Pa Rock's Ramble

Pitt's Dead Cat

2012-01-27T17:46:00.005+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

William Rivers Pitt has become my favorite political journalist. His articles on U.S. politics and economic policies are always spot on, and he is one helluva good writer. Mr. Pitt's work can be found at www.truthout.org where he posts every two weeks or so - and for those unfamiliar with Truthout.org, you need to stop by and get acquainted with the work of Pitt and all of the other columnists who contribute to that most excellent site.

Mr. Pitt had a new article posted today entitled "Staring at Empty Pages" where he credited the Occupy Movement with having an impact on President Obama's State of the Union speech. Toward the end of that piece, Pitt referenced a political story out of Arkansas that was new to me. It seems that earlier this week, on the same night that Gabby Giffords resigned from Congress, the campaign manager for a Democratic Congressional candidate returned to his home in Russellville, Arkansas, with his four children in tow, and discovered the corpse of the family cat on the front porch. Someone had smashed in the cat's skull and painted the word "liberal" across its body.

The campaign manager, Jacob Burris, has been working for his candidate, Ken Aden, for several months. As near as can be determined, the cat had no role in the campaign, and likely had no political philosophy or agenda, but was simply the children's pet.

William Rivers Pitt stated in his article that a "talk show host" for Arkansas radio station KURM, one Kermit Womack, has been releasing the addresses of political opponents he doesn't like over the air. Pitt added:

"While no firm, direct link has been established, it can be assumed that someone decided to take violent action after the location of Mr. Burris' home went out over the air. It was a cat, this time...but given the gruesome nature of the act, Mr. Burris must correctly be wondering if it could have been one of his children."

Yes, if I were Mr. Burris I would be fearing for the safety of my family. In fact, if I were anyone on the list of people whose home addresses were spewed out over radio station KURM, I would be very, very afraid. That is a tactic that the so-called "Right to Life" movement has used to intimidate doctors and women's health care providers for several years now- and it is shameless! It is also terrorism.

But, as Paul Harvey used to say, here's the rest of the story.

I am from that area and have listened to radio station KURM out of Rogers, Arkansas - so I decided to see what the local press had to say about the incident. Kermit Womack is not only a talk show host on KURM, he also owns the radio station. Not only that, but (and this is a great big "but") he is the father of Congressman Steve Womack of Arkansas's third district - the man that Ken Aden is trying to unseat!

Stay tuned. There just has to be more coming on this story!

At Home with the Grandkids

2012-01-26T17:57:00.004+09:00

by Pa Rock
Proud Grandpa

Next week (February 2nd) will mark forty years to the day since I first arrived on Okinawa - as a twenty-three-year-old Army lieutenant. Things were so much different back then. I remember sending two telegrams home in the nineteen months that I was here - and making two telephone calls back to the States - when Nick was born.

Making calls then was an expensive proposition, and the most reasonable way to do it was to go to what was called a MARS Station (shortwave facilities) where the operator there would contact a shortwave operator in the States, and that person would call the number you were trying to reach over their US telephone. It wasn't quite as expensive as an overseas telephone call, and the quality of the call was fairly crappy most of the time.

Today I have "Magic Jack" and the call goes through my computer and is somehow digitized and routed through cyberspace - and the connections are almost always good. I pay a small fee once a year to use it - $20 or so, and I can buy 5 years of service for around $60 or $70. (It gives me a US number, so my kids can also call me on their regular phone plans.) Someone was complaining to me recently that Magic Jack will cut you off after an hour-and-a-half - and she would have to redial. Needless to say, I told my friend that she needed to get a life!

And Skype! For a very small fee a person can call from here to the States and watch the person on the other end of the line as they visit!

Oh, yes - things have changed a great deal in forty years! (Most communication home back then occurred by letters. Remember letters?) And if a military spouse wanted to talk to her husband at work, she had to call the orderly room and explain to the First Sergeant why he needed to be pulled away from work and brought to the office to talk to her. Now the poor soul's cell phone just keeps ringing or vibrating until he or she answers it - and the mission be damned!

All of the above was written as prologue for a discussion of my grandchildren. Most weekends I am able to speak to all of my children and grandchildren, and many days I receive photos or movies of them just moments after they are filmed.

Tonight I came home to pictures and a movie of Baby Willow. In the video I watched Willow laugh at her mother as Molly made funny sounds, and I could hear Sebastian running around the house talking to "Daddy" and "Molly." Then I watched a movie of Baby Olive jumping in her jumper and just having a grand old time! After that I pulled up an older video of Judah eating dinner just as he was starting to learn to feed himself.

It's hard to put stuff like that into letters - and if a person does print off a few photos to mail, it takes more than a week to get them here.

Things change - often for the better. It is definitely much easier being overseas today than it was forty years ago!

A Few Thoughts on Oscar

2012-01-25T18:04:00.006+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The nominations for this year's Academy Awards were announced today, and being out here on the world's elbow, it was not surprising that I hadn't seen many of the movies and performances that made the list. Military theatres like to show action flicks, so not every great movie makes in onto our local screens.

Of the nine movies nominated for Best Picture, only three have played in the military theatres on Okinawa: The Help, War Horse (currently playing), and Moneyball which only played here very briefly. I saw Moneyball back in the States while I was home on leave, and I watched The Help at the theatre on Camp Foster, and have yet to see War Horse. I also saw a fourth nominated film, Midnight in Paris, on a long plane ride across the Pacific.

If I had to choose the winner among the three that I have seen, it would be difficult because they are all very good. But of those three, the one that moved me the most was The Help. It was such a great movie on so many levels and tugged at a variety of emotions. Moneyball would be second on my list. This was a film about athletics, something that I did not anticipate liking - but I did. The movie sucked me right into the story and had me rooting for the Oakland A's. Midnight in Paris was the movie about which I was the most hopeful, and it too was very good. Woody Allen tells a sweet tale in most of his movies, and this was no exception - and the backdrop of Paris in the twenties was very appealing to the senses - but the story was just not as gripping as the other two.

The other films nominated for best movie were The Artist, The Descendants, The Tree of Life, Hugo, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. When I was living in Arizona, I would always try to see all of the nominated films before the awards were announced, but that isn't going to happen here.

One comment on the Best Actor: I was surprised that Leonardo DiCaprio did not receive a nomination for his portrayal of J. Edgar Hoover in the Clint Eastwood film, J. Edgar. I saw that movie on Guam and said at that time that it was a disappointment - but, that said, DiCaprio nailed his part. He came across every bit as evil and odious as the famed G-Man. I also felt that Armie Hammer's Clyde Tolson was worthy of a nomination.

Maybe this will be Brad Pitt's year with Moneyball.

And speaking of war horses, the Best Actress category contained two legends of Hollywood: Glenn Close and Meryl Streep. Close is being nominated for her work in the film Albert Noble. This will be her third nomination for Best Actress, and she has also been nominated three times for Best Supporting Actress - with nary a win. Meryl Streep was nominated for her role as Maggie Thatcher in The Iron Lady. This is her fifteenth nomination for Best Actress with only one win - for 1982's Sophie's Choice. She was also nominated twice for Best Supporting Actress and won in that category for 1980's Kramer vs Kramer.

Viola Davis, from The Help, will, I suspect, make this one more "also ran" year for Glenn Close and Meryl Streep.

Beyond that, I can't predict.

Advantage Obama

2012-01-24T19:11:00.005+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

At this point with the last four Republican nominees spilling out of their clown car every couple of days and rolling around in the mud, it would seem that all President Obama would have to do to win re-election in November would be get his name on every state ballot and then go on a nice, long vacation. If ever there was a political party hellbent on self-destruction, it would have to be this year's teabagger-infested GOP. Clearly the base is in control and will be satisfied with nothing less than an ideologically pure, mouth-breathing racist wearing a ball cap and packing a handgun - as the Republican Party's nominee for President, and the final four are furiously slugging it out in a sordid attempt to be that man.

But in the event that the Republicans eventually nominate somebody who is able to move at least somewhat closer to the center of the political spectrum, the President is still in a relatively strong position based on the record of his first four years in office. Yes, he was a disappointment in some respects, but he was not a constant, day-in-and-day-out disappointment like his immediate predecessor. This President does have some positives that he to which he can point.

Today there was an article on the Internet at theweek.com by Paul Brandus entitled "Obama's Top 5 Successes." I agree with the author's selection and ranking, but want to embellish liberally with a few points of my own. Those "successes" follow in reverse order.

5. Getting Out of Iraq: George Bush started the war with Iraq under the pretext of that country having weapons of mass destruction. (It had absolutely nothing to do with Bush's daddy issues of one-upping the Old Man by going further than Pappy Bush had done in his own war with Iraq. No sir, this was a necessary war to rid the world of a menace. And if you believe that horseshit...), but Bush went to war against Iraq while our forces were already at war in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and ostensibly looking for Osama bin Laden. Many of the young Americans who fought in Iraq did so with the notion that it was somehow payback for 9/11, when, in reality it had nothing at all to do with 9/11 - and George Bush and Dick Cheney did nothing to disabuse them of their misconception.

The figures out of the Bush wars, according to Paul Brandus, are 4,484 American deaths, 32,000 wounded, expenditures of $806 billion, and an estimated $1 trillion needed for the future medical care of the wars' veterans until 2050. That insane price tag does not even address the deaths and injuries of Iraqi men, women, and children, and the near-utter destruction of their infrastructure and economy. But, hey, Junior got Saddam when his daddy couldn't. That's got to be worth something!

Of course, as Paul Brandus points out, the eventual Arab Spring would have undoubtedly toppled Saddam as well, but what would have been the glory in that?

Good for President Obama for getting us out of Iraq. He could have done it quicker, cleaner, and more completely, but he did finally manage to extricate our fighting forces from a war quagmire that could not be won in any conventional sense of the word.

4. Improving America's Image Abroad: America had a lot of goodwill from around the world after the attacks of 9/11, but much of that goodwill quickly evaporated as we began showing our uglier side in the prosecution of the wars. Suddenly we associated ourselves with things that were insults to humanity: secret prisons, prisoners without rights, images of Abu Ghraib, water-boarding, and the practice of extra-ordinary rendition. We had always been the good guys, but something happened on the way to the Middle East.

President Obama came into office and the world heaved a literal sigh of relief. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, some would argue before he even had a chance to earn it, and during nearly four years in office not a single person, foreign or domestic, has lobbed a shoe at him. The man has legitimate international chops and is respected in places where we need to be respected. His superlative choice of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, also served to greatly increase the importance of our nation in the world.

3. Passing Health-Care Reform: The President made good on his pledge to sign a universal health-care bill into law during his first term. The bill and the process were bitterly attacked by the health-care and insurance industries through their allies in both political parties in Congress, but the will of the people and the President ultimately prevailed and the Affordable Care Act became the law of the land. True, the bill was not perfect, but a product was ultimately passed that mandated that every American have health insurance (which may yet be overturned by a tone-deaf Supreme Court), allowed young people to remain on their parent's health insurance policies until the age of twenty-six, did away with denial of coverage due to existing pre-conditions, made it much harder for insurance companies to rescind coverage, and did away with lifetime limits on insurance coverage.

2. Getting Osama bin Laden: Osama bin Laden was a member of a well-respected Saudi business family who went off to do his own terrorist thing. The first reaction of the Bush administration after the 9/11 attacks - which were carried out almost exclusively by Saudi's - was to get important Saudi's, including members of the royal family, out of the country and safely back to Saudi Arabia. Then the administration turned its focus toward Afghanistan and declared war on the Taliban. One of the goals of that effort was to track down and capture or kill Osama bin Laden. At some point early on, that focus began to wane, and the Bush administration seemed to change their target of choice to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. When Bush left office years later, Saddam had been captured and executed, but Osama remained at large.

Under the policies and leadership of Barack Obama, the American focus returned to Osama bin Laden, and he was ultimately cornered and killed. Mission accomplished!

1. Preventing a Depression: Paul Brandus compares the economy that Obama inherited from Bush as being a house on fire, and notes that Republicans got out by "the scruff of their necks - and now don't like the way Obama put out the fire." He quotes GDP figures that indicated the economy was in free fall when Obama became President. Obama used the "much maligned" stimulus bill to save the nation from tumbling into a catastrophic depression. And yes, Brandus admits, money was wasted, but ultimately it kept things, such as unemployment, from becoming much worse.

My own measure of President Obama's economic savvy is that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen from just below 8,000 on the day he took office to nearly 13,000 today. Real numbers equaling real economic growth. Also, General Motors was on the verge of bankruptcy when Obama came into office. The new President made a decision to help the automaker stay in business with government loans. Today America's largest car manufacturer is leaner, meaner, and well on the road to complete recovery - and it is pumping out thousands and thousands of beautiful pay checks every week!

So, if the Republicans get their act together and challenge President Obama with a candidate in November who is not completely nuts, the President will still have a formidable record on which to run. And while President Obama may not have been all that we had hoped for, he is definitely head-and-shoulders above what the loyal opposition has coughed up so far.

Four more years!

Monday's Poetry: "Pastures of Plenty"

2012-01-23T17:41:00.006+09:00

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

There was a time in the not too distant past when America was still expanding – geographically, emotionally, and intellectually. After the Civil War and well into the first part of the twentieth century, many poor blacks headed north looking for opportunities that were denied them in the southern states. Sometimes they found jobs and homes, and other times they succeeded only in transporting their poverty and perilous living conditions into a colder climate. But there were also those times when the move north resulted in breathtaking achievement – such as the Harlem Renaissance.

World War I introduced many heretofore isolated Americans to the wonders of Europe, and as a popular song of the day foretold, it was going to be hard to “keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree.” It was in those heady days just after the Great War that several famous American writers and entertainers sailed off to Europe (particularly Paris) and started creating some of the century’s most enduring work. A good depiction of these willful and fun-loving expatriates can be seen in Woody Allen’s latest film, Midnight in Paris. Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein referred to their expatriate cohort as “the lost generation.”

The Great Depression and the unrelenting dust storms that tore through the American heartland in the 1930’s were a one-two punch from Wall Street and God. The response from poor Americans, particularly the “Okies” and “Arkies” of the Midwest, was to throw everything and everyone into old claptrap vehicles and head west to California – the promised land, the land of milk and honey, the home of sunny skies, warm weather, the blue Pacific, palm trees, Hollywood, and endless dreams. John Steinbeck, himself a former expatriate and member of the lost generation, explored that tragic and complex era of American history in his classic novel, The Grapes of Wrath.

The great westward migration of the twentieth century was interrupted by World War II, but when the war ended many of the young veterans and their working wives headed to California where they found good jobs in the booming post-war economy, bought homes, and raised their families. My dad’s brother Wayne, and his pretty wife, Mary, were two of those adventuresome young people who were drawn to the Mediterranean climate and plentiful jobs of San Diego at the war’s close. Wayne died of leukemia a few years later, but my Aunt Mary (now in her eighties) and their two grown daughters and their families are all Californians.

My parents never did pack up and move to California, although I remember my mother begging to move there on numerous occasions. Later she shifted her focus to Florida, but she was never able to get my dad to move south either. While they did not completely relocate, my parents did travel to California to pick fruit the first two summers that they were married – 1946 and 1947. (By 1948 I had joined the family and they apparently did not want to try caring for an infant in a migrant camp.

What I know about those summers that my parents were migrant farm workers is embarrassingly scant. I wish now that I had asked more questions. If memory serves, and at my age it doesn’t always, at least one of those summers they took my dad’s dad – Chock Macy – with them. I know that at least one of those summers my dad’s job was to ride around on the back on a tractor with a long stick that he would use to beat the branches of English walnut trees, a job that sounds more glamorous than having to be one of the guys on the ground scurrying around dodging and picking up the falling nuts. Mom’s job, I suppose, was picking fruit directly from the trees or packing it for shipment.

I remember once when I was ten or so, my mother looked at me and suddenly asked, “Do you remember Spike?”

“Spike?” I asked.

“Oh,” she said, “He was a young boy at the camp who was always getting into trouble – but you weren’t even born then so I guess you wouldn’t remember him.” Her senior moment was funny at the time, especially since she was not all that old!

John Steinbeck was not the only chronicler of the westward migration of America’s poor. Woody Guthrie was also hard at work telling the story of those same people in song. Today’s poetry selection is actually a song by Guthrie that celebrates the energy and sweat of those poor Americans who made their livings by following the harvests.

Please enjoy Pastures of Plenty.

Pastures of Plenty
by Woody Guthrie

It's a mighty hard row that my poor hands have hoed
My poor feet have traveled a hot dusty road
Out of your Dust Bowl and Westward we rolled
And your deserts were hot and your mountains were cold

I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes
I slept on the ground in the light of the moon
On the edge of the city you'll see us and then
We come with the dust and we go with the wind

California, Arizona, I harvest your crops
Well its North up to Oregon to gather your hops
Dig the beets from your ground, cut the grapes from your vine
To set on your table your light sparkling wine

Green pastures of plenty from dry desert ground
From the Grand Coulee Dam where the waters run down
Every state in the Union us migrants have been
We'll work in this fight and we'll fight till we win

It's always we rambled, that river and I
All along your green valley, I will work till I die
My land I'll defend with my life if it be
Cause my pastures of plenty must always be free

Some Thoughts on Equality

2012-01-22T19:07:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

For the past month or two I have been reading a collection of African American novels written in the 1920's. The book that I am currently enjoying is Plum Bun by Jessie Redmon Fauset, and although I am only a couple of chapters into it, I found this poignant passage of a young black girl's thoughts on equality:

"At a very early age she had discovered that the good things of life are unevenly distributed; merit is not always rewarded; hard labour does not necessarily entail adequate recompense."

Just a few years ago the social and economic inequalities were seldom brought out into the sunshine and discussed. The Occupy movement with its "in your face" dramatics has now focused attention on what is, in some respects, a national caste system. Add to that the Republicans' all out war on unions, public pensions, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, public healthcare, education, and any attempts to force the rich to pay their fair share of taxes, and it is suddenly quite clear that those in control of the national wealth are hellbent on staying in control.

America is at a crossroads. Will we continue to cede control of the economy and the political process to the people who ship jobs overseas, do their banking in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands, pay lower tax rates than those of us who actually work, and love to fire people - or will we finally begin to acknowledge how things really are and commit to making serious change?

Having an intelligent President committed to making positive social change is not enough. As we have learned over the past four years, the Republicans in Congress will vociferously oppose anything the President supports - even legislation that they once proposed themselves. Their agenda has been one of obstruction and destruction.

The approval rating of Congress is now somewhere in the high single digits. If ever the time was ripe for change, this would be it.

It is time that we began placing the same level of scrutiny on our Representatives and Senators as we do our presidential candidates - focusing on where their campaign cash originates and how those donations correlate to votes in Congress.

It is time to kill Citizens United - either through a Constitutional amendment or a second hearing in front of a more intelligent Supreme Court.

And it is well past time to occupy Congress with real people whose loyalties are to the people back home and not to the armies of lobbyists who infest our nation's capitol.

Only then will we have a shot at equality.

It's Newt!

2012-01-21T16:08:00.004+09:00

by Pa Rock
Political Prognosticator

Mitt Romney must be wondering what happened. Just a few days ago he was basking in the glow of victories in the first two voter showdowns of 2012, Iowa and New Hampshire, and his well-paid staffers were blanketing the airwaves with stories of his "inevitability." But now suddenly the rush to crown him King of the Krazies seems to have hit an snag, and his inevitability is evaporating faster than a snowball rolling into hell.

And Mitt must feel like he has been run down by that very snowball.

So many things have happened that were not part of the highly scripted Romney campaign. Who knew that Newt Gingrich would get off that great shot at Juan Williams, a black journalist who called him out on his unabashed bigotry, and get a standing ovation from the peckerwoods in South Carolina. Mitt's mama, God rest her, raised him better than that. And then a few days later Gingrich tore into another journalist, CNN's John King, and got his second standing ovation from people who vote for Neanderthals like Joe Wilson and Jim DeMint.

Yesterday the Republican Party of Iowa had a change of heart and announced that they recounted their votes (still at a secret location) and Little Ricky Santorum is now the winner of Iowa - while Mitt slumped in a corner wistfully singing, "No, no, they can't take that away from me!"

And then there were those cruel endorsements of Gingrich from the absolute creme de la creme of the Republican Party. The giants of GOP electoral politics, people like Todd and Sarah Palin, rushed to endorse Newt Gingrich. When Rick Perry quit the race, he threw his support to the Newt also. (With all of that going for him, there was no need to ask "What would Jesus do?") Who would be next? Tebow?

Well, actually Chuck Norris was next - and with that bombshell it is literally all over. Joe Arpaio, a supporter of Rick Perry, will undoubtedly soon call a news conference to announce his support of Gingrich - and as Arpaio goes, so goes Steven Seagal!

It's dominoes, baby - dominoes! And they're starting to fall!

Mitt One-Percent

2012-01-20T17:26:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

To refer to ultra-rich presidential candidate Mitt Romney as being among the wealthiest members of our society is actually quite disingenuous. Not only is Mitt in the top one-percent economically, he is in the top one-percent of the top one-percent! The man who loves to share an aw-shucks smile as he states that he is unemployed, is filthy rich.

But we all know that, and we have known that all along.

Now, however, as the Republican race tightens, more of the candidates are beginning to lob insults and accusations at the front runner - and much of that political vitriol is focused on Romney's obscene wealth - money he says he did not inherit but rather made himself. Though that claim is specious at best, even if the Mittster did make his own money, the methods in which he made it are now coming into question - and into daylight.

We have been hearing stories for weeks now about Romney's company, Bain Capital, buying distressed companies and then selling off assets and firing people in order to make a profit for Bain - and for Romney and his partners. Romney, of course, is trying to claim that Bain was actually creating jobs, but the evidence for that appears to be scarcer than rainfall in Phoenix.

Now the focus is shifting to tax returns - an objective measure that can be used by average Americans to make their own determination of a candidate's income. Romney said that he didn't make much actual money by working last year- just some speaking fees. That "not much" is apparently $374,000 - a figure that, by itself, would place him in the one-percent category! (According to PolitiFact.com, Mitt and Ann Romney own three homes worth a total of about $14 million, so $374,000 really isn't much considering the upkeep that would have to go into residences like that. Maybe he used illegal immigrants as groundskeepers because they were all that he could afford!)

But of course Mitt Romney made much, much more than $374,000 last year. Well, he didn't roll up his sleeves and make it, he put his musty money to work making more money. He is an investor, a rentier. But just how much money did his money make? We won't know that until he tells us - or until he releases his tax returns.

