Apologies to those who check-in regularly and have missed some recent posts...
Wednesday was our latest chemo day. The local pharmacies didn't have her pre-chemo medicine in stock so her treatment this time is just a tad bit... rougher.
Poor girl is sooooo wiped out. I'd say she has about 10-15% of her normal energy. Has a frustrating cough that won't go away... doc says might be from medicine, might be from sickness that keeps circling our house from kid to kid...
She's so tired... Don't know how to help her, and feel guilty for relying on her for anything she can do...
Is such a challenge lately. It's non-stop, from the first moment of waking up. T still doesn't sleep through the night, M has nightmares (no, we have NO idea what's bugging her), and then it's off to the races when the alarm goes off. K off to school, take M to hers (it's 1 km away as the birdie flies, but it's a 30 min. round-trip due to security), T to childcare, then E to treatments, race back to meet deadline to get T, take care of him, K comes home, go get M (30 more min), arrange dinner, homework (if any), baths, then bed... In the meantime, take care of E, manage house, maintain finances (thank goodness for online banking), MY homework, keeping the Army happy, forms, phone calls to return, etc., etc., etc.
I have taken to staying up late just to try to accomplish things.
Surprised myself... been sick 3 times in 6 weeks - unusual for me... usually a robust immune system.
Why in the world would ANYONE volunteer to be a single parent?
14 January 2006
Is It Wrong?
When the unit left, I did not leave with them... I was held back for the birth of my son (turned out to be a fortuitous decision as that was a very trying time when we didn't know if he'd make it).
When it came time for me to leave, of course, there was no formal ceremony... I just left in the middle of the night.
When I came back, it wasn't with my unit. They're still there. And when they return, of course, I'll be in the cheering section... not with them.
So I ask... there's a part of me that would have enjoyed the ceremony. Is it wrong to be envious?
(Put another way - the inevitable view by some is "Well, you didn't do the full time... it doesn't count." And yes, I've heard that.)
When it came time for me to leave, of course, there was no formal ceremony... I just left in the middle of the night.
When I came back, it wasn't with my unit. They're still there. And when they return, of course, I'll be in the cheering section... not with them.
So I ask... there's a part of me that would have enjoyed the ceremony. Is it wrong to be envious?
(Put another way - the inevitable view by some is "Well, you didn't do the full time... it doesn't count." And yes, I've heard that.)
A Special Thanks
Ellicia and I would like to thank the good people from The Fisher House and Miles for Heroes for a very generous offer.
While our situation doesn't qualify, they offered to fly all three of us to the States for free.
Wow.
Unfortunately, due to a number of considerations, we did not accept. We DO want to ensure that these wonderful organizations are recognized.
Please note: If you'd like to donate to these organizations, whose main purpose is to support wounded troops and their families, please go to the links at the beginning of this post.
Thank you!
While our situation doesn't qualify, they offered to fly all three of us to the States for free.
Wow.
Unfortunately, due to a number of considerations, we did not accept. We DO want to ensure that these wonderful organizations are recognized.
Please note: If you'd like to donate to these organizations, whose main purpose is to support wounded troops and their families, please go to the links at the beginning of this post.
Thank you!
12 January 2006
My Friend Jessie
My mother sent this delightful snippet to me the other day... Enjoy...
You have a new little friend. Her name is Jessie, and she is 10 years old. We were in the Grecian House Restaurant tonight and were waited on by Crystal, whom I didn't know. She's a single mother and an RN currently out of work. A little girl, much too young to be working (I was wondering if she was even 12) came to pour us tea. I asked the waitress who she was and was told she was her daughter and came and helped out now and then.
When we went to pay, Jessie was there. She asked me if I had any children, as she fingered some free circus tickets on the wall. I said "Yes, but he's a lot older than you are." "Oh," she said, thinking a bit. "How old IS he?" "He's 32 years old, and he's in the Army." "Oh." She pulled her hand away from the tickets. Then A. said that you had children, so I said, "Yes, they are younger than you are." "Really?" she asked, hopeful again. "Yes, one is 7, one is 3 and one is 9 months old. "Oh, then you can..." She had a handful of tickets now. "Wait a minute," I said. "He's in the Army, and his family is in Germany." "Oh," she said again. "I guess they won't need these." A pause. "Then tell him he has my blessings." "I'll tell him," I replied. Then, "Is he, like, in the Iraq army?" "Sort of," I said. "He was in Afghanistan, but his wife is sick, so he came back home." "Oh." Another pause. "Then tell him he has my thanks for supporting our country." "I'll tell him." Then I hugged her and got a wonderful hug back.
That from a 10-year-old. Her mother was near but had been talking, so I told her she had a remarkable daughter and repeated the conversation. "Oh, she prays every night for our soldiers. And then I pray for all the sick people." So next time you say your prayers, add little Jessie and her mother Crystal.
You have a new little friend. Her name is Jessie, and she is 10 years old. We were in the Grecian House Restaurant tonight and were waited on by Crystal, whom I didn't know. She's a single mother and an RN currently out of work. A little girl, much too young to be working (I was wondering if she was even 12) came to pour us tea. I asked the waitress who she was and was told she was her daughter and came and helped out now and then.
When we went to pay, Jessie was there. She asked me if I had any children, as she fingered some free circus tickets on the wall. I said "Yes, but he's a lot older than you are." "Oh," she said, thinking a bit. "How old IS he?" "He's 32 years old, and he's in the Army." "Oh." She pulled her hand away from the tickets. Then A. said that you had children, so I said, "Yes, they are younger than you are." "Really?" she asked, hopeful again. "Yes, one is 7, one is 3 and one is 9 months old. "Oh, then you can..." She had a handful of tickets now. "Wait a minute," I said. "He's in the Army, and his family is in Germany." "Oh," she said again. "I guess they won't need these." A pause. "Then tell him he has my blessings." "I'll tell him," I replied. Then, "Is he, like, in the Iraq army?" "Sort of," I said. "He was in Afghanistan, but his wife is sick, so he came back home." "Oh." Another pause. "Then tell him he has my thanks for supporting our country." "I'll tell him." Then I hugged her and got a wonderful hug back.
That from a 10-year-old. Her mother was near but had been talking, so I told her she had a remarkable daughter and repeated the conversation. "Oh, she prays every night for our soldiers. And then I pray for all the sick people." So next time you say your prayers, add little Jessie and her mother Crystal.
06 January 2006
Wishing Holidays Would Take a Holiday
Ok, this time of year... maybe it's just me, and the fuller-than-usual plate...
I suppose most people love the holidays, and most times, I think I do, too. This is usually a great time to be dodging work for free, er... I mean, celebrating all that we have to celebrate. You start with Thanksgiving, a few weeks later we get reduced work time for Christmas, plus a 4-Day for Christmas, a week later a 4-Day for New Year's, a week later we get a day from the Germans for Three Kings Day, and then the next week we pick up another 4-Day for MLK.
The downside is that during this time of year, good luck getting anything done or accomplished.
For example, I'm trying to balance all of the various needs and demands of time (of which there is an inexhaustable list of needs and demands and rigorously fixed amount of time) and coordinate into all of the appropriate schedules (e.g. Doctor's schedules, childcare provider schedules, PX opening times, Commissary opening times, office hours of various Army departments, leave schedules of important people I need to see, etc.)
Just pushed my button a bit today. Illesheim is a base so tiny that nothing is open on a consistent and regular schedule. Commissary is closed Sun/Wed, PX closed Monday, Bank is closed German holidays and open American days, other places are opposite, Thrift store only open on Tue (12-1500) and Thurs (12-1700), etc, etc, etc.
Finally got my phone bill that included all of the fees for moving ($287!!!), and wanted to meet with the folks who maybe, might, just possibly help me out with it, and they were closed for the German holiday (American Army office, but with German civilian workers, so... closed. Grrrr) Now have to find another free slot somewhere soon so I can get paperwork together and beg and plead to have Army cover the fees, before I fly out and come back to discover no phone service and get to pay the fees all over again to rehook. Arrrrggghhh.
So much red tape for such a little place. Thank goodness I'm not at Ft. Hood...
I suppose most people love the holidays, and most times, I think I do, too. This is usually a great time to be dodging work for free, er... I mean, celebrating all that we have to celebrate. You start with Thanksgiving, a few weeks later we get reduced work time for Christmas, plus a 4-Day for Christmas, a week later a 4-Day for New Year's, a week later we get a day from the Germans for Three Kings Day, and then the next week we pick up another 4-Day for MLK.
The downside is that during this time of year, good luck getting anything done or accomplished.
For example, I'm trying to balance all of the various needs and demands of time (of which there is an inexhaustable list of needs and demands and rigorously fixed amount of time) and coordinate into all of the appropriate schedules (e.g. Doctor's schedules, childcare provider schedules, PX opening times, Commissary opening times, office hours of various Army departments, leave schedules of important people I need to see, etc.)
Just pushed my button a bit today. Illesheim is a base so tiny that nothing is open on a consistent and regular schedule. Commissary is closed Sun/Wed, PX closed Monday, Bank is closed German holidays and open American days, other places are opposite, Thrift store only open on Tue (12-1500) and Thurs (12-1700), etc, etc, etc.
Finally got my phone bill that included all of the fees for moving ($287!!!), and wanted to meet with the folks who maybe, might, just possibly help me out with it, and they were closed for the German holiday (American Army office, but with German civilian workers, so... closed. Grrrr) Now have to find another free slot somewhere soon so I can get paperwork together and beg and plead to have Army cover the fees, before I fly out and come back to discover no phone service and get to pay the fees all over again to rehook. Arrrrggghhh.
So much red tape for such a little place. Thank goodness I'm not at Ft. Hood...
Plugging Right Along
Ellicia certainly seems to be plugging right along. She's currently in her Week 3 of the cycle, so isn't having too many problems. Next treatment is this Wednesday.
Holding things together... if just barely. We're starting to see some success from selling our stuff at the post Thrift Store, so that's certainly a help.
Recently went to Munich to ensure our passports are all in order. The trip to Munich is NO fun (can't get there from here), and the Consulate hours are very narrow (0800 - 1100), which just makes the whole thing brutal. Drains the car, too... tank and a half for the round trip.
We're starting to pursue some other options, and we'll soon have Thomas enrolled in the base day care (hopefully, if the local area commanding colonel signs off on it); expensive but keeps the unit off my tail.
And the good news is that Ellicia will soon be able to see all of the family. Since the doctor has authorized her travel during Week 3, we're going to make a sprint trip back to the states. Last week or so of January, I'll take Ellicia back to see the folks...
So, that's the current status...
Holding things together... if just barely. We're starting to see some success from selling our stuff at the post Thrift Store, so that's certainly a help.
Recently went to Munich to ensure our passports are all in order. The trip to Munich is NO fun (can't get there from here), and the Consulate hours are very narrow (0800 - 1100), which just makes the whole thing brutal. Drains the car, too... tank and a half for the round trip.
We're starting to pursue some other options, and we'll soon have Thomas enrolled in the base day care (hopefully, if the local area commanding colonel signs off on it); expensive but keeps the unit off my tail.
And the good news is that Ellicia will soon be able to see all of the family. Since the doctor has authorized her travel during Week 3, we're going to make a sprint trip back to the states. Last week or so of January, I'll take Ellicia back to see the folks...
So, that's the current status...
05 January 2006
An Article Worth Reading
Originally published in the New Criterion, and recently republished on OpinionJournal.com, here is a wonderful, truly thought-provoking article by Mark Steyn.
I encourage you to all take time (and yes, it IS long) to completely read through this article.
It's the Demography, Stupid
The real reason the West is in danger of extinction.
BY MARK STEYN
Wednesday, January 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There'll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands--probably--just as in Istanbul there's still a building called St. Sophia's Cathedral. But it's not a cathedral; it's merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon Western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the West.
One obstacle to doing that is that, in the typical election campaign in your advanced industrial democracy, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much all parties in the rest of the West are largely about what one would call the secondary impulses of society--government health care, government day care (which Canada's thinking of introducing), government paternity leave (which Britain's just introduced). We've prioritized the secondary impulse over the primary ones: national defense, family, faith and, most basic of all, reproductive activity--"Go forth and multiply," because if you don't you won't be able to afford all those secondary-impulse issues, like cradle-to-grave welfare.
Americans sometimes don't understand how far gone most of the rest of the developed world is down this path: In the Canadian and most Continental cabinets, the defense ministry is somewhere an ambitious politician passes through on his way up to important jobs like the health department. I don't think Don Rumsfeld would regard it as a promotion if he were moved to Health and Human Services.
The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion. The problem is that secondary-impulse societies mistake their weaknesses for strengths--or, at any rate, virtues--and that's why they're proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam.
Speaking of which, if we are at war--and half the American people and significantly higher percentages in Britain, Canada and Europe don't accept that proposition--then what exactly is the war about?
We know it's not really a "war on terror." Nor is it, at heart, a war against Islam, or even "radical Islam." The Muslim faith, whatever its merits for the believers, is a problematic business for the rest of us. There are many trouble spots around the world, but as a general rule, it's easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs. Jews in "Palestine," Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, Muslims vs. backpacking tourists in Bali. Like the environmentalists, these guys think globally but act locally.
Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it's not what this thing's about. Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It's not the HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S. military, they lose--as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there's an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.
That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb. Take multiculturalism. The great thing about multiculturalism is that it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures--the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures. It's fundamentally a fraud, and I would argue was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society. Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched native dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or that your holistic masseuse uses techniques developed from Native American spirituality, but not that you or anyone you care about should have to live in an African or Native American society. It's a quintessential piece of progressive humbug.
Then September 11 happened. And bizarrely the reaction of just about every prominent Western leader was to visit a mosque: President Bush did, the prince of Wales did, the prime minister of the United Kingdom did, the prime minister of Canada did . . . The premier of Ontario didn't, and so 20 Muslim community leaders had a big summit to denounce him for failing to visit a mosque. I don't know why he didn't. Maybe there was a big backlog, it was mosque drive time, prime ministers in gridlock up and down the freeway trying to get to the Sword of the Infidel-Slayer Mosque on Elm Street. But for whatever reason he couldn't fit it into his hectic schedule. Ontario's citizenship minister did show up at a mosque, but the imams took that as a great insult, like the Queen sending Fergie to open the Commonwealth Games. So the premier of Ontario had to hold a big meeting with the aggrieved imams to apologize for not going to a mosque and, as the Toronto Star's reported it, "to provide them with reassurance that the provincial government does not see them as the enemy."
