Thanksgiving II: Revenge of Tradition

What has happened to thanksgiving? The Detroit Lions won a football game! Wait you don’t have a TV? No problem you can go to the store and get one now even though its thanksgiving, of course, you already missed the game…but you might be able to get highlights on your phone unless your phone is old then you’ll have to upgrade there while getting your new discounted Black Thursday TV.

That’s what we’re calling it now I hear – Black Thursday. Blasphemy. A holiday about gratitude for and sharing of blessings turned into another exercise in narcissistic materialism. The news reports about economic indicators – a 2.9% increase in holiday spending worrying retailers and such. The home country from which we sprung, Britain was once derisively referred to as a nation of shop keepers a tradition we have maintained and improved upon, but should we be so obsessed with shopping, profits, markets, and economic indicators?

The real crime here is this insanity threatening thanksgiving, giving Detroit a chance to win, comes to us courtesy of another day of religious significance destroyed by materialism. It’s as if the whole baby Jesus's story was about the gifts that were brought him and how important they were. The baby was just an excuse to use a coupon and an event to spur economic activity at the bazaar. Xmas is already destroyed and they are trying to roll over thanksgiving - the only thing is left protecting Veteran’s Day and Remembrance Day from Xmas. Veteran’s day won’t have a chance if thanksgiving falls, with less than 1% of our country serving or having served. Pagan (and fun) Halloween will be destroyed next and before you know it we’ll be letting Santa usher in Labor Day – also marked by sales, most notably at mattress discounters.

Thanksgiving is a day for God. Black anything doesn’t belong anywhere near it. I just re-read President Washington’s thanksgiving proclamation I see God mentioned 9 times (19 if you count the pronoun “His”), prayer 3 times but no mentions of shopping or discount. Sure he was the man who has everything but surely he could have used a properly fitted coat at least?

It’s clear what the man who gave us the holiday thought of it and what its true purpose was. For me, I too am thankful for God and His blessings but I yet struggle how best to introduce the kids to this concept which I believe is best-experienced vice explained? For now, it’s enough to go through the motions, spending time with family and eating far too much – which I why I suspect Washington’s clothes were always a bit large for him – they hadn’t yet invented the elastic waistband.

But I digress.

If you know me and TO&S, you know I’m thankful most for my family and that starts with my wife. So for me, the holiday is about her and the time I get to spend with her. We did something special and new this year – we started prep work, not just cleaning and re-arranging the furniture or decorating but the real tangibly intimate tender togetherness that cooking together is for us. I feel tears well up when I try to imagine the holiday without her. I hope it never happens. For some, they are alone and they’re doing it for us – whether they understand the war or even agree with it – they’re in uniform on the watch for us, or our sons or friends. The photo was especially poignant for me having just a few months ago volunteered to come out of retirement and don once more the Army uniform for another term of service. That fellow manning that wall eating pressed turkey out of a box and ready mix mashed taters could easily have been me, and may yet be.

We’re not having it. Any of it. We’re pushing back (okay it was mostly her idea). I’m a fighter, so Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving is now Thanksgiving and it’s a two day holiday with Thanksgiving proper and Eve. From this day forth I proclaim it so, that if Black Thursday becomes a thing there will always be at least one day for my wife and me to enjoy giving thanks (for each other at least). Even if we’re forced to spend it assembling PB&J sandwich brown bag lunches for a long Thursday trek to some far off mall assigned as our official shopping center by the Obama website people for Black Thursday minimum economic stimulus activity required under the commerce clause.

So help me God.

Death and Names

Death by any other name...

So for a few weeks now we’ve been anxiously dreading the death of a family patriarch. Pap-Pap Sheffel, on my editor’s side of the family. A WWII veteran of the 11^th Airborne Div. and all around great guy, he will be sorely missed.  His slow goodbye was exceptionally difficult for the family, split between Penna. and Indi. I did the best I could to help her deal with this difficult matter but often felt like only a spectator, helpless and useless. Worse when she asked me about my beliefs about the afterlife and what awaits us I was disappointed in my ability to answer her in a comforting way. But this isn’t about me.

