All posts by Jim

Cheerio

A Pocket of Resistance

After i wrote my last post, i took my younger daughter out to lunch as Maureen had gone to an art exhibit in Balboa Park with a friend. i felt  good. Memories of things i loved always get me up, and time with either of my daughters are precious to me. So this, too, gave me it was two uppers for me.

When we got home, i went to a dark place. Don’t know why. Perhaps i subconsciously recognized my time at sea was gone and my times spent with either of my daughters were very precious to me, but the opportunities for such moments are dwindling. Perhaps it was a reaction to Notre Dame burning. Perhaps it was acknowledging i was never going to play golf like Tiger. Perhaps it was the weather: gray, seaport weather in the Southwest corner, a bit cool, rain likely. Like i said, i don’t know why.

So i went outside and collected our garbage and recycle cans and put them back behind our side yard gate. As is my practice, i put away the cans for three neighbors. Such a minor thing helping others always makes me feel better. Then i planted some onion seeds in my  garden box.

The gray storm clouds still lingered above. But the darkness was gone. Now i’m going to digitize a favorite LP onto my iPod, have some pizza and watch a baseball game.

i’m fine.

Cheerio.

Morning Watch

Sea Stories

Previously on this website, i have commented on my habit of rising early.

i did it again today, got up just past five, fed the cats, took out the trash, put up last night’s pots and pans, took out the trash for pickup, added to and tended the compost box, watered the gladiolas, checked the vegetable boxes, set the table, and then sat down at this infernal machine to cuss at all of the blockades to doing anything productive — the genies who dwelled in the evaps (distilling plant) and gave me grief, only allowing the evaps to produce good water when they felt so inclined when i was the chief engineer on the Hollister; well they jumped on my shoulder and rode with me until they leaped into my computer, moving each time i got a new one to torment me to the gates of hell with their insidious, prankish, really evil shenanigans — while the rest of the house and neighborhood slept except for the cats who pestered me while i cussed at my desk.

It is a routine. i do not know how i got into it. i don’t know why i arise early, but i suspect it’s because of the morning watch.

i have written of the morning watch before, but this morning, i am so inclined to write of it again. The morning watch was my favorite watch. It hardly ever started as my favorite. The messenger of the watch would show up in my stateroom beside my rack around 0315, 3:00 a.m. to landlubbers.

Messengers of the watch were circumspect in this duty of waking up officers for the mid and morning watches. They had heard of the one who had difficulty in arousing a rather burly LTJG from his rack, finally grabbing his shoulder when the young hard sleeping officer jerked hard and kicked out, whacking the messenger in the head driving him into the locker on the other side of the stateroom and breaking his nose. If calling the officer “lieutenant, lieutenant, wake up, wake up, it’s time for the morning watch” didn’t work, they would get at an angle, ready to leap away, and gently prod the officer.

i never lashed out, but i did grumble a lot. i would rub my eyes, shoo the messenger back to the bridge, put on the khakis i had prepped on the small fold-out desk across from my rack, splash my face with water from the shared sink at the entrance to our stateroom, hit the head on the way out, all with my red-lens flashlight on to guide me through the passageways and up the ladders to combat (Combat Information Center or CIC) to get the operational picture of what was happening before reporting to the bridge and announcing to the off-going OOD (Officer of the Deck), “i’m ready to relieve you, Sir.” It would be around 0340. In five minutes or less, i was briefed, saluted, and announced to the OOD so all could hear, “I relieve you, Sir,” to which the OOD would respond, “I stand relieved,” and the Boatswainmate of the Watch would echo, “Mister Jewell has the deck and the conn.”

It was only then, i appreciated the morning watch. The rest of it was just irksome stuff i did mechanically, reluctantly.

But then, i was in my world. For years, it was with a cup of coffee and a cigarette. On my last two ships, the cigarettes had left me. i was usually in my world of darkness standing at the center gyro compass, peering out into the darkness with not much going on. When the ship was in company with other Navy ships, i might see their running lights sparsely glowing in the surrounding waters. They too were quiet: never too much going on as far as formation changes or information exchanges. All of the elephants were in their racks. Junior officers ruled the  decks, the seas, their universe, and at that time of day, they were not inclined to much other than leaning on their gyros (i have some other sea stories about disliked seniors (elephants) screwing with OOD’s and even CO’s on other watches).

The first signs of the morning came in the aromas. Somewhere on 0430, i would get another cup of coffee and weather permitting, would go out to the starboard bridge wing, lean over the gunnel with my cup of coffee. The galley would be stirring a couple of decks below. Starboard, not port side was where to catch whiffs of the coffee, baking bread, bacon coming up to greet the morning.

