The Daily Brief

So, I am putting it out to the many fans I know I have who also have blogs of their own: send me half a dozen questions that you absolutely, positively want to know the answer to, direct from me— and I will answer them, honestly and amusingly. You can post the interview on your site, with a link to my eccentric and charming memoir, and I will post a link to your penetrating and insightful interview on TDB.
No, it is not link-whoring, just exploring the so-far-unlimited limits of the blogosphere. And it’s not like I’ve been booked on “The Today Show” or “Fresh Air” or anything… but I have four hungry cats to support, and a daughter to put through veterinary school, even though the GI bill will do a lot of the heavy lifting as far as Cpl. Blondie’s continuing education is concerned. (She already knows how to hotwire a Humvee, and siphon gas with a length of garden hose, but veterinary school requires many, many other skills.) And why do I have to travel, when I can be there, with the click of a mouse?
Let me know, via comments, or e-mail.

For just about every busload of kids, a visit to the Mather AFB Museum and Planetarium (and whatever else) was the first ever time they had ever been to a military base. The grade school kids were demented with excitement from the sheer adventure of being sprung from a boring classroom for a day, and although the more worldly middle and high school students managed a show of insouciance, they were usually impressed and fascinated, also. Mather’s neat, tree-lined grid of streets and ranges of World War II era temporary buildings certainly looked like a movie set of a military base. (Temporary in this case means that the military gets at least half a century of hard use out of it; permanent has to last a couple of centuries. Really and truly temporary is canvas with a wooden floor.)

I turned the commute between the gate and the flight line into part of the tour, with a monologue about how the base was really a town, just like where they lived: we had a city hall (the wing HQ), and a grocery store (waving a hand towards the road where the commissary was), a department store (we’d be passing the BX complex at this point), and apartment buildings (which would be the student navigator barrack blocks). Our suburb was the housing area, away around the end of the runway, where there was a church and a grade school. To the kids, this was familiar, but the uniforms…. And the airplanes…. And the helicopters!

All that made it no end exotic, and extra fascinating, to the point where I couldn’t give up this part of the tour when we had a group that came in a carpool, instead of efficiently all loaded onto a bus. In that case, I’d have prepared by bringing along strips of bright cloth, to be tied to the aerials of all the cars in the tour, with me in the lead car, and my casual officer assistant in the last. At various key points, I’d have the tour convoy pull over and park, and the kids gather around for the commentary. This would eat up precious time, unloading and loading the cars, until I came up with a strategy to move the kids along briskly. I told them the story of England’s Finest Hour, when the RAF fighter pilots had to be ready, standing by their aircraft and ready to take off at a moments’ notice to fly and fight. As soon as they were given the order to “scramble” I would say, they had to run to their planes, jump in, fasten their safety belts, and take off, as swiftly and as efficiently as they could. And this is what I wanted the kids to do— to run to the car they were riding in get in and fasten up, and help their friends— the minute that I yelled “Squadron! Scramble!” Worked like a charm, too, but there must be many thirty and forty-somethings on the Sacramento metro area who now have a decidedly eccentric take on the Battle of Britain.

We usually took them to the planetarium first, a tiny column of a building with a domed roof that always reminded me of Poindexter’s planetary telescope— which could seat an astonishingly large number of people, on the tiered seats inside. I listened to the planetarium presentation so many times, I could have done it myself, if necessary. It was interesting to see how the various school groups responded, and sometimes disheartening; how so very few kids could recognize the planet earth, blue and green and swathed with clouds, in a shot taken from space. It seemed that the sharpest classes were either from parochial and private schools, or from the small rural towns outside the city. The dullest academic knife in the drawer during my time doing tours was a class which contained only two kids— one white, one black— who spoke English. The rest of the class was split between Hispanic and Vietnamese, and although they had a Spanish-fluent and a Vietnamese-fluent teachers’ aide with them, we were left all to wonder if anyone had gotten anything out of the trip at all.

