Alas, today’s score is Deer 4, Abby 0. That is, Views Offered (of any deer, regardless of size, sex or nationality) as contrasted to Shots Taken.
Fortunately, it’s not frigid here at all, and so it was mostly just a very nice day of watching squirrels. And listening to squirrels. And being woken up from nice outdoor naps by squirrels… And there were, of course, multiple episodes in which squirrels pretended to be deer just to get me excited.
Tomorrow, we try again!
I woke up yesterday very early and very nearly leaped out of the rack. Tossed a duffel and a dog and some boots in the Jeep and hit the road.
We made Michigan around 2300 and crashed Mom's place. That's 930 miles, so it was good work.
Why the sudden urgency? Well, Sunday is the beginning of what Mom always called the "high holy days," that is, deer season. I'll move my base camp down to Dad's this afternoon, make sure my shotgun still works (I have the confused idea that the rear sight on something - either my slug gun or my 30/30 - got dorked up, so I need to check it), then sit and dream of the 30-point buck until Sunday morning.
I'm not a real high-intensity hunter (more of a sit-under-a-tree-and-nap sort, really), but I can't not get excited about Opening Day. It's a weekend (in Michigan, it's always Nov 15 - regardless of whether that's a Saturday or a Tuesday), the weather is not off-putting, and you can't drive down a road here without playing a white-knuckle version of deer pong, so I should see deer. Whether or not I see anything to shoot at is a different question, but not a very important one.
We could, of course, post something thoughtful and somber. But you know what, let's not. We've got plenty of other days for that.
Veteran's Day is great because it celebrates all our vets, whether you were one of the guys who served in Godawful Somalia in the early 90s or whether you served as a Navy Yeoman in the late 80s who never left shore.
Peacetime, wartime, in combat or just in the constant state of confusion and paperwork flux that defines military service, this day celebrates everybody who's ever put on a uniform and said, "do with me what you will."
If you've ever been forced to care about the length of a $3 belt in relation to your belt-loops, this is your day. If you've ever spent an hour painting the little eyelets on a cartidge belt black, if you've ever received 37 hepatitis shots in two weeks because of lost paperwork, if you've ever walked 15 or 20 miles and then found the promised trucks or helicopters weren't coming and turned around and walked back...this is your day.
If at one point or another you rode a bus to a training center in the middle of the night and, as you saw someone with abnormally good posture waiting in the darkness, thought, maybe this was a really bad idea... If you've ever folded your underwear and t-shirt into squares and watched someone take a ruler to those squares... If you've ever had to find a helmet to move a vehicle across a parking lot, learned to carry 45 bags in your left hand to retain the ability to salute, been told by angry sweating cook that "gravy" is the main course...this is your day.
If you've used your boots as a pillow while waiting on a plane that may or may not show up, if you've ever thanked the taxpayers out loud over a pitcher of beer, if you've ever dragged your buddy out of an Asian tattoo parlor to make it back to the ship on time...it's your day.
Oftentimes, veterans are modest to a fault. The vast majority of us were not among the Rangers who took the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc, and realizing there are real heroes among us, tend to not want to brag on our own, minor achievements and experiences. This is an honorable impulse, but once in a while we need to celebrate all our service, even the most pedestrian.
So corner a family member, a loved one, or a friend. Best of all if you can corner a child or teenager. Insist they listen to your stories, don't be afraid to embellish a little. If you were once forced to process leave forms on a Friday afternoon, make it into a mountain of leave forms (just for storytelling purposes). If you changed tires on five-ton trucks at Fort Polk, make it into a lot of five-ton trucks, in July, with water mocassins. Don't be afraid to start a story with There I was...in the Camp Kinser postal facility a week before Christmas. Celebrate the time nobody had told you smoke grenades get hot, or to watch your thumb with that Garand, or that chock blocks go on the downhill side of the tires.
(Suggest if you're telling stories to spouses or children, you don't tell any that start out There I was...on Pattaya Beach on liberty...)
It's Veteran's Day. Be proud of your services, and share your experiences with those close to you.
I watched the service today on CNN. It was nicely done, and the TV folks even resisted the urge to chatter during the ceremony. I saw an estimate of 15,000 attending. I was struck, beforehand, by the some of the never-changing aspects of life in the military. There wasn't enough seating, and so Joe - the generic and undistinguished generic American Soldier - was standing behind the chairs. And sitting up against vehicles, and against shipping containers, and on the ground. Sitting back-to-back with other Soldiers and standing, arms crossed, in bits of shadow.
These ceremonies are something that, although nobody wants to attend, nobody wants to not attend, either. It's the exact same ceremony, with some minor differences in scale, that is held periodically on FOBS and camps and COPs all around the theater of operations. Same program of events, same music (although one usually gets Amazing Grace on tape, rather than by a talented master sergeant, in the desert), same boots-helmet-and-rifle. The Soldiers (and Mr. Cahill, although retired, was certainly a Soldier) who were killed at Fort Hood got the same sendoff from the Army we provide to each one who falls downrange.
Maybe that's why there was such impressive attendance from the Soldiers of Fort Hood. These ceremonies are as much for the comrades of the fallen as for anyone else. They're important, they help us acknowledge loss, and reassure us that if we should go down, we'll be acknowledged. You go to a memorial ceremony because you want every seat to be full, you want to be a part of a demonstration that a fallen comrade won't be forgotten, and is being honored not by a commander and a couple of others, but by the entire community of warriors.
I'm glad it was packed. It was a fine farewell.
And I think they do have black bears here in Georgia. However, none of them seem to live with me, so I had to do the next best thing and arm a Big Black Dog.
I got the news about Fort Hood while I was driving home yesterday, and spent about 500 miles punching the "seek" button and trying to keep up with developments.
