Archive for April, 2008

What is a military officer? A yes man/woman? Or someone who protects their oath to serve the Constitution and cares about the people they command? Apparently, in this war, the military only wants the “Yes sir, Yes Sir, three bags full, Sir” type of officers. Army generals have been sacked for telling this President he doesn’t know how to run a war—because yeah, we all bought the shit about them wanting to spend more time with their families.

And now, a young Navy lieutenant from Washington State is home again, career ended. Her name is Sabrina Weiner and she served with distinction after graduating from Stanford, where she attended on a Navy ROTC scholarship. She served seven years active duty, was shipboard on Sept. 11 and got great reviews of her service; she was a talented and dedicated officer. She came home, became a reservist planning to go back to graduate school.

Then she was called back up and told she was going to Iraq to become a “commerce officer.” This meant, as a woman of Asian-Jewish ancestry, she would be dealing with Iraqi men who ignore most of what any woman says about money and contracts. She thought this made little sense, even though she was willing to serve in this war, unlike the Army’s Lt. Watada. But she had deeper concerns than being part Jewish and female.

Both the Navy and the Air Force have been forced into providing warm bodies for the depleted Army and Marines through the “individual augmentee” program. Her quote on the subject:

“It is not an against-the-war argument but a people-accountability argument,” Weiner says. “I was proud to say I was a Navy officer. My problem is the way they are using us as IAs. It minimizes the job and training we do for the Navy.” It cannibalizes the Navy — and Air Force -- to cover up a shortage of Army and Marine troops to fight the wars, she argues.” (from here: http://tinyurl.com/53lwcn )

And I feel she is right. While the Air Force sends their individual augmentees to a course to prepare them for land combat, the Navy does not. These poor mis-assigned people not only risk their own lives unduly, but constitute a risk to those around them because of their total lack of experience in their hasty new duty assignments. Those she was concerned over are not a paltry few: according to the Navy Department, they number 7,063 active and 5,050 reserve sailors are serving as individual augmentees ON THE GROUND, not only in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere.

For her concerned argument, she was arrested and flown cross-country in shackles. She was threatened with court martial if she didn’t accept her assignment. She was arrested at home as she packed to report to her reserve unit in New Orleans; the Everette (Wa) Police picked her up. She credits all parties with being professional and proper even though she was strip-searched and booked. She was not about becoming a celebrated cause against the war; she simply doesn’t want military personnel to be misused.

But the cannibalization will continue, she was branded with a lousy “fitness report” and separated “for the good of the Navy.” Not a yes-woman, dedicated to intelligently protecting the sailors who have to count upon and trust their officers—she is discarded.

She is a hero. And the Navy doesn’t want her kind of heroics, apparently, only the “ours is not to question why, ours is but to do or die” type need apply. It is uncannily like the sci-fi series “Battlestar Galactica” where Cylon flyers are lobotomized for refusing to fire in ambivalent circumstances where they might be killing “their own.” They have lost what they most needed, and only more suffering and error can follow.

Yesterday was not a sterling day.  A small personal event plunged me into the familiar sensation of feeling small and worthless.  My usual response to this is to work on something that restores my sense of worthiness, so I knitted most of the afternoon after errands were done.   But, the melancholic mood was well established and as evening fell, a sense of paralysis took over. My dear husband swept me out of the house to dinner at a Thai place nearby, and bought me my non-milk “ice cream” and forbidden food  (coconut macaroons) on the way home.

So then, we settled in before the television.  Hundreds of channels of nothing worth watching, so we looked in old movies at the “On Demand” function.  We discovered that neither of us had ever seen “Hair.”  Me, because I was too young when the movie came out—being 13 or 14 at the time ; and him because he was in Viet Nam at that time.   Never mind that he was possibly too young to be in Viet Nam–having joined the Army at seventeen!  So, “Hair” it was.

