Maybe September

Since 1976, whenever September rolls around, the haunting refrains of two beautiful songs come into my head. One is called "Maybe September" and the other is "The Saddest Thing of All". They're both from Percy Faith's 1976 album titled "Summer Place '76.".
For those of you who remember Percy Faith, you may recall that his recordings were almost exclusively orchestral (he died 6 weeks after recording this album). But on Summer Place '76, a very young woman named Leslie Kendall sang the two songs mentioned above.
There was/is a quality to Ms. Kendall's voice that fit the songs perfectly. I'm not sure how to describe it: Plaintive, sad, melancholy, or maybe all three. Regardless, her voice and Percy Faith's orchestra combine to paint an image that will stay in your memory bank for a long long time.
Over the years I had forgotten Ms. Kendall's name and the album wasn't available on CD so I was feeling bummed out a little. I mentioned it one day in an email to my good ol' pal, Nub.
Well, Nub not only found her name, he found HER! She is still singing and teaching voice in Medford, Oregon!
I wrote her a letter and said how much I liked her performance and how bummed I was that the album wasn't available on CD. She responded with a nice letter AND a CD she burned just for me containing the two songs!
Now I can listen to them whenever I want. Which is right now. So, goodbye.

Telling It Like It Is

Once again, I offer you an outstanding editorial by Sam Hurst:

Sam Hurst: We've lost war in Iraq
By Sam Hurst, Journal columnist
We have lost the war for Iraq. Say it out loud. Roll it around on your tongue. It tastes bitter. Curse me for saying it out loud. We have lost. Now it's all about the taste of bile in the back of our throat.
Our goals are re-shaped every day to fit the failures of the week. Our strategy has been reduced to cliches and tough-talking platitudes. "Stay the course." "Don't cut and run."
The war is in its fourth year. We have lost over 2,600 soldiers. Our soldiers fight an insurgency they cannot see, cannot describe, cannot defeat. All they can do is grudgingly admit that it is getting bigger.
And now there is a sectarian civil war. Last month 3,500 Iraqi civilians died in the violence, the largest monthly death toll of the war. Our glib, simplistic crusade for democracy has given birth instead to religious death squads, terrorist cults and increased influence for Iran in the region.
We have failed to restore the economy, rebuild the nation's infrastructure, or stabilize the oil fields, although we have succeeded in lining the pockets of American contractors. Last, but of most consequence, we are utterly incapable of controlling events on the ground.
This, my fellow citizens, is a quagmire of epic proportions, a quagmire of Vietnam proportions.
We know we have lost this war. But as soon as the first Democrat gloats, as soon as the first Republican waves the flag, the fight starts. We Americans simply hate to lose. We would rather wrack up another $80 billion in deficits, lose another thousand soldiers and destroy the last vestiges of our credibility in the Arab world than face our failure.
We have been here before. Vietnam. Spring 1968. Republicans would do well to study what happened to the Democratic Party in 1968. It was torn apart. If Lyndon Johnson had come clean, Hubert Humphrey would not have had to run as a war president. Richard Nixon would not have been able to position himself as the peace candidate. History would have turned out so differently.
More than the loss of Congress awaits the GOP in '08 if they cannot rein Bush in. 1968 was the beginning of the end for liberal Democrats. That was 40 years ago.
I know that failure is hard to choke down. But the unique character of American democracy offers us a way to think about the problem that might help.
At the end of the Vietnam War I had the opportunity to interview North Vietnamese Foreign Minister Le Duc Tho. He and Henry Kissinger shared the Nobel Prize for Peace for negotiating the 1972 Paris Accords. I asked him why he was not bitter toward the American people for all the suffering they had brought to his country. He smiled calmly and explained, "We make a distinction between the American people and the policies of the American government. We don't blame the people for what Johnson and Nixon have done." I never liked that answer, too smooth, too diplomatic.
Last week I heard the same exact framing when Mike Wallace interviewed the president of Iran on "60 Minutes." "We don't hate the Jews. We hate Zionism." "We don't hate the Americans, we are opposed to the policies of the Bush administration."
Then it dawned on me why I had been so suspicious of Le Duc Tho's comment all these years. These two men don't understand democracy. In their countries there is a distinction between the policies of the government and the will of the people. But in our democracy, the policies of the Bush administration are an expression of our will.
George Bush isn't squandering the nation's wealth, killing Iraqi civilians and blowing up American soldiers all on his own. It is our war as well as his. It reflects our obsession with oil, our obsession with being number one, our indifference to the way we interact with the rest of the world. It is our burden, and our time to step up.
Because my generation could not learn how to speak honestly to each other about failure in Vietnam, we shouted at each other, cursed and threatened, demonstrated, occasionally rioted, and even shot at each other. In the end, the traditional of liberal democracy was crucified on the cross of Vietnam. I cannot bear the thought of going through it again.
How do we begin to talk to each other about Iraq? First, leave the origins of the war to the historians. They will judge the false premises and failed strategy soon enough. Stay focused on the reality in front of us.
Secondly, separate the war in Iraq from the war on terror. The two were never linked, despite the best efforts of the Bush administration. Failure in Iraq does not mean that we have lost or should give up on the war against terror.
Third, Iraq is now a failed state. It is in anarchy. Iraqis will have to re-invent themselves. We have no capability to impose a political solution on Iraq any more than we have imposed a military solution.
Finally, George Bush and his Cabinet will be the last admit failure. How could they? We should not expect bold solutions from them. That task is ours.
And the first bold task of all is to understand that not one more American soldier should be killed for a failed policy.