She asked me about heaven and reincarnation. I was raised with the idea like she was that in heaven you have all your family waiting there for you as she was, but I had rejected that concept. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to meeting relatives who had abused my mother, rejected my father for being a half-breed, or who spat hate at me from every pore because I was an adopted half-breed son of a half breed. Why would I look forward to that? That concept of heaven made no sense to me.

I neglected to explain that now, with our family complete I could find comfort in that idea. Instead I asked stupid questions about what age would those people be? What would we do in heaven? Wouldn’t they rather spend time with their elders? Would they know me? Would I be as important to them or would they be reunited with a lost lover from a marriage I never knew about or some other such thing. What would other people’s expectations of me be there? Can you have any fun there or is it a Mormon caffeine free utopia and what good is that? I want to drink a beer with Ben Franklin in the afterlife, or party with some Vikings in Valhalla not sing hymns in the choir eternal being chastised by nuns for being off key or late for a performance. Maybe I’d just want to sleep in and skip it, stay in bed with the wife. Would God allow that?

I’ve always been “the journey is the important part” guy. I believe in heaven here and now, my life with my family is as good as it gets.  Heaven? What’s that good for? Are we going to go fishing with God? I would only want to live again to meet my wife and enjoy again the tenuous first moments of our meeting, falling in love and growing into a single entity here on earth.  So for me reincarnation is where it would be at. I’d want after the time of my reaping to return if only to scour the earth a dozen times in search of her, even if it meant dying horribly each time before the 13^th time when I did find her, if ever so briefly.

It’s difficult to understand and harder still to explain – here I fall short again. So what comfort is there in knowing what is beyond? I’d rather not, for me there is comfort in that – in hoping I’m right, or maybe that God gives us a choice, a menu of options.

So the journey is what’s most important I’ve lost sleep worrying that I’m not making the best of that journey. Risk aversion having chased away valor and courage, slow and steady caution has destroyed my appetite to shake things up, make a difference and fight for what I believe in. There a lot of things I’ve managed to squeeze into my life, living easily a dozen times more than most could dream of – yet many things I’ve had to let go by the way so I could choose another path. Right now I want to find more fulfilling work, or something that lets me spend more time with my family. The two seem to be mutually exclusive in a galactic Catch-22.

I saw an old torpedo recovery boat on the GSA webpage. The boat was rusted out but reparable, I thought wow I could go for something like that a vacation boat or something a 2^nd address to have on the water, but I’ll never try to make that kind of thing happen. Too expensive, to complex I think. What happened to me? Maybe I will. The wife talks about a vacation home sometime in the future. Of course I can’t afford that on my meager salary carrying my current and foreseeable debt load, we’re paycheck to paycheck now and financially imperiled by rising gas prices.

These are the concerns of the living. I used to look at the world through the eyes of a dead man born again, someone who thought everyday was a gift not to be taken for granted or wasted on idle concerns following my near death experience. Now I’m overwhelmed with daily bills and deadlines on a calendar my kids are growing so fast I’m afraid I’ll be a bigger mystery to them than my own father who spent most of his life at sea. I’m losing the fight to be what I want to really be right now and the loss of Pap-Pap made me think how sad it would be to look back from the deathbed and wonder if I could have done it better. Not just to satisfy my selfish sense of adventure and ambition but for my family and their future. I search for signs and portents and find the universe dark and empty, the stars are only an abyss and I’m flying blind.

When I put it that way it sounds pretty adventurous.

So death, heaven, and reincarnation what’s in a name?

I’d like to ask my mother that question. She had visited just before Pap-pap fell gravely ill. She expressed at dinner great sadness (including some show of holding back tears) that I was carrying her family name Chandler and not my adopted father’s name. He took great pride in having a son to carry on his name didn’t I know, she said he’d be angry or disappointed to see I was not carrying on the name. This hurt me a bit at the time. But I’ve been wrestling with this question too. Is it an existential question? I think it is, on par with death and the afterlife.