I still could sing almost all the words to “Let the Sunshine In” and “Age of Aquarius”….those were my favorite songs back at age 14.  Of course, back then, they were rushing the cosmic calendar a bit.  We were then, and still are, in the age of Pisces as the precession of the equinoxes has not tipped over into the sun sign of Aquarius even yet.  At 14, astrology was an uncertain mystery, but it sounded nice.  Now, still unconvinced but occasionally enticed with childish hope, I find that I can not, as a bitter old bitch of 55 even dream of the optimistic changes everyone singing in 1968 thought would be presaged by that little astrological/astronomical twitch.

Well, if I thought I was pinged with brain loop despair before….let me tell you, watching “Hair” pushed me right over a whole new edge.  It brought back memories of being young and hopeful; yes, even against the backdrop of the Viet Nam war.  I hated that war, too.  But I wasn’t a protester—my dad would have beat me to death, and even then, I was writing letters to the troops telling them I hoped they came through all right and lived a good life after the war.  What the hell did I know about it all, back then?
Sitting in the arms of the man who was “in country” back then, who I would never have met if he had suffered the fate of the unlucky Burger in the film, made me intensely sad.  Even before the film moved to its tragi-comic ending, I tried to quit—invoking early morning alarms and bedtime.  No deal, the Man was fascinated with seeing a film rendition of a culture he didn’t get to see since he was very, very “someplace else” at the time.  The final frames of the film were hundreds of young people waving peace signs and flags at the White House, after showing the protagonists of the film observing their lost buddy’s grave in a military cemetary.  As we climbed into bed, both of us wrapped in the semi-silence connoting some emotional shock, I found my voice.

“If what happened to Burger had happened to you, we never would have met.”  He tried to comfort me and perhaps shush the next line of my thought train, and failed.  “That is, you know,” I said, “What is happening to all the young men and women dying in Iraq and Afghanistan—-their futures are blinking out like bursting soap bubbles.”  And for even a stupider reason, these deaths.  And there are NOT thousands in the streets bitching about it.  No draft, no danger to the upper class; and America is lulled into watching placidly?

We didn’t learn anything in 1968, did we?  Some really crude folks still look at the death count and say, “Oh, only 5,100 or so…” comparing it to WWII or to Korea, or Viet Nam.  When will it be enough?   Must we drag this war out as many years as Viet Nam, until the death count is in the tens of thousands like Viet Nam before we can say “Enough!”

I think we need more than the age of Aquarius here.  Astrology isn’t going to save our asses….or our Army.  Though, Aquarius is the “water bearer”….maybe if we took THAT tack with our Congressional ass-kissers?  After all, they don’t seem convinced that water-boarding is torture, do they?  Maybe we need to converge on the Capitol with jars of water and sing a new verse of “Age of Aquarius” to them ?   After all, we don’t know what the original water-bearer was going to do with that jug, do we?  Maybe it should be the dawning of the age of Aquarius!

I was going to leave this alone.

Really, truly, I was going to ignore the goat-fuck press dust-up over Obama saying small town Americans are bitter and worried and clinging to religion and guns.   But I do get sick of it going on and on and on and can’t keep my mouth shut any more.  Cause every time SOMEone in America says something America rather needs to hear, everyone else screams like raped apes.  And gloss is applied to cover up all the cracks in the foundation.
Hillary?  Shut up….you are too condescending to convincingly administer the sunshine enema you are attempting to use on America.  McCain?  You, you, YOU are calling Obama “elitist”??  Oh man, that’s pretty damned rich coming from you.  Both of you just have a long tall drink of STFU, for the love of sanity.  And you media hacks, talking about Obama being “in a political pickle”?  Honestly, find some balls and feed us some REAL news, will you?  Do your fricking job!  You are not supposed to be gossip columnists and cheerleaders, damn it.

And America?  If you are buying that Obama is talking down to you?  Wake the hell up.  I LIVE in a small town, ok?  And since this crap-shoot began when Obama said what apparently just can NEVER be said, I have looked around my small town when out doing errands.  Particularly, I have looked at cars and their bumper stickers and kept a running tally.

