The Bird that Didn't Fly South

A friend posted a link to an article describing some proposed changes to the way veterans file for disability. As a lover of efficiency I say this isn't all that bad an idea. Especially since it's dealing with federal civil servants. Except for one thing, the most helpful federal civil servants I have ever met (present company INCLUDED) were people who work for the Veteran's Administration.

As a lover of the American Military I say this isn't all that bad an idea. Our military forces deserve better service, faster service, and more efficient service especially from federal civil servants. Except for one thing, the most helpful federal civil servants I have ever met (present company INCLUDED) were people who work for the Veteran's Administration. 

As a veteran I say this isn't all that bad an idea but it could use some tweaking. There should still be an exception for people who are elderly, who can't read, who don't have access to a computer or the internet especially since they will have to deal with federal civil servants. Except for one thing, the most helpful federal civil servants I have ever met (present company INCLUDED) were people who work for the Veteran's Administration.

As a disabled veteran I say this isn't all that bad idea except that it could use some tweaking,. Chief among the tweaks would be that I volunteer to help any vet that needs help filing under this system or the use of a computer. In fact, I've talked several vets in to filing for disability. I have contemplated filing an appeal to increase my disability but would rather leave the small difference I could get for some other vet that needs it more than me. In fact, I'd venture a guess that there are many others like me who would willingly give of their time to help others file their disability claims with the VA. As an example, the most helpful federal civil servants I have ever met (present company INCLUDED) were people who work for the Veteran's Administration.

I suspect the greatest fear driving the push to keep things the way they are is just because it is change.

Change is not always bad, ask the bird that didn't fly south for the winter.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

Fifteen

My blog shift was intended to make this blog more of journal of The Big Trip, my Adventures in Asia, a story of Activities in Afghanistan, a record of what I saw both figuratively and literally on my journey on the other side of the world. Today, I am returning to the previous theme. A story from the perspective of The Hole on the End of the Bible Belt during A Year Without Wearing a Tie.

During my time in the military I became extremely disillusioned with Army Chaplains. So much so that I would fight vehemently for my soldiers to be able to attend services when we were in the field, but wouldn't darken the threshold of a tent where one was being held. If you have ever seen a Protestant service conducted by an Orthodox Priest you would have a glimpse of my dissatisfaction. No doubt I missed something in my boycott. I did attend church, including a Southern Baptist church in Tacoma that was the stereotypical Southern Baptist church to include multiple visits with cakes, pies, and gifts each Tuesday for several weeks after our visit. But not to any military services, with the sole exception being the funerals I attended (twice serving as pallbearer, once for a friend).

Several weeks ago my main right hand man was in my office talking when his wife came by and said they'd be late for church. I took this as my opportunity to eschew work and go to a service so I invited myself to join them. We have been a few times since, today being another. The message was not that memorable to me, but the thing that stands out the most was a guy who stood at the beginning and told of a praise during the prayer request portion.

This gentleman works with a man he described as a Saracen. His initials are A.M. or M.A. depending on where you consider his surname to fall. Apparently A.M./M.A. had a close aunt pass away recently, and despite the thorns around his heart concerning his being a Saracen has approached him clearly questioning about Jesus and this man's Christianity. Listening to him speak, I turned to John sitting next to me and posed the following question:

What if that is the reason for this whole thing?

Not, what if we are in Afghanistan to reach people like that. Not maybe we're here to reach Muslims and tell them of the love of God. No, what if this whole thing: twelve years of conflict; two thousand plus American military deaths; multiple billions of dollars of American taxpayer money spent on operations, construction, relief; contractors mobilized and working; the Corps of Engineers presence; and even our own physical sitting in  Fraise Chapel on Kandahar Airfield, what if it was intended JUST FOR THAT ONE MAN.

It may well be.

The real problem I have with writing in a literary style is that I want to go on. I want to support why I think it is. I want to explain. I don't want this to end leaving a sour taste on the mind of the reader as I'm sure it may.

Unless, you are the one person this very post was intended for.