Newt Gingrich has just released his tax returns and has challenged Mitt Romney to do likewise - but Mitt is resisting. He says now that he may release his current return in April (probably long after he has been crowned King of the Krazies). He also has begun desensitizing that information by announcing that he pays a tax rate of around fifteen percent. He gets away with that outrage because the tax rate on money "earned" from investments in fifteen percent. Members of the United States military pay considerably more, but they have not had lobbyists in Congress for generations writing tax law that favors them.

President and Mrs. Obama pay 26% in income taxes, and even that is lower that what some in the true middle class pay.

Mitt Romney may be able to cruise all the way to November without ever having to stand firm on any issue or tell Americans how he really feels about the big concerns of the day, but he will not be able to escape the numbers. Sooner or later the public will see him for what he is - a child of privilege who is protected from the realities of the world by immense and vulgar wealth, a dilettante who feels some sort of divine right to rule based on his position in society - another George W. Bush.

And do we want or need another George W. Bush?

Hey Mitt, show us your money!

2012 Pa Rock's Dead Pool Entries

2012-01-19T17:40:00.002+09:00

by Pa Rock
Dead Pool Master

This year we had twenty-one entries in the Dead Pool, down a few from last year, but still a decent showing. I credit the slight decrease in entries to the uptick in the economy – which is recovering thanks to the hard work of our President and in spite of Congress.

The first (and most unique) entry was from my three-month-old granddaughter, Olive. Her selections included Elmo, Big Bird, the Monster under her bed, the Vacuum Cleaner, Dora the Explorer, the Neighbor’s Dog, her stuffed armadillo animal, Kermit the Frog, Oscar the Grouch, and Kim Jung Un. Good luck, Olive. Pa Rock loves you!

The other twenty were somewhat less daring.

Rod B: Bobby Knight, Mel Gibson, Queen Elizabeth, David Letterman, Joe Paterno, John Madden, Burt Reynolds, Joan Rivers, Bill Clinton, and Willie Nelson.

Judy B: Steven Tyler, Betty White, Charlie Sheen, Dick Cheney, Bernie Madoff, Gloria Vanderbilt, Michael Douglas, Magic Johnson, Dick Van Dyke, and Larry King.

Odessa B: Antonio Banderas, Nick Cannon, Kate Moss, Elton John, Queen Elizabeth, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia, David Letterman, Robin Williams, Magic Johnson, and Lance Armstrong.

Brenda K: Walter Mondale, Adam West, Ray Bradbury, Billy Graham, Loretta Lynn, Wynonna Judd, Andy Griffith, Stephen Hawking, Garrison Keillor, and Andy Williams.

David S: Rosalyn Carter, Nancy Reagan, Brian Wilson, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Lindsay Lohan, Annette Funicello, Shirley Temple, Etta James, Robin Gibb, and Dick Cheney.

Darby G: Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Charlie Sheen, Steve-O, Rush Limbaugh, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, and Dick Cheney.

Ron H (hoptwo): Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Billy Graham, Muhammad Ali, Pope Benedict, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Jerry Lewis, Annette Funicello, Hugh Hefner, and Aretha Franklin.

Breanne: Paula Deane, Oprah Winfrey, Magic Johnson, Lindsay Lohan, New Gingrich, Kirstie Alley, Ed O’Neal, Dr. Phil, Dolly Parton, and Lil’ Wayne.

Ricardo: Barack Obama, David Letterman, Brittney Spears, President Calderon of Mexico, Carlos Slim, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Hulk Hogan, Allen Greenspan, Joe Torre, and Hillary Clinton.

Charles B: Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen, Courtney Love, Dick Cheney, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Betty White, Ashton Kucher, Tom Cruise, Bob Barker, and Wilford Brimley.

Leslie K: Joanne Woodward, Etta James, Kirk Douglas, Chuck Yeager, Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen, Oprah Winfrey, Nancy Reagan, Jimmy Carter, and Aretha Franklin.

Tim: Bill Clinton, Ron Paul, Dick Cheney, Andy Griffith, Larry King, Pope Benedict, Fidel Castro, Henry Kissinger, Stephen King, and Queen Elizabeth.

Erin: Chris Christie, Nancy Grace, Ringo Starr, Fidel Castro, Tiger Woods, O.J. Simpson, Charlie Sheen, Artie Lange, Frank Martin, and Hugo Chavez.

Don H: Fidel Castro, Muhammad Ali, Prince Philip, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Billy Graham, Hosni Mubarek, Dick Cheney, Henry Kissinger, Kirk Douglas, and Saif al-Islam.

Mike B: Fidel Castro, Dick Cheney, Fats Domino, Aretha Franklin, Peter Fonda, Hamid Krzai, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jerry Lewis, Mickey Rooney, and Margaret Thatcher.

Molly: John Goodman, Courtney Love, Nancy Reagan, Charlie Sheen, Dennis Leary, George Wendt, Lindsay Lohan, Snooki, Ozzy Osbourne, and Seth Binzer.

Nick: Clint Eastwood, Marilyn Manson, Danny Devito, Bill Cosby, Val Kilmer, Wee Man, Jack Black, Ted Danson, Woody Harrelson, and Alan Alda.

Tiffany: Betty White, Michael Douglas, Craig T. Nelson, Lindsay Lohan, Charlie Sheen, Bill Cosby, Roseanne Barr, Paula Abdul, George Lopez, and Willie Nelson.

Boone: Bette Midler, Kirk Douglas, Louise Rainer, Charlie Sheen, Ben Stiller, Larry King, Britney Spears, Dick Cheney, Analena Joe Lee, and Willie Nelson.

Pa Rock: Celeste Holm, Ted Turner, Cloris Leachman, Rupert Murdoch, Sophia Loren, Dick Cheney, Shirley Jones, Jim Carrey, Jean Stapleton, and Clint Eastwood.

The top vote-getters appear to be Lindsay Lohan in third place with six votes, Charlie Sheen in second place with eight votes, and Darth Vader’s evil twin, Dick Cheney, leading the pack with nine votes. All three are perennial favorites in this contest.

If the group’s instincts are any indication, it might be a good year for Dick Cheney to take some of those millions that he received from Halliburton while serving as Vice President of the United States – and use those ill-gotten gains to take Lynn on a Grand Tour of Europe. I recommend that he start with Holland because The Hague is so beautiful in the spring!

(Please print a copy of the entries and post on your refrigerator so that you can keep up-to-the-minute track of the results. That will also let anyone walking through your kitchen know just how sick you really are!) (Just kidding!)

(Note: I misplaced one entry, found it, and added it to this post on 20 Jan 12. Welcome aboard, Boone!)

Costa Concordia: The Tale of the Coward and the Hero

2012-01-18T18:04:00.004+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Shareholders in Carnival Cruise Lines (CCL) got a sobering reality check yesterday when shares in their stock dropped from $34.28 a share to $29.60 - a drop of $4.68 per share during one trading day. The cause of that precipitous drop was, of course, the capsizing of the cruise ship, the Costa Concordia, off the coast of Italy. The Costa Concordia is owned and operated by Carnival Cruise Lines.

For the past couple of days we have all been transfixed by images on the Internet of the big, beautiful cruise ship lying on its side in the Aegean, mostly submerged. There were at least eleven deaths in the incident, and possibly more than twenty.

Today two tales have emerged regarding employees of the ship, one a tale of cowardice and the other a more uplifting story of heroism. Sadly, the coward was Francesco Schettino, the ship's captain. When he realized that his ship was in trouble, Captain Schettino wasted no time in getting himself aboard one of the lifeboats - hours before some of the passengers were able to do so. None of that "Captain goes down with his ship" for that old sailor. Today a tape was released in which a member of the Italian Coast Guard was heard ordering the Captain to return to his ship, but the Captain was refusing, saying that he could be of more help directing the recovery operation from the lifeboat.

Captain Schettino was arrested by Italian authorities for dereliction of duty, but today he was released into a program of house arrest. He continues to deny that he did anything wrong.

The other employee of the ship who made news was a British teenager named James Thomas who was working as a dancer on board the vessel. He discovered that some passengers had gone to the wrong floor and could not reach the lifeboats. Young Thomas turned himself into a human ladder allowing passengers to climb down his body in order to reach the safety of the lifeboats. The 6-foot 3-inch physically fit young dancer told the Daily Mirror:

"We couldn't get the lifeboats off and the life rafts the staff use were stuck to the side of the ship. It was frightening. People couldn't get down, the drop was too far, so I lowered myself into position. I grabbed the lifeboat with one arm and the upper deck rail with the other and let people climb on my shoulder and down my body."

One of the passengers that James Thomas helped to rescue ultimately pulled the hero himself into a lifeboat.

The Costa Concordia had a staff of 1,023 - but many of those were involved in running the bars, casinos, theatres, shops, restaurants, and swimming pools on board the cruise ship. Very few were qualified seamen, and most did not have sufficient training to deal with a sea-going emergency - including, it would seem, the ship's captain.

Fortunately for several of those on board, a young dancer mustered the courage to act courageously in the face of danger and save lives. James Thomas is his name, and he is a hero!

A Stage Full of Crackers

2012-01-17T17:55:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The Republican Presidential field has devolved into something that rank-and-file Republicans and teabaggers can readily support: a stage full of hate-spewing crackers.

Last night's Republican candidate debate in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, featured the final five: Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, and Paul - and, not for the first time, the audience inserted its own bigoted views into the debate process.

Apparently the most "newsworthy" moment occurred when Fox commentator Juan Williams, a black man, tried to take Newt Gingrich to task over his earlier remarks that poor children in low-income neighborhoods should be given janitorial work in local schools. Williams asked the former Speaker, "Can't you see that this is viewed at a minimum as insulting to Americans, but particularly to black Americans?" Gingrich shot back, "No, I don't see that," to the loud approval of the crowd.

Williams countered with a suggestion that Gingrich's comments had been "intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities." The crowd booed loudly. Gingrich, then smelling blood, began a grand diatribe designed to marginalize and vilify the poor - and received a standing ovation!

Happy Martin Luther King Day from South Carolina, ya'll!

(I wonder if Juan Willliams is yearning for the good old days at NPR?)

Monday's Poetry: "Comes the Colored Hour"

2012-01-16T19:08:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

Monday evening, and as the national holiday honoring American civil rights visionary, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, draws to a close, I feel that a selection by Langston Hughes is in order. The following, Comes the Colored Hour, is a bit of satire that looks at an America where the roles and rules of skin color are reversed. Mr. Hughes undoubtedly smiled sadly as he held the America that was up to a mirror and saw the opposite image, an image that would have been no more fair or just than the one to which he and his race has been consigned by fate.

America is a better place today thanks to the work of people like Langston Hughes and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There is still much left to overcome, but many significant barriers between the races have fallen thanks to the bravery and determination of people like them.

Comes the Colored Hour
by Langston Hughes

Comes the Colored Hour:
Martin Luther King is Governor of Georgia,
Dr. Rufus Clement his Chief Adviser,
A. Philip Randolph the High Grand Worthy.
In white pillared mansions
Sitting on their wide verandas,
Wealthy Negroes have white servants,
White sharecroppers work the black plantations,
And colored children have white mammies:
Mammy Faubus
Mammy Eastland
Mammy Wallace
Dear, dear darling old white mammies--
Sometimes even buried with our family.
Dear old
Mammy Faubus!

Culture, they say, is a two-way street:

Hand me my mint julep, mammy.

Hurry up!
Make haste!

Racism from the Heartland

2012-01-15T18:04:00.002+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

How many times over the last three or four years have we had to watch in astonishment as some blustering political figure, always white and usually old, had to come out and apologize for a racist and stupid email about the President that they circulated to their friends. It would appear to the rational mind that the morons would eventually figure out that someone will take offense and forward it on to the press. But it just keeps happening - they never learn!

And the people who send those things around always bristle at being called racist - even though that is exactly what they are. (One woman wrote to me and declared that she was not a racist because she had a Negro friend. Sorry, honey, but having a black housekeeper doesn't do much toward breaking the color barrier!)

This week there is another example of a white power-broker having to apologize to the First Family over a piece of "humor" that he forwarded to his friends. Fortunately one of his friends turned out to be a Judas and shared it with the press.

Mike O'Neal, the (old, white, male, Republican) Speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives, has issued an apology for an email which he forwarded to friends that referred to Michelle Obama as "Mrs. YoMama" and compared her to the Grinch. (Okay, maybe there is a bit of humor in any Republican elected official calling anyone a Grinch - after all, the only "people" they seem to give two shits about are rich ones - and corporations and fetuses. Certainly the real Grinch is a card-carrying Republican.)

But, unbelievable as it may seem, the Grinch email about the First Lady was not Mike O'Neal's low point for the week. A few days prior he had sent around an email that quoted from the Bible -Verse 8 of Psalm 109 - a hate-filled diatribe that is a prayer for the death of a leader, the meat of which is listed below:

Let his days be few, and let another take his office
May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.
May his children be wandering beggars; may they be driven from their ruined homes.
May a creditor seize all he has; May strangers plunder the fruits of his labor.
May no one extend kindness to him or take pity on his fatherless children.

Speaker O'Neal added his own postscript:

"At last - I can honestly voice a Biblical prayer for our president! Look it up - it is word for word! Let us all bow our heads and pray. Brothers and Sisters, can I gen an AMEN? AMEN!!!!!!"

Nice one, Mike! Your family must be so proud.

Mike O'Neal, the Speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives, is declining to apologize for the Biblical email, probably believing that one should not have to apologize for spreading the word of God.

No word yet whether Kansas governor Sam Brownback is on O'Neal's email contact list, and if he is, what he chose to do with the controversial communications.

(Note: Much of the information for this post came from ThinkProgress and my favorite Kansas newspaper, The Lawrence Journal-World.)

Ie Shima: Ernie Pyle, Mountain Climbing, and Giant Tortoises

2012-01-14T20:05:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Cultural Explorer

I spent the entire day today on the island of Ie Shima with my friends Valerie and Murphy. It is about a thirty-minute ferryboat ride from Okinawa.

Ie Shima is relatively small, containing one town, a U.S. Marine Corps training area, lots of farmland, and one tall mountain that looks very incongruent on the flat island. The primary crop appears to be peanuts, and huffing and wheezing up the mountain is certainly one of the more popular entertainments.

We met Valerie's friend, Atsuko, on the ferry and followed her to the community center where she teaches little children to speak English. We interacted with the children for an hour or so and had just as much fun as the kids did!

Our next stop was at the memorial that marks the spot where journalist Ernie Pyle was killed by a sniper during the Battle of Okinawa. I had read several of Pyle's war dispatches this morning on the long ride to the port at Motubu, including the last one that he filed from Okinawa, and I found the combination of those readings coupled with actually being on the spot where he was killed to be a very moving experience.

We had lunch and walked along the beach at the YYY Resort. This is their slow season so we basically had the place to ourselves. Valerie and I managed to gather a pocketful of sea glass.

This afternoon Valerie and I climbed Mount Gusuku while Murphy stayed in the car and tried to sleep off the motion sickness meds that he took for the boat ride over. We were able to drive halfway up the mountain and then park at the gift shop. The rest was conquered by marching up a long series of zigzagging cement steps that went all the way to the summit. Valerie said there were 298 steps, but it felt like a million! We were the only two on the summit for a few minutes, but then a busload of Japanese students began showing up. By the time we headed down, twenty or thirty of the healthy teens had gathered on the peak!

The rest of the afternoon was spent driving around the island while we waited on the 4:00 p.m. ferry to show up to take us back to Okinawa. (Valerie was chauffeuring us in a rental car.) As we were coming down a narrow street in the town, Murphy spotted a group of kids gathered around a fence taking pictures, and he was certain that he had seen some giant tortoises on the inside of the fence. Valerie quickly cut her 48th illegal u-turn of the day, and we headed back to see if our friend was hallucinating on his motion sickness meds.

But those extra-big turtles had not been hallucinations. There were at least nineteen giant tortoises roaming around a large fenced-in area eating greens that had been cut and strewn into their enclosure. It was an amazing sight. I haven't researched them yet, but they were approximately two feet in height, and more than three feet in length. They had to be Galapagos tortoises - which I have heard are disappearing. There were no signs or any indication of this being a commercial activity - just some private collector hoarding an endangered species. They did appear to be healthy and well cared for.

That was our day. It was a long one.

Sing a Song of Freedom

2012-01-13T18:19:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

This coming Monday is the date set aside by Congress to honor the birth of an icon of the American civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. King was murdered while I was in college, and I remember well the turmoil of the times. Black people were freed from the shackles of slavery in the 1860's, but a century later they were still fighting bigotry and still enslaved to an American social, political, and economic systems that provided few opportunities for advancement. Those were the doors that Dr. King was trying to open.

Now, over forty years after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, a black family is living in the upstairs quarters of the White House, not as servants but as the freely elected President of the United States, the First Lady, and their lovely daughters. Oh how times have changed!

But there is still much to be done. The election of Barack Obama served to remind a certain element in America that they feel threatened by advances in civil rights. Fortunately, that attitude is beginning to fade as young Americans with more liberal views slowly begin to make their presence felt in society. Public attitudes are changing for the better, and sooner or later the old white men running the Republican Party are going to figure that out. Probably not this year, though!

Today I found a piece on the website of The Nation magazine that had a listing of the top ten civil rights songs of all time. It was compiled by Peter Rothberg. He invited readers to add to the list if they felt he missed something worthy of inclusion. (More on that at the end of the list.) Here are the Rothberg selections:

1. "We Shall Not be Moved" by Mavis Staples
2. "People Get Ready" by The Impressions
3. "A Change is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke
4. "I Wish I Knew (How it Would Feel to be Free)" by Nina Simone
5. "Here's to the state of Mississippi" by Phil Ochs
6. "The Times They Are a Changin'" by Bob Dylan
7. "Eyes on the Prize" by Sweet Honey on the Rock
8. "95 South (All the Places We've Been)" by Gil Scott Heron
9. "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me 'Round" by The Roots
10. "Freedom Highway" by the Staples Singers

Okay, so what was the absolute civil rights classic that Peter Rothberg overlooked? To my way of thinking, it doesn't get any more moving than "We Shall Overcome," perhaps the Joan Baez version. It is a song that Dr. King knew well, and it was definitive of the times in which he worked.

Have a wonderful weekend while you sing a song of freedom!

Protestant Evolution

2012-01-12T17:43:00.007+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

A poll conducted by the Gallup organization in 2010 found that 40% of Americans believe God created humans in their present form - all science and fossils to the contrary be damned! That same poll revealed that 54% of Americans believe that humans developed (evolved) over millions of years.

The Republican party knows that the theory evolution is nonsense. Sarah Palin, for instance, has stated her belief that dinosaurs and humans walked the earth at the same time - sometime less than 6,000 years ago when, according to some rigid Christian fundamentalists, God created the earth.

Recently the Southern Baptist Convention surveyed 1,000 American Protestant pastors to get their take on the theory of evolution and some ancillary matters. Forty-six percent of those surveyed agreed that the earth is approximately 6,000 years old, while 43% disagreed. Seventy-four percent of the Protestant ministers surveyed believed that Adam and Eve were real people. Many of these same pastors usually aren't reticent about letting their congregations know how Jesus would have wanted them to vote.

So these Republican presidential candidates appear to know exactly what they are doing when they begin waving the flag and bearing the cross. They aren't just playing to the base, they're singing to the choir!

And Bible-thumpers vote!

Can I have an "Amen!"

The Stuffed Wonders of the World Tour

2012-01-11T19:11:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
The Intentional Tourists

On a recent trip to Vietnam one of my most memorable encounters was with Ho Chi Minh, the leader of North Vietnam who worked tirelessly over many years to expel the French and later the Americans from his homeland. Never mind that Uncle Ho died in 1969, a full six years before the last of the American forces finally left Vietnam. He's still there - I saw him!

The reason, of course, that I was able to see Ho Chi Minh is that his body was handed over to some skilled taxidermists shortly after his death, and the stuffed result is now enshrined in a glass casket and on display in a special mausoleum in Hanoi. There is no fee to see Uncle Ho, but a souvenir shop is close by where tourists can spend their money on books and posters and other paraphernalia having to do with the peasant who grew into an international political force.

And twelve years ago I saw another famous dead political leader. Vladimir Lenin who died in 1924 has been stuffed and is on display underneath the reviewing stand on Red Square. A souvenir shop is also close by.

Today on the front page of the Stars and Stripes is an interesting article entitled "Rest in Public" which says, in part, that the recently dead President Kim Jong Il of North Korea has also been turned over to the taxidermists so that he can be prepared for eventual public display. According to that article, that Kim's father, and former North Korean dictator, Kim Il Sung, is also on public display. Apparently the North Koreans feel that if the new Kim's father and grandfather are both available for public viewing, it will add legitimacy and continuity to Junior's new regime.

According to the Stars and Stripes:

"Political experts say leaders' bodies are sometimes preserved to validate the godlike status they received - or bestowed upon themselves - while they were alive, and/or to justify the succession of power in places without elections."

Other bodies waiting around for more public adoration besides Ho Chi Minh, Valdimir Lenin, and the father and son circus act from North Korea include Chairman Mao Tse-Tung of China, and former Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. (Apparently there is also a gift shop available for those who stand in line to see Chairman Mao.)

A woman who used to work for the Marcos family as a fashion model said that she had viewed old Ferdie's body and decided that he looked better dead than he did alive. She speculated that Botox had been used to make him more attractive than he had been when he was still sucking air.

While it might seem a bit macabre to view stuffed dead people, the two that I have been up close and personal with so far have had very long lines of tourists waiting for a brief glimpse of someone of actual historical relevance.

So I'm thinking, isn't this something we could be doing in America - maybe not with Presidents (though Hillary might not object!), but how about stuffed athletes, movie and music stars, and even criminals? I mean, who wouldn't want to see the actual Ted Bundy while on their Florida vacation? Or Marilyn, or Elvis, or Mickey Mantle - or even Ted Williams' head? Heirs who didn't inherit as much as they felt they were due, could put the dead family celebrities on display and charge for the viewing - because we are, after all, a capitalist society - and they could still end the line in a souvenir shop. States could charge to see their most nefarious dead criminals as a way of recouping court and incarceration costs - or even as a way to compensate victims.

"Our next stop will be the John Wayne Gacy room. Please don't block the kiddies' view because everybody loves a clown!"

Of course the Botox bills for Mick Jagger and Steven Tyler would be astronomical, but Joan Rivers ought to be ready for display fairly quickly after her demise.

Just thinking out loud here.

The American Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2012-01-10T17:39:00.006+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Film Critic

What business does an American film crew have in tackling a Swedish novel that has almost risen to the level of a national treasure – particularly since the Swedes themselves made a highly acclaimed movie of that same material just two years ago? Certainly profit motive was a major factor in creating an American version of the film of the late Steig Larsson’s terrific novel – but I suspect there were a couple of darker reasons for Hollywood’s rush to film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

My gut feeling is that there is a pervasive sense among American moviegoers that good films can only come from America - that, and the reluctance of Americans to bother themselves with reading subtitles. Subtitles, after all, are for foreigners.

