Dr. Phil's Dreamwidth Journal

What Sort of Holiday?

Memorial Day Weekend. The official start of summer. Memorial Day (Observed). Three-Day Weekend. No mail service on Monday. Garbage pickup delayed by one day all week.

What are we to make of Memorial Day? Well, I guess we do a better job of commemorating the official job of it than we do Veterans Day.

Of course not everyone makes it to parades. Or to cemeteries. Not everyone has served in the military, though my dad did and most of my uncles, a couple of cousins. Many, many friends. In the U.S. we give such short shrift to many working people in terms of vacation days and holidays, that making a big commercial deal of Memorial Day is inevitable.

It's the Indianapolis 500 -- won this year under caution as one driver tried a bold move on the start of the last lap and ended up crashing. It's baseball -- with the Cubs swept by the Pirates to complete a 12-game losing skid, mollified only by a dramatic 11-7 win on Monday against the Evil Padres. (If you don't know why they're evil, then you don't know Cubs history.) (grin)

It's the National Memorial Day Concert on the Mall in Washington DC, hosted by Joe Mantegna and Gary Senise, with dramatic readings of letters of those left behind by war, carried live by PBS... well up until the point that they had to switch to a tape of last year's concert, due to severe weather rolling in and having to clear the space.

Even were I to wish to go to any of the public celebrations, parking and my left leg and crowds would have made it difficult. We mostly stayed home.

War Movies

AMC in particular spent quite a lot of the weekend showing war movies -- it's how a lot of people who don't read, serve or talk to those who do, know anything about war. The weekend started, as I recalled, with Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which we hadn't seen before. Wikipedia says it's "Tarantino's highest-grossing film to date." More than Kill Bill? Amazing. And quite an entertaining train wreck of a movie. Think of it as The Dirty Dozen but more improbable. (grin) Then there's Midway, which aside from some silly personal plotlines, I've always liked Midway more than Pearl Harbor's Tora! Tora! Tora! *** -- you can't beat not knowing how many carriers there are, or "sinking" the Yorktown twice, to turn an assured defeat into a great victory. And thank goodness no one seemed to be showing that stinker Pearl Harbor. Patton, always a personal favorite of mine and George C. Scott's greatest, gravelly role. Heartbreak Ridge, is also improbable and implausible, but there's very little else that covers the invasion of Grenada to free the American medical school students. Call it a guilty pleasure, especially to watch Clint & Co. chew up the scenery. The Great Escape, a romanticized version of an actual breakout during WW II. From the age of Big Epic Movies. I'm surprised it isn't paired up with Stalag 17 for a killer POW double-feature every time.

Then they ran Clint Eastwood's Flags of Our Fathers followed by Letters From Iwo Jima, his bookend movies about Iwo Jima -- one about the American invasion and the using of the publicity machine regarding the raising of the flag(s) over Iwo Jima to sell War Bonds, and the other about the Japanese essentially abandoned in place and dug in to delay the Americans and die for the Emperor. I saw most of both, Mrs. Dr. Phil packed it in because the second was running into the early morning hours. We hadn't seen either in the theatres, particularly since (mostly) B&W films don't get booked much and I swear Letters From Iwo Jima was only shown for a couple of days shy of a week on one screen in one theatre-plex in Grand Rapids.

History Channel's six part/three-night miniseries Hatfields & McCoys also began airing on Monday, and given that the roots for the feud began during the American Civil War, which also prompted the historical roots for Memorial Day itself, I suppose it could also be grandfathered into the Memorial Day war movie filmfest.

So there you have it -- a day (or weekend) of Memorial and remembrance of those who have fallen, distilled down to a few public events and hours of movies. Thanks to all who have served, who are serving and who will someday sign up to serve.

From others in the UCF:
David on family who served.
Vince in a poignant Ken Burns moment.
Random Michelle starts with a WW I sad comment.
And then there's Jim Wright from last year, as only Jim can put it.

Dr. Phil

*** Ack! I knew it was Tora not Toro. Thanks! Corrected 5-31-2012.

A New Medal of Honor Recipient

Sergeant First Class Leroy Petry, US Army 2nd Ranger Battalion.



Second living Medal of Honor recipient of the wars of Iraq and Afghanistan.