My father’s spirit was invoked, and said to have judged my life wrong for not honoring him and his wishes. I wasn’t only hurt by this I bristled. I lost sleep on the question for days. Should I just change the name back?

All the while, we continued our genealogical research for the 2^nd book to draw heavily from the editor’s side of the family. And watching names change with every marriage and over every so many generations I suddenly recalled that the great ancestor Wong had changed HIS name when he moved from China to Hawaii, in part for expediency in conducting business. Well why not? How many families had changed their names when coming from the “old country” to Ellis Island? Was my move from Hawaii to the Contiguous States any different? The cultures are entirely alien, and in TO&S I had spun the name change undertaken to appease my ex-wife as a move to shield my offspring from having to be subject to scrutiny and speculation about their origins because of an ethnic name that had led to so many problems for me. Chandler is a gift to my kids, and a shelter from idiotic questions I’ve heard my entire life, and again at my first drill weekend back in the guards last weekend. My lieutenant was entering my social security number into a database and guessed I was born in Hawaii. I said no I was born in LA, but raised there – I got my social sec. id in Hawaii. And there it was, my old name in the system under “Other Names Used” and “A.K.A.”  and the LT shocked, excitedly asked “Hawaii?! What the heck are you doing here?!” and it was parroted by many in the room.

I was now an idiot to each mainlander in the room. Their incredulous stares said it all. My first impression was set “idiot”.

I’m always interrogated like I’m an idiot for leaving Hawaii and I’m damn piss poor tired of it and I’m not willing to put up with that anymore. I don’t want my kids to have to answer that same line of questioning and there is the answer. My ancestor wanted to fit in, he took a local name, I like to fit in too and skip awkward often pointed questions about my origins so the name change will stay.

Have I somehow failed to honor my father? As I had said he was often a monster, a fountain of unchecked rage of which my mother and I were frequently the target of. I can’t imagine how best to honor that except to be better than that and to try to keep the good parts of his legacy I outlined including holding up his ancestor and his story as a shining example. I have endeavored to honor my mother who hasn’t abandoned the ethnic name despite a ‘marriage’ to a new man – the only decent one she’s ever known by the way, and I can’t explain that. For her own reasons life with my dad might have been heaven the way I see my own marriage. I can’t say I ever saw it could have been - she was often in tears and miserable. I don’t recall many happy days for her, or many smiles being worn on her face. He often struck her, sometimes viciously and she had left or attempted to leave him on many occasions. Still she seems to apply rose colored glasses to that time in our life and maybe I’m too harshly critical out of fear of being even a little violent.

I lay awake wondering what would happen to my kids if a plane crashed into the house and killed me would my wife be able to get the kids to safety? What if we both died? Would someone get to my kids before they died? I don’t normally do this, it’s the normal process I think of dealing with loss and grief, the fear of loss of Pap-pap, we had hoped he would recover and we could visit as a family, and the loss of my father and his name, my mom had brought me artifacts including the Chief’s Anchors dad had hoped to pin on my collar one day. That day will never come, and I think it made me sad that it was something my dad and I could have shared happily, there was so little happiness in my early life and it is so abundant now the contrast so stark as to sometimes cause an abrupt and powerful reaction as hot and cold air coming together rapidly in the sky forming a tornado, only in the heart. What’s in a name? Nothing. We Are As We Do, not as we are named. Pap-Pap was a good man even if Pap-pap is a silly name for such a wonderful man. My father’s name though filled with lyrical beauty was something not quite so lovely, but he was my dad and were he here I’d dare him to find fault with my reasoning. If he is waiting for me in heaven I think he’ll understand and approve, if I don’t then in the next life I hope only to have a father as so many kids lack even that.

Ten Years Too Late

I'd like a refund from the Services please. As a guy whose had to change uniforms several times with duties that crossed service boundaries many times - I know it can get very expensive personally. Taxpayers have been taken to the cleaners on this, fleeced for billions on uniform studies, unique camo patterns, ego tripping seeking of a branch specific brand and recognition...for uniforms that are suppossed to be "camoflage" on the "battlefield".