Old-Time Imagination

The radio was always on in our house when I was a kid. Some of my earliest memories are of playing on the kitchen floor while my mom was ironing or fixing a meal - and listening to the radio. Even now I can clearly remember listening to DON McNEAL'S BREAKFAST CLUB and ARTHUR GODFREY.
In my 4-year old imagination, Don McNeal really was hosting breakfast for a bunch of ladies every morning- probably in one of the big department stores downtown.
Arthur Godfrey was so laid back that I imagined he and his cast were sitting around on a front porch somewhere and everything they did was completely spontaneous.
In an earlier post, I mentioned that I checked out 30 hours of old-time radio shows from the library. I've been listening to an hour or two of them before bed for the last few nights. Unfortunately, many of them aren't very good and I confess to falling asleep more than once before the CD was finished.
Nonetheless, I think it's interesting how well some of the material has held up over the last 50-60 years since many of the radio scripts were written. Last night, I was listening to a program starring Bob Hope and Judy Garland. In one skit, Bob was playing a kidnapper and Judy was his victim. In one scene, Judy is pleading for her life and says, "I appeal to you on bended knee!" To which Bob replied, "You appeal to me in ANY position!" A little later Judy tries to avoid Bob's advances by telling him that she's engaged to be married. She says, "I've promised my hand to someone else." Then Bob says, "He can have it, I'll take the rest!" I think those are pretty funny lines, even by today's standards.
DRAGNET was another well written and well produced show. They effectively used pauses, and background sounds to keep the "feel" of the show authentic. Of course, Jack Webb was perfectly cast as Joe Friday. That helped.
Edgar Bergen was always funny. He must have written his own dialogue.
FIBBER McGEE AND MOLLY was well written and always funny. One of the cleverest episodes was written around a character to spoke in sentences that were constructed to sound like he was saying something other than what he meant. Does that make sense? For example, in one scene he said, "Normally, I'm a potato clock." Huh? Eventually it became clear that he was saying, "Normally, I'm up at eight o'clock".
GUNSMOKE was superb.
The list goes on.
Even though the "golden age" of radio drama was winding down just about the time I was getting old enough to enjoy listening, I still have fond memories of laying on the living room floor at night, with the only light in the room coming from the radio dial and a little 4-watt lamp in the decorative base of a floor lamp, and listening to the LONE RANGER or SUPERMAN!
"Look, up in the sky, it's a bird. It's a plane. It's time to ignite your imagination!!!"

Happy Holidays!

Do you know that there is only one month when there are no major U.S. holidays?
This is it.
Oh, I know what you're thinking, "What about Mustard Day on the 6th or Creamsicle Day on the 14th?" Let me rephrase the question. Do you know that there is only one month where there are no MAJOR U.S. holidays?
There are more MINOR holidays this month than you can shake a stick at! Here's a partial list: Respect for Parents Day (1), Ice Cream Sandwich Day (2), Watermelon Day (3), Champagne Day (4), Forgiveness Day (7), Bonza Bottler Day (8), S'mores Day (10), Elvis Memorial Day (16), Pencil Day (17), Homeless Animal Day (20), Banana Split Day (25), Rock & Roll Day (27), National Toasted Marshmallow Day (30).
Don't ya think we could make one of the minors into a major? What's this country all about if not three-day weekends?!! I think we should celebrate Toast a Marshmallow on a Pencil, dip it in Mustard and Feed it to a Homeless Animal Day. What holiday do you like?

