. But I’m gonna take a deep breath and put it out there.

I received the same compliment from six different people, six different times. It really felt flattering, receiving it every time, and I glow as I remember it now. Each of these people were individuals I respected. So I thought it the best compliment when each called me years after they’d last worked for me and said, “You’re the best person I ever worked for.”

I mean, you know, I tried. I think many do try to be a good boss, someone who is honest to their people, trying to help them grow, and hopefully developing bonds. Half of those people who called were from my military career, and the other half were from my civilian positions. Regardless of whether I was in the military or a civilian, my stance as ‘boss’ was driven by several tenets. One, treat everyone with respect. Two, trust people. Three, be honest. Four, teamwork and communicating are critical to get things done. And five, the best evidence that you’re a good leader is how well your team does when you’re not around. So after all those years, to get those calls, man, it was satisfying and rewarding.

Probably a good thing that they waited and called me up to tell me that, though. Otherwise, it would have gone right to my head.

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Three Out of Five Times

Daily writing prompt
You’re going on a cross-country trip. Airplane, train, bus, car, or bike?
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I’ve gone across the United States a few times. Furthest was from San Fransisco to New Hampshire via New York. I did that a few times in the military, always by train, and then SF to Connecticut via NY a few times for business, also by train.

I’ve always loved traveling by car. Back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, my parents loaded us into cars and off we went! One trip, barely remembered, was in a large Chevy station wagon from California to Pennsylvania. I think I was three years old. What I best remember about that was that I shared space in the station wagon’s back end with my older sister and a large black trunk. The trunk was useful as a fort and a table. Traffic being what it sometimes was, peering out the windows and waving to others was a recurring pastime. There were many coloring books involved with that trip, too.

My wife and I took a few almost cross-country trips. After I returned from my military assignment in the Philippines, I traveled to West Virginia where my wife stayed with her parents via commercial aircraft and Greyhound bus. Some of the logistics are a little foggy in my head, but I ended up visiting family in Pittsburgh and bought a used Porsche 914 there. I drove it down to West Virginia, and then my wife and I drove it across the southern United States to my new duty location outside of San Antonio, Texas. The first five hundred miles was through a blizzard. We then drove the reverse trip eight months later, when I decided to exit the military.

Funny enough, years later, there we were, in Texas again. This time we’d returned to the United States from an assignment in (on?) Okinawa. We’d been there for almost four years. Two things to know about driving in Okinawa was that it was on the left side of the road, with a right side steering wheel and the fastest speed we’d gone was 100 KPH, about 61 MPH. Renting a car in San Antonio at the airport, we were suddenly driving on the other side of the ride, the steering wheel on the other side, in the rain, at night, at 70 MPH. It was an awakening.

We then bought a new car, a Mazda RX-7, and drove it from San Antonio, Texas, to…ready? West Virginia. A big blizzard struck Texas that year. Interstate 10 was closed. Fortunately, Texas has Interstate ‘access roads’. We drove out of San Antonio through the blizzard via the access roads until we could get onto I-10. Man, I’ll tell you, traffic was pretty light.

I’ve flown cross country multiple times since then. The last time that my wife and I drove across cross country was from West Virginia to California. This was 1991. We’d been assigned to a base in Germany. She returned a few months early and was living not far from her parents in West Virginia. She’d bought a little Honda Civic. We loaded her and our three cats, Rocky, Crystal, and Jade, into the Honda, along with her belongings, and drove to Sunnyvale, California, via the Rocky Mountains. Let me tell you, the Honda, with its 1.5 liter engine, wasn’t happy about the Rockies. We’d swooped down the mountains as fast as we dared to build up speed to get up the next one. Geez, what a trip.

Not our actual car. Our car looked just like this, except it was gray.

I’ve also gone from Texas to Pennsylvania via Greyhound bus after finishing military basic training in 1975. But the one thing I always wanted to do was take a train across the country. We traveled by train in Japan and Europe, and loved it. It’s hasn’t come to pass in the U.S.

Maybe, someday, though, maybe someday…I’ll get to take a train ride across the United States.

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Munda’s Theme Music

It’s FOFFing* outside in Ashlandia, where the voters are liberal. Munda has fallen on us and can’t get up. A later winter storm is driving through the valley and the temperature is sticking to 35F. Supposed to rocket up to 48 F but that rocket might not get liftoff, if we use those clouds for our reasoning. If we use history and experience, the weather could go in any direction from here.

This is Munda, March 17, 2025. Which is, yelp, St. Patrick’s Day. Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you. Are you wearing green to draw some Irish luck your way?

