The Fog of War

That well-known phrase referring to the confusion and uncertainty common during a battle seems like it is not unique to the battlefield. I grew up in a military family, and have memories of the occasional soldier or sailor going off the deep-end, usually injuring property and themselves more than anything or anyone else, but sometimes an unlucky few who happened to be close by never had the chance to regret it. But nothing like the mind boggling events that unfolded this last week at Ft. Hood.

There is no question that military service at the front is a dangerous business, and things happen that aren’t always explainable. I find it ironically that the Ft. Hood tragedy happened in the same town that decades ago had the horrible massacre at Luby’s, in a time before Texans freely carried handguns. I remember vividly the argument that had people been packing, someone might have stopped or reduced the carnage during that tragedy in a Texas cafeteria. Now we have this recent horrific event that defies us to make sense of the why, the how. Of all the places you’d think someone on a rampage would have little success, it would be on a military installation. Yet, amidst all that training and weaponry, no one was armed initially. One wonders if firearms as de rigueur will be the norm on bases in the future. I’m not pro-gun by any means, just sense the irony at work.

Bob Greene’s CNN column lays out the challenges brought on by the Fog of War, the likely progression of the days following, and the intense interest in learning who the slain were, their comrades, and a renewed appreciate of what these young men and women go through. But why, oh why, does it take the senseless loss of life to awaken the American psyche like this? Why are we systemically deaf to what we’re doing to our young (and not so young) citizens? How many Americans really understand the damage that’s going on by repeatedly sending our patriots back to the insanity with little regard (or a sense of intentional ignorance) to the mental damage?

Wars are sadly a fixture of our history, yet modern warfare seems to be pushing our mental capacities to cope far beyond what’s humanly possible to handle. Or is it just that such sensationalized media reporting make it seem unusually so? I believe many a Vietnam vet would argue that the mental damage from that senseless engagement is no different than the post-trauma stress syndrome that’s getting more and more publicity.

In conversations with my father about his wartime and military experiences before he passed on, he believed back then his generation served with a purpose, that everyone believed in the cause behind the war. Fast forward to 2009 and it seems not many of us consider the why of what we’re doing over in the Middle East as reason alone to go blindly into the Fog of War.

Enjoy the Last of the Color

My favorite time of the year is drawing to a close. Winter is about to replace fall’s multi-colored coat with a drab, grey blanket. This year was especially colorful in Northwest Ohio, yielding vibrant reds and yellows in every direction, and seemingly timed to turn at the same time. A good year for fall colors, which old timers are telling me means a snowy winter. Oh boy oh boy. Winter wonderlands are a close second in my book to autumn colors. Don’t mind the cold if there’s a white blanket everywhere.

The NaNoWriMo Cometh

October is all about pumpkins and pretty colors. Come November, our thoughts turn to…30 crazed-filled days scribbling nonsensical sentences in a quest for 50,000 words, a modicum of sanity at the end, and that elusive brag: “I wrote a novel.” Oh, and something involving a bird and cranberry sauce happens that month, but never mind that, focus on the writing!

This year will be my fourth voyage into the world of daily word counts, banning contractions, and breaking all the rules for crisp, succinct writing. For those unbapitized, NaNoWriMo is short-speak for National Novel Writing Month, and annual event held since 1999. My first dipping came in 2004, where I’m proud to report I cleared the bar with 51,700 words that will never-see-the-light-of-a-publishers-pressroom, but hey, a goal met is a goal celebrated. If you’re feeling voyeuristic and want a glimpse of the madness such an endeavor breeds, read my celebration post. And if that didn’t bring you to your senses and you still want to have a go, I wrote about my takeaways a week later after my fried brain cells were replenished.

I tried again in 2005, thinking I’d start with something more structured than the 18-word sentence I launched with the previous year (yes, one can create an entire plot in those few words…at least, if your target audience is the NaNo). Spending a week prepping a five-page outline, multiple character sketches, the usual stuff, I thought I’d really take NaNo seriously…and promptly bailed out after about 10 days. Too much structure for NaNo? Perhaps.

2006 brought a third attempt, this time a plot paragraph (yes, as in MULTIPLE sentences) of a book idea, but the fates intervened via the passing of my father that November. Few things can deter a determined writer during NaNo, but that excuse certainly qualifies.