I don't know who that reader is. But there is one. That one reader will read this and get the point. It is always about just one person. Leave the 99 in search of the one. Because it was all about the one.

It always will be.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

Never Forget

Never ever forget that the reward for working hard and being good at something is the ability to get to do more, most often with less. Also remember that doing more with more isn't always easier either.No good deed goes unpunished.

Bad Navigation

When I say "today" it's a relative term. I honestly couldn't tell you the day of the week or the date without really thinking about it. But, "today" is supposed to be Columbus Day when we celebrate bad navigating. The beautiful part of it all is that in Afghanistan we don't celebrate it by taking off work. We work and get paid Holiday pay. Of course, to save money, they pay us for our holiday on Sunday so they don't have to pay us Sunday Premium. So instead of getting paid for a holiday on Monday, we're paid for it on Sunday, but being 8.5 to 11.5 hours ahead of the rest of the country that means that get paid for our holiday before Sunday in the States.

Columbus, who didn't know where he landed, is celebrated by people, who don't know what day it is, on a day that doesn't match up with the day that people on the land Columbus didn't know he found.

Why does this make perfect sense to me?

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

Cut Fruit

I don't often preface my work, either you get it or you don't. Sometimes I reiterate where I am or what I'm doing, but very rarely prefaced. This is an exception. This post was started on 12 Aug. I posted it in draft form on my blog on 8 Sep. When I wrote it I noticed I had a similar post entitled Smoking a SIGAR. Same topic, different observations. The SIGAR post may come out later, but for now, there's Cut Fruit. In light of the actions of our elected officials in Washington, D.C. I think it's appropriate to share now, at a point that Congress has collected over $2 million dollars in salaries while not operating because of funding squabbles. It isn't this Congress's fault that while no other part of the government is funded completely or at the adequate amount that their paychecks still go into the bank on time, but they aren't bothering to fix that for the next one either.

So, with no further ado, Cut Fruit:

Not long before I headed home for R&R I was talking with Pat (because, again, first names are for officers) and he commented on the cut fruit. Now after two months of talking with him I have no idea why I haven't heard about the cut fruit before.

Pat is an engineer, too. His dad was an engineer. It's in the blood. He jokes about hating spreadsheets, but I suspect he has a spreadsheet he uses to track all the spreadsheets he doesn't use. It's in the blood.

Not all engineers are in touch with their artistic side like me. Not that my projects look artistic, I'd still build the world out of cinder blocks (kind of like we do in Afghanistan), but I can take a big picture and pare it down to an anecdote or small example. This comes in handy in my engineering job because of how I describe things. I consider a major part of my job to be taking the people who talk french and the people who are talking German and get them communicating with one another using English. My ability to touch the human side of things means I know which group to say is using English and which group is using German. Sometimes people are touchy about such things, especially the french.

I don't catch them all, but Pat, who usually compliments my ability to catch the macro and describe it with the inane, absolutely nailed one of the biggest things there is to grab and explained it with cut fruit.

Every morning Pat walks in to the DFAC (dining facility for the un-acronymed) and sees cut fruit. This starts off the day poorly and he can't get over it. Cut fruit is wasteful. If all the fruit isn't eaten, it will get thrown away. And it's never all eaten, there's simply too much. To cut the fruit takes a lot of man power. All morning long there are people cutting fruit, putting fruit out on the bar, and later on throwing out the uneaten, unused cut fruit. We are in a war zone. There are people coming through the line with weapons, that will be getting into an armored vehicle and going on patrol, or training the Afghan army, or just plain run the risk of meeting up with the bad guys and getting a street named after them, or a building, or some other piece of infrastructure that is named to memorialize a fallen soldier. Some of these soldiers get cut fruit but most of the fruit does not go on patrol. It goes into the trash.

Every day, we spend money on cut fruit, and Pat can't get over it. He leaves from the cut fruit and comes in to work, where we argue over how to more efficiently spend the government's money. The money that Congress wastefully blows by appropriating it for causes and getting bent out of shape when it is wasted because the system they installed for controlling the spending of the money is inefficient because that is the way they wanted the system. I would say they spend it like a drunken sailor, but I don't want to insult anybody that's ever served in the Navy, after all, even drunken sailors stop spending money when their wallet's empty.