*FOFFING: Fat Ol’ Flakes Falling

Watching those flakes reminded me of a cat experience. This is about Jade. She came to be with us in Okinawa. She belonged to the people up the hall in our apartment building. They had a toddler, and Jade didn’t take shit from anyone, telling them so with claws and teeth. So she came to us and was with us for 20 years more.

When she was four, we moved from Okinawa to the United States. This would be January, 1985. We were in San Antonio after landing to visit family. Jade was with us, as we’d just flown into the country. It began snowing. Jade had never seen snow, so she went out to experience it. She would take a step and shake a foot. Step, shake. Step, shake. Finally fed up of it after a minute, she returned to inside the motel room. I still grin, remembering her reaction.

Been catching up on the news. Hear there was some wicked weather across the United States and that the Trusk Regime thumbed their nose at a judge. It’s enough for me to groundhog back to bed for six more weeks. But I’ve served myself coffee so that’s not a current option.

Out of all that news catchup, The Neurons direction Twenty One Pilots to play their 2016 song, “Heathens”, in the morning mental music stream.

We don’t deal with outsiders very well
They say newcomers have a certain smell
You have trust issues, not to mention
They say they can smell your intentions
You’ll never know the freak show sitting next to you
You’ll have some weird people sitting next to you
You’ll think “How did I get here, sitting next to you?”
But after all I’ve said, please don’t forget

h/t to Genius.com

The coffee is doing its function. Take it slow and roll through Munda, St. Patty’s Day. Here we go. Cheers

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Phasing Out

Daily writing prompt
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
View all responses

I thought in depth on this. I retired from the military after twenty years. It was surprisingl easy to say good-bye to it. But I’d been ready to leave it for at least a year. The politics and hypocrisy inherent in the organization disgusted me. Also, leaving wasn’t hard because we rotated every two to four years. Little was permanent, thanks to ‘permanent change of station’ orders. I was deployed to theaters around the world, and the missions changed. While controlling nuclear weapons, war planning, and mitigating the effects of disasters were constant, as were the uniforms, the people were not. We were proficient at ending phases and saying good-bye.

That got me to thinking about how it was really about the people. Leaving IBM after fifteen years was like leaving the military: supremely easy. For the final nine years, I worked from home in southern Oregon. My co-workers were mostly voices on the phone. I’d rarely actually met any of them. My niche was small and I typically dealt with the same ten semi-strangers all week. It was boring, although it could be mentally stimulating, but mostly tedious and empty. Projects would arrive with great fanfare. Then the winnowing would begin. Many projects failed to launch. That was the business.

I left home and family when I was seventeen. Mom’s home was riotous with broken marriages and arguments. When I lived with Dad, he was an absent father. I became adept at being independent.

My wife and I have been together for over fifty years. That’s an ongoing phase. I’ve moved around the nation and around the world. Relatively little remained the same for me. Change was a constant phase.

But we usually had cats. They bonded with me more than my wife, with one exception. These cats became my buddies. At one point, I had six living with me. Another four that belonged to neighbors regularly visited. Now all are gone except one, and he’s getting old.

That’s what phase I guess it’s been hardest to let go of. Each fur friend’s death was so deeply felt that I’m weary of feeling it. My wife said the same and has declared, no more cats. I’m willing to accept that for the moment, but it’s the end of a phase, and a very long good-bye.

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Just A Dream

Daily writing prompt
Write about your dream home.
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I’ve almost lived in my dream home a few times. That whole personal paradigm of what a dream home is changes with time.

Living in Germany off base in a little town called Waldorf, I was quite happy. Up on the fifth floor, we had nice views and were short walks to some sweet cafes, bakeries, and gasthauses. The drive to the base was short. Not much traffic was encountered on a typical day until I reached the gate, so there was no frustrations or irritations associated with driving. Frankfurt itself, with all that it offered was just down the autobahn. The train or the autobahn easily took us other places, not just in Germany, but across Europe. It was wonderful.

But I rotated ‘home’, to the United States. Home was now Onizuka Air Station, previously known as Sunnyvale Air Station, in Sunnyvale, California. After living in an apartment in Sunnyvale, I moved to base housing. Then I retired from the military and lived in a Mountain View duplex on a cul-de-sac. But my wife and I noticed that we often spent time when we weren’t working in Half Moon Bay, California. So we found a place there, a beautiful townhome just a mile from the beach.