That is all.

Dr. Phil

Yes, I've Been Very Quiet Here Lately

I just made it back from my third round-trip drive to Greensboro NC, after the ones on Thanksgiving and New Years. This one was less than scheduled, shall we say, but it was necessary. Thankfully I had good driving weather 3 of 4 days there and back. I'm sure I'll post more about my travels, because I took a lot of pictures along the way.

This Was Not Expected

The Lockheed C-130 Hercules is a workhorse. No question. The four-engine military cargo hauler is one tough sonofabitch. I know that they've made carrier landings and take-offs. And...

In 2007, the C-130 became the fifth aircraft—after the English Electric Canberra, B-52 Stratofortress, Tupolev Tu-95, and KC-135 Stratotanker—to mark 50 years of continuous use with its original primary customer, in this case, the United States Air Force. The C-130 is also the only military aircraft to remain in continuous production for 50 years with its original customer, as the updated C-130J Super Hercules.

I used to regularly see C-130s flying around Chicago -- along with Navy P2 Orions -- and used to see C-130s taxiing at Chicago's O'Hare field.

But I've never thought about the size of them before, or thought about putting one on a flatbed and driving it around. Good thing I had a 20mm ultra wide angle handy for the Kodak DCS Pro SLR/n so I could get it all in one shot. (grin)

Click on photo for high res.

This was at a rest stop in Ohio on I-75. I was going to drive around in front and get a cockpit on face view -- but I couldn't pull off the exit road because there was no shoulder and I didn't like the one foot hard drop-off. (evil grin)

Now for my idea for a kick-ass RV conversion van...

Dr. Phil

Nine Years Out From Nine-Eleven

9/11 falls on a Saturday this year. It's the weekend, it's Fall (or at least Fall Semester), and with the kids back in school, colleges in full swing and businesses working as much as they are working in this economy, weekends are made for outside activities. Our schedules are too crowded to give much room for maneuvering, so though there will be some remembrances, much will dissolve into the excitement of college football games, minor league playoff baseball, the winding down of the major leagues and the anticipation of the first real Sunday of the NFL season. There will be the fifth annual Tomato War in downtown Grand Rapids, with two tons of red, ripe tomatoes available for throwing and many bloody Marys will be consumed.

It's raining here in West Michigan. Very different than that perfect blue sky day from nine years ago. Last year I wrote this about the realization that my college students were by and large children when 9/11 happened, and while we are all affected by 9/11 and its aftermath, those who were children may not yet fully understand what happened. A decade from now, my college freshmen will all have been born after 9/11, and will have a very different view of things as those freshmen today don't share my feelings about JFK, Viet Nam, the Apollo Moon landings or the space shuttle Challenger.

A Not Every Year Thing

I went back and located my previous postings on 9/11 -- since I started this blog in 2005, it hasn't been every year. But that's all right. Sometimes one doesn't have anything new to say and it is better to leave the ether waves uncluttered. And though I have NOT gotten very far with my retrospective LJ Tagging project, I have now tagged all those 9/11 entries so if you want to, you can read them all here.

Retired Navy Chief Warrant Officer Jim Wright over on Stonekettle Station has "nothing to add to what I said on the 7th anniversary of 9-11, a piece I strongly recommend to you.

I shall close with what I posted on Jim's piece two years ago, of my own personal 9/11:

Dr. Phil (Physics) said...

9/11 was a day of spectacular high clear blue skies. Just before 9am, and just south of 100th Street on US-131, there was a news blip that a "light commuter plane" had hit one of the WTC towers and that weather was not an issue. My thought was "how stupid did you have to be..."

WOOD-AM was using ABC News as a feed in those days, and they had an architect on the line from another high rise describing in great detail the fire, when he clearly and unbleeped said, "Oh shit, there's another plane." And my blood went cold. One could be an accident, two is deliberate.

By the time I got to Kalamazoo, we had three planes hit, reports of another possibly down -- and rumors of five more hijackings. I went to my 10am class and told them we were under attack and that if anyone wanted to leave and try to learn more, I had no objection. A couple of guys I knew were Guardsmen left. By 11am, returning back to the Physics Dept they'd dug up two ancient portable TVs, and word was the university was closing. The traffic jam lasted over an hour.

