VD 2024

Wow, 2024 already. . . . .If I'd known I would live this long. . . 

So I'm standing in line at the Desoto Walmart pharmacy counter holding a generic, inexpensive card and a rubber chicken squeaky toy. . .  

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

I feel the need to explain a few things ahead of the meat of this particular post. Context is important.
Sure, today is Valentine's Day. So what.  Not a big deal, at all, in the local Bentley household, never has been, we're just nonconformists in that regard.
Angel, my much beloved wife of 30+ years is still with me. Who would have seen that coming? 
We decided/averred, ad nauseum, many years ago to grow old together, we have started to accomplish that very thing.
. . .  in sickness and in heath, etc.
A few things that maybe you didn't know about Angel:
She doesn't very much like being in enclosed spaces (indoors) with flowering plants or flowers themselves. . . not that she doesn't admire their beauty, it's an olfactory/sinus thing.
She doesn't usually wear shiny, dangly jewelry, especially since she works with dogs every day and often these beasts will mistake dangly, shiny things for some sort of treat, or bait.
She loves, LOVES chocolate. As a dutiful husband I try to make sure there is at least a thing or two of chocolate in easy reach.  Recently she has been seeking out and actually finding acceptable 'zero sugar' chocolate because that's almost like a salad in dietary terms, right?
    These itemized things make certain celebrations a little difficult for me. Especially this 'holiday'.

    On Monday February 12, Angel went on a minor shopping run and brought home a couple of items of relevant interest. Two shrink-wrapped potatoes (for baking) since she'd announced that for dinner on Cupid's birthday, or whatever you've been told was the cause for this manufactured madness, we would be having our all-time favorite home-cooked meal, steamed shrimp and a baked potato. A delightful combination that we prefer to keep rare and special, like for birthdays and such.
She also brought home a pile, a near-pallet load, of chocolate treats, some even encased in cojoined-heart* shaped boxes.
She showed them to me, I sighed, heavily. 
"Well, you've certainly sucked all the air out of the room for me, upcoming celebration-wise." I scolded her.
No flowers, no jewelry, and now, no chocolate. . . . what's left? thin, slinky lingerie? No, I don't think so, we dropped the bodice-ripping passion pretense many years ago. . . . 
"Well" she replied, (not at all snarkish or condescending) "You could just bring me a box of chicken. . ."
(Our local grocery store make a truly outstanding fried chicken, we have it at least a couple of times each month)
On Tuesday, February 13, after work, I made a run to Walmart to pick up some, in my nurse practitioner's words; 'aggressive antibiotics' for a relatively minor inflammation in my jaw/neck area. I would not have normally bothered, I'm from the 'it'll be fine, just walk it off' generation, but okay, what with the six week radiation treatments coming up on the calendar starting later this week, it's probably prudent to pay at least a little heed to the medical experts. . .  (radiation treatments? Sorry, that's the subject of another post  that I haven't finished articulating/editing yet)
While there, I happened to notice about 150 men, about my age/style/type rummaging up and down the pink aisles that have been there, pretty much untouched and unexplored, since the beginning of this silly season back in early January. . .   This reminded me of this so-called holiday.
"Damnit" I screamed into the abyss in my head.
I headed that way, looked up and down at the over-the-top offerings in the fear and sadness, tear-stained card section. I found one, cute, dog-themed. Perfect. The message inside the card said something like "I knew you'd like a box of chocolates. . . " I checked the front of the card, sure enough the dogs were of the Chocolate Lab variety, sitting in a box.  Cute. . . "Hey wait a minute! This gives me an idea!" I told my inner narrator. (He's kind of an a$$hat at times, my inner narrator, but he has a silky, resonating bass voice, not unlike James Earl Jones, with a decidedly British accent)
So I immediately headed to the pet section and found the perfect answer to my epiphany.  A rubber-ish squeaky toy shaped like a cartoonish chicken.  I grabbed it, it fart-squeaked at the slightest touch.  ("That won't get annoying")
I then high-tailed it directly to the pharmacy line, where all the local baby boomers seem to hang out on a regular basis. 
I was next in line when a typical local young lady (young = 'under 60') stepped in line behind me. 
"I have one of those" pointing roughly at my crotch area "My dog LOVES it!"   
I slowly made the safer assumption that she was referring to the chicken.
"It's for my wife" I replied.
Her reaction was as predictable as it was priceless.  This required explanation. I provided same.
After I finished telling the story she looked at me with that same kind, loving, tender, appreciative expression that Angel very often gives me when I correct her grammar. . . . 
I took my turn at the counter. The young (see above) lady behind the counter dutifully triple checked the medication and scanned it, started punching buttons. . . 
"Would you mind very much shooting these as well?" I asked, in the friendliest, least-threatening voice  I could muster. 
"Sure!" She said, picking up the chicken. "Your dog will love this!" 
"Well, ma'am I DO have four dogs, but this is for my wife. . . . "



* Factoid: The double curved (cojoined) heart depicted on common Valentine's Day cards, as well as many, many other places is, in fact, two human-ish hearts joined together. Don't believe me? Rip out YOUR heart and tell me what it looks like. . .   

💓

The Unfortunate, Though Predictable, Demise of a Local Institution

Troubling local news this morning. Not exactly surprising, but troubling, nonetheless. 

The Hillsboro, Mo. Hardees closed, permanently, on Sunday, November 27, 2022. 

 Hillsboro is the official seat of Jefferson County.

I moved to a rural property, just outside Hillsboro, in 2006. Hillsboro was established for the sole purpose of being a county seat, on property alongside a natural spring in the 1830s. Prior to that, the only fully established towns were along the Mississippi river. There is no industry in Hillsboro. No hotels or Starbucks or department or big-box stores either. In a county of 226,739 people, the sixth most populous county in the state, there are only 3,473 Hillsboro residents. Most of the county’s population lives to the north, just outside and within comfortable commuting distance of greater St. Louis. Many of the businesses and offices are county government related. The courthouse, the jail, the health department, the official administrative offices, many law firms and bail bond shops are all located in a few block radius of the intersection of Highway 21 and State Route BB (Main Street). When I first moved to the area this intersection was the location of the only fully operational traffic light in the town. Also at that intersection is/was the Hardees. Prominent in that location it was a popular meeting place for lawyers, their clients, local administrators, and officials, especially in the morning hours. A place to grab a cup of coffee a biscuit and to have a little away time from more sterile, less genteel offices, cubicles and desks. It was also a locally recognized landmark, a meeting place for exchanges of dogs, kids, etc. For us, Angel and I, it was for 16 years, an almost-convenient, nearby place to grab a burger or cup of coffee. I once saved the life of a small dog there, a story I shared, and eventually published in a little blog article I wrote called
“Oscar: A tale of Karma, Unfulfilled” . At one time Hardees was a regular weekend treat. I loved the sausage and egg biscuits, and the rarely crowded dining area was a cozy, quiet place to read in peace. I haven’t done that very much the last several years. Reasons. Reasons that included but not exclusively, changes in personal habits, covid, general laziness. The last three years, during the pandemic, the dining area remained closed for a while, and like many other fast food franchise outlets, staffing suffered. 

Angel and I would still sporadically utilize the drive-through to pick  up a quick lunch, a Famous Star with Cheese, and a medium order of French fries. Even as recently as this Monday evening, it was considered a viable option. Little did we know, the place was, by then, already shuttered. Gone now are the weekend mornings spent inside at the order counter, a book under one arm, a cup of coffee, a sausage biscuit on a tray. Gone now are the covert eavesdropping occasions, listening in on the discussions of an upcoming trial or hearing or deed transfer. Gone are the days of the drive-through breakfast pick-ups and the subsequent short drive to my favorite Hillsboro shady spot at the nearby city cemetery. . . . I wax nostalgically this morning about the nation-wide decline of small-town America. . . I shed a private tear for the fading away of things familiar. I grieve, a certain, sadly familiar, casualty of living a long life. A silly thing to be sentimental about, I suppose. Life will go on. The building, I am sure, will be repurposed or torn down within a few months, to make way for . . . something else. Hillsboro already has a McDonalds, A Taco Bell, a Subway, a Dairy Queen. . . There was a lot of low-information speculation on Facebook this morning, dubious mentions of disgusting, roach infested, poor service and anecdotal references to bad coffee, possum meat, and rude employees. . . I personally never witnessed any of that. For me it was just a handy place to grab some nourishment and a moment or two of respite from the daily grind.

Where I've been, where I am. . .

“Bemis contentedly sorts the books he looks forward to reading for years to come, with no obligations to get in the way. Just as he bends down to pick up the first book, he stumbles, and his glasses fall off and shatter. In shock, he picks up the broken remains of the glasses without which he is virtually blind and bursts into tears, surrounded by books he now can never read.”