The museum was down the street and around the corner from the planetarium, an easy walk of three blocks or so, and which incorporated a “sight” not actually listed in the teachers’ “handbook of field-trips”. I always stopped the column of children about half a block away, and told them what it was, and what they should look for. This was Mather AFB’s very own unofficial mascot and endangered species, a particular and very rare breed of ground-burrowing owl, peculiar to California and very high up on the endangered species list. So when one of these rare birds deigned to make itself entirely at home in a stretch of field and find a mate and build it’s own-equivalent of the rose-covered cottage adjacent to a well-traveled sidewalk, the powers that be were suitably impressed. So was everyone else. No one on base was permitted to pester, harass, or deliberately frighten it. The owl (or owls) were often seen, perched on top of the rounded cone of dirt from the burrow. A kind, wild-life loving soul in CE even provided a gnome-sized patio table with umbrella to mark the burrow especially. (Little-known fact: military preserves are often very well stocked with endangered species, which often seem remarkably stoic about live ammunition, noisy engines, and frequent explosions. Go figure.) With luck, and if they were quiet and kept their eyes fixed on the little table, and the mound of dirt, at least half the tour group would have a glimpse of the owl— a stubby brown little thing about the size of a fat grackle, before it went to ground.

Around the corner, the Museum was in an old warehouse, quite professionally designed and with a nice collection of aviation relics, an authentic old wire recorder, and a half-sized replica biplane that the kids could actually climb into. The unicycle-riding major provided good amusement value, although his accounts of Pancho Barnes’ place in aviation history had to be considerably toned down for the grade-school set.
And then to the picnic ground across the road from the museum, keeping a watchful eye on the kids, eating bag lunches, chatting to their teachers, and answering questions posed by clearly hero- or heroine-worshipping kids… well, there are worse ways to spend a morning at work. I could hardly believe the Air Force paid me a salary to do something I enjoyed this much,
We used to get packets of thank-you letters and drawings from the kids, afterwards. Their teachers assigned them to do pictures and letters as a class assignment.

It was amazing, how many of them did pictures of the owl!

I loved the Public Affairs posting, at Mather AFB, where I went after more than four years in Japan, waiting for the man who would be my daughter’s father to catch up to me. He never did, and we broke up before she was born; I came back to the States late in 1980, thrilled no end to be away from a place where I had been deeply happy and then deeply unhappy. I moved into a grim little concrete-block bungalow in the housing area, and incredibly, a job where I worked during daylight hours! With other people! And work hours compatible with the Day-Care Center! I could interrelate with normal, well adjusted people! (And a posting which was merely a long-distance telephone call away from my parents, rather than an international call, and a mere day’s drive away, a distance of 600 miles.) It more than made up for having to walk the half-block between the PA office and the BX/Bank/Snack bar complex with your right hand permanently stapled to your right-eyebrow in salute, for Mather AFB crawled, simply crawled with 2nd Lieutenants, shoals and drifting bands and formations of them, callow youths every one, and it would take eight of them to equal my time-in-service. They were at Mather to be trained as navigators, a year-long course.

I was assigned to what they called ComRel, or Community Relations, which consisted of myself and a relatively young lieutenant, plus whatever casual labor was assigned from an available pool. The Media Relations section— a captain and a wise and wily DOD civilian dealt with the local press. Internal Relations—another lieutenant, a senior NCO and a couple of juniors, plus a DOD civilian who had been working at Mather since WWII, dedicated themselves to the production of the base newspaper, “Wing-Tips”. We were all under the command of a Major, (subsequently promoted to Lt-Colonel) who was absolutely one of the three best commanders I ever worked for, being the ATC’s go-to guy for sorting out problem detachments. He had been the Supply Squadron Commander, and would be commander of the first Family Resource Center in ATC, in spite of having absolutely no experience in supply systems, Public Affairs and in social work—but he was a genius at organizing those who were.

What the ComRel job involved for me mostly involved going down to the front gate three or four days a week and meeting a school bus. A school bus which would be full of kids, any age from pre-school, thorough high school, and even sometimes an astronomy class from UC-Davis. The Air Force trained navigators at Mather AFB, and one of the necessary facilities was a small planetarium. This planetarium was about the only one for several hundred miles in every direction, and as such was listed, along with the bases’ little museum as an “Approved Educational (and Free!) Destination for School Field Trips” in the teachers’ handbook for the greater Sacramento metro area. An hour at the planetarium, a brisk walk around the corner to the museum, and cross the street to the base picnic ground for lunch, and there was three hours of an academic day taken care of.

Other options included the maintenance hanger, the working dogs and the navigator training facility, but those had to be specially arranged with the units involved, their mission permitting, and made the tour much longer. Volunteer instructors from the Nav School had a 45 minute presentation at the Planetarium, and a very jolly Major who often amused students by demonstrating his skills on a unicycle, ran the museum.

