And there i was in a place i always wanted to go: Flagstaff. Doing what i have always wanted to do: write. Taking breaks just as i imagined: walks in the mountains, walks up to Buffalo Park, the crown jewel of the Flagstaff Urban Trail system. The first hike up i read the sign. The park began as a refuge for bison and other animals. i kept my eye out but only saw deer. i realized they could not have bison commingling with the human kind. Too dangerous for the latter. Sad, i thought. Then tonight, it sort of just came to me what it might have been like for those majestic  beasts before those crazy humans moved in.

shaggy beasts

oh, i done seen ’em coming
coming over the ridge
breathing fire
hooves of thunder
raising storms of dust in their wake
eyes aflame
coming after me
humped back furry beasts
coming after me
in the dry heat
way up in the mountains
breath hotter than steam
that’s it:
a herd of shaggy locomotives
coming after me
i done seen ’em coming
in my dreams
as i climb
the path up the mountain
to the tableland
they dedicated
to those shaggy beasts
then decided
the tableland would be a nice place
for the locals to enjoy
then recognizing
the horned shaggy beasts
were prone to run over
scrawny walkers
so
they relocated the inhabitants
to some protected prairie habitat
far away
so
i missed them
until
i done seen ’em coming
coming after me
over the mountain ridge
breathing fire and brimstone
in my dreams.

Sam Cooke wrote it

Sam Cooke sang it. Then Otis sang it. Then Aretha sang it.

Then over fifty other groups sang it…and they are still singing it.

“A Change is Gonna Come.”

And it will. i believe the change Sam was addressing will come.

It was a heroic song. It is a beautiful song.

And the title words fit something far less important on this website. A change is gonna come. Here.

Last week, i wrote my last column for The Democrat, number 500. Last week, i completed my sequestered sojourn to somewhere and found it. What i found is i will continue to write.

i started a book, or rather i picked up where i left off at least a half dozen times writing a book. It’s about a ship, a wonderful ship in a position to allow change to come. The Yosemite did not only allow the change to come, she caused the clarions to blow the song of change to the heavens. She went to the Indian Ocean and unlike those tenders before her, she steamed north to the island of Masirah, Oman, anchored and performed wondrous repair and maintenance on ships of the carrier battle group, and she did it with an extended out of port time while women, one hundred enlisted and six officers were part of the crew and wardroom. First time. It was akin to what Sam Cooke was singing about.

i was the executive officer, and i think the lessons learned still apply today, not just to the Navy or the military in general, but to the world. Before continuing, i must thank Captain Frank Boyle, USN (Ret.), Noreen Leahy, Emily Black, and Dr. Frank Kerrigan for helping me remember, correcting the fault in that memory, and adding to the fun of writing this book. i also need to thank Blythe Jewell Gander, Sarah Jewell, Alan, Maren, and Eleanor Hicks, Joe Jewell, Carla Neggers, Kate Jewell, and Maureen (you know her, right?) for providing guidance and encouragement as i move forward in writing the book. Oh yeh, the working title is Steel Decks and Glass Ceilings.

My book is a long way from finished, barely started really. But i will finish it. i don’t know if i will publish it for the public, but i will finish it. What will come next is yet to be seen. As it nearly always is with me.

i’m also dedicated to bring changes to this website. i plan to have more posts, to put a little more of my soul into these pages. After all, i am seventy-three and wise enough, i think, to not try and change the world. It’s the next generations turn to try their hand at that. My part in this thing called life is to provide stories about what has happened to me in those 73 years, what i’ve observed, and how i feel about things. This is not an attempt to change the world, but to, perhaps, let some folks who might think about my experience, read my stories, and maybe make their plan to change the world a little bit better.

Part of the change here is to see if i can cover my expenses. i am, with the help of the incredible Walker Hicks, planning to make this a subscription website around the first of September. It won’t cost much. i’m thinking about a buck a month, paid for annually. That should cover my expenses and reward Walker a small token of what i owe him.

i will need some help. So as i roll this out and continue to change and massage those changes, i will be asking readers to help me.

Like i have a problem with what to call this. When this began, Walker suggested the theme be golf-like. i certainly agreed to that. Walker came up with “jewell in the Rough.” i liked it a lot, and it has been on the banner of this site ever since.