-       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Enough_at_Last     -

 

If you’ve come this far then I really want to start with a sincere ‘thanks for caring’.  Warning though, this may get boring or even pathetic after a while. I'm not fishing for condolences, thoughts or prayers, I'm just over-explaining myself as Angel can attest, is my most infuriating trait. 

Several have noted that I have been largely absent from social media for the last few months. Yes, yes I have, that was completely deliberate. Bear with me and I’ll explain.
Several folks have asked about my health since my last few posts in early spring mentioned being in the hospital. . .  well, that’s fair.

Here goes.

Like many people during this bizarre pandemic thingy, days of ‘quarantine’ seem all muddled and jumbled since it started, so forgive inconsistencies in chronology within. I don’t keep a daily journal, so yeah, May 5^th was, in my head, completely indistinguishable from July 3^rd. Not that those dates have any specific bookmarks. . . hardly any in the last 5 months do.
The quarantine hit me hard. I don’t like working from home. I had never really gotten used to it. I’ve found my new-world-order stride now, but still head to the station every couple of weeks if for no other reason than to remind myself of a larger universe than my living room.
Not a headline: I have anxiety issues. Normally quite tolerable and manageable. However, on occasion, though I often joke about dropping into a fetal position in a dark corner and quivering and sucking my thumb. . . in reality, there actually have been times much like that. I am rather glad that now, in  21^st century America, that I can finally admit it without my maturity or manhood being significantly called into question.
A few days or weeks into the WFH lifestyle, I noticed a significant change in diet/general health. Angel says the diet reduction has been going on much longer than that, I’ll take her at her word. She’s so much smarter and attentive than me in so many important ways.
It got pretty bad. Mostly these things, often randomly, sometimes, all at once:
Noticeable tremors (inability to write with pen and paper or work with texts on the smartphone.)
Inability to sleep.
Inability to wake up.
Inability to eat. . . anything.
Slurred speech.
Noticeable balance issues.
There may be more, but in retrospect many of these things were probably the inevitable result of the one thing, the inability to eat.
Then one day, my frustration and complete lack of sleep, etc., had me on my knees, sobbing.
She took me to the emergency room. I didn’t object.
The ER poked me and drew blood. Pretty soon they sent me directly to admitting. My sodium level was below healthy levels by an alarming margin. Two days in a locked down hospital, no change of clothes, no visits allowed. I was, of course, miserable. I didn’t sleep at all even though the staff kept encouraging me to try in spite of the fact that they were taking new blood draws every other hour for two damn days and nights.
They released me once my levels hovered near the normal mark. I felt 100% better.  For about 20 hours. The next day, I still couldn’t eat. I hadn’t eaten very much at all in the hospital but that could easily be explained away since this hospital’s food offerings were just south of disgusting.
Most of the other symptoms ebbed. The eating issue remained. It sort of came and went, but mostly remained. I was surviving on protein shakes, watermelon, fresh peaches and pretty much any unhealthy sweet, candy, pastry. . .  
Sweet, including the fruit, seemed to not trigger the reflex. I can’t explain this, nor could my general practitioner. More on him later.
I stated that part about the eating in the past tense to refer to my recent history, however it should be noted that, as of this writing, that has not changed. It is currently past one P.M. I have so far today had a single Twinkie and a protein shake. Nothing else. All day yesterday: half a leftover sausage egg biscuit and about half of a fresh peach, No protein shake (I forgot to have one though Angel has been buying them by the case.)
On Sunday, I thought I was improving. I felt almost frisky compared to the lethargy of the last four months. So I spent the day preparing dinner. My famous grilled chicken thighs, sweet corn on the grill along with fresh potato salad and a small iron skillet load of Jiffy brand cornbread. I love this stuff!
Annnnd then no. Can’t do it, not even a little.
Here's what it is. I’m not a medical person, never cared to be, so I’ll try to describe it accurately in words that I actually understand.  Icky Alert!!!! :
I take a bite of any solid food, maybe two or three bites, then suddenly my throat clamps shut. I run to the nearest available plumbing receptacle, gagging and retching violently. Then my nose gets stopped up. I can only get through this by coughing up mucus and blowing my nose with as much force as I can muster. This lasts for five to ten minutes. After this I am no longer longing to put anything in my mouth for at least a couple of hours. Probably a Pavlovian reaction, but still.
For four or more months, this is what I am dealing with, almost every damn day. Seriously, almost every damn day. . . for four or more months.  Somebody I mentioned this to commented about how that must be frustrating. I suppose that would be very accurate as long as we can also agree that the American Civil War was “A prolonged protest.”   It left ‘frustrating’ in its swirling wake three months ago.
I should mention that with SOME subsistence, like a peach or a Twinkie, the vitamins and protein shakes, I am able to manage most daily tasks, though I am weaker than usual and tire very, very easily.
 
Back to the medical processes. After the hospital stay my GP interviewed me. I told him everything I knew to that point.  He suggested about 36 more blood draws and issued me a prescription for a low level anxiety drug. I recall telling him, since we’d tried this sort of things five or six times over the last 8-9 years (panic attacks were the very reason for me starting to see a doctor regularly.)  “Maybe just something strong enough to round off the edges, not something that will try to blow it out of the water.” I’d had some bad experiences with the earlier attempts.
Don’t ask me the name of it, but it seems to have done the trick. Now even my worst days and hours are quite tolerable. Yes, I still get anxious, yes, I till sort of panic, but no, I’m not cowering in a dark corner anymore. I can live with it.
This visit was about four months ago. I’ve had two or three more since. Four months that, save for the anxiety meds, have been completely without a change in symptoms, diagnosis or actual treatment.
CT scan, 2 MRIs, dozens more blood draws? Sure. . . still no diagnosis or treatment plan. At one of the later GP visits, who I was, even before this thing, a bit frustrated with, suggested I take an appetite enhancer. I was confused. “I have an appetite, I’m pretty much always hungry, I just can’t swallow anything.” He stopped and looked over the e-tablet he carried. He swiped up and down several times. Then he actually, finally made the entry. .  . that’s right, for several weeks or maybe months all the tests all the blood draws tens of thousands of dollars of medical work. . .he was looking for an appetite problem.
Frustrating? Hell yes!
He did put me in touch, finally, with a GI specialist. Who had an appointment available a month away. Well, progress? Sure.
This whole thing started roughly the same time as this quarantine. The scheduled endoscopy appointment was nine days ago.
Guess what? They found something!

No it was not cancer, heart disease, organ malfeasance, the big ticket items a guy my age worries a lot about. In fact with all the scans and blood draws, I am assured that I am in great shape, in spite of the fact that in my entire life I’ve never really come close to trying to take care of myself properly. DNA roulette I suppose, just got lucky.
I forget the medical name for this and I refuse to lift a finger for anything that closely resembles research, as that sort of thing inhibits the already wobbly creative process.
Best description I’ve heard:
“You have a yeast infection on your esophagus.”
Yeah, a bacterial infection, or as I prefer to think of it fouled up mushrooms in my throat.
The cure? The same damn common medication that biological women are given for yeast infections in their unmentionable parts. The same pill that’s been around for a lifetime or two. The only difference? Women are generally given one dose. . .  one pill. I was given 14. I suspect that the MD was underselling the magnitude of my crop of funky mushrooms a bit.
I am currently on the fourth pill. I thought it was already starting to work for about a day and a half. Then I expertly made that favorite meal and then couldn’t get past the third bite.
It should work. Maybe I should exercise some patience?
Patience? PATIENCE? Have you not been paying attention? I have a lot of things going for me. An award winning, very satisfying job, excellent co-workers, a full head of hair, a winning smile, I eventually won the marriage lottery, I could go on. . . (and often do.) but PATIENCE? at this point?  Sorry, insufficient funds at the moment.
Okay, you’ve stuck around this far. Stay with me. I may have buried the lead. . . maybe. Stick around.

Anyway, the reason I dropped off of social media was an awareness that I was.  . . let’s just call it a bit "mood-swingy" and leave it at that. When I get frustrated I tend to verbally express it in greater than necessary detail. I chose not to respond to casual queries or make late night, angst-fueled posts. I went on hiatus. Most notably I stopped posting photos of food, which did not escape the notice of many of my ardent fans. But you probably understand why now. If not, I will summarize in words that even the simplest heathen among you should understand:
Because I haven’t been able to so much as finish off a simple half- sandwich or single slice of frozen pizza in FOUR DAMN MONTHS! My motivation to prep fine southern-style meals or eat out is completely shot. I  ain’t gonna finish it anyhow, WHY BOTHER?!?

The only good thing and it is a great thing, is that I know, for certain, that I am, though currently approaching my senior years (stop laughing!) in really, really good health. No cancer, no organ disease or failure, no heart condition, cholesterol and BP are fine. I know, with precision, that my body is, except for a throat infection, in very good shape. Most people can’t say they know this much about themselves.

