Proactively “From the Sea”; an agent of change leveraging the littoral best practices for a paradigm breaking six-sigma best business case to synergize a consistent design in the global commons, rightsizing the core values supporting our mission statement via the 5-vector model through cultural diversity.
For the Salamander family - deployment is over. Maybe I will post a few thing about what I did downrange - maybe I won't. All I know is I am glad to be back. I will gladly trade a weapon everyday for a family dinner every day --- any day.
That's it.
Though it isn't family friendly - for some - here is a freebie.
You know those guys who used to use egg whites and Elmer's Glue as hair product back in the day? As Chap has realized over the years - they and their "Siouxsie Souix in '82" significant others (and their following generations fellow travelers) have thoroughly infiltrated today's military.
The summary from Amazon is fine, but from her blog, I like the Kirkus Review better.
A journalist and ex-stripper marries a career Army officer.
After a chance meeting and whirlwind romance, Burana (Try, 2006, etc.) married Mike, a major in the U.S. Army. Though they were an odd couple—a former exotic dancer who wrote a bestselling book about her adventures (Strip City, 2001) and an all-American hero who devoted his life to the military—Burana willingly joined the sisterhood of women whose husbands serve their country in uniform. She learned what this meant when Mike was deployed to the Middle East as the Iraq War began. She coped with the fear and loneliness that accompany having a loved one in harm’s way. She was awed, and intimidated, by the way other military wives kept home and hearth together. She was confused when Mike returned from duty different. On to West Point, whose arcane rituals and rules, both written and unwritten, Burana describes in hilarious detail. Despite her unorthodox—and what she feared some would see as sordid—past, she found peace among the soldiers and spouses of West Point. Until, following her father’s death, depression hit her like a guided missile. Then the marriage that had sustained her began to suffocate her; the life of an Army spouse that had challenged and bemused, now terrified; and all she wanted was a way out. She left Mike and embarked on a battle to understand the posttraumatic stress that afflicted her and the memories of childhood abuse at the hands of a babysitter that haunted her. Mike learned he could not fix Burana, as was his Army can-do inclination, but could only love her. After many struggles, achingly delineated in beautiful prose, they reconciled and resumed their life at the Academy.Moved by the kindness and understanding other Army wives showed her, Burana determined to repay their kindness. How she did so was appropriately outrageous—and too funny an ending to give away.
One of those rare memoirs that both teach and make us laugh.
A 39-YEAR-OLD man has been charged with lighting a deadly bushfire as well as possessing child pornography.
The suspect, who cannot be named, was charged at Morwell Magistrates' Court with one count of arson causing death and one count of intentionally lighting a bushfire.
First of all - why can he "not be named?" Another moment to hug your Constitution. The press can be a pain; but it is a life saving pain. Basic freedoms; speech, press, religion, self-defense - they are all like that.
A link between terrorism plots and hardcore child pornography is becoming clear after a string of police raids in Britain and across the Continent, an investigation by The Times has discovered. Images of child abuse have been found during Scotland Yard antiterrorism swoops and in big inquiries in Italy and Spain.
Secret coded messages are being embedded into child pornographic images, and paedophile websites are being exploited as a secure way of passing information between terrorists.
AUSTRALIA has been singled out as a target for "forest jihad" by a group of Islamic extremists urging Muslims to deliberately light bushfires as a weapon of terror.
US intelligence channels earlier this year identified a website calling on Muslims in Australia, the US, Europe and Russia to "start forest fires", claiming "scholars have justified chopping down and burning the infidels' forests when they do the same to our lands".
All should wait for the official ID - but if this turns out to be the "jihad of the trees" we read about earlier .... ungh.Let me help you out with some math. Some reports say these fires have killed 181 people. Australia has a population of ~21 million. The USA has a population of ~303 million. In an American scale - the Australians have had 2,612 people killed. That is just a few hundred under what we lost on 911.
Today is President Lincoln's birthday. Time Magazine got together with the USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (CVN-72) to make this video of crew members reciting the Gettysburg Address. There is no way to embed the video, so click the link above - and then come back.
Nice, isn't it? What a great opportunity for the Navy, her Sailors, and a fitting tribute to the man that made the nation we have today possible.
How could the Navy possibly ruin such an opportunity? How could something as inclusive, uniting, and purely American as the Gettysburg Address be used as a tool to divide Sailors?
There is some background here that will sound all too familiar to many of us, and it demonstrates well why when you tell Sailors that "Diversity" has nothing to do with quotas or picking people just by their DNA --- they look at you like you just lied to their face.
From: (redacted) Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 10:20 PM To: CVN-72 Dept LCPO's Subject: TIME MAGAZINE
LCPOs,
Here is the skinny on Time:
Need a DIVERSE (gender, race, age) group of 15 Sailors in "NEW LOOKING" uniforms (whether Jerseys or Utilities/Wash Khakis, coveralls not desired) to meet with Time in the following locations:
ONE Sailor on the Flight Deck with XO and two CVW2 officers
THREE Sailors on the Bridge with the CO
THREE Sailors at the Lincoln Bust (outside Deckhouse 3) with the Admiral
THREE Sailors in the Hangar Bay with one officer
THREE Sailors in the Foc'sle with one officer
TWO Sailors in CDC with two Strike Group officers
I have some names provided, and was going with a first-come, first-served roster. Can't do it. Need to screen for diversity.
Please canvas your divisions and provide names to me by COB 1 FEB. They will be on board 3 and 4 FEB. Time TBD.
**Each Sailor/officer is expected to recite one line of the Gettysburgh(sic) Address for a Web-based video.
V/R (redacted)
Diversity - it makes bigots of us all - and orders good, solid Sailors to be bigots despite their natural tendency to be fair to their Shipmates. Note the second bold section - that Sailor wanted to be fair to all, but found out later that he "...can't...".
Why? Who ordered him to discriminate on the basis of "...gender, race, age..." How, after so much blood and treasure and time has been expended in this great Republic to make all men free and equal - that it as become a legal order to discriminate on the basis of something so completely out of control of the individual in question as "...gender, race, age..."
in '82" significant others (and their following generations fellow travelers) have thoroughly infiltrated today's military.
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Remember, A55, Grass, and Gas - No One Rides For Free