House Votes to Eliminate Service Camo Patterns | Military.com

The senate will probably kill this sadly. I hope this works good work again House, at least a small part of our gov't is serious it seems about doing real work on the peoples business vice naming post offices (Senate) or building a dead on arrival immigration disaster on the scale of obamacare's debacle recently illustrated with HHS secretary's cold indifference to a dying girl here in PA.

Still living this...

I happened on this today. Good post, I lived this and as my fracas with the Navy draws to a close this month or the next, I continue to live it. I cannot wait for it to end.

English Historical Fiction Authors: Samuel Leech's Account of War at Sea: by Wanda Luce Every time I read Jane Austen's famous, historical novel Persuasion, I wonder what life for Captain Wentworth might h...

How did we get here?

This a great piece sent to me by my fiend Dr O. He's a brilliantly diabolical fellow who like me is secretly working to bring the whole place down from the inside. But all kidding aside, we were discussing terrorism and tactics and somehow got to this. It shifted the discussion to cognitive dissonance something I discuss a bit int TO&S and so worth highlighting here.

HANSON: A nation of promiscuous prudes - Washington Times

HT Hanson and Dr O.

Toddlers of War

I once took a position that it was too early to tell about the future of the nations we’ve recently invaded, Iraq and Afghanistan. In challenging a Marine Officer's assessment that Iraq was a win I said we’ll see what path the next generation takes the kids we gave candy to all those years - I said let’s wait and see their choices as political creatures over the next ten or fifteen years. And so here we are looking at Afghanistan on April Fools 2013 where it’s being reported a young man of 16 has stabbed an American SGT to death while he played with local children. They can’t verify the age of the attacker who escaped but if they’re speculating then this kid is probably someone known to other personnel on scene.

 So maybe we don’t have to wait that long to see where this has taken us.

Yes this is only one incident and I don’t offer it up as the final piece of evidence Afghan and Iraq actions have been for naught, there is ample evidence to back that hypothesis and little to show otherwise. No, this one incident is significant because if it’s true, the attacker is between 15 or 18 yoa. That means when we arrived there this attacker was barely a toddler between the ages of 3 and 5.

New meaning to the word 'infantry' (literally child or youngest soldiers).

Our benign empire has made a foe of a baby despite our best efforts to win hearts and minds, using our special forces to terrorize and abduct locals we knew (76% of the time or so) were terrorist ring leaders and describing dead relatives of this kid as collateral damage without facing scrutiny or justice is what brought us here. A guy from Kentucky barely old enough to realize the folly of our adventure is lost and in his place we have a new, young enemy and probably many others waiting to stab the rest of us in the neck.

There isn’t anyone to blame except ourselves, no one in government is individually responsible for the inept strategic planning or lack thereof, there is a lot of blame to go around as far as most American’s are concerned the war is over and has been for some time, we’re just waiting for one or two guys to come back since the president declared our exit date in 2009. Keep the 68,000 US service personnel in Afghan in your thoughts while you enjoy attacking the self-esteem of colleagues today with office pranks.  

Madness Abounds

Speaking with those I know and reading what can be seen from here everything in the arena of public affairs seems quite insurmountable, overwhelming and inexplicably maddening for its complexity and cognitive dissonance. Folks I know are just throwing up their hands and turning to various diversions – March Madness, speculation about what the Yankees and Red Sox will achieve this year compared to the Rangers or Tigers or if RGIII will be able to start week 1 and if so, how healthy will he be?

Trying to make a dent in the stupid that surrounds us is slow hard and tedious, we seem to be legislated into paralysis and it may be deliberate. In a discussion this morning about what should be a simple improvement I found bureaucratic inertia would not allow a seemingly simple improvement. Oddly I noted this same colleague clamoring vociferously for change when asked to participate in making it happen, beyond complaining – angrily declined the opportunity. So fifteen minutes of warming the air later, I too could use a distraction. I fired up Al Gore’s magnificent machine and find myself drawn into the daily drumbeat of Papal reporting.