It’s all ethnocentric crap, of course, which is close to what I expected to see on the screen last Saturday night when a friend and I ventured to one of our local military theatres to see director David Fincher's take on Larsson’s monumental bestseller. I fully expected to be disappointed.

(Disclaimers: First, I have read all three of Larsson’s Blomkvist-Salander novels and loved them – and I don’t recall ever seeing any movie that lived up to the book on which it was based. Second, I have been to Stockholm and walked some of the old cobblestone streets described so vividly in the novels. I hoped to recognize at least a few of those places in the movie. And third, I saw Daniel Craig in New York City a couple of years ago and knew that it would take nothing less than demonic possession to pass him off as a Swede.)

The movie, to my utter disbelief, was far better than I expected. The first two-thirds of it followed the book, almost tediously at times, but was nevertheless a product that Steig Larsson would have embraced. There was one significant detour from the text toward the end of the film – the Australia bit was left out, and an alternative narrative was used. That maneuver probably shaved five minutes off of a movie that was already a bladder-buster, and it didn’t hurt the quality of the tale – but I still resented it as an unnecessary manipulation of a finely tuned plot. (Hollywood, when you have the opportunity to leave an author's work alone, do it!) That minor and unnecessary transgression was, in fact, my only complaint.

No, I didn’t see any Stockholm sights that I recognized, but most, if not all, of the film appeared to have been shot in Sweden and had a very authentic feel.

Many of the actors, as well, had Swedish names and rich Swedish accents. Three of the main players, however, weren’t Swedes. The venerable Christopher Plummer (remember him as Captain Von Trapp in The Sound of Music?) who portrayed Henrik, the sad patriarch of the massively rich Vanger family, is Canadian. Daniel Craig, a.k.a. Mikael Blomquist, the disgraced reporter and magazine publisher, is a Brit, and Rooney Mara, the tattooed and pierced bi-sexual computer hacker, Lisbeth Salander, is American.

Daniel Craig gave an acceptable performance and was believable in the role of Blomkvist, which was a welcome surprise. It was Rooney Mara’s ability to completely become the complex Lisbeth Salander, however, that fired this film with unbridled intensity. She was absolutely astounding as one of the most complex characters to come roaring out of the pages of a novel – on a motorcycle – and onto the big screen in generations.

I haven’t seen the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo yet, but I will – and I look forward to getting the Swedish take on this Swedish material – and I’m not too lazy to read subtitles. But even if that film is exceptional, and I have heard that it is, the American version is still mighty damned good!

Monday's Poetry: "We'll Go No More A-Roving"

2012-01-09T19:02:00.005+09:00

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

A few nights ago I was watching an old episode of one of my favorite mystery programs, Midsomer Murders, when I came across a snippet of poetry that I really liked. The plot of that particular episode revolved around the murder of the village's philandering postman who had had affairs with more than a few of the ladies in the village. Several of those ladies were standing around sobbing openly at the funeral, and many had brought floral offerings. DCI Barnaby and Sergeant Troy were both at the funeral evaluating mourners. and their husbands, as possible suspects, and Barnaby also began reading the notes attached to the flowers. One particularly nice floral arrangement had an unsigned note that said simply, "So we'll go no more a-roving so late into the night."

It was eventually brought out that those lines were from a poem by Lord Byron. I found the poem, liked it, and will share it here. The three stanzas are very simple, yet very beautiful - a perfect eulogy for a randy postman who did much of his romancing while the moon was shining brightly.

We'll Go No More A-Roving
by Lord Byron

So, we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Thought the night was made for loving
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

2012 Pa Rock's Dead Pool

2012-01-08T17:13:00.000+09:00

by Pa Rock
Dead Pool Manager

It's true! Pa Rock's Dead Pool is back for yet another year - our fifth! The rules are simple. All you have to do is select ten names of people whom you think might die in the year 2012 - from the world's nearly endless supply of celebrities - and email those names to me at pa.rock.macy@gmail.com. That's all there is to it. Submit those names and then kick back and wait on the Grim Reaper to do his thing.

Points are awarded for each death that you are able to accurately predict. They are determined by subtracting the person's age at the time of their demise from one hundred. The younger the dearly departed, the more points they are worth.

It will be considered bad form to pick me - and I am not worth many points anyway!

And, there are prizes! The person who scores the most points will win $50, second place will take home $25, and third place is worth $10. There are no entry fees, so it's all coming out of my pocket. Of course, I'm entering too - in hopes of saving myself a few bucks.

The deadline for entries is midnight in your time zone on January 15th. You have just over a week to get those names in, so hop to it!

(Please tweet or otherwise forward this information along to others who might enjoy the challenge!)

Another Arizona Desperado

2012-01-08T13:46:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

This week a handgun was fired on an Arizona school bus that was loaded with children. An eight-year-old boy had apparently taken the gun to school that day where it remained undetected in his backpack. He was riding the bus home and manipulating the gun through the fabric of his backpack when it went off and fired a round into the floor. Shockingly, nobody was hurt.

There is no word yet on whether the National Rifle Association will issue a letter recognizing the Second Amendment rights of the young boy from Mesa - and appealing for funds to fight Obama as he deviously plots to come for the guns of real Americans with proper birth certificates.

But regardless of what the NRA does or fails to do, the Arizona Legislature will not hesitate to act. Legislation will undoubtedly be drafted as a result of this incident that will call for an end to compulsory education (so that children won't be such easy targets), eliminate state funding for school transportation, and mandate that everyone using any form of public transportation be armed. Only then will the children of Arizona be truly safe!

2011 Dead Pool Results

2012-01-07T14:46:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Dead Pool Manager

Pa Rock's 4th Annual Dead Pool ended with the arrival of the new year, and I have just found time to count the corpses. This year we had twenty-one entries, and of those, nine managed to correctly predict at least one celebrity demise, and four of those hit on multiple deaths.

This year's winner is my good friend, Brenda Kilby, of McDonald County, Missouri, who managed to make three correct predictions - and that in itself was a record for this Dead Pool. Brenda correctly guessed that James Arness would bite the dust of Dodge City for 12 points, Elizabeth Taylor would quit getting married - permanently - for 21 points, and Amy Winehouse would kick her drug habit - for good - for 73 points. Congratulations, Brenda, with your record score of 106 points!

Mike Box, an old college friend from the turbulent sixties, came in second by also correctly naming Elizabeth Taylor and Amy Winehouse for a total of 94 points. Good work, Mike!

Another good friend of mine, although we have yet to meet in person, is Don Hunsberger. Don came in third with his predictions of Amy Winehouse and Andy Rooney - for a total of 81 points. Congratulations to you, Don!

Honorable mentions go to Eva and Scott who each picked Amy Winehouse for totals of 73 points each, Molly who selected Betty Ford and Jeff Conaway for a total of 47 points, David and Ricardo who hit on Osama bin Laden for 46 points, and Ron who selected Liz Taylor for 21 points.

Great work, everyone! If you were in the top three, a check will be going out in the mail. (Don, please email me your snail mail address.) Please spend your winnings on something socially responsible - or extremely alcoholic!

The 5th Annual Pa Rock's Dead Pool (2012) will be announced shortly - maybe as early as today! Start getting those unfortunate names selected!

My Wonderful Three-Day Weekend

2012-01-06T17:20:00.000+09:00

by Pa Rock
Chronic Complainer

The is Friday of my bi-monthly three-day weekend. By agreeing to work an extra hour each day for eight days, we get every other Friday off. It usually takes me an extra hour to get all of my work done anyway, so I like the system.

But I was just coming down with a cold when I got back from Vietnam last Sunday, and it has been getting worse all week. Still I persevered and went to work, because that's the way I roll. Yesterday morning as I pulled into work in the dark, my poor car died. I'm not complaining because I have had the little piece of junk for a year-and-a-half and this is its first major malfunction. As the electrical system slowly faded away, I was fairly certain that I would be buying an alternator.

But nothing is simple on Okinawa. It took over a day to get my car towed to an on-base repair shop that was less than a mile from where it quit running. Today they told me that I will need a new battery and a used alternator. Apparently "used" alternators here sell for something north of $300! The total bill will be at least $550!

Thank you, sir. May I please have another!

My friend Kelly brought me home last night. We went by the commissary on the way, so I have enough groceries to make it through the weekend.

And I am still sick.

And yes, this is definitely my three-day weekend!

We'll All Miss Marcus

2012-01-05T19:53:00.000+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Barney Frank, the retiring Congressman from Provincetown, Massachusetts, has authored a catchy little slogan for this year's national Democratic campaign, to wit: "We're not perfect, but they're nuts!" Boy, howdy, are they ever nuts! But today, after only about five percent of Iowa Republicans even bothered going to their caucuses, one of the nuts is leaving the party mix.

Michele Bachmann, who has claimed that God lured her into the race, is packing it in. She is being coy about her plans for the future, but one possibility is that she may actually return to the nation's capital and begin representing her district in Congress again. Of course, for the past several months she has been caterwauling to anyone within earshot that she is an Iowan, so the good folks of Minnesota may not be so eager to keep her on the government dole.

There is also some speculation that Bachmann may raise her sights and run for the Senate seat currently held by Amy Klobuchar. I wonder if God is promoting that gambit also?

And, of course, there is the tea-party fall-back position of hosting her own show on Fox.

I will miss Marcus. He always seemed to provide some comic relief to the dirty business of Republican presidential politics - especially after ~~Clarence Thomas~~ Herman Cain withdrew from the race. But I can't seem to gin up much remorse for his wife's departure from the national political scene. Roy Clark, the great country singer, had a recording out more than twenty years ago that captured the essence of how I feel about Michele's exit. That song was titled "Thank God and Greyhound She's Gone!"

And the nice thing about buses is that there is always another one coming along.

Romney Buys Iowa, Barely

2012-01-04T18:27:00.005+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

With more than 125,000 votes cast in the Iowa Republican caucuses, Mitt Romney trounced second place finisher, Little Ricky Santorum, by an astounding eight votes. The final tally was 30,015 for Romney (24.6%) and 30,007 votes for Santorum (also 24.6%). The unemployed Mr. Romney, who rarely wins anything, pulled off this amazing victory at a cost of somewhere north of $100 per vote. Santorum, on the other hand, spent about $1.65 for each of his votes. Somewhere in all of that is proof positive of the corrosive effects of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

Romney will take seven Iowa delegate votes to the Republican convention, and Santorum will arrive with six. Clearly both men will be claiming a victory, with Romney's being statistical and Santorum's being moral.

Since it is obvious that God, the real one and not the Mormon one, favored Santorum, the other two evangelical firebrands, Perry and Bachmann, have some serious thinking to do. Governor Perry, who had to settle for 10.3 percent of the vote and a fifth place finish, has already said that he is flying home to Texas to "re-evaluate" his candidacy and probably ask himself "What would Tim Tebow do?" Congressman Bachmann, who finished sixth - and for all practical purposes dead last - with a mere 5% of the votes, may have a come-to-Jesus meeting with Jesus and impress upon the Messiah just how bitterly unfair it is that evangelicals continue to be distrustful of women in positions of power.

And speaking of chatting with the Gods, Christian fundamentalist tele-huckster Pat Robertson said that he recently had a conversation with God, and the Almighty told him who the next President would be. Pat, out of fairness to God and the electoral process, is not saying whom the anointed one will be. But hey, it's Pat Robertson for Christ's sake, and we all know He wouldn't lie!

Here's what I think, however. If Pat's dementia clears for a few moments, he should be compelled to tell the rest of us which candidate God has chosen. If he won't do it voluntarily, the goons from Blackwater - or whatever name it is going by today - should be sent in to beat or waterboard the information out of him. (What could be more American than that?) Then we could cancel the election, save the taxpayers a warehouse full of money, and crown the next commander-in-chief at the halftime of next year's Superbowl.

Wouldn't it be great if the Broncos were in that Superbowl and God's chosen turned out to be...no, wait, he's not thirty-five yet. Never mind.

The Iowa Circus

2012-01-03T18:27:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

In less than twenty-four hours the hog farmers, coffee shop malingerers, and retired school teachers of Iowa will go to their caucus sites and attempt to tell the rest of the country who should be our next President. As of the moment the pundits are predicting a really tight three-race between the economically privileged Mitt Romney, Ron Paul the libertarian, and Little Ricky Santorum - God's man on Earth - or as the Huffington Post described it - a three-way between the business class, the libertarians, and the evangelicals.

First of all, I am forever offended by the crazy quilt of caucuses and state primaries that determine, usually quite early, who the candidates of the two major parties will be. Iowa is representative of Iowa. Period. It has squat to do with how people view things in New York, Colorado, or Louisiana. Yet out of Iowa will come some yahoo with barely a third of the vote claiming a victory and inevitability - most likely one of the three yahoos mentioned above. Next week the folks in New Hampshire will go to the polls in a slightly more democratic process, and somebody (perhaps somebody other than the yahoo who won Iowa) will claim that he is Mister Inevitability.

Yes, I said Mister. Michele Bachmann has the only bonnet in the ring, and her tea leaves don't look promising. Praise Allah for small mercies!

So, as of today, it looks like the Republican field may have winnowed its way down to three - old white men. Gotta love those Republicans, they are so effing predictable!

(I support the idea of three regional primaries, with the voting order shifting every four years. One time the eastern states would vote first, the next time the central states, and after that the western states. Everybody gets to have their say before the nomination is sewn up.)

There are only two types of Republicans that I can't abide. The first is those with no principles who change positions more often than they change their underwear. I am of course giving a nod to Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. (Okay, Mitt's underwear is "magic" and probably doesn't need changing, and Newt likely doesn't wear underwear - but you get the idea.) The unprincipled are totally poll-driven and drift with the vagaries of public opinion - and may change their minds more than once in a single speech!

The other group is too principled. These are the mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging, Mexican-hating, homophobic, racist, gun-toting, Bible-thumping, Jesus-owning evangelicals. They are insanely rigid and not tolerant of anything that does not fit into their tighty-whitey worldview. Michele Bachman, Rick Perry, and Ricky Santorum share a revival tent with these baboons.

Ron Paul and his merry band of libertarians have a foot in both of these camps, but Paul also harbors a few progressive tendencies which makes him a pariah to party regulars everywhere.

Tomorrow some old white man will win thirty-five or even forty percent of the votes cast in the Iowa caucuses, and his wife will begin looking at fabric samples for the new White House drapes. And a few hours later the circus will roll out of town and head for New Hampshire. When it goes, Iowa will once again slip back into irrelevance and the guys at the coffee shops will be able to get back to the serious business of not farming.

And the candidate who will get the best sleep on Tuesday night will be Barack Obama!

Then They Came for Me

2012-01-02T16:28:00.005+09:00

by Pa Rock
Open-Minded American

There was an excellent piece in today's Daily Kos regarding Arizona's never-ending struggle to define itself in terms of being a white, male, conservative culture. The focus of today's article is on the ethnic studies program that was started several years ago in the Tucson School District.

Not long after the highly popular ethnic studies program began, the state superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horne, became enraged when several students from the class turned their backs on one of his assistants who was speaking to the student body. Instead of engaging the students in a dialogue in which he might have run the risk of learning something, the ever-pompous Mr. Horne went ballistic and moved to kill the program. Under his urging, the Arizona State Legislature, not exactly a bastion of intellectualism, passed a knee-jerk law to ban "divisive" ethnic studies programs.

HB 2281 has the express purpose of keeping Arizona history nice and white - never mind that the state is over one-third Latino and home to more Native American speakers that any other state in the lower forty-eight. Those ne'er-do-wells who immigrated into Arizona from other places (like Tom Horne who was born in Canada) want to define the state according to their backgrounds and values - and everybody else can turn white or lump it!

HB 2281 is so egregious in its denial of free speech and basic human rights that even the Roberts' Court might eventually overturn it. But there will be no judicial remedies in the Scorpion State. Last Tuesday an Arizona Administrative Law Judge (which sounds suspiciously like a glorified Justice of the Peace) said that Tucson's ethnic studies program violates that monument to blatant racism and political skulduggery known as HB 2281 - and the racially diverse student body in the Tucson schools will have to continue learning history that excludes, marginalizes, or distorts the impact that their ancestors had on the history of Arizona.

Clearly their education is the white man's burden.

The article at www.dailykos.com included this oft-quoted chestnut from Martin Niemoller to remind us that unless we stand firm in our support of one another, the forces of hate will eventually win out. Sadly, hate is on the march in Arizona.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me,
And there was no one left to speak out for me.

For the Times They Are a Changing

2012-01-01T20:21:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Globetrotter

We are safely back on Okinawa after having spent a day in the air flying from Hanoi to Taipei to Naha. Okinawa appears unbelievably tame after spending eight days in Vietnam. I used to think the traffic here on Highway 58 was intimidating, but no more. After experiencing Saigon and Hanoi, our little four-lane main highway is a cakewalk!

Eight days was the perfect amount of time to experience Vietnam. It is a crazy quilt of busy streets packed with motorbikes, bicycles, cars, tourists, animals, and street peddlers who conduct small business at its most basic level. Murphy commented on the ride home tonight that we really didn't encounter any vestiges of communism on our trip. The country is so capitalistic that the shops in the Hanoi International Airport were happy to accept dollars!

Neither LBJ nor Uncle Ho could have predicted the Vietnam that we experienced on our trip. It is as though all of the ideology that made the past century so bloody just quietly faded away and people decided to get along. Vietnam has rid itself of its colonial masters and is now free to determine its own national identity and future. It may not be exactly the future that Ho Chi Minh envisioned, but it is a struggling nation that is finally able to invest its resources, talents, and labor in its own people - and therein lies a better future.

It makes one think that wars are fought solely to benefit arms merchants and ego maniacs.

Uncle Ho Would Have Been Mortified!

2012-01-01T02:53:00.000+09:00

by Pa Rock
International Party Animal

The New Year swept into Hanoi forty minutes ago - and was this city ever rocking! There were thousands of people gathered downtown by the lake enjoying a sound-and-light show that featured musicians, dancing girls, and an out-of-control deejay. The crowd was mostly teens and twenty-somethings, but there were also families with little children, and a few grandparent types. It was mostly Vietnamese, but foreigners were also present in abundance. All of the singing was in English.

The lights, the thumping music, the screaming deejay, the dancing in the streets...it was western youth culture at its zenith! Uncle Ho would have been mortified!

Happy New Year 2012 from Vietnam!

New Year's Eve in Hanoi

2011-12-31T21:53:00.005+09:00

by Pa Rock
International Party Animal

The New Year is still four-and-a-half hours away in Hanoi, but the streets are filling with people and excitement is in the air. Actually, the streets of Old Hanoi are always filled with people and there can be few places on this planet any more exciting - at any hour of any day! But tonight most of the locals are ending their sentences with "Happy New Year!" One poor lady who was trying to sell me street food wished me "Merry Christmas!"

The soundtrack of Vietnam is honking horns - a long, never-ending cacophony of honking horns!

An hour ago I was out among the cars and motorbikes, weaving my way through the tourists and street peddlers, when a woman approached me trying to sell a 3X tee-shirt. I told her I might buy shirts for my littlest grandsons, because I saw that she had nothing small and would have to let me go. But no, she persisted and told me that she had the perfect shirts at her store. "You follow me."

I followed thinking that we were just going across the street. We did cross the street, then walked a block, then took a turn and walked two more blocks, and then turned up a long dark alley with many peddlers lurking in the shadows.

(At this point I knew that I was probably in trouble. It reminded me of the time a couple of years ago when Carla (Turnbough) Brown and I were in New York City, and she wanted to go into Chinatown to buy some knockoff purses. We found a "saleslady" who led us to a side street where she told me to wait on the corner while she walked Carla on down the street and had her climb into the back of a van. Ten minutes later my friend emerged smiling with a couple of fine bargains.)

So, back in the alley in Old Hanoi, my guide finally reached her "store," which turned out to be a couple of plastic bags hanging from a motorbike. She pulled out two hand-embroidered shirts and told me that she and her poor teenage daughter had spent hours and hours making them. I finally bought them - on the condition that she lead me back to where she found me.

Sebastian and Judah, I hope you like your shirts. Pa Rock had to be very brave to get them for you!

I will be back out on the streets at midnight!

Happy New Year, Vietnam!

A Trip to See Uncle

2011-12-31T18:09:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Cultural Explorer

The Vietnamese refer to their famous political hero, Ho Chi Minh (1890-1969), the man who brought the nation together and encouraged her citizens to drive out the French and later the Americans, as "Uncle." The communist hero never married or had children, so many viewed him as an "uncle" to the struggling nation.

We began our tour of Hanoi this morning with a visit to the mausoleum of Uncle Ho where we viewed his body, a marvel of twentieth century taxidermy, lying in state in a large glass case with four very solemn Vietnamese military guards standing at each corner of the display. Uncle Ho looked pale and colorless, certainly no match for the much healthier stuffed body of V.I. Lenin which I saw a dozen years ago in Red Square.

(I'm thinking about having my body stuffed when I die and put on display someplace appropriate...perhaps at the Macy's Store in Kansas City.)

After leaving the mausoleum, we walked the adjacent grounds past the palace built by the French for their dignitaries. along the lake where Uncle Ho used to clap his hands so the fish would know it was time to come and eat, and up close to two small houses in which he lived after he became politically powerful and famous. Both houses were very compact and ordinary, the epitome of socialist utility. But it was the second house that captured my imagination. That little house was built on stilts, with a large conference table sitting on the cement slab beneath the house.. It was at that table where Ho held many important meetings. Next to that house was an underground bunker where Ho and his friends could flee in the event of an air strike.

Further on down the lake on the same property was the famous "One Pillar Pagoda," a Buddhist shrine that sits in the air atop one pillar. It is reportedly where couples go if they want to get pregnant, but we didn't see anyone attempting to get pregnant during our visit.

Our next stop was the infamous Hanoi Hilton, an old French prison built in the 1890's where Vietnamese patriots and prisoners were tortured and killed for decades. After the French were finally driven out of the country, the Vietnamese turned it into a prison for captured American pilots. Young John McCain was a resident there for several years. One of the displays inside is a photograph of Senator McCain visiting the prison in 2000. They also have the flight suit that he was wearing when he was captured on display, along with a large photo of the Vietnamese pulling him out of the lake that he parachuted into when his plane was shot down.

Most of the Hanoi Hilton has been torn down and the land given over to the city for commercial purposes, but several rooms have been maintained. It is a very grim place. One of the exhibits, in fact, is an actual guillotine used by the French to deal with Vietnamese patriots. So much for the Rights of Man and the Citizen!