Oh, there was/is one other thing that was found I almost forgot to mention.

I have a marble sized mass between the left and right hemispheres of my brain.

I’m not deliberately "burying the lead" as they say in journalism parlance. I simply do not know yet, and neither do three or four doctors that know about it, is if it has anything to do with anything. I did discuss it with my neurosurgeon, yes I seem to have inherited a neurosurgeon along the way, and we still have future appointments to investigate it further. There are theories afloat how it may be causing things, but no smoking gun. We do know this, and it is good to keep in mind, so to speak: It is definitely not cancerous. That was confirmed in the noggin MRI that I got whilst we were still looking for an appetite issue. It is akin to a brain pimple, just a small blob of mass.
My neurosurgeon explained that we have no idea how long it has been there or whether it is or is not growing, since there are no brain photos prior to the one I had a couple of months ago. I will be seeing him again next week and he’s going to show me the images. I don’t know why he doesn’t just Instagram the images, maybe he’s old school. I wouldn’t mind, I’d kind of like to see actual images of the keeper of all things I know and have ever known and all things I have ever imagined.
Wouldn’t you?

I, like Mr. Bemis, am currently surrounded by the very things I cherish, a full pantry, freezer, refrigerator and easy access to every other imaginable sort of food, yet, am unable to consume.

** This Twilight zone reference is from an episode I saw as a child. I had just been prescribed my first pair of glasses. I have remembered nearly every detail of that episode my entire life.

***** Note: Angel has been, well, an angel during this whole stupid ordeal. Her patience and tolerance are awe-inspiring and very, very much appreciated. She’s seen what this thing does and has consoled me to no end. She’s seen my fickle moods and yet, does not complain. She drives me to my appointments and listens in to the medical phone calls, at my request, to make sure I heard what I thought I heard. I cannot imagine going through a Kafkaesque ordeal like this without her.

******  Extra note:  I am not terminal, I am not dying, in fact, aside from the eating thing, I feel fine and can manage a day just fine. I am not always angry or frustrated. Most of the time, except mealtimes, I try to ignore it altogether. I try.  I am on a larger scale a lot better off than many, many friends and family members. I am sure one day I will look back on this whole thing and . . . . I don’t know. At least it has distracted me from that whole pandemic thing. . . How’s that going anyhow?

B-52s and F4s

B-52s, and F-4s

I was up at 4:00 A.M. again. My brain was active, though my focus wasn’t. No TV or other electronic device, which is an arbitrary rule I have applied to myself during these pointless and inexplicable waking sessions.
I tend to have odd memories pop to mind during these weird events. This morning it was B-52s. Not the 80’s rock singers, which I have actually heard of and Angel loves, but the airplanes.

The first time, outside a movie theater, that I saw an active B-52 was when I was stationed at Sheppard AFB outside Wichita Falls, Tx. I was all of 18 or 19 at the time. They trained pilots there.  SAFB was and is, a training base. There are several things I learned about the ‘buff’ during my 9 years of cold-war service. I thought I’d share, for no particular reason.

I have never set foot on one. I am not anywhere close to being an expert on the subject, so if this spew includes inaccuracies, so be it, they are the product of ignorance and staunch refusal to do actual research, not intended to mislead.

The first buff rolled out shortly before I was born. They, though enhanced and updated, are still flying today. (I’m not going to do the math for you, figure it out yourself.)

They are what Alton Brown would refer to as a ‘single tasker’.  It was designed for one thing and one thing only and ill-suited for any other conceivable use. They were designed specifically built to haul a crap-load of bombs, conventional or nuclear, halfway across the globe, drop them and then, if necessary, and possible, return.

There are no first class or business class accommodations. No coffee carts or packets of reheated meals.  It carries a modest, young, professional crew and lots and lots of bombs and fuel. So much fuel that they cannot take off with a full tank. They take off light and get refueled in the air, Yeah, a hell of a single tasker and not a cheap one.

I first recall one taking off and just staring at it in scary awe. Recall that I left rural, bucolic, Kentucky the day after high school to learn electronics in the best electronics school in the world, the U.S. Air Force. Even Navy guys wanted to go to that school. My service was, as I have confessed before, nothing to do with patriotism or national pride or wanting to kill the enemy. I knew that my entry test scores were high enough that I could spend a career ‘in the rear, with the gear’.

I heard the beast fire up before I saw it. 8 massive jet engines spinning up takes a while. It started taxiing down the ramp. Jesus those things are huge and ugly. Prettiness was not exactly one of the design parameters.  The first thing I noticed was that it was pointing the wrong way. About 20 degrees off from where it was heading.  A thing about these behemoths is that the enormous wingspan has to be pointed into the wind to take off or land. Yeah, they need that much help to get airborne. When it finally took off, the nose was still pointed about 20 degrees off from the direction it was going. That, if you ever see it for yourself, will screw with your brain for a while. Even screwier, they can land like that as well. A B-52 has the glide path of a crowbar at low speeds.

I recall it hitting me then, still just a kid. This is not merely a plane, it is an expensive yet ultimately expendable weapons platform. It only exists to rearrange the topography and alter the population of some far-off land, for reasons that may not always be clear. (Case in point, these were the latter days of the Vietnam conflict (don’t call it a war, because wars are completely different))

BTW, the term ‘glide path of a crowbar’, as much as I would like to claim it, is actually a quite common term usually applied, as I first heard it, to the silvered delta wing F-100 class  fighters of the Korean and early Vietnam era. (once again, conflicts, not wars. ‘Wars’ are declared, conflicts are not. Semantics people, semantics. Embrace It.)   The term also applied to the premier fighter of my ancient military career, the F-4 Phantom. The F-4 is also the loudest f’ing jet I have ever watched launch. (Including the U-2s I watched take off in Korea several times, but officially didn’t actually exist, don't tell anyone, it's a secret) Case in point, I spent a month in South Korea, not far from the DMZ at Osan Air Base. Don’t worry, I was still in the rear with the gear, learning how to repair IBM card punch machines. (do not fold, spindle or mutilate) Yeah I’m punch card repairman old. (to be fair, I was the last PACAF (Pacific Air Force), formally trained IBM card punch repairman. They

were, even then, being replaced by those new-fangled “computers” you may have heard about)

I was walking to the main gate to once again get wasted on awful, mostly loosely regulated, varying proof, cheap local booze, which came, delightfully, in several  fruity colors and flavors (it made the inevitable puking a lot more interesting) The base sirens sounded. No, not a tornado, someone on the other side of the DMZ had crossed the line. This was at least a weekly occurrence.  I happened to be right beside the flight line. The ready fighters, the ones that sat, manned and idling 24/7/365 at the end of the runway lit up, massive engines at full throttle,side by side, roared down the tarmac mach one in no time. The noise they made scared the crap out of me, I don’t recall anything being that loud, before or since. If this experience doesn’t make you poop your pants, you should seek medical attention.
Nothing at all like a commercial plane. Knock off the sound suppression, mufflers maybe. While you are at it, set the exhaust on fire.

The F-4, like the buffs, was designed to do one job and one job only. There is no domestic equivalent of either. They are lethal weapons. Not pretty, not sleek. The F-4 is big and heavy for a fighter. Like the muscle cars of the 60s and 70s, they overcame large, cumbersome, non-aerodynamic design simply by putting in the biggest-ass engines ever designed. All muscle, no pretty.
As with the buffs a few years earlier, this spectacle shook my core, rearranged my brain, helped me realize exactly what I had actually signed up for.
So when you hear the phrase ‘military mind’, don’t laugh. For many of us, it is a real thing. It doesn’t necessarily define us; most of us go on to lead regular, normal lives. I never had a gun pointed at me, nor did I ever face an actual enemy. However, at a very young, invincible, immortal age, I realized that I was not the thing this was all about. Once the creases and color fade from the pretty uniforms and the medals lose their shine, those of us that enlist, at the end of the day, like the B-52 and F-4 are little more than expendable weapons platforms. Most of us never, ever forget that realization; we are not ever the ‘thing’ again. Instead, we serve.

Osan AB

Why are Books Male and Magazines Female?

(Originally written in 2016)

Recently I read an article about the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Someone on staff at that state university had posted online about the need to use more neutral pronouns in daily life. Being as this was on the internet, a lot of people swiftly took offense. The administration responded that it was merely a suggestion, a partial how-to, rather than a directive.

The highly offended masses decried the stupidity and the arrogance of the submitter, including the family, friends and pets of same.

This was, of course, a throwaway article about what is essentially just more hissing background noise on the information superhighway.

I had, not so long ago, spent some brain cycles on this very subject.