I’m not Catholic, one of my grandmothers was and so I’m just a tad bit curious about it. I like this fellow, as he seems to embody a very simple and straightforward approach to life and leadership. He might even be a link to a more magical world, a more spiritual world a less complex, nuanced, litigious and murderous world. He offers the intoxicating distraction of a vibrant breathing mythology perhaps able to compete even with the NFL. We’ll see in the fall that’s for sure. But this allure of his might be his undoing; the attention he’s garnered, the popularity might it become a worldly celebrity or fame?

His past is not without controversy either with regards to rebels and mass murders in Argentina or his take on same sex marriage. Marriage and the state, the current SCOTUS docket is perhaps the finest recent example, next to sequestration - of the wheels coming off the bus as we approach a hairpin turn. I personally don’t care if you marry a lampshade, a kangaroo or a dinosaur fossil unless this costs money from the public treasury or reduces my own legitimate sensible families’ ability to compete for resources and to thrive.  You can call a duck a chicken but it’s a duck, that’s my take – also the gov’t is too deeply involved in our daily lives if this has become an issue of national importance of any priority.

Meanwhile North Korea is perhaps running out of threats and may be forced, by inertia of its own distracting mythology surrounding their leadership cult into a nuclear exchange and oblivion. Looking at defense related media it seems all are in agreement a reheated war with NK would be a quick and easy win for the US. I however remain unimpressed and skeptical – I remember how many wars have been sold to us this way, including Iraq. The first NK intervention of 1950, a mere 5 years after the 2nd war to end all wars comes to mind.

As a semi-retired soldier I had to think would I prefer to serve in this theatre or another? It seems there are so many opportunities for pointless gruesome death or murder around the globe in the name of some obscure objective on a classified memo. We got our bluff called in Syria but seem hell bent to attack Iran where we don’t have to go. NK is something that might happen to us more than us asking for it like we are in Uganda, Jordan or Iran. I don’t want to fight in the sand so if given a choice in the event of a recall I’m going to ask for the pacific theatre – NK mud and smaller opponents for melee combat vs. the larger specimens of the Barbary Coast, Fertile Crescent or the Holy Land.

If that’s the holy land, it belongs to a cult of death, one that justifies murder and war for personal gain and revenge, not in self-defense.

That brings me back to the Papal topic. I think part of the interest in the Pope is that if I understand his statements he equates murder with war and doesn’t yield to the nation state entity the power to bless or legitimize it. There is a public voice I can agree with- simple, reasoned and sane.

I hope. Not because I’m lining up to convert, only because I know he is capturing the imagination of and can mobilize a growing young church with great influence in the economic south.

So I offer a statement of support, a plea or a prayer if you will for this fellow who might break the lawyer's, profiteer's, bankster's and madmen's grip on the world – their rule is driving us to a new madness.

This new madness is a place where teenagers are threatening mothers and executing babies in strollers, lawyers argue that an unconscious girl consented to rape, and her peers film it while daring each other to urinate on her unconscious form and her mother offers her up to this cohort of stupid savages who haven’t the common decency to apologize to the girl or the country as a whole for having to be sickened by their misdeeds. I wonder about their religious affiliation, what denomination do they belong to?

So marry a kangaroo I don’t care – in fact I don’t want to know about it, do it in your basement without the government having to sanctify it or pay for it. I’ll slog on trying to keep my kids safe until they’re ready to wade into this society and its debates, hoping I prepare them better than the boys of a certain big red football program for a life among the mad.

Oh and GO Skins! Pope if you read this – put a good word in with God for RGIII wouldja?

Promised Update

The new year - a snake year brings us many wonderful new opportunities and challenges. North Korea is more nuclear than it was, some seem to be quite worried about it. File that one under "challenges". There is a job opening coming soon at the Vatican, polish those resumes up if you're from the 3rd world. Internet rumors have it that the church, not to be outdone by the US is leaning towards a black or third world Pope for a change. If you're from the third world I think you've got more pressing concerns that race quotas in hiring but I want to wish all the candidates in the economic south well in seeking the post - good luck fellas, I'm quite sure you can't see this from there. Internet rumor quality what it is, the smart money is on a Polish or Japanese Pope instead. File under "opportunity".