Anyway, the get-me-to-the-mosque-on-time fever died down, but it set the tone for our general approach to these atrocities. The old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between the traffic light changing in New York and the first honk from a car behind. The new definition is the gap between a terrorist bombing and the press release from an Islamic lobby group warning of a backlash against Muslims. In most circumstances, it would be considered appallingly bad taste to deflect attention from an actual "hate crime" by scaremongering about a purely hypothetical one. Needless to say, there is no campaign of Islamophobic hate crimes. If anything, the West is awash in an epidemic of self-hate crimes. A commenter on Tim Blair's Web site in Australia summed it up in a note-perfect parody of a Guardian headline: "Muslim Community Leaders Warn of Backlash from Tomorrow Morning's Terrorist Attack." Those community leaders have the measure of us.
Radical Islam is what multiculturalism has been waiting for all along. In "The Survival of Culture," I quoted the eminent British barrister Helena Kennedy, Queen's Counsel. Shortly after September 11, Baroness Kennedy argued on a BBC show that it was too easy to disparage "Islamic fundamentalists." "We as Western liberals too often are fundamentalist ourselves," she complained. "We don't look at our own fundamentalisms."
Well, said the interviewer, what exactly would those Western liberal fundamentalisms be? "One of the things that we are too ready to insist upon is that we are the tolerant people and that the intolerance is something that belongs to other countries like Islam. And I'm not sure that's true."
Hmm. Lady Kennedy was arguing that our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people's intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism. So you're nice to gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists. In other words, just as the AIDS pandemic greatly facilitated societal surrender to the gay agenda, so 9/11 is greatly facilitating our surrender to the most extreme aspects of the multicultural agenda.
For example, one day in 2004, a couple of Canadians returned home, to Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto. They were the son and widow of a fellow called Ahmed Said Khadr, who back on the Pakistani-Afghan frontier was known as "al-Kanadi." Why? Because he was the highest-ranking Canadian in al Qaeda--plenty of other Canucks in al Qaeda, but he was the Numero Uno. In fact, one could argue that the Khadr family is Canada's principal contribution to the war on terror. Granted they're on the wrong side (if you'll forgive my being judgmental) but no one can argue that they aren't in the thick of things. One of Mr. Khadr's sons was captured in Afghanistan after killing a U.S. Special Forces medic. Another was captured and held at Guantanamo. A third blew himself up while killing a Canadian soldier in Kabul. Pa Khadr himself died in an al Qaeda shootout with Pakistani forces in early 2004. And they say we Canadians aren't doing our bit in this war!
In the course of the fatal shootout of al-Kanadi, his youngest son was paralyzed. And, not unreasonably, Junior didn't fancy a prison hospital in Peshawar. So Mrs. Khadr and her boy returned to Toronto so he could enjoy the benefits of Ontario government health care. "I'm Canadian, and I'm not begging for my rights," declared the widow Khadr. "I'm demanding my rights."
As they always say, treason's hard to prove in court, but given the circumstances of Mr. Khadr's death it seems clear that not only was he providing "aid and comfort to the Queen's enemies" but that he was, in fact, the Queen's enemy. The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, the Royal 22nd Regiment and other Canucks have been participating in Afghanistan, on one side of the conflict, and the Khadr family had been over there participating on the other side. Nonetheless, the prime minister of Canada thought Boy Khadr's claims on the public health system was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate his own deep personal commitment to "diversity." Asked about the Khadrs' return to Toronto, he said, "I believe that once you are a Canadian citizen, you have the right to your own views and to disagree."
That's the wonderful thing about multiculturalism: You can choose which side of the war you want to fight on. When the draft card arrives, just tick "home team" or "enemy," according to taste. The Canadian prime minister is a typical late-stage Western politician: He could have said, well, these are contemptible people and I know many of us are disgusted at the idea of our tax dollars being used to provide health care for a man whose Canadian citizenship is no more than a flag of convenience, but unfortunately that's the law and, while we can try to tighten it, it looks like this lowlife's got away with it. Instead, his reflex instinct was to proclaim this as a wholehearted demonstration of the virtues of the multicultural state. Like many enlightened Western leaders, the Canadian prime minister will be congratulating himself on his boundless tolerance even as the forces of intolerance consume him.
That, by the way, is the one point of similarity between the jihad and conventional terrorist movements like the IRA or ETA. Terror groups persist because of a lack of confidence on the part of their targets: The IRA, for example, calculated correctly that the British had the capability to smash them totally but not the will. So they knew that while they could never win militarily, they also could never be defeated. The Islamists have figured similarly. The only difference is that most terrorist wars are highly localized. We now have the first truly global terrorist insurgency because the Islamists view the whole world the way the IRA view the bogs of Fermanagh: They want it, and they've calculated that our entire civilization lacks the will to see them off.
We spend a lot of time at The New Criterion attacking the elites, and we're right to do so. The commanding heights of the culture have behaved disgracefully for the last several decades. But if it were just a problem with the elites, it wouldn't be that serious: The mob could rise up and hang 'em from lampposts--a scenario that's not unlikely in certain Continental countries. But the problem now goes way beyond the ruling establishment. The annexation by government of most of the key responsibilities of life--child-raising, taking care of your elderly parents--has profoundly changed the relationship between the citizen and the state. At some point--I would say socialized health care is a good marker--you cross a line, and it's very hard then to persuade a citizenry enjoying that much government largesse to cross back. In National Review recently, I took issue with that line Gerald Ford always uses to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." Actually, you run into trouble long before that point: A government big enough to give you everything you want still isn't big enough to get you to give anything back. That's what the French and German political classes are discovering.
Go back to that list of local conflicts I mentioned. The jihad has held out a long time against very tough enemies. If you're not shy about taking on the Israelis, the Russians, the Indians and the Nigerians, why wouldn't you fancy your chances against the Belgians and Danes and New Zealanders?
So the jihadists are for the most part doing no more than giving us a prod in the rear as we sleepwalk to the cliff. When I say "sleepwalk," it's not because we're a blasé culture. On the contrary, one of the clearest signs of our decline is the way we expend so much energy worrying about the wrong things. If you've read Jared Diamond's bestselling book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," you'll know it goes into a lot of detail about Easter Island going belly up because they chopped down all their trees. Apparently that's why they're not a G-8 member or on the U.N. Security Council. Same with the Greenlanders and the Mayans and Diamond's other curious choices of "societies." Indeed, as the author sees it, pretty much every society collapses because it chops down its trees.
Poor old Diamond can't see the forest because of his obsession with the trees. (Russia's collapsing even as it's undergoing reforestation.) One way "societies choose to fail or succeed" is by choosing what to worry about. The Western world has delivered more wealth and more comfort to more of its citizens than any other civilization in history, and in return we've developed a great cult of worrying. You know the classics of the genre: In 1968, in his bestselling book "The Population Bomb," the eminent scientist Paul Ehrlich declared: "In the 1970s the world will undergo famines--hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." In 1972, in their landmark study "The Limits to Growth," the Club of Rome announced that the world would run out of gold by 1981, of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead and gas by 1993.
None of these things happened. In fact, quite the opposite is happening. We're pretty much awash in resources, but we're running out of people--the one truly indispensable resource, without which none of the others matter. Russia's the most obvious example: it's the largest country on earth, it's full of natural resources, and yet it's dying--its population is falling calamitously.
The default mode of our elites is that anything that happens--from terrorism to tsunamis--can be understood only as deriving from the perniciousness of Western civilization. As Jean-Francois Revel wrote, "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."
And even though none of the prognostications of the eco-doom blockbusters of the 1970s came to pass, all that means is that 30 years on, the end of the world has to be rescheduled. The amended estimated time of arrival is now 2032. That's to say, in 2002, the United Nations Global Environmental Outlook predicted "the destruction of 70 percent of the natural world in thirty years, mass extinction of species. . . . More than half the world will be afflicted by water shortages, with 95 percent of people in the Middle East with severe problems . . . 25 percent of all species of mammals and 10 percent of birds will be extinct . . ."
Etc., etc., for 450 pages. Or to cut to the chase, as the Guardian headlined it, "Unless We Change Our Ways, The World Faces Disaster."
Well, here's my prediction for 2032: unless we change our ways the world faces a future . . . where the environment will look pretty darn good. If you're a tree or a rock, you'll be living in clover. It's the Italians and the Swedes who'll be facing extinction and the loss of their natural habitat.
There will be no environmental doomsday. Oil, carbon dioxide emissions, deforestation: none of these things is worth worrying about. What's worrying is that we spend so much time worrying about things that aren't worth worrying about that we don't worry about the things we should be worrying about. For 30 years, we've had endless wake-up calls for things that aren't worth waking up for. But for the very real, remorseless shifts in our society--the ones truly jeopardizing our future--we're sound asleep. The world is changing dramatically right now, and hysterical experts twitter about a hypothetical decrease in the Antarctic krill that might conceivably possibly happen so far down the road there are unlikely to be any Italian or Japanese enviro-worriers left alive to be devastated by it.
In a globalized economy, the environmentalists want us to worry about First World capitalism imposing its ways on bucolic, pastoral, primitive Third World backwaters. Yet, insofar as "globalization" is a threat, the real danger is precisely the opposite--that the peculiarities of the backwaters can leap instantly to the First World. Pigs are valued assets and sleep in the living room in rural China--and next thing you know an unknown respiratory disease is killing people in Toronto, just because someone got on a plane. That's the way to look at Islamism: We fret about McDonald's and Disney, but the big globalization success story is the way the Saudis have taken what was 80 years ago a severe but obscure and unimportant strain of Islam practiced by Bedouins of no fixed abode and successfully exported it to the heart of Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Manchester, Buffalo . . .
What's the better bet? A globalization that exports cheeseburgers and pop songs or a globalization that exports the fiercest aspects of its culture? When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they're running out a lot faster than the oil is. "Replacement" fertility rate--i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller--is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?
Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%. In America, demographic trends suggest that the blue states ought to apply for honorary membership of the EU: In the 2004 election, John Kerry won the 16 with the lowest birthrates; George W. Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest. By 2050, there will be 100 million fewer Europeans, 100 million more Americans--and mostly red-state Americans.
As fertility shrivels, societies get older--and Japan and much of Europe are set to get older than any functioning societies have ever been. And we know what comes after old age. These countries are going out of business--unless they can find the will to change their ways. Is that likely? I don't think so. If you look at European election results--most recently in Germany--it's hard not to conclude that, while voters are unhappy with their political establishments, they're unhappy mainly because they resent being asked to reconsider their government benefits and, no matter how unaffordable they may be a generation down the road, they have no intention of seriously reconsidering them. The Scottish executive recently backed down from a proposal to raise the retirement age of Scottish public workers. It's presently 60, which is nice but unaffordable. But the reaction of the average Scots worker is that that's somebody else's problem. The average German worker now puts in 22% fewer hours per year than his American counterpart, and no politician who wishes to remain electorally viable will propose closing the gap in any meaningful way.
This isn't a deep-rooted cultural difference between the Old World and the New. It dates back all the way to, oh, the 1970s. If one wanted to allocate blame, one could argue that it's a product of the U.S. military presence, the American security guarantee that liberated European budgets: instead of having to spend money on guns, they could concentrate on butter, and buttering up the voters. If Washington's problem with Europe is that these are not serious allies, well, whose fault is that? Who, in the years after the Second World War, created NATO as a postmodern military alliance? The "free world," as the Americans called it, was a free ride for everyone else. And having been absolved from the primal responsibilities of nationhood, it's hardly surprising that European nations have little wish to reshoulder them. In essence, the lavish levels of public health care on the Continent are subsidized by the American taxpayer. And this long-term softening of large sections of the West makes them ill-suited to resisting a primal force like Islam.
There is no "population bomb." There never was. Birthrates are declining all over the world--eventually every couple on the planet may decide to opt for the Western yuppie model of one designer baby at the age of 39. But demographics is a game of last man standing. The groups that succumb to demographic apathy last will have a huge advantage. Even in 1968 Paul Ehrlich and his ilk should have understood that their so-called population explosion was really a massive population adjustment. Of the increase in global population between 1970 and 2000, the developed world accounted for under 9% of it, while the Muslim world accounted for 26%. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30% of the world's population to just over 20%, the Muslim nations increased from about 15% to 20%.
Nineteen seventy doesn't seem that long ago. If you're the age many of the chaps running the Western world today are wont to be, your pants are narrower than they were back then and your hair's less groovy, but the landscape of your life--the look of your house, the layout of your car, the shape of your kitchen appliances, the brand names of the stuff in the fridge--isn't significantly different. Aside from the Internet and the cell phone and the CD, everything in your world seems pretty much the same but slightly modified.
And yet the world is utterly altered. Just to recap those bald statistics: In 1970, the developed world had twice as big a share of the global population as the Muslim world: 30% to 15%. By 2000, they were the same: each had about 20%.
And by 2020?
So the world's people are a lot more Islamic than they were back then and a lot less "Western." Europe is significantly more Islamic, having taken in during that period some 20 million Muslims (officially)--or the equivalents of the populations of four European Union countries (Ireland, Belgium, Denmark and Estonia). Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the West: In the U.K., more Muslims than Christians attend religious services each week.
Can these trends continue for another 30 years without having consequences? Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.
What will Europe be like at the end of this process? Who knows? On the one hand, there's something to be said for the notion that America will find an Islamified Europe more straightforward to deal with than M. Chirac, Herr Schroeder & Co. On the other hand, given Europe's track record, getting there could be very bloody. But either way this is the real battlefield. The al Qaeda nutters can never find enough suicidal pilots to fly enough planes into enough skyscrapers to topple America. But unlike us, the Islamists think long-term, and, given their demographic advantage in Europe and the tone of the emerging Muslim lobby groups there, much of what they're flying planes into buildings for they're likely to wind up with just by waiting a few more years. The skyscrapers will be theirs; why knock 'em over?
The latter half of the decline and fall of great civilizations follows a familiar pattern: affluence, softness, decadence, extinction. You don't notice yourself slipping through those stages because usually there's a seductive pol on hand to provide the age with a sly, self-deluding slogan--like Bill Clinton's "It's about the future of all our children." We on the right spent the 1990s gleefully mocking Mr. Clinton's tedious invocation, drizzled like syrup over everything from the Kosovo war to highway appropriations. But most of the rest of the West can't even steal his lame bromides: A society that has no children has no future.
