When Families Facing Autism Also Face Isolation . . .

When Families Facing Autism Also Face Isolation . . .

I remember one of the sweetest compliments I ever received came from a female admiral in my Navy community who, seeing Joey walking on the beach with Noel and me during a Navy “wetting down” celebration, told me how much she admired us for bringing him to as many events as we did.  

She said there had been children with autism in her extended family and they were kept hidden, out of the public eye. 

We couldn’t do it any other way.  I am a fairly social animal!!!

Even when Joey had a hard time handling gatherings like this wetting down, we would just take a half hour off and go walking down the beach, hand in hand with him.  

Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Worst Example of Journalism I have seen since High School!

Worst Example of Journalism I have seen since High School!

This article is an example of purple prose. It is an example of a tempest in a teapot. And, for those who dislike such phrases from bygone eras, it is also an example of rampant racism (or some other type of “respect of persons” as forbidden by the Bible).

Let’s list the reasons why:
1) The “crisis” seems to have started right before Jason Cosby, the Virginia Beach Director of Public Works, was sent to Afghanistan on a mandatory military deployment. I would suspect someone at the city didn’t want to hold his job until he came back (as required by the law called USERRA). So they started a trumped up process to fire him . . .
2) The “infractions” are so vague and minor (if this news article can be believed) that they would probably apply to hundreds of other employees of Virginia Beach. There is no evidence that any other employee has been gone over with a fine-toothed comb like this. It is as though Mr. Cosby were suddenly looked at under a microscope to pick apart any mistakes made during his twenty years with the city. I regard that as racism (or at least as undue scrutiny of just one person) until I see evidence that everyone else has been subjected to the same level of inquiry. Who else was followed around at Virginia Beach rec centers to see whether they actually worked out when they swiped in, for example?
3) The article does not specify, in most cases, what was done when these infractions came to light. They could have been innocent mistakes that were later made right. For example, I once grabbed my business American Express card to pay for some Christmas presents I bought while on travel. I was shopping with a friend and not paying attention. That card was the one on top in my wallet. Since I had to pay the card off anyway, after my return, it was a “no harm, no foul” situation which I brought to the attention of my supervisor. I believe many people accidentally use official credit cards to pay for things at some point in a twenty year career. It is what they do when they find that out that matters!
4) Mr. Cosby is not currently profiting from receiving city pay (only benefits like medical, which the military also offers in most cases). The first year, the city paid him the differential between his city salary and his lower Army salary, as required by law. This is, again, a common factor for all people who work a full-time job while maintaining a reserve career in the military. If people don’t like the way that works, they need to lobby to change the system, not persecute one person who is doing it as though he were doing something wrong. In this case there not only is no fire, there is no smoke!
5) The article smears a decorated veteran with a 20-year city career that was, until now, regarded as exemplary. He holds degrees from the University of North Carolina, Virginia Tech, and Georgia Tech, two of them advanced degrees. His case is making its way through the city system, with lawyers on both sides working it. Why put this case in the paper to be tried in the court of (ignorant) public opinion by many people who don’t understand the USERRA law and how it is used to get quality military personnel to serve in places like Afghanistan?
6) At best, releasing the requested freedom of information files in the paper today is meant to sell papers. At worst, it is meant to produce an online lynching of someone who is, due to the ongoing process, not allowed to talk to the press and defend himself. Ya know?

Band of Brothers–History is Just Everyone’s Story Combined with Everyone Else’s

I finished the Band of Brothers series on video last night.  It was clearly HBO’s finest hour!

I love the personal touch.  Never have I seen so eloquently the fact that history is a very large river made up of the smaller trickles and streams of everyone’s personal story!

I love that the producers (Tom Hanks, whom I learned is a huge World War II buff, and Stephen Spielberg, who has produced some epics about World War II already in the past) took very little creative license with the stories of the individual men of Easy Company, 101st Airborne.  

If a man lost a leg in a specific battle in real life, that is how it happened in the film.