But it would be my job to meet the students at the gate— being the very parfait gentil sergeant and representative of the Air Force— shepherd them to the various locations, take them to the picnic ground, and at last, to see them out the gate again, without loosing any of them, and hopefully without any of them hurting themselves or damaging government property. I could have used the services of a couple of well-trained sheep-herding dogs, but more usually had the assistance of a casual, drawn from the pool of 2nd Lieutenants who were either waiting for their course to begin, had graduated and were awaiting further assignment, or those who had flunked out and were sadly, facing discharge. Unless they were AF Academy grads, or had majored in something useful like engineering, the Air Force had no real use for them, otherwise.

We usually had an idea of how many students, and from which school, since the tours were booked and organized in advance, and timed out to the five-minute increment— which made establishing and keeping control from the minute the bus pulled into the Visitor Center Parking lot, and the door whooshed open for us.

One of those interesting life skills— standing up at the front of the moving bus, talking into the PA mike; the trick being to space your feet far apart and keep one elbow looped around whatever stanchion there is, behind the driver’s seat, or in front of the first seats— while I launched into my introductory lecture:
“Good Morning, welcome to Mather Air Force Base! I’m Sgt. Hayes, and this is Lieutenant_____, we’ll be escorting your tour today. I need to make a couple of things clear, first. This is a working military base… it is not your school, it is not a playground, and it is not a nursery. We are happy to show you around, and to answer your questions, but we need to make sure that everyone stays with the group. There is a lot to see and do here, but here are things which we ask you not to touch, and there are things which you may not climb up on, and there are places where you may not go. If I see anyone doing anything we have asked you not to do, first we shall speak to your teacher. If we see it happening a second time, the tour will be ended right there. Everyone clear on that? Good.”

The casual Lieutenants used to tease me about my initial lecture— comparisons were drawn to Hitler and Napoleon— but I never, ever had to call off a tour. And I never lost a kid from one of them, either.
(To be continued)

From: Sgt Mom
To: New Members of the Collective
Re: Mission Statement and Standards

1. First, let me welcome you to the collective at The Daily Brief, and the wonderful, eccentric world of the weblog. It may be something you become truly addicted to, if you have not already, and it may be something that once explored, you may find yourself burning out, and moving on to other pursuits and interests. You may find your literary voice here, and you may develop fans and a following, friends in distant places, critics, sparring partners, contacts… or not. It all depends on you, really.

2. This weblog was begun by a member of the active duty forces, and after a year of providing content by himself, felt that it would be enhanced by adding the input of other members of the military, either current or former, from the US forces and their equivalents serving in Canada, Australia, and the UK. I feel very deeply that this weblog serves a continuing useful and informative purpose, in that it gives those who are, and who have served a voice in the larger and developing new media community; a voice which had been marginalized for too long a time. It is nearly thirty years since military service was the common coin of experience, and in that time the weeds of ignorance and misinformation have grown particularly tall; this weblog is a way of cutting them down, and relating what the military life and experience is really like, from all our many and varied experiences.

3. Inform, and entertain— the motto of AFRTS, less the cheesy spots. Whatever interests and intrigues you—indulge your curiosity and explore it. It will probably interest and intrigue readers too; a good writer can make a seemingly boring topic quite engrossing. Sometimes I think I shall challenge myself and write an essay about dryer lint, and see how interesting I can make it!

4. I like the rule at Rantburg (www.rantburg.com) about posting a couple of paragraphs and a link, rather than duplicating an article/post in full. Life is too short to duplicate here what you can read somewhere else.

5. Pace yourself: at this moment a good few top bloggers are a little burned out and taking a break from it all. It will be a bit of a drain— sort of like a vampire extracting a pint of your best homogenized once a day or so. I try to post three times a week; a self-imposed deadline, but it works for me. I actually find deadlines rather inspiring. Work out for yourself the pace you can maintain over the long haul— think of this as a duty requirement, and then stick to it as much as you can.

6. I write in Word, save, spell-check, etc, post and insert links when referring to an article or book. Whatever works best for you, of course. I answer comments, within reason, even if only to thank the commentor.

7. As always, Opsec applies. Also, my parents, my sister, my Significant Other, and my daughter all read my posts, and as it turns out, so do an embarrassing number of former co-workers and NCOICs. Discretion is the better part of valor. Any fires you light with your posts are your own to put out.