Congress wants cut fruit.

I had to come to grips long ago about the way the federal government spends its money. Congress gives up efficiency in order to maintain control. Congress does not want efficiency because the most efficient way to spend money is to not allow Congress to spend it.

If you don't learn anything at all from reading my blog, learn this. Send it to people who don't read it, never ever forget it. And the next time you hear of some wasteful expenditure of money remember it:

Congress gives up efficiency in order to maintain control.

A subsidiary effect of this is that Congress gets bent out of shape when their money is spent inefficiently--the way they want it. Congress does not want to admit that they spend it inefficiently, that would be asinine and a sure-fire way to not get re-elected. So Congress spends money to investigate the inefficient way they spend money. They then get reports from their inefficient investigators that say the money was spent exactly like Congress wanted it to be spent. Of course their reports don't say that, their reports say that it was spent in accordance with some bloated, asinine, inefficient system. The report doesn't say that Congress invented the system.

Pat can't get over the cut fruit. I can. I can because I have to. I can't do my job hung up on the fact that it is a dumb system. All I can do is spend the government's money like it is my own. My efficiency with the government's money pales in comparison with Congress's inefficiency. I can never catch up to their stupid. But I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't do all I could to try. Do not ever mistake my ability to get over the cut fruit as agreement with the system.

There's an awful lot of stupid, I've mentioned it before. Unfortunately, there isn't just cut fruit on the bar. There is a wide variety of cut fruit on the bar.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

Which Side of the Line

It's been said there's a thin line between genius and insanity. What's unsaid is that the only way you know which side of that line you're on is if its the former though sometimes the genius is in questioning which side you're on. Not just a philosophical moment, I'm struggling with a question and that might be the answer to it.

New Ixeveh

It's been said that the United States doesn't have royalty (we did after all fight a war to keep from having them) but we do vicariously have a Queen. We celebrate our aristocratic family in a slightly less open way than our true founding fathers, the British. And yes, true founding fathers is a stretch since I come from an area more proud of its Spanish and french founding fathers than their English heritage (I still think that D'Iberville and Bienville spoke with a Southern drawl). Whether you agree or not, there is unquestionably some degree of interest in the British Royal family. Maybe we don't treasure the Queen or mourn the loss of the Queen Mother. Perhaps there isn't much speculation on whether or not the Queen really wants to hang on until she can give her grandson the throne rather than her son (a topic I did discuss with an actual Englishman en route from Bahrain to Heathrow). But we keep track of our cousins the Brits. Twice in my life I've woken up to watch a Royal Wedding, maybe I don't care about the Prime Minister or his politics, but I still track the Queen.

In the same way, The South has New Orleans. Eclectic, original, historic, any city in the United States can claim the same things, but New Orleans revels in it and just puts it out to say love us or hate us, you know where we are. New Orleans is the heart of the South, the screw it all, I want to be just like it was South. The heat, the humidity, the old sidewalks, dangerous and non-ADA compliant. Buildings that look like they'll fall down at any minute, yet they house new restaurants, new bars, new antique shops.

Growing up within 90 miles of New Orleans, I went a lot. I remember a trip at the age of 5 with my Aunt Susie, I remember trips to the Audubon Zoo in just about every one of its renovations and stages. I recall when the Aquarium of the Americas was built, the 1984 World's Fair, my first NFL game when the Vikings beat the Saints by three points because Tony Galbreath cost them the game with Archie Manning as quarterback. I recall Bobby Hebert's less than stellar return to the Superdome when everyone booed as he took the field and he cheered them on thinking them cheers. I recall three plays later when they did turn to cheers and in typical Saints-fan fashion they loved him again. I recall the first time I saw the no longer there swinging legs at Big Daddy's, my first underage Hurricane at Pat O'Brien's. Well, underage because you could drink at 18 but you couldn't buy it until 21, last State in the country on that one. I recall getting caught in many a torrential downpour in Jackson Square that lasted only as long as it took to get under cover, a tour of the Papal Portraits in St. Louis Cathedral. So much history, mine, and the country's.