In fact, the most interesting part of the entire series was the documentary at the end in which the survivors were interviewed and gave more details of their individual stories.  

I wept as they introduced the real Major Winters, who remained lifelong best friends with Lieutenant Nixon, and even moved to New Jersey so he could work for Lieutenant Nixon in the factory he inherited from his father.  

The men of Easy Company have held annual reunions, along with their families, ever since the war ended.  Can we even fathom an annual reunion that has lasted for almost 70 years so far?

Since Easy Company was the assault company of their battalion, they saw some things they still cannot express, especially in the Battle of the Bulge, where they lived in foxholes in the Ardennes Forest for a winter.  Even a documentary cannot get some words past their lips.  And many wept as they spoke, even after almost 70 years.  These men, who refer to themselves as ordinary and to those who died as heroes, gave the best of their youth to their country.  Many entered the Army at age 17 or 18 and served for at least the next three years.   

Often life is so much fuller with warmth and love and heroism than fiction ever could be!

Slippery Slope: How Private Schools and Racial Segregation Can Go Hand-in-Hand

Slippery Slope: How Private Schools and Racial Segregation Can Go Hand-in-Hand

A thoughtful article.

I do have to give a shoutout to my own church and its academy. I haven’t done an exact count, but the academy seems to be approximately 50% non-Caucasian, with students who are black, Asian, and Hispanic all there. And the most popular ethnic group nowadays–those beautiful kids who are of such a mixture of heritages that you couldn’t even classify them if you wanted to do so!

That, my friends, is heaven.

We are advantaged here by having the military as the great integrator. In our area, we host all five military branches. People are comfortable with those of other races because they learn to be comfortable at their government/military jobs.

I suppose a place like Jackson, Tennessee (in the article) isn’t advantaged like we are with a working environment in which people of various races get to know each other well.

But our church also reaches out to all ethnic groups and has a low enough tuition for the private school that it is more easily accessible for members of ethnic groups who might be the first in their family to consider private education. It is a sacrifice for everyone, but it is one that an increasing number of African-American, Asian, and Hispanic parents are choosing at our school . . .

Band of Brothers and the Liberation of the Camps

Last night, I saw the penultimate episode of Band of Brothers (episode 9).  It affected me in a way I can almost not put into words.  

After Easy Company parachuted into France on D-Day, fought their way across France and the Netherlands into Belgium for the Battle of the Bulge, stood off with the Germans in the Ardennes Forest for a winter, protecting Bastogne while being encircled by enemy forces as the other U.S. forces withdrew from them (that was the gist of the Battle of the Bulge for them), and fought on into Germany, they encountered the worst thing of all . . .

On patrol, they accidentally stumbled on a Jewish work camp. This was while the Russians were in the process of discovering death camps like Auschwitz on the other side of the Reich. The footage in Band of Brothers is unreal. The work camp guards had fled that morning, in advance of the American arrival in the area. They had burned some huts, with the prisoners trapped in them. They had mowed down as many prisoners as they could before they ran out of ammunition. There were already corpses stacked in piles three feet deep that had been left in trains on the tracks in that camp. They looked to have been dead for days, if not week. There were dead bodies lying (and swelling up) everywhere. There were the walking dead, awaiting the American GI’s at the fence or lying in bunks, unable to get out of them.

The Americans broke down at this point. These brave 20 year old soldiers were openly weeping for the first time in the series. The segment is called, fittingly, “Why We Fight.”

The next thing we see, the American General Officer in that area has declared martial law and is sending the well-dressed “respectable” German townsfolk from the town right outside the camp into the camp to remove the bodies for a decent burial. One of these “decent” women catches the eye of a GI who had earlier gone into her house looking for supplies. He had thrown the photo of her German Army officer husband on the floor and broken it. And this was before he knew about the atrocities with the Jews. As he catches the eye of this lady, in an expensive dress, picking up rotting remains of humans that many Germans did not even acknowledge as human, he just stares, with the knowing look of a young man who realizes that she and her husband have knowingly profited from this misery. For many Germans may have been ignorant of the Final Solution, but if you were ignorant half a mile from a camp with the stench of death hanging over it 24/7, it was only because you didn’t want to ask questions!

