{"id":23573,"date":"2019-03-10T11:41:52","date_gmt":"2019-03-10T18:41:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=23573"},"modified":"2019-03-10T13:56:15","modified_gmt":"2019-03-10T20:56:15","slug":"erin-go-get-a-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=23573","title":{"rendered":"Erin Go Get a Job"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"300px-Boilermaker\"<\/a>I quit drinking 12 years ago this month. I wasn\u2019t sure how long I’d stay on the wagon, so I didn\u2019t mark the calendar. Anyway, whatever the exact date, I’m at or near\u00a0the 12-year mark. An even dozen. Half a score plus two. If sobriety is a child,\u00a0mine is finishing 6th grade. If sobriety’s a marriage,\u00a0mine is\u00a0giving its spouse silk\u00a0& linen.<\/p>\n

I don’t miss drinking, not even a little. I love waking up clear-headed and feeling good. The three best things I’ve done\u00a0for my physical and mental well-being\u00a0have been, in order, marrying Donna (53 years ago), quitting smoking (40 years ago), and quitting drinking (12 years ago.) Did I mention I’ve been sober for 12 years?<\/p>\n

Tobacco’s an actual physical addiction, and quitting smoking remains the hardest single thing I’ve ever done. Christ, I still<\/em> miss it. When I quit drinking, I\u00a0feared that too would be hard. To my surprise, it wasn’t. I didn’t experience withdrawal, and by the third month the temptation to drink was gone. I spent a good part of my life partying and drinking with fighter\u00a0pilots\u00a0and even\u00a0harder-drinking Hash House Harriers. Chronic, lifetime alcoholics? I know hundreds of them. Every one of them\u00a0has\u00a0tried to quit,\u00a0and most of them have failed. I know I was and am one of them, and can’t explain why it was so easy for me.\u00a0Somehow I dodged\u00a0the alcohol addiction bullet. Lucky me.<\/p>\n

\n

The more I see and hear of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the more I like her. She’s a breath of fresh air. I was really struck by a tweet she posted last week:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

She’s right.\u00a0Most of us understand that\u00a0the representatives and senators we elect work for us, and not the other way around, but\u00a0our understanding is academic\u00a0and when it comes down to it we bow and scrape as if they are our betters. We need\u00a0people like AOC to remind us\u00a0they’re not, and that they’re there to serve us. Of course in real life most of them serve other masters, the ones that line their pockets … I hope AOC and the other new faces on Capitol Hill can resist the lobbyists and keep\u00a0their independence.<\/p>\n

Her point about the dignity of work resonates with me as well. I\u00a0was a commissioned officer in the US Air Force\u00a0and flew jet trainers and fighters. I\u00a0had a second career\u00a0as a defense contractor, training USAF fighter pilots. I’m not puffing myself up when I say the work was\u00a0glamorous and rewarding. Later, though,\u00a0I did work\u00a0most people would consider menial, several steps down from what I’d done before. Driving school buses. Delivering RVs to wealthy customers. Transporting disabled patients for the VA. And I was okay with that.<\/p>\n

Because it was honest work, just as important as what I did before. I\u00a0tried to take\u00a0as much pride in\u00a0those jobs as I did in flying fast movers and training pilots.\u00a0The experience taught me to never\u00a0look down on\u00a0people\u00a0who work in the service industry.\u00a0If you’re doing something people need, it’s not menial or beneath you. Don’t disparage honest work.<\/p>\n

I’m going to go right on disparaging\u00a0elected officials who’ve forgotten who they work for, though.<\/p>\n

\n

A couple of days ago Trump was in Alabama, signing bibles. That struck a lot of observers as\u00a0sacrilegious, and probably it was, but not to the\u00a0evangelicals who lined up to get\u00a0his\u00a0autograph, some of whom\u00a0say he’s been sent by\u00a0god to make America white again or whatever. But anyway, some of the bibles he squiggled on were military challenge editions. That’s a new thing to many\u00a0people, at least from what I see on social media. Here’s an example from Facebook:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

One commenter\u00a0suggested\u00a0the bible on the right is\u00a0“a special edition with supplemental material relating passages to military service.” Another observed\u00a0that it’s sized “to fit in the pockets of military uniforms.” Another described it as a “free (propaganda filled) version you can get if you are in the military.” Here’s one I liked: “At various points it challenges you to live up to the military actions of Biblical characters. Like King David going out and collecting 200 foreskins in the book of Solomon.” My absolute favorite, though, was this: “Trump’s words are printed in red.”<\/p>\n

But here’s the deal. In the military, challenge coins and emblems are objects\u00a0given to members of certain units, often elite ones. If you’re given one, you’re\u00a0expected to carry\u00a0it on your person for the remainder of\u00a0your military career and be able to produce it when challenged by a former or current member. Someone walks up to\u00a0you and whips one out,\u00a0you’re supposed to whip\u00a0yours out in return. If\u00a0you lost it or left it at home on the dresser,\u00a0you buy the bar. That’s the challenge.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0carried several\u00a0unit coins and emblems over the course of my career. I know exactly where my\u00a0US Special Operations Command coin is, in case some snake-eater drops by the house:\u00a0it’s in the drawer with\u00a0the cufflinks and tie tacks.<\/p>\n

In real life\u00a0few of us continued to carry\u00a0challenge coins once\u00a0we left the units that gave them out, but we were proud to have them. I never heard anyone complain they felt pressured to carry one.\u00a0A bible, though? You know damn well there’s pressure\u00a0involved, particularly with the inroads evangelicals have made\u00a0in today’s military. In my day no one gave a shit I was an atheist. No one ever so much as hinted that church attendance might advance my career (well, maybe a little toward the end, but I never took it seriously). But today? I don’t know.<\/p>\n

All I can is I hope Mickey Weinstein<\/a> and the\u00a0Military Religious Freedom Foundation are on the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you’re doing something people need, it’s not menial or beneath you. Don’t disparage honest work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,250,10,4,14,2,8,827,29],"tags":[2690,2691,2692,2693,2694,237,2262,2024],"class_list":["post-23573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class","category-culture-wars","category-current-events","category-hash-house-harriers","category-military","category-personal","category-politics","category-social-media","category-the-economy","tag-aoc","tag-bibles","tag-challengecoins","tag-mickeyweinstein","tag-mrff","tag-jobs","tag-sobriety","tag-trump"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23573"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23587,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23573\/revisions\/23587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}