Then i chose some categories to label each post. One category was “A Pocket of Resistance.” That is me. Blythe has noted i am a “contrarian.” That is accurate, but “A Pocket of Resistance” relates back to my discovery of that part of my nature while aboard the USS Anchorage in the South China Sea in 1975. i like it. A lot.

Soon, every post bore the label “A Pocket of Resistance.” It seems sort of duplicative to have everything labeled “jewell in the Rough” and “A Pocket of Resistance.” So i would like you readers to let me know which you prefer better or what you would like to see my website labeled. And don’t worry, i have a tough skin and can laugh at myself if you want to throw some rocks over the wall.

So, even though it is not as earth shaking-ly important as what Sam Cooke meant, it is important to me.

After all, a change is gonna come.

It was 1968. April.

i had flown on a military flight out of Charleston to Rota, Spain with way too much personal crap in a plywood cruise box.

i was reporting to my first ship, if i ever got there. The USS Hawkins (DD-873) was somewhere in the Mediterranean. Being completely naive (damn near my permanent state, sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse), i expected an overnight in Rota and being flown to my first ship in some romantic spot like Rome the next day. But they couldn’t find my ship…or something. Who the hell knows. My overnight turned into two weeks.

i cannot describe my loneliness. i hooked up with another junior officer and took a bus to Seville for the day: a bullfight and wandering around the city not having a clue as to what to see and what to do. That was about it except a couple of stories to save for later.

i was lonely. i had no clue as to what would happen when i actually did report to my ship. My world had tumbled upside down. i was out of place. But on the ride back from Seville, i looked out the bus window at the agrarian landscape. i was longing for calmness, order and for a brief moment, i found it.

southwestern spain

there are no rocks here;
there are just rolling hills of fields and fields;
there are no woods here:
one just feels a calm.

don’t stay long; it could get dull;
dullness could be an affixation of the mind:
one moment of one day, the dullness
turns to calm which can suffocate my kind;

it could be solitary here;
try not to think of this
amidst the military people,
it grows into left-right bliss.

people have no quarrels here;
at least, with life itself they live;
most people seem not to notice;
perhaps it irks their souls too much.

the fields are green here;
the ocean rolls softly in the bay;
the trees are green here;
spring’s coolness precedes summer days.

the bullfights are clean things
people watch to see men face
death for nothing more than an ear or more;
it is satisfying to the crowd and perhaps the matador.

the roads are curved here;
no super highways sever the countryside;
the world is clean here
as if the rest of the world has died.

there are no rocks here,
just rolling hills of fields;
there are no woods here;
i feel the calm.

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig,
Home again, home again, dancing a jig;
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog;
Home again, home again, jiggety-jog;
To market, to market, to buy a plum bun,
Home again, home again, market is done.
— Mother Goose

It was a cool 55 when i left Flagstaff just before six. Tom Suby came out to dump some trash from the house above my studio and we said goodbye again. While we were talking, i commented i smelled smoke and there was a smoky haze. He said it was the Kendrick fire, about 10,000 acres. When he realized i didn’t know about the fire, he was incredulous. “You really have been doing anything but writing, haven’t you?” he asked.

Yes, i had isolated myself that much. No television. No news except the exchanges with friends of the Fitzgerald collision, something we Navy surface types will be talking about for a long, long time. But that and some Facebook exchanges. After all, i was trying to get to somewhere.

Friday morning, i had found somewhere i wanted to be and i was taking it home.

It was old Jewell traveling again. My little Mazda 3 was packed pretty full, not jammed like i have traveled many other times, but full. i rolled onto old US 66 and shortly hit I-17, down, down, down the mountain. The vistas of pines in the rolling mountains was beautiful. And rolling down those curves, the highway folks had put up one of those temporary flashing signs that warned, “Look out for Elk.” i took that to mean meeting an elk on the two lanes down could be imminent. i had this thing in me that wanted to pull off at a safe spot and go look for elk. Of course,  i didn’t. Just kept rolling like i always do.