So now, a couple years removed from my three-year NaNo servitude, I’m ready again. Armed with a NEW idea, one not too deeply prepared, but one with serious intent, I’ll charge up the MacBook batteries, load up the iPod with tons of Hearts of Space recordings, and head off to the dozen or so coffee shops I’ve targeted to get me through the month. Nothing brings a smile to writer’s lips, hope in their heart, and that unbridled passion that writing with a purpose brings. Won’t you join in? It’s free, fun, and safe (don’t worry about the months of therapy that’s bound to follow…think of that as research for future NaNos).

It’s All About the “O”

Obama… Osama… Oprah… Overstock.com… Obsession… there’s lots of famous “Os” in the world to muse over.

But, of course, I’m talkin’ about ORGANICS! (And where was your mind, dear reader?)

In a world of plastic and pharmaceuticals, preservatives and pesticides, I am progressively going organic. Fortunately, organics are fashionable, therefore local markets carry a lot more than they used to stock. I’m old enough to have gone to college when and where the mighty Whole Foods Market had their meager beginnings. Back then it was mostly hirsute hippies and willing wannabes hanging out in the original Whole Foods Market, a modest bare-concrete-floor, rough-made-wooden-shelvies, foreshadow of what was to come. Organic wasn’t a buzzword back then, but the practice of nurturing whole Earth and eating clean was well underway.

Without going into the politics of organics and the open-ended argument that big-farm organic isn’t as healthy as localvore organics, I’m just happy there is more variety and reasonable prices than ever before. With terrific tools like this iPhone app and the uber cool companion wallet card), I can channel my inner hippie and decide when it’s all about the O and when it’s not.

Redux: The Zen of Laundry

There are times when I truly enjoy the Zen-like experience of laundry:  the process, the patience for cycles to complete, the rhythmic appliance pulse, the joy of folding. Now, lest you think this makes me desirably domesticated, I confess that although I enjoy the peace and simplicity of the process, I adhere to the bachelor’s art of sorting clothes…namely none! Like the lawn I think should drink naturally from the heavens, so goes my simplistic approach to washing: they’re clothes, they’re all dirty, and they can all come clean together. Fortunately, a wondrous, man-saving product exists called color sheets that prevent sparkling white dainties from being unduly influenced by purple jogging shorts. Modern science solving real-world problems.

There’s something soothing about the washer humming harmonically alongside buttons and zipper pulls clinking randomly in the dryer. And in the winter there’s no better place than the laundry room, with it’s warmed air and sweet, fresh chemical scents made possible by scientists from faceless detergent conglomerates who selfishly pollute their own backyards so that our socks and jocks can be sparkly clean. Over the years, thankfully, I’ve been able to buy cleaning products with reduced dyes, perfumes, bleaches, radioactive chemicals, and other assorted wonders of chemistry we’re safer simply not knowing about. It’s frightening enough knowing residues of these concoctions get intimate daily with our birthday suits. I try to use free-everything products whenever I can, but it isn’t possible to always be pure. A Zen Laundry Master abiding by the “just do it” mantra can’t get hung up on how much phosphorus this one has, or which FDA-approved dye that one has. Life’s too short to worry about such things.

In my early bachelor days, washing clothes at the apartment’s community laundromat seemed like a covert way to meet girls, which of course was both naive and stupid. How friendly can ladies be as they fill washing machines with their dirty unmentionables? What possible sex appeal could exist (ignoring what Madison-Avenue-produced commercials foist on us) between two people chit-chatting over dirty socks and other stark revelations of one’s true nature (i.e., for guys, revealing one’s lack-of-fashion sense)? The only time I remember any girl ever showing the slightest interest in guys at these laundromats was when they ran out of change. It was merely coincidence that I always took my COMPLETE change jar when doing laundry. After all, I never knew when I’d have to rerun those jeans 10 or 12 times…it might happen.