As a professional, published, award winning writer, (don't laugh, I have the certificate and the check stubs to prove it. . . Seriously, stop laughing!) I think about grammar. I can't NOT think about grammar. I don't always get it right, but it is something, like speed limits, stop signs and remembering that a plastic bag is not a toy, that I get right most of the time, but certainly not all the time.

I have theories about grammar and spelling rules and why they are so befuddling, convoluted, seemingly arbitrary and rife with boxes full of 'exceptions'. Primarily, that the rules were written and voted on after the fact, reverse engineered. We've clumsily tried to create a rule set to accommodate or rationalize already commonly accepted words and phrases.

If you were going to design a language today, especially since women have now brutally forced their oppressive equality upon us, we'd probably not bother with many gender specific pronouns at all. We certainly would not have gender tagging to nouns (objects) that don't even have an apparent gender, as is often found in French, Spanish, etc. 

In Spanish, all nouns seem to have a gender, i.e.: El libro (book, male) La revista (magazine, female), El miedo (fear, male), La libertad ( liberty, female), la perra (female dog), el perro (male dog)

See? It all seems really, really silly, complex, arbitrary and certainly, inefficient.

How about this:

"Pat Tucker called the auto repair shop to ask when his car would be ready." 

What is the value of the word 'his' in that sentence? 

"Pat Tucker called the auto repair shop to ask when her car would be ready."

What changed? Oh, Lee is a female's name now! 

But what difference does it really make? A person made a phone call to ask about the status of a car repair. What does gender specificity have to do with any of that? 

 

Of course there are tons of inconsistencies. The words I, us, you, me, they, etc.,  are also personal pronouns, but do not declare biological reproductive roles. 

"Lynn and I went to the market. I bought five apples and a magazine. She bought a can of hairspray and a sandwich."  

Pop quiz: 

1. Is the person speaking male or female? 

2. What about 'Lynn?' 

3. Why does it even matter at this early point in the story? 

Some languages have attempted to be more efficient. Russian is almost totally devoid of 'articles' as we English speakers know them. Thus, when translating word for word we end up with a choppy, blunt sounding sentence:  Our "A tree fell in the woods."  becomes:" дерево упало в лесу" (Tree fell in woods)

Just about any rookie actor in Hollywood knows/learns that dropping articles is one sure-fire way to magically sound Russian. Listen for it  . . .

But back to the gender issue.

We understand Actor/Actress, certainly.  But what do you call female vs.male dancers? We struggle with Comedian vs. Comedienne, but why do we even bother when they are pronounced almost exactly the same anyhow? . . . Actors and Actresses do the same job, Comedians and Comediennes, likewise. But with doctors, painters teachers, writers, butchers and candlestick makers, we don't bother punctuating the profession with information about that person's genital mechanics. Why not?

More questions:

Why do we have 'nurses' and 'male nurses'? 

The issue with 'male nurse' is the fact that for several reasons, not all of them sexist or stupid, we equate 'nurse' with female.  This is even more complicated since we also call feeding a baby in 'the natural method',  'nursing'. Whereas the medical professional title 'nurse' really has very little to do, for the last hundred or so years, with suckling babies.

Of course, this line of thinking, of qualifying things with unnecessary modifiers, eventually spirals toward racism.

If I read you a short story and the opening line was "Two white men entered the liquor store." or "Three Hispanic teens raced toward the bus stop.", would you not assume that  race was somehow a significant factor in the story to follow? What if it really wasn't? 

But I'll skip that whole mess for now.

"The puppy was beautiful. It had short, but very soft and fragrant, fawn colored fur. It's bright blue eyes had just peeled open for the first time, taking in a kaleidoscopic universe. From the mutt's mouth came a whimper, a squeak and its whole body jerked and twitched with a tiny, but snotty sneeze."

Awwwww.

But wait, is the puppy a male or a female?

Again I ask, does it matter? Does your mental image of the little dog change without that information? 

"The child was beautiful. It had messy, short blond hair, bright pink cheeks and a face that seemed to always be smiling. Its eyes were as bright green as the sign on the Irish Pub beneath the rented room it and its happy family called home. It had a thick flock of freckles, the entire family's curse or blessing. It loudly skipped down the sidewalk as if it didn't have a care in the world."

Why does that sound wrong? Actually, it sounds wrong because in English, 'it', used to indicate the thing we are talking about,  as has been taught for many generations, is simply not good enough to indicate something when that something is human. Some books say that 'it' properly refers to an inanimate object. Well, that may be the intent, but no one yelled at me when I used 'it' to refer to the puppy.

For reasons  unknown, perhaps lost to time, if we are indicating individual people, we immediately default to gender identifiers. Even now we struggle with it in everyday speech and writing. We have to gesticulate to untangle things to be non-gender specific.

Fill in the blank:

"If a customer wants more information, the sales associate should offer ______ a free brochure."

Did you fill  in with "them"? (Sorry, 'them' is historically, a pluralization of 'it'.) "Him/or her"? "Him/her?" Clunky, especially when you are writing.

Or did you reword the sentence to make it flow better?

"If customers ask for more information, the sales associate should offer free brochures."

So this is less a question of right vs. wrong, politically correct or incorrect, it's an archaic legacy issue of our contrived and convoluted language itself. The 'sexism' is front-loaded, nearly mandatory gender identification has been around since very, very early in the cobbled together and ever-evolving architecture of our language.

Still don't believe me?

Exercise:

Create a simple paragraph of at least four sentences about individuals on an assembly line or at an art museum, at the grocery store or at a flea market. Have at least some interaction among the individuals, even if it is passive interaction and dialog free. No need to tell a whole story, just a simple paragraph. Don't overthink it. 

How long before you are essentially forced to gender identify any of them?  

I'm currently reading a series of crime fiction novels by Icelandic author Arnaldur Indriðason.  Don't bother trying to pronounce that, you'll shred your tongue and knock loose a couple of back teeth. 

One of the characters in the outstanding 'Detective Erlendur Sveinsson' series is named Marion Briem. Marion, whose name even in Icelandic is gender ambiguous, is never identified as male or female. It's a running theme in the series. Other characters in the books even mention from time to time that they don't know Marion's gender. I'm reading the English translations of these novels, even there, or especially there, trying to stumble around giving Marion's gender away reads clunky. I imagine that in patronymic-heavy Iceland, it is just as hard, if not more so. Almost all the other Icelandic characters and their authors, have dead give-aways in their very names: Sviens 'son', Indriða 'son'. 

Another author I follow from that country, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and her lead character, Thóra Gudmundsdóttir, are both someone's dóttir.

So it's not just English, Spanish French and Italian that are to this day, still pointlessly, needlessly ,sexist in places that there is simply no reason to be.

To take it even further (and more ridiculous) the still occasionally used, Mr. and Mrs. To use these correctly in correspondence, you need not only to know the addressee's gender, but as for the latter, her marital status, which is in this day and age, awkward, intrusive and absurd, especially in the context of someone for whom it doesn't actually matter, say in some official capacity like a bureaucrat or corporate executive, school principal, etc. 

I was in a conversation with my brother a few days ago. My younger brother is about the only person on the planet that I will discuss politics with anymore. He drags me into it, relentlessly. Though I'd already told him that at this early stage of the Presidential season that I was not really paying close attention to either the circus nor to the occupants of the clown cars in it, he asked me this:

"So who will it be?"

"I don't know, my guy hasn't announced his candidacy yet." 

"And who is that?" He dug.

"I don't know, just no one currently running."  I answered, thinking this would put an end to it, but no. . . 

"But you are saying it will be a man?"

Of course, that's not what I meant. . . if I'd made the intent clear and gender-free though, it would have sounded like the overwritten dialog from a cheap, irritating infomercial, or an extract of nearly every legal document.

"The person for whom I might eventually vote is not among the currently declared contenders. . ."

It is my hope that someday we will simply tire of the awkward and archaic gender-biased pronouns. There are already a few that have crumbled among the youngsters, used interchangeably, between the lasses and the lads. . . 'Guys'   as in the 'HEY YOU GUYS!!!" opening line from the old PBS series "Electric Company"

The Warrior: Continued.