I have another opportunity for consideration, a savings opportunity for the country. There is a lot of hand wringing and posturing about budget issues; Admirals cutting ship maintenance and telling the administration publicly it can't meet commitments and JOs over at the USNI blog suggesting senior leaders resign in protest, coincidentally opening up promotion opportunities for themselves. No need for the high drama, there are many simple cost-savings measures and if you recall, this blog believes sequestration is only a good start.

One reason I believe the sequester is a good start is the US Navy Reserves. As you know I've been in a simmering feud with them for some years regarding my final retirement status. Recently the 3 star in charge there has decided to appoint an ethnic employment champion for Hispanics whatever that means. Apparently, if you are from the Iberian peninsula, and blond you are not Hispanic. So they can do away with that six-figure salary person first, and this admiral who clearly has misplaced priorities. I think he's angling for a position on the Hon. Sen.  Rubio's presidential campaign staff for a 2016 or 2020 presidential run. Another reason is the DoD has long resisted common sense money saving ideas that other agencies had instituted long ago. Here at the DoC, for instance, we've altered printing habits and reduced printers inventory.

Originally I criticized the idea as too small to make much difference, and possibly counter-productive as printing volume will not decrease proportionally with the printing capability resulting in higher wear and tear on equipment, lost production time and reprints as documents are lost in shared printer schemes where office partners don't get along well. I thought it was a piece of low hanging fruit; shaving the hair off the elephant to reduce its weight when there was still a charging elephant to deal with. It might weigh a wee bit less without its hair but it might also be more aerodynamic and it's going to hit you with approximately the same force it would with the added weight of its hair. Still, the idea is a potential money saver (the jury remains out) despite the cost in man-hours to plan the excess, ship and strip equipment, re-network offices, increased wear and tear and the loss of sunk costs related to discarding equipment not yet halfway through its service life. In some cases, older printers were retained for special abilities newer (cheaper to operate) printers did not have.

Despite the idea having little proven merit, the printer reduction idea is one good example of an attempt however half-witted it might be, that the DoD resisted until just a few weeks ago when it issued a directive to reduce printing. The DoD directive was less extensive than the DoC one, in that it did not require draft quality printing of images and prohibit color but it is so late to the party as to be useless in realizing any immediate savings. Toner, paper, and maintenance contracts for existing soon to be discarded printers in inventory are sunk costs already misspent.

Okay so this sounds like a lot of complaining for nothing. Where is my big idea? In 2009 I put together a small paper and submitted it to the White House as a savings idea when they solicited ideas from government employees. My little idea might have helped then and still might help. In the beginning it would have saved over $75 million dollars, now I don't know what it might realize but I'm putting it back out there again here for reference.

Eagle and the Owl.

Happy Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year and Homecoming!

If you haven’t found a fitting gift for your sweetheart it’s probably not too late. I’m one of the lucky ones, not only do I get adequate spam from various vendors of appropriately themed tchotchkes I also am well organized and forward oriented in my use of something called a calendar. I highly recommend them; they’ve been in use in one design or another for some time and can be used to ensure you don’t miss any upcoming or recurring events.  My lovely editor helped me plan our mutual gifting, our shared favorite a night away from the chaos of the rug rats who will observe the holiday with grandma. There will be the expected surprise of course, but she generously sets the bar low making it easy for me.

Speaking of calendars and recurring events though – things that happen again and again like revolutions, there is way too much angry, paranoid, socially withdrawn talk out there about revolutions again. I don’t want to revisit the Stop It post, so I won’t. The recent open justice ‘revelations’ about the torture program carried out by the CIA is nothing new. The DOJ memo discussing and endorsing the legal killing of citizens (including minors) with remote control robots and without due process is nothing new either. I would encourage those who are in opposition to these abusive policies carried out in their names to use the processes we have to oppose them, reverse them and restore some semblance of sanity and accountability. But in the spirit of the holiday let’s not take any hostages okay?