8. And finally, remember to have fun!

Sgt Mom

I run in the mornings, before the sun has even done nothing more than lighten the sky over the roofs of the houses across the street, rolling out a little before 6:30, when most of the newspapers in the driveway have not been taken in, when the windows are mostly still dark… but not all. There are other runners about— over the next hour or so, you would get fairly trampled in the rush of them. That, and the owners of various dogs, taking them out for an air and a trot around the block before dogs are shut in the house, or the yard for the day, while their chosen human toils in the vineyards of various gainful employment. The leash laws are strictly observed around here, although cats (a superior species) are under no such onerous burden. Certain of them, usually suitably collared and tagged, are allowed unleashed freedom.

Being sensible creatures, most of them stick close to their home turf, so I know many of them by sight, they and the white and grey rabbit who also prowls a limited territory as the Little Friend of All the Cats, all of them knowing very well upon which side their personal bread is buttered. Bubba From Down The Road, who belongs to a 7th grader named Roger, has already been at my back door for his occasional ration of finest veterinarian-approved dry kibble. Roger has been to my house also, with catalogues of things— candies and cookies and cards and gifts— his school fund-raising project. I have ordered an apple-shaped timer, filling out the order form and writing out the check in advance, while my own cats sniffed him over, and decided they liked him. Roger is one of those boys at the most awkward stage of development, slightly hyper and socially inept, starving for approval, and naïve enough still to be reassured by the obvious approval of animals, and any adult who takes the trouble to treat him with courtesy and interest.

I start my run, turning left from my drive, with a long straight uphill stretch. The houses on the lower end of my street are the smallest, described as “garden cottages” of about 1,000 square feet and free-standing, but only a little larger than an apartment or condo would be, set on narrow lots with an unwindowed side on the property line. This leaves them with a front and back yard, and a narrow side yard; most of them have a tiny porch and front door along the side, or at the front. All of them are set back the same distance, all have a garage at the front, some of them have a second floor, and an assortment of interesting gables, bay windows, perhaps a vestigial front porch. A variety of designs saves the neighborhood from numbing conformity; although they are all carried out in brick and painted siding, and vaguely Palladian arched windows and bits of Victorian-ish stick painted trim, the builders worked with a varied palette of brick colors— grey and mushroom, light and dark reds, brown, beige, with paint colors to match. The oldest houses are planted around with mature trees and well-established gardens, but the newer ones are stark and unshaded, and look rather like the little box houses featured in model railway layouts, with various prefab doors and windows glued onto a plain square box of a house.

A few cars move on my road, which is one of the main traffic arteries in and out of the neighborhood, and being fairly straight for six or eight blocks is a temptation for speeders. I run on the asphalt roadway, which is easier on the joints than the concrete sidewalk, and keep a wary eye out when I have to skirt around cars parked on the street. There are a few porch lights on, at the top of the hill, at the intersection of the other main artery. When Blondie and I first moved here, and I bought my house, many of the lots at the top end were still empty, or under construction— in fact, the builders’ trailer and parking lot was at this corner. I turn right, carefully looking both ways before crossing. This intersection will be fairly heavily trafficked in another half hour; a short extension of the road I live on was run out to Stahl road, where the high school and the elementary school are. There will be kids on bicycles, and walking along the sidewalks, and nervous mothers and fathers ferrying the younger ones, or perhaps dropping them off on their way to their own work.

But now, the only foot traffic is that of the dedicated exercise fanatics like me, the only noise being the regular quiet beat of athletic shoes hitting the asphalt, and the barking of frustrated dogs as we pass by in the darkness…

A Sunday September morning, on one of those mild and gorgeous fall days, when the leaves are just starting to turn, but the last of the summer flowers still linger, and the days are warm, yet everyone grabs hold of those last few golden days, knowing how short they are of duration under the coming Doom of winter.

And there is another Doom besides the changing of the seasons on this morning, a Doom that has been building inescapable by treaty obligation for the last two days, clear to the politically savvy for the last two weeks— since the two old political opposites-and-enemies inexplicably signed an alliance— deferred by a humiliating stand-down and betrayal of the trusting two years since, a doom apparent to the far-sighted for nearly a decade. The armies are marching, the jackals bidden to follow after the conqueror, a country betrayed and dismembered, the crack cavalry troops of an army rated as superior to the American Army as it existed then charging against tanks, their ancient and historic cities reduced to rubble… and by obligation and treaty, the Allies are brought to face a brutal reality. That after two decades of peace, after four years of war that countenanced the slaughter of a significant portion of a generation, that left small towns across Europe and Great Britain decimated and plastered with sad memorials carved with endless lists of names, acres of crosses and desolation, sacrifice and grief, for which no one could afterwards give a really good reason, a decade of pledging “never again”, war is come upon them, however much they would wish and hope and pray otherwise. Reservists had been called to active duty, children had been evacuated en mass from the crowded city center, and Neville Chamberlain, who had been given a choice between war and dishonor, chosen dishonor and now had to go before the nation on radio and announce the coming of war:

