29 JUN 12

Hot ...
It's 12:30 and 92 degrees on my back deck.
The ballyhooed heat wave has begun.
Gonna concentrate on indoor chores this day.
Central air is going strong.
Thank the gods.
         _______________

There's a lot of ranting on the web about the Supreme Court decision concerning the Stolen Valor Act.
It was struck down as not conforming with the First Amendment - Freedom of Speech.
Seems that being a poseur is a constitutional right. (???)

My voice was among the first shocked complainers.
I was pissed!
I've since cooled down some. The law is being looked at by congress again. They'll try to write a resolution that better defines the actual crime, one that can't be used to quash honest protest.

I've known but three poseurs in my lifetime.
I cannot adequately describe the contempt with which I view their deceptions.

The first was a businessman up in Concord, NH.
He claimed to have been a (What else?) Green Beret, operating in Vietnam's I Corps area.
This one day, I was sitting at the bar with two other (true) Vietnam vets ... one had been a draftee 11B20 grunt and the other had been an entomology specialist with a USAF Prime BEEF Team. The poseur walked over and sat with us ... coiffed hair, polished nails, a golf tan, thousand-dollar suit ... the other two knew him already. He started in telling war stories ... stories of blood, stories of courage ...  
Victor Charley's hot spilt blood ... and ... His Own indomitable courage.
                                    (Oh my!)
This was the first time I'd met the guy and he was already over the top. When he mentioned visiting the MACV compound at Hue, I casually asked if he knew a fellow who'd been stationed there during the same time frame. He suddenly became interested in the time of day ... (Was late, was late for a very important date.) ... he had to be somewhere. The poseur's sudden need to be elsewhere got us to thinking and talking ... finally (Duh!), we figured out that the blowhard was just that ... a lying blowhard.  When we compared notes, he had shown no concept of army procedures ... his was a comic-book understanding of things military. (Think Sergeant Rock.)

(By the way ... the entomologist, named Bobby, had been with a team trapped on a Central Highland hilltop; fogged in, they spent a week repelling the VC trying to overrun them. He saw more actual combat than many a grunt ... and he was just a Zoomie bug killer. Prime BEEF Teams were engineer units that were dropped into the jungle to clear and construct rough-terrain airfields or landing zones. Bobby didn't tell me of his combat experience until months later. We were sitting on his back deck, drinking beer, after having had dinner. His wife was putting his kids to bed and we were just smoking and shooting the bull. When he spoke of his little "adventure," he wasn't bragging, he was just speaking of something that occurred way back when ... in a land far away.
I've never doubted that he was telling me the truth.)

The next poseur had a bunch of us fooled for a very long time. He was an expert machinist and claimed to have been a USMC GySgt in Vietnam. He always wore the green USMC cover, with rank pinned to it. He knew his munitions and weapons. There was no obvious reason to doubt him. He helped a civilian couple run a small, highly respected, military museum in Ridgefield, CT. (Ridgefield Museum of Military Artifacts, Inc.) The museum was known to the Pentagon and had been awarded several small treasures ... one such was an actual 14" shell from the USS Arizona. On trips to Ft. Drum, NY, the poseur gave advice to Army Reserve Armor units. He was that good! The Marine Corps League approached the poseur at every parade and asked why he wasn't a member. After years of asking, somebody checked ... and found that the poseur had never been in the service. He was a mere wannabe ... kept out for a physical disqualifier. He was a nice enough guy. I liked him. But his lies hurt everyone and caused the museum to return every artifact in it's collection and close it's doors.

Third poseur ran a small business in this town. He claimed to have been a door gunner on a US Navy chopper. Here's the rub ... when I asked him where he'd been stationed in Vietnam, which unit he'd been with, he became vague ... said that he couldn't remember the unit's designation since he flew all over the place in that "God-damned country." Here's the thing ... nobody ever FORGETS which units they'd been assigned to in combat ... NEVER. Though I have no definitive proof, it's my opinion that the guy was just another wannabe vet.

There is no shame in being an ordinary, honest, solid citizen.

Be what you are!

-Fini

PS: There, actually, is one more poseur that I forgot about. I knew him while in Berlin ... but he was so ridiculous that I'm not even gonna relate any of his tales.
(Apparently, he'd learned his soldiering by watching episodes of M*A*S*H on AFN TV.)

28 JUN 12

Finally ...
We finished potting all the annuals!
Only took us 4 weeks.
I blame it all on fatigue and hot weather.

Another heat wave starts tomorrow ...
three more days of being house-bound.
Thank God for central air.

-Fini

25 JUN 12

Rainy day ...
Woke to booming thunder and
falling rain.
A storm line passing through ...
after a very pleasant
week-end.
      ____________

The eldest grandchild has graduated
high school.
He now awaits the start of
college.
For him ...
a new world's comin'.

(Just where has the time flown?)

" I was born tomorrow
            today I live
    yesterday killed me."
              -Parviz Owsia


18 years ago - Barbara and I with the eldest grandchild
(Thomas Keane), at his Christening.

 -Fini

22 JUN 12

Approaching noon ...
and 94 degrees outside.
Officially a heat wave.

A daughter and her family are down visiting Coney Island.
We are watching their two dogs for the day.
Weather reports show storms moving through the
area with heavy, heavy rain and hail ... especially on
Long Island and parts of Jersey.


-Fini

20 JUN 12

Outside ...
I'm avoiding going out today.
On the back deck the temp. is 94, in the shade.
In the house, with central air, it's a cool 72 ...
I'm going to remain cocooned inside today.
(One of the advantages of being retired.)


Early evening ... 97 on the deck.
Stayin' inside ... still 72.


-Fini

19 JUN 12

And seldom is heard ...
a disparaging word ... concerning religion.
Though I am a non-believer, I harbor no
ill will towards religion ... unless it teaches
it's followers to kill or subjugate others in the
name of a particular God or gods.

My own personal view:
Humans and religion... this pairing goes back in
time to when our ancestors huddled in trees at
night, watching thunderstorms sweep the savannah.
Surely SOMETHING BIG was responsible for the
light show, all the ground-shaking noise.
An evolving intelligence, the evolving brain, sought
answers ... and the concept of a Supreme Being
was born.
I hold that all religions are evolved from the norms
of the societies that created them. A society developed
it's way of living before religion came along ... guided by
climate, geography, relationships with other tribes.
Once belief systems were conceived and brought into being,
they were enacted in such a way that validated the norms of
that particular society. The, self-proclaimed, decoders of the god's
will became the priests and shamans who laid down the rules that
everyone, even kings, were forced to live by. Thus was power
attained ... and wielded, from behind closed doors.

 -Fini

17 JUN 12

Sunday ...
and Father's Day
too.
Dawned gray ... but the promise is for sun
later.

A poem that I love:

THOSE WINTER SUNDAYS

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house.

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

-Robert Hayden
    _________________

There is no day set aside for "Steps" ...
pity, that.

There yet lives a man who agreed to
become step-father to two young boys in
need. His name is Tom Welsh.
We took his name, my brother and I.
Even though he and my mother divorced,
he never stopped being our "Dad."
All these years later, even though he has
another family, to include four children of his own,
I still consider him to be my Dad.

Happy Father's Day ... Dad.

                                  Tom Welsh with his daughter, Karen - ca. 2012

 

-Fini