Murphy used to be a prison psychologist and had no interest in touring a prison, particularly not one with that much negative American history, so he walked the neighborhood while I did the tour.

Our tour ended after lunch, and we decided to take in the Vietnamese Military Museum on our own. There were several very interesting exhibits at that museum, including a thirty-foot high sculpted pile of scrap metal made up of shot-down United States warplanes. Inside we saw one of the actual tanks that broke through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon in April of 1975 - thus symbolically ending the war.

All of that was followed by a crazy taxi ride back to the hotel. Tonight we will be on the streets seeing what a Hanoi New Year's looks like.

(Last night as I was walking around town by myself, a working girl on a motorbike pulled up to me and asked if I would like a massage. I quickly told her "no," knowing full well that it was just a ploy to get her hands on my belly!)

The Lotus Flowers

2011-12-31T00:02:00.001+09:00

Original Poetry
by Pa Rock

(Written along the road to Ha Long, Vietnam, and dedicated to Olive and Willow, my little Lotus Blossoms - with love.)

Lotus flowers float gracefully
Upon the peaceful river
Among the sunning turtles
And past the young men fishing.

They drift ever so slowly
Down through the waters of time
Serenely, eternally
Gathering strength and beauty.

Ha Long Bay

2011-12-30T22:25:00.005+09:00

by Pa Rock
World Traveler

This was a very long day indeed!

We were on the road headed to Ha Long Bay at 8:00 a.m. The four-hour drive north took us near the famous port city of Hai Phong and ultimately to our destination - which was a mere 170 kilometers south of the Chinese border. The drive, as with any motorized trip in Vietnam, was a harrowing experience. As we got near Ha Long we came upon a a motorbike and its driver who had been crushed by a truck. Our driver, himself a maniac, survived the drive up and back only because he had Happy Buddha sitting in the backseat. (We learned this evening that the young man on the motorbike died at the scene.)

One of the most interesting sights that we encountered was two men riding down the highway on a motorbike. Tied to the back of the motorbike where a third passenger could have sat was what appeared to be a young adult water buffalo. The poor creature's head was hanging low over the edge of the seat while its other end was busy defecating! Murphy was on the right side to get the photograph - but maybe I will luck out tomorrow when we are taken on a tour of Hanoi.

There are many funny postcards on sale here showing the types of things that people carry on their motorbikes besides water buffalo - a dozen crates of clucking chickens, a large basket of live pigs, ducks, balloon displays, construction materials, you name it. The bikes are ubiquitous and necessary for commerce. Just about anything needed to be moved around the city can be balanced, tied, or stacked on a motorbike. I've even seen street vendors stretched out and sleeping on their bikes!

Ha Long Bay is one of the most beautiful places on earth. (Google it!) It is a UNESCO World Heritage site that has over two thousand uninhabited limestone islands thrusting up into the sky. Our tour company arranged for us to have a private cruise on a large boat that would have held twenty people comfortably. A lady crew member prepared a wonderful lunch for us as we weaved through the majestic islands. (Later the same lady brought out intricate pieces of embroidery showing life in Vietnam that had been stitched by members of her family, pearls, and postcards - all of which she tried to sell to her captive tourists. (Molly and Erin, expect a beautiful piece of embroidery.)

Ha Long Bay would make a nice vacation destination by itself - in fact, that is where Mark Zuckerberg and his entourage spent a few days last week. Of course the King of Facebook flew there in a helicopter. He wasn't about to be slowed down by a pooping water buffalo on the back of a motorbike!

That was his loss!

There are many new luxury hotels going up at Ha Long Bay, and even a casino. I asked Quan how the privately owned casino meshed with the concept of a socialist state. He replied that Vietnamese citizens are not permitted to gamble - only foreigners may throw their money away in the casinos. Somehow, I think Uncle Ho might have approved!

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve, and Hanoi seems to be gearing up for one helluva street party! I'll be staying up late to enjoy the craziness!

Thrice Blessed!

2011-12-30T00:36:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
Object of Adoration

This morning we toured two final stops in Hue, the ancient capital of Vietnam. The first was called the Pagoda, a monastery where an order of Buddhist monks live and work. The second was the Citadel, an immense walled city where the emperor and his royal entourage (a thousand or more people) resided back in the day.

The Pagoda was a very moving experience. The monks were working at a variety of tasks - meditating, teaching, shining brass - and taking care of children. Children, in fact, seemed to be the focus of the monks' operation. Orphans are left in the care of the monks, and those who happen to be male grow to adulthood in the monastery where they receive an education from the monks and do chores. Our guide, Tuan, said that sometimes family members come to the monastery to visit the boys, and if they choose, they may take their particular boy our of the Pagoda and back to their family home at any time. When a boy reaches the age of eighteen he may choose to remain with the Order or move out into society.

The young boys, called novices, whom we observed today were clearing tables, scrubbing a concrete floor on their hands and knees - while also playing on the slippery concrete, and having fun chasing and playing with one another as they did their work.

One older monk was walking around holding an infant swaddled in a baby blanket. Tuan said the baby was a three-day-old female who was left at the monastery. He said that after she has been nurtured at the Pagoda for a couple of months, she will be transferred to a nunnery where she will be raised by the nuns. Several people were taking pictures of the jolly monk and his baby. When he saw me he came over and patted my belly and said "Happy Buddha!" Then, pleased with himself, he did it two more times and proclaimed "Happy Buddha" even more loudly.

I'm not sure if he was blessing me, or using me to bless the baby. All I know for certain is that he made me feel really good!

The Citadel was not nearly as interesting. It is immense and very elegant, but it is also aging with lots of crumbling stone and mold and mildew. The government is slowly refurbishing the facility, but it looks as though they may never get caught up. One of the things I saw that sort of encapsulated the entire experience of the Citadel was a large pile of bricks and stones that we came upon during our walk along the grounds. It was obviously the remains of a building that had recently been torn down. I asked Tuan what it had been, and he said that it was public restrooms that had gotten so nasty that the government had them demolished instead of trying to clean them. That's what I call housekeeping!

This afternoon we flew into Hanoi. The airport is several kilometers away from the city, so we got to view a lot of agricultural land and factories on the way into Hanoi proper. Our hotel, The Medallion, is located in the heart of Old Hanoi - several blocks of craziness with the small streets crammed with motorbikes, cars, trucks, cyclos (rickshaw-type affairs that have a sedan chair pushed by a man on a half-bicycle), dogs, drunks, street vendors, people squatting and cooking over small braziers, and just about anything else you could imagine. I even saw a couple of chickens navigating through the madness!

Next door to our hotel is a hostel for backpackers. It appeared to be bursting at the seams with young foreigners.

Tonight Quan, our Hanoi guide, walked us down through the street chaos and onto a bigger boulevard where he placed each of us in a cyclo. I felt like some foreign potentate who was part of the reason that Ho Chi Minh went to war, but my knee was still hurting from the fall yesterday, so I sat back and let myself be carted around Old Hanoi in style.

Murphy, on the other hand, couldn't come to grips with his inner-proletarian, and soon abandoned his cyclo and was walking along beside mine. Then a few minutes later I heard my driver shouting excitedly, and Murphy peddled by driving his cyclo with his driver sitting in the sedan chair! He was quite a sight!

Our evening's entertainment was the Water Puppet Theatre, a venue with a Vietnamese band sitting above a small indoor lake. A variety of puppets splashed around in the water and acted out various skits. It was unusual and very interesting - but an hour was sufficient.

We ended the evening at a restaurant that Quan recommended. Our seats were on a narrow balcony where we looked down the bustling street. After dinner we took a long route back to the hotel, looking in a few shops and dodging vehicular traffic. I was only clipped once, by the mirror on a sleek black car. The driver glared at me like I had hit him.

I did make one purchase on the way back to the hotel. We were in a shop that sells copies of old Vietnamese propaganda posters from the war. The one I ended up buying has a bomb falling on Vietnam with Nixon's face painted on it. Red lightening bolts are firing up from the ground toward the Nixon bomb. The caption, in Vietnamese, said "Nixon has spilled our blood and now we must spill his." It really spoke to me - or at least to the person I was in the sixties!

Another one that I really liked was a drawing of a young mother holding a baby in her arms with a rifle strapped over her shoulder.

Tomorrow we are taking a three-hour drive to Halong Bay where will go on a cruise through one of the most beautiful places in Asia.

More later from the city that made Jane Fonda famous!

(Please know that America is a capitalist country, so if you want to pat my belly when I get home, it's gonna cost you!)

A Fall from Grace

2011-12-28T19:08:00.008+09:00

by Pa Rock
International Bumpkin

As we were leaving Da Nang this morning, our tour guide offered to take us by China Beach - an offer we couldn't refuse. China Beach is the Pacific at its most beautiful and ruthless! There were no swimmers or surfers, but many locals and a few tourists were out walking along the free beach.

Our drive to Hue took us along many miles of the Pacific coast and then over the mountains. At the top of main mountain that separates the Da Nang district from that of Hue, we pulled into a tourist rest and gift stop where we were chatted up shamelessly by women selling jewelry - a couple of whom patted my belly and called me "happy Buddha!" (I'm getting used to that!) Across the road we saw a cement bunker that was built by the Americans during the Vietnam War. On a clear day it would have had a commanding view of the countryside all the way to the ocean, but today was cloudy - and we were actually in the clouds.

Our next stop was at the foot of the mountains on the Hue side where we pulled over to take pictures of the water buffalo that were working the fields by the road. There were six or eight of the massive beasts along with a water buffalo calf which was wearing a raincoat! We crossed the highway at that point - a death-defying stunt - and walked along a mud path to a small row of houses. Vietnamese children ran out to greet us with their hands out shouting "Hello, hello, hello!" Tuan pointed to a plaque on one of the houses. He said that it was constructed by the government for the mother of a young man who died fighting in the war.

As we were entering Hue, Tuan had the driver stop so we could cross the road and take pictures of an exquisite private family shrine. The gate was locked, so we were taking pictures from over the wall. As we were about to leave, the owner, a seventy-year-old gentleman, showed up and invited us onto the grounds. A long cement ramp led from the sidewalk down into the base of the shrine. It turns out it was actually a long, slick, cement ramp - a fact that I noted mentally as I tumbled ass-over-elbows before landing flat on my back with my head bouncing on the hard and slimy cement like a spiked volleyball! I survived pretty much intact, aside from a skinned elbow, twisted knee, and a probable case of TBI, but it was not my most graceful moment!

During our second royal burial site visit after my fall, I finally gave up and sat down on the cement railing of a quaint little bridge while Murphy and Tuan marched ever onward. While I was sitting there licking my wounds, a very sweet college girl from Hanoi named Nhung came up and asked if she could practice speaking English with me. She had a notebook with words that she was having difficulty on - "r" words like "born," "girl," and "world." Nhung wants to be an English teacher. Her primary goal is to make an income, but she also wants to be able to teach her younger relatives to speak English. Our little encounter was the best part of the day - and it sure as hell beat seeing the grave of yet another dead emperor!

Tonight, knee permitting, I may take a stroll through the neighborhood that surrounds our hotel. We will see some more historic and cultural sites in Hue tomorrow, and then fly to Hanoi in the afternoon.

Tempus fugit in the land where calves wear raincoats and old men fly!

Heading to Hue

2011-12-28T10:20:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen of Planet Earth

Early morning in Da Nang. I have just finished a good hotel breakfast and will soon be packing for our 9:00 a.m. departure to Hue, a three-hour car drive. Hue is the ancient capital of Vietnam and promises much in the way of history and culture.

A word or two about our hotel in Da Nang: The Ancient House Resort is very tropical and beautiful. Again, it was a cheap-o three-star, but extremely nice according to my limited experience. Each room has its own balcony that overlooks a very lush pool area with much greenery. My extra-big king-size bed had rose petals strew across the white cover - all beneath a silk canopy! The bath tub was long and very comfortable - much to the delight of my poor, sore legs that had recently trudged up and down Marble Mountain!

The Wi-fi, however, did not work in the room - forcing me to do email and blog from the lobby. I can pull up the edit page for my blog and post new entries, but the local connection will not let me pull up the actual blog - so I am sort of flying blind hoping that everything publishes the way that I intend. (Is Pa Rock's Ramble too controversial for Da Nang, Vietnam?)

Off to pack, to ride, and to walk, and walk, and walk!

The Happy Buddha Does Marble Mountain

2011-12-27T20:18:00.004+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen of the World

Our Saigon tour guides picked us up at the hotel at 6:20 a.m. this morning and shuffled us to the airport where we boarded a full Vietnam Airliner for the seventy-minute flight to Da Nang. Our guide and driver in Da Nang were waiting at the airport and immediately threw us into tour mode - no stop by the hotel, no restroom breaks - just run, run, run! Sadistic bastards!

We began the day at a museum of Cham artifacts (google it), follow by a trip to Marble Mountain - which is, not surprisingly, a mountain of marble. At the foot of the mountain are many shops with marble souvenirs carved from the mountain's marble. There was a new elevator ascending the mountain, but I elected to climb the uneven and very slippery steps to the top. That was a huge mistake. Each time my left foot landed on a step I heard the word "broken," and the sound of my right foot striking the slick marble steps was "leg!" Broken leg, broken leg, broken leg! How, I wondered, would they ever get me off of the mountain with one or more broken legs?

But somehow I made it up and down Marble Mountain. I spent the rest of the day looking for a tee-shirt to hail my accomplishment - but never found one.

Marble Mountain is home to a couple of nice caves and several Buddhist shrines, some with enormous marble statues of the "Enlightened One." From the top of Marble Mountain we had a fantastic view of China Beach - the place where American troops used to go to relax and surf during the Vietnam War. The waves at China Beach are immense!

Most of the afternoon was consumed with walking the streets of a vast Vietnamese open-air market. I ran by many interesting things trying to keep with the long-legged Murphy and Tuan, our energetic guide. One continuing irritant was several Vietnamese is the shops who would pat my belly and say, "Happy Buddha!" I decided not to be insulted. (The "happy" Buddha is the pot-bellied one who is always laughing.)

Da Nang is beautiful. Our hotel, the Ancient House Resort, is beautiful. The Wi-fi at the hotel is not beautiful and does not work - so I am typing this missive from the "Guest Relations" desk in the lobby.

More tomorrow from the ancient capital of Hue where we will spend two nights. Until then I remain your "Happy Buddha!"

Saigon and Vicinity by Day

2011-12-26T20:16:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen of the World

Our guide and driver picked us up early this morning at our hotel and managed to cram two or three days worth of tourism into about nine hours. We began by driving through the hustle and bustle of Saigon and out into the countryside where we spent the morning visiting the famous Viet Cong tunnels at Cu Chi (pronounced "koochie"). While there we viewed one of the propaganda films that Uncle Ho had his troops watch back in the day, watched rice paper being made, and saw lots of weapons and displays from the war. The area that we were in had been defoliated by the Americans with agent orange, but everything had been replanted after the war and it is now back in its natural state.

Our lunch was close to Cu Chi at a riverside restaurant called the Ben Nay. I had a large bowl of chicken noodle soup that looked wickedly healthy but tasted wonderful. We ate on the veranda overlooking the river where we watched large lumps of water lotus floating by. It was truly beautiful!

We were back in Saigon by early afternoon. Our first stop in the city was the enormous Chinese Market. If anyplace could be crazier that the motor scooter infested streets of Saigon, it has to be the Chinese Market. People where stumbling all over each other, throwing things, driving down the alleys and aisles on scooters loaded down with merchandise, playing, handling the food with dirty hands, and smoking. Loc said that one of his teachers once told him, "Where there's smoke, there's Chinese!" So true!

Next we visited the Thien Hau Buddhist Temple which was build in 1760. It was quite impressive - and packed with worshipers and tourists.

Much of the rest of the afternoon was spent at Independence Palace, the former home of the Presidents of South Vietnam. A nice young couple from New York City joined our little group so they could listen to Loc's excellent presentations on the history of the palace, the presidency, and his country. Murphy made the visit to the palace memorable when he leaned out of a window on the top (fourth) story to take a picture and his glasses fell off of his nose. They landed on a sealed-off ledge ten feet below. Loc, ever the hero, managed to get permission to go into the restricted area and retrieve them.

Our final two stops were at the Saigon main post office - a building designed by Mr. Eiffel of the Tower fame - and Notre Dame Cathedral. A bride and groom were posing for pictures outside of the cathedral, and a mass was being said inside. Two beautiful white doves were sitting on the head of the large statue of the Virgin Mary in front of the cathedral - and pooping! Loc said that the Protestants and Catholics both wanted to build a church on that site, and they finally resolved the issue by shooting craps. The Catholics won the right to build their church on the spot - proving that God works in mysterious ways, or maybe that they are just better with dice than Protestants!

The post office was decorated with a large ornate Christmas tree and a large ornate painting of Ho Chi Minh - communism with a commercial and religious bent!!

Some other things that I learned today: There are no McDonald's in Saigon. There were a few at one time, but they pulled out because the street food was so plentiful and good that it hurt the burger business. Horn-blowing is constant, but it does not mean that the drivers are angry - only that they are coming through - and they do! Wood from Vietnam's numerous rubber trees is used to make furniture. And AH1 (Asian Highway 1 which we were on part of the morning is 21,000 kilometers long and runs from Korea to Turkey!

Tomorrow we are up early catching a flight to Da Nang!

Saigon, Christmas Night

2011-12-25T23:59:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen of the World

We are safely in Saigon, Vietnam, and have been out walking the streets most of the evening. It is a beautiful night, about 80 degrees with balmy breezes. The whole city appears to be up and partying.

The guide who met us at the airport is a twenty-three-year-old young man named Loc. He and a van driver got us to our hotel which is about half an hour from the airport. We are staying in the center of Saigon. It is an amazing place, and I am so glad that I decided to make this trip.

One of the things we read before arriving was how dangerous it was to cross streets in Saigon. I suspected that warning was just for dramatic effect, but getting anywhere downtown on foot is a challenge. There are rivers and streams of motorcycles and motor scooters - I mean thousands upon thousands - some transporting mom, dad, and two kids! Loc told us that there are currently 33 million motorbikes in Vietnam, and three thousand new ones are added to the streets of Saigon every day! I feel certain that we saw most of the 33 million htis evening! Interspersed among all of the cycles and scooters are cars, trucks, and even some bicycles.

Except for Uncle Ho Chi Minh's picture on all of the currency, one would never suspect that this is a communist country. Brand name stores and luxury hotels abound. There are even Santa Clauses out among the tourists. Christmas decorations are up, and we were told that they would remain up until after the lunar new year in February. As we walked by a pretty girl posing in front of a Louis Vuitton storefront, Murphy noted that in retrospect, the capitalist forces actually won the Vietnam War.

Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City after the forces of the north won the Vietnam War - but Loc told us that most of the Vietnamese still call it Saigon. He said the communists changed the names of many places, but the people still tend to use the historic names. Saigon is home to over seven million people.

Dinner tonight was at the Lemongrass Restaurant, a nice place that serves an international clientele on three floors. Our meal came to 770,385 dong - or $36.69 USD. (Half-a-million dong is approximately $25.00.)

We are staying at a three-star hotel called the Asian Ruby, within walking distance of the Saigon City Center and their famous Saigon Opera House. My room is exceptionally nice. We chose three-star rooms through the travel agency to save money - and it looks as though that was a good idea.

Loc will be here early in the morning to get us started on our only full day in Saigon. There is so much to see and do, and so little time!

Christmas Day 2011

2011-12-25T07:24:00.002+09:00

by Pa Rock
World Traveler

My bags are packed, breakfast is in the planning stages, and I am just killing time waiting for my ride. The day appears to be dreary and overcast on Okinawa - just perfect for going someplace else!

I have no idea what the Wi-Fi availability will be in Vietnam, so this blog will feature updates on a catch-as-catch-can basis. Sometime after my return I will post photos at: www.okinawanodyssey.blogspot.com

I am trusting all of my friends to keep the world running smoothly while I am on vacation. My best to everyone for the happiest of holidays!

Christmas Eve on Okinawa

2011-12-24T16:50:00.000+09:00

by Pa Rock
Traveler

This is Christmas Eve, the third and probably the last that I will spend on Okinawa.

My first Christmas Eve on this lovely island was in 1972, just a few months after it went from American to Japanese control. I was a newly married 1st Lieutenant in the United States Army living in a duplex on the edge of Naha. I had no kids then, but my wife was pregnant with Nick who would be born on Okinawa the following July. We had a tree up and were also house-sitting for a friend's Siamese cat while he was back in the States visiting family for the holidays. The cat, of course - being a cat, loved to climb in the Christmas tree. He also liked to eat the foil icicles and then vomit them up in various places around the house. It was a little chilly, but we had our trusty kerosene heater to keep us warm.

My second Christmas Eve here was the most recent one - in 2010. I remember running up and down the island that day in shorts and a tee-shirt, so it was quite warm. The next day, on Christmas, the weather changed drastically and the long pants came out. The temperature dropped into the fifties and we were all freezing!

Today, my third Christmas Eve on Okinawa, the weather is again chilly. I did my morning running around the island in blue jeans and a tee-shirt getting the last few necessaries for tomorrow's trip to Vietnam. We head to the Naha Airport at about 8:30 a.m., fly to Taiwan at noon, and then on to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) where we will arrive in the early evening.

I am traveling with my good friend, Daniel Murphy, a psychologist who works with me at Kadena. Murphy and I and a mutual friend, Kelly, all went to Korea together last year. Kelly was supposed to go with us to Vietnam, but she backed out at the last minute due to a family issue. Valerie, the friend who went to Guam with me over Thanksgiving, is on a special trip to the Philippines this holiday season. Two other friends in our group, Stephen and Stacey, are spending the holidays in Hong Kong. There is so much to see and do in the Far East!

This afternoon as a way of putting off packing, I have settled in for two good holiday movies: the original Miracle on 34th Street (which is chock full of Macy references) and the Jim Carrey version of A Christmas Carol. As soon as they are over, I will put some serious effort into packing.

My best to you all for the happiest of holidays!

Michelle Obama: A Beautiful and Elegant Woman

2011-12-23T16:22:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Jim Sensenbrenner is a flabby old white man with weight issues. He is also a Republican member of Congress from Wisconsin who has been has been feeding at that particular public trough since Jimmy Carter was President.

Congressman Sensenbrenner has caused a bit of a stir lately over remarks that he made regarding the First Lady. While chatting with a group of church ladies back in his home state, he got off on a Limbaughesque tirade about Mrs. Obama where he implied that she was being a bit hypocritical in her campaign against childhood obesity. He apparently told the ladies that the First Lady herself had a "big butt," or words to that effect. Sensenbrenner thought that he was delivering his remarks to fellow crackers, but, alas one of those present took great offense and told him so.

