Just shy of a year ago, i began to daily post an entry of “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar on my Facebook page. Many folks have told me, either on Facebook, through a message, or personally how much they enjoy reading them.

To begin this year, i will be posting them here until i run out. i don’t know when i will run out, but i not planning to repeat the process when i’ve gone through the archives.

How did all of this get started? i told this story when i began the daily entry. But it’s worth telling again. It began in Hong Kong, 1979. Actually, it was several weeks earlier back on Greenwich Avenue in Red Bank, a suburb of Chattanooga, Tennessee. That’s when my Uncle Pipey Orr and my Aunt Evelyn Prichard Orr found the “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar, purchased it, wrapped it, and sent it to me as a Christmas present. Perfect.

The new gift arrived aboard USS Tripoli (LPH 10), the flagship for  Commander, Amphibious Squadron Five and delivered to the Current Operations Officer, aka me, at the Fleet Landing, Hong Kong Bay. i was delighted when i opened it and on the first day of January 1980, i read “Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” Of course, i had heard the law before and thought it was funny, and often true, especially in a bureaucracy like the Navy’s. On the second day, found another law and laughed out loud. By the end of the week, i decided i should share them and did so with Mike Peck, a P3 pilot and the Tactical Air Control Squadron officer assigned to the staff for the deployment, and with Pete Toennies, the UDT officer also assigned temporarily to the staff.

The three of us had become close and shared many escapades together on our Hong Kong liberty (more stories). We also had developed a strategy for the daily “message meetings” the commodore held each workday morning in the staff wardroom. During those meetings, the commodore, Captain Jim McIntyre with the handle of “Silver Fox,” sat at the head of the table.

Ops, Commander John Collins, my boss, sat to the commodore’s right, and began meetings with a review of what had happened, the previous day including radio messages, a preview of important events concerning the squadron, and being a rather bombastic self-promoter some stories about what he had done.

The meeting continued with the staff member to the right of Collins reporting on his area of expertise and what he thought was important. This continued around the table until it reached the Chief of Staff, xxxx, who sat to the immediate left of the commodore. Then, McIntyre would make any necessary decisions and comment on what he felt was pertinent to the staff. Mike and i realized early on if we sat next to the chief of staff by the time everyone else had their say and it was our time, there was nothing to say because someone else had already briefed everything. So we just passed our turn to the chief of staff.

Sometime in the next week or so, we decided we should say something. That something was the daily entry from the “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar. Our comments were well received by the chief of staff and the commodore, although i think my boss had a cooler reaction.

Soon, Mike, Pete, and i realized the daily “laws” were not only funny, nearly all had a good point to think about. Not knowing if i would get another calendar the next Christmas, i decided to save them. i began to scotch tape them on the covers of my appointment books and spiral notebooks. What you have been reading on Facebook and now here are from those old calendars and notebooks — Yeh, i saved the daily notes and the calendars and notebooks: i thought i might write about those events someday .

Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Pipey Orr sent me another desk calendar the next Christmas. They continued the annual gift. Aunt Evelyn sent them until she fell ill in her last years. Then, she had my cousin Nancy send them for her. After she passed away, i began buying my  own and wrapping it with the note it was from Santa. i kept that up and added daughters and a few other people as recipients over the year.

When i went to order my gifts last year, i discovered they quit making them. ne of those calendars as a Christmas gift in 1979 while i was deployed to WESTPAC. They sent me one every year until my cousin, Nancy Schwarze, sent them while her mother still was alive. When my aunt passed, i began to get my own calendar and wrap it “from Santa” every Christmas until this past Christmas when they quit publishing the annual desk calendar. Thirty-eight years and they run out of laws. Go figure.

Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Pipey were successful in their careers as a teacher and psychology tester (Aunt Evelyn) and an engineer for TVA. They were also highly respected in their community and their church. And everyone in their family, their nephew especially, loved them beyond words. So every time i post a “law,” i think of these two wonderful people.

And to institutionalize them, more or less, i will now be posting them here with a link to them on Facebook…until i run out.

Today’s law:

“The Army Axiom: Anything that can be understood has been misunderstood.”

Goofy guy’s expansion of the Army Axiom: This is true in any organization of more than one person, not just the army.

It’s that time again: Change. Hope. Recollections. Promises.

Been there. Done that. Hope i can do it several more times.

Sarah went out to her wonderful friend’s party. Heather de Ocampo is one of the best. i am wishing both of them a swing upwards and a healthy and happy new year.

i’m wondering how the Austin branch of family is celebrating.

We, are sitting by the fire; Maureen’s new soup is, as always delicious. Her salad, as always of the kind that made my father say if he could have those every night he could be a vegetarian, but i think he forgot about his eggs and Tennessee sausage breakfasts. The fake Christmas tree, a concession to our spending Christmases on Signal Mountain is stored in the garage attic with all of the other decorations that came down. There is little likelihood either of us will make the magic turnover. We are not concerned.

And tomorrow will be a new year. 2019. What lies ahead in the next 365? Can’t tell. One thing for sure, there will be change. Always has been. Always is. Always will be. Change can be good or bad. Disregarding calamities beyond our control, we have the choice to make it good for us or bad for us. Our choice.

Now this is a little more challenging this year: thinking about change. After all, i’ve seen seventy-five years, three-quarters of a century of years with change. And now i’m older. Feel it in my bones (and several other body parts). Not bad considering the things this body has been put through by some nut who didn’t have a lot of sense about what was good for him.

