Cowardly killers and the Oh So PC abettors of cowardly killers

Very early on Friday morning on the other side of town a cowardly killer walked into a crowded movie theatre and shot down 70 people at close range.  You all know the name of the thing who did this and you know what it looks like because papers like the Denver Post published every detail of the thing's life and every photo they could find of it as quickly as they could.  The Saturday edition of the post even published full color illustrations of the weapons the thing used and what it was wearing when it killed, artfully done of course, glamorous even.  The Denver Post is a top level paper after all.

It is also a tool and an abettor of mass murder.  It breathlessly gave the thing what it wanted most, what all these things want most.  It gave it fame.  It made its face famous and it made sure its name will be known by all.  The Denver Post, and all those other oh so responsible news outlets, will ponder and comment upon every facet of this thing's life for days and months.  And every time it does, the thing's name will be mentioned and its photo will be shown, especially if an enterprising reporter can find a new as yet unpublished photo.  So the thing is happy now.  Everybody will know who it is, what it looks like and every little thought it ever had.  Thanks to the Denver Post and all those other serious news outlets that are only doing their jobs, because after all, its news.

Except they are not doing their job.  They are pandering to morbid interest.  All the facts of case can be reported, all aspects of the tragedy fully explained without once printing the name of the killer nor once showing a photo of it.  If they didn't print those, other potential cowardly mass killers out there would see that if they killed, nobody would know their names.  Nobody would know what they looked like.  They would just be an anonymous thing just as they had been before.  There would be that much less incentive for them to carry out their fantasies.   Not now though, if you want the world to know who you are and what you look like, just do what that thing did and papers like the Denver Post will carry out your wishes and feel good about themselves as they did so.  After all, it news!

I am going to cut one avenue of apology for the Post and other news outlets off right here.  The line will be that if they didn't do it others would.  The unspoken assumption is if others would, the Post would lose out, money or circulation.  They can't after all be expected to lose out.  Why not?  Why can't doing the right thing trump a loss of some kind.  That is why doing the right thing is admirable, because it is often hard.  

The other argument will be that the thing's name at least is going to be public record.  It will be in the police report and on the court docket.  Yes it will.  But it won't be on the evening news, it won't be on the front page and it won't be broadcast to millions.  If somebody wants to look the thing's name up in the public record that will take some work-time and effort.  But news outlets take the work out of finding out the name of a thing like that.  They not only take the work out of it they try as hard as they can to make sure the world knows the thing's name and what it looks like.  After all, it's news!

Of course all these outlets rent their garments and cry crocodile tears about the tragedy.  And all will pontificate at length about why this has happened and what must be done in the future.  Why something must be done!  But not one, not one will look in their figurative mirror and acknowledge that they are looking at a prime cause of a killing like this.  Not one of them will say I shall not be a tool of a killer.  And if this happens again, not one of them will say to themselves "I share the blame in this."  Not one.

You may be thinking I'm picking on the Denver Post unfairly.  But that is the only paper I get so that is all I've seen.  I am sure though that many other papers and broadcast outlets have behaved as shamefully, I just haven't seen them.  That doesn't matter anyway.  If you participate in a gang rape, you ain't less guilty because you weren't the only one.

If you think the Post was wrong about this you might want to tell the editor.  His phone number is listed on the Denver Post web site under Editor and he answers his own phone.  He will listen, at least until he figures out why you are calling.  Then he might abruptly hang up.  

My postponed misadventures

I said a little while back that I would relate how my misadventures ended up last year in the land between the rivers.  Well I have to wait some more to do that.  I hope I don't have to wait too long because I'll start to forget.  So I'll just write some other things.

85 and gone

My Mother died on Wednesday, very early in the morning.  She was 85 years old, the mother of seven children born, all still living and a child of the Great Depression.  She died frightened but not alone and in her own house as she wanted.  Death does not often come easy, even when it is slightly desired.  It didn't in this case because it came so fast in the end.  It had been hanging around unrecognized and when it finally struck it was a surprise and it was fearful.  I hope our being there made it easier, but that is all I can do, hope.  It came so fast.

She and her sisters were Catholic ladies of the old days.  They vowed and they meant it.  They were also women of their family.  They all lived for others and they weren't complete unless they were helping their children.  That is what made old age so hard for my Mom, it so often robbed of her ability to help her children in all the ways she had and all the ways she wanted.  It would not let her do the other small things she wanted to do and that hurt her.  But she got away before it took everything and that was good.