When I left after 1pm, there were almost no vehicles on the road, and in flyover Michigan, not one contrail in the perfect clear blue sky. Twice I came over hills and saw zero cars on the road -- it was an SF moment.

About that time it was reported that fighters were scrambling out of Indiana because radar had an aircraft without a transponder coming south down Michigan. Turned out it was some DEA or Border Patrol bizjet with a malfunction -- and not properly cleared. That may have been it for the Battle of Michigan.

I've a lot of students rotating in and out of tours -- happens at a university with science, engineering and a top aviation program. The university has really softened the rules to help them, when they have to deploy in the middle of a semester.

Nowhere close to the front lines, but definitely a nationwide day of infamy which some of us will never forget.

Thanks, Jim.

Dr. Phil
September 11, 2008 6:50 PM

Dr. Phil

Memorial Day (Observed)

As a steady stream of cars go up and down the road outside, people going hither and yon for purposes only they know, it is Monday 31 May 2010 and Memorial Day (Observed). Last year I intended to write a SF short story for Memorial Day. Alas, it got bogged down in a side project of wondering how Arlington National Cemetery would look and function nine centuries from now. That needs some thought, still. So as my own modest contribution to the commemorative events of the I have written a different SF story -- this one in much smaller venue.

                       "Memorial Day-II"
                  by Dr. Philip Edward Kaldon

Friday 24 May 2880
Ottawa Bypass MI, USA, Nordamericano, Earth
     The Skat drove by him in a hurry, bearing four shirtless young men 
already well tanned.  They hollered some youthful expression of exuberance, 
probably thrilled to have cut school after lunch in order to start the 
three-day weekend early.  One boy turned back to stare -- surprised to 
see a man in dress black uniform walking along the side of the old road.
     Master Chief Petty Officer Daniel Hoogerhyde (Ret.) didn’t mind.  
The walk westward to Placid Waters Cemetery was hot, but pleasant enough.  
At 0700 hours this morning an intense thunderstorm had crashed through 
town and he’d thought the walk would feel like he was hiking through a 
humid swamp.  But the front had brought high pale blue skies and a stiff 
dry wind, so despite the 29° temperature, he wasn’t miserable.
     By the time he reached the marker stake, he could see the boys had 
parked up on the adjoining Picnic Hill and were playing some sort of 
catch game.  Life went on and he wasn’t annoyed by their presence.  
He was, however, wondering how’d they react to the coming proceedings.
     Another uniformed figure came marching stately up the road.  
Hoogerhyde knew Master Gunnery Sergeant Leo McMasters, USFMC -- they’d 
served together on many of these details.  He noted that the gunnery 
sergeant’s listing on his data glasses no longer had the Retired tag.
     "Master Chief," the Marine nodded tersely when he arrived.
     "Master Gunny," Hoogerhyde replied.
     There was no further reason to talk until the other four arrived.  
And then when the tandem linked bubble cars arrived, the two senior NCOs 
were able to point and direct everyone to their tasks without so many 
words either.  The three enlisted personnel came from two American 
terrestrial military services to fill in.  The lone Fleet officer of 
the detail, Lieutenant (j.g.) Anne Leslie Aage, moved stiffly.  All he 
knew of her was that she’d been burned in a reactor accident somewhere 
hundreds of light years from here and had been sent home to Grand Rapids 
on Earth for rest and recuperation leave.  Still, she walked with them, 
carrying the flag stand base, as the flag and rifle lockers were lugged 
up the hill to the grave site.
     The cemetery staff had already dug the perfectly edged hole, placed 
the brass frame with the support straps, and erected the tent.  The 
electric gravetender sat silently with its load of dirt and carefully 
rolled up patch of sod.  With the arrival of the military honor guard, 
all they needed was the funeral party.
     Hoogerhyde raised the white cloth over the newly laser cut stone 
and inspected it.