“I am speaking to you from the Cabinet Room at 10 Downing Street. This morning the British Ambassador in Berlin handed the German Government an official note stating that unless we heard from them by eleven o’clock, that they were prepared at once to withdraw their troops from Poland, a state of war would exist between us. I have to tell you now that no such undertaking has been received, and consequently this county is at war with Germany. You can imagine what a bitter blow it is to me that all my long struggle to win peace has failed. Yet I cannot believe that there is anything more or anything different that I could have done and that would have been more successful…. We and France are to-day, in fullfrnlment of our obligations, going to the aid of Poland, so bravely resisting this wicked and unprovoked attack on her people. We have a clear conscience, we have done all that any country could do to establish peace. The situation in which no word given by Germany’s ruler could be trusted and no people or country could feel safe has become intolerable. Now we have resolved to finish it, I know you will all play your part with calmness and courage…

Now may God bless you all, and may he defend the right. For it is evil things that we shall be fighting, against brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression and persecution, and against them I am certain that Right will prevail.”

The filmmaker John Boorman in the movie “Hope and Glory” noted the queer occurrence of all the lawnmowers in the suburb suddenly falling silent, everyone listening to the sad speech of a man who has seen his worst fears realized followed by the sound of air raid sirens. It was a false alarm, that morning, but within a year the alarms would sound for real. The docklands would be reduced to rubble, historic churches would fall, the city would burn, but in the aftermath, defiantly humorous signs would appear “More Open Than Usual” and “I Have No Pane, Dear Mother Now”. It would be entirely possible for men who had served in the Western Front to see grim and tragic duty again as firemen and wardens in the streets where they lived in this new war. By the time the Blitz became a reality, most everyone had gotten more or less accustomed to the idea. My Grandpa Jim, though, would take the bombing of London as a personal insult, and be restrained from going downtown and assaulting the German Consulate in Los Angeles, while his son and namesake collected newspaper clippings about the war, and aviation for his scrapbook. I do not think the news of war that came to them on another Sunday morning, nearly two years later came entirely as a surprise, only the direction form which it came— east, and not west.

In any case, the news would have come, late on a Sunday morning, after the early service. I like to think this is a hymn that might have been sung in the last few quiet hours before the storm— as it was at the service I attended the day that the ground offensive began in the first Gulf War.

God of Grace and God of Glory, on your people pour Your Power;
Crown your ancient church’s story, Bring it’s bud to glorious flower.
Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, For the facing of this hour
For the facing of this hour.

Tune: Cwm Rhondda
Words: Harry Emerson Fosdick, 1930

September 3, 1939: 65 years ago today.
(Reminder, courtesy of Cronacea)

