All posts by James Jewell

Another Southwest Corner Afternoon

A Pocket of Resistance

i’m back at the grill with a cocktail. Two days in a row. i could do it every night i think.

Like i used to do at A&M, Texas that is. Late Seventies. Divorce pending or done. Same thing. Bought her a condo for her and our daughter. Sold the big house and then, thinking it was a wise investment, bought a smaller one. Nice place. But not a good investment.

Still it was mine and being single when i got back from my NROTC office, i took up running seriously. Well, serious for a guy who was never really very fast, nor ran for very long. But i’d get home, feed the Olde English Sheepdog “Snooks” named after my uncle, and the cat, a three-legged, 17-pound terror and one of my all-time favorites named “Shore Patrol.”

Then i would change into my running shorts, tee-shirt, and sockless $17 Adidas i found at J.C. Penney. i hit my route for somewhere between three and five miles, come home. i would put on a baked potato in the oven and light the hibachi, a wonderful cast iron contraption that folded up to make a flue to speed up the charcoal heating to hot, hot, hot.

i would finish the shower, dress, lay out the hibachi for grilling and pour either a gin and tonic or Mr. George Dickel’s 12-year sour mash with one ice cube, and sip while the steak grilled and i put together a very, very simple salad and put the bread in the toaster.

i’d pull off the steak, put it all on my kitchen/dining room table and eat a sumptuous meal with a modest red wine while Snooks and Shore Patrol hung close by with ravenous looks with no luck. Oh okay, i would always give in at the end and give both a little steak remnant.

Unless i was going out that evening, this was the routine. The routine would be interrupted by sharing special time with a beautiful young woman, a really neat lady named Judy McConnell who was one of the first female Aggie grads and then a psychologist for the university. And then when i was lucky enough to have my  daughter Blythe stay with me, and then, all bets were off. Blythe was the center of my universe.

i remembered all of this as i tried to corral the temperature of the runaway egg grill knock off for the pork loin Maureen had prepped for my afternoon outside.

To brag a bit, this is the Southwest corner. The weather is about perfect. The temperature is holding a couple of degrees below 70. There is a slight ocean breeze, and there is not a cloud in the sky. Reverie.

This evening, i did not put my ancient iPod — okay, okay, ancient by today’s standards — on “scramble” as i usually do to listen to my potpourri of almost all kinds of old genre’s. No hip hop or rap here. As the grill heated up, i went to one of my favorites. Years ago, when she was young and i wasn’t as old as i am now, Blythe gave me a six CD anthology entitled “The R&B Box: 30 Years of Rhythm & Blues.” When it comes to music, Blythe understands me well. This set starts in the 1940’s and goes through the 70’s. My music, especially the 50’s and 60’s when i cut my teeth on WLAC’s late night blues and the heyday of Motown and Ray Charles. i know many of them by heart and sing along. Softly, so hopefully no one can hear me, cause i don’t sing as well as i used to and it seems a little silly when i think about it.

So i’m listening to Aaron Neville’s “Tell It Like It Is,” one of my all time favorites and thinking about stuff as the grill continues to heat. i realize this was one of the songs i played as a WCOR dee-jay and how my “Top 40” weekend shows heavily favored rhythm and blues and even blues, probably a bit too much for the teen audience and not enough country for the older folks in the limited listening area. Didn’t care then and don’t care now. Great music. Makes me move. Like Gene McDaniels “100 Pounds of Clay,” which strangely is not in my collection.

So i kick back and look at my world, which has gotten quite a bit smaller over the last ten weeks, and think i need to make sure i don’t whine about all the crap we manage to foist on ourselves with hate and anger and hyperbole and thinly veiled prejudice. i got it pretty good.

i’m looking at one of two of our coral trees as the coral blooms are giving way to green. This particular tree is my favorite. It was challenged and not only survived the challenge, it rose to new heights. But that is another story for later in the Southwest corner.

Memorial Day Revisited

Notes from the Southwest Corner

Each year at this time, i have written a post or a column about Memorial Day. One can become trite when trying to come up with something new or putting a new twist on any event. Such efforts, which fall painfully short in my estimation, are why i did not write a daily column when i was a sports editor. The only folks i know who could write a daily column about sports and not get trite often were Fred Russell, Grantland Rice (well, i didn’t really know him), Red Smith, Furman Bisher, and Jim Murray. 

So i ain’t gonna write anymore about one of the few nationally declared holidays i actually rever. Perhaps this day is so special for my military service has given me an understanding of the sacrifice so many made in defense of our flag, our country, our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution. Regardless, it is special to me and i have written about it often. So for the next several days, i will revisit my previous thoughts about this day honoring our fallen heroes. This one is a column i wrote for the Lebanon Democrat. And thank you, Blythe, for giving me Siegfried Sassoon.