I was so undone by this segment that, for one of the only times in the 23 years we have lived here, on half an acre with no curtains over our backdoor and the lower parts of our breakfast nook bay windows, I got up from the den chair, at 2 AM, with a feeling of panic because I did not have a working lightbulb in the light on our deck. I feared evil eyes looking in at me as I sat and watched the movie. And how silly was that, when we have lived this way every night for 23 years, in a fairly safe neighborhood, and rarely turn the decklights on, even when they are in working order?

Yes, this segment literally sent me into a panic attack. I suspect it does that for others, too. I understand from German friends who talked freely to me while we lived in Germany, that it was a complex time and many were afraid to speak up for persecuted people lest their own young families be ripped apart. But isn’t that how evil thrives–when everyone is too afraid to call it out as evil? Good lessons for us all in this segment, lessons from World War II and the generation of giants who fought it.

P.S. This segment probably singlehandedly gains an R rating for the series with a gratuitous sex scene in the first five minutes, as peace is breaking out. The woman never shows up further in the story and her tryst with an American GI has nothing to do with the plotline. She is just there so the producers could say, “See, even HBO can do R-rated material.” Which is kind of sad, because the violence would have gotten it an R-rating without that. And now I cannot unreservedly recommend the series to my Christian brothers without telling them to advance past the first five minutes of episode 9, to avoid the topless woman. Just saying.

Band of Brothers . . . Living History

For Christmas this year I treated myself to the six-DVD set of Band of Brothers, as originally seen on HBO.  I had long looked forward to seeing this series.

I have seen all but the last DVD (two episodes).  It is a fine, historical series.  No huge surprises, as most of us know the story of World War II.

What is awe-inspiring is the interviews at the beginning of each episode with Easy Company, 101st Airborne survivors.  I so hope at the end of the series they identify the survivors by name, as it is easy to fall in love with the amazing young men in the series, as portrayed by today’s young actors.  It would be wonderful to know which ones have survived to a ripe old age (many, many of them die in the series, as they did in real life). 

The series does not veer too far in either direction–it does not glamorize nor vilify war.  It shows that many bodies were (and are) shattered by it.  It is not for the faint of stomach, in fact.

But it allows us to form our own conclusions from history, as it should. It leads people to think.  

I did not realize that the 101st Airborne’s winter defending Bastogne was much like Washington’s winter at Valley Forge.  One survivor says he still tells his wife, when it gets cold and snowy outside their home, “At least I am not sleeping outside in the snow in Bastogne.”

Men are shown huddled under blankets in foxholes, sleeping like a heap of kittens with other men for warmth.  Amazing times.

It is totally understandable how the men of Easy Company have remained best friends and closest of brothers during the ensuing decades.  They say no one else could even understand what rigors and horrors they undertook that winter.  

In the battle for Bastogne and in their other battles, they had over 100% casualties (lots of replacements sent in were killed or injured, too).  

Amazing times.  Amazing men.  I am glad this series was made.

The Damage that can be done by People without Knowledge of History

This is going to be dangerous territory.

There are some ideas that you cannot call out in the U.S. without people who hold them realizing they are being called out for holding those ideas.  

You can call it a “conversation” if you wish, but if you have talked with said individuals numerous times and have found it to be like hitting your head against a brick wall, then you doubtless are aware that this is not really a conversation.  

Sometimes you just have to say things plainly and . . .if people hold other views and feel their views are being attacked, well, that is actually true.

You see, not all ideas are equally valid, no matter what we say about free speech.  You have a right to say it.  But just saying words does not gain you validity, nor followers.  You have to know what you are saying and be able to back it up.

People who have not studied history have the same right to free speech as the rest of us.  But they also have the right to listen to others laugh at them when they say silly things, due to not knowing history.  