Ann Marsh-Meigs, a 72-year-old member of the church, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she was appalled by the Congressman's characterization of the President's wife. She said that it appeared as though Congressman Sensenbrenner assumed that his remarks would be taken as humor, but she was not amused in the least. She looked the congressman in the eye and said, "I think Michelle is a beautiful and elegant woman, and she dresses beautifully."

Yes, Michelle Obama is a beautiful and elegant woman, possibly the most beautiful and elegant woman ever to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. She is a great wife and mother, and is not afraid to wade in on issues that she feels are important to America and her families. It is, in fact, the First Lady's beauty, brains, and political activism that cause flabby old white men to hurl insults at her.

Sticks and stones, Jimmy Boy - and you, too, Rush!

And Michelle, just for the record, this flabby old white man thinks you're a hottie!

Marty Atencio Dies In Phoenix

2011-12-22T18:10:00.004+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Two days ago in this space I wrote about the latest victim of Sheriff Joe Arpaio and the Maricopa County Sheriff's Department. Forty-four-year-old Marty Atencio of Peoria, Arizona, was arrested by officers of the Phoenix Police Department on assault charges and for exhibiting bizarre behavior. Phoenix PD turned him over to the sheriff's office for processing and detention, and then things got truly bizarre.

The sheriff's people say that Atencio was unruly and had to be tazed. Family members say that he had a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder - going back to his days in the military - and was probably off of his meds. They also said that the sheriff's office was (or should have been) aware of his mental issues. Some are saying that Atencio may have been tazed up to six times. Whatever the number, after being shocked he was placed in a solitary cell, called a "safe" cell, and left alone for fifteen minutes. When someone finally came to check on him, he was not breathing and had no pulse.

Sheriff's Joe's people got Mr. Atencio quickly resuscitated and shuffled off to St. Joseph's Hospital where he lingered in a vegetative state on life support until family members made the sad decision yesterday to remove the machines that were keeping their loved one alive.

Marty's brother, Mike Atencio, called his brother "the most patriotic guy on the planet," and he speaks openly and angrily about Marty being "murdered" by the sheriff's office. He said that the resuscitation and removal of his brother to the hospital was just a political ploy by the sheriff's department so that they would not have to count him as a jailhouse death.

As predicted here, the family is suing Maricopa County over the actions of Sheriff Arpaio and his department in what they regard as the wrongful death of Marty Atencio. They have hired attorney Mike Manning who has brought five other successful lawsuits against the county over wrongful deaths in Arpaio's jail facilities.

Attorney Manning is already hard at work trying to put rumors about Marty to rest. Some have claimed that he may have been high on drugs or drunk when the incident occurred. The lawyer said that the hospital took two separate blood tests on Atencio which prove that he was not using illicit drugs or alcohol at the time of his death. Autopsies are also planned by the County Medical Examiner as well as by a coroner hired by the family. Manning is asking for the jail videos of Marty Atencio being tazed - but he said that Arpaio's people are stalling.

The Phoenix Police Department is also conducting its own investigation of the incident, and they too have requested to see the video tapes.

Attorney Manning said that of the five death cases that he has handled, no detention officer has ever been disciplined as a result of their actions, and indeed all of them received promotions after the deaths!

The US Department of Justice said last week that the administration of Sheriff Joe Arpaio has shown a systematic, discriminatory treatment of Latinos. The death of Marty Atencio is yet one more example of the culture of cruelty, especially against Latinos, that appears to be so pervasive in the sheriff's office.

That cruelty has to stop. Sheriff Joe's reign of terror has to come to an end. Russian novelists Fyodor Dostoyevsky famously remarked, "The degree of civilization in a society is revealed by entering its prisons." Civilization in Maricopa County, Arizona, is by that definition, at rock bottom.

Greyhound Rolls On

2011-12-21T18:11:00.002+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The last time that I had much to say about the Greyhound Bus Line was back in the summer of 2008 when one passenger, Vince Weiguang Li, killed and cut off the head of his seatmate, a young carnival worker named Tim McLean, late one might while traveling across the Canadian prairie. Shouting passengers got the bus driver to pull over and stop, and everyone rushed off after Mr. Li began waving Mr. McLean's head around for all to see. Li also managed to cannibalize part of his victim while waiting on the Royal Canadian Mounties to show up.

The two men had not known each other prior to that fateful night in July. The perpetrator was later judged to be not guilty by reason of insanity and remains institutionalized as of this date.

A couple of months later one passenger aboard a Greyhound, again in Canada, stabbed and seriously injured another passenger. Since that time, as nearly as I can determine through a search of the Internet, the Greyhound Corporation has had a fairly uneventful ride.

But now comes Alec Baldwin spitting snide snippets of slander at poor Greyhound. Baldwin made national news last week when he went to war with American Airlines after being removed from a Los Angeles to New York flight for failing to follow the directives of a flight attendant and turn off his phone. Baldwin said that even though the airline plays his television show, 30 Rock, on their long flights, he will not fly with them again. (And neither will I - and I don't even own a cell phone. I just resent American's high-handedness and lack of cordiality.)

I also have a modicum sympathy for Mr. Baldwin. We all know there are some people in America for whom rules and laws do not apply - bazillionaires, professional athletes - especially if they are white, members of Congress (Sheila Jackson-Lee, I'm looking at you!), reality television stars, and some lesser celebrities like Alec Baldwin - aka the one-percent. (Just kidding, of course! No one in America gets special treatment!)

While Baldwin was barbecuing American Airlines, however, he stepped over a line - at least that is how the head of Greyhound felt. Baldwin said that the airline's flight attendants "have made flying a Greyhound bus experience."

Greyhound President and CEO David Leach was not amused. He sent an open letter to Baldwin saying he was "disheartened" to hear what the actor had said about his company. He invited Baldwin to join him on a bus ride from New York to Boston in the hope that he might learn more about how modern and comfortable Greyhound has become.

Leach said the company has hundreds of new buses on the road, and they are equipped with leather seats, more legroom, power outlets, and even free Wi-Fi. In his letter to the actor, Leach informed him that Greyhound will never ask a passenger to turn off their electronic devices.

I doubt that Alec Baldwin has ever been on a Greyhound bus, but I have had the privilege on numerous occasions. I usually found my trips by Greyhound to be interesting beyond measure. My fellow passengers were always a true slice of Americana, real people with complex issues which they were eager to share. I learned so much riding the bus! Of course, I did have the good sense to never fall asleep next to a stranger!

Hey Alec, life's too short to suffer the rudeness of bitchy flight attendants. American Airlines can fly empty for all I care. From now on let's you and me take the bus and leave the driving to Greyhound!

More Deadly Abuse in Sheriff Joe's Jail

2011-12-20T17:45:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The ink was barely dry on the U.S. Department of Justice's stinging rebuke of Sheriff Joe Arpaio's law enforcement outrages when another tragedy occurred at one of his jails. It is the type of story that keeps coming out of Phoenix with mind-numbing regularity.

Ernest “Marty” Atencio, aged 44, is lying near death at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. He is being kept alive by machines until his family completes their heart-wrenching good-byes. The family, in fact, is already speaking of their loved one in the past tense, stating that he was murdered by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office.

Marty Atencio served his nation proudly in the Gulf War, but his service left him with some mental disabilities that continued to plague the veteran in later years. Late last week Marty was arrested in Phoenix on an assault charge, and while he was being booked at Joe Arpaio’s infamous 4^th Street Jail, he became agitated to the point where Sheriff’s deputies felt the need to taze him. According to local news reports, it appears to have been a particularly brutal tazing that was followed by deputies placing him in a “safe” cell. Atencio was left alone, unobserved for fifteen minutes. When the deputies finally came back to check on him, he was not breathing and had no pulse.

Family members noted that Atencio had been in the 4^th Street Jail before, and his mental disability should have been a matter of record at the jail – which would have perhaps given rise to a more humane form of treatment.

After jail personnel belatedly reengaged with Marty Atencio, he was given CPR and transferred to the hospital. The medical attention was too little and too late.

Mike Atencio, the victim’s brother, updated the press on his brother’s condition. “(Marty) is hanging on by a thread, machines are the only thing keeping him alive.”

Family members will make the decision to unplug those machines in a few days and Marty Atencio will slip quietly from this life. He will be gone, but not forgotten. His family will bring suit against the government of Maricopa County and at some point a judge or a jury will agree with their claims of criminal mistreatment of their relative, and the county will pay out a large settlement to atone for the abuses of Joe Arpaio and his staff – as the county has had to do so often in the past.

Will the taxpayers of Maricopa County ever tire of bailing out the sheriff’s office? Will they ever say that enough is enough? Will they ever give their reality television star the boot and replace him with a law enforcement professional?

Mike Atencio makes no bones about who he holds responsible for the impending death of his brother. “The sheriff’s office murdered my brother. That’s what I want to get out to the public right now."

It is not the first time that an aggrieved relative has lobbed that charge at Joe and his overzealous deputies, and, sadly, it is unlikely to be the last. The carnage will continue as long as the voters stay blinded to the reality of the brutality and keep fawning over their infamous sheriff.

Too much is too much! Sheriff Joe needs to go!

Monday's Poetry: "Merry Christmas, My Friend"

2011-12-19T18:04:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

Today's selection is a timely update on Clement Moore's Twas the Night Before Christmas which I have previously featured in this space. This version was written by a young marine, Lance Corporal James M. Schmidt, twenty-five years ago. It has been previously published in the Marine Corps Gazette and Leatherneck magazine.

The last United States fighting troops left Iraq today. May all of our young people serving in harm's way be home safe and secure in the warmth of their families by the time the next Christmas rolls around.

For your holiday pleasure:

Merry Christmas, My Friend
by Lance Corporal James M. Schmidt

Twas the night before Christmas, he lived all alone,
In a one-bedroom house made of plaster and stone.
I had come down the chimney, with presents to give,
And to see just who in this home did live.

As I looked all about, a strange sight I did see,
No tinsel, no presents, not even a tree.
No stocking by the fire, just boots filled with sand,
On the wall hung pictures of a far distant land.

With medals and badges, awards of all kind,
A sobering thought soon came to my mind.
For this house was different, unlike any I'd seen,
This was the home of a U.S. Marine.

I'd heard stories about them, I had to see more,
So I walked down the hall and pushed open the door.
And there he lay sleeping, silent, alone,
Curled up on the floor in his one-bedroom home.

He seemed so gentle, his face so serene,
Not how I pictured a U.S. Marine.
Was this the hero of whom I'd just read,
Curled up in his poncho, a floor for his bed?

His head was clean-shaven, his weathered face tan,
I soon understood, this was more than a man.
For I realized the families that I saw that night,
Owed their lives to these men, who were willing to fight.

Soon around the Nation, the children would play,
And grown-ups would celebrate on a bright Christmas day.
They all enjoyed freedom, each month and all year,
Because of Marines like this one lying here.

I couldn't help wonder how many lay alone,
On a cold Christmas Eve, in a land far from home.
Just the very thought brought a tear to my eye,
I dropped to my knees and started to cry.

He must have awoken, for I heard a rough voice,
"Santa don't cry, this life is my choice.
I fight for freedom, I don't ask for more,
My life is my God, my country, my Corps."

With that he rolled over, drifted off into sleep,
I couldn't control it, I continued to weep.
I watched him for hours, so silent and still,
I noticed he shivered from the cold night's chill.

So I took off my jacket, the one made of red,
And covered this Marine from his toes to his head.
Then I put on his T-shirt of scarlet and gold,
With eagle, globe and anchor emblazoned so bold.

Although it barely fit me, I began to swell with pride,
And for one shining moment, I was Marine Corps deep inside.
I didn't want to leave him so quiet in the night,
This guardian of honor so willing to fight.

But half asleep he rolled over, and in a voice clean and pure,
Said, "Carry on, Santa, it's Christmas Day, all's secure."
One look at my watch and I knew he was right,
Merry Christmas, my friend, Semper Fi and goodnight.

The Sad Plight of Arizona Prisons

2011-12-18T17:41:00.008+09:00

by Pa Rock

Citizen Journalist

"The humanity of a society can be judged by the treatment of its prisoners." Winston S. Churchill

I wrote a couple of pieces for this blog in May and June of 2009 that dealt with prisons. The first article was about a new prison that a community in Montana self-funded in an effort to bring an economic boost to their small town. The folks in Hardin, Montana, followed the "Field of Dreams" philosophy that "if you build it, they will come." Unfortunately, the state decided that it didn't need a prison in Hardin, and the brand new, ultra-expensive structure was sitting empty while some shysters from Texas were partying-down on the profits that they made from promoting that boondoggle.

At some point in that article I noted that Arizona had prisons owned by private corporations, and those seemed to be working well. Several readers immediately took me to task and explained in lurid detail that Arizona's private prisons are cesspools of abuse against convicts as well as against staff. I have since learned that the lobbyists for their private prisons slather their money all over Arizona legislators. It must be a highly lucrative business.

In a follow-up post I wrote about Marcia Powell, a 48-year-old woman who was serving time for prostitution, a victimless crime, at the prison in Perryville, Arizona. She was left outside in a holding cage and essentially forgotten for four hours when the temperature was over 100 degrees. There was no shade and no water. She was dead by the end of the day.

I also used that post to write about Officer Brent Lumley who had been overpowered and killed by inmates at that same prison a dozen years before. In memory of Officer Lumley, some of his co-workers started an underground newsletter called The Lumley Vampire that provided the inside scoop on what was going on in Arizona prisons as well as those nationwide. It was called the Vampire because it was printed in secret, late at night, and then placed on employee car windshields. The prison officials were able to quash the printed version, so then it was taken to the Internet where it eventually reached a much wider audience.

The reason that I am taking this walk down memory lane today is that I have just received a response to the old post on The Lumley Vampire. It was actually the fifth response that I have received in the two-and-a-half years that the article has been up on the Internet. This response is from a reader who chose to remain anonymous. She states that she is a former resident of the prison at Perryville. Her remarks follow:

"I was incarcerated in the Perryville Women's Prison on the Santa Cruz Unit for two-and-a-half years. Because of overcrowding, they put beds in laundry rooms, classrooms, side rooms, and two condemned kitchens! I was one of many minimum custody inmates who were housed with high-mediums (murders, rapists, child molesters) because they had nowhere else to put them.

In Arizona the summers reach 115-118 plus degrees and the only source of cooling is swamp coolers. During the summer monsoons, the power goes out and we are locked in our rooms with no air and no windows, for hours! My whole pod (48 of us) did not have working toilets so we had to use an outhouse - after we finally banged on the doors loud enough for the CO's (correctional officers) to pay attention and unlock our doors.

My first Bunky was four months pregnant with twins and she started to cramp. Finally they took her to the hospital where she lost one. Six hours later she was back in our room. The same night she started cramping again and was told to lay down (because) it "was normal." She started to bleed and after three hours of banging for help, they came in just as she caught her second baby in the toilet. All that I could do was wrap her up in a towel and hold onto her until medical took my screaming / sobbing Bunky and her still-born daughter out of our room. She was back by morning.

I'm home now, but those two-and-a-half years will take a lifetime of therapy to make the nightmares go away. I wish that I could be a voice for the ones who will never leave there."

There are those who would scoff at this woman's remarks about life in hell, saying that she must have committed a crime and thus got what she deserved. I wonder, though, if inflicting experiences that will require a "lifetime in therapy to make the nightmares go away" does anything to strengthen us as a society. Does swift and ugly retribution make us better, or is it a way of pleasuring ourselves by kicking the shit out of someone while they are down?

Somehow that just doesn't feel like something Jesus would do.

The Annual Holiday Party

2011-12-17T21:00:00.000+09:00

by Pa Rock
Party Boy

Last year my friends Kelly and Nefredia and I went to Murphy's apartment for a Christmas gathering where we ate soup and pie - and played cards. It was on Christmas Day and into that evening, and the weather was starting to turn cold - well, cold for Okinawa.

This year we held the party a week early because Murphy and I are going to be on a plane headed to Vietnam on Christmas Day. Nefredia was the hostess. Kelly couldn't make it, but Valerie was there. The party also included two of our co-workers, Steven and Ron, and their better halves, Stacey and Carolyn. Merriment was the order of the day.

The food was plentiful and very good. Valerie brought groceries to my apartment and cooked here before we left. She created a couple of pasta dishes and a pair of meat sides. Murphy, who rode to Nefredia's with us, provided fruit salad and some dip that he made himself. My contributions were all store-bought: pecan pie, egg nog, and cashews. Ron and Carolyn brought a big salad, and Steven and Stacey showed up with bread and wine.

It was such a nice night.

We have decided to do a movie night in January, and I will be the host for that. We will be premiering a great new feature-length film months before it is available to the general public. The menu for that affair will be popcorn and soft drinks. More than that I cannot say!

Feds Finally Thump Arpaio

2011-12-16T17:35:00.004+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

I awoke to great news on the radio this morning. The US Department of Justice, after a painfully slow three-year investigation, has finally come down with a list of findings against the most narcissistic and shameless cop in America, Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. In a detailed list of abuses, the DOJ hammered Arpaio on his department's pervasive practice of racial profiling, routine mistreatment of minority (Latino) inmates, and knee-jerk retaliation against those Arpaio sees as opponents to his onerous law enforcement practices.

Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, herself a victim of Arpaio's political revenge, viewed the release of the DOJ report as a God-given Christmas miracle. She said, "Let this be the start of the end of Joe Arpaio and his reign of terror."

Some of the findings in the report were:

Latino drivers are four-to-nine times more likely to be stopped than similarly situated non-Latino drivers.
A fifth of all the immigration-sweep traffic stops violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizures.
Arpaio's anti-immigration squads responded repeatedly with enforcement patrols to complaints about people with "dark skin" or Spanish speakers.
Jail guards punished Spanish-speaking inmates for failing to understand their commands in English, sometimes putting them into solitary confinement for that reason.
Jail guards refused to accept grievance forms and "tank orders' which allow inmates to request basic daily services, that were written in Spanish.
Guards pressured Latino inmates to sign voluntary deportation forms.
Arpaio's office responded to critics by subjecting them to "retaliatory detentions and arrests without cause, unfounded civil lawsuits, and other baseless complaints."

After the report was released today, the US Department of Homeland Security announced that it was taking its 287(g) cross-training program out of the county's jails - and prisoners held on immigration charges were also being removed to other facilities. DHS is headed by former Arizona governor and long-time Arpaio foe Janet Napolitano. Arpaio will no longer be able to strut his stuff as a junior G-Man.

Joe Arpaio, in his best bulldog manner, held a news conference today and declared the whole thing a "witch hunt," and said it was orchestrated by President Obama who is picking on him for the benefit of Obama's upcoming presidential campaign. That, of course, is a baseless charge, but one that is almost amusing considering that Joe is always in campaign mode and has a habit of leaking his department's upcoming raids and theatrics to friendly members of the press.

Mary Rose Wilcox is right. It's time for the Arpaio reign of terror to come to an end. Old Joe needs to go - now more than ever!

Shiva is Ten!

2011-12-15T21:03:00.005+09:00

by Pa Rock
Sentimentalist

I received an email this morning from Millie Crossland, a good friend whom I see way too seldom. Millie wrote to let me know that her dog, a beautiful Great Pyrenees named Shiva, turned ten-years-old today. She was also thanking me for giving her Shiva a decade ago.

Shiva was born on my little farm down in the Ozarks, a place that I lovingly call Rock's Roost. The "farm" is actually less than four acres of pine trees and brambles scattered along a rocky hillside. It has a small farmhouse that is barely big enough for one person, and a few out-buildings. It was my happy home for several years, but today sits sadly vacant. However, to quote an old fascist, it is a place where "I shall return" someday.

Back when I was living at Rock's Roost, I maintained a small petting zoo that was home to several small goats, some guineas and chickens, a couple of pot-bellied pigs, three emus, and even a fighting ostrich for a time. The most important residents of the farm were Paladin and Paloma, a pair of beautiful Great Pyrenees dogs who oversaw the place and kept varmints at bay.

Shiva was born to Paladin and Paloma on the dirt floor of the barn. I came home for lunch that day and knew that Paloma was in labor - with a couple of pups already snuggling up next to their mother. That evening it was dark by the time I got home, so I took a flashlight out to the barn to check on Paloma and see how she was doing. (It was not her first litter, and I knew that she could handle the situation.)

Great Pyrenees are big white dogs that are bred for watching sheep and goats. It is not unusual for them to have large litters. Their puppies are white with tan patches that fade to white as they get older. When I went into the barn I was greeted by the sight of a fatigued Paloma nursing a pile of little white puppies - but in the center of the pile was one that was coal black.

It took a few minutes to get my bearings and figure out exactly what was happening, but soon my light drifted over a few feet on the ground where I spotted Mama Pot-Bellied Pig who had just given birth to a pile of black piglets. One of the brood had wiggled around on the floor and wound up in the wrong pile! (I had not even realized that the old sow was in a motherly way.)

Shiva was the runt of Paloma's litter, and I knew when I saw her that she and Millie would be perfect for each other...and they have been! I wish them a many more years of enduring friendship as they enjoy life together and take care of each other.

Happy birthday, Shiva!

Me and My Big Mouth!

2011-12-15T17:51:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Grinch

Yesterday I used this space to praise the folks at Armed Forces Network because they had the good sense to replace some of their more angry radio talkshow hosts (Limbaugh, Hannity, and Colmes) with Christmas carols. It was such a pleasant change of pace. Unfortunately, as I learned today, it was also painfully temporary.

While I didn't get to tune in during the Hannity or Colmes time slots this afternoon, and don't know what was playing at those times, I did crank up the radio on my way home expecting some more seasonal merriment - but the Grinch had been at work and Rushbag was back on the air spewing fecal matter and hate at warp speed. It was such a disappointment. Unfortunately, at least from my perspective, AFN decided to replace the National Public Radio morning programing with seasonal songs today - so I did get my fix, but a such a cost! That's what I get for bragging yesterday!

The weather is misty and chilly, and the days are too short so I am driving to work and home in the dark, and somebody needs to send me some holiday cheer!

(And to my old friend in Kansas, I am going to take your advice and increase my listening options. That will make me infinitely more merry!)

It's Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Christmas!

2011-12-14T17:41:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
American Abroad

It never snows on Okinawa, and a cold day here will be in the fifties, so it's hard to really get the sense that the holidays are upon us. People buy trees and decorate their houses - but the military wants those Christmas lights off by 10 p.m. It's just not the same experience that our friends and families are having back home.

But something nice has happened the last two days.

We only have two American radio stations on the island, and both are run by the Armed Forces Network. The FM station has a playlist of about a dozen pop songs that they play over and over - with an occasional country tune thrown in for the older crowd. The AM station is primarily talk, with shows ranging from NPR's Morning Edition to more odious offerings like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Alan Colmes. Hannity is usually on during lunch, and Limbaugh spews his stuff during the drive home. That is the only station that I can get in my car, so my radio is normally off during lunch and when I am headed home.