                      SPC2 CECILIA GRACE STAAT
                         USFS DELFT (CCB 52)
                                 †
                    5 APRIL 2859 - 26 MARCH 2880
                     IN SCHOOL · SOCCER · SPACE
                        OUR DEAR GIRL ALWAYS
                       THOUGHT OF OTHERS FIRST

The epitaph seemed to match the report he’d gotten from the Fleet 
Chiefs Association, which was considering Staat for recognition as the 
next enlisted spaceman to be named on a Callisto frigate.
     One by one they removed the five flags from the locker -- State of 
Michigan, United States of America, Nordamericano Confederation, United 
Nations of Earth and the banner of the Unified Star Fleet -- unfurled 
them and placed them in their holders.  A farmer’s bubble truck rolled 
up and a local high school student stepped out in a perfectly pressed 
suit and carrying a brilliantly polished brass cornet.  Hoogerhyde put 
away the military music player as this young man was very good on the 
cornet.  The boy’s mother would wait quietly in the bubble truck for 
the service to end.
     A single bip! in his ear signaled the approach of the funeral party.  
The six military men and women aligned themselves on the road below 
and came to attention.  Hoogerhyde could see the four boys on Picnic 
Hill had stopped their games and were now leaning against their vehicle, 
watching.  The hearse glided to a halt directly in front of the detail, 
while a linked train of bubble cars followed with the mourners.
     With few called orders required, the six members of the funeral 
detail took possession of the casket and, with great precision, marched 
one step at a time up the hill to the grave site.  The first time 
Hoogerhyde had borne a casket, he’d been terrified that he might drop 
it.  Now he knew the wisdom of having six bearers split the load and, 
truth be told, this was not the heaviest casket he’d ever taken up the 
hill to Placid Waters.  The family had selected the familiar American 
stars and stripes to be draped on the casket, rather than the more 
stark, black Unified Star Fleet banner.
     The graveside service for Specialist 2 Cecilia Staat was short.  
The private church service had been the place for long eulogies and 
remembrances.  The flag was folded, stiffly and precisely, and handed 
to Staat’s parents by Hoogerhyde, On behalf of a grateful nation and 
people.  The young cornet player performed the Last Call, then 
Hoogerhyde piped Now Departing on a bosun’s whistle and the casket 
lowered as the master gunnery sergeant and the three enlisted men fired 
the requisite volleys into the air.  As expected, it was these sharp 
reports which caused the most visible reaction from the mourners.  
Ceremonial amounts of dirt and single flowers were tossed into the 
grave -- the cemetery’s crew would complete the covering later -- and 
the funeral was over.  All per the 2866 revision of the Manual of the 
Unified Star Fleet Funeral Service.
     After the funeral party and the young cornet player had departed, 
the master chief noted the four boys trotting down from Picnic Hill.  
He continued to help stow the flag and rifle lockers, then walked with 
the others to the tandem bubble cars.  Once stowed, the master gunnery 
sergeant began his walk back to town.
     "Excuse me, sir?" one of the boys stepped up to ask Hoogerhyde, 
after the tandem had left.
     He was immediately elbowed by one of his buddies.  "Don’t call 
him ‘sir’.  He’s got chevrons and rockers on his sleeve -- that makes 
him a chief."
     Hoogerhyde smiled.  "You seem to know something of the military."
     The second boy nodded.  "My brother serves in the Michigan National 
Guard.  He’s a corporal, chief."
     "Master chief," Hoogerhyde said, tapping the patch on his sleeve.  
"But I’ll forgive someone who knows army ranks from trying to keep track 
of the navy -- sea or space."
     "You’re Fleet, aren’t you?  Space navy?"
     "Correct.  The Unified Star Fleet."
     "And who got buried?"
     "Specialist 2 Cecilia Staat."
     The boys seemed to know of the family.  "Was she killed in the war?"
     "The interstellar war with the aliens?"