Seven out of ten vehicles with bumper stickers and decals have at least one related to religion.  At least five out of ten have one related to guns(pro-gun, not anti), and if you count NRA  stickers that number goes up to six or seven.  And in about five out of ten cases, both applicable stickers or decals were on the same car.  So, there you go, American small towns (at least this one) DO cling to religion and guns.  And while this is the more “redneck” county of the area, it is not the most redneck; and baby…..I live on the BLUE side of the state!

In many primitive societies, the moon is seen as the carrier of the dead—a sort of boat or raft to the great, presumed Beyond.  Now, paganish sort that I am, I don’t know where (if anywhere) the dead go. My experiences since building the Labyrinth incline me to think there is a somewhere; but good little Kantian that I am, I cannot presume to know the specifics of that journey.

Nonetheless, two or more times a week, I go outside to the Labyrinth with a list of names of the newest dead Americans & Coalition members in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Since the news here  only mentions names when they come from the local post or are state residents, I figure many news outlets  do the “be nice to the President and hide his bodies” thing.  So, from the founding of this website, over a year ago, I have listed those names on the associated message boards (Folder – Taps) each time I walked, and never less than four times per month–with each change of moon phase.

Since I am planning to lose the message boards next spring for various reasons, it dawned upon me that I need to list the dead somewhere.  So, brace yourselves….four times per month I will list all the names released by the DOD and hunted down at other sites by me.  It will not be as day to day as the message boards, done right before my walking.

For instance, todays entries are given you from the New Moon entries for April of 2008.   But at least, they will be listed….which is more than I can say for the national news, where they look all trembly just mentioning the numbers killed.

From the last moon phase: New to First Quarter April 2008:

Staff Sgt. Jeremiah E. McNeal, 23, of Norfolk, Va. -Army – Iraq – IED

Sgt. Richard A. Vaughn, 22, of San Diego, Calif. – Army -Iraq – RPG

Sgt. Timothy M. Smith, 25, of South Lake Tahoe, Calif. – Army – Iraq – IED

Spc. Jason C. Kazarick, 30, of Oakmont, Pa. – Army – Iraq – RPG

Sgt. Michael T. Lilly, 23, of Boise, Idaho. – Army – Iraq -RPG

Maj. Mark E. Rosenberg, 32, of Miami Lakes, Fla. – Army – Iraq – IED

Col. Stephen K. Scott, 54, of New Market, Ala. – Army – Iraq -enemy fire

Maj. Stuart A. Wolfer, 36, of Coral Springs, Fla. – Army – Iraq – enemy fire

In Iraq, all Army:

Pfc. Shane D. Penley, 19, of Sauk Village, Ill. – died of “wounds” while on guard duty

Capt. Ulises Burgos-Cruz, 29, of Puerto Rico, – IED

Spc. Matthew T. Morris, 23, of Cedar Park, Texas – IED

Staff Sgt. Emanuel Pickett, 34, of Teachey, N.C., – indirect fire

And Coalition TRoops (not all names for the period are released yet)

All killed in Afghanistan:

Jeremie Ouellet of Canada
Anders Storgaard of Denmark
Christian Rasschou of Denmark

Spc. Charles A. Jankowski, 24, of Panama City, Fla. – Iraq – Army – IED

Sgt. Jevon K. Jordan, 32, of Norfolk, Va – Iraq – Army -IED

Sgt. Dayne D. Dhanoolal, 26, of Brooklyn NY – Iraq – Army -IED

Staff Sgt. Travis L. Griffin, 28, of Dover, Del. – Iraq – Air Force – IED

In Iraq and Afghanistan, Coalition and American dead are now over 5,100 dead.

Yes, he pumps his service in Viet Nam and his POW status. Fine, Mr. McCain, tell us how that experience changed you for the better? Tell us how it informs your choices for the men who take the military risks you no longer have to submit yourself to suffering? What have you done for veterans of more modern wars since? Since a veterans group has given you a D- for your voting record on veterans’ issues, why should any of us listen to your lines about “supporting the troops” since you obviously mean glad-handing them and not spending money to aid them?

