Friday Musings

(Yes of course he is aware that it’s no longer Friday. Again. But these are all yesterday’s thoughts. So there.)

Sorry for the shocking poverty of blogging lately – quality as well as quantity. Life is rather full these days – still covering all the bases I think, but the fabric is getting thin in places and I thought I heard something tearing the other day. And I’m very much aware that there’s a Rhythms episode due soon overdue, but those take a bit more time than the standard political link and sneer that has filled the spaces where sea stories really belong. And too, there is some rather dreary admin to clear up from the XO’s CAS mission – a debrief in CVIC, a debrief in the ready room, chow, some butt to chew for incautious or inept aviator (I haven’t forgotten 304’s incident on the tanker) before we get started on the night mission which is the penultimate event for this tale. Dreary but probably necessary, can’t just leave them standing there like that, one foot on the flight deck, one going through the hatch, hand forever stuck on the hatch dog. I’ve been trying to come up with a way to pull it all together and dispense with it with minimum fuss – I generally do this sort of thinking on the bike during the commute to and from work – believe I’m close enough to a solution to just start typing and see where it takes us. Just got to find the time. And time, gentle reader, is the fire in which we burn.

We’re well launched down the ways of November, wondering what happened to October and how it could have left so fast, without leaving a note or with so much as a “by-your-leave.”

Which was the way were taught to pass a senior officer back when I was a mid, coupled with a salute if one were out of doors. We were supposed to wait until he said, “granted,” and I suppose that mostly we did, even if our need for speed always seemed greater than did that of the ancient mariner whose permission we were asking – captains never seemed to be in a hurry, back when I was a lad. They seemed to be perpetually savoring the moment. I wonder if they still teach the “by your leave” courtesy today, or if it, like other things, has gone the way of all flesh…

I have a specific memory of doing just this thing that I’d like to share with you: It was a windy day in Annapolis, and your humble scribe was then a plebe midshipman moving quickly down Stribling Walk, a brisk walk as ever he might without breaking into an actual run as he is running late to get to his afternoon class and tardiness is to the naval service what suicide is to the Catholic church – an unpardonable sin. An aged captain walks slowly on that self-same walk and in the same direction, in conversation with a lady. He may not be passed without the granting of leave to do so, and this leave is quickly requested, and upon request automatically granted, for such are the courtesies of the service.

That’s it, the memory ends right there, like memories often do except for this: If you combine the nearly 30-odd years of service which the captain granting permission for Midshipman (Fourth Class) Lex to pass him by on Stribling walk in November 1978 with the nearly 30 years of total service possessed by your humble scribe as he taps at his keyboard at home in San Diego on a cool morning in November you will come up with a number that represents a significant fraction (25%) of our country’s history – at least since independence. Just between the two of us.

We are rather young to feel so jaded.

Saw some email traffic yesterday that the Navy is poised on the very precipice of eliminating the requirement for signalmen to know semaphore, having officially eliminated the rate of signalman itself. Operations Specialists will replace them on the signal bridge and apparently now be required to learn to transmit Morse code signals via flashing light, as well as signal flags because they’re useful in communicating with international navies. But the days of the signalman bracing himself into the ocean breeze on the starboard bridge wing, semaphore flags in hand and snapping in the air is apparently coming to a close.

Makes perfect sense of course – in an age of satellite comms, one only rarely sees messages sent by semaphore any more, although my last captain was deliciously anachronistic in this at least. But whenever two ships were close aboard the sight of guys from sigs talking to each other in semaphore across the intervening sea – personal stuff most likely, jokes or gossip – was strangely gratifying, both as evidence of a rare skill manifested with something very close to grace and as a tenuous link back to times past, back before we came to rely on such mere innovations as the wireless.

Although April is perhaps the cruelest month, it was November that we were talking about. I’ve always loved November, not least because it was on a day in this month (whose anniversary is not so very far away) when your humble narrator first sprang upon an amazed world. Thanksgiving is also in November and it has always been one of my favorite holidays; there are no gifts to stress over, neither the getting nor the giving, it is an all-too-rare four day weekend usually coming just at the point in the academic life when a break seemed most necessary, and it was all about family, warmth and food. What’s to hate?

Plus, after Thanksgiving was the traditional start of quail season, which meant happy days in the field behind an exultant dog, a bit of fog on the breath, the crunch of the lightly frosted turf beneath your boots, the heft of the side-by-side and the smell of oil, the dog trembling on point with eyes rolling, the flutter of wings when the brown erupted, the swing and the shot and the falling back to earth. The strangely welcome sense of being fully alive at the end of the harvest.

But as I mentioned, I’ve a birthday coming up, one that will set me right at the halfway mark to 90. This is a thought that furrows my brow a bit, knowing as I do which of the two halves is likely to be better, the one just past or the one to come.

Still, consider the alternative!

Also coming with the anniversary of one’s birth, at least in the aviation navy that is, is the flight physical. In memory of which I offer you this, written when time was at a little less of a premium.

I’m humbled by the generosity of so many of the donors to the Soldier’s Angels/Valour-IT cause. In the spirit of friendly inter-service competition you’ve not only put the Navy right where it belongs, but have brought us very nearly half-way to our goal in just a day and a bit. There is so much evil in the world, and so much misfortune, and the two often combine in their attempts to bring us down that it is always a pleasure to see how much empathy and kindness there is in the world too – people will surprise you.

Thanks especially to Steve and Bryan and Dale. I’m guessing that anytime someone gives money counted in four digits it has to sting a little, unless that somebody is “Bill from Redmond, WA” and so far I don’t see him on the list. It’s a great thing you’ve done, all of you that have given, each according to your ability. I’ll leave off of dunning the rest of you until Monday, since there’s little traffic around here anyway on the weekend. Which brings to mind a half-formed thought about the laudable impact on national productivity that would ensue if blogs were suddenly outlawed. This thought I will leave unexpressed for fear that someone’s listening.

(ps – Five bucks!)

Y’all have a great weekend!