As years passed and the threat of wisdom teased my bachelor mind, the appeal of having my own washer and dryer seemed more practical that the lost hopes of laundromat love. I did notice that women’s interest perked up once word got out that I, a mere guy, had my own washer and dryer. As though some invisible mark of maturity, the mere ownership of the two ugliest appliances ever bestowed on man counted for something in the love war. Maybe they recognized this bold move as the first sign of domestication, and thus raised me one notch higher up the food chain over the wild, free-ranging male with his laundromat-limited habitat. Had I understood this basic principle back then, I might have invested in a top-loading deep freeze. Talk about a chick magnet!

I taught my 18-year-old son the laundry way last year in an honest display of fatherly love to pass on my laundry wisdom. To say he was thrilled to learn this knowledge would be, well, lying. I’m proud to say, however, that he’ll now carry on that fine tradition of male-patterned, laundry-sorting, color blindness. But to my dismay, he’s adopted his own, creative manner of clean laundry folding…or rather, clean laundry STUFFING. He’s content to take his pile of unfolded, unsorted&emdash;but clean&emdash;clothes out of the dryer and upstairs to his room, whereupon he immediately STUFFS the whole pile in one cabinet. How he finds clean clothes to wear, or can discern between dirty and clean is one of those mysterious teenage skills. Somehow, someway, teenagers grow up into responsible adults, one of those mysteries of life yet to be fully explained.

Ultimately, in the true spirit of Zen laundry, each of us has to find his/her own way and simply “just do it.” The details are not important. What’s important is tradition, and I’ve done my part to pass on my male wisdom in this area. When he finally moves away, it will be up to my son to discover the secret of appliance ownership and its chick potential that can be his for just a little bit a month. After all, why should I share all my secrets? I just might have to recycle and reuse them again someday.

random past musing: Findlay O Findlay

I’m blogging to you from deep in the heart of…Northwest Ohio. Ohio? What happened to Texas? I’ve been up here in the land of sensible values since last summer, but I have a good excuse: an odd need to eat and pay bills. So when the chance came up to do a long-term consulting project up here in Flag City and thus end a drought of work, I said “Duh…of course.”

I’ve lived in Texas since 1971, so to suddenly relocate (even temporarily) to a more northern clime is a bit of a shock to the system. To keep this in perspective though, my formative teenage years were spent in the suburbs of Chicago, so this cowboy is no stranger to cold northern winters. But that was more years ago than I’ll admit to in this public forum, so suffice to say I’m out of winter-shape, so to speak.

I’ve written fondly of winter and missing seasons here before, so this opportunity has certain upsides: seasons, smaller town, slower pace of life, and those damn practical Midwestern values. On the other hand, it’s still the culturally starved Midwest where corn and babies seem to occupy most minds. What culture one enjoys up here is either imported or traveled to…there just isn’t much here. But on the balance of things, I’ve enjoyed a simpler, more hassle-free life in my temporary Ohio digs.

One pleasant surprise has been the close proximity of several interesting getaways. You can get out of or across Ohio by car within a relatively short time. It takes part of two days to traverse Texas. Chicago and it’s cosmopolitan influences of the Art Institute and nightclubs is a brief four hours away. Cleveland and it’s Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame a couple hours. The blue hills of Kentucky are a little more than four hours due south. And for a spicier venture, Windsor, Canada and its blue collar party atmosphere beckon complete with (legal) Cuban cigars and potent beers. I don’t smoke cigars, but I’ll inhale those non-export high-alcohol-content Canadian beers any day.

I do travel back to Houston occasionally, and between the humidity (who wants to remember that?) and the congestion (who wants to deal with that?), it’s always a shock to the system. At the end of these back-travel weeks, I’m somewhat stressed and looking forward to returning where the corn sways slowly in the wind and the search for intellectually based culture continues. Of course, that’s not during the winter, where most of my time now is spent trying to keep the damn wind from sending its icy probes into every exposed skin pore. I love snow, and the temperature hasn’t been too bad, but the wind. Oh lordy the wind.

Unfortunately, winter in northwest Ohio is mostly about cold and wind, and seldom about snow. Tolerating frigid temperatures is always more pleasant when the calmness and serenity of a white, wintry blanket greets the eyes, but alas: this winter’s been unusually cruel and we’ve haven’t been blessed with much snow to mitigate the depressive gray of a snowless winter scene. But now spring is around the corner, with green images and hiking opportunities, and sun. I’ll miss what little snow we’ve had, but I won’t miss the wind.