Half Moon Bay was a wonderful town. Our place was just a six minute walk from downtown and its plethora of restaurants, shops, cafes, and stores. We were in heaven for a while there.

But it’s Half Moon Bay, a small place. We still worked in San Mateo, Redwood City, Mountain View. Besides work, we needed to venture up Highway 92 and ‘over the hill’ to do shopping. The traffic there was bad and getting worse.

Then our housing association started going crazo. They began more stringent with the rules while increasing the HOA dues. We were soon paying almost a thousand a month for that and climbing.

So we moved here, to Ashland, in southern Oregon. The town initially offered a lot of promise but the promise has faded. We also know that, gosh, we miss that ocean. So, we want to move again.

To where? Well, probably the east coast in the U.S. Maybe to Europe. Perhaps Canada. Or South America. I want a small town with interesting stores and cafes, good food, and a sense of community. It’s a place where I can walk for coffee, food, beer, books. I’d also like to be by the sea and the churning, interesting facets it throws at my mind and senses. Will I find my dream home?

I don’t know. I think I’m still trying to dream it up.

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Sunda’s Theme Music

Good mornin’! It’s Sunda, February 9, 2025. Sunshine is crowding the window, pressing its rays up against the glass. We started the AM at 25 F in my locale but the sun soon had us soaring past 33 F. ‘They’ tell us 43 is possible. Don’t know if their fingers were crossed behind their backs.

The sun has been working its magic. Trees and bushes are pushing their heavy lids of snow back and stretching and flexing into their normal postures. Seeing sunshine, both floofs clamored to escape the house. Checking on them later, the two sat, eyes closed, soaking up rays on the patio’s sun-warmed cement. After being sun-doused, they returned to the house. One is now napping on a bed while the other is in a chair in sunshine snoozing.

What a night of dreams. Another military dream was among them. Classic of these dreams, I’m in the military again, and again coping with a uniform malfunction. In other words, I was out of compliance and trying to solve that. It’s my version of being pantless in school. But a twist arrived when an officer accosted me and asked, “What are you doing?” I figured he was going to ladle grief on me for my uniform. I whipped out an explanation and told him I was trying to rectify it. “Why?” he responded, surprising me. Then he added, “You retired.”

Oh, yeah.

That sunshine had me thinking, I hunger for a bouncy, energetic song. Something as an antitdote to PINO Trusk’s destruction. Drifting back into time, The Neurons surfaced with a Who offering from 1972. Although the video is silly with them miming playing their instruments and singing, the infectious blending of instruments stirred the kind of hope I felt when I was sixteen. That — and coffee — is just what my spirit ordered.

Coffee saved me again. Brekkie is done, cats are fed. Time to gen up other activities. Hope your day serves you well. Cheers

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Friedaz’s Theme Music

We’ve clocked into Friedaz, February 7, 2024. Snowfall greeted me when I checked the weather. A couple more inches had been added during night’s rule. Now 30 F, more was piling up.

Or was it? The temperature crept up to 31. 32. 32.3. 32.4.

Papi the ginger blade, aka, ginger butt, had a vet appointment. 10 AM. I’d made it three weeks ago. He was suffering fur loss, ravenous appetite and some weight loss. Hyperactive thyroid was suspected by us. We’d seen the same in Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah). In fact, based on that, we’d started sharing Tucker’s medicine with Papi. Stopped it on Monday so we could get it out of his system and see the test results.

After strapping chains onto the tires and putting a complaining Papi into a kennel, I made the drive under heavy snowfall.

Turned out that chains were only needed for our driveway and street. The city’s main roads were plowed. As we traveled west and north, the temperature rose. Snow became rain. Precipitation ceased by the time we reached the vet.

That’s okay. Little inconvenienced. Important thing is to get Papi checked and healthy. Yeah, blood work shows hyperactive thyroid. Five hundred clams later, she prescribed the same med that Tucker is getting. Wants to check him in a month.

BTW, I researched why we call money ‘clams’. Turns out that it’s an old joke, based on settlers observing natives using clams for cash. Actually, I made that up. Figure that in this era of fake news, what’s a little more?

I have a 1974 Procol Harum song, “Pandora’s Box”, in the morning mental music stream. Procol Harum often brought interesting music to the scene. This is one I knew from their albums but I don’t believe I ever heard it played on the radio. Funny enough, Aerosmith had a song with the same title in the year before. That caused some confusion among some of us. The two songs sound nothing at all alike, with vastly different intentions presented by the lyrics. I later bet a friend about who performed the song, cleverly inserting the year as part of the bet. I won but he accused me of being underhanded and taking advantage of him. Guilty! But the bet was just a beer, come on. It was at the NCO club and was five dollars for a pitcher. Of course, it was American lager…Miller Lite, I think.