Camping on the Cheyenne River

I'm not much for camping. I truly enjoy the outdoors, but I trulier enjoy a real bed and shower, a real toilet, and not saturating all my clothes with wood smoke. Truly!
But when I was a kid in high school, none of that mattered. We didn't even think of camping as "camping". To us, camping was just an exciting night or two away from home.
Most frequently, we camped in the Black Hills. The "Poet's Cabin" near Hill City was my favorite. The poet's cabin was actually the remains of three buildings - main cabin, servants quarters, and garage. The servants quarters had been built in such a way that 4 large pine trees stood in the corners and it had a huge natural stone fireplace. The fireplace was all that remained by the time we came along. The main cabin was still standing when we were there (it has since been demolished to stop local kids from having keggers). I remember laying on the roof of the main cabin one night watching the northern lights dance across the sky. Every once-in-a-while, a shower of tiny sparks floated from the chimney when someone stoked the fire below. I remember it like it was yesterday, not 45 years ago.
Another favorite spot to go jeeping and camping was the Cheyenne River, about 50 miles east of Rapid City. Ecologically, the Cheyenne River area was, and is, totally different from the Black Hills. The river ran through sun-baked prairie. The water was cool and the mud was hot. Somewhere near the spot where we used to camp, a tributary entered from the east. The bottom of that tributary felt like a cobblestone street. The cobblestones were concretions- each holding a fossilized treasure rolled up in an ancient ball of mud.
The river was only 2-3 feet deep so the jeeps could ford it fairly easily in spots to go exploring, but most if the time we stayed and played in the river. I used to search for a shallow pool that was isolated from the main flow. Even thought the river water remained pretty chilly, by mid-afternoon, the water and mud in those little pools would be in the 90's. I liked to get chilled in the river, then run over and lay down in that hot mud bath. Ahhh. I never paid for a spa experience that was as therapeutic and relaxing as those little mud puddles.
One night we camped on an island in the middle of the river. One of my friends, J. Farrar, decided to hit the sack earlier than the rest of us, so he walked down to the far end of the island to sleep. Eventually the rest of us dozed off around the camp fire. At about 3:30 in the morning, we awoke to find a small herd of cattle passing through our camp site on their way across the river. They didn't step on us and we didn't stampede them, so the meeting concluded without incident. After they passed, we went back to sleep. The next morning we got up, got the fire going again, and sat around musing about our middle-of-the-night "visitors". Only then did someone ask, where's Farrar? Oh no! Our immediate group-thought was the worst - he had been trampled to death in his sleep! We ran to the other end of the island looking frantically for the grisly remains of poor Farrar. Before long, somebody found him and signaled for the rest of us to come over. As we got closer, we could see that he was alright. In fact he was still sound asleep! He was laying on his back, mouth open, snoring peacefully, with a fresh cow pie the size of a pizza pan about 6 inches from his head! How does that commercial go? "WW-2 surplus Jeep, $250; gas, 32 cents a gallon; seeing Farrar sound asleep in the sand with a cow pie next to his head, priceless!"