I will only tell two stories about her.  The first had to do with her Pop whom she admired above all other men.  He was a milkman in the 30s and one day he took her along on his route with him.  She liked her Pop and he liked her company.  The day was a long one and as it progressed he must have felt she was getting bored, so he started giving her treats along the way, some ice cream at this stop, some chocolate milk at another and something else at a third.  All these things were great for a little girl but as I said it was  a long day with a lot stops, more to come and a young girl has a stomach that is only so big.  But she didn't say "Pop, I've had enough" because he was so attentive and solicitous she was afraid it would hurt her feelings.  So she kept eating ice cream and drinking the chocolate milk stop after stop till the day ended.  No real point to this story beyond a small girl not wanting to hurt her Pop's feelings.

The second story has to do with my time at the police academy and vitamins.  My Mom had been after me for years to take various vitamins and supplements.  I couldn't be bothered.  Her arguments about health benefits didn't sway me until she told me that if I took the right ones, I wouldn't age as fast.  That did it.  Pretty soon I was taking whatever she told me, 8 to 10 a day.  That's a lot and it took some time to open and close the bottles, take the pills and some space to store it all.  When it came time to go to the academy she was worried because she knew I would have neither the time nor the space.  So she asked me how many days, exactly, the academy would last.  I told her and she gathered all the vitamin bottles, some plastic wrap and some rubber bands on her kitchen table.  She then proceeded to measure out each days dose, put it a piece of plastic wrap and close it up with a rubber band.  She did it for every day I would be there, 120 days worth.  I can still see her sitting at the kitchen table counting out the pills and making each little packet.  I remember being in wonder that anybody could do something so nice for me.  I still am.

When I did become an officer I saw a number of dead people and it never bothered me.  They looked as if they were just sleeping and you could wake them or if they were broken up, they looked like stage props.  But my poor Mom looked dead.  It was so sad.

Goodbye Mom.  Goodbye.

Too soon old

I had occasion to hang around Landstuhl Regional Medical Center for about 2 months last year.  Nothing serious for me, I just had to check in periodically to examined.  I'll tell that story later but something occurred to me just now and I figured I should write about it.

To start with the American military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany is the main clearing hospital for anybody who is wounded, injured or sickened in Iraq (used to be) and Afghanistan.  They stabilize people for transport in those countries and fly them to Landstuhl.  There they treat them and/or stabilize them further if they need to be transported back home.  Anyway there are many badly wounded soldiers of various nationalities there or passing through.

I was walking by the main entrance one afternoon and I saw a guy in a wheelchair parked about 50 feet from the door.  He was obviously recovering from something serious and there were two people, or three who were sitting with him.  That is all they were doing, sitting.  The guy in the chair looked ahead with little expression except tiredness, great tiredness.  The people sitting with him sat quietly also, saying little and not looking at much.

I only saw them briefly as I passed by but the scene stuck with me for all these months and I didn't know why.  It just struck me though, it looked like a something you would see in front of an old age home.  The visitors just sitting with the old person and the old person just sitting and looking, too tired or sick or hurting to do anything else.  I wonder if that is what it is like to be recovering from a bad wound, to be old and used up decades to soon. 

I will start writing on this thing again. A few things have happened to me in the past months, most uninteresting but a few of note. The interesting things include miracles provided by the U.S. Army and the USAF, Georgian soldiers (Georgia the country) rolling down hospital hallways with slightly bloody bandages on the ends of leg stumps, proficient German doctors, incompetent American Army civilian docs and that very good looking blonde German nurses really do exist (blonde good looking German docs too).

This makes it hard to find the sandwich bar

They have put 6' tall concrete blast walls inside the chow halls at the new big base. The walls subdivide the interior into sections so if a something that goes boom launched from outside the base hits the chow hall it won't wipe out everybody, just the people in that section. I never saw them do it like that before but it must have something to do with the pullout and time available for construction etc. It does make the place more crowded but it is a only a minor inconvenience. literally limited to not being able to see if the soda pop cooler is fully stocked from across the room. Some hardship post huh?

Speaking of IDF, indirect fire, things like rockets and mortar shells that go boom when they land but must be launched at higher vertical angles (hence-indirect), there hasn't been any in the short time I've been here, which is good since they told us there would be more than the essentially none we used to get at the old base. There have been a lot more warnings though, the Big Voice saying this or that condition exists and you should be wearing this or that and you must be here or there.