     The second boy blushed, it seemed such a crazy thing to talk about.  
They’d never found any aliens out nearly a thousand light years from 
Earth -- and then the first ones they find seemed hell-bent on killing 
humans?  Insane.  And yet very, very real.
     "No," the master chief said.  "The war started just a week ago.  
We can move information fast, but bringing casualties home?  That’ll take 
a couple of months."
     "Oh."  The first boy seemed disappointed.
     "But don’t worry.  Specialist Staat is still a hero.  She spotted 
something wrong with someone running to board her ship -- turned out the 
man was trying to get a bomb on the Delft.  She stopped him long 
enough for ship’s security to stop him permanently.  Unfortunately, her 
efforts cost Staat her life.  Space is a dangerous game.  Even without 
alien attackers."
     The boys thought about this.  Three headed back to their Skat –- 
but the one with the brother in service remained.
     "What else can I answer for you?"
     "How come not all of you were in Fleet uniforms?"
     "There’s not a need for a large Unified Star Fleet presence in West Michigan," 
Hoogerhyde said.  "And Ottawa Bypass is a pretty small town."
     "Oh... yeah."
     "The two sailors were U.S. Navy Reservists -- sea navy.  The army 
lad, like your brother, is a Michigan National Guard soldier.  Their 
service is Earthbound, not in space.  Not yet anyway.
     "As for the Fleet personnel, Lt. Aage is going in early for her 
reentrant physical.  I expect she’ll be lifting within a week.  The 
master gunnery sergeant has come out of retirement to go and serve in 
this new war.  He’ll leave in thirty days."
     "Not immediately?"
     "Fleet is vast, but there are only so many billets to fill and 
so many transports -- the pencil-neck Personnel people on the Moon 
have a lot of logistics they have to work out with so many to move 
around."
     "I see."
     "I think you do.  Look, son, I’m not a recruiter -- I’m not here 
to try to convince you to join up with Fleet or for any service.  But... 
Monday is Memorial Day Observed.  That’s the reason you’re getting 
this nice three-day holiday weekend.  All I ask is that you take a 
moment on Monday to remember all who have served in the military, on 
land, sea, air or space.  Can you do that?"
     "Yeah, master chief, I can do that."
     "Then take care, son.  And enjoy a little of this lovely day, even 
after this somber ceremony."
     "Thanks!"  Relieved to be released, perhaps, the boy ran off and 
hopped onto the back of the Skat and the four boys roared off towards 
the lake.
     And you, Master Chief, the boy hadn’t asked, are you going 
back in?
     Hoogerhyde didn’t know.  Perhaps.  Maybe.  Probably he should.  
But he’d been right to tell the boy that Fleet Personnel was flooded 
with old-timers like him begging to be let back in during the last week.  
There’d be an update from the Fleet Chiefs Association on it.
     An interstellar war with an unknown alien race who attacked Fleet 
ships without warning or challenge.  Ships were being damaged or even 
destroyed in battle.  There’d be more spacemen coming back to Earth to 
be memorialized.  Someone had to be here to stand for them.
     He imagined there’d be a couple of waves of new recruits and returning 
officers and NCOs.  It was unlikely that this war would be short -- he’d 
already heard one idiot on the viddie news suggest that it’d be over by 
Christmas.  That old misguided chestnut seemed to surface with every war 
fought over the last ten centuries.  He figured they’d be in this war 
for years.  There’d soon come a time when Fleet would be hurting for 
experienced master chiefs.  When, unfortunately, he could imagine there’d 
be more injured and recuperating come back home to help serve on these 
funeral details.
     There was a time coming when he might return to space.  But for now, 
there were still the men and women who’d already given their lives in 
service to humanity.  For now, his duty was to stand and honor them.  
And he’d  be back on Monday, planting small flags next to graves stretching 
back five-hundred years.
     He could live with that.