Coffee has resuscitated my energy levels again. Time to get on the day and ride. Hope your day fills your needs.

Hey, look, the snow has stopped and the sun is out.

By the way, I thought I’d utilize the original spelling used today, Friedaz. In doing research, I learned that ‘day’ was actually ‘daz’ almost universally until it became Anglicized. And the prefix, Fri, was originally Frig or Frigga, after a Nordic Goddess. Those rebelling against Nordic influence because they were chaffing from looting done during Viking raids in Europe, changed it to Frie. That spelling upset Christians, as Frigga day or Frieday was a day of fasting. People thought that calling it Friedaz gave them permission to eat fried food. Hence, they started eating fried fish on Friedaz, giving rise to the Catholic rule of eating fish on Friday. The spelling was changed to try to stop people from eating fried foods on Friedaz, but it had became too embedded. Even so, a last ditch attempt was made by religious authorities: they changed the spelling to Friday. And that’s why we have that spelling.

Naw, I made that up, too. Blame the coffee. It’s always forcing me to write and say crazy things.

Until another time, cheers

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My First ‘Puter

Daily writing prompt
Write about your first computer.
View all responses

I purchased my first computer when I came back to the United States. I was in the military, and my wife and I were stationed on Okinawa in May of 1981, returning to the U.S. in January of 1985. After settling into our new assignment at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, we went out and dropped about 2 grand on a Kaypro II. That was a huge chunk of cash for us. Looking like a portable sewing machine when it was closed, the heavy blue computer had a small green screen, 64K of ram and two 5 1/4 floppy drives. Running at 4.77 megahertz, the machine’s operating system was CPM 87.

Not my machine.

My primary software was MicroPro Wordstar on a floppy.

In 1987, I replaced the Kaypro with a Zenith 100, which could use PC Dos, MS Dos, and IBM DOS. Still ran at 4.77, but the monitor was a big separate RGB monitor. I later added a 10 Meg hard drive, changed the processors, and added more RAM. 10 Meg, we thought, wow, would I ever use that much?

So much has changed in the decades since.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Mood: Friazing

Friday morning, December 20, 2024, has arrived. It crowned us with fog, wind, and surprisingly warm temps. While weather services claim our temp is 46 F, my system say 56 F. I went out there to check and agree with my system. Meanwhile, in the space to think and type that, I turned around and the fog was gone. A white slate has been dropped onto the valley. Sunshine squeezes through where and when it can.

We went around town doing stuff yesterday. People were frequently overheard or encountered remarking about the short day. We’re all eager for the solstice to arrive so more sunshine will fill our days. Just a few more nights to endure.

So much news to digest and comment upon but my brain is warning, no, slow down. Back away from that toxic stuff. But watching the Musk call the shots for the inept GOP as they try to game the system to favor PINO Trump threatens to plant a permanent scowl on my mien.

Meanwhile, a fellow blogger reminded me of The Specials, and a terrific ditty they wrote back in 1982. “The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum” is gleefully playing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark sedated). A Canadian in the U.S. military who was a dozen years older than me introduced me to group and this song. The of us, along with a third, and the four children — two boys and two girls — were camping out at Okuma on Okinawa. End of a good day, a fire going as the Pacific lapped at the beach a few hundred yards away, sipping cognac, he played this on the boombox. It’s the perfect song for now. While it’s a mellow, lazy bouncy flow, the words are ideal. To wit:

The Cowboy has told us to go nuclear,

who am I to disagree?

Remember, back when they wrote this, Ronnie Reagan was the Power. Now with PINO Trump, we have a perfect crowning line:

Cuz when the madman flips the switch,

the nuclear will go for me.

Between Ronnie back then and Putin and Trump now, that’s a real fear. Putin doesn’t give a shit and PINO Trump is too empty-headed to understand the consequences of going nuclear. But the song goes on to capture capitalism’s insanity in another verse:

I’ve seen the faces of starvation,

but I just cannot see the point.

Cuz there’s so much food here today

that no one wants to take away.

Yes, there is so much wasted food in the world, often because people are overeating in restaurants or it’s prohibitively priced, goes unsold, and gets tossed. Meanwhile, people starve and beg around the corner.

Gotta move on. I introduced coffee to my neurons today, and they’re getting along well. Here’s the music, and I hope you enjoy. Here we go. Cheers

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