New Orleans is the heart of a lot of things. Some stuff that they claim started here didn't but they claim it all the same. No one corrects them, they just add to it. I heard a guy explaining how Basin Street was filled in starting in the 40's. That part is probably true, but the remainder of his explanation, that it was done as they started building the interstate system, not so much, since Eisenhower didn't sign that act for a few years yet. There are lots of other stories, not so factually off, about interstates such as The Second Battle of New Orleans was fought by people who didn't want an elevated interstate going through the heart of the Heart of the South (a fascinating story that's really, REALLY off-topic, and if I say it's off-topic, wow!).

Despite my love of Biloxi, my love of my new home Fairhope, and despite the fact that I have never "loved" New Orleans, it has always held a place in my heart as well. Not the decadent, debauchery associated with Mardi Gras, not the party all day, every day feel of New Orleans, the real part of the city. The quiet, heartbeat of the city.

New Orleans has made appearances in my blog even though this it the first time I have visited the city proper since before Katrina. It is the model for New Ixeveh from my novella. When I was told that novellas are too hard to publish as a first work (unless you want to self-publish), I chose New Ixeveh as the part of my novella that would be expanded in my work in progress. So yes, the plan is to publish the novel simply to generate interest in the novella. Backwards, perhaps. Impossible, highly likely (though impossible is a synonym for unimaginative in my book). But it is the plan. New Orleans lies at the heart of the plan.

William Faulkner wrote his first novel here in a small unassuming little house on Pirate Alley. The Nobel Prize winning author began the leg of his career that 30 years later would earn the award in New Orleans. For all that I've ever done in New Orleans, the one thing I haven't done is write there.

Until today.

The heartbeat of the city pulses underneath me as I sit on the second story balcony of the Dauphine Orleans. The heat presses down from above as I view the varied and changing skyline from my metal deck chair. One of St. Louis's spires sticks above the roofline as the humidity envelops me. The Macbook in my lap burns my legs as I watch the city sleepily prepare for another day, and another night.

New Orleans lives and breathes. It gets in your blood, in your soul. It inspires. It is.

~~~~~~~~~

After I returned home to Fairhope I started reading New Orleans Sketches by William Faulkner. They were short pieces he sold to make money while living in New Orleans. I bought the book in the Pirates Alley Bookstore in one of the two rooms he rented while living there. In many ways these sketches show the transition from poet to novelist he made while living there. In typical form, he succinctly said what I prolifically (and ineptly) said above:

New Orleans . . . a courtesan whose hold is strong upon the mature, to whose charm the young must respond. And all who leave her, seeking the virgin's unbrown, ungold hair and her blanched and icy breast where no lover has died, return to her when she smiles across her languid fan. . . .

New Orleans. 

 From "New Orleans" in New Orleans Sketches

~~~~~~~~~         ~~~~~~~~~

Before I found the Faulkner bit I was going to end with: And, it's like my home in Afghanistan, because you are afraid to drink the water straight from the tap.

Long Night's Journey into Day

Upon arrival in Kuwait I began the first time zone correction on my watch, but it was far from the last. Many years ago I decided that I would not update my watch unless I was spending an entire week in the new time zone, however, before deploying to Afghanistan I bought a Super Watch.

This Super Watch has the ability to display two different time zones simultaneously. The real advantage is the ease with which you can change one of those two-time zones. The disadvantage is the ease with which you can change one of those two-time zones. Super Watch also has a function which will show me when the high or low tide is (not very useful in Afghanistan), what phase the moon is in, and what the azimuth to the sun is. Of the five alarms available, I have only used one and it was confusing as all get out. Confusing because I have Central Daylight Time set as my main time zone so if I want to wake up in Kabul Time I have to adjust it 9.5 hours. Then, once it was set, I have not been able to figure out how to turn it off.

All this for less than the price of a Rolex, but I don't think I shared that story yet.