Starting yesterday, however, something wonderful has happened. Both Hannity and Limbaugh have been replaced by Christmas carols. It is such a terrific experience to be able to actually enjoy the trip home in the evenings. I find myself singing along, much to the amusement of the Japanese drivers in the neighboring lanes!

I wish the holidays would last forever!

Sheriff Joe Needs to Go

2011-12-13T18:24:00.007+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona - which includes the city of Phoenix, is an intentionally controversial and combative character who thrives on hogging the public spotlight. Old Joe is known for such outrages as bragging about feeding his prisoners green bologna, making them wear pink underwear, and limiting their television to a couple of channels that no one wants to watch. He is a real tough guy and wants everyone to know that it doesn't pay to mess with Joe.

Arpaio is also known for other scurrilous stunts including his immigrant sweeps which tie up vast amounts of sheriff's department personnel and equipment - as well as local commerce and traffic- for hours on end, but seldom result in more than a handful of arrests, conducting political vendettas against those who dare to oppose him, setting up or condoning situations where people wind up dying in his jails, and costing the county millions of dollars in lawsuits when the courts ultimately do the right thing and hold his office responsible for the false arrests and injuries - or deaths - sustained in his jails.

But the people in and around Phoenix like their tough cop and revel in all of the glory that his theatrics bring to the Scorpion State. He is currently in his fifth term as sheriff, and plans to run for a sixth in 2012 - at a time when he will be eighty-years-old.

The worm, however, may finally be ready to turn. There has been a recent story in the national news about how Joe's office failed to investigate hundreds of sex-crime cases, many involving children, between 2005 and 2007. Around 400 cases were either not investigated at all, or only given a cursory examination. That was reported locally in 2008, but the people who live in Maricopa County are subjected to an almost daily barrage of bombastic Joe stories and are basically inoculated against his blatant abuses of power and dereliction of duty.

Now the story about the neglected sex crimes cases has re-emerged, this time on a national level, and more people than ever are beginning to focus in on the state of law enforcement in Maricopa County, Arizona. Recently I received an email invitation asking me to sign an on-line petition requesting that Sheriff Joe resign, and my decision to add my name took all of about two nano-seconds. I proudly cast my vote at the ballot box against Joe Arpaio in 2008, and have never regretted that decision. It was the right thing to do.

Now Old Joe should do the right thing. With the scandals that Joe has brought to Arizona, his wanton disregard for the rights of certain classes of individuals, and the outrageous amounts of money that he has lavished on his department as well as the millions of dollars paid out in lawsuits as a result of his department's actions, Joe really should do the honorable thing and resign.

I am not, however, holding my breath expecting a miracle like that to happen. That is why I added my name to the petition, and why I will once again vote against Joe Arpaio in 2012. Sheriff Joe needs to go.

You may view and sign the on-line petition that is seeking Joe's resignation here: http://www.change.org/petitions/demand-the-resignation-of-sheriff-joe-arpaio

Monday's Poetry: "That Spotted Sow"

2011-12-12T17:45:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

It's been awhile since this space was used to highlight any cowboy poetry, a favorite genre of mine. I came across "That Spotted Sow" by Carlos Ashley recently and instantly knew that it was something that I would like to share. As someone who once ran a small farm (petting zoo, actually), I occasionally came into contact with the odd animal that felt he controlled me, and not the other way around. (A particularly bossy goose comes to mind!) The old sow in the poem that follows has a big streak of independence and will not be tamed. She is the type of character who is easy to "root" for!

That Spotted Sow
or The Ballad of Cedar Mountain

by Carlos Ashley

Did you ever hear the story
   Of that famous hog of mine?
She’s a razorback and spotted
   Black and white from hoof to spine;

With a snout made outa granite,
   She can root just like a plow;
And the fence ain’t been invented
   That can turn that spotted sow.

Born and bred on Cedar Mountain
   She is wilder than a deer;
And she’s known by reputation
   To the ranch hands far and near.

Though a sow of mine had raised ‘er,
   On that mountain she was free;
And I always kinda doubted
   That she really b’longed to me.

She didn’t claim no owner—
   Save the God who put ‘er there—
And for mortal man’s relations
   She just simply didn’t care.

She preferred the solemn silence
   Of her Cedar Mountain home,
And most of all she wanted us
   To let ‘er plum alone.

Ever Fall I’d try to mark ‘er
   But she’d get away agin;
And I reckon that my cussin,
   Though artistic, was a sin.

Well, I sold my brand in ’30—
   Moved out ever hog and cow;
Rounded-up…yea…all but one head,
   All but that blamed spotted sow.

So we organized against ‘er—
   Got the best of dogs and men;
But we never got good started
   Puttin that hog in a pen.

Now we really went a-huntin
   When we tried to catch Ole Spot;
We left the ranch at daylight
   And her trail was always hot.

She might be pickin acorns
   On the banks of Sandy Creek.
Or in somebody’s turnips
   Cultivatin, so to speak.

But let the foot of dog or man
   Disturb the morning dew.
And you might as well a phoned ‘er,
   Cause somehow she always knew.

She’d light out for Cedar Mountain
   Where the land and sky divide—
There ain’t no spot on earth nowhere
   A better place to hide.

We’d hear the pack a-bayin
   Up the mountain loud and clear.
But before we rode up to ‘em
   That ole sow would disappear

Or she’d rally ‘gainst a boulder,
   Bristlin like a porcupine,
Till a dog forgot his caution—
   Then she’d cut him into twine.

Killin dogs was just a pastime
   To that hog; I’m tellin you
With them long, curved, knife-like tushes
   She could slice a houn in two.

She could whip most any critter
   On four legs I ever saw,
And she had a perfect record
   'Cause she never fought a draw.

Now the more I tried to catch her,
   And the more I give it thought,
I begin to get the notion
   She’s opposed to bein’ caught.

I couldn’t help admire that sow,
   When all was done and said;
For, to tell the truth about ‘er,
   She was really thoroughbred.

She had character and courage
   And the heart to do the right;
And when it come to fightin
   Now she shore as hell could fight.

Well, the Fall froze into Winter,
   And the Winter thawed to Spring.
April watered hill and valley;
   Maytime painted ever’thing.

Late one evenin just at sundown
   I was ridin home right slow,
When I passed a lonesome waterhole
   And saw…..it was a show.

Ole Spot was trailin down the hill
   And right behind her trotted
Ten baby pigs not ten days old,
   And ever one was spotted.

I stopped and stared; she studied me;
   My eyes filled like a fountain;
And there I gave ole Spot a deed—
   A deed to Cedar Mountain.

Now I was taught that folks who try,
   You oughta help and praise em;
So, “Boys,” I sez, “Ole Spot's got pigs,
   And, damn sure gonna raise ‘em."

She’s still on Cedar Mountain
   Though I seldom see ‘er now;
You can bet that’s one dominion
   Where the Queen’s a spotted sow.

The High Cost of Dissent

2011-12-11T13:09:00.002+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Bryan Gonzalez was a Border Patrol agent in Deming, New Mexico, who lost his job over some remarks that he made in private to a co-worker. Mr. Gonzalez expressed his opinion to the co-worker that if marijuana was legalized, drug-related violence across the border in Mexico would cease.

That is a view held by many citizens of the United States, and probably many Mexicans as well. But it is not a view that is held in high regard by members and the leadership of the United States Border Patrol. Why, in the weird event that Mr. Gonzalez proved to be right and drug violence began to come down, whatever would become of the Border Patrol.

What would become of job security?

Mr. Gonzalez probably drove the decisive nail in his employment coffin when he went on to tell his co-worker about an organization of current and former law enforcement officials that is fighting to decriminalize marijuana. That group, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), has seen its membership numbers explode over the past few years. It now has an email list of over 48,000, including members (past and present) of law enforcement, judges, prosecutors, and even prison guards - all people in positions to clearly appreciate and understand the massive impact that the flood of marijuana "criminals" has on the nation's police systems, courts, jails, and society in general.

So what became of Bryan Gonzalez? After his "friend" passed his comments up the food chain, a letter landed on his desk telling him that he was terminated for his "personal views that were contrary to core characteristics of Border Patrol Agents, which are patriotism, dedication, and espirit de corps."

A man who loves his country enough to risk his job by stating an idea that he believed would reduce warfare along the border and undoubtedly save millions of dollars in the process is unpatriotic? Clearly something is wrong with that characterization. Mr. Gonzalez is currently in court fighting a flawed system.

Joe Miller, a probation officer in Mohave County, Arizona, has filed a suit in Federal District Court, after he was fired for signing a letter from the aforementioned LEAP. His employer also attempted to keep him from drawing his unemployment, but that mean-spirited effort failed.

A third law enforcement official, Jonathan Wender, was fired as a police sergeant in a small town in Washington, due in part to his support of the decriminalization of marijuana. He went to court and was awarded $815,000 and given his old job back. He has since retired and now teaches a course at the University of Washington entitled "Drugs and Society."

It's not easy to fight the system, as anyone who ever protested a dismissal or had to fight to receive unemployment benefits will readily attest to, but things are slow to change in a bureaucratic organization without someone occasionally stepping forward and putting his or her neck on the line. What seems extreme today, will often be seen as common sense tomorrow.

Reason pulls us ever onward, though sometimes the pace is painfully slow.

(Parts of this piece were taken from an article by Marc Lacey titled "Police Officers Find that Dissent on Drug Laws May come with a Price." It was published in the New York Times on 2 Dec 2011.)

The Notebook

2011-12-10T14:41:00.005+09:00

by Pa Rock
Movie Aficionado

The Notebook, a 2004 movie that was based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks, is proof that Hollywood does not have to destroy a good story in order to adapt it to the screen. And it also serves to remind me that there are hundreds of really good movies out there of which I am sorely unfamiliar.

This is a sweet and simple story. An old man (James Garner) shows up at the rest home every morning to read to one of the residents, a lovely older woman (Gena Rowlands) who is suffering from dementia. Each morning he has to be introduced the the lady, Allie, because during the night she has forgotten him. The old man is known as Duke, and the handwritten story that he reads from an old notebook is the tale of a young man and woman falling in love. He reads the story to her over and over, day after day.

It becomes fairly obvious early on that Duke and Allie are in fact the young couple in the notebook. Duke doesn't just show up at the rest home each day, he is actually living there to be near his wife, the woman he has adored for decades - and the woman who has now forgotten him.

Much of the film is focused on the couple as they were just meeting and falling in love - the story in the notebook. Ryan Gosling plays Noah (as Duke was called in his youth), and Rachel McAdams is the young Allie. They meet, Noah charms Allie with his outlandish behavior, they fall in love, her wealthy parents intervene and pull them apart, World War II happens, Allie falls in love with someone else, and then the fates kick in.

Yes, the story is comfortable and maybe a little too predictable at times, but it is also very, very good. It is a tale of ordinary life played out on a canvas of extraordinary love. It will leave you in a good place.

Holiday Greetings from Japan!

2011-12-09T14:43:00.005+09:00

by Pa Rock
Globe Trotter

This morning I sat down to create a newsletter to place in the few holiday cards that I send out - and since not that many people get an actual card from me during the holiday season, and since it is cold and rainy today on Okinawa and my creative spark has come, fizzled, and gone out - I am choosing to memorialize the holiday message in the Ramble as my daily offering.

Holiday Greetings from Japan

As hard as it is to imagine, another year is on the verge of slipping away. 2011 has been an eventful and satisfying time in my life. The most important happenings this year have been the births of my granddaughters, Olive Noel Macy on October 12^th in Overland Park, Kansas, and Willow Midnight Seraphina Files on November 30^th in Stayton, Oregon. Olive and Willow are both bright-eyed and healthy – really sweet additions to our family!

My friend, Valerie, arrived on island to work at Kadena in January. She stayed at my apartment for a month or so while getting settled and finding a place of her own. In February I made my second trip to Seoul, Korea – this time for training, but I was able to get out and explore Seoul some more. It is unbelievably huge and modern.

March brought us the earthquake and tsunami that rocked northern Japan. Although we did not get any physical repercussions down in Okinawa, that event stirred environmental and political issues that impact us to the present. Tim and Erin were supposed to come for a visit in April – and also go to Tokyo, but they postponed their trip due to the radiation alerts in the Tokyo area.

Three friends and I spent Memorial Day weekend on Yoron, a small Japanese island that is about 10 miles beyond the northernmost point of Okinawa. We stayed in a nice hotel and did a lot of exploring and bike-riding, and also weathered a powerful typhoon while we were there. In September another group and I went to Tokashima, a small island in the Kerama’s that is close to Okinawa, for the Labor Day weekend. That was also fun, and we didn’t have a typhoon to deal with.

Later in September I made my first trip back to the States since arriving on Okinawa in July of 2010. I was there three weeks, got to see all of my kids and grandkids as well as my sister, Gail, and all of her kids and grandkids – and a few old friends, to boot! One of the highlights was being able to be at the hospital when little Olive was born.

A couple of friends and I went to Guam for Thanksgiving week. It is a small island also, about half the size of Okinawa, and we were able to see most of it in four days. Christmas Day a friend and I will be leaving for a week in Vietnam, and we will return on New Years’ Day. We will travel from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Da Nang, and on up to Hanoi. It should be very interesting.

So 2011 has been a year of travels and babies! I have made it my mission while out here in the Pacific to have a good time and try to see as much as possible, and I think that I am being fairly successful in that effort. I should be moving back to the States (probably Phoenix) this July and will hopefully see all of you in the weeks and months that follow.

You can see pictures of my travels on the Internet at: www.okinawanodyssey.blogspot.com

My best to each of you for a joyous and happy 2012!

Messing with the One Percent

2011-12-08T19:01:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Registered Voter

Sitting out here on the world's elbow makes it difficult for me to be very active in the political and socio-economic movements that are occurring at home. I mean, I guess that I could go sit in a park, but the Japanese police would eventually show up and make me leave - and any message that I might be promoting would get lost in translation.

Today, however, I got an email from my election authority in Missouri that gives me a good opportunity to share my concern through the ballot box. Missouri is holding a presidential preference primary in February, and my local county clerk wrote to ask which party's ballot I would like to have sent to me.

The Democratic Party ballot had four names as well as an "uncommitted" slot. The candidates in order of appearance on the ballot were Barack Obama, Randall Terry, Darcy G. Richardson, and John Wolfe. Terry, of course, is a long-time anti-choice advocate who is "running" as a Democrat just to give any rigid fundamentalist Democrats who refuse to vote Republican a place to cast their vote. I have never heard of the other two candidates.

The Republican Party ballot has ten names as well as the "uncommitted" slot. Those candidates are, in order of appearance on the ballot: Gary Johnson (former governor of New Mexico who has been excluded from most, if not all, of the Republican debates), Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Michael J. Meehan, Rick Perry, Keith Drummond, Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul.

Oddly, Newt Gingrich is not on the ballot - making it look as though the Newster may have some organizational deficiencies.

Having no doubt whatsoever that Barack Obama will sail to an easy victory in the Missouri Democratic Presidential Primary and will go on to become the national nominee, I have decided to use my vote to give a boost to one of the Republican candidates because I know they will appreciate my ~~meddling~~ participation in their primary.

But now the question becomes which weasel to support. Should I act honorably and try to help one of their better angels - Johnson or Huntsman - or should I be a problem voter and support somebody completely unelectable like Cain, Santorum, or Bachmann? I could also vote for Ron Paul whose numbers are always just high enough to give the leaders heartburn, but continually falls short of victory. It is really a difficult decision.

What do you think? All advice appreciated!

The New Massachusetts Witch Hunt

2011-12-07T18:27:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

I guess if you were of a mind to conduct a witch hunt, the state of Massachusetts would be a good setting. It is, after all, where sanctimonious Christians went on a rampage four centuries ago and burned a couple of dozen housewives at the stake as the result of some malicious ramblings by a few adolescent girls.

Over the past few days there has been another witch hunt occurring in the Bay State, this one involving an annoying television reporter who is hellbent on getting a high school teacher fired over his past involvement in a few porn movies. Reporter Mike Beaudet of Fox Boston received a tip that the Chairman of the English Department and crew coach at Mystic Valley Regional Charter School in Malden, Massachusetts, had once acted in some gay porn movies. The teacher, Kevin Hogan, is by all reports well respected by his students who regard him as a good teacher.

Beaudet, in a typical Fox ambush move, had some still shots made from one of the movies and then tried to confront Hogan on camera. He then began interviewing members of the community to find out what they thought of this teacher's past vocation.

But that wasn't enough for the dogged reporter, he also went on Twitter and contacted a female student of Hogan's. "Would love to know what you and other students think of him." The student responded, "I think you blew this story way out of proportion and single handedly destroyed a man's life." Another student of Hogan's chimed in: "Hogan is the best thing that has happened to my crew team. Students now have more respect for him due to what you did #thanks" And this from another student: "My English teacher is a gay pornstar #nbd" (no big deal).

And my personal favorite student response to Beaudet: "Reporters are so fucking annoying." Are you listening, Mike? That student was speaking directly to you. Surely in a city the size of Boston you could find some real news to report.

There is now a page on Facebook dedicated to keeping Kevin Hogan employed and firing Mike Beaudet. It has only been up a few days and has already been accessed over 25,000 times. The site is: http://www.facebook.com/firemikebeaudet.

Sadly, even though the kids are supporting their teacher, many parents are not. Forgiveness is a hard concept for Christians. It is much easier to pass the matches and chant "Burn witch, burn."

Eat More Kale!

2011-12-06T18:02:00.007+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Bo Muller-Moore is a folk artist in Vermont who hand-screens tee-shirts as part of his strategy to eek-out a living. One of his better sellers is a collection of shirts that declares this healthy sentiment: "Eat More Kale." Nobody, one could suppose, would take offense at a positive message like that.

Nobody, that is, except the folks at Chick-fil-A who seem to think that it is usurping their message of "Eat mor chikin." The gigantic corporation told the Vermont working man in a recent cease-and-desist letter that his tee-shirt slogan "is likely to cause confusion of the public and dilute the distinctiveness of Chick-fil-A's intellectual property." (Can it get any more intellectual than "Eat mor chikin?")

So once again in America we see the ugly reality of one of these obscenely big corporate "people" running around trying to stomp a little guy into the ground. This is a perfect example of why Americans have taken to the nation's streets and parks in an angry rebuke over the disparity of wealth.

Chick-fil-A, if you remember has been in the news before for its support of anti-gay activities. Searching the terms "Chick-fil-A" and "homophobia" in a reputable search engine will produce thousands of hits. In fact, Chick-fil-A's financial support of many Christian fundamentalist organizations and activities has led some wags to refer to their main product, a delicious chicken sandwich, as "Jesus Chicken." To underscore the devout faith of management, all of their stores close on Sundays so that their employees can go to church and spend time with their families.

I love the sandwiches at Chick-fil-A, even if their corporate attitude and policies make them hard to stomach. But if company sees fit to maintain its air of intolerance, I may just have to pass on the "chikin" and begin eating more kale. God knows it would be better for me!

Monday's Poetry: "Georgia Dusk"

2011-12-05T18:02:00.002+09:00

by Pa Rock
Poetry Appreciator

I have recently begun reading the Library of America two-volume collection entitled Harlem Renaissance. The first volume consists of five novels of the 1920's, and the first of those novels is Cane by Jean Toomer. It is built around short stories, character sketches, and poetry from his experience as an educator transplanted from Washington, DC into rural Georgia just after World War I. Toomer was the son of a former slave and the grandson of a governor of Louisiana. He was an astute observer of the poverty and class struggle that was prevalent in America during the years that he was writing.

This piece, as with most of the material in Cane, is very descriptive of rural Georgia in the 1920's as seen through the eyes of a black man.

Georgia Dusk
by Jean Toomer

The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
The setting sun, to indolent to hold
A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
Passively darkens for night's barbecue,

A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
An orgy for some genius of the South
With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.

The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,
Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill
Their early promise of a bumper crop.

Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile
Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low
Where only chips and stumps are left to show
The solid proof of former domicile.

Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
Race memories of king and caravan,
High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,
Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp

Their voices rise...the pine trees are guitars,
Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain...
Their voices rise...the chorus of the cane
Is caroling a vesper to the stars.

O singers, resinous and soft your songs
Above the sacred whisper of the pines
Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.

Max Winkler's "Ceremony"

2011-12-04T13:27:00.018+09:00

by Pa Rock
Movie Aficionado

Yesterday as I stopped in at the "Shopette" on Camp Foster for my morning fix of iced tea, I took a few minutes to peruse the shelves of movies for sale - always a much better selection than the violence and drivel that seems to constantly be playing at our local military theatres. As I was about to pay for my drink and head home, one movie caught my attention. It was a romantic comedy entitled Ceremony, and I was drawn to it because of film's leading man, Michael Angarano.

Okay, so the name "Michael Angarano" probably isn't readily recognizable to many movie-goers - yet - but it was a name that I know. Michael Angarano happens to also be the male lead in an upcoming movie, The Brass Teapot, which was written (both the story and the screenplay) by my youngest son, Tim - and Tim, who was on the set for much of the filming, knows Mr. Angarano and is familiar with his acting ability. I bought Ceremony and took it home so that I could take the talent-measure of this young man as well.

It turns out that my money was wisely invested.

Ceremony is a movie by twenty-somethings aimed primarily at the demographic of twenty-somethings, but this old sixty-something also found it easy to enjoy. Max Winkler, a sharp young filmmaker who is on the sunny side of thirty, wrote and directed the movie, and he also took on the responsibility of casting the major roles - making Ceremony a "Max Winkler film" in the true sense of the phrase. It was Winkler's writing and directing debut for a feature-length movie, a feat which he pulled off flawlessly.

Michael Angarano stars as Sam Davis, a young man who writes unsuccessful children's books that seem to borrow from his own misfortunes. As the movie opens, Sam has just learned that the woman he loves, Zoe (Uma Thurman), is about to marry someone else, and he sets off on a quest with his best friend Marshall (Reece Thompson) to crash the wedding party and bring Zoe to her senses through his boyish charm and manly perseverance.

Sam, however, neglects to tell Marshall the real purpose of their road trip - a trip that is taking place in Marshall's car and being financed primarily through Marshall's largess. Marshall, an emotionally wounded and frail character, believes that they have hit the road to work on rebuilding their friendship which has been neglected of late.

(A gay subtext runs through the story - enough innuendo to keep it interesting, but not enough to derail Sam's relentless pursuit of Zoe.)