A few years back I wrote a piece titled 'The Warrior' which described my late summer evening battles against the damnable beasts otherwise known as horseflies.*
In recap, we live in a hole in the woods, we are inundated with the critters and crawly beasts that thrive in those environs. Most of them harmless, many are at least little more than a nuisance. A few however, are vicious. Thankfully it's not bears, wolves or dinosaurs I'm talking about. Mosquitoes plague Angel. She's a dog trainer and is outside a lot on most days, everyday, winter, summer, autumn, etc. She has several sprays and even a hooded, mesh mosquito jacket. She still gets bitten though.
Not as numerous, but certainly more dreaded, are the horseflies. Female horseflies suck blood from animals in order to reproduce. They must do this about once per week. Otherwise they and the males exclusively, harmlessly feed on plant nectar. The males completely lack the requisite  mouth parts, the grotesque jagged daggers that the females use for this demonic  task.
A horsefly bite is really, really awful. The female rips  open holes in your exposed neck or legs and uses its sponge like mouth parts to soak up your blood. What you are left with is a painful, burning itch and a large, hard, easily infected, welt. It burns and itches for over a week and there's very little that you can do about it. Of course this also means that she can inject you or your dog with whatever diseases she's happened to come in contact with.
Cattle, deer, horse, dog, human, any animal will do. It's for the sake of the dog/human victims that  I decided to retaliate with unfettered violence rather than run away.
A lady fly got me on the neck one evening while I was walking a perfectly innocent dog. I didn't notice she was there at first, because another couple of the flies, males probably, were harassing the dog, buzzing, landing, buzzing off again, the dog was going nuts trying to make it stop. That's when the lady fly got me, while I was distracted trying to control/rescue the dog.
I had a zapper-swatter that I carried with me the next outing. Useless.  Horseflies have evolved to see a swat or tail swish motion coming from a mile away. Swinging something at them is exactly the one thing they know how to avoid. We can't broadcast poisons on our five acre lot because of the many dogs that come and go from our compound. So I devised a tactic that may seem a little out of the box. A BB gun. I owned an old, seldom fired, Daisy Red Ryder model, just like the one that dorky kid envied in that stupid Christmas movie.
It's a lousy inaccurate and under-powered weapon in general, but I knew I cold get really close to the hovering pests lined up along the driveway in the evening, and BB's are dirt cheap.
Most summer evenings, starting around mid-July and at around eight o'clock, the flies will gather along the driveway, a dozen or two per day. I kill most of them. Sure, every night there are more, but the cycle simply repeats itself. I don't give up on things simply because of overwhelming odds or patently obvious futility. Just ask Angel, my third wife.
Since my original story I've studied and learned more about my adversary and have evolved my tactics to become even more of an industrial killer than the raving, angry savage I'd started out being several summers ago.

A very important thing I've learned is that the bugs that hover and dive along my driveway before sundown are pretty much all males. You know, the ones that do not bite and suck blood. Among them, even a furious 3D jousting  match of a dozen or so of them, I have nothing to fear.  They are not tossing and turning, swooping and soaring to get to me. No, they're trying to get a date.  They swoop in together each evening and wrestle each other for prime position and to display their sexiness to  the smaller, less numerous, but bloodthirsty females.
During the initial stages, the first five or ten minutes, the females don't even bother  to show themselves. That is my window of opportunity, all offense, no defense. In four seasons  I've only had one more near-bite from a female. I'd hung around too long that evening.
You don't have to know a lot about bugology to tell the difference between male and female. The females are  a bit smaller and, unlike the head diving males, will usually aim lower, neck or  leg. They also tend to be more independent and stealthy than the loud, raucous and braggadocious males. Think inebriated frat boys when a pretty coed arrives at the party.
Once the initial scuffling for position starts to settle into a lineup, the ritual killing can begin. The bugs do not recognize me or my weapon as any sort of threat. They are obviously far more concerned about the other males and of course, looking fine for a female. I can and do walk right up to them, within inches, and fire away. They don't often even flinch when I miss.  They will occasionally perform a throttled up diving maneuver, more for show as far as I can tell, than for defense.  It is very similar to the aeronautical 'Immelmann turn'. If you've ever watched a war movie that included a formation of attack aircraft, this is that rolling, off-the-top, banking dive that the hero's plane always leads off with. It even has a similar sound. If a male does this after I've fired, I know I've missed. That's  okay, because they will make this move in a near miss and then return to almost the exact same spot  a few seconds later. I've seen the same bug dive and return to the same exact spot, under fire, a half dozen or more times. I just patiently hold my aim.
Yeah, it sounds very stupid of them, I know. But see, the horny boys have fought furiously for their particular positions. Lust rules the male brain. Alert the media!
I've even been able to locate the most prized positions, those sweet spots,where even on a light night the randy boys will furiously fight over. A few particular clusters of leaves at the end of a low branch. This is actually a very shrewd tactical position. They can be seen by the lower flying female, but are pretty much safe from a male horsefly's only real natural enemy, birds.
Each evening as I venture up into position I can see  a few birds, swooping in on the sunny, sloping, roughly east-west corridor that is my driveway. They are diving in for a snack. For other bugs as well, I'm sure, it's a very busy travel lane for flying and crawling bugs. So the two or three most prized positions for these guys are very near these few leaf clusters.  Indeed, I have made that cool Hollywood shot, just once though, through the leaf and into the bug for a kill.
So why kill the males if the females are the scary ones?
Well, simply put, to make my driveway a far less romantic hot spot. They are gathering there to mate. I am interfering with that ritual. (Coitus Interruptus?)  A female likes a wide sampling of suitors to pick and choose from. By the time she finally pokes her head out here, most of the males here are either dead, quivering and broken on the pavement or in the ditches, or hiding deeper into the woods.
Does it work? 
In the original write up, I spoke a lot of the 'ground troops' that populated the lower section of my driveway, right in front of the house. For the past two years they have not returned to that area. Will it stay that way? Well, as I've said, I'm no bugologist, I'm just a killer.


*There is debate and disagreement about whether 'horse fly', 'horsefly', or 'horse-fly' is more correct. I decided to just pick one and stick with it.

A well regulated militia. . .

Though billions of impassioned words have been spewed debating the intent/meaning/limits of the second amendment to this nation's constitution, relatively little is said about the first dozen or so words:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State. . . 

I'll not take a stand in the overall gun control debate for now. . . No, I just want to pass on what I have researched and learned about that particular part of this very controversial 'right'.

Though it may not seem so clear to us now in modern times, I can assure you, the Founding Fathers (FF's) were very familiar the term 'militia'. Perhaps so much so, that they felt no further elaboration was necessary.

Pop quiz, hotshot:
What is the 'militia' they were referring to, translated into modern terms?

A. National Guard.

B. Groups like those armed extremists/patriots that recently took over the Oregon bird sanctuary.

C. ROTC/Military Academies.

D. Military 'Reserve' forces.

Answer: E. None of the above.

This is perhaps why many of us don't often get it. It doesn't really exist anymore as it did at the time.

You've heard the stories though, these were the non-professional, citizen-soldiers that fought and won the Revolutionary War, then went back to their farms and families.

Each of the 13 colonies sponsored militias. Prior to the actual war, they were pretty much placeholder organizations and maybe occasionally, ceremonial. Poorly trained and equipped, lacking in nearly every necessary military resource, including professional leadership.

They were farmers mostly, and certainly not plantation owners in the rank and file. Poorly compensated, bringing their own muskets and knives, rarely even issued a uniform. Usually they were only deployed for a few weeks or months at the most, rarely did they venture far from home.

In 1775, the Continental Congress established a Regular Army. Not to replace the militias, but to provide a small, stable, trained core of soldiers and officers to train and command those militias in wartime.

Most of the FF's absolutely abhorred the idea of a large, standing military. i.e.:

"Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people"    - James Madison -

“The Greeks and Romans had no standing armies, yet they defended themselves. The Greeks by their laws, and the Romans by the spirit of their people, took care to put into the hands of their rulers no such engine of oppression as a standing army. Their system was to make every man a soldier and oblige him to repair to the standard of his country whenever that was reared. This made them invincible; and the same remedy will make us so.”   - Thomas Jefferson -

Sorry, I don't want to belabor this missive with a pile of archaic quotations, but these are just to highlight the point made, to peek into the mindset of the people that actually drafted the constitution.

So the 'intent' of the FF's was perfectly, undeniably clear. Maintain only a small standing military and when needed, conscript the civilians!

Yes boys and girls, we're talking about 'the draft.'  In Revolutionary times, up until the American Civil War, conscription was managed entirely by individual states.  With the outbreak of that latter war, both the Union and the Confederacy legislated 'national' conscription. It was no more popular then, on either side, than it was in the heady days of the late Vietnam conflict. Rioting, demonstrations, civil unrest, rampant draft dodging and desertion. Precisely because of all that noise and violence, the U.S. switched to an 'All Volunteer' policy in 1973. However, registration is still a requirement and a call up could occur should the need arise. The draft has not been eliminated, just shelved.

But that's a whole 'nother essay.

In those early days (1700's) most of the population (around 2.5 Million) of the U.S., were stretched out thinly across the colonies. Not so much crammed into cities, mostly on small farms. Away from the cities there were lots of things to be wary of. 'Savage' indigenous peoples, wolves, bears, mountain lions, etc. One simply didn't set up a homestead five miles into the the wilderness and away from the nearest neighbor without packing some form of 'protection' from these and other certain hazards. Yes friends, nearly everyone had guns in their homes, times were very, very different then. It is not hard to imagine that the FF's assumed that an already armed populace would not need additional weapons provided to them in wartime. Practically every farm boy and even girls had several years of experience shooting, something. Hunting back then wasn't a 'sport', it was a vital necessity, a near daily chore out in the woods. 

