A whole bunch of people my age, including me, disparage the ubiquitous use of iphones and smart phones among today’s youth.

i remain saddened neither of my daughters nor son-in-law get a daily newspaper, the stuff of my dreams for most of my life and now an integral part of Maureen’s and my morning routine.

i don’t often comment about my regrets about the next generation and their children being immersed in technology: mobile funs, video games, television, and such instead of what we had…before television, of course.

i often comment to Maureen — but seldom to others as i recognize i am old and don’t completely understand how those younger than i go about living just like my parents didn’t understand about how i went about living: different times, different culture — i am concerned about how all of this technology, innovation, social and health concerns might limit our grandson in the scope of his learning about the world.

Then after learning my grandson has his own iPhone yesterday, i asked my daughter and son-in-law about rules and if i could have his number.  Within the half hour, i swapped to text messages with him and received a Facetime call.

For over a half-hour, Samuel James Jewell Gander regaled me with a tour of his home, an introduction to Gordon, Sam’s relatively new gecko, a detailed description of several stuffed animals, and a narration about Sam being a “guide” tonight for parents at the PTA meeting (Blythe is the PTA president). There were several other revelations underway when his father, Jason, came home, and then Maureen came back from shopping, generating another tour and other stories for Grandma Mo.

It was tough cutting off the call, but knowing he had to do his homework (he told me about that as well) before the PTA meeting, i began easing out of the conversation.

It was tough.

It was tough because i was in heaven. Grandson and i just chillin’. The only thing that would have been better would have been to have the tour in person.

So now, every once in awhile considering decorum and proper distribution of time in Sam’s rather full schedule, i will talk to Sam. Just Sam and me.

Lord, that’s heaven. Pure heaven.

Thanks, Blythe and Jason…oh yeh: and Sam!

i may have posted this before and you may have to zoom in to read it. It is a poem my Aunt Colleen Prichard wrote soon  after i was born and her finance, my Uncle Bill Prichard was flying his fighter out of Belgium — the name on the nose cone was “Colleen.”

This is especially for all of my Prichard family. i just wish i could remember her in those days. Oh what gloriously romantic times it must have been…not to mention scarier than hell.

There are some things i’ve done in life i regret. There are many things i’ve done in life that are what they are and not much more, sort of a “so be it” thing.

And there are some things i’ve done of which i am immensely proud. One of those was the manner in which i handled my job as Executive Officer of the U.S.S. Yosemite (AD 19), my last operational tour in the Navy. i reported aboard twelve days after Maureen and i married, deployed to the Indian Ocean just over a month later.

The Yo-Yo had a crew of 900 with 100 women sailors and six female officers in a wardroom of 44. Previously, i had worked with one female Navy officer, Carolyn Prevatte, at Texas A&M NROTC from 1976 to 1979; in 1982, i saw a female deckhand on a tugboat assisting the U.S.S. Okinawa (LPH 3) tying up to a pier; and in 1979, i listened to three female officers Navy sounding officious at the Admiral Kidd BOQ swimming pool while i was attending the Tactical Action Officer course in San Diego. That was it before i was charged to be Number Two on Yosemite. 

i was old school Navy, the kind they don’t have anymore. We were rip-snorting, steam-driven, wild liberty hounds. Women were what we left back home and what many chased in foreign ports. There were many things wrong with that Navy, but there were many good things, too. i was frightened…well, not frightened but gravely concerned about being in charge of a ship with women as part of the crew. i remember being glad i was reporting aboard married rather than single. i later found out Captain Boyle had considering rejecting my assignment until he found out i was getting wed before i reported aboard.

i tried to get information about the “Women At Sea” program, taking leave and going to Norfolk rather than spending my last week in PXO school in Newport. My intent was to spend a day in Washington with the program coordinator, but she could not make herself available: too many congressional hearings. i ended up talking to the XO of a sub-tender with women in the crew. It was a total loss: the guy was macho up to his ears where if he had one, his brain had stopped working.

So there i went. i am still going to write the XO log kind of book about that deployment. Eleanor Hicks thinks it should be my next book. i think i’m going to write one or two more before that one. My working title is Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings.

But today, i was attacking the piles in my home office: fairly successfully for a change, when i ran across this letter. It was from Lieutenant Kathy Rondeau who transferred from the Yosemite in Diego Garcia to report to her new duty station at NAS Jacksonville.

Her letter makes me feel proud of how it went on Yo-Yo, nearly eight months from Mayport and back. Challenges abounded. Frank Boyle and i worked together to make it work with very little coherent direction and often cross-threaded decisions from the desk sitters in DC (and when we got back, realizing the brass did not want the program to be a success: they did not want women to be stationed on ships).