This blogger laments the time wasted in meetings, meetings to plan events, meetings that are a waste of time and annoyance to most of the people involved. But the ability to run a productive meeting is a skill, a rare and necessary skill, and the military was where I first saw it displayed to effective advantage.
MSgt Rob the station manager at FEN Misawa, for reasons of his own, of which I knew nothing at the time, but probably had more to do with his schedule and disinclination to spend his own time on a pretty routine task, sent me to attend a planning meeting. It was the planning meeting to work out the details of the annual Air Force ball, and all around the table at the NCO club were representatives from every other unit on base. All guys, every one of them with about six times my time in service, and enough stripes to dazzle a herd of zebras.
And they had the whole project sorted out in a briskly off-hand manner;
Venue? O’Club or NCO. O’Club a bit more plush, a bit more special. All in favor? Aye.
Date? Calendars consulted. Friday in September when the O’Club was available. No conflicts with third Friday? Ok, then. Third Friday it was.
DJ, for after-dinner dancing? One of the present NCOs was the MWR manager, and armed with a list of available DJs. He was detailed to work out who would be available for that date, and brief us at the next meeting; any of them would be acceptable.
Cost of tickets? Keep ’em affortable so the junior enlisted could participate. Some small discussion on what exactly consituted affordible, and all eyes swiveled to me, as the only junior enlisted present. I stammered out a cost which I thought would be acceptable. Right. Agreed? Next item— the menu.
The MWR manager, prepped with a list of available banquet entrees available from the O’Club kitchen, read out the items that agreed with the cost of tickets: chicken with mushrooms, or beef burgundy. Everyone cool with that choice? Good.
Guests at the head table? Of course the guest of honor, who would also be the speaker. The base commanders and spouses, the chaplain who would do the invocation— short sidetrack while the representative from the Chapel was instructed to see which of the chaplains would be available on the date in question.
Decor for the tables, and that? This produced a silence, until I cleared my throat and suggested that the tablecloths be autumn colors— red and gold, maybe. And fall foliage on the tables instead of flowers.
I held my breath; this sort of thing would have brought about hours of discussion among the Girl Scouts, or the church ladies. Everyone would take sides, and argue over it, and not a few feelings would be hurt, and it would only be resolved when everyone was heartily sick of fighting over it.
The senior NCO looked at the MWR manager? Red and gold tablecloths? Not a problem, said the MWR manager, we got ’em. All agreed, red and gold it is.
Deliver the guest of honor in an eccentric vehicle— of course. It is the custom. Some discussion about possibly using the flight-line fire engine. The NCO from the fire department does not like that, and suggests using the little “follow me” truck. Perfect. All agreed. The NCO from the motor pool will make the “follow me” truck available on the evening in question.
The NCO representing the Personnel section— which included the base reprographics section— has enough information to mock up the tickets. At the next meeting, the program for the evening would be set. He would bring the tickets to the next meeting, where we would have the information for the final program line-up. Anything we’ve forgotten? No. Next meeting, this time next Thursday.
Fourty-five minutes flat, under the firm hand of decisive people who do not wish to waste time… or anyone elses.
I love doing business that way.

The trouble was the Athens/Saronic side of the Attic Peninsula was not that great for sea bathing. The English-language newspapers often published disconcerting notices, forbidding swimming or wading at such and such a place on the western shore, at such and such a distance from the sewage outfall. Not having the expertise to do tests on the waters at various beaches myself, I took their word for it; and conformed with my own eyes that the beaches between Vouligmeni and Sounion tended to be— even when not thickly crowded— strewn with trash, either brought in by the tide from all the ship traffic, or just dropped by the careless. Even the water looked murkier, to me.

And so, if I wanted to get out of Athens, this summer day, and spend it at the beach, I would head south from Glyphada, but take the road inland at Vula for Koriopi and Makropulion; a narrow, two-lane country road that meandered over the top of the hills that made the spine of the blunt spear-point peninsula, a road which wandered past a tall, medieval tower in the middle of a farmer’s field, between stone walls, and olive trees, and ended in the salt-marsh flats on the eastern shore by Vraona…
There were the ruins of a seriously crumbled classical temple complex there, so ruined that there was very little left above ground, the artifacts and remains of which put the lie to the assumption that the Classical Greeks didn’t artistically portray children. It seemed to have been a sort of dedicated shrine and boarding school for children, to judge from the sculpture found there, all the largest remaining bits were on display at a museum— a very fine, marble-floored museum, run up to a standard 1960ies architectural pattern, and on the occasion that my daughter and I visited it, almost completely deserted.

There was a tractor with some sort of agricultural implement hitched to it, in the otherwise empty parking lot. Presumably, the driver was the older man taking a bit of leisure in the foyer, chatting to the other man who seemed to be an old friend, and also concierge, ticket-taker and security, all in one. I paid over the couple of hundred drachma notes that gained us admittance, and the one-man museum authority waved us on, into the deserted, marble floored galleries, after a little admiration and sanctioned head-patting of my daughter. Children in Greece are universally cherished, admired, ritually adored and petted by all adults, all children— even the ones in the difficult stages of toddlerhood, who are apt to be snappish on occasion. My daughter is gracious and charming, having learned in the last few months that all local nationals—especially the older ones— are particularly soft touches, apt to deal out pieces of penny-candy, a drachma-coin, or a bit of extravagant adoration at the drop of a hat, or a blond eyelash.

The statues in the museum gallery are nearly as charming. The two most complete are a little girl, in classical draped robes, her hair gathered into a bun on the top of her head— but a little girl, cuddling a tame rabbit in her arms, and a little boy with a pair of pet doves, and a small dog at his heels— he holds one of the doves teasingly downwards, and the dog is sniffing at it, eaten up with curiosity. Such a little boy— snips and snails, doves and puppy-dog tails, realistically observed with wry humor and affection, and the little girl, cherishing her rabbit, borne up safely in her four or five-year old grasp. Children, they who are our dearly beloved hope for the future and our hostages to fortune, now and in the 5th century BC.