Dr. Phil

Eight Years Out From Nine-Eleven

On the eighth remembrance of the events on 9/11 in the U.S., I note in passing that the times are changing. It would be so easy to just say, "Well, it's a new Administration and...", but that's not it. It's the eight years.

Realize that a typical age for a college freshman is eighteen. 18 - 8 = 10. Ten years old is about fifth grade. So today's freshman might've been in elementary school on 11 September 2001. While I was a pretty aware ten year old, I freely admit that I am weird and an outlier. The impact of that day's events on them would've been, I think, more about seeing the worry on the faces of the adults.

How many fifth graders would've notice how empty and quiet the skies got in the couple of days after 9/11?

I have a clear memory of Eisenhower giving a speech on television. I apparently pointed at the screen and declared, "I like Ike," which got a lot of amusement at the time. This had to have been 1960, when I was two. It is more typical, I am told, to have clear memories of events when one is three or four. 2 + 8 = 10. 4 + 8 = 12. Children who were just aware of the world around them are now finishing elementary school and are in middle school.

Because of the impact of the day's events on schools, this cohort differs from the rest of the elementary school children, who grew up or were born in a post-9/11 world. This latter group has always lived with excessive airport screen procedures and lived with a Department of Homeland Security -- an organization whose purpose I understand, but whose name still makes me uncomfortable.

The memories of 9/11 have softened and faded somewhat, jarred back into reality if one sees a really good 9/11 documentary. Quite a number have shown up on cable in the last week, but surprisingly, a quick scan of channels around 1pm EDT showed only the History Channel showing a line-up of 9/11 shows. It is interesting to me that I can still learn things about the events of that day -- one show documented the calls made by the flight attendants on American Flight 11, essentially the first salvo of a new war. A second documentary showing pictures from Ground Zero in New York brought back the apocalyptic hell-on-earth nightmare of the scene deep into the collapse and debris zones. How does an aluminum street light manage to stand upright and seemingly undisturbed in the same frame as the starkly unreal peeled metal bark of one of the World Trade Center towers?

The other thing about the post-9/11 world of 2009 is that I still see a great deal of respect and honor paid to fire fighters, soldiers and, to what I think is a lesser extent, police officers. In the last few years I've had a lot of my students at WMU either in ROTC, National Guard or having just returned from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one blinks when a trio of students comes into a lecture hall wearing digital camouflage fatigues or a uniform and jacket over shirt and tie. High-and-tight haircuts on men, whether in the service or not, are as mainstream as any other hair style.

Meanwhile the rest of the channels go on with TV judge shows, soap operas, sports events, reruns of comedy and reality shows, etc. As it should be, probably, recognizing that life goes on. Others may spout and vent about the sacrilege of this tragic day, but it will continue to be a generational thing. A where-were-you-on-9/11 thing. A defining moment thing. And eventually just a faded memory thing, like Appomattox or Flanders Fields or Bastogne or Desert One.

Of course on this eighth remembrance of 9/11, we still have considerable troops in the fields and have not neutralized the threats against us completely -- and perhaps never will. Hate is a commodity which can circulate with great rapidity and raining down destruction on civilians is a favorite tactic/pastime of too much of the world's violent minority of haters.

The world exists, as it has for several years, in an odd mixed quantum state of peace and war. I am not so naive as to believe that the terrorists have been stopped and will never attack us again. But Tuesday 11 September 2001 dawned as a beautiful blue sky day over much of the United States, and continued so even into the afternoon. Even after our world had changed forever.

Dr. Phil

Our schizophrenic nation is again... "commemorating" I think is the word I think I want between "celebrating" and "memorializing"... commemorating the events of Tuesday 11 September 2001. There'd been a clear build-up this year, what with probably progress towards building some sort of Freedom Tower at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, a design for a bell tower at the Pennsylvania site and The Discovery Channel's airing of the docudrama The Flight That Fought Back.

I Have Mixed Feelings...

... about TDC's show. I don't know if it is too soon to talk about this. Whether it will spawn trashier made-for-TV versions, etc. Still, it is, I have read, a powerful telling of one of the powerful stories of 9-11, and the advertising on air and in print (see today's Parade magazine supplement in many American Sunday newspapers) has a relentless inevitability which clearly points to the tipping point which those on that flight experienced.

A New Shock To The System

After NY, DC and PA, the scene soon shifted to Afghanistan. The Iraq. And Iraq. And Iraq. And Madrid. And London. Our attention keeps getting divided, we don't always remember to pay attention to everyone all over the world who deserves our thoughts and prayers.

Then Hurricane Katrina came to the front.

Today's Grand Rapids Press' had a wire services story about NYC fire fighters and policemen serving in New Orleans right now, and how despite living and working through 9-11, they are surprised by the extent of the devastation over something like 90,000 square miles.

It's not that we can't feel for all these people and all these incidents, but we do better dealing with stories one at a time. Serial, not multiplexed. It's human nature and human capacity.

So I don't know if the media and politicians were gearing up to hype the fourth anniversary of September the 11th more than was necessary or appropriate, or whether those efforts will be blown by the wayside with our also necessary concerns for the present and those who still need the help now.

Maybe it's not important that we rank our care -- only that we still do.

Dr. Phil