Locals tell me we’re close enough to Lake Erie to stay under cloud cover for most of the winter in our attempt to emulate Seattle. Some of my co-workers even admit to taking occasional winter drives south a few hours where the sunshine is more frequent this time of year. I haven’t felt that dark side of winter yet, but the few days the sun does manage to break through the clouds it feels like a celestial event worth celebrating. Another difference between Ohio and Texas regarding the sun must have to do with sun angles. In Texas I couldn’t go outside without sunglasses, whereas up here it seems less of an issue. Maybe it’s the glare from all the concrete and glass that defines Houston, or maybe the air pollution down there reflects the sun rays just enough to enhance the glare. Either way, it’s a moot point up here right now for sunglasses are the last accessory I need to remember.

I’ll be up here through this year with an option to continue part-time for another year. I’m getting acclimated to this slower pace of life, and certainly relishing the seasonal changes, so who knows: maybe this cowboy might have to trade in them boots for snowshoes and heavy blankets.

random past musing: Faded

The familiar usually brings a promise of comfort. Like a pair of faded blue jeans, the things in life we’re used to tend to feel the best and silently assure us that everything’s okay in the world…at least for a little while. Slipping out of work clothes at the end of a tough day, the soft familiar of a well-washed flannel shirt and undemanding jeans for a brief time offers a relaxation unmatched by most artificial methods, and is fortunately calorie free as well. While some people head to bars to unwind after a tough day, you’ll usually find me heading towards my closet for textile relief before finding a long-ignored magazine and settling into the promised comfort of my well-worn reading chair. And if lucky, the nap fairy will ignore me long enough to get in some quiet, quality reading. Nap or not, the world’s chaos melts away in a very short time nestled with such familiar and comfortable companions.

Listening to a recollection CD of Van Morrison while I write this has me thinking how we define comfort in our lives. The soulful wailings of this Irish singer were often a mellowing influence back in college days, and on occasion I’ll listen and fade back to those times I perceive were more comfortable (whether they were or weren’t isn’t the point, only that the trigger works to invoke memories of comfort). While frequently defined by touch or absence of physical irritation, comfort also exists when there’s no emotional resistance. We look for friends and mates whom we can be ourselves with, where we can be comfortable expressing our ideas, or just hang out with. When we choose clothing and furniture, their comfort level is high on our list when making a final decision. And when we struggle with life’s little detours we seek the comfort of those close to us that can offer refuge from these sudden, temporary emotional storms that are often easier to weather than to fight.

What makes each person comfortable varies, of course. We could all list what we consider comforting and I’m sure these lists would reflect a wide variety of tastes. The important thing is not what’s on our lists but that we are conscious of a list and rely on it often. The demands of a driven life frequently don’t allow much attention to comfort in ways that could help de-stress us. Take five, take a breath, take a hike — all these can provide some comfort if we just stop and think often enough to allow them into our lives.

I’ve reached another traumatic level in my weight loss that requires me to let go of some comfortable friends. My favorite blue jeans have become too loose to wear. Unless I intend to let Gypsies camp in these pants while I’m wearing them, it’s time to move them on. The thought of breaking in new jeans is too much right now (or really ever), but fortunately there are resale shops where I can adopt some new-to-me jeans with some of that familiar comfort already built in. Part of the reassurance from faded blue jeans are the quick-flash memories of the years spent breaking them in. While that can’t be replaced by adopting abandoned jeans, I’ll have to be content with their velvet touch to carry me forward until a time when I can begin the familiar process of breaking in new jeans and once again start measuring the cycles of life by the fade of my jeans.

random past musing: Looking for Mr. OFR

Every now and then I find myself trying to resurrect some bit of technology from the past. As Satchel, the dog in the strip Get Fuzzy) once said, “I love living in the past…it’s so predictable.”