On paper and in times of non-war, the militia idea, hardly a new one, worked . . . okay. 

These colonial and state militias provided the boots on the ground for several major and minor battles and skirmishes. The Revolution, 1812, etc. 

In 1792 Congress enacted the Militia Act, which left the militias firmly in the control of the states, but outlined certain minimum requirements and definitions. Formalizing the existing concept of militias and setting more uniform standards. It called for:
" . . . each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years (except as is herein after excepted) shall severally and respectively be enrolled in the militia. . ."

Okay, pretty much every white male between 18 and 45 (later expanded to 'all' males and to age 54).

Now the meaty bit:
". . . every citizen, so enrolled and notified, shall, within six months thereafter, provide himself with a good musket or firelock, a sufficient bayonet and belt, two spare flints, and a knapsack, a pouch (etc). . ."

There it is, 'bring your own weapon.'

This is exactly the 'well regulated militia' that needed to be perfectly free to own and 'bear' arms. 

Our FF's not only knew that a large percentage of the population was armed, they counted on it. Heck, they mandated it. If you think about it, even though at the time of the drafting of these acts, there were few, if any high-powered, rapid fire 'assault' weapons, I imagine a local banker-temporarily-turned-Captain hastily called up to guard a railroad bridge during the Civil War would have been absolutely delighted if a couple of his local boys showed up for muster with AR-15's and boxes overflowing with shiny ammunition. 

The FF's themselves were not thinking only about single-shot muskets used only for sport or hunting or home defense. Effective national security as they envisioned it actually counted on these militia men having powerful and fast weapons available, the more, the merrier. 

So in historical context, the wording of the second amendment was not at all vague, peculiar or misunderstood. In time of war, regular gun totin' civilians would be called up in the form of state-run, well regulated (structurally/uniformly defined) militias and turned over to the Fed for its defense.

The Militia Act of 1792 was amended many times throughout the remainder of the 18th century and through the entire 19th, until it was all but completely superseded by the 'Dick Act' (I'm not making that up) or 'Militia Act of 1903'.

The Spanish - American War, which we rushed into in 1898, really highlighted, once again, many of the problems with a conscript dependent military. Low levels of training and readiness, lack of uniformity of command and leadership skills, non-standardized equipment and weaponry, etc. It was really hard to pull boys off the farm and get them up to speed for big combat if they were needed in a hurry.

The Dick Act formed the more professional institutions that we know now, the Reserves and the National Guard. This, and many subsequent amendments to that act, created and fixed budgets, created ROTC, set policies in place for the use of 'Federalized' Guard units, set standards for uniforms and equipment, etc. It also did away with all those archaic, self-equipped, state militias as they existed in the 18th and 19th centuries, those familiar to the FF's..

Thus, the Dick Act of 1903 pretty much eliminated the need for conscripts to own and bring their own weapons.

So what about the second amendment?

Well, this all shows how outdated the wording/concept may be. The only stated reason given at the time for that unconditional right to bear arms, simply no longer exists. However, legally, the amendment stands on its own. It doesn't cease to be the law of the land simply because nobody bothered to update it. (Speed limits don't go away just because the signs have been knocked down.) Quite the contrary. In order for the various anti gun movements to ever be ultimately successful, they are going to have to get that amendment changed. Pretty much every attempt to sneak under or around it has been slapped down by one Supreme Court decision or another. 

It was, simply, an idealistic, perhaps unrealistic effort to create a new nation without also requiring/allowing a large standing military to 'protect' it.
Does it need to be changed/updated? If so, there's a mechanism for that. I didn't say it would be easy.

For those who occasionally wonder why cars have to be registered and drivers licensed, hairdressers must be licensed, many, many businesses can require drug testing and background checks, etc. but guns are somehow, magically, exempt from any of those types of requirements and inconveniences:

Simple, because hairdressers, cars, drivers and corporate employees do not have an entire line item devoted to specifically singling them out, right there in the bill of rights. Guns do.

There's your problem!

* Interesting factoid that would have many of the 'small-army' FF's rolling in their graves: The current Active duty/reserve military headcount in the U.S. is around 2.5 Million, roughly the same as the entire population of the U.S in 1776.

* * * No, I am not at all interested in debating the merits/problems of personal gun ownership, good guns vs. bad guns, mental health issues, WMD's, open carry/concealed carry, etc. The only purpose of this whole exercise was simply to try to understand the meaning and intent of the second amendment. 

References:

http://www.constitution.org/mil/mil_act_1792.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_Act_of_1903

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militia_%28United_States%29

R.I.P. Radio Shack

You've probably heard the news, Radio Shack has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
For many, this is about as shocking as getting up one morning and hearing that Abe Vigoda had died. He was still alive?
For me, it's not at all surprising, but it is still sad. Back in the 70's and 80's I spent a lot of time and money at the venerable geek shops.  

I have fiddled around with electronics since I was in high school. After graduation I joined the Air Force precisely to learn electronics. And I did. In fact, immediately after my military schooling, the Air Force sent me to an instructor course, pinned a heavy metal badge* on my uniform and put me behind a podium for the next three years, teaching electronics.
During and after the Air Force, I played around with digital circuits.  I lived and breathed Radio Shack part numbers.This was all well before personal computers. The available circuits had engineering type names, mutiplexers, counters, flip-flops, converters, gates, shift registers, etc. They performed digital functions without the benefit of a controlling program.
Basic stuff assembled on a bread-board, also a Radio Shack item. The IC's cost only a couple of bucks at the Shack, the more complicated ones a bit more. Popular Electronics, the monthly Bible for electro-tinkerers even exclusively listed Radio Shack part numbers with their projects.
For starters I hooked up a little 8-legged IC called a 555 timer. Connect a couple of capacitors, a variable resistor (volume control) and of course a red LED to that little bug and you could produce pulses at speeds between minutes between pulses to thousands of pulses per second. Nice, clean pulses.Take those pulses to a counter that counts binary 0 to 15 (000-1111)and take that output to a TTL 74154 demultiplexer add LED's to output of that thing and you have a variable speed light sweeper, like Kit on 'Night Rider' or the Cylons on 'Battlestar Galactica'.
Frequent trips, a few bucks here, a few there, a pretty inexpensive hobby and a fantastic way to get hands-on up-to-date electronics experience. Unlike the vacuum tubes and old, analog transistor circuits I was exposed to in the service.
Radio Shack was created in 1921 by brothers Theodore and Melvin Deutschmann, who leaped on the very first wave of electronics as a hobby, providing parts, tubes, wire, tools, etc. to the new 'amateur radio' hobbyists cropping up in 'shacks' around the country. In 1921 the first licensed commercial radio station (KDKA, Pittsburgh) had only been on the air for less than one year. (I had to know this little tidbit for the test to get my own FCC broadcast license when I was 16). Amateur radio was pretty much the very first techno-fad. It enabled Ham's to communicate across the country and around the world. (I would explain how it all works, but it involves things like amplitude modulation, skip, the ionosphere, boring stuff.) And yes, I had a HAM license myself for a while as well. . . KA6TAT, for those that are curious about that sort of thing.
Once computers became personal, Radio Shack started flailing. They certainly tried, the TRS 80 was quite a respectable computer system in its day, Radio Shack simply failed to follow the trends once the IBM PC model became the industry standard. That's pretty much the day the music died for the old company. They survived the depression, a few nasty wars, the Nixon administration, they even made it through Disco. They even thrived after being bought by a hobby leather company (Tandy). But rather than capitalize on their massive retail presence with an updated computer standard, they bailed. Those of us who'd tinkered with the old circuit parts were by then building our own computers. (IBM PC warranty certified technician 1984)
Radio Shack didn't even pick up on the add-on board/peripheral market. Instead they sold remote control cars, TV antennas and batteries. 
The last couple of decades has seen that once highly respected company reduced to a cell phone and accessory kiosk that didn't even make their own phones. You can still get a TV antenna there.
In the past few years I've only been to the Shack a handful of times, for connectors or something, they didn't have the right ones.
They've had 11 fiscal quarters of dismal and sliding numbers. They have no vision, no goal, no product line. Nobody's asking who will fill those shoes, they have no shoes to fill.
Yes, I recall fondly the heady old days of digging through the racks and drawers, reading the tech specs on the packages, creating projects in my head, ah yes, good times.. . 
So long, old friend. 