One afternoon during my night the Voice said get out your little metal house, put on your helmet and vest and go sit in a bunker, which I did. I noticed there didn't seem to be any crowds headed that way and I had the concrete shelter all to myself when I got there. A few minutes later one of the Army girls wandered in an she told me why. There are a lot of warnings, so many that most people don't bother getting up and going to a bunker unless something actually lands, and lands close enough so when it goes off it shakes the little metal house. Ok, so that is the actual brief, and back I went to my little metal house.

Solar cooking

One of the other guys told me that eating oatmeal was good for your various blood chemical levels so that is what I have started to do. there is a slight problem in that I get up in the middle of the afternoon and don't have any way to heat water in my little metal house. But it did occur to me that when I get up it is plenty hot out, normally in excess of 100 degrees f. And it further occurred to me that any water bottle left sitting out side will be even hotter that 100 degrees f. Therefore, problem solved. I pour most of the water out of the bottle, add instant oatmeal, a little sugar, let it sit for a little while and voila-oatmeal. It has to be a little runny though so it can pour out of the bottle.

This is not a big thing, but for some reason I am really pleased that I was able to think of this and it works. When the weather changes and it isn't above 100 in the afternoons, I'll have to think of something else.

I use the plain oatmeal because it has beaucoup less salt and they would run out of that first in the chow hall. I asked the very pretty girl who ran the chow hall midnight shift why that was and she said the guys in the Route Clearance Teams and various convoy escort units grab that first because it is better for mixing with other ingredients. So the plain old is still the best and the apple-cinnamon fruit crackle etc that the Quaker Oat Company spent so much effort to develop sits there in the bin rejected in favor of the old old original. Just goes to show you...what I don't know but it must show something.

Bright lights in the big city

We were flying over the capitol city of this land the other day as we have on other days over the years, and I saw something new. There was a brightly lit full size soccer stadium where there hadn't been one before. It added some color to the city scene when viewed from above and I was glad to see it. I know bombs are still going off down there but somebody thought it worth while to construct and light a big stadium so maybe that is a good sign.

There only other bits of color to be seen are the mosques. The bigger the mosque, the brighter the lights. Two of the big ones in the capitol look like amusement parks from the air, great long strings of bright green and white lights. It almost seems like they are competing.

You can spot mosques by these lights. The bigger the mosque the grander the lights but even the little ones have a string or two. I thought for a long time the smaller ones were gas stations (this is an indication of how culturally knowledgeable I am), until one day we looked at them close and saw what they actually were.

I know how to ID buildings in the States by their configuration and parking lot sizes and now I know how to ID mosques in this land and maybe some of the lands surrounding. That will enhance my resume not at all but I can do it.

Our new big base

We have moved to a new big base. The Army gave up the old big base to the host country so we had to move. Most of the bases are closing. People and equipment are all moving south through the rich country and then...who knows? All the bases are going to be closed and we will all be gone by the end of the year unless something changes, which it probably will six hours before the deadline. Right now there is a huge logistical task, moving people and equipment from bases that are closing to bases that may only be open for a few more months and then maybe out of the country.

It took us a few weeks of moving this, cleaning that, throwing away all kinds of stuff, blowing 1/4" layers of dust off and..."What are those things? Holy smokes, we thought those were lost. We bought new ones. How long have they been there? WHAT!!", before we were able to complete our move. I learned how to chain big containers down to airlift pallets. The people we were helping do that appreciated it and told us we did a fine job. It was good that we did because I took the same C-130 to the new base that those big containers did. We were sitting in the front of the cargo area and the containers filled the whole back end. No getting out that way. I looked at those things, looked at where I was sitting and thought to myself that I will be the first guy crushed if those things shift.

Anyway it took us weeks to complete our move and we are a wee project. Imagine the effort and organization it takes to move brigades and brigades, then do it again in a few months.

Our old big base was dirt interrupted by concrete inturrupted by gravel interrupted by T-walls and Hesco barriers, then more dirt. Dirt was the unifying theme. Our new base, if it is possible, has more dirt than the old one. The old base was big and there were still some undisturbed areas where the surface hadn't been disturbed. There were even some pathetic trees. The new base is smaller and more crowded and every square foot of the surface has been graded, moved or driven over. The dirt prevails. There is a thousands of year old ancient structure just outside the wire you can see. That is dirt too, but very old, organized, historic dirt. I thought I'd seen ugly before just north of Bakersfield but this has that beat. The dirt wins.

(They tell me one of the chaplains takes people over to the ancient structure so I am going to try to do that.)

So, that is our new big base.