Notes from the Southwest Corner:
Memorial Day: the reason for it is unchanged

SAN DIEGO – This past week as usual, I received emails relating to Memorial Day.

Retired military officers send each other missives honoring our late comrades-in-arms around this holiday. But many of last week’s emails came from friends with no military service.

This increased interest in honoring our patriots who died in defense of our country gives me a good feeling, especially considering how it used to be.

As a junior officer, it seemed I carried some stigma because I wore the Navy uniform. It did not bother me personally, but I did feel separated from society, particularly my age group.

It also incensed me when protestors took it out on personnel returning from defending their right to protest. Regardless of the political posturing, those who received the abuse were no more responsible than me.

In my youth, I was awed by the World War I veterans honored at the various parades. I read enough to know of the horrors of trench warfare.

About two years ago, my oldest daughter gave me a copy of The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon. The poems are brutal and describe the gore of that war in grisly detail. Although some of the poetry is darkly beautiful, the overall effect makes one wonder at the logic of war.

Sassoon’s poetry confirmed my feeling about our heroes from that war.

The Second War

Born during the Second World War, I grew up respecting the previous generation’s sacrifice. I have studied pre-war history and am amazed so many can forget so much about where isolationism and non-intervention can lead. I wonder how many United States citizens might not have died had we joined the Allies earlier.

We do not learn from our historical mistakes.

World War II cemeteries across the nation and throughout Europe with thousands and thousands of crosses in military formation and the United States flag flying over them are testament to the honor we bestow on those military dead.

It became my generation’s turn. Initially as I was going through Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island, I was too busy learning steam engineering, small boat operations, ship handling, deck seamanship and damage control to be very much aware of what was going on the other side of the world.

But before I went to OCS, I learned Parks McCall, my big brother as a Kappa Sigma pledge at Vanderbilt, had been killed when his aircraft was shot down in Vietnam.

Later while at home after Anti-Submarine Warfare Officer training and en route to my first ship, the U.S.S. Hawkins (DD-873), I found out Bobby Bradley was killed when his A6 with Bobby flying as Naval Flight Officer (NFO), crashed in the Atlantic.

Bobby and I played baseball together and were good friends for as long as I could remember, but I remember him most for volunteering to go on a five-mile hike with me so I could get a merit badge to advance from the Boy Scout’s tenderfoot classification.

Sacrifice hit home and my service took on an entirely new meaning for me.

Remember the Heroes

Over the course of twenty-one years in the Navy, there were very few incidents when I stepped into harm’s way. When I did, I remember them clearly. But overall, it was not much more dangerous than crossing a street in downtown New York. Others from Lebanon, like Bobby and Jim Harding, served in real danger.

Wikipedia, the on-line, open contribution encyclopedia, states General John Logan, the commander of the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization, issued General Order 11 in 1868. The order designated May 30 as Decoration Day, which evolved into today’s Memorial Day.

So for almost 150 years, the citizens whom we honor for dying in defense of our freedom have grown astronomically. Even though more folks are honoring our heroes more than in my early Navy days, Memorial Day ceremonies compete with car races, picnics, and backyard barbeques.

But this morning in the Southwest corner, I will go to the top of my hill and raise my flag at 8:00 a.m. and back down to half mast as is the protocol along with all of the ships in the harbor doing the same, and I will pause and remember my friends who made the ultimate sacrifice for our country, for me.

I hope you do something similar. Those heroes earned this much.

 

My Humor, Unappreciated

A Pocket of Resistance

My wife, Maureen Renee Boggs Jewell, doesn’t always share my sense of humor.

Now most of the time, i can illicit one of her guffaws that is legendary among her friends and family and often has them searching for something to strike her funny and create the laugh, making everyone jovial and happy.

In fact, our humor and ability to laugh at each other, at ourselves , and at our relationship is one of the things that has kept us close. We love each other and we love to laugh together.

But sometimes…

Like this afternoon. Maureen began to play Mahjongg (hmm, is it capitalized?) with a friend using Zoom. i think she likes it as she has scheduled another session tomorrow.

Well, i am about into Mahjongg like i’m into forced hard labor, which i was doing by cleaning the oven racks while she was zooming, but as i cleaned, i overheard her game talk.

Somewhat dismayed, i walked into her room, the front one with her computer, my old liberty ship hatch cover now posing as her sewing and craft table, the cats, Maureen, and her Zoom partner.

i asked, “Did i hear you say you had the crabs?” (pause) “What kind of game are you playing?”

She gave a little titter but i knew, yes, i knew it was not sincere.

i left and vowed not to interrupt her Mahjongg games ever again.