Permanence is the illusion of every age. In 1913, no one thought the Russian, Austrian, German and Turkish empires would be gone within half a decade. Seventy years on, all those fellows who dismissed Reagan as an "amiable dunce" (in Clark Clifford's phrase) assured us the Soviet Union was likewise here to stay. The CIA analysts' position was that East Germany was the ninth biggest economic power in the world. In 1987 there was no rash of experts predicting the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact and the USSR itself.
Yet, even by the minimal standards of these wretched precedents, so-called post-Christian civilizations--as a prominent EU official described his continent to me--are more prone than traditional societies to mistake the present tense for a permanent feature. Religious cultures have a much greater sense of both past and future, as we did a century ago, when we spoke of death as joining "the great majority" in "the unseen world." But if secularism's starting point is that this is all there is, it's no surprise that, consciously or not, they invest the here and now with far greater powers of endurance than it's ever had. The idea that progressive Euro-welfarism is the permanent resting place of human development was always foolish; we now know that it's suicidally so.
To avoid collapse, European nations will need to take in immigrants at a rate no stable society has ever attempted. The CIA is predicting the EU will collapse by 2020. Given that the CIA's got pretty much everything wrong for half a century, that would suggest the EU is a shoo-in to be the colossus of the new millennium. But even a flop spook is right twice a generation. If anything, the date of EU collapse is rather a cautious estimate. It seems more likely that within the next couple of European election cycles, the internal contradictions of the EU will manifest themselves in the usual way, and that by 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on American network news every night. Even if they avoid that, the idea of a childless Europe ever rivaling America militarily or economically is laughable. Sometime this century there will be 500 million Americans, and what's left in Europe will either be very old or very Muslim. Japan faces the same problem: Its population is already in absolute decline, the first gentle slope of a death spiral it will be unlikely ever to climb out of. Will Japan be an economic powerhouse if it's populated by Koreans and Filipinos? Very possibly. Will Germany if it's populated by Algerians? That's a trickier proposition.
Best-case scenario? The Continent winds up as Vienna with Swedish tax rates.
Worst-case scenario: Sharia, circa 2040; semi-Sharia, a lot sooner--and we're already seeing a drift in that direction.
In July 2003, speaking to the U.S. Congress, Tony Blair remarked: "As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible but, in fact, it is transient. The question is: What do you leave behind?"
Excellent question. Britannia will never again wield the unrivalled power she enjoyed at her imperial apogee, but the Britannic inheritance endures, to one degree or another, in many of the key regional players in the world today--Australia, India, South Africa--and in dozens of island statelets from the Caribbean to the Pacific. If China ever takes its place as an advanced nation, it will be because the People's Republic learns more from British Hong Kong than Hong Kong learns from the Little Red Book. And of course the dominant power of our time derives its political character from 18th-century British subjects who took English ideas a little further than the mother country was willing to go.
A decade and a half after victory in the Cold War and end-of-history triumphalism, the "what do you leave behind?" question is more urgent than most of us expected. "The West," as a concept, is dead, and the West, as a matter of demographic fact, is dying.
What will London--or Paris, or Amsterdam--be like in the mid-'30s? If European politicians make no serious attempt this decade to wean the populace off their unsustainable 35-hour weeks, retirement at 60, etc., then to keep the present level of pensions and health benefits the EU will need to import so many workers from North Africa and the Middle East that it will be well on its way to majority Muslim by 2035. As things stand, Muslims are already the primary source of population growth in English cities. Can a society become increasingly Islamic in its demographic character without becoming increasingly Islamic in its political character?
This ought to be the left's issue. I'm a conservative--I'm not entirely on board with the Islamist program when it comes to beheading sodomites and so on, but I agree Britney Spears dresses like a slut: I'm with Mullah Omar on that one. Why then, if your big thing is feminism or abortion or gay marriage, are you so certain that the cult of tolerance will prevail once the biggest demographic in your society is cheerfully intolerant? Who, after all, are going to be the first victims of the West's collapsed birthrates? Even if one were to take the optimistic view that Europe will be able to resist the creeping imposition of Sharia currently engulfing Nigeria, it remains the case that the Muslim world is not notable for setting much store by "a woman's right to choose," in any sense.
I watched that big abortion rally in Washington in 2004, where Ashley Judd and Gloria Steinem were cheered by women waving "Keep your Bush off my bush" placards, and I thought it was the equivalent of a White Russian tea party in 1917. By prioritizing a "woman's right to choose," Western women are delivering their societies into the hands of fellows far more patriarchal than a 1950s sitcom dad. If any of those women marching for their "reproductive rights" still have babies, they might like to ponder demographic realities: A little girl born today will be unlikely, at the age of 40, to be free to prance around demonstrations in Eurabian Paris or Amsterdam chanting "Hands off my bush!"
Just before the 2004 election, that eminent political analyst Cameron Diaz appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show to explain what was at stake:
"Women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our bodies. . . . If you think that rape should be legal, then don't vote. But if you think that you have a right to your body," she advised Oprah's viewers, "then you should vote."
Poor Cameron. A couple of weeks later, the scary people won. She lost all rights to her body. Unlike Alec Baldwin, she couldn't even move to France. Her body was grounded in Terminal D.
But, after framing the 2004 presidential election as a referendum on the right to rape, Miss Diaz might be interested to know that men enjoy that right under many Islamic legal codes around the world. In his book "The Empty Cradle," Philip Longman asks: "So where will the children of the future come from? Increasingly they will come from people who are at odds with the modern world. Such a trend, if sustained, could drive human culture off its current market-driven, individualistic, modernist course, gradually creating an anti-market culture dominated by fundamentalism--a new Dark Ages."
Bottom line for Cameron Diaz: There are worse things than John Ashcroft out there.
Mr. Longman's point is well taken. The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, "Racism!" To fret about what proportion of the population is "white" is grotesque and inappropriate. But it's not about race, it's about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn't matter whether 70% of them are "white" or only 5% are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%, 45%.
Since the president unveiled the so-called Bush Doctrine--the plan to promote liberty throughout the Arab world--innumerable "progressives" have routinely asserted that there's no evidence Muslims want liberty and, indeed, that Islam is incompatible with democracy. If that's true, it's a problem not for the Middle East today but for Europe the day after tomorrow. According to a poll taken in 2004, over 60% of British Muslims want to live under Shariah--in the United Kingdom. If a population "at odds with the modern world" is the fastest-breeding group on the planet--if there are more Muslim nations, more fundamentalist Muslims within those nations, more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations, and more and more Muslims represented in more and more transnational institutions--how safe a bet is the survival of the "modern world"?
Not good.
"What do you leave behind?" asked Tony Blair. There will only be very few and very old ethnic Germans and French and Italians by the midpoint of this century. What will they leave behind? Territories that happen to bear their names and keep up some of the old buildings? Or will the dying European races understand that the only legacy that matters is whether the peoples who will live in those lands after them are reconciled to pluralist, liberal democracy? It's the demography, stupid. And, if they can't muster the will to change course, then "What do you leave behind?" is the only question that matters.
Mr. Steyn is a syndicated columnist and theater critic for The New Criterion, in whose January issue this article appears.
I encourage you to all take time (and yes, it IS long) to completely read through this article.
It's the Demography, Stupid
The real reason the West is in danger of extinction.
BY MARK STEYN
Wednesday, January 4, 2006 12:01 a.m. EST
Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most Western European countries. There'll probably still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy or the Netherlands--probably--just as in Istanbul there's still a building called St. Sophia's Cathedral. But it's not a cathedral; it's merely a designation for a piece of real estate. Likewise, Italy and the Netherlands will merely be designations for real estate. The challenge for those who reckon Western civilization is on balance better than the alternatives is to figure out a way to save at least some parts of the West.
One obstacle to doing that is that, in the typical election campaign in your advanced industrial democracy, the political platforms of at least one party in the United States and pretty much all parties in the rest of the West are largely about what one would call the secondary impulses of society--government health care, government day care (which Canada's thinking of introducing), government paternity leave (which Britain's just introduced). We've prioritized the secondary impulse over the primary ones: national defense, family, faith and, most basic of all, reproductive activity--"Go forth and multiply," because if you don't you won't be able to afford all those secondary-impulse issues, like cradle-to-grave welfare.
Americans sometimes don't understand how far gone most of the rest of the developed world is down this path: In the Canadian and most Continental cabinets, the defense ministry is somewhere an ambitious politician passes through on his way up to important jobs like the health department. I don't think Don Rumsfeld would regard it as a promotion if he were moved to Health and Human Services.
The design flaw of the secular social-democratic state is that it requires a religious-society birthrate to sustain it. Post-Christian hyperrationalism is, in the objective sense, a lot less rational than Catholicism or Mormonism. Indeed, in its reliance on immigration to ensure its future, the European Union has adopted a 21st-century variation on the strategy of the Shakers, who were forbidden from reproducing and thus could increase their numbers only by conversion. The problem is that secondary-impulse societies mistake their weaknesses for strengths--or, at any rate, virtues--and that's why they're proving so feeble at dealing with a primal force like Islam.
Speaking of which, if we are at war--and half the American people and significantly higher percentages in Britain, Canada and Europe don't accept that proposition--then what exactly is the war about?
We know it's not really a "war on terror." Nor is it, at heart, a war against Islam, or even "radical Islam." The Muslim faith, whatever its merits for the believers, is a problematic business for the rest of us. There are many trouble spots around the world, but as a general rule, it's easy to make an educated guess at one of the participants: Muslims vs. Jews in "Palestine," Muslims vs. Hindus in Kashmir, Muslims vs. Christians in Africa, Muslims vs. Buddhists in Thailand, Muslims vs. Russians in the Caucasus, Muslims vs. backpacking tourists in Bali. Like the environmentalists, these guys think globally but act locally.
Yet while Islamism is the enemy, it's not what this thing's about. Radical Islam is an opportunistic infection, like AIDS: It's not the HIV that kills you, it's the pneumonia you get when your body's too weak to fight it off. When the jihadists engage with the U.S. military, they lose--as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq. If this were like World War I with those fellows in one trench and us in ours facing them over some boggy piece of terrain, it would be over very quickly. Which the smarter Islamists have figured out. They know they can never win on the battlefield, but they figure there's an excellent chance they can drag things out until Western civilization collapses in on itself and Islam inherits by default.
That's what the war's about: our lack of civilizational confidence. As a famous Arnold Toynbee quote puts it: "Civilizations die from suicide, not murder"--as can be seen throughout much of "the Western world" right now. The progressive agenda--lavish social welfare, abortion, secularism, multiculturalism--is collectively the real suicide bomb. Take multiculturalism. The great thing about multiculturalism is that it doesn't involve knowing anything about other cultures--the capital of Bhutan, the principal exports of Malawi, who cares? All it requires is feeling good about other cultures. It's fundamentally a fraud, and I would argue was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society. Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched native dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" or that your holistic masseuse uses techniques developed from Native American spirituality, but not that you or anyone you care about should have to live in an African or Native American society. It's a quintessential piece of progressive humbug.
Then September 11 happened. And bizarrely the reaction of just about every prominent Western leader was to visit a mosque: President Bush did, the prince of Wales did, the prime minister of the United Kingdom did, the prime minister of Canada did . . . The premier of Ontario didn't, and so 20 Muslim community leaders had a big summit to denounce him for failing to visit a mosque. I don't know why he didn't. Maybe there was a big backlog, it was mosque drive time, prime ministers in gridlock up and down the freeway trying to get to the Sword of the Infidel-Slayer Mosque on Elm Street. But for whatever reason he couldn't fit it into his hectic schedule. Ontario's citizenship minister did show up at a mosque, but the imams took that as a great insult, like the Queen sending Fergie to open the Commonwealth Games. So the premier of Ontario had to hold a big meeting with the aggrieved imams to apologize for not going to a mosque and, as the Toronto Star's reported it, "to provide them with reassurance that the provincial government does not see them as the enemy."
Anyway, the get-me-to-the-mosque-on-time fever died down, but it set the tone for our general approach to these atrocities. The old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between the traffic light changing in New York and the first honk from a car behind. The new definition is the gap between a terrorist bombing and the press release from an Islamic lobby group warning of a backlash against Muslims. In most circumstances, it would be considered appallingly bad taste to deflect attention from an actual "hate crime" by scaremongering about a purely hypothetical one. Needless to say, there is no campaign of Islamophobic hate crimes. If anything, the West is awash in an epidemic of self-hate crimes. A commenter on Tim Blair's Web site in Australia summed it up in a note-perfect parody of a Guardian headline: "Muslim Community Leaders Warn of Backlash from Tomorrow Morning's Terrorist Attack." Those community leaders have the measure of us.
Radical Islam is what multiculturalism has been waiting for all along. In "The Survival of Culture," I quoted the eminent British barrister Helena Kennedy, Queen's Counsel. Shortly after September 11, Baroness Kennedy argued on a BBC show that it was too easy to disparage "Islamic fundamentalists." "We as Western liberals too often are fundamentalist ourselves," she complained. "We don't look at our own fundamentalisms."
Well, said the interviewer, what exactly would those Western liberal fundamentalisms be? "One of the things that we are too ready to insist upon is that we are the tolerant people and that the intolerance is something that belongs to other countries like Islam. And I'm not sure that's true."
Hmm. Lady Kennedy was arguing that our tolerance of our own tolerance is making us intolerant of other people's intolerance, which is intolerable. And, unlikely as it sounds, this has now become the highest, most rarefied form of multiculturalism. So you're nice to gays and the Inuit? Big deal. Anyone can be tolerant of fellows like that, but tolerance of intolerance gives an even more intense frisson of pleasure to the multiculti masochists. In other words, just as the AIDS pandemic greatly facilitated societal surrender to the gay agenda, so 9/11 is greatly facilitating our surrender to the most extreme aspects of the multicultural agenda.
