Home

Advertisement

Customize
ace_cub_reportr
10 December 2009 @ 04:23 pm
GIP  
That's what the kids say these days, isn't it?
 
 
Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: last night's Mythbusters
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
29 November 2009 @ 03:58 pm
Ave et vale.
 
 
Current Mood: somber
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
17 November 2009 @ 11:11 pm


Beautiful place.
 
 
Current Mood: ecr
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
14 November 2009 @ 10:51 am
 
 
Current Mood: confused
Current Music: Car Talk
 
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
12 November 2009 @ 12:15 pm
Really, we need to circulate those white papers more widely. 
 
 
Current Mood: tired
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
11 November 2009 @ 02:51 pm
"Oh, what a gift I've been given. That's the best way I can put it. The gift to move on and do something with the rest of your life."

Habiba Nosheen interviews Lt. Col. Michael Sternfeld.
 
 
Current Location: work
Current Mood: contemplative
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
Nov. 9, 1989.

"Visas will be granted immediately by police stations all over the country."

Twenty years ago today I was a rookie field agent drinking schnapps in a bar in Cleveland with a woman in her late seventies who was telling stories in a German accent about what really happened when the Russians rolled into Berlin. She had gray hair stylishly cut, and was full of schnapps and also coyly-worded hints about secret marriages and clandestine escapes to South America*.

In return, I told her about meeting Gyula Horn in Budapest in 1977**, some time after he went to work for the Hungarian foreign affairs department (and long after he spent a couple of long weekends crushing anti-Soviet revolution) but long before he posed with Alois Mock and a couple pairs of pruning shears along the fences at the Austro-Hungarian border.

Heady times.