_____________________
* The Badge: that is indeed my old instructor badge, my second one. The first one I was issued did not have the word 'Master' at the bottom of it. Of my entire nine year military career, I am perhaps the proudest of that second badge. 'Master Instructor' had a specific and rigorous qualification process. College hours, podium time, experience teaching all thirteen or fourteen 'blocks', or units of the course. Only about one in fifty instructors were awarded that badge, there are fewer of these awarded than commendation medals.
Fortunately there was no minimum age requirement for it. I had just turned 20, at the time as best anyone could determine, the youngest airman to ever have been awarded it. So yeah, I gloat.

A Book Signing

A long, long time ago, late 2006, to be more precise, I decided that I needed to expand my literary horizons, on the input side. I was reading three or four novels per month and was running out of authors.
I have this habit of finding writers of serial novels and reading the entire series, then finding another, similar author or genre and so forth. This has inherent limitations though. I was reading mostly crime and geo-political fiction, that sort of author tends to be white and male. I figured I needed to expand my intellectual scope to include other types of authors, else get stuck with a mindset/worldview that was a bit too narrowly focused.
So I declared 2007 to be the year of the female author.
Of course I started by looking up female authors of that same genre. I didn't have a lot of luck. Then on NPR. . .  yes I listen to NPR, I heard an interview with an author who was talking about one of her recent characters. A Norwegian, lesbian, badass character, no less.
She had me at 'Norwegian'.
The author admitted that she had very little first hand knowledge of Norway, but that was part of the fun, part of the challenge of writing a series of novels.
The Author, Nicola Griffith, liked research, was almost obsessed with it.
I get that. . I too find research to be very challenging and, well, fun.
I'm one of those guys that will overhear something in a conversation, like "I can't remember what the TV show was, but it had Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch. . . and maybe that little guy from Mayberry RFD. . ."
By the time they get to the question mark, I've already Googled it. ('F Troop', by the way.) I thirst for knowledge, mostly the more obscure and rarely relevant kind.
Even when I pound out one of my nearly weekly lame and silly restaurant reviews, I will look up a fair amount about either the establishment itself, or a dish offered there, or maybe just an ingredient. . . I simply love that part of the process.
So I figured that this writer and I had something very basic in common. Then again, maybe it was her voice that captivated me.
Nicola is British by birth and even though she'd lived in the U.S.,(Seattle), for several years, she still had a distinct accent. There are many different flavors of British accent, hers was not the street urchin 'Cockney', hers sounded to me more like the accent of a more well-bred, university polished, more 'sophisticated' style, the kind we Americans hear and get the impression that the person speaking must be very, very intelligent, very in-the-know. It's a BBC news reader sort of accent.
Whatever it was, I was looking for female authors, crime fiction preferably, and it had just been handed to me on a Chablis and Brie platter.
So I ordered the series.
Sure enough the voice in the books was completely different from what I was used to. It's hard to pinpoint the difference exactly, but this was new for me.
The main character, Aud Torvingen, was quiet, reflective, strong and fiercely independent, all qualities I

aspire to myself. Unlike many of the protagonists in male-driven novels, Aud didn't hunt down trouble. She didn't just rush into a room and start screeching and punching and shooting. Each time she found herself in a corner or in vicious circumstances, we heard what was in her mind. Her conflicts and decision process, as if the millisecond of time between discovering imminent trouble and engaging it were cerebrally slowed down. . as happens often in certain real life circumstances.
She required no big, strong, handsome men to rescue her or even to assist, no comedy sidekick. . .
I thoroughly enjoyed the entire series and wanted more.
I looked up Nicola on Facebook and sent a friend request. That's not an unusual thing for me to do. I often reach out to or link to authors. I like to get updates on what they are working on and occasionally I'll post a note of appreciation for their work. Usually, the more well known authors will have a page you can subscribe to, rather impersonal, Nicola actually accepted friend requests.
Within a few days, she accepted. I was impressed and flattered.
I sent a post, or something, which included a request for more Aud books.
She was working on something else though. But I wasn't the only fan begging for more.
Some of the fans wrote admiringly about an earlier work of hers, science fiction, 'Ammonite.'
So I ordered it.
I can't honestly say I enjoyed it. It lacked the pacing and the characters I'd enjoyed in the Aud series, add to that the fact that I only rarely read scifi anyhow, it's just not my thing.
It was different though. Once again it spent more time inside the head of the characters than I was accustomed to. Not much actual action at all.
Which is funny, that I don't find that more interesting, since I am terribly cerebral myself. I spend a lot of time thinking, thinking about thinking, revising and editing my thoughts, rehearsing my lines, mentally poking and prodding at things around me. . . feeling, yeah I do that too. Don't laugh, I really do have feelings, despite an abundance of rumors to the contrary. I have swirling mental anxiety storms, exaggerated fears and triumphs, even a laugh track and a theme song.
That I don't talk very often, or much, is merely reflective of all the thinking going on, the constant editing and filtering. . .
If I determine that I have little or nothing interesting, articulate, useful or amusing to add to a conversation, I'll probably just sit there with a blank, detached expression on my face and quietly bide my time. Just ask the guys I occasionally go to lunch with. At some point it always devolves into a discussion about sports, a subject I have very little interest in. If it goes on for a while, I'm off in my own little world and the next thing I hear is "Yeah, he's gone, we lost him again."
It's not personal, I just don't like to fake interest in certain subjects.
So a few female-authored books went by, I found a few I quite enjoyed, as well as many I didn't care for at all. I even read every one of Janet Evanovich's 'Stephanie Plum' books which were at the time growing in mass popularity. Why, I am not very sure. . . The first book, and maybe the next one or two, were enjoyable, funny, quirky. The rest of them were heavily repetitious and formulaic. I could not distinguish at all between 'Three to Get Deadly' and 'Hard Eight'.
Early on I had also subscribed to Evanovich's newsletter, something that I now seem to be unable to unsubscribe from, despite several overt efforts.
Admittedly I am a rather fickle fan. I have subscribed to several authors, male, female, alive and dead and subsequently unsubscribed from many of them. As soon as they start getting formulaic, enslaved to the strict form and characters that previously 'popped', I lose interest.
But I hung on to Nicola. Occasionally I'd comment on a post, a couple of times those comments were acknowledged, mostly not. I didn't want to come across as pushy or stalky.

Last week, I noticed in a post from her that she was St. Louis bound, a leg of a promotion trip for the recently released 'Hild'. She was going to make an appearance at Left Bank Books in the Central West End.
I knew of the place, it has a great reputation among we upstart, struggling, local writers. I'd just never been there.
When I saw the subsequent Facebook post that was broadcast from a hotel in St. Louis complaining about the freezing temperatures outside, I replied with a 'Welcome to St. Louis!' response.
She actually replied to that:
"Will you be there?"
Gulp. . .
That gulp is not a reflection of narcissism, that a real, live author had actually invited me to an event, no, it was darker than that.
What immediately popped into my head were dozens of reasons, excuses, that I couldn't be there.
It's just my instinct. My primary reflex is to go out of my way to avoid social situations, especially in unfamiliar places and among people I have never met. A situation like that, for me, is like hell on earth. Any other living nightmare of that amplitude involves the lopping off of limbs, or wild, swirling flames lapping at my facial features.
I know it is completely irrational, that's why it is so scary, it defies all logic and reason. A lot of people are afraid of speaking in public, I am as well, but my fears start at a point well ahead of actually standing at the podium, it starts at the door.
I was torn. I would really like to see and maybe actually meet Nicola and there wouldn't ever be very many chances.
I responded with a safe, calibrated "I'll try." It would be the next night, Friday, at 7 P.M., nearer my place of work than home, with plenty of time to leave work, pick up a bite of something and be at the bookstore.
I told Angel about it, then went and found, among the hundreds of books I have shelved and boxed, my hard covered, dust jacketed copy of 'Always'.
I knew this presentation would be about her newer book, 'Hild' but I thought I'd beg for indulgence and get a signature on this old one as well.
'Hild'
I knew about Hild. Nicola had been posting updates for at least a couple of years or more.  It never sounded like anything I would want to read.
The work is historical fiction. Saint Hild (or Hilda) did exist. She was born in England in 614, yeah, seventeen hundred years ago. All we really know about her is what the Venerable Bede wrote about her in Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (The Ecclesiastical History of the English People). Bede was the premier chronicler, and many would say chief propagandist, of the early Christian faith in England. Whereas he details major accomplishments of Hilda, that she was sought out by kings for counsel, headed up several abbeys, and had attributed many miracles to her, including turning snakes into stone, very little is mentioned about her early life.
This lack of back-story fascinated Nicola.