After the Vraona museum, I would go south a little, after a little time on the beach, for a late lunch in Porto Rafti. Kyrie George, my next-door neighbor tells me that a large portion of the British forces in Greece evacuated from Porto Rafti after the WWII German invasion—an evacuation as spectacular and dramatic as Dunkirk, even, and that Porto Rafti should have been as important a seaport as Athens, only it was a shallow-water port, and so fortune passed it by. Perhaps fortune did it a favor, leaving it small, and edibly charming, with a couple of built-up streets, and a small square, and a short esplanade where the fishing boats tied up every morning.

Kyrie Georgios had a theory that the very best food came from places where the cook had served as a cook in the Greek Navy. His theory is open to question and discussion; my own theory of gustatorial delight was that there was a powerful correlation between excellent food and the presence of thriving potted plants in a Greek restaurant. A place which displayed exuberantly thriving potted plants was, ergo, a place where they paid attention to small things…. After all, the best meal I had in Porto Rafti was eaten in a storefront restaurant, which boasted a fifteen-foot tall ficus by way of décor. Or it was the best until Penny and Georgios took me on a Sunday to their favorite, a tiny place with a large outdoor eating area, a place with tables under shady trees, a little way up from the quay and harbor, a place with a simple and uncomplicated menu: salad and crusty fresh bread, and fried potatoes… and fish.

At the edge of the paved dining area, there was a single table stacked with platters and metal tongs, next to a large metal chest of drawers, each drawer filled three-quarters full of crushed ice, and shoals of silver fish, ten or twelve inches long. Their eyes are still slightly bulging, and there is only the faintest smell of the salt sea from the drawers of fish.
“They buy every morning from the fishermen, right over there,” Georgios tells us, “And when the fish runs out… pffit. That’s it. They are closed for the day.”
He heaps a platter generously with fish, and hands it to the waiter, who vanishes in the direction of the kitchen. On a day like today, most everyone prefers to sit outside, under the trees in the open air, where it is always cool, and the light ocean breeze blows away most of the smoky smell from the kitchen.

In a very few minutes, the waiter brings us back the platter of fish that Georgios had selected so carefully, grilled to perfection, accompanied by nothing more than a couple of lemon halves. The silvery skin, lightly charred from the grill slides off easily, and the delicate flesh underneath is the essence of the sea… an utterly sublime and simple meal, eaten in the most perfect place for it imaginable. And that is where I would go, given a day in Greece this week, just to avoid the crowds— a simple meal in a quiet little place by the sea.

The most beautiful words in the English language are indeed the words “Check enclosed”!
I have recieved as of last week my very first royalty check on The Book, which was completely and totally thrilling, even though I have gotten payments for writing and for voice-work. This is for “The Book”— even though I happen to know that my daughter bought three copies herself… still! The Book!
(happy and rapturous sigh inserted here)
I will be spending this check, alas, all in one place— to buy a number of copies to use as gifts for friends and family, to offer for review, and to market to one or two local bookstores which are *ahem* supportive of local writers, and for those who want an inscribed, author-autographed copy.
(This is your cue, for those who have asked for it. Paypal works for me, thanks- same price + shipping)
Oh, and it seems that someone has been publishing, and has made a certain name— using my real name for the last ten years or so… so, in order ro reduce confusion all around, I have taken a pseudonym, which mercifully hardly turns up hardly at all when googled— that is why the name on my e-mails doesn’t quite match the name on the front of “The Book”.
And thanks to all of you who have bought a copy! (MWAH!)