So what about this next year. i’m old enough to not be concerned. It will be. There will be change, good and bad, guaranteed. And you know what? i believe you and i will deal with as necessary to make it as good as you and me can make it for ourselves and others.

As Judy Lewis Gray posted today, this is a remarkable occurrence every year for the opportunity to rejuvenate old promises, resolutions we call them. It’s a remarkable yearly accounting of us with the opportunity for, as we said in the Navy missile world, mid-course correction.

And what do i remember?

Home. Lebanon, Tennessee: a quiet little country town with not a great deal of concern beyond the county limits. Good folks in a place with a dark underbelly we still have not eradicated. Good folks. Gospel singing on Sunday night. Sports. Work. Treating neighbors like neighbors. Friends from church, elementary school, junior high, high school, and beyond and lasting. Forever.

Vanderbilt. A place for gaining lifetime friendships. Good times, bad academic habits. Learning in a place that has evolved into trying to make it right for everyone.

Middle Tennessee State. Working and learning for a change. Dwelling in an academic world of literature i loved then and continue to love today. One of my other passions.

Navy. Ahh, the Navy. The sea. The lady i loved with abandon, with passion. She was my soul mate. Navy ships were my vehicles for communicating with her and making more friends.

Ahh, hell. i could go on and on and on. There are so many folks i would like to share this moment, this precipice of change with tonight. There are so many tales i would like to tell about change in my life. But time is limited, and we are cutting it short in the Southwest corner tonight.

My ingredients are laid out for my black-eyed peas and cornbread for fixing (Tennessee term) tomorrow. We will partake in the afternoon and salute to change and promise.

i hope you have positive change and fulfilled promises in 2019.

When one has reached the precipice of really old, like 75, there are moments of regrets about what is no longer.

Today, i felt old, like something was gone. Why? It was.

Late morning, we packed the car, said goodbye to my sister and her husband, who once again have given us a beautiful Christmas, and drove our rental car to the Nashville airport to spend the night in a nearby hotel before flying back to the Southwest corner tomorrow.

It was unusual. Well, it hasn’t happened quite like this before, but it’s been four years since it’s been like it always was, or at least like it always was from 1992 through 2014. But this time, we didn’t fly out of Chattanooga or take a shuttle to Berry Field to fly out that day. No, this time we spent the night in a hotel.

Forever and forever, since i became a wanderer, my last night anytime i was in Tennessee headed back west was with my parents in Lebanon.

Old ways are gone.

Of course, that is the way life is. It moves on. Change is inevitable. People pass on. That is neither good nor bad. It’s what we make it.

Still, driving on I-24 from Chattanooga to Lebanon over those mountains and past those hills and through those valleys on a road i’ve traveled more times than i can count, not even considering our trips on US-41 before the interstate was completed, i kept thinking how i would not turn north of US-231 or north of I-840 to head home to Lebanon, but how i would keep going because that is the way it is now.

OId is gone.

It is not such a good feeling for an old man, regardless of how he reasons life is meant to be that way.

It’s okay. Next year will be a good year. Daughters, son-in-law, grandson, other relatives will do just fine. Me too.

But i miss old.

My sister, with Maureen’s assistance, makes Christmas a gastro delight: In addition to Christmas breakfast and dinner, and a Christmas Eve supper of her taco soup and cornbread and her pre-Christmas welcome back dinner of spaghetti, she also makes brownies, boil custard, and her wonderful chocolate chip cookies for continual nibbling here and enough for Todd to distribute to many friends on Christmas Eve. This year, she thus far has used over ten pounds of sugar, over five pounds of flour, and more than five dozen eggs…and we are still eating. Then you add children church services with candlelight on Christmas Eve (the old man did not make the midnight service this year: too old to stay up that late after dealing with the three whirling dervishes and concerned that if i went twice, the walls just might tumble down) and this is Christmas morning, before the fire is started and before young’uns arrive. Merry Christmas to all. Noel.

i am a “rambling man.”

Well, i am not quite like Hank Williams as he described himself in his “Ramblin’ Man” or the Allman Brothers claimed in their song of the same name, although i guess i’ve been to enough places, gone from enough jobs to another, and had enough loves to qualify on that measure.

But i’m talking about rambling thoughts. i have enough of rambling thoughts to be called a rambling man in triplicate. i’ve had more than a few rambling thoughts on this trip back east. In fact, i’ve had so many ideas about what to post here, i haven’t had the time to do it. i am wondering if other folks have that kind of rambling and feel the need to write about them.

So right now, i’m rambling. Here are some, but not all of those thoughts. i wanted to capture them here and plan to write in depth about many of them later:

◊  Henry Harding remains my best friend. A short meeting last Tuesday confirmed our friendship, regardless of how long  we haven’t seen or talked to each other, never stops, just picks up again.

◊  Vanderbilt athletics is a gem within this state, often overlooked and never with the support it should have. Tuesday, i met David Williams, the retiring Vice Chancellor of Athletics who has forged a program dedicated to Commodore Athletes being true “Student Athletes” and giving them a college experience preparing them to live well long after athletics are behind them, preparing them to be good people.

◊ Southern women have an elegance and a gentleness hard to match. Ann Eliot is a superb example of that elegance and gentleness.

There are many other thoughts rambling around this rather empty head.

But this early evening, i went to church. No, the walls did not fall down. The Signal Crest Methodist Church held a service with children acting and narrating the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. It was fun and it was Christmas.

i felt a stirring in my soul i had not felt in a long, long time. Now, as i sit amongst family and a passel of grand nieces and nephews, it is Christmas Eve. It is a good feeling.

May all of you have a wonderful Christmas and a bountiful New Year.