So, my $20 watch allows me to change time zones quite easily, which I did before checking out Ali Al Saleem. Flying in to Kuwait, this is where you land. I'm not real sure what else goes on there, but you have your CAC (the Common Access Card that is used for identification purposes and commonly called the redundant CAC Card) reviewed, then you're put onto a plane that flies to a point where they will take you off and review your CAC. Once everyone's CAC has been confirmed, we are put onto a bus where no one else can get on or off and taken to a tent. Where our CACs are reviewed.

After confirming that we are us we are told not to go anywhere. Except the mess hall a half mile away. Eventually we are all herded back into a tent where our names are called out (by our CAC) to get onto another controlled bus which takes us to a place where they review our CAC as they put us into another controlled area. This new area is on Camp Arifjan, about an hour away, and this is where we do get some freedom.

What no one wants here is freedom. We all want to get on with the trip, even though by the time we get there it is about 1500 and we have been traveling since midnight in and out of heat and air conditioning, on and off planes, buses, and controlled areas full of cattle-like people.

I mentioned the temperature, I think I've compared temps before. Herat is a wonderful place climate wise to live. It gets into the 100s, but it also gets down into the 70s all throughout my time there. And the breeze is almost always blowing, at times very stiffly. It isn't the 120 Days they have in Shindand, but it is the start of that breeze. Kandahar on the other hand is a much more warm area. Walking out at 1800 at times feels like walking into a convection oven (but only when the wind's blowing). Camp Arifjan makes Kandahar feel cool. The temperature reached 120 and I suspect that's when the thermometer broke. Don't give me crap about "it's a dry heat" because I've never seen a turkey come out of the oven with a smile on its face and that's dry heat, too. Wow, Kuwait is hot!

So after finally getting a bed, dinner at Hardee's (because Carl's Jr is known as Hardee's east of the Mississippi and the river is still at least 7,000 miles to the west), and a shower I got onto my bed for a sleep. I say onto because I didn't get any sheets. There was a pillowcase-free pillow and I snagged a blanket from the used laundry box outside (because it was about 60 inside the building). The next morning after a trip to the PX to buy souvenirs, stuffed camels and a Kuwait Camel Racing Club (Get Outta My Way) shirt for my daughters the guy I had been travelling with since Kandahar and I went to check to see if we had an itinerary yet.

The building with our itinerary also has free WiFi, so we brought our computers to waste some time. The guy behind the counter told us that we would be leaving for the airport at 1400. When we sat down and fired up the laptops the guy told me that he had misspelled my name and that when he fixed it there was one earlier flight so I needed to be there at 1100 (about an hour) to leave.

Excited, I ran to grab my stuff and hung out right there until the next briefing. At which time I found out he still misspelled my name.

The briefing started and I listened with one ear the conversation at the far side of the room while listening with the other ear to see if the guy fixed my name. In the nick of time he handed me my itinerary and I rushed out behind the last person to leave from the building to get onto a bus.

Where I waited an extra 20 minutes while they reviewed our CACs.

Finally we drove the hour plus to the Kuwait City International Airport. There we got our briefing (but not our CACs reviewed) and were released for the ride home. In six hours.

The new group I was traveling with went to a pizza joint and then we walked around some. Eventually it was time to split up and get our boarding passes. After which we had no idea that we would be reunited because KCIA doesn't run like the American airports we've grown to love.

Our bags were scanned, then we were led back into the same uncontrolled area we had just walked around in killing time so that we could cross to the other side where we hit Customs. At the first screen I was held back because I had a metal, folding shoehorn that showed up in the X-Ray. The security guy, who spoke little English, tried to ask me if I had a moussa (making motions like a razor). Do I look like I own a razor? Eventually it got cleared up and he said I was good. I was sweating like I was back outside in the 120 degree heat, but I was good.

Then as we got to Customs, our bags were scanned as were we, and we headed for the gate. At the gate we were stopped, because here the gates are right at the entrance to the plane. In many ways the inefficiency of Ali Al Saleem/Arifjan emulates the Kuwait model. There is another luggage scanner and metal detector at the gate just before we got onto the plane.