For example, one day in 2004, a couple of Canadians returned home, to Lester B. Pearson International Airport in Toronto. They were the son and widow of a fellow called Ahmed Said Khadr, who back on the Pakistani-Afghan frontier was known as "al-Kanadi." Why? Because he was the highest-ranking Canadian in al Qaeda--plenty of other Canucks in al Qaeda, but he was the Numero Uno. In fact, one could argue that the Khadr family is Canada's principal contribution to the war on terror. Granted they're on the wrong side (if you'll forgive my being judgmental) but no one can argue that they aren't in the thick of things. One of Mr. Khadr's sons was captured in Afghanistan after killing a U.S. Special Forces medic. Another was captured and held at Guantanamo. A third blew himself up while killing a Canadian soldier in Kabul. Pa Khadr himself died in an al Qaeda shootout with Pakistani forces in early 2004. And they say we Canadians aren't doing our bit in this war!
In the course of the fatal shootout of al-Kanadi, his youngest son was paralyzed. And, not unreasonably, Junior didn't fancy a prison hospital in Peshawar. So Mrs. Khadr and her boy returned to Toronto so he could enjoy the benefits of Ontario government health care. "I'm Canadian, and I'm not begging for my rights," declared the widow Khadr. "I'm demanding my rights."
As they always say, treason's hard to prove in court, but given the circumstances of Mr. Khadr's death it seems clear that not only was he providing "aid and comfort to the Queen's enemies" but that he was, in fact, the Queen's enemy. The Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, the Royal 22nd Regiment and other Canucks have been participating in Afghanistan, on one side of the conflict, and the Khadr family had been over there participating on the other side. Nonetheless, the prime minister of Canada thought Boy Khadr's claims on the public health system was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate his own deep personal commitment to "diversity." Asked about the Khadrs' return to Toronto, he said, "I believe that once you are a Canadian citizen, you have the right to your own views and to disagree."
That's the wonderful thing about multiculturalism: You can choose which side of the war you want to fight on. When the draft card arrives, just tick "home team" or "enemy," according to taste. The Canadian prime minister is a typical late-stage Western politician: He could have said, well, these are contemptible people and I know many of us are disgusted at the idea of our tax dollars being used to provide health care for a man whose Canadian citizenship is no more than a flag of convenience, but unfortunately that's the law and, while we can try to tighten it, it looks like this lowlife's got away with it. Instead, his reflex instinct was to proclaim this as a wholehearted demonstration of the virtues of the multicultural state. Like many enlightened Western leaders, the Canadian prime minister will be congratulating himself on his boundless tolerance even as the forces of intolerance consume him.
That, by the way, is the one point of similarity between the jihad and conventional terrorist movements like the IRA or ETA. Terror groups persist because of a lack of confidence on the part of their targets: The IRA, for example, calculated correctly that the British had the capability to smash them totally but not the will. So they knew that while they could never win militarily, they also could never be defeated. The Islamists have figured similarly. The only difference is that most terrorist wars are highly localized. We now have the first truly global terrorist insurgency because the Islamists view the whole world the way the IRA view the bogs of Fermanagh: They want it, and they've calculated that our entire civilization lacks the will to see them off.
We spend a lot of time at The New Criterion attacking the elites, and we're right to do so. The commanding heights of the culture have behaved disgracefully for the last several decades. But if it were just a problem with the elites, it wouldn't be that serious: The mob could rise up and hang 'em from lampposts--a scenario that's not unlikely in certain Continental countries. But the problem now goes way beyond the ruling establishment. The annexation by government of most of the key responsibilities of life--child-raising, taking care of your elderly parents--has profoundly changed the relationship between the citizen and the state. At some point--I would say socialized health care is a good marker--you cross a line, and it's very hard then to persuade a citizenry enjoying that much government largesse to cross back. In National Review recently, I took issue with that line Gerald Ford always uses to ingratiate himself with conservative audiences: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." Actually, you run into trouble long before that point: A government big enough to give you everything you want still isn't big enough to get you to give anything back. That's what the French and German political classes are discovering.
Go back to that list of local conflicts I mentioned. The jihad has held out a long time against very tough enemies. If you're not shy about taking on the Israelis, the Russians, the Indians and the Nigerians, why wouldn't you fancy your chances against the Belgians and Danes and New Zealanders?
So the jihadists are for the most part doing no more than giving us a prod in the rear as we sleepwalk to the cliff. When I say "sleepwalk," it's not because we're a blasé culture. On the contrary, one of the clearest signs of our decline is the way we expend so much energy worrying about the wrong things. If you've read Jared Diamond's bestselling book "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed," you'll know it goes into a lot of detail about Easter Island going belly up because they chopped down all their trees. Apparently that's why they're not a G-8 member or on the U.N. Security Council. Same with the Greenlanders and the Mayans and Diamond's other curious choices of "societies." Indeed, as the author sees it, pretty much every society collapses because it chops down its trees.
Poor old Diamond can't see the forest because of his obsession with the trees. (Russia's collapsing even as it's undergoing reforestation.) One way "societies choose to fail or succeed" is by choosing what to worry about. The Western world has delivered more wealth and more comfort to more of its citizens than any other civilization in history, and in return we've developed a great cult of worrying. You know the classics of the genre: In 1968, in his bestselling book "The Population Bomb," the eminent scientist Paul Ehrlich declared: "In the 1970s the world will undergo famines--hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death." In 1972, in their landmark study "The Limits to Growth," the Club of Rome announced that the world would run out of gold by 1981, of mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead and gas by 1993.
None of these things happened. In fact, quite the opposite is happening. We're pretty much awash in resources, but we're running out of people--the one truly indispensable resource, without which none of the others matter. Russia's the most obvious example: it's the largest country on earth, it's full of natural resources, and yet it's dying--its population is falling calamitously.
The default mode of our elites is that anything that happens--from terrorism to tsunamis--can be understood only as deriving from the perniciousness of Western civilization. As Jean-Francois Revel wrote, "Clearly, a civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself."
And even though none of the prognostications of the eco-doom blockbusters of the 1970s came to pass, all that means is that 30 years on, the end of the world has to be rescheduled. The amended estimated time of arrival is now 2032. That's to say, in 2002, the United Nations Global Environmental Outlook predicted "the destruction of 70 percent of the natural world in thirty years, mass extinction of species. . . . More than half the world will be afflicted by water shortages, with 95 percent of people in the Middle East with severe problems . . . 25 percent of all species of mammals and 10 percent of birds will be extinct . . ."
Etc., etc., for 450 pages. Or to cut to the chase, as the Guardian headlined it, "Unless We Change Our Ways, The World Faces Disaster."
Well, here's my prediction for 2032: unless we change our ways the world faces a future . . . where the environment will look pretty darn good. If you're a tree or a rock, you'll be living in clover. It's the Italians and the Swedes who'll be facing extinction and the loss of their natural habitat.
There will be no environmental doomsday. Oil, carbon dioxide emissions, deforestation: none of these things is worth worrying about. What's worrying is that we spend so much time worrying about things that aren't worth worrying about that we don't worry about the things we should be worrying about. For 30 years, we've had endless wake-up calls for things that aren't worth waking up for. But for the very real, remorseless shifts in our society--the ones truly jeopardizing our future--we're sound asleep. The world is changing dramatically right now, and hysterical experts twitter about a hypothetical decrease in the Antarctic krill that might conceivably possibly happen so far down the road there are unlikely to be any Italian or Japanese enviro-worriers left alive to be devastated by it.
In a globalized economy, the environmentalists want us to worry about First World capitalism imposing its ways on bucolic, pastoral, primitive Third World backwaters. Yet, insofar as "globalization" is a threat, the real danger is precisely the opposite--that the peculiarities of the backwaters can leap instantly to the First World. Pigs are valued assets and sleep in the living room in rural China--and next thing you know an unknown respiratory disease is killing people in Toronto, just because someone got on a plane. That's the way to look at Islamism: We fret about McDonald's and Disney, but the big globalization success story is the way the Saudis have taken what was 80 years ago a severe but obscure and unimportant strain of Islam practiced by Bedouins of no fixed abode and successfully exported it to the heart of Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Manchester, Buffalo . . .
What's the better bet? A globalization that exports cheeseburgers and pop songs or a globalization that exports the fiercest aspects of its culture? When it comes to forecasting the future, the birthrate is the nearest thing to hard numbers. If only a million babies are born in 2006, it's hard to have two million adults enter the workforce in 2026 (or 2033, or 2037, or whenever they get around to finishing their Anger Management and Queer Studies degrees). And the hard data on babies around the Western world is that they're running out a lot faster than the oil is. "Replacement" fertility rate--i.e., the number you need for merely a stable population, not getting any bigger, not getting any smaller--is 2.1 babies per woman. Some countries are well above that: the global fertility leader, Somalia, is 6.91, Niger 6.83, Afghanistan 6.78, Yemen 6.75. Notice what those nations have in common?
Scroll way down to the bottom of the Hot One Hundred top breeders and you'll eventually find the United States, hovering just at replacement rate with 2.07 births per woman. Ireland is 1.87, New Zealand 1.79, Australia 1.76. But Canada's fertility rate is down to 1.5, well below replacement rate; Germany and Austria are at 1.3, the brink of the death spiral; Russia and Italy are at 1.2; Spain 1.1, about half replacement rate. That's to say, Spain's population is halving every generation. By 2050, Italy's population will have fallen by 22%, Bulgaria's by 36%, Estonia's by 52%. In America, demographic trends suggest that the blue states ought to apply for honorary membership of the EU: In the 2004 election, John Kerry won the 16 with the lowest birthrates; George W. Bush took 25 of the 26 states with the highest. By 2050, there will be 100 million fewer Europeans, 100 million more Americans--and mostly red-state Americans.
As fertility shrivels, societies get older--and Japan and much of Europe are set to get older than any functioning societies have ever been. And we know what comes after old age. These countries are going out of business--unless they can find the will to change their ways. Is that likely? I don't think so. If you look at European election results--most recently in Germany--it's hard not to conclude that, while voters are unhappy with their political establishments, they're unhappy mainly because they resent being asked to reconsider their government benefits and, no matter how unaffordable they may be a generation down the road, they have no intention of seriously reconsidering them. The Scottish executive recently backed down from a proposal to raise the retirement age of Scottish public workers. It's presently 60, which is nice but unaffordable. But the reaction of the average Scots worker is that that's somebody else's problem. The average German worker now puts in 22% fewer hours per year than his American counterpart, and no politician who wishes to remain electorally viable will propose closing the gap in any meaningful way.
This isn't a deep-rooted cultural difference between the Old World and the New. It dates back all the way to, oh, the 1970s. If one wanted to allocate blame, one could argue that it's a product of the U.S. military presence, the American security guarantee that liberated European budgets: instead of having to spend money on guns, they could concentrate on butter, and buttering up the voters. If Washington's problem with Europe is that these are not serious allies, well, whose fault is that? Who, in the years after the Second World War, created NATO as a postmodern military alliance? The "free world," as the Americans called it, was a free ride for everyone else. And having been absolved from the primal responsibilities of nationhood, it's hardly surprising that European nations have little wish to reshoulder them. In essence, the lavish levels of public health care on the Continent are subsidized by the American taxpayer. And this long-term softening of large sections of the West makes them ill-suited to resisting a primal force like Islam.
There is no "population bomb." There never was. Birthrates are declining all over the world--eventually every couple on the planet may decide to opt for the Western yuppie model of one designer baby at the age of 39. But demographics is a game of last man standing. The groups that succumb to demographic apathy last will have a huge advantage. Even in 1968 Paul Ehrlich and his ilk should have understood that their so-called population explosion was really a massive population adjustment. Of the increase in global population between 1970 and 2000, the developed world accounted for under 9% of it, while the Muslim world accounted for 26%. Between 1970 and 2000, the developed world declined from just under 30% of the world's population to just over 20%, the Muslim nations increased from about 15% to 20%.
Nineteen seventy doesn't seem that long ago. If you're the age many of the chaps running the Western world today are wont to be, your pants are narrower than they were back then and your hair's less groovy, but the landscape of your life--the look of your house, the layout of your car, the shape of your kitchen appliances, the brand names of the stuff in the fridge--isn't significantly different. Aside from the Internet and the cell phone and the CD, everything in your world seems pretty much the same but slightly modified.
And yet the world is utterly altered. Just to recap those bald statistics: In 1970, the developed world had twice as big a share of the global population as the Muslim world: 30% to 15%. By 2000, they were the same: each had about 20%.
And by 2020?
So the world's people are a lot more Islamic than they were back then and a lot less "Western." Europe is significantly more Islamic, having taken in during that period some 20 million Muslims (officially)--or the equivalents of the populations of four European Union countries (Ireland, Belgium, Denmark and Estonia). Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the West: In the U.K., more Muslims than Christians attend religious services each week.
Can these trends continue for another 30 years without having consequences? Europe by the end of this century will be a continent after the neutron bomb: The grand buildings will still be standing, but the people who built them will be gone. We are living through a remarkable period: the self-extinction of the races who, for good or ill, shaped the modern world.
What will Europe be like at the end of this process? Who knows? On the one hand, there's something to be said for the notion that America will find an Islamified Europe more straightforward to deal with than M. Chirac, Herr Schroeder & Co. On the other hand, given Europe's track record, getting there could be very bloody. But either way this is the real battlefield. The al Qaeda nutters can never find enough suicidal pilots to fly enough planes into enough skyscrapers to topple America. But unlike us, the Islamists think long-term, and, given their demographic advantage in Europe and the tone of the emerging Muslim lobby groups there, much of what they're flying planes into buildings for they're likely to wind up with just by waiting a few more years. The skyscrapers will be theirs; why knock 'em over?
The latter half of the decline and fall of great civilizations follows a familiar pattern: affluence, softness, decadence, extinction. You don't notice yourself slipping through those stages because usually there's a seductive pol on hand to provide the age with a sly, self-deluding slogan--like Bill Clinton's "It's about the future of all our children." We on the right spent the 1990s gleefully mocking Mr. Clinton's tedious invocation, drizzled like syrup over everything from the Kosovo war to highway appropriations. But most of the rest of the West can't even steal his lame bromides: A society that has no children has no future.
Permanence is the illusion of every age. In 1913, no one thought the Russian, Austrian, German and Turkish empires would be gone within half a decade. Seventy years on, all those fellows who dismissed Reagan as an "amiable dunce" (in Clark Clifford's phrase) assured us the Soviet Union was likewise here to stay. The CIA analysts' position was that East Germany was the ninth biggest economic power in the world. In 1987 there was no rash of experts predicting the imminent fall of the Berlin Wall, the Warsaw Pact and the USSR itself.