Sam and Marshall eventually make it into the wedding party and are even invited to stay in the large beach house where the nuptials are to be held. Their benefactor in this process in the prospective groom, Whit (Lee Pace), a polished and pretentious documentary filmmaker who is sure enough of himself to know that Sam's quest for Zoe's heart will be futile. The self-confident and narcissistic Whit has one of the best lines in the movie as he and the male wedding guests are returning from a night of camping in the woods. As they pass in front of the rain-soaked picture window that frames a tear-soaked Sam, Whit tells his attendant film crew: "Get a picture of that. He's the saddest man in the world." It was a beautiful shot.

Uma Thurman is perfect as Zoe, the bride-to-be who enjoys (at times) the daring mischief of Sam, but also understands her own need for the security of Whit. An unsuccessful children's author barely out of adolescence would not be her ticket to a comfortable ever-after. The choice of Uma Thurman for the role of Zoe was the director's nod to classy Hollywood leading ladies, and it was perfect casting.

Reece Thompson, Sam's emotionally and financially abused sidekick, Marshall, does a fine job of growing and separating himself from Sam's sprawling personality during the stay at the beach house. He comes across as perhaps one of the most likable, though constantly victimized, characters in the wedding party. At one point he is relegated to spending the night sleeping in a bathtub of water so that Sam can have their bed for his carnal pleasures. And it is Marshall who rushes into the ocean to save the life of Zoe's younger brother, Teddy, a hapless and lovable drunk played by Jake M. Johnson, yet Marshall's act of heroism is largely ignored by one-and-all during the ensuing commotion over Teddy following his near-drowning. Marshall and his feelings are easy to overlook.

But it is the physical and comedic energy of Michael Angarano which drives Ceremony. The actor appears to be a full head shorter than the leading lady, bringing to mind Dustin Hoffman and Michael J. Fox of earlier generations. But Angarano, who turned twenty-four yesterday (December 3rd), is funnier than Hoffman and presents on screen as more natural and believable than Fox. He is a dynamo throughout the movie. Michael Angarano's list of credits is growing rapidly, and soon he will be a household name.

Ceremony is a great movie. It was written for a young audience, but sophisticated old farts will find it funny as well.

And I do like the concept of screenwriters directing their own work!

Surviving the Brutality of Winter

2011-12-03T17:49:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Back a few years ago when I was still living and working in the Missouri Ozarks, I remember heading to the grocery store every time the weather reports indicated snow - especially for the first snow warning of the year. Me and everyone else in town felt the need to stock up just in case - never mind that most of us had plenty of groceries already. I was always after ingredients to make chili, a hot and spicy comfort food whose steamy aromas fought off the bitterness of winter in a way that few other foods could. And, not surprisingly, many of the other shoppers were also buying hamburger, tomato paste, onions, kidney beans, and that wonderful Williams Chili Seasoning.

It was what we did to welcome in winter.

Last night the winds howled across Okinawa from dusk until daybreak, and today the temperature had dipped down into the fifties - admittedly not cold by Ozarks standards, but temperatures that low on a small island put many people in mind of winter. I was out most of the morning running errands, and by early afternoon I was ready to buy just a few groceries and head back to my apartment. I wanted to go home and put some comfort food in the oven - and baked chicken thighs sounded like just the ticket.

But the season was changing, and every other American on Okinawa seemed to have basically the same urge as me - to clean out a few shelves at the commissary and go home and cook.

The commissary at Camp Foster was packed. I knew it was going to be an ordeal when I stepped inside and discovered that there were no carts. I took one of those small shopping baskets and headed off to war. I only needed a few items, and the little basket would be more than adequate.

Or so I thought.

Eventually my burden got so heavy that I had to go loiter around the check-out stands until I could finagle a real shopping cart. The urge to stockpile overwhelmed me. I think it started when I tried to get to the canned chili - that sounded so good! But when I had to get in line behind some young marines who were literally throwing the cans of chili into their carts, I knew that the battle for survival was on!

A quest for chicken thighs, milk, and maybe a box of cookies eventually totaled eighty-five dollars - but I can now make it through this dangerous cool spell with the knowledge that I won't starve to death! (And all of the fresh chicken thighs were gone, so I had to buy frozen ones. This afternoon's comfort food turned out to be Double Cheeseburger Hamburger Helper - and it was delicious!)

Kentucky Passions

2011-12-02T17:33:00.000+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

A few weeks ago I came across an article on the Internet that promised to provide a list of the ten states with the greatest percentage of smokers and the smallest percentage of smokers. Without scrolling down to look, I knew - I absolutely knew - that Kentucky would have the greatest ratio of citizenry of any state who smoked. And I was right.

Not only does the Commonwealth of Kentucky grow much of the nation's tobacco crop, it also employees thousands of people in the manufacture of cigarettes, and dumb asses, being dumb asses, feel some sort of perverse compulsion to be tobacco consumers as well. Smoking is almost a religion in the Blue Grass State.

I used to live in Kentucky - and I know this stuff.

Another thing that I know about Kentucky through first-hand experience, is that the Commonwealth has more than its fair share of bigots. While it was technically a "border state" in the American Civil War, those folks think they live in the heart of Dixie. The racism has grown more subtle over the years, but it is still very much in evidence.

That is why I was not in the least surprised when I came across an article, again on the Internet (my primary source of news overseas) that stated the membership of the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church in Pike County, Kentucky, has voted to deny membership to interracial couples and to ban interracial couples from participating in some of the church's activities.

It seems that some in the small church got their tails in a knot last June when 24-year-old Stella Harville, daughter of the church's secretary and clerk, showed up at the church with her black fiance, 29-year-old Ticha Chikuni, a native of Zimbabwe. They performed a song for the congregation.

Melvin Thompson, a former pastor at the church who must have been fuzzy on the teachings of Christ, then told the young lady's father that she and her fiance could not sing at the church again. Mr. Thompson proposed that the church go on record as being open to all people to attend worship services, but opposed to the concept of interracial marriage. The church ultimately barred interracial couples from being members of the church and from being involved in any public worship services except funerals.

Reverend Randy Johnson, the president of the Pike County Ministerial Association, said that the action of the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church was "not the spirit of the community in any way, shape, or form."

And it doesn't sound very Christian either.

(Oh, and the state with the lowest percentage of smokers is Utah. Of course, there is some research indicating that Utah leads all states in the consumption of Internet pornography. A question of priorities, I suppose.)

Support for the ACLU

2011-12-01T19:35:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Good Citizen
Proud Supporter of the Occupy Movement

Every year the federal government has a national campaign where it encourages employees - civilians and those in uniform - to contribute a few dollars of their salaries to selected charities. They inundate personnel with catalogs that describe hundreds of charities and lets contributors know facts like what each charity does and how much of their income goes to administrative costs.

The first time that I checked out this year's catalog, I opened it to a page where one of the "charities" discussed with Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum. That shook me up so badly that that I set the catalog aside and forgot about it. The most charitable thing that I could imagine doing for Phyllis Schlafly would be to completely ignore her.

Today, as the campaign was rolling to a close, I picked up the catalog and made a decision. I checked the box to give a small percentage of my Army pay to the American Civil Liberties Union. That made me feel warm and fuzzy on several levels. An hour or so after submitting my donation form, one of our Captains came down the hall and presented me with a commemorative coin because my donation exceeded the bare minimum.

So not only did I syphon a bit of the Army's money off to support the important work of the ACLU, I was rewarded for doing it. Life doesn't get much sweeter than that!

Willow Files

2011-12-01T05:43:00.000+09:00

by Pa Rock
Proud Grandfather

I learned last night that I have a new granddaughter. Willow Files was born in the wee hours of November 30th in Salem, Oregon. She will soon be at home with her older brothers, Sebastian and Judah Files.

Congratulations to Scott and Molly and their wonderful little family. Willow, welcome to the party!

Much love from Pa Rock!

Alabama's Racist Immigration Law Backfires

2011-11-30T18:05:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The good white people of Alabama were so proud of themselves earlier last year when they managed to pass an immigration law that was even meaner than the one adopted in Arizona. HB 56 was intended to put all of those job-stealing Mexicans on notice - Alabama jobs would be held by Alabamans, and all illegals would be found out, stripped of their basic human rights, jailed, and deported. Police had to begin asking everyone they stopped to prove that they were in the country legally. Show me your papers, please.

It was going to be a Godsend. The unemployment rate would drop drastically, crime would evaporate, and all of the Mexicans would be somebody else's problem. Best of all, God's chosen language, English, would go unchallenged as the basis for verbal communication in Alabama - though sometimes when the locals use that language, it is slobbered out in a manner that begs for a translator.

And if the goal was to get rid of the Hispanics, the law worked wonderfully. That population, both legal and illegal, fled the state en masse. Unemployment has dropped slightly, but probably only temporarily, and farmers are being very vocal about the fact that their crops are rotting in the fields because they can't find farm laborers. So it will be awhile before the full economic impact of HB 56 is known, but initial reports are troubling.

Still, the folks in Alabama are very proud of the fact that they are just as mean-spirited as Arizonans. Well, that is they were pumped up until the arrest of an illegal earlier this week in Tuscaloosa, and now they don't rightly know what to think.

Detlev Hager, a 46-year-old citizen of Germany, was pulled over by a Tuscaloosa policeman because his rental car did not have a license tag. When the police officer asked the mandatory questions regarding proof of residency and citizenship, the poor man could only produce a German identification card. The policeman did his duty according to HB 56 and proceeded to haul Mr. Hagar off to jail.

It turns out, however, that Mr. Hagar did have a reason and a right to be in this country - as did much of Alabama's former Hispanic population. He is a manager for Mercedes-Benz and was in America visiting the Mercedes-Benz manufacturing plant in Tuscaloosa. He is a very important person whose company was lured to Alabama fifteen years ago with massive state tax breaks. His arrest was such a big deal that the governor, when he learned of the incident, immediately called the State Director of Homeland Security to find out just what the hell was going on.

Now it seems that some residents are beginning to rethink HB 56. They want to harass some immigrants, but definitely not business executives from Europe who happen to be significant players in the state's economy. The law is apparently too colorblind and may need a bit of fine-tuning!

It will be interesting to see what their state legislature spits out next.

J. Edgar

2011-11-29T18:23:00.008+09:00

by Pa Rock
Movie Aficionado

Clint Eastwood's new film on the life and times of J. Edgar Hoover, the man who created the Federal Bureau of Investigation and served as its head for nearly half a century, is a big cinematic mess - and it pains me terribly to say that because I really, really wanted this movie to be good. The film was a mishmash of snippets from Hoover’s life, lightly stirred, and poured into a story line that hopped forward and backward almost without strategy. It was confusing and often boring.

The fault for this cinematic debacle lies completely with the director, the writer, and the film editor. It was as though none of the three could determine where they wanted to take this effort, or what they wanted it to accomplish.

That said, the acting was superb. Leonardo DiCaprio and Dame Judi Dench (Hoover and his mother) are both Hollywood legends who can always be counted on to bring their characters to life with vitality and believability. Surprisingly though, the best performances were turned in by co-stars Naomi Watts and Armie Hammer.

Watts played Helen Gandy, the spinster who served as Hoover’s personal and confidential secretary for decades at the FBI. (It was Gandy whom many believe destroyed all of the blackmail files that Hoover kept on political rivals immediately after the old man’s death - before Richard Nixon could get his sweaty hands on them.) Watts portrayed Gandy as a caring and sensitive soul who had a compassionate understanding of her boss.

Armie Hammer was Clyde Tolson, Hoover’s lover and dedicated assistant. It was Hoover’s relationship with Tolson that could have been the core of this story, but Eastwood seemed to fear going there – at least for any sustained examination. Eastwood’s Hoover and Tolson were two lonely and frustrated men who grew old and frail just beyond each other’s physical embrace.

Eastwood deserves credit for portraying the old coot as the blackmailer and power abuser which he obviously was, but there was so much more to the man. His deeply closeted homosexuality, his intense racist bent, his hatred of FDR and the Kennedy's - all of those could have been more closely examined and drawn more fully into the script.

It becomes obvious during the movie that Hoover and Tolson, both aging bachelors, are in some sort of relationship, though they are never free to show their love to the world. A recent book that I read regarding the FBI referred to Hoover and Tolson as having been in a "spousal relationship," and though they always lived in separate residences, they rode to and from work together in the backseat of Hoover's staff car, usually dined together, and took their vacations together. When Hoover preceded Tolson in death, he left his estate to Tolson, the man he had promoted to Assistant Director of the FBI.

To the movie director's credit, he did a nice job of depicting how strongly Hoover hated Martin Luther King, but there was not much beyond that to show Hoover's deeply held racist views. Robert Kennedy as Attorney General inquired of Hoover almost daily as to when he was going to hire some black FBI agents. On the few occasions that he did relent and employ black agents, they were routinely shuffled off into domestic duties - such as cooking and drivering. Hoover knew the black man's place in society even if the Kennedy's did not - but Eastwood failed to fully show that ugly side of his subject.

Hoover had collections of files on many public people. He was always quick to let them know about those materials and that he was keeping a copy for "safety's sake." According to the Eastwood version, FDR couldn't fire him because Hoover had evidence showing that Eleanor had been in a lesbian relationship. (Pot-kettle, Mr. Hoover?) And also according to this movie, he had an audio-taped session of JFK wrestling in the sheets with a mobster's girlfriend. (Judith Exner) Both of those stories have been referenced by numerous historians and are undoubtedly true. LBJ eventually appointed Hoover Director of the FBI "for life." His file must have really been juicy!

But Hoover's laundry was not clean either. Many believe that the reason he refused to recognize the presence of organized crime in America is that the Mafia had its own blackmail file - on him and Assistant Director Tolson.

J. Edgar is a film built on snippets. I was surprised that it did not include a bit on the character assassination that the FBI did on liberal activist and actress Jean Seberg. At one point the agency released information to gossip columnists indicating that the baby the pregnant actress was carrying had actually been fathered by a black man - a member of the Black Panther Party. Many still believe that the extreme harassment by the FBI was a contributing factor in Seberg's suicide. Jean Seberg starred with Clint Eastwood in the film Paint Your Wagon.

Expect a few Oscar nominations for the acting in J. Edgar - and maybe for costumes and set design, but while Clint may get a nomination just because he is a Hollywood legend and really, really old, he won't be taking home one of those little statuettes.

I am glad that I saw J. Edgar once, but once was plenty.

And a Little Child Shall Lead Them

2011-11-28T18:17:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Okay, this piece is not about a little child. The focus is on a young lady, aged eighteen, who is a senior in high school. But when Emma Sullivan is compared to Kansas Governor Sam Brownback, the crusty, snarly old politician whom she humiliated and slew in less than 140 typed characters, Emma is indeed a child - but also a force of nature to be reckoned with.

The story has made all of the literate news outlets over the past few days. Ms. Sullivan, a resident of Fairway, Kansas, and s student at Shawnee Mission, was taking part in a Youth in Government program in Topeka last week when she tweeted to a friend across the room that Governor Brownback, who was speaking to the group at the time, "sucked." The next day the governor's gestapo came across that tweet as they were combing through the social media sites to find out what people really think of God's man in Topeka. The staff promptly notified Youth in Government saying that the comment was not respectful, and that organization passed the pissy complaint on to Emma's principal.

The principal, one Karl R. Krawitz, called Emma into the office and lectured her for an hour, instructing her that she needed to write a letter of apology to the governor, and even providing her with talking points for the letter. The letter was due on the principal's desk today (Monday).

But then Emma's older sister got into the act and decided that maybe the press needed to be informed of this outrage. Now the worm has turned on Governor Brownback (who is in the process of learning about the power of social media), and Emma finds herself in the catbird seat.

When Emma tweeted that jab at Brownback she had a mere 65 followers on Twitter, mostly her high school friends. Now, with the unwitting assist from the governor's office, that number is skyrocketing. This morning I checked out her Twitter page and she had over 3,200 followers. A few minutes ago that number had climbed to 5,777. Governor Brownback and his squad of thick-headed sycophants have succeeded in enabling an 18-year-old high school student to become a significant force in Kansas politics.

What is Emma Sullivan's political agenda - now that she has such a mighty forum? She would like to dialogue with Brownback and others about his decision to veto the Kansas Arts Commission's entire budget - a move that made Kansas the only state in the nation to completely eliminate funding for the arts. (Sam, that move alone proves that you really do suck!)

Emma tweeted today that she has decided not to write the letter of apology. Now the ball is in the court of Principal Krawitz. As a former high school principal, I can predict the following: No matter what decision Krawitz makes with regard Emma, he will lose his job. Kansas will rehire principals during February and March, and Mr. Krawitz will be seen as the man who let this situation get out of control. The governor has been offended, and state government in large measure funds the schools. The hand that feeds the high school has been bitten.

What the principal and governor fail to appreciate (well, they may appreciate it now) is that social media has changed the entire political dynamic in this country and the world. It is because of Twitter and Facebook that the Occupy Movement was able to fortify itself and grow. Those scroungy protesters didn't have to rely on the media who initially ignored them - they just tweeted their way into significance. It was also social media that brought down the governments of Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. The people in those countries took charge of their own futures and created their own way of getting the word out.

And Emma Sullivan who was tweeting to just sixty-five of her friends a few days ago, now has an international audience of nearly six thousand - and that number is growing by the minute.

You can follow Emma Sullivan on Twitter @EmmaKate988

It's a new world, Sam. Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride!

Kramerbooks: The Best Little Bookstore in America!

2011-11-27T12:15:00.000+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

I don't make it to our nation's capital very often, but when I do get there one place that I always visit is Kramerbooks on Dupont Circle. It is such a fun place to browse and shop!

Kramerbooks is comprised of several small rooms that are strung together like some sort of devious Chinese puzzle, and each of those rooms is packed floor-to-ceiling with a delicious array of real books (the kind you hold in your hands and proceed to read by turning actual pages). Those books range from bestsellers to wonderfully obscure finds of which NPR is probably not even aware! I have a dozen or more volumes here with me on Okinawa that I originally came across on the shelves at Kramerbooks.

The reason for this sudden walk down memory lane is that I read on the Internet this morning that President Obama took his two daughters holiday shopping at Kramerbooks on Saturday. He made time in his busy day to highlight shopping at a small business and to spend time with his kids. The President exhibited good values, both in a business sense and also in a family sense.

President Obama has had only one wife, with no hint of scandal in the marriage. He spends time with his children and is involved in their lives on a very positive basis, and he even lets his mother-in-law live with the family. I think that when it comes to real family values, the President has it nailed.

Wouldn't you agree, Newt?

A Drive South

2011-11-26T19:19:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Road Warrior

I rode south today with two of my buddies, Kelly and Valerie. We went to the Ryukyu Glass Factory at Itoman and then on to Peace Park at the extreme southern end of the island. I had already been to both, but the girls had yet to visit either - and I was more than ready to revisit these cultural centers.

We watched glass being blown and pottery being thrown at Itoman, and also spent a couple of hours walking through the shops. It is the Year of the Rabbit, and I was able to find a couple of beautiful small glass rabbits to send to my two new granddaughters for their first Christmas. (Granddaughter number one, Olive Noel Macy, was born October 12th in Overland Park, Kansas, to Tim and Erin. Granddaughter number two, Molly and Scott's baby, is due to be born next week in Oregon.) Now that I think of it, Grandson number one, Boone Macy, is also a rabbit - being born in 1999.

I have grandchildren born in two different millennia! How cool is that!

Peace Park was called Suicide Cliffs back in the seventies when I was first on the island. It is the place where thousands of Japanese soldiers chose, or were encouraged by their leaders, to walk off of the cliffs and fall to their deaths on the rocks below rather than face imminent capture by the Americans. Forty years ago there were a couple of dozen monuments on the cliffs honoring the war dead. Today the sight is immense, covering a hundred acres or more, with many monuments set off by fantastic landscaping, dark granite walls with the names of those who died in the war on Okinawa engraved on their surfaces (both Japanese and Americans), and a sprawling museum that has many exhibits and on-going films of the war.

Soft-hearted Kelly was so overtaken with the experiences depicted in the museum that she walked off and found a quiet corner in which to have a cry. The Okinawan people, who were very rural and rustic at the time of the war, got caught in the middle of something that did not concern them (politically), and was well beyond their ability to control or even influence.

We did have a nice visit with a pair of American tourists, Bill and Jen McDonald, who teach at a military installation on the mainland near Hiroshima. It is always nice to reset our view of Okinawa by seeing it through the eyes of visitors.

Supper was at Jack's Place on Kadena - always a treat!

(Photos of today's outing will soon be up on www.okinawanodyssey.blogspot.com - as soon as I finish posting the pictures of the Guam trip.)

The Twilight of the Twilight Movies?

2011-11-25T16:32:00.007+09:00

by Pa Rock
Social Commentator and Film Critic

The worst part of Thanksgiving Day wasn't the cheeseburger that I ate at Burger King after my plans for the day fell through. And it wasn't pushing my way through the PX with the other holiday losers. No, the absolute worst part was the God-awful movie that I stumbled into as the day was drawing to a close.

I have seen two previous Twilight movies and found them to be entertaining diversions. Perhaps, I naively thought, the new episode in the franchise might be an acceptable way to spend the remainder of Thanksgiving Day. I chose to go the the 4:30 p.m. showing knowing full well that it would have an abundance of obnoxious young teens who were being neglected by their parents so that they could run wild and terrorize me in the process. But I am a tolerant individual, so what the heck. Besides, the next showing wasn't until 8:00 p.m. which would be edging up dangerously close to my bedtime!

I sat on the back row where it is so loud that the little darlings would be unable to talk and be heard during the movie. (The back row is directly under the theatre's speakers.) After getting comfortable in my seat, four of the awkward monsters pushed and kicked their way into the row in front of me -three girls and a boy, all about twelve years of age. The movie hadn't started yet, but the group remained remarkably quiet anyway - that is until another twelve-year-old girl came traipsing up the aisle. They called her over and she sat down directly in front of me. She told them that she had just finished watching the previous showing of the movie, but her mom had not come to pick her up so she was going to watch it again.

Great parenting, Mom!

Then the new girl and one who was two seats down (they had the boy in-between them making him a real "tweener") started a conversation about who they hated at school and why - and the more they talked, the more dramatic and louder they got. I put up with their pre-adolescent drivel for fifteen minutes, knowing that when the movie started, their drama would come to an end and we could all focus on the cinematic drama.

The national anthem played and we all stood. The national anthem ended and we all sat. And then the blessed noisy previews started. Things rattled along fine until the feature presentation began. The girl who had already seen it got bored very quickly and began texting her friend two seats down. They traded texts for about half-an-hour before the princess got up and left the theatre. I doubt that it had anything to do with the old man who accidentally kicked her seat every time she opened her flip-phone, but you never know!