As a nation we collectively watched as one little boy with some social developmental difficulties was taken hostage, after his unarmed citizen defender was gunned down by some very angry old fellow and held for a week in a bunker. Did you know the gunman and hostage taker was a veteran? You probably couldn’t escape that “fact”.

No word on the military status of the bus driver, the hero in this episode.

Nor has the DoD officially verified that this kidnapper fellow was a veteran or that he served honorably.  It’s alleged he was a Vietnam era vet and thus possibly a draftee from another era, another time – hardly representative of all veterans.  Since his service some 40 year ago he has become a wholly different person. His life since Nam has since shaped and altered him over time far more than his service might reasonably be blamed for.

This kidnapper’s service had nothing to do with his killing of the bus driver, or his decision to be a violent sociopath – we have many of those in the civilian populace to which he belonged to until being killed by our government. Rumor has it his neighbors knew this man was dangerous but no one reached out to him – why? Are we not our brother’s keeper in the age of ever expanding friend networks across the World Wide Web? Do we embrace only those at a safe distance and ignore our neighbors as a matter of course?  

I for one am tired of hearing servicemen and women smeared as damaged or incapable, less equal and dangerous because of PTSD which does not make one violent. We don’t look at victims of other trauma that can cause PTSD (rape for instance) and marginalize them as ticking time bombs of violence waiting to go off. Why not? Because it’s not right, it’s quite stupid. Somehow the media and pop culture has decided they get a pass on civility and are allowed to smear veterans and military service writ large. The former Navy sniper killed this past week by a fellow veteran wasn’t just murdered in cold blood in a horrible tragedy; he was killed by a veteran with PTSD (whom he was trying to help). We might never know the details, and perhaps that’s for the best but nor should we be suggesting that PTSd is to blame.

First, it’s not a disorder, post-traumatic stress is a normal reaction to trauma, its normal and we heal with time usually, though sometimes a little help is necessary. Symptoms vary widely but it’s hardly a disorder. Second, not every veteran has it, not everyone who has it is a veteran and PTS, while presenting different ways is not normally violent. I do make the mistake of blaming my dad’s violent tendencies on PTS in TO&S but that isn’t fair – I too guilty of the conditioning by the media anxious to avoid attributing it to a character flaw in his own nature but it wasn’t the PTS that mad my dad prone to violent outbursts.  

It’s Valentine’s Day, enjoy and celebrate the spirit of romantic and filial love. Say hello to a neighbor even if he may not be the friendliest chap, maybe he or she is just lonely or enduring a loss. Perhaps it’s seasonal affected disorder. Stop being angry at the government for making our veteran’s ticking time bombs or shredding the constitution or what have you – take a deep breath, smell the roses and eat a chocolate truffle with a loved one, a neighbor, your cat – a picture of an old friend and be happy for a moment. No one you can think of? Go hug a veteran coming home off a plane. Lots of them come home to empty apartments or in the case of sailors an empty pier. Bring one flowers; guys like flowers too.

This would be an appropriate occasion to write a letter to your wife, girlfriend or even your mom.  And if for some reason you are unable to be excited and happy for the holiday, say you’re not catholic or don’t believe in saints or hallmark holidays guess what? Chinese new year’s is just around the corner (Feb 10^th) and I promised a post about it but I’ll be neck deep in adventure this weekend (of the romantic kind) and so a brief update of the prior new year’s post next week will have to suffice. Mom, Sis, if you’re reading this I love you both. My lovely editor gets her sentiments in analog format. Wolf, Alvie, Josh and Nick (both of you) I love you guys too - better brothers couldn't be wished for or coceived in the wildest work of fiction - I'm forever proud to have been in your company.

Good luck out there folks, keep your head on a swivel and remember when gifting – there is an art to understatement don’t get crazy!