Yet, even by the minimal standards of these wretched precedents, so-called post-Christian civilizations--as a prominent EU official described his continent to me--are more prone than traditional societies to mistake the present tense for a permanent feature. Religious cultures have a much greater sense of both past and future, as we did a century ago, when we spoke of death as joining "the great majority" in "the unseen world." But if secularism's starting point is that this is all there is, it's no surprise that, consciously or not, they invest the here and now with far greater powers of endurance than it's ever had. The idea that progressive Euro-welfarism is the permanent resting place of human development was always foolish; we now know that it's suicidally so.
To avoid collapse, European nations will need to take in immigrants at a rate no stable society has ever attempted. The CIA is predicting the EU will collapse by 2020. Given that the CIA's got pretty much everything wrong for half a century, that would suggest the EU is a shoo-in to be the colossus of the new millennium. But even a flop spook is right twice a generation. If anything, the date of EU collapse is rather a cautious estimate. It seems more likely that within the next couple of European election cycles, the internal contradictions of the EU will manifest themselves in the usual way, and that by 2010 we'll be watching burning buildings, street riots and assassinations on American network news every night. Even if they avoid that, the idea of a childless Europe ever rivaling America militarily or economically is laughable. Sometime this century there will be 500 million Americans, and what's left in Europe will either be very old or very Muslim. Japan faces the same problem: Its population is already in absolute decline, the first gentle slope of a death spiral it will be unlikely ever to climb out of. Will Japan be an economic powerhouse if it's populated by Koreans and Filipinos? Very possibly. Will Germany if it's populated by Algerians? That's a trickier proposition.
Best-case scenario? The Continent winds up as Vienna with Swedish tax rates.
Worst-case scenario: Sharia, circa 2040; semi-Sharia, a lot sooner--and we're already seeing a drift in that direction.
In July 2003, speaking to the U.S. Congress, Tony Blair remarked: "As Britain knows, all predominant power seems for a time invincible but, in fact, it is transient. The question is: What do you leave behind?"
Excellent question. Britannia will never again wield the unrivalled power she enjoyed at her imperial apogee, but the Britannic inheritance endures, to one degree or another, in many of the key regional players in the world today--Australia, India, South Africa--and in dozens of island statelets from the Caribbean to the Pacific. If China ever takes its place as an advanced nation, it will be because the People's Republic learns more from British Hong Kong than Hong Kong learns from the Little Red Book. And of course the dominant power of our time derives its political character from 18th-century British subjects who took English ideas a little further than the mother country was willing to go.
A decade and a half after victory in the Cold War and end-of-history triumphalism, the "what do you leave behind?" question is more urgent than most of us expected. "The West," as a concept, is dead, and the West, as a matter of demographic fact, is dying.
What will London--or Paris, or Amsterdam--be like in the mid-'30s? If European politicians make no serious attempt this decade to wean the populace off their unsustainable 35-hour weeks, retirement at 60, etc., then to keep the present level of pensions and health benefits the EU will need to import so many workers from North Africa and the Middle East that it will be well on its way to majority Muslim by 2035. As things stand, Muslims are already the primary source of population growth in English cities. Can a society become increasingly Islamic in its demographic character without becoming increasingly Islamic in its political character?
This ought to be the left's issue. I'm a conservative--I'm not entirely on board with the Islamist program when it comes to beheading sodomites and so on, but I agree Britney Spears dresses like a slut: I'm with Mullah Omar on that one. Why then, if your big thing is feminism or abortion or gay marriage, are you so certain that the cult of tolerance will prevail once the biggest demographic in your society is cheerfully intolerant? Who, after all, are going to be the first victims of the West's collapsed birthrates? Even if one were to take the optimistic view that Europe will be able to resist the creeping imposition of Sharia currently engulfing Nigeria, it remains the case that the Muslim world is not notable for setting much store by "a woman's right to choose," in any sense.
I watched that big abortion rally in Washington in 2004, where Ashley Judd and Gloria Steinem were cheered by women waving "Keep your Bush off my bush" placards, and I thought it was the equivalent of a White Russian tea party in 1917. By prioritizing a "woman's right to choose," Western women are delivering their societies into the hands of fellows far more patriarchal than a 1950s sitcom dad. If any of those women marching for their "reproductive rights" still have babies, they might like to ponder demographic realities: A little girl born today will be unlikely, at the age of 40, to be free to prance around demonstrations in Eurabian Paris or Amsterdam chanting "Hands off my bush!"
Just before the 2004 election, that eminent political analyst Cameron Diaz appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show to explain what was at stake:
"Women have so much to lose. I mean, we could lose the right to our bodies. . . . If you think that rape should be legal, then don't vote. But if you think that you have a right to your body," she advised Oprah's viewers, "then you should vote."
Poor Cameron. A couple of weeks later, the scary people won. She lost all rights to her body. Unlike Alec Baldwin, she couldn't even move to France. Her body was grounded in Terminal D.
But, after framing the 2004 presidential election as a referendum on the right to rape, Miss Diaz might be interested to know that men enjoy that right under many Islamic legal codes around the world. In his book "The Empty Cradle," Philip Longman asks: "So where will the children of the future come from? Increasingly they will come from people who are at odds with the modern world. Such a trend, if sustained, could drive human culture off its current market-driven, individualistic, modernist course, gradually creating an anti-market culture dominated by fundamentalism--a new Dark Ages."
Bottom line for Cameron Diaz: There are worse things than John Ashcroft out there.
Mr. Longman's point is well taken. The refined antennae of Western liberals mean that whenever one raises the question of whether there will be any Italians living in the geographical zone marked as Italy a generation or three hence, they cry, "Racism!" To fret about what proportion of the population is "white" is grotesque and inappropriate. But it's not about race, it's about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn't matter whether 70% of them are "white" or only 5% are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn't, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90% of the population or only 60%, 50%, 45%.
Since the president unveiled the so-called Bush Doctrine--the plan to promote liberty throughout the Arab world--innumerable "progressives" have routinely asserted that there's no evidence Muslims want liberty and, indeed, that Islam is incompatible with democracy. If that's true, it's a problem not for the Middle East today but for Europe the day after tomorrow. According to a poll taken in 2004, over 60% of British Muslims want to live under Shariah--in the United Kingdom. If a population "at odds with the modern world" is the fastest-breeding group on the planet--if there are more Muslim nations, more fundamentalist Muslims within those nations, more and more Muslims within non-Muslim nations, and more and more Muslims represented in more and more transnational institutions--how safe a bet is the survival of the "modern world"?
Not good.
"What do you leave behind?" asked Tony Blair. There will only be very few and very old ethnic Germans and French and Italians by the midpoint of this century. What will they leave behind? Territories that happen to bear their names and keep up some of the old buildings? Or will the dying European races understand that the only legacy that matters is whether the peoples who will live in those lands after them are reconciled to pluralist, liberal democracy? It's the demography, stupid. And, if they can't muster the will to change course, then "What do you leave behind?" is the only question that matters.
Mr. Steyn is a syndicated columnist and theater critic for The New Criterion, in whose January issue this article appears.
02 January 2006
Answer to the Title
For those of you who've been guessing and curious, the answer to the meaning of the title for the post Why Nary a Peep...
Here it is:
It was a double-meaning title. The first meaning was that the New Year was coming in quietly. The other was an anagram. "Why Nary a Peep" is an anagram of "Happy New Year".
Yep, case of the clevers... :)
Here it is:
It was a double-meaning title. The first meaning was that the New Year was coming in quietly. The other was an anagram. "Why Nary a Peep" is an anagram of "Happy New Year".
Yep, case of the clevers... :)
National Guilt
Something I've observed this Christmas season (and last year's, too)...
Germany has a serious case of national guilt.
It's truly interesting to go through the various town centers and see all of the Christmas displays, and often... the Stars of David outnumber the Christian displays.
Quite interesting...
Germany has a serious case of national guilt.
It's truly interesting to go through the various town centers and see all of the Christmas displays, and often... the Stars of David outnumber the Christian displays.
Quite interesting...
Milbloggies
Apparently we ended up as a Finalist at Milblogging.com's 2005 Milbloggies Awards.
And we're sitting at #21 in the Top 100!
Not bad for a lil' ol' blog like ours...
Thanks all, and thanks to Klinger and Miss Birdlegs for pointing it out.
And we're sitting at #21 in the Top 100!
Not bad for a lil' ol' blog like ours...
Thanks all, and thanks to Klinger and Miss Birdlegs for pointing it out.
31 December 2005
Homesick
Was clicking through channels, and passed the Pentagon channel. (Hey, when it's a military owned cable network, you KNOW you're going to get the Pentagon channel!)
Anyway, at that very moment, they were starting a report from Kandahar. It was about how the coalition was helping pilgrims for the Hajj.
It was the first civilian use of the Kandahar airport (aka Kandahar Air Field) since the war began. It seemed unusual to see all the familiar sites...
Actually felt... "Homesick". Strange.
Anyway, at that very moment, they were starting a report from Kandahar. It was about how the coalition was helping pilgrims for the Hajj.
It was the first civilian use of the Kandahar airport (aka Kandahar Air Field) since the war began. It seemed unusual to see all the familiar sites...
Actually felt... "Homesick". Strange.
Why? Freedom
Mary Ann sent me her first Hat Tip... Michelle Malkin has a nice article, certainly well worth the read.
Why Nary A Peep*
Two-Headed Coins. That was the title I was originally working with for this particular posts. Those who've been reading for awhile know how much I enjoy the fun of titling the posts.
I was looking at today (in particular, and the time of year in general) as the end of a really rotten year, and the opportunity for a new year to begin.
A side note - isn't it interesting how we always believe that changing the digits in the date can somehow adjust the course our lives are travelling?
Anyways, I'd been looking at 2005 as a truly bad year. The unit leaving, Thomas' difficult birth, My deployment beginning, My first experience being mortared, Missing My First Anniversary (with a really wonderful woman), Seeing a Ramp Ceremony, The War Hit Close to Home (please read this one), The very concept of experiencing my 2nd attack in my life (never saw my life like THIS), and there's always... a whole new storm.
You'll notice that that's quite a few links to posts... understandably, it's easy to call it a bad year.
But life is definitely a two-headed coin. Even when it's showing heads, there's still another way to look at it.
As my Dad pointed out, this year also gave me my son, the opportunity to have a wife to share an Anniversary with (even if apart), the chance to serve my country, the chance to be home at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the chance to come home at all.
So, maybe, in retrospect, 2005 wasn't that bad. 2006 is another year, or perhaps... Sunday is just the day after Saturday. But, either way, I truly can't complain.
Through this blog, and Soldiers' Angels, we've become linked to dozens of new friends we never knew we had.
2005 was a good year, after all. And of course, let's not forget this minor day.
* So why DID I use this for a title?
I was looking at today (in particular, and the time of year in general) as the end of a really rotten year, and the opportunity for a new year to begin.
A side note - isn't it interesting how we always believe that changing the digits in the date can somehow adjust the course our lives are travelling?
Anyways, I'd been looking at 2005 as a truly bad year. The unit leaving, Thomas' difficult birth, My deployment beginning, My first experience being mortared, Missing My First Anniversary (with a really wonderful woman), Seeing a Ramp Ceremony, The War Hit Close to Home (please read this one), The very concept of experiencing my 2nd attack in my life (never saw my life like THIS), and there's always... a whole new storm.
You'll notice that that's quite a few links to posts... understandably, it's easy to call it a bad year.
But life is definitely a two-headed coin. Even when it's showing heads, there's still another way to look at it.
As my Dad pointed out, this year also gave me my son, the opportunity to have a wife to share an Anniversary with (even if apart), the chance to serve my country, the chance to be home at Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the chance to come home at all.
So, maybe, in retrospect, 2005 wasn't that bad. 2006 is another year, or perhaps... Sunday is just the day after Saturday. But, either way, I truly can't complain.
Through this blog, and Soldiers' Angels, we've become linked to dozens of new friends we never knew we had.
2005 was a good year, after all. And of course, let's not forget this minor day.
* So why DID I use this for a title?
Fonecall Re: Group (FRG)
Ok, so I really stretched on the title this time.
Anyway, received a phonecall from the FRG co-leader wanting to confirm that I no longer needed dinners delivered.
She was slightly surprised when I mentioned that the reason was because I was informed that the FRG had indicated to my command that they felt overburdened.
We had about a 20 minute phone call, and suffice it to say, it appears there's just the teensiest bit of miscommunication going on, or politics, or... who knows...
Not my teapot to have a tempest in.
Interesting, though. Wonder who's playing the next card?
I ended the call with, "The official message to the FRG is that Ellicia and I are extremely thankful for the help and support and appreciate all of the well-wishes from the group."
Life goes on.
Anyway, received a phonecall from the FRG co-leader wanting to confirm that I no longer needed dinners delivered.
She was slightly surprised when I mentioned that the reason was because I was informed that the FRG had indicated to my command that they felt overburdened.
We had about a 20 minute phone call, and suffice it to say, it appears there's just the teensiest bit of miscommunication going on, or politics, or... who knows...
Not my teapot to have a tempest in.
Interesting, though. Wonder who's playing the next card?
I ended the call with, "The official message to the FRG is that Ellicia and I are extremely thankful for the help and support and appreciate all of the well-wishes from the group."
Life goes on.
29 December 2005
He Ain't Dead Yet!
A special congratulations goes out to my Dad! He celebrated his 60th birthday a couple o' days ago.
And he truly celebrated! It's like I always remind people, and him, and the title of this post... one of the best things about a birthday is it means you're not dead yet! (I've always loved a particular Star Trek quote in reference to birthdays - "What's so wrong with not having died?")
It's a nice thing that he's gone and done. I've gauged many of my accomplishments of late towards precedents set by my father. He survived Basic Training (when it was REALLY tough), I can do it. He can endure the Army, I can do it. He can manage not to kill his child (a big thank you, by the way, Dad), I can... well, so far, I've managed that one. So, if he can reach 60, then by golly, I'm gonna do it.
And finally, as a special treat, there's a particular copy of a comedy routine (I think it's by George Carlin, but I can't be sure.
Since I'm not sure exactly to whom the copyright belongs, please know that this material was originally written by whomever originally wrote it... originally.
Here goes:
Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids?
If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions. "How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five!
That's the key. You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back.
You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead. "How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16!