Nicola knew very little about seventh century England. She recalled learning about the wars and battles and conquests, and she inherently knew that the seventh century was not a high point, anywhere, in any way, for female humans.
So she had questions. How does a peasant-born female in seventh century England break out of the chattel-like role certainly foisted upon her by the times and culture, to become, at a fairly young age, a teacher, a sought-after counselor, a renowned head of large institutions?
In order to build a plausible thesis, Nicola would have to learn as much as she could about that place and time.
She polled experts and amateur historians. She needed to know about the food, the economics, the daily lives, not of the kings and priests and princes, but the peasants, the farmers, the laborers, for this was where Hild was from.
In her presentation on Friday, yes I did attend, she absolutely glowed, radiant with stories of discovery, of hidden truths revealed about this research.
I was jealous.
I know that feeling, when you work, read, query, then finally reap the reward of new found knowledge. The assembly of dusty, nearly forgotten fragments into a tapestry, a texture, a landscape and a timeline.
For example, she told us that at one time she thought the young girl Hild might have a dog. But what kind of dog? What kind of dog would even be in England in 620 A.D.? Surely not a Pekingese, probably not a poodle. . .
So she queried the net, trolling for advice from experts, amateurs and historical records.
I find things like that nearly orgasmic. I too have done that sort of thing about Eastern Missouri in the later 1800's. What was grown in the garden at the county poor farm? How was madness, mania and dementia handled by society and medicine at the time? What happened to the paupers that died?  What kind of buggy and horses would have been common, family farm appropriate? What did they teach the kids? How was news spread?
All of these things we might have some rough ideas about, but as a writer, you have to make sure. As sure as you can be, at least.
We'd hate to see our labor of love be stripped of all credibility simply because we assigned someone like young Hild a dog whose breed had not even been developed yet. Pile on three or four little inaccuracies like that and your book is bound to be tossed away in its entirety as fraudulent or amateur.
Historical fiction is tough. You have to confine yourself to the physics, science, geography, technology, biology and geo-politics of the time and place. Unlike science fiction or fantasy, where you get to fully define your own universe, historical fiction requires one to paint within the many borders already well established.
During her readings and discussion, Nicola filled in some of the story she had built for Hild. As she presented, her hands actually formed shapes around the various objects she was describing, the lance, the fruit, the stones. I recognized this as well. In a writers mind the story and the objects in that story must actually exist as real. She did not merely write that Hild threw a stone at an animal, she had to feel the texture, weigh the heft of the stone as if it were as real as those found along an actual woodland path.
Most writers also know that it is rare that a character ends up exactly as initially planned. Characters grow, learn, evolve, adapt as their story unfolds. This is part of the fun as well. Start with a narrowly described human and watch it grow. You can't control it any more than you can a real child. Your job is to point it toward goals, give it what it needs and then let go so it can bend with the twists and curves, finding its own path.
The event.
When I finally arrived at the bookstore, which took more effort than it should have and eventually involved

figuring out how to punch a street address into the recently acquired, hand-me-down GPS machine in my car, there were only a dozen or so people inside. One of which, though her back was to me, I immediately recognized as Nicola.
That's not as difficult a deduction as it may seem. Since I had been following her posts for several years, I was familiar with her close-cropped hairstyle, her general frame, and of course, the crutches.
Nicola has Multiple Sclerosis. If you'd read her bio or followed her on social media, or even just heard that NPR interview (or many others) a few years earlier, you'd already know that.
I walked in and approached, swinging a wide berth so as to come up from the side. Angel is always accusing me of sneaking up on her, people at work have said the same thing. I apparently possess stealth-like qualities that I am not consciously aware of. When I do remember, I make sure to make a more overt, even noisier approach.
Of course it also gave me an opportunity to confirm that it was indeed her, I'm nothing if not in constant self-doubt.
There was no mistaking it though. She looked up at me, I detected a detached recognition in her face, I was someone she'd perhaps met before, or saw before, but little more beyond that. That was expected. She has hundreds of 'friends' online that she's never actually met. I had no presumption of overwhelming personal charisma. I introduced myself. My name, she recalled. We had just exchanged greetings the day before.
Then I hugged her. A greeting hug, like more socially adept people are wont to do. I hoped it was appropriate, not forward and creepy.
Growing up, my family were not huggers. Physical contact with other people, anything more intimate than a handshake, was almost completely foreign to me. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it was just our way. Over the course of my rather bland and unremarkable adulthood though, I've developed a more relaxed, dare I say, outgoing attitude. It still feels awkward, but the occasional welcoming or consoling hug no longer sets off klaxons and sweaty tremors quite like it once did.
Rather than object, she introduced me to a man with a nice camera. Mark, her close friend and part of her traveling entourage for this tour. Then she introduced me to Kelley.
I knew of Kelley. Once again if you'd read the bio or read about her on the internet. . .
Kelley Eskridge is Nicola's wife. She is an accomplished writer in her own right. I was honored, flattered.. They then led me to the room adjacent to the main entry and pointed at a small bar offering beer and wine.
Noticing Nicola holding a dripping brown bottle of Schafley's, a local brew, I followed suit and grabbed one for myself.
I hadn't had a sip of beer in months. I'm more of a wine guy. I also have a fairly low reaction point to the 'medicinal' properties of booze. I had to drive later, so I would not be drinking very much at all, of either. I don't drink beer often, but when I do, I like good beer, not that thin, pale, industrial American stuff, so Schafley's was just fine. It at least didn't taste like old furniture polish and it had a tangible, earthy texture to it.
I thanked them and took my leave to explore the store. I'd heard about it, I knew it dealt with many local and regional works and was generally liberal and rather esoteric in theme. I saw a few interesting works that might find a way onto my Christmas wish list. . .
More people wandered in, I went up to the counter, picked up a copy of 'Hild' and paid for it. It's the first time I'd ever bought a book while buzzing a little on booze.
I was now packing around the big hardback I'd brought in, the smaller paperback I'd just paid for, and my E-Tablet, which doubles as a camera. I asked the lady at the counter about the WiFi password, found a seat and checked email and social networks. Nicola had settled in a chair behind a small library table at the front of the room. I snapped a few photos, no flash, no fake camera sound. . . I call it non-intrusive photography, Angel would probably say it was sneaky. I didn't ask permission, I just assumed that it would be okay since Mark was going around taking crowd shots anyhow. I don't usually ask permission to photograph things but that's because I mostly photograph dogs, gravestones, food and weeds. I seldom get objections from any of them.
The seats behind me started filling in and soon enough Nicola, apparently not fully understanding the unassuming and bashful nature of midwesterners, had to cajole them to fill in more chairs in the front. I felt personal gratification that I was already in the front row, if only because I didn't want a bunch of heads blocking the sneaky photos I was taking.
She began her presentation, two readings, one from the beginning of the epic, then a break for Q&A and followed by another reading from the later stages of the book. This book only covered the Saint's very early life, up until very early adulthood. This book was to be the first of three. The real Hilda lived to a ripe old age, in her sixties, so the trilogy would chronologically separate the three major life phases.
Her reading of it was enchanting. She deftly shifted from contemporary English narrative to old Anglo dialog, with all the guttural clicks and buzzes of that archaic form. The text was highly descriptive, even more so when read by the author. Sometimes when you read something you have to assume rhythm and inflection, this was much better, the words and sentences being read aloud exactly as they were intended.
If it sounds like I'd never been to a book promotional event before, you'd be wrong. I've been to . . . two, at this national/international release level, if you include this one.
The other one was sometime in the 90's by a former fighter pilot who had written a few military/political novels of his own. I had read the first one or two of his books, saw in the paper that he was going to be in town, then made an effort to show up for that and get his autograph. . . I won't mention his name since unless you were reading lots and lots of second tier geo-political techno-thrillers in the 90's you wouldn't recognize it anyhow and also for the fact that his later books were simply awful, in nearly every respect.
So no, I do not go to enough of these things to fully grasp the protocol and decorum, nor too often to be non-impressed with hearing an author put voice to their own work.

At the end of the presentation I was first or second in line for autographs. Nicola graciously signed both books then said, holding 'Always', that she hadn't seen one of these in a while. She told me that when questioned people will generally recall 'The Blue Place' and  'Stay' but rarely the third in the series. A twinge of personal pride swarmed over me. I had a real keeper in my hand.
I can't say I lusted to rip open the new book and start burning my way through the pages of 'Hild'. . . but I certainly enjoyed what I heard and was motivated a little more to actually read it. Middle Age British historical fiction has never, ever been on my bucket list. . . but I respect the effort and the work and realized that I probably wasn't exactly the target demographic anyhow. So I might read it. . . maybe. . . but I did not just buy a copy out of guilt or to sit collecting dust on my bookshelf. . . I've bought a few books by local authors that I never finished, a couple I've never even started, in  a vote of support of local writers. This was not one of those purchases though.
This was in fact a Christmas present . . .  for my mother. . . Whose name happens to be . . .  Hilda.