In the marketplace of ideas, laughter is a valuable thing.  We don’t need to suppress speech.  But we do have to research what we are saying if we hope to have our speech be respected.  

I have a friend in my age group who has been a valuable person to help me understand how some folks in younger generations look at the military in the U.S.  She has helped me with that because she holds many of the same views as our younger generation generally does.   

The military is regarded, nowadays, as an unaffordable luxury.  What are we protecting, after all?

As a student of history, I see that mindset as myopic.  Tragically so.  

But it may take another world war to turn that mindset around.  

My friend has often made statements about the military not having a right to an opinion about what she calls “other entitlement programs.”  Yes, she will say, “You have your entitlements like the commissary and Tricare, so you have to keep quiet about the entitlements of the rest of us.”  

Really?  So when you serve 27 years for it, as I did, it is still regarded as an “entitlement”?  

So when the government signs your paycheck because you work for the government, it is the same as when the government signs a welfare check?  Have we told the President and the Congress that their paychecks are “entitlements”?

I totally get it about not treating welfare recipients as pariahs.  But that does not mean they earn their checks in the same way the military does.  You don’t turn it around and elevate the self respect of welfare recipients by lumping them in with the military, for whom we have traditionally held the highest respect of all.  

In an era of limited resources, it would go far toward healing some of the U.S.’s divides if people would at least act appreciative of the military while asking them to take 50% of the budget cuts (note:  the military is not 50% of the budget, but we are regarded as having more discretionary dollars than Medicaid, Medicare, social security or welfare).  

I totally get it that most of our Senators and Congresspeople have no military service, for the first time in history.  So they can’t really appreciate us unless they are students of history.  Sometimes they try to give us lip service.  Sometimes they don’t bother.  

I totally understand that most people sleep through high school history classes and some even do that in college.  But . . . I entered the military with a very sparse knowledge of history and just started reading . . . It is amazing what history books, even good historical fiction, can do for you!  I always loved history.  Now I have a pretty broad background in it.  

There is no excuse for not understanding the Cold War or what the U.S. did to preserve freedom in World Wars I and II.  There is no reason for anyone to not tell a Viet Nam vet “thank you for your service” with full understanding of why that phrase matters to him.  

And, more recently, our next “greatest generation” that gave the strength of its youth in Iraq and Afghanistan needs to be praised and encouraged, not lumped in with welfare recipients as “entitlement folks.”

It is important.  Very important.  

Band of Brothers and PTSD . . .

I bought our family (well, myself) the HBO Band of Brothers series for Christmas this year and just started watching it three days ago.  I watched the second segment (about D-Day) last night. Wellmade series.  I especially like the interviews with real Easy Company survivors at the beginning of each segment . . . and the listing of medals awarded to Easy Company men for D-Day which came at the end of last night’s segment.

While watching these airborne men parachute into France on D-Day, amidst anti-aircraft fire and flak, I reminded myself that what was a glorious sight to me would have been an event that produced some serious PTSD in its participants.  Only back then, PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) was not called that.  It was called shellshock from World War I onward. 

Nonetheless, one could not have been there, amidst planes getting shot down and crews burning to death, and emerge unscathed, even if not one bone of one’s body was broken.  It was the kind of scarring of the soul that would remain forever.  

And, you know, God built us that way for a reason.  We can’t pass through life without scarring of our souls.  Some of it does last forever.  That is not to be regretted, really.  

Much of it is related to learning.  It is one thing to participate in D-Day, for the good of a greater cause, and quite another thing to participate in a painful situation that has no purpose.  Only, since we tend to be so unthinking in our actions, we can spend our lives participating in painful, purposeless situations until the consequences they bring force us to think them through. 

A friend made me laugh the other day by telling me that she learned, at age 5, to not produce backwash in her drinks while sharing them.  She learned this by way of being laughed at by older people who caught her doing just that.  At the time, she didn’t even know what backwash was, but by the end of that day she had a hypersensitivity to producing it that continues till this day.  Kind of a minor PTSD, as it were.  So much embarrassment attached to an incident that she is guaranteed to learn from it–to always react in a hypersensitive way to that situation for the rest of her life. 