The indoor smoking areas were kind of neat to look at. One was a big fan that just sucked the smoke up, the one near the gate was a glass room with a sliding door and a big fan. Both worked about as inefficiently as you might imagine, though the smoke smells only penetrated about a 5 meter area around the smoking areas.

We took off from Kuwait headed to Bahrain, where we had another 5 hour wait. I think I exhausted every word of English the guy next to me knew, he was Baharaini, but it was interesting trying to talk.

As we deplaned we headed straight to our next gate and along the way ran into the part of our group that didn't get the call for 1100, we saw the 1400 group. They got to the airport about a half hour before our plane took off and got seated in First Class.

From there I flew on to Heathrow. My seat companion was an Englishman and we had a nice chat before takeoff and just before landing. From there I flew to Dallas and finally Mobile where I was met by my father and sister and rushed home to remember that people over here still worry about what day of the week it is and my family was at church.

After a ten minute search I found them all and was able to surprise them. All in all a difficult feat, and one I don't intend to repeat. It was wonderful having Doodlebug run to see me (the ladies in the nursery at church didn't realize I'd been gone nearly 3 months). It was very nice to kiss my wife again, listening to one of the ladies she was talking to when I showed up comment, "That's why he hasn't been answering your texts." Then when both my teenagers showed up they ran down the stairs and jumped on me nearly knocking me over. Worth every single second of the trouble of surprising someone from 7500 miles away.

Not including the trip from Herat to Kandahar, or from Kandahar to Bagram to Kuwait, or my time on the Rock, the travel time from KCIA to Mobile was 29 hours and 40 minutes. Three time zone adjustments on my watch, and 9.5 hours on my biological clock, but I was home. In Fairhope. With my family.

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

Back to Bagram

The purpose of my third trip to Kandahar was to make my first trip home. Little did I know that it also meant my third trip to Bagram. Like most steps on the way home it was a stuttering step. At my 2200 briefing I was told to come back at 0045 to sign in for the flight. Most of the people on these flights are in the military, not civilians, so the civilians are forced to comply with the military mantra of hurry up and wait.

To be honest, I don't even recall what time we left. The 0045 brief included walking down to the Outpassenger Terminal (why did I start my trip in the Inbound? Because it's what you do) for a 0115 brief. This was followed by a wait, then our names were called to go upstairs into the waiting rooms (as compared to the waiting tents we were in previously) where we were told anywhere from 2 to 3 hours later the plane would take off.

It wasn't that long, but whatever time it was we finally were able to get loaded onto a C-17 for the flight to Bagram and Kuwait. The C-17 is not the largest plane in the air, and not even the largest plane in the American fleet, but it is pretty damn big. This was my first flight on one and I was impressed with everything except the lack of windows, a point which foreshadowed all but the last leg of my journey.

Everyone finds a way to cope with airline travel. Some love it, some hate it, some take it as a necessary evil, some medicate, some sleep, but everyone who does it has to figure out how they feel most comfortable in a huge pressurized metal tube hurtling thousands of feet to several miles above the ever-present and waiting ground at hundreds of miles an hour. Never forget that in over 100 years of aviation history not one time have they ever left a plane up there (This is a part of the Trouble With Travel).

One of the most common ways to cope with flight is to drown it out with earphones. A most recent development I have seen in the past few months is a trend towards wearing Beats by Dre headphones. I don't know if it's a Asian thing or if these headphones are big everywhere. For this reason the next observation shouldn't strike me as oddly as it did. Typically one would expect the younger generation to be the one most affected by the desire to drown the outside world out with headphones, particularly a set designed by a pop music name such as Dr. Dre (admittedly he's more Hip Hop than Pop, but he's also not the most in the forefront of the industry either anymore). So it really shouldn't strike me as odd when I saw a platinum haired gentleman who appeared old enough to be my father's contemporary wearing a pair of red Beats on his head.

I suppose it is just a matter of the pulse of the theater.