I’ve decided it’s time to replace my faithful audio sidekick, a portable radio that I got to help past the time doing carpentry work back in the 70s. It’s still working, but senility has invaded it’s plastic mind: the radio dial is kaput (fine if you like the station at the very end of the dial), the volume knob has a short (two choices: barely audible, and teenager blaring), it no longer likes batteries (contacts corroded long ago), and while the paint spatters offer a nice patina-like effect to the outside, it looks like hell sitting on the bathroom sink counter where I like to listen to the BBC while getting ready in the morning. No problem, except the BBC doesn’t come in on the station at the end of the dial.

Easy to replace, right? Not so fast, boombox breath. Seems like this type of radio mostly exists in the minds of old farts like me (I’m not quite in the old fart category yet, still working towards my old-fart merit badge). Oh, you can find portable mp3 players, boom boxes in all shapes and sizes, and strange looking morphs of plastic and colors that allegedly offer sound (if you can decipher the instructions), but to find a good old portable radio the size of a hardback book is a challenge. At least it has been so far. I’ve been to four stores with no luck.

But I’m determined to find my OFR (old-fart radio), even if I have to start visiting pawn shops and flea markets in the process (or maybe garage sales at old folks homes, but that’s probably a bit extreme…or maybe not!).

I’m sure I’ll find it, and at this point it’s become a principle-sort-of-thing challenge. It may take awhile, but I’ll persevere. Guess when I finally find one, I’ll have to buy two so I don’t go through this again in another 30 years. I can always put one of them next to the Lava Lamp to keep it company.

random past musing: Black Friday

Let’s see…climb into the car, drive to the mall, walk quickly to the mall entrance engorged with mallites, scream “Cry havoc and let loose the dogs of war!,” then dive into the mob to grab them Black Friday specials. Nah…

Today of all days is best spent either indoors or moving in the exact opposite direction of anything remotely looking like a retail establishment. On this, the most profitable day of the year for retailers, I plan to stay snuggled under blanket with lots of coffee fueling me for writing lots and lots of bad prose in my attempt to finish up my NaNoWriMo ReallyBadOh novel. While this effort will hardly benefit society at large, neither would my joining the merciless throngs besetting my local mall. Yes, I know many of you out there live to shop and shop to live, but really, what’s the point?

I’m usually up before the newspaper man tosses my paper against my second-story apartment door, thus I’ve grown accustomed to the familiar “thump” that signals the arrival of the news. Yesterday’s “THUMP” in preparation of today’s shopping massacre announced the expected Thanksgiving day paper. If I wasn’t already aware of today’s special plague, I become so yesterday while it took extra time to weed through the pile of ads to get to the real news.

After reading what was left of the paper, I took a walk to visit the denizens of my favorite pond nearby. While handing out morsels of bread I asked them if they planned to storm the malls in hot pursuit of that $19.99 DVD player advertised by one merchant. As you can tell from the picture, my query was met with a bit of indifference. “But,” I implored, “haven’t you seen the other specials in today’s paper? What about these amazing savings??” Still nothing. The only realization that came out of those ponderings was that I had sunk to the point of asking questions of ducks, geese, and nutria, and even more worrisome: expecting some sort of answer. But then, novel-mode mind puts one in a state of constant query: asking trees, rocks, pond denizens, anything, if they might know where the novel should go next.

Last year I wrote about Buy Nothing Day, an actual grass-roots effort at offsetting consumerism, which obviously did little to slow the growing legions of mad shoppers based on today’s expected insanity. Once again “that day” is here in full glory. I’d love to report about it from the front lines, but really, a non-shopper like me doesn’t belong in the line of fire. Somebody could get hurt, and that likely would be me. Who would finish my NaNoWriMo novel? Would would care? But I digress…

I guess I should cut some slack for those of you (meaning the ladies) who enjoy the high of shopping. So as an olive branch, I offer this link to ShoeWaWa, an insanely over-the-top homage to shoe-shopping fetishists everywhere. That’s showing my shopping-sensitive side, don’t you think? And that should be worth a few points or at least enough to be left home alone when the mob heads out on Black Friday.

The “cry havoc…” phrase is pulled from today’s Funky Winkerbean newspaper comic.

random past musing: Procrastination

It plagues us all, writers and nonwriters alike, this wily anti-muse known as procrastination. I recently gained some insights into how I combat the venerable Mr. P, but…nah, maybe I’ll write about this later.