I used to be a feminist, a long time ago and another century, when it used to mean that you were bright and adventurous, and the life choices presented to you— the options that your mothers and grandmothers had were about as appealing as a plate of cold gruel. My Grannie Dodie opened the campaign for that conventional life almost the minute I graduated high school: my clear duty was to marry a man with a well-paying job, immediately bear a certain number of appealing children— all of which would earn her bragging rights in the battle for status among her peers, since the number and quality of great-grandchildren counted for much— keep a spotless house, which would be beautifully and tastefully decorated, cook plentiful and appetizing meals (on a budget), dress myself and the hypothetical children in understated elegance (also on a budget), and – oh, crap, just look at the latest edition Martha Stewart or the other womens’ magazines. It all looked – well, not very interesting, not next to the options available for boys, which offered lashings of adventure, interesting work, and substantial paychecks.
Trust me, there was really only one choice on the block in those formative years, in the eyes of my parents, my teachers and society in general. And a lot of the limitations we felt were really in our own heads. Those few far-scattered female movers and shakers available as role models were, we were given to understand, very rare and special and brilliant: Madame Curie, Queen Elizabeth I, Jane Addams, Amelia Earhart. When I looked around in my high school Honors and AE classes and saw only two other girls besides me – well, that said something. What it said was “Forget about romance if you are brainy and driven and competitive and don’t want to hide it, ’cause guys don’t like being beaten at anything by a girl.”
It wasn’t just at school that the limitations applied, the ones in our heads and those imposed by tradition. There were just so very few places where a woman could go, and have a real career, even fewer where you could work after marriage and children. While there were always women who broke those conventions, they were rare exceptions. They were extraordinarily talented, or lucky, or very, very driven; us ordinary girls were not encouraged to very much more than being a teacher, or a nurse, a secretary, or in sales: everything else, everything that looked daring, or adventurous, or well-paid or just plain fun was beyond a thin, gauzy veil with the words, “No, girls can’t do that.”
Feminism changed all that in a thousand ways: any number of interesting and challenging careers are now open to pretty much anyone qualified and interested, it is now possible to have credit, a business, a house in your own name, a medical appointment with a woman doctor— all of which were almost unimaginable, save to some visionaries in the 1960ies. You don’t even have to wear those damned high heel shoes, unless you want to; you can organize your professional and personal life in whatever arrangement works for you. Now there are few barriers preventing women from acquiring the skills and credentials which will give them an astonishing degree of economic and political freedom, and equality, our world is changed for us, but the movement which spearheaded those changes hasn’t. Instead it is insular, reactionary, petty and increasingly doctrinaire—- even irrelevant to most of what would be their natural constituency.
Increasingly, a number of matters began to bother me: how conventional courtesies like opening a door for a woman were somehow conflated with economic and political injustice, and how being a feminist in good standing meant having to meet an increasingly rigorous set of strictures. Reading through MS Magazine, as I did devotedly during the years that I was in active service, the message became clearer and clearer: you weren’t really counted as a (large capital) feminist in good standing unless you were a vegetarian-pagan-lesbian-single-parent-of-color-employed-by-a-university-and-serious-victim-of-the-patriarchy, and also eschewed leg and armpit shaving and makeup into the bargain – and if you had the misfortune to be white and middle class, better get down and do a lot of groveling apologies for it.
So, as I had internalized the early principles of strength, independence, and freedom of choice, the feminism of the later period brought about a certain amount of cognitive dissonance: You mean, I have fought my way into a twice male-dominated field (broadcasting and the military), borne and raised a child on my own, built a fairly happy and successful life— and you want me to insist that I am a desperately unhappy and downtrodden victim? That the military, which was really rather accommodating about medical benefits, child care, and family requirements was this horrible patriarchal, brutal establishment dedicate to squashing the sisterhood? There was nothing said about how damn good it felt to exercise authority, what an absolute kick it was to go out and make things happen; it was all sitting around with the sisterhood, moaning about how downtrodden, and how very superior it was morally to be a perpetual victim.
Mind you, the military was not one vast warm fuzzy support group that the traditional feminists envisioned as their ideal society; it is rather a brutally efficient meritocracy; do the job, get the perks, earn the pension and the status. Over twenty years, I worked with the people who were incompetent ninnies, and people who were who were totally squared away professionals. There was no correlation between competence and possession (or absence) of a dick.
There were a number of the free-standing variety, however, as well as other challenges. As a military woman, I dealt with them directly, neatly and efficiently, and without involving my commander, the legal office or the womyn’s support group, and without thinking of myself as a poor, pitiful victim of patriarchal oppression, but as an adult and a professional. I mean, if there was any oppression going around, I was far more likely to be administering it. Playing by the rules laid out for us by the doctrinaire, die-hard feminists seemed more and more stultifying, useless… and worse than that— no fun at all.
Having only a circumscribed set of pre-approved choices to live your life… well, that was just what we had started with, wasn’t it?
After all of this, maybe I am a post-feminist; holding to only a few simple strictures for organizing women’s lives. The same access to educational opportunities, to be judged in the classroom and the job by the same standards, and to be paid the same for the same work. Arrange anything else— your child-bearing schedule, your profession, and your living arrangements in the manner which brings you and yours blessings and happiness.
And if you wanna wear four-inch spike heels, or goth makeup, or go totally vegan… well, whatever, sister. It’s a big world, and the possiblities and the choices are endless.