"Your one-stop source for improper ideology and freedom seeds."
You really never leave
Another letter from my Dad, this one about his World War II service as a navy gunner aboard the merchant tanker MS Chester Sun. While at boot camp all of us recruits had to take a battery of tests. The top scorers got to choose which school they wanted; all the others had to take the […]
After my father died, I said I’d write more about him. My Uncle Lindley unearthed a letter Dad wrote to me in 1992, describing the ship he was assigned to at the end of World War II, when he was a sailor in the US Navy. Here are some excerpts from Dad’s letter: The Bolster, an Auxiliary Repair Ship […]
My friend Dick Herman, in a comment to an earlier entry, asked for my thoughts on the warrior ethic. For a few years, back when my career was on fire, I was on the staff of a joint command, working with Army, Navy, and Marine officers. Army and Marine officers could philosophize about the warrior […]
Report Uncovers Astronauts’ Heavy Alcohol Use. Oh my. Here’s what I read between the lines of the linked article: NASA, in the wake of the Lisa Nowak incident, has been busy hunting witches in the astronaut program. Astronaut pilots, astronaut mission specialists, and astronaut flight surgeons are turning on each other. It must be a horrible […]
Have I mentioned that my wife works part time at a local gun shop? Well, she does, and that’s how we came to be invited to an Arizona Friends of the National Rifle Association auction and banquet. One of the speakers was Scott O’Grady, the USAF Reserve F-16 pilot who was shot down over Bosnia in […]
Here’s an interesting article about supermarkets adopting “single line” policies. The idea is that customers, rather than lining up at individual cash registers, get in one long line instead; when customers reach the head of the line they go straight to whichever cash register is empty. Been there, done that. In the early 1980s the wife of General […]
Okay, I cede the battle. Our ground squirrels and pack rats are smarter than the traps I set out for them. For now, they have the run of the property. For now, they scoff at me. Vermin take note: I have not ceded the war. Yesterday’s news today: our first 100-degree day; regular gas finally […]
Toward the end of my military career, US Air Force Chief of Staff General Merrill McPeak instituted a host of changes. He was one of those egomaniacs who, put into a position of great power, are compelled to change everything. He killed Strategic Air Command. He made us rewrite every USAF regulation because he didn’t like the word “regulation.” He […]