I work with people who were in grade school when that happened. Ten years from now, wherever I am, I'll probably work with people who weren't born. Unless I'm--horrors!--retired by then.
~~~

*I'm pretty sure she wasn't actually Eva Braun. But she did have big, beautiful light-brown eyes and the remnants of a redhead complexion. And they were awfully good stories.***

**It was in the line of duty. For both of us.

***She said the dress was blue. If you were still wondering.****

****My stories, of course, were all completely true.
 
 
Current Mood: nostalgic
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
08 November 2009 @ 09:56 am
"She's a real good cop."

I'll say!
 
 
Current Mood: melancholy
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
I get so tired of the outrage.

I wonder what's going on in this guy's neighborhood that he has absolutely no clue he hasn't figured out? How many rapes, spousal abuse cases, child molestations? Basement meth labs? Elder abuse or neglect cases?

Yeah. It couldn't happen to us, could it? We wouldn't make those mistakes. Those people it happened to, they somehow deserved it.

Us? We're doing everything right. We follow the rules and drink our green tea and always pay our insurance premiums on time. We're safe.

No monsters under our beds.

Jimuny crickets. I wish I could bring these people to work with me for just one goddamned day.


*(context)
 
 
Current Mood: tired. really, really tired.
Current Music: Tom Waits - What's He Building?
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
30 October 2009 @ 11:36 am
New Scientist photo gallery on the history of mental asylums.

Of course, now the old ones are being repurposed for all sorts of things, including a puppetry museum.
 
 
Current Mood: pensive
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
03 October 2009 @ 03:05 pm
Air support is like health insurance. You don't need it until you need it, and then when you need it you need it now.
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
27 August 2009 @ 12:35 pm
Yay.
 
 
Current Mood: quixotic
Current Music: Indigo Girls - Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
28 July 2009 @ 12:41 pm
Fourth Wall: Photo Credit jamesthephotographer @ flickr.com used under creative commons
 
 
Current Mood: nostalgic
Current Music: waiting for the big one
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
24 July 2009 @ 04:34 pm
Fourth Wall: Photo Credit respres @ flickr.com used under creative commons
 
 
Current Mood: happy
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
23 July 2009 @ 09:57 pm
VoicePost Help
185K 0:55
“We left Oolitic (?) this morning.

Yesterday was a day of rain which encouraged indoor socialization. Snickerdoodles and cocoa.

The plan has us crossing the Rockies at Utah's Great Basin on Friday. But like all the best plans, this one is subject to change.

Then to visit some of my traveling companion's people in Cali before we turn north.

Traveling companion rides a Kawasaki. It's <i>cute</i>! I blow her away on the straightaways, but she sneaks up behind me on the curves, and I can't hear her coming.

I'm pretty sure Uncle Sam never intended those two-way headsets for the purpose to which they're being put.

<lj user=makito13>, does it date me if I admit that I remember when camping didn't have to be qualified with the adjective "wilderness"? Not that you find much wilderness along the side of the highway.

Toodlefoot(?), internet. Be good for Mommy.”

Transcribed by: [info]jry
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
19 July 2009 @ 07:13 pm
I'm informed that I'm not to report to work tomorrow, as apparently three weeks of leave have suddenly become mandatory.

So I've fed the fish and checked my tires and I'm going to Alaska. With a friend. By indirect routes.

And when we get there we're turning around and coming home again.

Don't wait up, but maybe I'll post from the road if something really interesting happens.
 
 
Current Mood: more relaxed already.
Current Music: Willie Nelson - On The Road Again
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
Walter Cronkite died yesterday.

He was the anchor of the CBS evening news from 1962 to 1981, but his influence extended far beyond those nineteen years. The very term anchor was coined in 1952 to describe his role in covering the Democratic and Republican conventions. His authority as a newsreader has never been equalled in the western world, and some credit questions raised in his trusted voice as being instrumental in bringing about a change in American attitudes towards the Vietnam War.

I had just turned fifteen when he made this broadcast. It infuriated me. Intemperate words may have been spoken regarding Mr. Cronkite's patriotism, journalistic fitness, and the presumed marital status of his parents.

I was very young.

In a month or a year or so, I may be able to write something that reveals obliquely the impact he had on the course of my life. Something that demonstrates without explaining, something that allows the reader to fill in the blanks. Today, all I can say is that I changed my mind sometime later, under circumstances complicated by personal experience, and so Walter Cronkite is probably the reason I became a reporter. It seems odd to be writing about his death now, when I've just started dabbling in public writing (albeit for this very small audience) again.

Mr. Cronkite has been ill for some time, his faculties reportedly failing, and 92 is a fine ripe old age for anyone. The good, thank God, don't always die young.

NASA gave him a moon rock. That's a mark of a life well lived.

#

Today, in Britain, the world's oldest man died. Henry Allingham was 113 years old and fought in the war that was raging in Europe the year Cronkite was born. Allingham was the last remaining veteran of the original Royal Air Force, and the second-to-last remaining veteran of the Great War in England. He was born during the reign of Queen Victoria.

According to AP reports, he attributed his longevity to "cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women."

#

So much has changed since March 30th, 1979. Three Mile Island is no longer the world's worst nuclear disaster, for one thing. The calm voice telling us about it is stilled. And I have gotten older.

Some of you reading this were probably not even born when it happened. It's history, for you. But for me, it's an event I covered, and it doesn't seem possible that it was thirty years, three months, and nineteen days ago.

So indulge me for a moment, and think about what it was like when The China Syndrome was in the theatres, the wind could shift at any moment, and we didn't know yet how the story would end.

Someday, we will all be history.





What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times ... and you were there.
              --Walter Cronkite
 
 
Current Mood: quiet
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
16 July 2009 @ 01:17 pm


Major Ed Freeman was real, and he was an honest to Betsy war hero. He was a veteran of WWII as well as Korea and Vietnam, things we don't even qualify with the words Conflict or War anymore when we mention them casually.

He died on August 29th of last year.

He was eighty.

According to Snopes.com and other easily accessible internet sources, his Medal of Honor citation reads as follows:

Captain Ed W. Freeman, United States Army, distinguished himself by numerous acts of conspicuous gallantry and extraordinary intrepidity on 14 November 1965 while serving with Company A, 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile).

As a flight leader and second in command of a 16-helicopter lift unit, he supported a heavily engaged American infantry battalion at Landing Zone X-Ray in the Ia Drang Valley, Republic of Vietnam. The unit was almost out of ammunition after taking some of the heaviest casualties of the war, fighting off a relentless attack from a highly motivated, heavily armed enemy force.

When the infantry commander closed the helicopter landing zone due to intense direct enemy fire, Captain Freeman risked his own life by flying his unarmed helicopter through a gauntlet of enemy fire time after time, delivering critically needed ammunition, water and medical supplies to the besieged battalion.

His flights had a direct impact on the battle's outcome by providing the engaged units with timely supplies of ammunition critical to their survival, without which they would almost surely have gone down, with much greater loss of life. After medical evacuation helicopters refused to fly into the area due to intense enemy fire, Captain Freeman flew 14 separate rescue missions, providing life-saving evacuation of an estimated 30 seriously wounded soldiers — some of whom would not have survived had he not acted. All flights were made into a small emergency landing zone within 100 to 200 meters of the defensive perimeter where heavily committed units were perilously holding off the attacking elements. Captain Freeman's selfless acts of great valor, extraordinary perseverance and intrepidity were far above and beyond the call of duty or mission and set a superb example of leadership and courage for all of his peers.

Captain Freeman's extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States Army.

Thanks, Major.

I salute you.



I mention this today because there's a chain email going around claiming Major Freeman died on the same day as Michael Jackson, and that an acknowledgement of his service to his country has been lost in the media furor over Jackson's passing.

In fact, Freeman was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor in 2001, while he was still alive, a feat that approximately one in six recipients do not manage. Freeman received the thanks of a grateful nation from the hand of the President--thirty-six years late, but some things are slow in arriving.

After his death, they named a post office in his hometown after him.

Ed Freeman lived, and was real, and saved uncountable human lives. Some of the things he did to save those American soldiers may very well have resulted in the deaths of other human beings, because among the supplies he airlifted were cases of ammo for those engaged.

This fact does not lessen or qualify his heroism. But in an honest assessment, it must be acknowledged.

None of this is meant to denigrate the contributions and sacrifices of Mr. Jackson (I wonder how many lives he saved? And the media spotlight he endured almost certainly cost him his own.), but to make a simple point.

When you repurpose someone else's narrative, their heroism and their sacrifice, for a didactic purpose, you are already on shaky moral ground.

When in order to do so, you lie--sir or madam, you become a monster.

For whoever habitually suppresses truth in the interests of tact will produce a deformity from the womb of his thought.

                   --Captain B. H. Liddell Hart*

Thank you, Major Freeman. And thank you too, Mr. Jackson. I very much hope you are both now at peace.



*Quoted in full irony. Really, a textbook example of leakage.

 
 
Current Mood: angry
Current Music: Oingo Boingo - Nasty Habits
 
 
ace_cub_reportr
13 July 2009 @ 10:25 am
This is not gun control.
 
 
Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: The Dandy Warhols - Godless
 
 
 
 

Advertisement

Customize