And then the greatest day of your life . . . you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony . . . YOU BECOME 21. . . YEAS!!!
But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk. He TURNED, we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?
You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 . . . and your dreams are gone.
But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would!
So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60. You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70!
After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday! You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime.
And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I was JUST 92."
Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!"
May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!
HOW TO STAY YOUNG
1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctor worry about them. That is why you pay him/her.
2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.
3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle. " An idle mind is the devil's workshop." And the devil's name is Alzheimer's.
4. Enjoy the simple things.
5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.
6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.
7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.
8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.
9. Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, to the next county, to a foreign country, but NOT to where the guilt is.
10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.
AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
Happy Birthday, Dad!
And he truly celebrated! It's like I always remind people, and him, and the title of this post... one of the best things about a birthday is it means you're not dead yet! (I've always loved a particular Star Trek quote in reference to birthdays - "What's so wrong with not having died?")
It's a nice thing that he's gone and done. I've gauged many of my accomplishments of late towards precedents set by my father. He survived Basic Training (when it was REALLY tough), I can do it. He can endure the Army, I can do it. He can manage not to kill his child (a big thank you, by the way, Dad), I can... well, so far, I've managed that one. So, if he can reach 60, then by golly, I'm gonna do it.
And finally, as a special treat, there's a particular copy of a comedy routine (I think it's by George Carlin, but I can't be sure.
Since I'm not sure exactly to whom the copyright belongs, please know that this material was originally written by whomever originally wrote it... originally.
Here goes:
Do you realize that the only time in our lives when we like to get old is when we're kids?
If you're less than 10 years old, you're so excited about aging that you think in fractions. "How old are you?" "I'm four and a half!" You're never thirty-six and a half. You're four and a half, going on five!
That's the key. You get into your teens, now they can't hold you back.
You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead. "How old are you?" "I'm gonna be 16!" You could be 13, but hey, you're gonna be 16!
And then the greatest day of your life . . . you become 21. Even the words sound like a ceremony . . . YOU BECOME 21. . . YEAS!!!
But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk. He TURNED, we had to throw him out. There's no fun now, you're just a sour-dumpling. What's wrong? What's changed?
You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you're PUSHING 40. Whoa! Put on the brakes, it's all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50 . . . and your dreams are gone.
But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn't think you would!
So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60. You've built up so much speed that you HIT 70!
After that it's a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday! You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime.
And it doesn't end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; "I was JUST 92."
Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. "I'm 100 and a half!"
May you all make it to a healthy 100 and a half!!
HOW TO STAY YOUNG
1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and height. Let the doctor worry about them. That is why you pay him/her.
2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down.
3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever. Never let the brain idle. " An idle mind is the devil's workshop." And the devil's name is Alzheimer's.
4. Enjoy the simple things.
5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.
6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person who is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are alive.
7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets, keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.
8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable, improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.
9. Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, to the next county, to a foreign country, but NOT to where the guilt is.
10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.
AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
Happy Birthday, Dad!
Followup Regarding Generosity (F.R.G.)
Thanks for the comment, Tom... sadly, I think that since the 1SG has been the one who suggested that I not accept nor solicit any help from the FRG (i.e., ANYone connected to the unit), I don't see it happening.
I am allowed to use one friend. She's a Soldier in the unit, but she's also a really good friend, and someone whom the kids love and adore. She's practically a member of the family (even spent Christmas with us). Anyway, we've worked out a deal with her supervisor where she can even come over and watch the kids even during duty hours.
However, of course... even any other friends who are connected to the unit are unusable for babysitting.
Checked with the base CDC (Child Development Center or Child Dumping Center) and there are easy to find spots for M and K, but of course, not T. Their slots are all full. So, I'll figure something out there... not sure what...
Probably going to work like this: Kids in school, and Soldier can watch T, as long as duty doesn't conflict. She is serving on the Quick Reaction Force, so in the event that the base is invaded, she'll need to drop T off with... someone. Going to try to find a back-up to my plan.
Sigh...
Think I'll be smart and try to find some babysitters on the economy. They aren't connected to the unit! Germans are working well for M, so why not? Besides, they'll be paid... Who can argue with that?
(Oh, and Tom... I think I'll pass on the WTF... good sentiment, but doesn't quite fit with the site...)
Passing 10,000 hits!!!
I am allowed to use one friend. She's a Soldier in the unit, but she's also a really good friend, and someone whom the kids love and adore. She's practically a member of the family (even spent Christmas with us). Anyway, we've worked out a deal with her supervisor where she can even come over and watch the kids even during duty hours.
However, of course... even any other friends who are connected to the unit are unusable for babysitting.
Checked with the base CDC (Child Development Center or Child Dumping Center) and there are easy to find spots for M and K, but of course, not T. Their slots are all full. So, I'll figure something out there... not sure what...
Probably going to work like this: Kids in school, and Soldier can watch T, as long as duty doesn't conflict. She is serving on the Quick Reaction Force, so in the event that the base is invaded, she'll need to drop T off with... someone. Going to try to find a back-up to my plan.
Sigh...
Think I'll be smart and try to find some babysitters on the economy. They aren't connected to the unit! Germans are working well for M, so why not? Besides, they'll be paid... Who can argue with that?
(Oh, and Tom... I think I'll pass on the WTF... good sentiment, but doesn't quite fit with the site...)
Passing 10,000 hits!!!
A Ray of Sunshine
Well, some good news...
AAFES, known for its consistent overcharging of gas prices (yes, yes, I know, they deny it), is lowering gas prices next month.
Currently, I pay $2.62 per gallon of gas. Next month, it'll be $2.43.
Some education: In Germany (and some other countries), AAFES sets gas prices monthly. It's said to be based to the Department of Energy's index of gas prices in the states, but... no one quite believes that is the whole truth. Anyway, I'll save that rant for another post.
Bottom line, it should get cheaper, which is great news... currently, I'm filling up about $50-$60 every two days... so, any drop in the price is going to be a welcome respite...
Nice ray of sunshine!!!
AAFES, known for its consistent overcharging of gas prices (yes, yes, I know, they deny it), is lowering gas prices next month.
Currently, I pay $2.62 per gallon of gas. Next month, it'll be $2.43.
Some education: In Germany (and some other countries), AAFES sets gas prices monthly. It's said to be based to the Department of Energy's index of gas prices in the states, but... no one quite believes that is the whole truth. Anyway, I'll save that rant for another post.
Bottom line, it should get cheaper, which is great news... currently, I'm filling up about $50-$60 every two days... so, any drop in the price is going to be a welcome respite...
Nice ray of sunshine!!!
Insert Title Here*
I'm not sure where to even start... I'm not so much frustrated as... well, I don't even know.
Had a sit-down chat with the First Sergeant this morning. It was kindly suggested that I back off of using the offers of help from the FRG. Someone complained.
Doesn't someone always complain?
It seems that as hard as I tried to make sure I spread things out and didn't use the same people over and over (even though that meant the kids were always with new people), someone felt "used" and "overworked" and "overburdened".
Not sure how, but it doesn't matter.
Someone complained.
A phone call was made.
And the kicker is I don't know who's still on the "We'd LOVE to Help" list. So, have to drop everyone.
No more dinner help, either (even though that was never the same person twice).
So, back to paying for childcare (when available, cause the spots just aren't open). Kids are still home on winter break...
Just incredibly frustrating.
What would it take for people to be GENUINELY honest and open? If you can't help, then don't offer. If you feel motivated to say something, then offer, "You're in our thoughts" or "That's a shame..." But, if you SAY "How can I help?" or "Can I watch the kids?", then please don't complain if I take you up on it.
The FRG offered to bring meals... apparently, someone is overburdened.
The FRG offered the childcare.
But, alas. I just have to move to my fall-back plan... paying for childcare and making do best I can. $12/hour/child. Grrrrrrrr. And of course, the ONE child not in school (once the schools are running again?)... Thomas. The one place that's full-up and can't take more kids? Infant-care.
Frustrating. Sad.
But, as I told 1SG, not unexpected. In all such situations, there's always the huge swell of sympathy, empathy, and "How can we help?"... and then, it dies down. And further, it eventually turns to resentment. It's a common cycle, and it can be seen in any long-term cycle of need - be it caring for a sick person, helping out a family struck by crisis (home burns down), or even on a larger scale, Hurricane Katrina Evacuees.
Anyway, getting ready to start writing the Thank You notes. So many people HAVE been genuinely wonderful... of course, anyone of them could have also made the phone call, but as a boss of mine once taught me (he said it like a mantra), "Believe in the good of the people."
Regroup... Restrategize... Re-plan... Rebudget... Life goes on.
* - I said Insert Title Here as there were quite a few possible ones, and none struck me as a good one. So, here for those who love titles are some of the contenders:
The Downward Wave
Inevitability is Inevitable
Frustration
A Small Community
It Takes Just One Call
(Do YOU have a suggested title?)
Had a sit-down chat with the First Sergeant this morning. It was kindly suggested that I back off of using the offers of help from the FRG. Someone complained.
Doesn't someone always complain?
It seems that as hard as I tried to make sure I spread things out and didn't use the same people over and over (even though that meant the kids were always with new people), someone felt "used" and "overworked" and "overburdened".
Not sure how, but it doesn't matter.
Someone complained.
A phone call was made.
And the kicker is I don't know who's still on the "We'd LOVE to Help" list. So, have to drop everyone.
No more dinner help, either (even though that was never the same person twice).
So, back to paying for childcare (when available, cause the spots just aren't open). Kids are still home on winter break...
Just incredibly frustrating.
What would it take for people to be GENUINELY honest and open? If you can't help, then don't offer. If you feel motivated to say something, then offer, "You're in our thoughts" or "That's a shame..." But, if you SAY "How can I help?" or "Can I watch the kids?", then please don't complain if I take you up on it.
The FRG offered to bring meals... apparently, someone is overburdened.
The FRG offered the childcare.
But, alas. I just have to move to my fall-back plan... paying for childcare and making do best I can. $12/hour/child. Grrrrrrrr. And of course, the ONE child not in school (once the schools are running again?)... Thomas. The one place that's full-up and can't take more kids? Infant-care.
Frustrating. Sad.
But, as I told 1SG, not unexpected. In all such situations, there's always the huge swell of sympathy, empathy, and "How can we help?"... and then, it dies down. And further, it eventually turns to resentment. It's a common cycle, and it can be seen in any long-term cycle of need - be it caring for a sick person, helping out a family struck by crisis (home burns down), or even on a larger scale, Hurricane Katrina Evacuees.
Anyway, getting ready to start writing the Thank You notes. So many people HAVE been genuinely wonderful... of course, anyone of them could have also made the phone call, but as a boss of mine once taught me (he said it like a mantra), "Believe in the good of the people."
Regroup... Restrategize... Re-plan... Rebudget... Life goes on.
* - I said Insert Title Here as there were quite a few possible ones, and none struck me as a good one. So, here for those who love titles are some of the contenders:
The Downward Wave
Inevitability is Inevitable
Frustration
A Small Community
It Takes Just One Call
(Do YOU have a suggested title?)
26 December 2005
They Came From the East
Ok, a hat tip here to CounterColumn. Mary Ann sent this to me. The picture is on there with the caption "They came from the East, three of them... bearing gifts."
Love it. Nice little twist.
(and yes, before anyone comments, I CAN count... There are four. Let it go...)
Cowards!
Something to keep in mind during the next time you're watching your favorite war shoot-em-up flick, or listening to some good ol-fashioned gansta rap...
It seems that a lot of celebrities (whom we're all sure "Support The Troops") are either too AFRAID or too Anti-War to go perform for the troops.
According to an article in UK's The Guardian, many of the stars who used to rally to the cause now shy away. Also, to be fair, hat tip to Robin Williams, Al Franken, and Henry Rollins, who, according to the article, have done shows while not supporting the war.
Some people talk... others are all talk.
It seems that a lot of celebrities (whom we're all sure "Support The Troops") are either too AFRAID or too Anti-War to go perform for the troops.
According to an article in UK's The Guardian, many of the stars who used to rally to the cause now shy away. Also, to be fair, hat tip to Robin Williams, Al Franken, and Henry Rollins, who, according to the article, have done shows while not supporting the war.
Some people talk... others are all talk.
24 December 2005
Christmas Achieved!
For the past couple of weeks, I've had a bit of a Sword of Damocles hanging over my head.
Christmas is a firm date on the calendar. No hiding it. No moving it. It is where it is.
Well, with the move, the week lost to the hospital (not a bad reason, just a fact), and then all the other appointments, etc... well, Christmas at our household was in jeopardy.
There just wasn't enough time. When to get a tree up? Buy presents? Decorate?
It wasn't happening. And as much as Ellicia and I could certainly forgive each other if there was no Christmas this year, the children would never understand. It would be retold countless times some twenty years from now in books and on Oprah's couch.
Sigh.
The days continued to march forward, and Christmas seemed more and more hopeless.
To add to it, in the immediate days leading up, there was another treatment for Ellicia, so that effectively not only took her out of the ballgame, but immobilized me as well... can't go anywhere if I'm staying to make sure she's ok (again, not complaining).
And then, a break. On Friday, 23 December, I got the tree up. A live tree and stand had been donated to us, and had been sitting on our balcony (still is, too), but AAFES, in all its wisdom, does not sell 110V lights. They sold plenty of 220V lights - just like I can buy at ANY OTHER STORE in Germany, but the 110V that I need in base housing? Can't find that... sigh. What's a tree with no lights?
We had an artificial tree (with lights pre-arranged), so up it went.
I begged a friend to come over for a few hours Friday afternoon so Ellicia and I could go shopping. She napped before, and had just enough strength to wander some aisles and we picked up a few things for the kids. Yippee!!!
And Saturday, Christmas Eve, the same friend blessedly took the kids out... as far as I can tell, they did a lot of driving and wandering, but for 6 sacred hours, we were alone. Presents were wrapped. Tree was decorated. Stockings were prepped (thanks to my Mum for some awesome stockings). We are set.
The house finally looks ready for Christmas. The kids will have it.
As for me, I'm a little sick, but nothing NyQuil can't take care of... and as for the stress, well, nothing a little NyQuil can't take care of... :)
Fröhliche Weihnachten!
(Merry Christmas)
Christmas is a firm date on the calendar. No hiding it. No moving it. It is where it is.