 

A Reason to Read and Not Read

A Pocket of Resistance

This morning at breakfast i confirmed my newspaper reading habit.

i am a seadog but i also consider myself a journalist. i grew up reading most of The Lebanon Democrat (when it was locally owned), especially Mrs. Thompson’s weekly update on Route 9 and her husband Wilson. i also scanned the front page and other pages for articles i found of interest, but read the entire sports pages and the comics every day in the Nashville Banner. 

After working at the Banner as an office boy, reporter and correspondent for a couple of years, i graduated from MTSU and joined the Navy. Then after three years at sea, for almost two wonderful years, i was the sports reporter and sports editor, and in the discussion to become the national news or state news editor of the Watertown (NY) Daily Times but as documented more times than you are likely to care, departed to rejoin the Navy.

In  the late 1980’s, i was in newspaper heaven in the Southwest corner. I was getting the Los Angeles Times’ San Diego edition in the morning and the San Diego Tribune in the afternoon. i was pretty close to a junkie because i was getting both the conservative and liberal cut on news and in the editorials along with two superb sports sections.

Then, there was one, the Union-Tribune, and it was getting bad like most majors in sloppy and opinionated news stories and cutting back and cutting back. And then its ownership moved to LA, and it got worse and less, less, and less. Now amid the pandemic, it is sad, just sad. But it is still part of our breakfast ritual: Maureen reads the “news” thoroughly, and i…well, see below.

Several years ago, i quit reading the front and local sections because there was very little but bad news, trite features, and both too opinionated for me to discern the facts. i went back to my younger days and read the sports and the comics. With the current curse and restrictions, i bypass the special interest stuff in sports and read the digest, which takes me about two minutes. The comics takes about five or so minutes as i read most of them. i guess i’m afflicted with comicitis.

This morning, i found another reason to read the sports pages. Near the end of the sports “Digest” summaries of the Union-Tribune, i read this:

South Korean soccer club FC Seoul is facing penalties, including expulsion from its own stadium for putting sex dolls in empty seats during a match last weekend.

You don’t read much news like that.

Something Right and Something Good

A Pocket of Resistance

My morning plans and work schedule have been temporarily interrupted when i opened an email from my Vanderbilt Commodore Athletics website. It was some of the best news i’ve received for a while.

The email was from the two head honchos at Vanderbilt:

Dear Commodore Nation,
Thank you for your continued support of Vanderbilt Athletics. We write to inform you of a major announcement. Candice Storey Lee, former standout student-athlete and three-time Vanderbilt University graduate, has been named vice chancellor for athletics and university affairs and athletic director at Vanderbilt after serving in the role on an interim basis since February.
Today’s announcement firmly cements Candice’s place in Vanderbilt and college sports history. She is Vanderbilt’s first female athletic director and the first African American woman to head a Southeastern Conference athletics program. The appointment places her in the upper echelon of college athletics as one of only five women currently leading a Power Five program.
Candice is perfectly positioned to lead our athletics program to new heights of success on and off the field of play. She is the living embodiment of the university’s values and aspirations, which are grounded in our commitment both to academic excellence and to preparing our student-athletes to play and win in one of the most, if not the most, competitive conferences in the country.
Daniel Diermeier
Incoming Chancellor
Susan R. Wente
Incoming Chancellor and Provost
As noted ,Candice will be the first black woman to be a athletic director in the SEC and one of only five women to hold that position in the “Power Five” conferences.
i think this is a great step forward for Vanderbilt. i am proud the university has sealed this selection from “interim” to confirmed full time. i think it is a tribute to her race and her gender long overdue.
i also believe this news is right and good because i have met Candice Lee. She has helped me in several ways. i consider her a friend. More so, i think she is the right person for the job of dealing with the difficulties of navigating the only private and smallest university through the rough waters of powerhouse Southeastern Conference athletics. It will be difficult as it always has been, perhaps even more than in the past, especially in football and men and women’s basketball.
In the SEC, as with most major athletic conferences, academics and the full college life experience is given a nod and then dropped in priority behind winning and making money from athletic programs. Vanderbilt has been trying to not allow that in managing their programs. Football and basketball should not be the dog wagging the tail. Academics should be the dog and sports should be what is wagging.
Candice understands that and the chancellors’ words about her ring true. She gives the Commodores the chance to integrate athletics and college life for the athletes and achieve success in both.
i thank the university for making this decision. i thank Perry Wallace, David Williams, and, i believe, Andrew Maraniss, for showing us the way it should be done. And most of all, i thank Candice for her capabilities bring us to this point and giving me hope for the future. Most of all, i thank Candice for being Candice and a friend.