Haven’t we all had something happen like that, something that produced lifelong learning in some trivial area just by being so utterly embarrassing?

I remember the days when I was just starting to need glasses, around sixth to seventh grade. Part of my nearsightedness revealed itself to me when I realized I could not see things normal people could . . . but that happened over the course of months, not instantly.  

One day I walked into the girls’ room at my junior high school and saw one of my cousins in there.  She was changing clothes, but I could not tell that from where I stood.  I thought she was wearing a flesh-colored shirt and I strained to make out what it looked like.  As I squinted right at her, I remember to this day her exact words:  “My God, you lez . . .”  No offense to my lesbian friends, but she said that to me in front of half a dozen other girls.  My cheeks burned bright as I realized my mistake.  

To this day, I have difficulty looking at another woman’s chest, even when she is trying to show me something she is wearing there.  Again, a minor PTSD.  A learning incident that became tied to painful and uncomfortable feelings of embarrassment.  

All that to say, God allows PTSD in order to reinforce learning by way of consequences that solidify it into our minds and souls.  Since God did not create war, there are many learning sequences there that are reinforced by PTSD and are also so major as to disrupt one’s life forever.  They are related to our minor learning sequences of life but are on such a major level as to be in a whole different league than the ordinary situations we all encounter.

Military PTSD has produced a whole new area of study which will be ongoing for years as we try to find some relief for those whose souls are completely scarred by the brutal things they have seen in warfare.

If I Am Gonna Be Your Beta Tester, You Have to Be Willing to Pay Me . . .

Has anyone else noted recently that the American public seems to have become the de facto beta tester group for every new software or application that is issued?

I am not merely talking about the healthcare.gov fiasco, although that is the most famous example of a software that was sprung on the public well before it was ready for prime time.  

I am talking about inefficiencies in softwares and apps that leave me, a non-programmer, shaking my head and wondering aloud why programmers couldn’t see what is obvious to a casual user like me.

Today my cause du jour is the Amazon Prime application on my iPad.  When I put a movie or television show on my watchlist, it is not intuitively obvious whether that show is free, with my Prime subscription, or whether it is an extra charge for an actual purchase of that movie.  

That is okay, if a bit inconvenient–I can figure that out when I go to play the movie and only have a preview available, not the movie itself.  If I have been anticipating a particular movie all day and find out at that moment that it is not free on Amazon Prime, that can be a disappointment, but it is a very First World dilemma to face and I acknowledge that . . .

The next step, however, is totally baffling.  When I play the preview, there is no option to purchase the film at that time, from that spot on the Amazon Prime app.  Wouldn’t you think they would put in a toggle switch with either “continue to purchase” or “return to watchlist” as options at this point?

In fact, I have found no place on my Amazon Prime app where I can purchase movies.  Seems I have to leave the app and go to the Amazon website.

How inefficient.  That is not even worthy of the early 2000’s, honestly.  

And again, how First World of me!

But if you are trying to be cutting edge in the world of technology, if you are telling reporters you are going to start delivering packages by drone . . . at least get your movies app up to 2013 standards.  Or get out of the way . . . as you will be run over.

I could go on but I have lots of softwares with which I need to interact as a current job seeker.  Yup, the state of Virginia jobs data base (list of commercial and government jobs) allows me to upload a resume, but it won’t mark my entry in their data base as complete until I enter my job (and education) histories by hand.  So I have been painstakingly entering more than thirty years’ worth of data on myself over the past two weeks.  And not being surprised that their software can’t translate my resume, like some commercial softwares can, because states can’t afford cutting edge technology like these other bad boys, including Amazon, supposedly can!