A political action committee headed by Wesley Clark has made a video asking McCain to support a bill for a new GI Bill:  the Webb/Hagel version that would restore college aid to higher standards. This bill would be more like the original FDR post WWII GI Bill—you know the one; the one that galvanized American society and industry with an influx of educated vets in the ’50’s! Can you think of a better plan to revive the stagnation and decline in the American economy right now? (Well, I mean BESIDES being rid of a ruinous war and its fan-club in the GOP)

You see, recruiters always tell kids how great it is to get money for college, but the truth is, the current GI bill is a piece of crap. The troops have to pay into it themselves—$100 per month for a year, which is a lot out of the budget if you are a private supporting a family. And it has a time limit for them to use their benefits (much like the Viet Nam Era bill—I couldn’t complete my degree in the ten years I had, being busy with family, earning money and other things of reality!), and it has a maximum amount it will pay per month. That amount is completely inadequate to pay college costs and somehow manage to eat without working a full time job at the same time.

Much opposition has come up; from the military itself—they say if the GI Bill is that good, folks will vamoose after their single tour and they will have no more career soldiers. Oh, man, the irony: keep them so stupid they are unemployable so we will have soldier-serfs forever! This must be why McCain, who really likes to use his veteran flag, has voted “no” so many times on every issue to better the GI Bill, or for that matter, almost anything that would improve the lives of vets? He voted against increasing funds to help vets with mental issues—because tax cuts for the rich was a higher priority for him as a good GOP card-carrying asshat. If he doesn’t care if they are able to fight PTSD and maintain sanity, why would he care if they can get a good education?

Good luck, Wesley Clark….McCain will waffle and shuffle his feet and not commit. But we all know his answer to this would be what it has been so many times before: NO! I can’t say this loudly enough: if a politician is talking “support the troops” you need to check their voting record instead of taking their rhetorical crap as reality. So, why would ANY vet vote for John McCain? What has he done for you lately except wrap himself in the flag and lie to you in red, white, and blue.

More information at: http://tinyurl.com/4bhxlb

A post stolen from the Pickled Jester! (What he refers to as the gentrification of the rich, I prefer to remember is the serfication of the American worker!)

I am quite certain that almost every American is aware of the unemployment problem in this country. For those of you still amazingly unaware, over 81,000 jobs have been lost this year. Unemployment offices across the nation are suddenly swamped with applications. Thousands of people are losing what they consider to be their lives; vehicles, homes, marriage…food on the table.

Even for those of us fortunate to have a good job (which I will define shortly) life is increasingly difficult. As each day passes inexorably forward, prices across the board continue to rise. Food, fuel, books, in short: inflation is no longer battering at the gates, it is now ransacking the cities and homes of our land.

As I said above, those of us to be employed with a good job are feeling the effects of this overpowering recession. And the people with good jobs are really only inconvenienced; for the vast majority of the country a ‘good job’ is a nothing more than a pipe dream. A good job is one that pays well and on time. It is a job from an employer that consistently manages to uphold their end of the bargain, permitting you to leave at the set time, allowing you those two days off a week, giving you the holidays promised off. A good job is one where you find yourself working in an environment which allows you to get and go and get a drink of water, or a snack, or perhaps to have a cigarette, or use the bathroom when you want and outside of federally mandated break times.

Most Americans do not have that sort of job. Most Americans work a job that is tiring, miserable, and in short, degrading to the human condition. I’ve personally seen workers threatened for possessing the audacity to leave their work area for a drink of water when it was not an approved break time. I’ve witnessed supervisors’ pressuring employees into working on a day off, by utilizing  the scare tactics of threatening with the loss of their job. I’ve seen people come into work for a ten hour day and not be allowed to leave until fourteen hours have passed, again, threatened with termination should they demand to leave on time. I have witnessed people come to work day-by-day, tired and frustrated, concerned and worried, because they have yet to receive their first paycheck; and this after a month of employment. Worse, I’ve seen people who have worked for the same company for a great deal of time  while failing to be paid for weeks on end. All in all I’ve seen wealthy corporations use and abuse the very people who enable them their wealth and pampered life.