Well, with the move, the week lost to the hospital (not a bad reason, just a fact), and then all the other appointments, etc... well, Christmas at our household was in jeopardy.
There just wasn't enough time. When to get a tree up? Buy presents? Decorate?
It wasn't happening. And as much as Ellicia and I could certainly forgive each other if there was no Christmas this year, the children would never understand. It would be retold countless times some twenty years from now in books and on Oprah's couch.
Sigh.
The days continued to march forward, and Christmas seemed more and more hopeless.
To add to it, in the immediate days leading up, there was another treatment for Ellicia, so that effectively not only took her out of the ballgame, but immobilized me as well... can't go anywhere if I'm staying to make sure she's ok (again, not complaining).
And then, a break. On Friday, 23 December, I got the tree up. A live tree and stand had been donated to us, and had been sitting on our balcony (still is, too), but AAFES, in all its wisdom, does not sell 110V lights. They sold plenty of 220V lights - just like I can buy at ANY OTHER STORE in Germany, but the 110V that I need in base housing? Can't find that... sigh. What's a tree with no lights?
We had an artificial tree (with lights pre-arranged), so up it went.
I begged a friend to come over for a few hours Friday afternoon so Ellicia and I could go shopping. She napped before, and had just enough strength to wander some aisles and we picked up a few things for the kids. Yippee!!!
And Saturday, Christmas Eve, the same friend blessedly took the kids out... as far as I can tell, they did a lot of driving and wandering, but for 6 sacred hours, we were alone. Presents were wrapped. Tree was decorated. Stockings were prepped (thanks to my Mum for some awesome stockings). We are set.
The house finally looks ready for Christmas. The kids will have it.
As for me, I'm a little sick, but nothing NyQuil can't take care of... and as for the stress, well, nothing a little NyQuil can't take care of... :)
Fröhliche Weihnachten!
(Merry Christmas)
Chaplains, Redux
I recently wrote about the Navy Chaplain on a hunger strike in front of the White House.
While driving to another doc appointment, it occurred to me just how much fire he's playing with.
Overseas, we Americans pretty much get to listen to one source of American radio... Armed Forces Network.
AFN is a government-owned service. It's broadcasters are government employees. The whole thing is government... not a commercially originating part in there.
So what?
Well, it's possibly significant when AFN provides airtime to Chaplains - "Power Hour".
Or significant when the shows devote their time to Christmas music (no, not holiday music). While "Jingle Bells" could be argued as non-threatening to the ACLU, "Oh come, Emanuel" can most definitely not.
So, again... the Chaplain in question should realize that by drawing unnecessary attention to a cause that isn't really justified, he's throwing into jeopardy all the OTHER examples of religion supported by the government.
Just what IS the goal, here? To be able to say "Jesus" to a seaman who comes asking for help regarding a problem (religious or not), or to end up with a religiously sanitized military?
(Not that the Chaplain is reading the blog, but... just a thought.)
While driving to another doc appointment, it occurred to me just how much fire he's playing with.
Overseas, we Americans pretty much get to listen to one source of American radio... Armed Forces Network.
AFN is a government-owned service. It's broadcasters are government employees. The whole thing is government... not a commercially originating part in there.
So what?
Well, it's possibly significant when AFN provides airtime to Chaplains - "Power Hour".
Or significant when the shows devote their time to Christmas music (no, not holiday music). While "Jingle Bells" could be argued as non-threatening to the ACLU, "Oh come, Emanuel" can most definitely not.
So, again... the Chaplain in question should realize that by drawing unnecessary attention to a cause that isn't really justified, he's throwing into jeopardy all the OTHER examples of religion supported by the government.
Just what IS the goal, here? To be able to say "Jesus" to a seaman who comes asking for help regarding a problem (religious or not), or to end up with a religiously sanitized military?
(Not that the Chaplain is reading the blog, but... just a thought.)
C-17s in Largest Formation Ever
17 C-17's (nice number) flew in formation for the largest formation of C-17s ever. They can be seen flying over Charleston's beautiful new bridge (which I haven't seen yet) which is also impressive.
The 17 is quite a bird to fly on, as I've enjoyed a couple of times now...
During this flight, they practiced several of the 17's missions, including air drops, tactical landings, and refuelings.
Nice.
22 December 2005
Chaplains In The Military
This article in The Washington Times 21 December 2005 issue tries to raise concern over an issue that isn't there.
It seems there's a Navy Chaplain, LT Gordon Klingenschmitt, who's having a hunger strike in front of the White House. He's protesting that he's discouraged from praying in Jesus' name.
With due respect to the Chaplain, I believe he's misunderstood the balance between his duties as a Chaplain and his belief preferences.
Chaplains serve a unique role in the military. They exist to minister to all members of the service, irregardless of a Servicemember's choice of religion, or even choice of non-religion. Chaplains are schooled in the requirements of over 170 belief systems. Whatever their core, or originating faith, they're expected to serve all others. He may be Southern Baptist, for example, but he'll be expected to guide a Jewish Soldier through Hannukah, or a Muslim through Ramadan. Even a Wiccan through... well, I don't know enough about Wiccans to know their ministerial needs, but I'm informed that they are there.
Regulations don't prohibit a Chaplain mentioning "Jesus". It's just discouraged where the audience (say, for example, a mass formation) may be present. When a Chaplain leads a prayer for a Company preparing to deploy, she must remember her duty at that moment is to ALL of the Servicemembers present, not just the Christians in the crowd.
Chaplains are not at all restricted in how they may lead the services for their respective faiths.
Chaplains have difficult roles. They must cover such a wide religious landscape, AND even minister to those who have no religion at all. They provide counseling services, and are often a critical relief valve for those who serve. And most importantly, they do all of this in combat zones where they are un-armed.
Perhaps this Chaplain should realize that in a day and age where people are seeking to eliminate any tie between the church (particularly those wanting to say "Jesus", sir...) and state (as in "United States", i.e. issuer of a paycheck), perhaps it's not best to draw attention to a situation where we have government paid, trained, and endorsed preachers who quite often have captive audiences.
When shining a light, remember the light makes it easier for the enemy to find you, before you see them.
It seems there's a Navy Chaplain, LT Gordon Klingenschmitt, who's having a hunger strike in front of the White House. He's protesting that he's discouraged from praying in Jesus' name.
With due respect to the Chaplain, I believe he's misunderstood the balance between his duties as a Chaplain and his belief preferences.
Chaplains serve a unique role in the military. They exist to minister to all members of the service, irregardless of a Servicemember's choice of religion, or even choice of non-religion. Chaplains are schooled in the requirements of over 170 belief systems. Whatever their core, or originating faith, they're expected to serve all others. He may be Southern Baptist, for example, but he'll be expected to guide a Jewish Soldier through Hannukah, or a Muslim through Ramadan. Even a Wiccan through... well, I don't know enough about Wiccans to know their ministerial needs, but I'm informed that they are there.
Regulations don't prohibit a Chaplain mentioning "Jesus". It's just discouraged where the audience (say, for example, a mass formation) may be present. When a Chaplain leads a prayer for a Company preparing to deploy, she must remember her duty at that moment is to ALL of the Servicemembers present, not just the Christians in the crowd.
Chaplains are not at all restricted in how they may lead the services for their respective faiths.
Chaplains have difficult roles. They must cover such a wide religious landscape, AND even minister to those who have no religion at all. They provide counseling services, and are often a critical relief valve for those who serve. And most importantly, they do all of this in combat zones where they are un-armed.
Perhaps this Chaplain should realize that in a day and age where people are seeking to eliminate any tie between the church (particularly those wanting to say "Jesus", sir...) and state (as in "United States", i.e. issuer of a paycheck), perhaps it's not best to draw attention to a situation where we have government paid, trained, and endorsed preachers who quite often have captive audiences.
When shining a light, remember the light makes it easier for the enemy to find you, before you see them.
20 December 2005
Hair Today...
It finally reached that point... Ellicia's hair had fallen out to the point where... well, the description I can best use is that she was beginning to look as if she'd escaped from a nuclear accident.
So, with it now irritating her, we got the clippers out and... started shearing.
Of course, the clippers can only cut so close. So, finally, we added some shaving cream and then took a razor and removed the last traces...
She's as smooth as can be. And beautiful. Her smile lightens her face and shines from her eyes.
So, with it now irritating her, we got the clippers out and... started shearing.
Of course, the clippers can only cut so close. So, finally, we added some shaving cream and then took a razor and removed the last traces...
She's as smooth as can be. And beautiful. Her smile lightens her face and shines from her eyes.
19 December 2005
On A Lighter Note:
Just because I love Monty Python, I took this little quiz...
What Monty Python Character are you?
Running away? You yellow . . .
Take this quiz!
Quizilla |
Join
| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code
What Monty Python Character are you?
Running away? You yellow . . .
Take this quiz!
Quizilla |
Join
| Make A Quiz | More Quizzes | Grab Code
18 December 2005
Bear
Last week Ellicia received a special present from PJ. It's a beautiful, plus, PINK teddy bear.
It's been named Crabby Patty.
Crabby for the Zodiac sign of Cancer.
Patty just because Crabby by itself didn't seem right. And, so what if everyone thinks it's a Spongebob reference. It fits, because it comes back to Mr. Crabs!
Picture coming when technology is working again.
PJ - Ellicia LOVES it and it really lifted her spirits.
It's been named Crabby Patty.
Crabby for the Zodiac sign of Cancer.
Patty just because Crabby by itself didn't seem right. And, so what if everyone thinks it's a Spongebob reference. It fits, because it comes back to Mr. Crabs!
Picture coming when technology is working again.
PJ - Ellicia LOVES it and it really lifted her spirits.
200 Posts
What better way to note a landmark than with... another post?
As of now, there have been 200 posts by me. There have been SEVERAL hundred comments by all of you (not bad considering some of the challenging words used by the spam blocker).
There have been over 9,000 visits to this site in 9 months. Very flattering.
4 of you subscribe via RSS feeds.
Boosting my ego a bit, I'm up to #20 in the Top 100 of all Military blogs.
There has been an enormous outpouring of support, both pre-cancer (when I was just another Soldier supporting the Storm in Afghanistan) to now when I'm just a lucky guy who's helping his wife weather her storm.
So many of you have sent wonderful e-mails, real mail, and even packages (and some of you have been even supremely generous via PayPal.)
I continue to be amazed at the surefire generosity of those of you who support the troops. So many times, I was dismayed when some Joe would receive a package and be dismissive of its contents. While handling the mail, I often had the opportunity to note that while the contents of care packages may not have been of the highest monetary value (nor did it NEED to be), the amount spent on postage was perhaps best indicative of the support. For even when an Angel may send a box which may have only cost $5 at the local Wallyworld, it may have cost $15 to mail it. And for those of you who truly approach supporting the troops as an addictive hobby (you know who you are, and we LOVE you), I would see boxes with postage approaching $100.
There are those who counter-protest, those who visit injured troops, those who support families who've offered the supreme sacrifice, and those who write to a troop who's lonely and without a support network of his own.
It is, perhaps, in all of you that the truest nature of "Support Our Troops" is found. While likely never to be reported, there have surely been countless message drives, crafting sprees, rallies, and of course, racks and racks of cookies baked to remind us troops that what we see on TV is not reality and to not always believe what we read in the newspaper.
As I've said in other posts, I never foresaw what this blog would become, nor the apparent following it has gathered... I certainly never knew of the many wonderful people I would meet, even if not face to face. Agnieszka, Barb, Blackfive (I'm trying to get that form for you), CaliValleyGirl, Edward, GunnNutt, Holly Aho, Homefront Six, Household 6, Jen, Jenny, Mary Ann, Mary*Ann, NectarMaiden, Pat in NC, PJ, stormchaser, Tom Miller, Amy, Kayren, and of course, Anonymous.
Thank you... All.
As of now, there have been 200 posts by me. There have been SEVERAL hundred comments by all of you (not bad considering some of the challenging words used by the spam blocker).
There have been over 9,000 visits to this site in 9 months. Very flattering.
4 of you subscribe via RSS feeds.
Boosting my ego a bit, I'm up to #20 in the Top 100 of all Military blogs.
There has been an enormous outpouring of support, both pre-cancer (when I was just another Soldier supporting the Storm in Afghanistan) to now when I'm just a lucky guy who's helping his wife weather her storm.
So many of you have sent wonderful e-mails, real mail, and even packages (and some of you have been even supremely generous via PayPal.)
I continue to be amazed at the surefire generosity of those of you who support the troops. So many times, I was dismayed when some Joe would receive a package and be dismissive of its contents. While handling the mail, I often had the opportunity to note that while the contents of care packages may not have been of the highest monetary value (nor did it NEED to be), the amount spent on postage was perhaps best indicative of the support. For even when an Angel may send a box which may have only cost $5 at the local Wallyworld, it may have cost $15 to mail it. And for those of you who truly approach supporting the troops as an addictive hobby (you know who you are, and we LOVE you), I would see boxes with postage approaching $100.
There are those who counter-protest, those who visit injured troops, those who support families who've offered the supreme sacrifice, and those who write to a troop who's lonely and without a support network of his own.
It is, perhaps, in all of you that the truest nature of "Support Our Troops" is found. While likely never to be reported, there have surely been countless message drives, crafting sprees, rallies, and of course, racks and racks of cookies baked to remind us troops that what we see on TV is not reality and to not always believe what we read in the newspaper.
As I've said in other posts, I never foresaw what this blog would become, nor the apparent following it has gathered... I certainly never knew of the many wonderful people I would meet, even if not face to face. Agnieszka, Barb, Blackfive (I'm trying to get that form for you), CaliValleyGirl, Edward, GunnNutt, Holly Aho, Homefront Six, Household 6, Jen, Jenny, Mary Ann, Mary*Ann, NectarMaiden, Pat in NC, PJ, stormchaser, Tom Miller, Amy, Kayren, and of course, Anonymous.
Thank you... All.
New Normal
Well, life is slowly returning to normal.
We're back to the doctor visit routine...
Everyone's under one roof now...
T is pulling himself up and standing as long as he's holding on to something.
Should be able to turn in old apartment on Monday.
E is nearly bald.
M is extending the Terrible Two's for another season as the Terrible Three's.
It's snowing!
Haven't quite gotten the new place ready to put up Christmas yet, but hope to have Christmas decorations up no later than Valentine's Day.