In my years of military service, I first functioned as a beta tester for an information management software (mostly a data base to keep track of multiple questions that might be asked about the same situation) that was being built by and for our military in Germany.  It was standalone for our site, back in the days when the military let sites develop their own softwares which subsequently were not usable by anyone else (since there was no Internet yet, either).  I would tell programmers what I needed the software to do for me, they would build it to my specifications, and I would test it.  Even though we didn’t have the term beta tester back then, I was one!

Later, I worked for almost a year for a market research company, managing entire projects for them, start to finish.  It was not my favorite part of the process (because their programmers were usually working under the gun with a deadline looming as they wrote code) but I tested my own surveys before they went live.  How well I remember having programmers who were not well paid (so therefore sometimes were just as baffled as I was about how to fix things that didn’t branch correctly into the next set of questions) sitting with me at 3 PM trying to fix things that were to go live at 6 PM.  With management standing there saying we were costing them money if we didn’t hit the ground running at 6!!!

Never mind that management didn’t give the specs to the programmers till 9 that morning because the client could not decide what she wanted on the survey.  Oh, no, it was not management’s place to tell the client that a well-written survey could not possibly occur between 9 and 6!  It was our job to make it happen.  And when I let things get by that did not branch correctly, by not following every possible answer that could be given to every possible conclusion in the survey, we would have people who were responding live on the phone that evening when suddenly the software would glitch up and not continue (like Obamacare!).   

I remember hearing yelling, being told how much it cost in dollars to lose live people who could not finish the survey and had to be replaced with others.  Or to have to shut the survey down during the time it was supposed to be live in order to troubleshoot a glitch.  Those angry statements directed at me were true!  And I was the person who was held responsible, back in the days when people still held others responsible for nonfunctional software!!!  

For me, that job was so high stress that it lasted less than a year before my husband and I decided I was only going to work part time for the Navy reserves.  

So, yes, I have earned my chops as a beta tester, both early on and in later Navy projects.  But I have also gotten into the annoying expectation that, when I test someone’s software or app, it is a job for me and I should be paid for the beta testing.  

Just serving notice to the developers of software and apps . . . if you are not cutting me a check, I am not planning to do your job for you!!!

Edward Snowden as the Canary in the Coal Mine . . .

Edward Snowden as the Canary in the Coal Mine . . .

Every few months I have to recalibrate with Eugene Robinson in order to realize that this liberal writer and I agree completely on the role of the National Security Agency and the fact that they have gone far beyond that role, funded by our taxpayer dollars to collect against our own citizenry, no less!!!

Edward Snowden had to be. Whether he is a traitor, I will leave to someone more nuanced than myself.

He did need to fill the role of whistleblower. And of canary in the coal mine.

He may never be able to come back to the States. I think he realized that possibility when he did what he did. He counted the cost and . . . did what he did anyway.

What if we had never found out that the NSA is collecting on virtually every electronic move made by every resident of this land, as well as many people overseas? And that it is storing the data for quick recall later if they ever suspect one of us of anything.

As Mr. Robinson says, this data is always available after the fact with a warrant.

But the NSA wants their collection to be effortless. And apparently warrantless.

I like Mr. Robinson’s statement that it is supposed to be inconvenient (to the government) to invade our privacy!!!

A Paradox, Bible-style

You know how the Bible has those paradoxes that unbelievers call contradictions?  Things that seem to not be able to both be true at the same time . . . except they are?

I saw one in action three weeks ago.  I lived it.  I then made a Sunday school lesson out of it.

The Bible says, “For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (James 1:20).

It also says, “Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee; the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain . . .”  (Psalm 76:10)

So . . . how can those both be true?  

Let’s pick up my story at my hotel three weeks ago, as I checked out in the morning before an all-night flight from San Diego to Norfolk, Virginia (my home).

I decided to go to the San Diego Art Museum in Balboa Park to while away the time before my flight.  I had plenty of time after that to turn in my rental car and check in for my flight.  