By the time i got to Phoenix, she was rising (okay, who makes that connection?). i called and told her i was coming home and i had found somewhere. By now the mountains and the hills and the pines were but hazy visions on the horizon. The landscape of Arizona is varied and always interesting. If only i could slow and study it some more. Of course, i didn’t. i just kept rolling. As always.

i cut west on state route 101, maybe there a long time but now a four-lane escape from Phoenix traffic, going south to I-10, then a quick jog to state route 85 to I-8 in Gila Bend, the land that i…, no i don’t love it, but i have had a number of adventures featuring Gila Bend, and i’ve always been amazed anyone would choose to live there and now even more amazed because it’s growing.

Now, i was in familiar territory: I-8, the ribbon of highway to San Diego. Been on this crazy route more times than i can count. 80 miles per hour, maybe more if i think the highway patrol isn’t hiding in the bushes somewhere west. Not much there to Yuma except exits to towns that don’t even have dots on the exit signs: Smurr, Theba, Piedra, Tarton, Stanwix, Aztec, Dateland, Mohawk, Tacna, Ligurta. Maybe a gas station and convenience store for the travelers, a couple of houses, most with no vegetation, a couple with tree breaks. That’s it. Not much to El Centro and ’bout the same until the road begins to climb just west of Ocotillo where i had to turn around once and spend an extra night (in El Centro where i dined at a Thai place run by Mexican-Americans, nice folk but their fried rice had a hint of salsa). Then up the mountains past Dos Cabezos until you feel like you just might be on the top of the world, that ribbon of highway launching across spans of nothingness looking down into valleys so deep you can’t see the bottom and looking up to the sky so close it feels like you could touch it. Then down, down, down where the names look familiar where there are now a grunch of casinos on the reservations until i hit the eastern edges of the city and the traffic looks familiar as i jockey for position to get the hell off this ribbon of highway gone lunatic and jiggety jog to home.

“Market is done.”

i’ve found somewhere, and i am home.

My little Mazda has done good. It will get a detail tomorrow. i was beat, worthless for the evening. Maureen puts up with me and we eat tapas down the hill, watch a bit of the ballgame recorded earlier and go to bed.

This morning, i arise and launch into old routines with the additional unpacking, organizing, washing. You know. Then before Maureen comes out of the bedroom, i assess where i’ve been. The trip home beat me down a bit more than before. But i am older. Someday in the future, i will have to stop such power drives to somewhere.

Somewhere? i found it. It isn’t exactly what i was expecting to find. The sequestered sojourn was not exactly the way i planned. But it did accomplish what i wished to accomplish. i know where i am. Somewhere. i’ll be a bit different now. i’m not sure exactly sure who that will be, but it will be different.

And i’m fine.

After all, when i walked out the kitchen door to fill Maureen’s garden water pail, i found this:

It’s good to be home, jiggity jig.

It is a lovely place, this someplace i have found.

Since i’ve found it, i’m moving on, back home where i belong.

i’ve checked out the car to leave a day early, early in fact tomorrow morning.

i’ve checked the car fluids, etc. as my dear bride asked me to do. i knew they were okay, but one of the primary drives in my life is to make her not worry. i’ve enough gas to get within a half-hour of Bonita, but i’ll stop somewhere after a couple of hours to fill ‘er up and go the rest of the way non-stop. My kind of driving. Just under 500 miles, seven to eight hours through the desert at its hottest. Done it too many times to remember them all. Do recall the old Toyota Corona station wagon through Arizona in July when i had to turn on the heat to keep it from overheating in 120-plus temperatures and then stopping in El Centro around 6:00 in the evening, thinking how cool it was only to see a bank sign thermometer reading 118. May get something of a repeat as the Southwest between Fredericksburg, Texas and El Centro, California is relishing in heat way above 100 degrees.

But it’s time to go. i spent today spinning wheels. i finally realized the sequestered sojourn to somewhere was over. i mean i got somewhere. i know where it is now, and i’m damn tired of the sequestered part. i was gonna gut it out through tomorrow. Then i talked to Maureen. That did it. i missed her. Flat missed her.

As for the writing retreat as i have called it, i got done what i needed. It’ll be a book sometime. It may or may not be published. Some folks will get a copy regardless. We’ll see.

It was good for me, this somewhere.  i will take somewhere with me when i leave tomorrow, but i’ll leave behind a wonderful workout/walk/interval training/run thing in the mountains. i think the introductory photo captures it.

But it’s time to go home.