And not only did it work well, the CO and XO gave those women, especially the officers good counsel on what they needed to do and what to expect in their careers. Kathy’s letter validates that.

i don’t know if you can read my scans. The new multi-purpose printer and i aren’t familiar enough with each other yet. So here are excerpts from that letter:

Thank you for all you did for me. You can never know how much you have helped me grow as a Surface Warfare Officer. That night we spoke about OOD quals – you said a lot of good things and I listened to you good advice. I agree with you about not worrying about what other people think or how other people got their quals. Also, i am proud to be a Surface Warfare Officer, and XO, if it had not been for the cruise, you, and the Captain, I wouldn’t be so proud…

…I never said goodbye to you, XO, it was too hard for me to do…you were so good to me and taught me so much professionally and built up my self-confidence as a Surface Warfare Officer and a department head.

That’s enough. i’ve put my scan of the three-page letter below. My new printer and i are not yet well acquainted enough to make the scans more readable.

Sadly, i cannot find Kathy on the web. i think i remember correctly that she went on and at least made captain. i would like to talk to her today and see how she is doing. And thank her for making me proud of doing the right thing on Yosemite.

There are more stories here to which i may return. But for now, an eulogy:

Sir Isaac Newt

Sir Isaac Newt
finally bought the farm
although he did not soar very much
during his lifetime,
just swimming around,
sitting on the rock
in the terrarium
we got him
after his unnamed compatriot
disappeared forever only days
after our daughter brought them home;
not much later, Sir Aristotle Newt
had taken a header in the deep sink
after escaping from the old terrarium
which we hope happened to the unnamed one.

we gave Aristotle a proper burial,
complete with a popsicle stick for a headstone
after our daughter demanded such,
her storing him in a plastic bag in the freezer
until i got home
to attend to him properly with respect.

then Ike swam on alone in his tiny world
sated with the frozen blood worm meal
we fed him a couple of times a week;
my wife, recognizing my procrastinating
cleaned his terrarium every other week
allowing him to roam in the bathroom sink.

oh, he had a good life, such as it was
in the terrarium on my desk next to the window;
i really did like him;
i would talk to him every day,
admiring his orange and black polka dot tummy,
considering his wide and vast knowledge of the world,
but
never saying anything,
not even making a noise.

my wife found him this morning
belly up
in the terrarium;
afraid i would be distraught,
she disposed of him
along with the coffee grounds,
an ignominious end
for such a glorious dainty creature.

for twelve years,
Sir Ike sat on my desk
calmly looking out at me from his terrarium;
other than when the cat would sit
on the top screen of the terrarium
or hungrily stare at him through the glass;
he always struck a calm pose,
making me feel akin, in control, peaceful.

but now, the newt era is over here.
Sir Isaac Newt is gone,
coffee bean grinds gone.

i will mourn only briefly for this
noble newt named Ike,
he was a good newt…

i think.

i do not understand how, when i am working continuously to clear out and organize papers, photos, computer files, and niches holding an unknown number of things, why the piles keep getting higher.

When i completed my Navy active duty, i was excited because two-year, even four-year tours never gave me enough time to do all of the things i wanted to do to make my command permanently better. This included many, many, regulations and instructions which needed to be either tossed or streamlined (after all, the Navy is a bureaucracy too). So i thought i would have time to put things in order.

But my task continues, apparently unending. And yesterday, i found a poem, not properly filed, from 1984.

A month or two before, Blythe, my daughter, had returned to her mother in Austin after several weeks with us. It was the first time she had spent time with Maureen and me after our marriage. It was in our wonderful home in Ponte Vedra Beach. i dont’ think there are many things much sadder than a man having to say goodbye to his daughter, regardless of the circumstances. Then several months later, i was thinking about missing her and i walked the half-mile from our house to the beach. It rained and inspired me to write the poem. i wrote this later while my ship, the U.S.S. Yosemite, was on local operations off the coast.

crying jag

crying jag;
pelicans, swirling
low over cresting waves
slow:
a painting in the morning mist
burns through,
no discernible edge yet,
the lone man on the beach
walks where
the ocean folds back upon itself;
the man with a gray sweater
protecting against the late fall moisture,
trousers rolled knee-length,
shoes in one hand,
turns with his free hand shading his eyes
to return the pelicans’ gaze;
the wizened face tightens;
tears well up and roll
down the creases in his cheek;
darker clouds overhead
commence showering
pelicans and man;
the pelicans, if they cared,
could no longer tell
the man was crying.