Following that, about 45 minutes before actual sunrise, came my joy, my moment of silence, my spiritual moment. First light. It would creep into my awareness, slowly lightening the black sky of a million stars with the stars fading away as the lightness gradually infused the sky, allowing me to discern the horizon, a sharp line between the shades of the sky’s grays and the dark Navy blue of the sea (you see, there is a reason for the color of “navy blue”).

Then, the inevitable rising of that lucky old sun. i didn’t even mind the pink auras of sunrise as mariners know “red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.” Renewal. New dawn. New day.

Better yet, it was a short watch. Relief would come by 0700, allowing the off-going watch time to be the last in the chow line for enlisted and the last three or four to join the wardroom table. All of the other watches, except for the two hour dog watches designed for three section watches to rotate and accommodate the evening mess, were a solid, unrelenting four hours.

Once relieved, my day would come with a rush. Chomping down the bacon, eggs, and toast while reading the morning message traffic, rushing to quarters to pass  the word to my division, taking on the morning duties, paperwork, inspections, paperwork.

Fading around 1000, nearly always. That’s when the rack monster would start calling me. You see, the beginning and the end of the morning watch was not joyful. By the noon mess break at 1130, i was stumbling, eyes burning. Most often, i would skip the wardroom mess and head straight to my rack: a nooner, a long nooner, and what i later came to know as a “NORP,” Naval Officer Rest Period. Good hard sleep, even in rough seas.

On several of my ships, my rack was a couch, for some reason nearly always red faux leather in the daytime. The back would fold down to disclose a mattress in a metal frame. For my rack in rough seas at night or for a NORP i had a system. i would put clothes or blankets at the back of the seat, fold down the frame until the clothes, blankets, etc. left the frame at an angle; then i would pull the mattress outward until there was a crevasse between the mattress and the bulkhead. i would wedge myself into the crevasse where the ship’s rolls had less effect on my NORP. Good hard sleep. An hour, maybe a bit more.

i don’t think i did, but i like to believe i dreamed of the morning watch.

i would continue this sea story, but i have just realized it’s time for a NORP.

“Murphy’s Law”

Murphy's Law desk calendar

From my “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar archives thanks to Aunt Evelyn, Uncle Pipey, and cousin Nancy:

Parkinson’s Fifth Law: If there is a way to delay an important decision, the good bureaucrat, public or private will find it.

Goofy guy’s proof of Parkinson’s Fifth Law: Try to get a decision on a building code from a city planner.

Cruel Vegans

A Pocket of Resistance

One morning last week, i heard a radio program where a vegan activist was informing us how cruel farmers and ranchers and butchers and all those sorts were cruel feeding us animals and how noble the vegan cause was and how they could solve all the world’s problems and bring about world peace, all animals included.

Seems to me they might be a bit cruel themselves:

Yanking their fruit off poor tree’s limbs; denying many plants the spreading of their seeds; pulling them screaming out of the ground; chopping off their leaves; putting them out in the hot sun on acres and acres of land. Segregating…yes, that’s right: SEGREGATING them from nature’s weeds and pollen and bugs and other critters; cross-breeding to create new varieties, even if the peaches, apples, pears, corn, taters, and all things vegetable and fruit only want to be left alone with their own kind, and certainly don’t wish to have their skin flayed back and be grafted.

Oh, the cruelty.

And then, these concerned vegans want to kill all the cows and pigs…and chickens, i guess.  ‘Cause i’m pretty sure as my good friend Marty Linville once said, those farmers ain’t gonna keep ’em around for pets; it costs a ton to feed ’em and tend ’em and milk ’em, which has to be done or those milk cows become miserable, and the farmer ain’t gonna grow no hay to feed ’em; and the poor chickens will watch all of those eggs hatch by the thousands and be unable to take care of all of them and they will cry mournfully…or cluck mournfully watching all of those chicks, helpless to aid them; and the fields will lie fallow and the cows and the pigs and the chickens will die slow, painful, horrible deaths by the thousands and thousands when the vegans have their way…

And then think of the farmers and the ranchers. Their farms and ranches will be overcome with the stench of all of those dead animals they once cared for (before slaughtering many of course the vegans will point out); those farmers and ranchers will not make money and they will go broke and then bankrupt and get kicked off their lands and come to the city and be homeless and live on the streets and not know how to live in the cities.

Unless, of course, the vegans adopt all of the animals and take on the expense of providing them feed and hay  and milking the milk cows, and take all of the destitute, homeless once-farmers and once-ranchers and once butchers, and the vegans take care of the young’uns in sickness and health.

But i don’t think that the vegans will take that on. They are too busy telling everyone how those horrible everyone else folks but vegans in this world are cruel.

Sorta like those anti-abortionists leaping up to volunteer to adopt infants at child birth.

But then, they know, both of those sorts. They know they are better, more moral than everyone else.

Still, it seems a bit cruel to me.