I made a mental note, while navigating to Balboa Park, that I would need to look up a gas station on the way to the airport.  San Diego is so compact that I could get from my hotel to Balboa Park in less than ten minutes, then get from the park to the airport in less than ten minutes as well.  But San Diego is also old and doesn’t have many chain stores or gas stations just standing around–at least I saw very few in my two weeks there, going most places on the I-5. There  were not many chains located within a few blocks of my exits from I-5.

So, while at lunch in Balboa Park, I found a gas station on Google, as I looked up my directions to the airport.  Problem is, when I drove those directions, I never saw the station.  Either it was not there anymore or it was one block off of the beaten path or . . . I just never saw it.  

So it was that I ended up at the turn for where I had to drop off the rental car with . . . half a tank of gas.  And I knew my company would be furious if I turned in a half-full car.  That is expensive!

I decided to keep going, straight ahead, on the shore drive that seemed to run through the airport.  Our Norfolk airport is a deadend, but this one did not appear to be.  There were exits in every direction to various airport facilities, but the road itself kept going on.  

It was about three in the afternoon and it was stop and start traffic.  Especially with so many of us out-of-towners driving in that area.  

I later found out it was the hour that many Marines were checking into nearby hotels for the Marine Corps Ball that night.  

The young lady who was behind me in traffic may have been a Marine anxious to get to her hotel.  All I know is that I suddenly noticed she seemed to be holding me responsible for the entire traffic pattern in that area.  

I was in the right lane, but she was riding my bumper, about six inches away.  I stayed in the lane (didn’t want to switch lanes at the same moment she did) but tried speeding up, slowing down, pulling to the left of the lane, pulling to the right.  Nothing deterred her.  She was staying right on my bumper no matter what I did.  She even did that when the passing lane was open.  When all three passing lanes were open . .. 

I was becoming rather afraid of what might happen at her hand when I noticed we had entered Point Loma, the area where another Navy base is located.

In desperation, I decided to take the first right, to try to shake her off.

It worked!  I also saw a gas station, up on the right.

As I pulled into the station, a women popped out of a booth, asking for my ID.  It seems I was at the Point Loma Navy Exchange gas station.  Off-base.

Hurrah, I could fill up and the gas would be cheap(er).  

I looked skyward and asked, “How did You do that, Lord?”  And then I remembered that even the wrath of man praises Him!  And the remainder of wrath He restrains (I didn’t get hit, after all . . .).

See how that works?  From the young lady’s perspective, the wrath of man (woman) worked not the righteousness of God.  She did not glorify God, blowing her top like that.

But from God’s perspective, and mine, He used her wrath to get me to the gas station where I was supposed to fuel the car!!

Amazing God!!!

Closing the Military Commissaries!

I must admit that nothing in the last six months has gotten my blood boiling quite so much as the bland little news article this week saying that the powers that be have charged the military chiefs to come up with a plan for closing the military commissaries (grocery stores, with special prices and no sales tax).  This would be regarded as collateral damage from sequestration.

The article was quick to say that Congress would probably never pass such a plan. 

Really?  Then why is it on the table?  

Is it really necessary to break every promise ever made to those of us who gave the best years of our lives to our country’s military?

It should never need to come to Congress for a vote.  That would just be another opportunity for them to grandstand.

Congress didn’t give us this privilege–we earned it.  And, yes, not every American gets it.  Because not every American served.  

Don’t make us promises when we sign up, then later hold them hostage to a vote for your particular political party. Either we earned these privileges or we did not.  If we earned them, they are part of our agreed wage package, so continue to give us these privileges as pay for our time invested.

It really is that easy!  Really!

Asking Questions to Protect our Troops

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-10-04/opinions/42719583_1_bacevich-troops-soldiers

This is strong language about “Breach of Trust,” a new book about the all-volunteer military service in the U.S. However the voice is an important one, helping us to grow a conscience as 1% of our population fights our wars for us (disclaimer: I was part of that 1% for 27 years).

My Oldest Possession!

Tonight I gave away what may be my oldest possession, and the only one I owned before I met Noel.  

Ironically, I got it the same day I met Noel.  Several hours before.  It almost led to me not meeting Noel, too. 