Good jobs, as compared to the myriad assortment and all too easily obtained soul-crushing types of jobs, are rare. It took me over six months of relentless searching to find a ‘good’ job. And I only managed that job due to my experience in the military. I have no college degree to use on my lengthy resume. Many Americans have no college degree to use on a resume, and yet they are more than capable of performing the functions of many jobs. For example, many employers require a bachelor’s degree for such jobs as warehouse management; a monkey can run a warehouse. I know this because for nearly a decade I worked in and around warehouses for the military and I may assure you, it is not a difficult job. But, companies want the added benefit of a bullshit business degree before they will allow you the misfortune of working for them. This sort of practice, America, is nothing more than the gentrification of American society.

This devolution to the once gratefully forgotten feudalistic society is a diametric opposite to the time-honored values of this nation. This land was founded on a different set of values and principles. This nation was built on the idea that wealth could, and should, be obtained by every person who calls America his or her home. And it has worked, too well for some and not at all for most. The majority of wealth in our homeland is not evenly distributed among the majority of the populace. Instead it is locked securely away by the extremely, and horrendously wealthy elite upper class, a paltry few. These obscenely wealthy individuals are the new nobility, the gentry of 21ST Century America.  (Editors note: It would remind our Founding Fathers more of the situation in France in 1787 or so!)

With a decaying economy, a government rife and replete with greedy, corrupt officials, a steadily (even rapid) decline in the educated and informed youth, and the innate sense of entitlement our population displays, our nation is on a collision course with ruin. Combine the aforementioned with the extremely wealthy and highly educated corporate tyrants that our laws have not only protected, but aided and enabled, and you have found the grandest and most failsafe manner of creating a society based on class divisions.

If our society allows this behavior to continue then we must all ask the hard question: Why did we bother with a revolution at all?

Ok, this is the official “weird stuff” post for the week.  I have had an acquaintance who had a brain tumor and believe me my title implies no disrespect for that brand of suffering.  She got strange “smells” but usually of burned scents.  So my reference comes from inexplicable odor occurrences.  I  don’t have a brain tumor….I have a Labyrinth in the back yard, and dead people with unfulfilled wishes to worry about.

I hate it when I get these weird things from time to time.  I know, for instance, that at least four more servicemen died this weekend.  No, I don’t have the DOD release of their names yet.  But sometimes, even before I read the news I know there has been a fresh batch of hell delivered to “our side” in that debacle in the sand.  How?

Because, apparently, “they” (the dead) know I am here and let me know their wishes.  I get “scents”, you see.  In an empty house, with nothing cooking and no near neighbors even home, a sudden delicious odor fills the house.  Sometimes it is fried chicken; sometimes in is angel food cake.  Now and then it is something harder to identify, or something as easy as home-made bread.

This morning it is a rich scent of deep dark chocolate….like death by chocolate brownies baking.  I will have to bake today, I think.

I have mostly got over weeping over the sheer numbers once I come back from the Walk.  I can even contain myself when the occasional sensation of someone right BESIDE me hits out there and I don’t freak over dreams of helicopters, dust and Hummers at all.

But food smells in the house and the sense of longing that comes with it.  Yes, color me unhinged every time.  Will I know, do you suppose, when the names come in e-mail, who it was wanting chocolate for a final meal that never happened?

Today is the second of April, the “calends” of old times.  On the calends of each month, I light a small candle before a beautiful marble rendition of the Athena of the Parthenon.  And I light a tiny charcoal disk and place sweet resinous incense upon it.  Then I muse upon religion—both personal and state.

America supposedly has no official state religion, not that one would know it, with all the speeches about Christian nations and Christian virtues flying about, and with every Presidential candidate trying to get their bonafides established vis a vis the proper faith.  Of course, small rites like mine were once common—in Rome for instance.  Incense to the gods…and the Emperor were a pretty commonplace requirement. And that is what got those pesky early Christians such trouble—they wouldn’t light incense to either.