It's nothing short of horrifying to lose our people here at home. One of the biggest sources of stress for our Warriors downrange is the utter lack of a true "safe zone" anywhere in Iraq or Afghanistan. That just makes it worse when the possibility of sudden and random murder becomes a reality here in the United States.
The last unit I supported in Iraq is a Fort Hood battalion. Fortunately, if things have remained on schedule, they are still in Iraq. And that's not something you say very often.
I was surprised at my impressions when I first heard who the shooter was. I will leave the Islam issue alone - there's nothing printable I have to say about that. What floored me (and surprised me by doing so) was the degree to which I was stunned that it was a field-grade officer who had killed Soldiers.
I understand that crazy is crazy, and evil is evil, and that neither crazy nor evil are ruled out by class, age, education, etc. I also understand that the Medical Corps is not the same as the rest of the Army. But an officer, particularly a goddam major, is expected to be a mature leader, for whom the care of Soldiers is a sacred trust.
Killed by someone who you automatically, by definition, trust with your life?
This shitbag had apparently decided it was just too darn hard to bear the responsibilities he accepted when he took his commission. He should have been drummed out of the Army way back when he started saying he was having issues with our national policy (imagine having that piece of work assigned to help you work through some war-related issues).
Bah. I'm disgusted. And devastated for the troopers killed and wounded, and their comrades in arms. These people have done enough, and that more strength and resilience is going to be required of them to deal with events at their home...it's heartbreaking.
I give thanks, though, for the Soldiers on the ground who shut doors and barred the shooter from getting to further concentrations of people. I give thanks for the Soldiers brave and quick-witted enough to begin performing care under fire while utterly without the ability to return fire. And I give thanks for the warriors who don't go downrange, like DoD Police SGT Kim Munley, who ran to the sound of the guns and dropped the shooter killing her flock. Munley is married to the military, accepted the responsibility of protecting the military community, and deserves to be considered a hero on par with any Soldier who runs into a hail of fire to save his comrades.
We look at the heartbreaking death of Noor Faleh Almaleki, a young woman in Arizona who, it certainly appears, was killed by her father for being "too Westernized."
It is unclear, at least upon cursory inspection, as to whether these folks were "Iraqis," or Americans who'd immigrated from Iraq. It may not be legally different, but if Miss Almaleki was an American citizen, I'd find it a little irritating to have her referred to as an "Iraqi woman." Because that makes it easier for us to distance ourselves from the savagery of an honor killing being committed in freakin' Arizona.
And I don't think we want to trivialize this sort of thing. It is, after all, male relatives killing women in America. That is, beyond just being awful, the perfect example of the sort of crap and horror that pretty much everyone ought to be able to agree needs to be left behind in the countries these folks leave behind.
Come to the US, you get economic opportunity, freedom from death squads, the ability to vote in reasonably un-rigged elections, public education for all your children. You do have to leave some things behind, and they should include: disappearing people with whom you disagree politically; discarding refuse and excrement in the street; and, treating your female relatives like goats you're not allowed to eat.
I would assume, since we (as a country) went to the trouble of running this man down and bringing him back when he tried to flee to Great Britain, the intent exists to prosecute him. Ms. Almaleki died last night, so I haven't seen yet the specific charge.
But I think we need to start making an example. This sort of thing, it appears, is happening from time to time. And, it seems, if left unchecked, this is a problem that will grow. It has in Great Britain.
In the first half of this year alone, the government’s Forced Marriage Unit – which deals with honour violence because of its frequent links to forced marriage – had received 2,000 calls.
The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act gives the Department of Justice (DOJ) the power to investigate and prosecute bias-motivated violence by providing the DOJ with jurisdiction over crimes of violence where the perpetrator has selected the victim because of the person's actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.The focus with this, particularly among conservatives, has been on the "sexual orientation" bit. But...gender was also added as a criteria to screen for bias in criminal motivation.
The FBI arrested 18 men in October 1964, but state prosecutors refused to try the case, claiming lack of evidence. The federal government then stepped in, and the FBI arrested 18 in connection with the killings. In 1967, seven men were convicted on federal conspiracy charges and given sentences of three to ten years, but none served more than six. No one was tried on the charge or murder. The contemptible words of the presiding federal judge, William Cox, give an indication of Mississippi's version of justice at the time: "They killed one ni---r, one Jew, and a white man. I gave them all what I thought they deserved." [source same as above link]It took 41 years to get murder convictions on the scum who killed those Freedom Riders. I don't think we can afford to play around with the scum who come to our country and kill women. If we need to use federal hate crimes statutes to stomp on the head of this particular rat with extreme predjudice, I'd support it.
Jack and I are, once again, on the road. We're headed to Virginia to do some visiting. Tonight finds us holed up in a Days Inn (I have yet to find a Days Inn that won't accept dogs) in western South Carolina.
One of us seems to think I got him his very own king-sized bed. I will have to break his heart soon and explain that he'll need to share it. The bed is a step up from our arrival, when he decided that he liked the bathroom.
In a singularly horrifying twist of events, I will spend the afternoon at a craft show with Cousin R. Craft shows are about as far from the Natural Habitat of Abby as it's possible to get, but...I guess it's the price I pay for jetting off to the gunshow with Cousin-In-Law last weekend.
Sigh.
You know it's a highly anticipated outing when I brush my hair and put on shoes and Jack shows no interest in the outing. In fact, whereas shoes-and-hair normally sends him into fits of pleasepleasepleaseIwannago, this evolution has him hiding in the bedroom.
I woke up this morning, staggered to the door and let Jack out. I jabbed the ON button on the coffee maker, and opened the fridge for the morning beverage.
Oooh, I thought. Cold water!
I've been sticking a pitcher of water in to cool off. So I grabbed the pitcher, only it didn't feel quite right...