It was my bicycle.  It was a necessity when I lived in London, as I worked some days at 5 AM, preparing for a brief at 9 AM for the Admiral.  The Tube (subway) didn’t run that early and the night buses were sporadic.  So I got a bike when I transferred to being the watchstander who briefed the Admiral at the start of my shift. 

I had picked it up early on that Friday and had ridden it back from the bike shop, much to my chagrin.  I never got completely used to riding a bike in London traffic.  The first day was the scariest!!! 

I had wanted to go to the Midsummer Night’s Passion Play (a medieval play about Bible events) at a church down the street from my home.  But none of my friends could go, as they were all watchstanders, too, many of them on opposite shifts to me.

I was tired and frazzled after riding my bike home.  I had to work my shift early the next day, on Saturday.  I almost didn’t go to the play.

But I did go in the end, all by myself, not knowing a soul,

And Noel came to that play, having heard from a friend in the cast that her friend would be in the audience.  Noel was supposed to look out for this girl.  It was kind of a blind date.

Only . . . that girl never came.  And apparently we resembled each other quite a bit.

You know what happened!!!  A case of mistaken identity.  

When we figured out the mistake, we already were having a good conversation.  So we sat together during the play and continued our conversation during the intermission.  He ended up walking me home.  

We kind of fell in love at first sight, although I would say I tried to play it very cool for the first several months.

After that, we both knew that it was the real thing!  

And now we are approaching our 25th anniversary.  

That makes the bike (whispers) . . . a little more than 28 years old!!!  A grand old Raleigh-Richmond, which was the luxury bike of the U.K. back in the day! 

 

 

 

Five Reasons That Someone Might Throw Himself on a Grenade in Your Vicinity!

As we send our beloved Kenyan seminarian back to his home country while there is an active, horrifying hostage situation in the capital of Nairobi, and as we contemplate last week’s carnage at the Navy Yard here in Washington, D.C., the question again arises, why do some people sacrifice themselves (or risk sacrificing themselves) to rescue others?

Parade Magazine took that question onboard yesterday, with its article about Captain Richard Phillips facing down a band of Somali pirates.  They came up with four reasons, according to research which has been conducted in this area.  I will start with their four reasons, using them for a riff on the theme . . . 

Why do some people behave sacrificially in a crisis?

1) They come from a culture or mindset where the theme of laying down one’s life for one’s brother is emphasized.  Christianity, along with other religions, teaches this.  So does the military.  So do first responder agencies.  This is not a philosophy that is adopted at the moment that gunfire breaks out.  It has long been a theme at the very center of this person’s life.  

2) This person practices “random acts of kindness” every day.  He does not suddenly go miles out of his way for people he has previously ignored.  Even if he rescues strangers in a crisis, he turns out to have a background of kindness toward strangers.  

3) This person sees the world as individuals, not as a large, impersonal horde of “others.”  Again, Christianity and first-responder training both emphasize doing what you can to help one individual, even if you can’t help everybody . . . 

4) This person has likely had some sort of first-responder training (perhaps in the military) and/or has actively thought through the responses she would make if she heard gunfire erupt in a crowded place.  The military always says they train for the future war they will fight, not the last war they fought in the past.  I believe that people who throw themselves on grenades (or on top of someone when gunfire breaks out) are realists who have usually thought through the steps that occur in modern hostage situations and have decided what they could do at any given stage in the scenario.  Annual training in the military covers this area.  

Jesus said there is no greater love than that a man should lay down his life for his friends.  Then Jesus did it, for us.  So here is my fifth reason, not mentioned in Parade.

5) The person has a philosophy that this world is not all there is, so it is not necessary to cling to our own lives so very tightly that we let a chance to save someone else’s life pass by.  This is a variation on reason #1, but a strictly religious one.  It is easy to see why a person who believes that this world is all the life they ever get would have a hard time throwing himself on that grenade (although atheists often do just that).  

Just some thoughts . . .