Sadly, it turns out that the unsupervised children were the most interesting part of the experience. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part One is a stinkbomb! The first third of the movie dealt with preparations for Bella and Edward's wedding, and the last two-thirds focused on Bella sitting around pregnant waiting on the birth of her demon child. Jacob ran across the screen shirtless on one occasion, and several marines in the audience hooted. That basically describes the entire movie. It was draggy, dull, and dumb. Even the twelve-year-old's got bored with it quickly.

But sadly there will be another in this soapy franchise. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part Two has already been filmed and is in the can. And my guess is there will be a few more of these affronts to basic intelligence before today's adolescent wannabes age out of the cycle and their younger siblings show an interest in something even more banal. Parents, after all, have to get their kids out of the house every now and then!

Republicans Take Themselves a Bit Too Seriously

2011-11-24T20:29:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

A couple of very recent news articles serve to illustrate just how cold, rigid, and humorless at least two nationally prominent Republicans are. Holier-than thou Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas and equally pious Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota apparently lack the ability to turn the other cheek.

Brownback's staff monitors social media to check all mentions of the governor. This week Brownback was speaking to a group of high school students who were in Topeka to see their government in action when a young lady, a high school senior, tweeted that he "sucked." God's man in Topeka wasn't going to take that lying down - you bet he wasn't! The ensuing ruckus was bigger than Dorothy's cyclone, and the poor girl wound up spending nearly an hour in the principal's office being lectured - and had to write a letter of apology to the governor. (My guess is that she thinks the principal sucks too, but probably won't tweet it!)

But the ire of Sam Brownback is small potatoes when compared to the Godly wrath of Michele Bachmann. Ms. Bachmann, who hasn't bothered to stop by her taxpayer-funded job in the past several months, did find time to appear on Jimmy Fallon's Late Night earlier this week Now one would think that anyone appearing on Fallon's show might expect be on the receiving end of some ridicule, but the overly uptight Michele apparently expected nothing but reverence. As she walked out on stage, the show's band played a few licks from a 1985 Fishbone song called "Lyin' Ass Bitch."

Ms. Bachmann, when someone explained the affront to her, went nuts, demanding apologies from Fallon and NBC. Eventually Fallon and an NBC vice-president mumbled their regrets - but not until after Bachmann marched onto Fox with a rant about how nobody respects conservative women.

Brownback and Bachmann need to get over themselves. They're coming off as the dweebs back in high school that nobody liked. It's time to grow up, smile a little, and act like adults.

The University of Guam

2011-11-23T13:25:00.000+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

We are halfway through our last day on the island of Guam. Valerie is down on the beach swimming, and I am ensconced in the hotel lobby replying to email and blogging. I am still lobster red from our trip around the island on Monday, so playing on the beach has lost its appeal.

This morning after breakfast at a nice local cafe we hit the road in search of adventure. We both wanted to see the University of Guam, and after asking some locals for directions (one of whom did not seem to know that Guam even had a university), we finally found our objective. The lady that we rented our car from on Sunday gave us some very helpful advice - "Just keep driving, you can't get lost on Guam!" And she was correct!

The university is small, with several modern buildings and a beautiful campus. We went through a couple of the academic buildings, the student center and bookstore, as well as the university library. I took a bathroom detour while we were in the Social Sciences and Humanities building, and when I came out I found that Valerie, true to her nature, had corralled a social work professor and was busy chatting him up. Professor Gerhard Schwab is from Austria, but he has been at the University of Guam for over twenty years and loves it. The professor, who was wearing shorts and flip-flops, said that the Department of Social Work graduates about fifteen students a year. He also said that last year they had a course on military social work, something that is just coming into fashion in the States.

Professor Schwab said that his wife was home packing for a big "Peace Conference" on Okinawa, and he seemed surprised that we had not heard of it. I guess that the military base where we work must have inadvertently forgotten to get the word out about a "peace" conference.

(News in English on Okinawa is limited, sanitized, and highly filtered. Much of it comes through Fox - and didn't I hear just yesterday that people who get their news through Fox are less informed on world events than people who basically get no news at all? Why yes, I did hear that. It was the result of a survey taken by some college students - no doubt godless humanists - unfair and imbalanced godless humanists!)

Guam: Where America's President Refuels

2011-11-22T18:01:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Tourista

Today was not nearly as active as yesterday. We drove to Andersen Air Force Base on the north end of the island for lunch and some souvenir shopping at the Base Exchange. Then, heading south, we stopped at the Micronesian Mall where Valerie got her fingernails and toenails painted, and I bought a book and went to the movies. The movie that I saw was "J. Edgar" which featured crappy writing, editing, and direction (sorry, Clint), but may still take home several Oscars for remarkable acting. Look for lots of great things to come from Armie Hammer.

When we returned from our island drive-about yesterday, I noticed that the flags in front of our hotel were all at half-staff. After inquiring, I learned that a National Guardsman from Guam was killed in Afghanistan a week or so ago. Army Specialist Calvin "Cal" Evangelista Pereda stepped on an IED and lot his life in America's longest war. He was just twenty-one-years-old.

Memo to Barack: I voted for you because you were going to end these futile wars and close Guantanamo. What happened?

Speaking of our President, I mentioned two days ago that Air Force One had landed on Guam this weekend late at night. The presidential plane actually sat down at Andersen Air Force Base to refuel as the President was going from Hawaii to Washington, DC. That sounds like the long way home to me. While he was on Guam, the President reportedly did not leave his luxury airliner. In fact no one would even confirm that he was here. However, the President, being the good guy that he is, picked up the Guamanian (non-voting) delegate to Congress, Madeleine Z. Bordallo, and gave her a lift back to DC - and Ms. Bordallo couldn't resist letting her friends know that she hitchhiked aboard Air Force One.

The President's aloofness did not sit well with the people of Guam, or at least with the Guam press. He was roundly criticized in both the Marianas Variety and the Pacific Daily News for failing to get off the plane and shake a few hands. The headline in the Marianas Variety was a classic. It read "Obama Passes in the Night." That same issue had a front page photo of some disappointed locals with a very large banner that read: "Guam: Where America's President Refuels."

Mr. President, it is true that most of the people living on the United States Territory of Guam cannot vote in US elections, but they are still subject to the laws and vagaries of our country, and they deserve to be shown the same respect as any wheat farmer in Kansas or steel mill worker in Pennsylvania. Cal Pereda from Guam died for our country just days ago in Afghanistan. Would it have been too much to have at least stood in front of the cameras for a couple of minutes and acknowledged his sacrifice?

(Note: Guam, Puerto Rico, and Washington DC should all be granted statehood, but that is unlikely to happen as long as Republicans get elected to Congress in large enough numbers to block their admissions. All three of those unrepresented entities have majority populations that are non-white, and Herman Cain and Clarence Thomas aside, Republicans know that most racial minorities are not going to be their friends at the polls - and for good reason. At least that's how I see it.)

A Descent into the Heart of Darkness

2011-11-21T17:49:00.002+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Today we hopped in the rental car and tried to drive around the island. The trip, with no stops, reportedly takes a mere three hours. We did some stopping. Seven hours later we dragged back into the hotel, having only seen about one half of this paradise in the Pacific. What we did see was the southern half of the island - and it is beautiful beyond words!

Our first stop was at an underwater observatory where we saw the little fishes swim among scuba divers. (There was a dive class being held nearby.) Stop number two was a marina where Valerie struck up a conversation with the skipper of a small boat that carts tourists around Guam. Today he was taking a group out to watch dolphins at play. I got a good picture of Valerie and Captain Mike that will be up on my Okinawan blog in a few days. I'm not set up here to post photos. www.okinawanodyssey.blogspot.com

Every time the highway curves along the coast of southern Guam, another postcard shot comes into view - so we did lots of stopping - crashing surf, sleepy lagoons, villages, and even a group of itinerant pigs! Valerie, who loves to talk to strangers, made friends with an American and his Japanese wife at a swimming hole in a park in one of the southern villages. A couple of hours later we saw them again at a seaside tourist stand and burger joint.

I had just bought a tee shirt there for my grandson that honors Shoichi Yokoi, the Japanese soldier from World War II who was discovered hiding in the wilds of Guam in 1972 - not realizing the war was over. When Valerie's new friends came in, they told us that since they saw us at the swimming hole, they had been to the cave where Shoichi had hidden all those years. We decided that some backtracking was in order.

The site where the cave was located was in a very remote spot. We left the car in the parking lot, walked through some displays set up for tourists (including a pair of live reindeer), and then boarded a rickety cable car (a plastic box on a ski lift type of cable - not sure what it is actually called) to be carried across a steep ravine and past a beautiful waterfall. Disembarking, we walked beside and below a breathtaking display of water cascading over boulders, across a suspension bridge that swung perilously with each step - the kind of bridge that would have broken if Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner had been in front of us trying to get across - and finally down a long, twisting trail for a half-mile or so. It was truly like we were descending into the heart of darkness. I kept expecting to see severed human heads mounted on stakes. The horror, the horror!

Finally we reached the cave, which wasn't a cave at all. It was a shaft dug straight into the ground that supposedly led to a hand-dug horizontal chamber. The shaft was lined with large stalks of bamboo. It was a Saddamesque hidey-hole that poor old Private Yokoi reportedly lived in for twenty-seven years until he was discovered and captured by a group of Chamorro hunters who had to explain to him that the war had been over for nearly three decades.

(I was serving on Okinawa in 1972 when Shoichi Yokoi was captured. It was a really big deal. He was taken to Tokyo to meet the Emperor (Hirohito, the real emperor) and feted by one and all as a war hero. Yokoi died in Nagoya, Japan, in 1997 at the age of eighty-two.)

That was what we saw. After we left the "cave" and returned to the cable cars for our ride back up to civilization, this is what we heard: Valerie, of course, struck up a conversation with the young Chamorro park guide who was operating the lift. He told us that the "cave" was not where the soldier had been hiding. In fact, he said that he, himself, had helped to dig that particular cave because so it would be much easier to access than the real cave which was nearby on top of a very steep hill. He said that he had been in the real cave once. He did a lot of smiling as he told the tale, and Valerie was not sure that she believed him.

When we got back to the parking lot area, I asked a female park guide if that was the real cave. She looked kind of startled and then said that it was not. She said the real cave had collapsed a few years ago during a typhoon and a new one had to be dug on what they hoped was the same spot. I told her that I had heard that the real cave actually was a cave and that it was located on a hilltop. She said that was not true.

I never got to the bottom of that story because about that time thirteen pigs of various sizes came roaming out of the woods and laid down in the shade on the parking lot. We had a great time trying to get the bored porkers to pose for pictures.

I am easily amused.

Guam: Where America's Day Begins

2011-11-20T16:55:00.001+09:00

by Pa Rock
Globe Trotter

Valerie and I arrived on Guam just as the morning sun was beginning to shine across the Pacific. Our friend, Lenny, who owns a home and a car on Guam, gave us a lift from the airport to our hotel - the Hilton. The staff at the hotel shuffled our reservation around to find a room that was empty so we could catch up on our sleep after the night flight from Okinawa.

Before we hit the room, we decided to have breakfast at the hotel buffet. The $25.00 per person experience left a lot to be desired! This afternoon we rented a car and began exploring the island. One of the things that we discovered was that Circle K has a special - a really good hot dog and a can of any domestic beer for $1.99 - and it was so much better than our breakfast!

It is just a question of knowing where to shop!

Just heard the President Obama's plane landed on Guam last night, but he apparently did not meet with anyone while he was here. Guam used to be known as the Pacific's gas station - I guess that it still is!

Tomorrow we are going to drive around the island - three hours with no stops, but I am sure we will do some stopping. We will also be taking our snorkeling gear and undoubtedly playing in the blue Pacific Ocean. (The Hilton and all of the big hotels are on Tumon Bay, which is beautiful beyond words.

Today's temperature was a pleasant eighty degrees or so! Not too shabby for Thanksgiving week!

Continental Flies When They Damned Well Please!

2011-11-19T09:27:00.000+09:00

by Pa Rock
World Traveler

Saturday morning, and here I sit on Okinawa. I was supposed to be sitting on a beach on Guam, perhaps nursing a large drink called a Trash Can, and staring dreamily out across the blue Pacific. But no, I am still on Okinawa.

My friend Valerie and I planned to board a non-stop flight from Naha, Okinawa, to Agana, Guam, last night, but less than a full day before our departure we received a notice that the flight had been cancelled, and we would be leaving on the next flight - 24 hours later. So maybe tomorrow we will be sitting on that Guamanian beach. Who knows?

Our flight had been booked on Continental - and they cancelled the whole damned flight and moved the passengers onto the manifest for the next day. I am familiar with many types of airline outrages, and have been the victim of most, but this particular outrage was new to me. When Valerie called to complain, impolitely I'm sure, she was told that no aircraft was available. (Which I suspect is airlinese for "We didn't sell enough tickets to make the trip worthwhile.")

So now I am left to wonder if Continental does manage to get us to Guam, will they have an airplane available to bring us back to Okinawa at the end of our trip - so we can get back to our jobs? With my luck they probably will!

Blood Types and Personality Traits

2011-11-18T17:42:00.013+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

A friend (psychologist) and I were at a meeting recently with a dozen or so young service men where marriage issues were being discussed. At some point during the session one young man who was married to a Japanese woman stated that the first thing a Japanese woman wants to know about a man is his blood type - not for medical reasons, but to have an indicator of the type of person he is. Before he had hardly finished making that point, a couple of other members of the group who were also married to Japanese or Okinawan women chimed in that he was correct. Blood types were also apparently being cited as indicators of compatibility.

Because neither my friend nor I had heard of this cultural anomaly, he decided to follow through today with some Internet research on the matter. The following was taken from information posted by Joy Alari, and though I can't vouch for her credibility, it does seem to go along with things that the men in the session were saying.

Ms. Alari notes that while it is normal in the United States to match a person's personality to horoscopes, the Japanese have a preference for matching personality traits with blood types - a fad that she said started in Japan in the early 1930's. Everyone in Japan knows their blood type, and, according to the author, not only are mates sometimes selected on this criteria, but some companies have even been known to divide their workers by blood type.

The desire to know about blood types allegedly originated because of a racist assertion from the West which stated that Orientals were lower on the evolutionary chain than Occidentals. That ridiculous and unscientific theory was insulting and demeaning, and a Japanese scientist, Furukawa Takeji, set about disproving it through a study of blood types. One of the results of his work was a public rush to match personality traits with blood types.

Below are the general theories of each blood type as they relate to personality traits. The author cautions that the Rh factor does not play any role in either blood type or personality traits.

Type O

People with the Type O blood group are said to be creative, confident and quite popular. They enjoy being the center of attention. Type Os are also outgoing and very social, and, though mostly initiators, they may not always finish what they start.

Type A

People with the Type A blood group, are said to be very trustful, honest, and conscientious to a fault. Type As are also known to be perfectionists. They might seem outwardly calm when in reality they may be quite nervous.Type As are also artistic, and are sometimes shy and sensitive.

Type B

People with Type B blood group are strong-willed and goal-oriented. They always finish whatever they start on time and in good order. People with Type B blood group always seem to find their own way in life.

Type AB

Those with a Type AB blood group, are an interesting lot. Though they are trustworthy and honest, it has been said that they seem to have a split personality. Those in the Type AB blood group like helping people.They are outgoing and confident, but they can also be shy.

Compatibility by Blood Groups:

A is said to be most compatible with A and AB

B is said to be most compatible with B and AB

AB is said to be most compatible with AB, B, A and O

O is said to be most compatible with O and AB

I am Type O, which I always assumed meant that whoever typed my birth certificate had spelled my name wrong!

Holiday Notes

2011-11-17T18:15:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
Happy Tourist

Unbelievable as it may seem, the two holidays that usher in the gift-getting season occur next week. The first is Thanksgiving and with it the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade which always culminates with the appearance of Santa Claus. I have never been to the Macy's Parade, but I will make it one day - hopefully before they retire the Bullwinkle balloon!

The second holiday next week, of course, is the day following Thanksgiving, an evil creation of corporate America known as "Black Friday." It is the day in which feeble-minded shoppers line up at their favorite stores in the dead of night so that they can stampede their way to the bargains when the stores open at daylight. People have literally been trampled to death as they rushed into the madness to grab clothing, toys, and electronics so that they could properly observe the birthday of Jesus.

I will spend Thanksgiving with my friend, Valerie, in Guam. That small American territory bills itself as "the place where America's day begins." While on Guam we will swim, snorkel, and relax - and Valerie wants to hit some real American stores - Guam reportedly has a Ross's, K-Mart, and a Target. We leave tomorrow night (Saturday at 1:00 a.m.), and we will return to Okinawa on Wednesday evening. Our plan is to celebrate Thanksgiving Day at the USO by having a great holiday meal and enjoying the entertainment.

And although I won't get caught up in any Black Friday nonsense, I will dedicate part of next weekend to getting my holiday gift packages ready to mail. (I have been making my purchases all year, discretely, and without having to knock down any old ladies in the process.) Timing is critical: the local post office won't guarantee delivery on anything mailed from Okinawa after the 6th of December.

My Christmas plan was a solo tour of Vietnam, the whole damned country, but two of my buddies have now signed up to go along, so that will be fun - and the trip will help take our minds off of our loved ones who are enjoying a more traditional holiday back in the states.

By the time the Season rolls around again, I should be back home and mooching a turkey dinner off of one of my children! Any offers?

Feds Reportedly Conspire with Mayors to Evict Protesters

2011-11-16T18:10:00.002+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The Internet news sites that I frequent have been clogged with stories all day about Wall Street tool Michael Bloomberg sending in his police force in riot gear to clear Zucotti Park, ostensibly, according to the billionaire mayor of New York City, for health and sanitation reasons. The rabble and the city have been in and out of court all day challenging and defending the attack on the protesters and the destruction of their property. At last report, they were being allowed to drift back into the park, but without tents, tarps, sleeping bags or any other items that would help to fend off a New York City winter.

Apparently a special effort was made to move the press away from the commotion while the ~~Pinkertons~~ New York City police dealt with sign-wielding anarchists.

Oddly, parks are beginning to be cleared in other cities as well. Recent days have witnessed removal of protesters from the green zones in Portland, Oregon, and Oakland, California. Is the fact that a dozen or more American cities began acting almost in tandem on clearing their parks completely coincidental? One would have to be mighty stupid to think so.

Whereas President Cheney might have simply ordered up a military blitzkrieg to deal with the social malcontents, the Obama administration is being a bit more discrete. Rick Ellis, a reporter for the Minneapolis Top News Examiner, ran a story today citing an unnamed justice department source who said that each of the recent police actions has been coordinated through the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and some other federal agencies. He said specifically that local police received "tactical and planning advice" from the national agencies.

The reporter continued:

"According to this official, in several recent conference calls and briefings, local police agencies were advised to seek a legal reason to evict residents of tent cities, focusing on zoning laws and existing curfew rules. Agencies were also advised to demonstrate a massive show of police force, including large numbers in riot gear. In particular, the FBI reportedly advised on press relations, with one presentation suggesting that any moves to evict protesters be coordinated for a time when the press was the least likely to be present."

The article also quotes Oakland Mayor Jean Quan as telling the BBC that she had recently been involved in a conference call with officials from eighteen cities who were struggling with the same situation. A few days later, Mayor Quan, having since smartened up, declined an invitation to expand on her remarks.

But yes, it looks at though the "coincidence" of this spate of park closures is not a coincidence at all, but a well-planned and coordinated assault on the civil liberties (especially freedom of speech and assembly) of Americans living in many communities across the United States. It is, unfortunately, our tax dollars in action - and it is shameful!

At least the Pinkertons never pretended to be working in the public's interest. They were hired thugs working for corporate America and everybody knew it.

Michele Bachmann is Clueless!

2011-11-15T18:47:00.003+09:00

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

I received an email from the American Civil Liberties Union today that was not only informative, but also thought-provoking and even somewhat entertaining. The ACLU, as most Americans are aware, is a selfless group of individuals focused on protecting our civil liberties as outlined in the first ten Amendments to the United States Constitution - a.k.a. The Bill of Rights.

Sometimes the ACLU is unpopular with certain groups of individuals because "everyone" means "everyone," and the venerable civil liberties organization will go to court to defend the speech rights, for instance, of odious entities like the Klan, the Fred Phelps family, and even the Koch brothers. But the Constitution and its Bill of Rights protects all of us, and without it none of us would be safe to voice our opinions. The ACLU attempts to be as blind as Justice herself in defending the constitutionally- guaranteed rights of every American.

There are some in this country who are basically opposed to rights for many under-priviliged or overlooked Americans, and constantly demonize the ACLU. Ms. Bachmann obviously regards the ACLU as an enemy of freedon - freedom as she defines it. Ms. Bachmann is pandering to those Americans who wave their flags and speak proudly of "freedom," all the while maneuvering to deny basic freedoms to certain groups of individuals - groups such as the poor, racial minorities, women, union members, and gay Americans. When it comes to defending the rights of those groups in court, the ACLU is often somewhere in the mix.

During last Saturday's umpteenth Republican debate Michelle Bachmann, a great thinker with a degree from Oral Roberts "University," apparently said this: "Today, under Barack Obama, he is allowing the ACLU to run the CIA." After successfully wedging that soundbite into the debate, she followed it up the next day on Meet the Press with a clarification - stating that she meant to say the CIA is being run in accord with the "philosophy" of the ACLU.

Well, the good folks (and they are good folks) at the ACLU could not let that pass, and today they released a rebuttal to Ms. Bachmann, an individual whom the organization sees as being clueless. In that rebuttal, the ACLU offered "Five Clues that the ACLU does not run the CIA." They follow:

CLUE #1: If the ACLU ran the CIA, we wouldn't have undermined our security and values by using waterboarding and other forms of torture.
CLUE #2: If the ACLU ran the CIA, we would have helped restore our nation's standing in the world with a full and complete accounting of any past involvement in torture.
CLUE #3: If the ACLU ran the CIA, the senior officials who authorized U.S. involvement in torture would have been brought to justice in a court of law.
CLUE #4: If the ACLU ran the CIA, there wouldn't have been any secret CIA prisons operating around the world.
CLUE #5: If the ACLU ran the CIA, the American people would never have seen extraordinary rendition, indefinite detention, targeted killing of people far from any battlefield, and other human rights abuses carried out in our name.

So, Michele, the ball is in your court. May I suggest that you use some of your government Medicaid income or your government farm subsidy income to buy a vowel - or a clue - or perhaps a brain. Or if those accounts are running low, maybe you could tap into the millions that your angry campaign has begged off of America's feeble-minded. You definitely have a lot to learn about the ACLU and the CIA.

For those wishing to support the fine work of the American Civil Liberties Union, please visit: www.aclu.org. Here's a clue: the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing at all to do with the management of the Central Intelligence Agency - though America's honor would be in much better shape if it did!