Paul’s Thing and Crouton’s Kitchen were inaccessible for a few days and I apologize. Bandwidth exceeded, whatever that means. Fixed now. A friend runs the server on which my blogs reside, and I’m lucky to have him, because he understands these things and is patient with me. I thank you, dear readers, for being patient with me as well.
Ghosts of Christmas Past: Oliver North and Fawn Hall got married, he at 81, she at 65. It’s actually a nice story, worth a click even if it is the New York Post.
Some time in 1987, a month or two after Oliver North testified to Congress and became Reagan’s fall guy for the Iran/Contra scandal, my three-star boss at U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa sent me to Washington DC to do some work with our satellite office in the Pentagon. Everyone at USSOCOM had followed the Oliver North story, of course, and not only that a lot of them were friends with Oliver’s brother John, an Army major who worked across the street at U.S. Central Command headquarters.
A constant stream of USSOCOM and USCENTCOM personnel rotate between MacDill AFB in Tampa and the Pentagon in DC. In my day Eastern Air Lines operated a shuttle between Tampa International and National Airport. Since it didn’t get you into DC until 8 p.m., the drill was to check into a hotel and take the Metro to the Pentagon the following morning, which is what I did whenever they sent me up.
When you get off the Metro at Pentagon Station, a long escalator takes you up to the entrance lobby of the building. I got on the escalator that morning and noticed a woman riding up a few steps above me. She looked familiar, and I quickly realized it was Fawn Hall, still working somewhere in the building. Like the time a few years earlier when I blew an F-15 tire on a runway in the Netherlands, witnessed by Queen Beatrix’s husband Prince Claus and their two little boys (one of whom is today King Willem-Alexander), sharing an escalator with Fawn Hall was a brush with fame. Or infamy, I guess.
By the way, Oliver North’s assignment to the president’s National Security Council was and is the BFD of BFDs for up & coming military officers. Alexander Vindman, who during the first Trump administration also testified before Congress and lost his job and career as a result, probably sat at Oliver North’s old NSC desk. I have to say, if you’ve ever met a military man or woman who worked at those levels, at the NSC or as a presidential aide, you know what shining stars they are, on their way to bigger things … barring having to give sworn testimony to Congress, that is!
It’s been critter central around these parts. Last week I was at the home office desk when I saw a coyote cross our front yard. Knowing they run in packs, usually in single file, I kept my eyes on the window and sure enough, along came a second, then a third, then another and another, ten in all. Two minutes later they came back in the opposite direction, still in single file. Our dachshunds, Lulu and Fritzi, were in the family room at the other end of the house and mercifully didn’t see them; otherwise they’d have begun barking furiously and the coyote pack might have hung around.
Then, yesterday, we had a different set of visitors.
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The tarantula, about the size of a jumbo Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, was in our driveway when I took the garbage out at dawn. It stood its ground and I had to wheel the bins around it. Polly and Donna came out to have a look, and I took this photo. It’s most likely a male, on the prowl for a female, and Polly says when they hold their legs up like this it’s a defensive posture. Well, no wonder, what with three big humans looming overhead! Tarantulas are all over this part of the country, but we haven’t seen any the last few years and this encounter was kind of a big deal for us.
In the afternoon, as with last week’s coyotes, I noticed movement outside the home office window and looked up from the desk to see a javelina coming into the yard, angling toward our bird feeder. Along came the rest of the family, and I hollered for Donna so she wouldn’t miss them. My phone wasn’t handy but hers was, and she took a photo through the sewing room window as they gathered under the hanging bird feeder. They took turns standing on their hind legs and whacking at it to knock seeds to the ground. One of them stood up to drink from the bird bath (which unfortunately is just outside the frame of the photo) and it’s a miracle it didn’t knock it over. I counted eight; Donna counted nine. Two were a little smaller than the others, we assume juveniles, almost fully grown, I think they have babies in the spring, and that’s when javelina are particularly dangerous, defending their young. This time the dogs were looking, but the javelina didn’t react to their barking and pretty soon they tootled off up the street.
Once in a great while we’ll see a bobcat; there’s a pair living in the subdivision. Once, after a fire on the mountain, Donna saw a puma crossing between our house and the neighbor’s. A pony-sized buck with antlers crossed the street right in front of me when I was walking Mister B a few years ago, taking his sweet time and not one bit worried about me or the dog. There have been occasional black bear sightings around the neighborhood but we’ve never seen one; like the puma, I think they only come down this low after fires on the mountain.
In the 1990s the U.S. Air Force had a chief of staff who might politely be described as “eccentric.” One of his idiosyncrasies was hatred of the word “regulation.” Shortly after taking office he ordered every USAF regulation rewritten as an “instruction.” Air Force Regulation 35-10 became Air Force Instruction 35-10. The process was repeated for hundreds, maybe thousands, of regulations. I don’t know if anyone ever totaled up the cost in manhours, paper, and printing. Probably no one dared to. I was there for that. Good times, you betcha. And for what?
I see where Trump, on being asked what rebranding the Department of Defense as the Department of War might cost taxpayers, said “Not a lot. We know how to rebrand without going crazy.” Okay, one way to not go crazy might be for department offices to continue using DoD letterhead until existing stocks run out, and only then ordering new DoW letterhead stationary. Right?
Yeah, as if. First thing Pete Hegseth did was have “Secretary of Defense” scraped off his office door and replaced with “Secretary of War.” You know damn well every undersecretary and deputy secretary in the building immediately did the same, and ordered their underlings to replace anything with “DoD” or “Defense” on it with the W word. Do you think there’s a single staffer in the department who’d dare to send a memo on old DoD stationary and risk being fired for lack of zeal?
There must be libraries full of DoD regulations and publications, and I’ll bet there’s a already a race on to rewrite them all. No one who depends on a government paycheck will want to come in last. That’s how shit works, and everyone knows it. Good times are back again, and I’ve never been happier to be a retired pensioner.
Since I’m jumping all around, here’s something else.
I remember well how, back in the day, we young lieutenants and captains (and our higher-ranking superiors, often as not) treated strippers at the Officers’ Club — yes, that’s how things were then, and there were ashtrays on every desk and table too — and still marvel at how the girls put up with our lewd suggestions and drunken attempts to paw them.
Which is why I’ve always believed the woman who said she was raped by members of the Duke lacrosse team at that campus kegger. Which is why I believe the Epstein survivors, including the then-13-year-old girl who said Donald Trump repeatedly raped her at Epstein’s place and then threatened her and her family to keep her quiet.
I know how guys are, with and without alcohol, where girls and the possibility of sex are concerned. I bet the tarantula I met yesterday would agree with me.