Sooo, emulating ancient Romans, though they would have called my marble image “Minerva”, what do I feel?  In spite of other times when I was sure I felt the touch of the divine in my life……I feel nothing.  I feel alone and hollowed out, cheated and angry in a vague indescribable way.  What do I expect from my presumed deities?

I’m not sure.  Some tender new proofs of existence at least would be nice.  I don’t so much expect any god or goddess to step up to the plate and fix the world for me, though, my goodness, wouldn’t that be nice??   But I have long espoused the idea that this planet is OUR ball of wax to make or break.  We have a long history of breaking it, it seems….and with it, our very hearts.  I guess, when it comes down to divine beings, THAT is what I’d like best—-the will to continue, some subtle comfort that makes one WANT to go on.  Don’t get me wrong, I do go on (and readers groan, “And on and on and ooooon!”), but it seems with ever less expectation of success in any field of endevour.

I see blogs daily, where I read some quite humorous lambasting from time to time, that entitle themselves part of the “reality based” blogosphere.  I guess, being even a skeptical, nominal sort of “person of faith” (and the “wrong” frakking one at that), keeps me outside that particular grouping.  I’d like to be atheist, sometimes, I’d like to dispense completely with my small mementos of seeking and reaching for something noumenal  in my life.  I’d like to stop wanting that something that might, just might, give adequate meaning to all the striving, suffering, success or failure.  What is adequate?  Isn’t humanity’s best effort sufficient?  In a word, for me, no.  It too often epitomizes futility.

There just has always been a certain steady stream of occasional cosmic seeming “taps” upon the shoulder….sometimes even when I am awake, that make me sure there is something beyond this phenomenal (and oft phenomenally fucked UP) world.  And in these occasional dark nights of tangled soul combings, I tell myself they were imagination.  This morning, as the candlelight lit up Athena’s calm and beautiful marble visage, I felt my face crumple and a cry was wrenched from my heart:

“You are so beautiful, so perfect….you HAVE to be real in some sense, don’t you?”  But of course, a tapestry of a unicorn is as beautiful and perfect—-and perfectly unreal.

It is always the beauty that leads me to searching down dark, lost alleys of my soul to find footprints of something greater than human power and need.  It is beauty that feeds my hope and fuels renewed effort on the many fronts of my life—-and there is less of it all the time.  And when I can’t “get there from here” and there is no “shoulder tap” and I can barely hold the memory of past taps in my mind;  I make myself go through the motions—not because of “faith” as most describe it, because I never had that, but because I don’t know what else to do.

I ask myself what I indubitably know.  I know we live, strive, fight, fail.  I know we love, reach, achieve and succeed.  What do I believe?  In the end, I believe in death.  It is the only tangible intangible when I stand on the Labyrinth with a list of names.  But I look at the pictures that match the faces on my list,  they are SO real, SO alive that I cannot believe in THEIR deaths.  My mind cannot hold the dual realities of those beautiful faces—those spectacular men and women so full of LIFE being dead and gone forever.

So, this is living in denial…..and waiting for unicorns.

….for the Fisher House!  This month is almost the cruelest of the year, round here, financially.  Property taxes are due, insurance on the house is due….grocery costs are sky-rocketing and I have a vet visit to pay for on its way.

But, it occurred to me, if it is hard for us, it must surely be harder for military families trying to cope with being the loved ones of any of the over 29,000 wounded men and women sent back from this war.  Fisher House alleviates some of that dire tension and fear in so many ways, and unlike other “help the troops charities” that enrich their so-called founders, Fish House actually spends at least 90 cents of each dollar on the troops and their families.

So, dear readers, the Fisher House block you see to the left will take you to a donation page.  Please, please….any two or three or five of you, please match my $50 for April.  I believe in a particular kind of magic—the kind where the kindness you sow upon others comes back to you when you need it most.  We are all struggling presently in an exhausted economy, lets struggle together and remember some of the most vulnerable, ok?