Silver Anniversary Without Any Silver

Today marks the 25th anniversary of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) strike. That's when 14,000 air traffic controllers walked off the job, based on lies they were told by their union leadership and certain members of congress. It cost all of them their jobs. All of them, that is, except the leaders. MEBA took care of the PATCO leadership, finding them jobs managing resorts and country clubs on the east coast.
From the standpoint of a psychological experiment in mass hysteria, the PATCO strike would make a great Doctoral thesis: "How 14,000 intelligent human beings were manipulated to such an extent that they participated in an illegal strike that cost them their jobs - especially since few of them felt any significant animosity toward their employer, the FAA."
I was lucky. I was functioning in a staff position as the strike deadline approached. It was the union's rule that controllers in staff positions had to suspend their membership. PATCO's rule may have saved my career.
I couldn't attend the union meetings prior to the strike, but I always found out about them the next day. PATCO was telling the controllers:
"Sure, you're happy here in the mid-west, but the controllers on the east coast are working at understaffed facilities, with outdated procedures and failing equipment. The FAA won't do anything about it unless controllers all across the country stick together."
"All your life you've been part of a team - from little league to boy scouts and the military - now you're on one of the most important teams in the country. This is no time to quit being a team player."
"The FAA may fire a few controllers after the strike just to make a point, but we have enough money in our strike fund to cover their salaries and benefits until retirement age."
"Congress is ready to step in and support the controllers, but they don't want to intercede until AFTER a strike actually occurs. That way it will look like they're doing it for the country, not in support of unions"
"When PATCO goes on strike, the Canadian and European controllers will go on strike too."
"The country will be paralyzed! The FAA will have no choice but to return to the bargaining table."
All lies.
The first thing the airlines did was sue PATCO for lost revenue, so a judge seized all their assets. PATCO was broke within 24 hours of the walkout.
Congress did nothing.
As I recall, a few Canadian controllers tried to walk out but the vast majority did nothing. I don't think any European controllers supported PATCO.
The FAA had a contingency plan all worked out with the airlines months in advance. The strike slowed operations down, but came no where close to paralyzing the country.
In spite of all the evidence against them, the controllers still believed the threats and lies their leaders were telling them:
"If you go back now, you'll regret it when the rest of us come back!"
"Your career is already black-balled for walking out. Your only hope is to stick together. The system will fall apart, wait and see. After there are a couple of mid-air collisions, the public will demand that the FAA meet our demands and take us back."
Reagan fired them instead.
I was interviewed by the local newspaper a couple of days after the strike. I told the reporter that I couldn't imagine that the FAA would support firing the controllers. I said it would be like the airlines firing all their pilots then try to replace them by hiring people off the street and sending them off to flight school. I said it would take years to hire and train 14,000 new controllers.
My interview wasn't published. I don't know why.
Some of the best controllers in the country were reduced to bagging groceries or selling insurance while they scrambled to put their lives back together. It was a terrible waste of training and talent. I blame both PATCO and the FAA, but mainly PATCO.
One card the FAA had up its sleeve that I didn't foresee was "borrowing" military controllers, primarily from air force bases around the country, to supplement the workforce until replacements started entering the system. Many were offered "early out" options if they agreed to work for the FAA. Many did. That's one of the main reasons the system kept operating.
Ironically, many of those military guys, the ones who helped put the final few nails in PATCO's coffin, were the ones who spearheaded the formation of a new union, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) which was chartered just 5 years later, in 1986.
And what's the FAA/NATCA relationship like today? Well, contract negotiations broke down. The FAA declared an impasse. Congress failed to order the FAA back to the negotiating table. The FAA is thumbing its nose at NATCA and NATCA is preparing its next move in retaliation.
Unhappy anniversary.

What Goes Around...

I'm a nostalgia nut. Last night I looked at old family photos for over an hour. I pour over each edition of Reminisce magazine at the library. I could spend days looking through old magazines. I even made a replica 1961 calendar to hang on my wall (the days of 1961 match up with 2006).

I recently came across several U.S. News magazines from 1978-'80. Looking through them, I forgot that I was reading 27-year old material. For example:

May 28, 1979:

• - America's gasoline hysteria is unmatched in most foreign lands, where drivers live with costly oil.
• - Congress considers "windfall profits" tax on big oil.
• - Why more families are caught up in a "buy now, pay later" spree. (The shaky pyramid of consumer debt)
• - Why the U.S. is falling behind in development of new products and technology.
• - Iran: Expectations were high that ouster of the Shah would bring better life to all. But broken promises are turning hope into bitterness.

May 12, 1980:

• Secretary of State comments: Military Force -"I hope we've learned that allowing ourselves to get involved in a guerrilla war with a small country on the other side of the world is a misuse of military power - if it is not any moral failure on our part." Middle East - "We must back Israel's demand for defensible borders."
• U.S. Military Ailing - Too much turbulence, too few men, too little equipment.
• New products designed to solve energy crisis - 1. Recover methane gas from landfills. 2. Produce gas from sawdust. 3. Use clock-controlled thermostats. 4. Use lift force of wind to produce electricity. 5. Motorless household garbage disposal. 6. Insulated window shades. 7. Hydrogen-powered cars.
• Top honors at the World Fair for Technology Exchange went to the inventor of U-Form, an insulated, prefabricated panel that, when filled with concrete, shapes the complete outer wall of a building.

I've seen set-back thermostats, wind-powered generators, and insulated window shades since 1980, but I don't think I've ever seen a U-Form panel. Have you?