While setting stuff up, I made a dumb mistake in deleting my Internet configuration. Now have to get a new password from the German phone system. Expecting a delay of 1-2 weeks.
Tired.
Exhausted.
Want a vacation already! hahaha
Trying to keep money straight... reducing income due to my no longer being deployed (one of the TRUE benefits of being deployed is a lot of extra $$$ each month). Sadly, the Army is backdating it to the day I came home (which is to be expected, of course, since that's when I was no longer deployed) but hasn't started the paperwork till now. This should be nice and messy, per Army standards. Throw in all the extra driving and AAFES gas-gouging prices... and well, it's getting pricey. But, hanging in there... Is what savings are for.
Pretty proud of T... watching him pull-up on things. *I* was the first object he pulled up on. He was sitting in my lap, and I held my arm straight out. He reached up, grabbed it, and stood up. All by hisself!
He's also advancing to developing his speaking skills. While no orator, yet, he IS getting ready. We should get a first word sometime in the next few months.
K is now out of school for her Christmas break.
M is loving her kindergarten, which is a good thing, cause she's becoming quite the handful at home! Ah, to think I once spoke of wanting SIX...
Cats have been good... even the mad-peer (pronounced PEE-er)himself, Scanner, has not decided to christen the new place. We're all very thankful.
Enjoying the snow. Gives everything a nice look...
(To all who e-mail, I am TRYING to answer... since I deleted my net access, I only access when I grab the laptop and find someplace where I can leech... please bear with me.)
:)
We're back to the doctor visit routine...
Everyone's under one roof now...
T is pulling himself up and standing as long as he's holding on to something.
Should be able to turn in old apartment on Monday.
E is nearly bald.
M is extending the Terrible Two's for another season as the Terrible Three's.
It's snowing!
Haven't quite gotten the new place ready to put up Christmas yet, but hope to have Christmas decorations up no later than Valentine's Day.
While setting stuff up, I made a dumb mistake in deleting my Internet configuration. Now have to get a new password from the German phone system. Expecting a delay of 1-2 weeks.
Tired.
Exhausted.
Want a vacation already! hahaha
Trying to keep money straight... reducing income due to my no longer being deployed (one of the TRUE benefits of being deployed is a lot of extra $$$ each month). Sadly, the Army is backdating it to the day I came home (which is to be expected, of course, since that's when I was no longer deployed) but hasn't started the paperwork till now. This should be nice and messy, per Army standards. Throw in all the extra driving and AAFES gas-gouging prices... and well, it's getting pricey. But, hanging in there... Is what savings are for.
Pretty proud of T... watching him pull-up on things. *I* was the first object he pulled up on. He was sitting in my lap, and I held my arm straight out. He reached up, grabbed it, and stood up. All by hisself!
He's also advancing to developing his speaking skills. While no orator, yet, he IS getting ready. We should get a first word sometime in the next few months.
K is now out of school for her Christmas break.
M is loving her kindergarten, which is a good thing, cause she's becoming quite the handful at home! Ah, to think I once spoke of wanting SIX...
Cats have been good... even the mad-peer (pronounced PEE-er)himself, Scanner, has not decided to christen the new place. We're all very thankful.
Enjoying the snow. Gives everything a nice look...
(To all who e-mail, I am TRYING to answer... since I deleted my net access, I only access when I grab the laptop and find someplace where I can leech... please bear with me.)
:)
15 December 2005
She's Home
Ellicia is home.
I'll have more later. But, right now, just truly exhausted... And sleep is calling.
But, she is home.
It is so good to see her sitting in the apartment. :)
Thank you all for your prayers and well-wishes... (but, let's not stop now!)
I'll have more later. But, right now, just truly exhausted... And sleep is calling.
But, she is home.
It is so good to see her sitting in the apartment. :)
Thank you all for your prayers and well-wishes... (but, let's not stop now!)
I Get to Stay
Found out today that we'll get to stay in Germany just a bit longer. My request for an extension has been approved. We're now going to stay until early 2009! Yippee!
13 December 2005
Leggo My Ego
Maybe it's ego... ok, so it's definitely an ego thing. Anyway, we're currently ranked at #50 in the Top 100 Milblogs at www.milblogging.com.
How much higher can we go?
Well, to break into the Top 20, it looks like I need a total of 14 votes... So, let's get out there and VOTE (it's not just for Iraqis and Afghans!)...
Register with the site (nothing bad happens to your Inbox and you don't get signed up for a bunch of stuff (make sure to un-check the subscription box if you don't want a newsletter), and then add A Storm In Afghanistan to your favorites (not the favorites for your Internet Explorer - we know you already have us there!).
Once you're registered, find my blog in the Top 100. Then, click on A Storm In Afghanistan.
At the bottom of the profile is a button to Add to Favorites. Click on that button to VOTE for A Storm In Afghanistan!
And when done, you won't even have any stains on your fingers... well, unless you've been eating a jelly doughnut while typing.
Thank you.
Now, leggo my ego...
How much higher can we go?
Well, to break into the Top 20, it looks like I need a total of 14 votes... So, let's get out there and VOTE (it's not just for Iraqis and Afghans!)...
Register with the site (nothing bad happens to your Inbox and you don't get signed up for a bunch of stuff (make sure to un-check the subscription box if you don't want a newsletter), and then add A Storm In Afghanistan to your favorites (not the favorites for your Internet Explorer - we know you already have us there!).
Once you're registered, find my blog in the Top 100. Then, click on A Storm In Afghanistan.
At the bottom of the profile is a button to Add to Favorites. Click on that button to VOTE for A Storm In Afghanistan!And when done, you won't even have any stains on your fingers... well, unless you've been eating a jelly doughnut while typing.
Thank you.
Now, leggo my ego...
E Update
What a joy to walk in to her room today! She was sitting up, wearing glasses, and smiling.
Wow.
I took her a can of soup (Campbell's Healthy Meal Chicken Noodle)and she had about half.
I saw she'd even been reading a little.
What a joy...
And then, it all came back. The headaches, the nausea, and yes, even the chicken noodle soup. I had to leave minutes after she'd vomited because I was out of time (as it was, I was still late picking M up from school).
These weekday schedules are rough. I feel like I barely get any time to see E, and I KNOW she wants more. But with the drive taking an hour+ each direction (I've driven over 700 kilometers (um, about 437 miles) in the last four days just for visits), and the schedules of the kids, plus other appointments, and contractors for the apartments, and... and... and...
It's just tiring. And it pains me to see her face as I leave. I HATE this.
Lump is smaller. Good news. Hair is disappearing (noticing it in the lesser known spots right now... like arm, chin, toes, etc.).
I hope to bring her home soon.
Going to go to bed now. A bit depressed. I miss my wife. I miss my kids. And I'm not even deployed.
I don't know what else I can do for E... :( :( :(
Wow.
I took her a can of soup (Campbell's Healthy Meal Chicken Noodle)and she had about half.
I saw she'd even been reading a little.
What a joy...
And then, it all came back. The headaches, the nausea, and yes, even the chicken noodle soup. I had to leave minutes after she'd vomited because I was out of time (as it was, I was still late picking M up from school).
These weekday schedules are rough. I feel like I barely get any time to see E, and I KNOW she wants more. But with the drive taking an hour+ each direction (I've driven over 700 kilometers (um, about 437 miles) in the last four days just for visits), and the schedules of the kids, plus other appointments, and contractors for the apartments, and... and... and...
It's just tiring. And it pains me to see her face as I leave. I HATE this.
Lump is smaller. Good news. Hair is disappearing (noticing it in the lesser known spots right now... like arm, chin, toes, etc.).
I hope to bring her home soon.
Going to go to bed now. A bit depressed. I miss my wife. I miss my kids. And I'm not even deployed.
I don't know what else I can do for E... :( :( :(
12 December 2005
Notes of Thanks
PJ Degross (nice card)
Mary Ann (Box of Goodies)
FRG (Twice a week dinner deliveries)
The Butlers (Babysitters extraordinaire)
The Unit (Amazing... just amazing.)
Holly Aho (for the nice plugs on her blog)
All of you Praying (um... for the prayers, of course)
Ellicia (for being worth the drive)
Mary Ann (Box of Goodies)
FRG (Twice a week dinner deliveries)
The Butlers (Babysitters extraordinaire)
The Unit (Amazing... just amazing.)
Holly Aho (for the nice plugs on her blog)
All of you Praying (um... for the prayers, of course)
Ellicia (for being worth the drive)
And at home?
Tired. Strangely enough, after getting a full night's sleep. Feel a bit overwhelmed, and not just from the tasks stacking up, but...
Well-meaning individuals (this does NOT include anyone sending e-mails).
Any and all trips anywhere on post must now include extra time factored in for the inevitable, "How is she?" "What can we do?" "Need anything?" "Oh my God! She's the ONE???"
Between needing to continuously update (or "brief") the:
CO
1SG
Platoon Sergeant
FRG
Chaplain
Clinic Doc
Patient Liasion
(that's all on a daily basis)
There's also of course friends, family, newly discovered supporters, and of course, perfect strangers.
Levels of information include:
Full detail (usually available in blog format)
Short detail (She's better, she's worse, partly cloudy, etc.)
I don't know you from Adam (Oh, she's fine... we're just doing the best we can. Thanks for asking.)
It is interesting to be near the top of the base gossip food chain, and have no illicit activity to accompany it. No, my truck wasn't parked overnight at the wrong house. But, we ARE all the talk of the base. Just an interesting position to be in.
Still want to get Ellicia a T-shirt which reads: "Yes, I'm the one with the cancer." Think it'd be a hoot.
Smile!
Well-meaning individuals (this does NOT include anyone sending e-mails).
Any and all trips anywhere on post must now include extra time factored in for the inevitable, "How is she?" "What can we do?" "Need anything?" "Oh my God! She's the ONE???"
Between needing to continuously update (or "brief") the:
CO
1SG
Platoon Sergeant
FRG
Chaplain
Clinic Doc
Patient Liasion
(that's all on a daily basis)
There's also of course friends, family, newly discovered supporters, and of course, perfect strangers.
Levels of information include:
Full detail (usually available in blog format)
Short detail (She's better, she's worse, partly cloudy, etc.)
I don't know you from Adam (Oh, she's fine... we're just doing the best we can. Thanks for asking.)
It is interesting to be near the top of the base gossip food chain, and have no illicit activity to accompany it. No, my truck wasn't parked overnight at the wrong house. But, we ARE all the talk of the base. Just an interesting position to be in.
Still want to get Ellicia a T-shirt which reads: "Yes, I'm the one with the cancer." Think it'd be a hoot.
Smile!
Un-Masked!
Ellicia has improved.
Ok, ok, you wouldn't know this from talking to her. But, she has! Her White Blood Cell count is up to 1500 (a marked improvement from the dangerously low hundreds before). This means that we no longer need to be masked, gowned, gloved, and capped just to be in the same room with her. However, I am still taking those precautions as I have some sniffles, and don't wish to challenge her further.
Docs say that if she continues to improve, she may be home by Friday.
She still has nausea, dizziness, pains, and gets her nutrition via McIV bag, but... it's an improvement.
Today was such a short visit... felt horribly guilty. She has nothing to do (nor the desire to, really, but that's beside the point) and I felt SO horrible. But, the rest of the world was DEMANDING attention.
Talked to the doc today, with the patient liasion providing any needed translation assistance (none needed). Some vital questions answered include:
Can Ellicia Continue Her Chemo?
Yes. By all means.
What precautions need to be taken considering home includes 3 kids, 2 cats, 1 hubby, and approximately 8,654,283,512 germs?
During second week after chemo, Ellicia will wear a mask 24/7 for a solid week.
What else can we do to avoid future hospital visits?
We've learned that her body (the bone marrow) just cannot keep up with the chemo. Therefore, some boosting injections will be recommended prior to each treatment as a prophylactic.
Other news?
Lump is smaller. Perhaps that's good news in the lungs, as well?
Her first clump of hair passed through her fingers. She smiled.
Ok, ok, you wouldn't know this from talking to her. But, she has! Her White Blood Cell count is up to 1500 (a marked improvement from the dangerously low hundreds before). This means that we no longer need to be masked, gowned, gloved, and capped just to be in the same room with her. However, I am still taking those precautions as I have some sniffles, and don't wish to challenge her further.
Docs say that if she continues to improve, she may be home by Friday.
She still has nausea, dizziness, pains, and gets her nutrition via McIV bag, but... it's an improvement.
Today was such a short visit... felt horribly guilty. She has nothing to do (nor the desire to, really, but that's beside the point) and I felt SO horrible. But, the rest of the world was DEMANDING attention.
Talked to the doc today, with the patient liasion providing any needed translation assistance (none needed). Some vital questions answered include:
Can Ellicia Continue Her Chemo?
Yes. By all means.
What precautions need to be taken considering home includes 3 kids, 2 cats, 1 hubby, and approximately 8,654,283,512 germs?
During second week after chemo, Ellicia will wear a mask 24/7 for a solid week.
What else can we do to avoid future hospital visits?
We've learned that her body (the bone marrow) just cannot keep up with the chemo. Therefore, some boosting injections will be recommended prior to each treatment as a prophylactic.
Other news?
Lump is smaller. Perhaps that's good news in the lungs, as well?
Her first clump of hair passed through her fingers. She smiled.
Seen in the Base Clinic
While scheduling appointments this morning, I noticed someone at hung a sign with this on it:
"All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood to do the fighting for them."
--Emma Goldman
(Who is Emma Goldman? She was an anarchist, amongst other bright spots on her resume.
Anyway, such a wonderful thing to see in our clinic. I hope I have some free time coming up to point it out.
I'm sure those in charge would like it removed before those in charge of them notice it and choose to remind them of the UCMJ implications of such statements which could easily be interpreted as implying that the Commander-in-Chief is a thief and coward.
Just started the day on such a bright note.
"All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore induce the young manhood to do the fighting for them."
--Emma Goldman
(Who is Emma Goldman? She was an anarchist, amongst other bright spots on her resume.
Anyway, such a wonderful thing to see in our clinic. I hope I have some free time coming up to point it out.
I'm sure those in charge would like it removed before those in charge of them notice it and choose to remind them of the UCMJ implications of such statements which could easily be interpreted as implying that the Commander-in-Chief is a thief and coward.
Just started the day on such a bright note.
Address
Well, judging by the comments, y'all would like an address.
So, here it is:
Ellicia Stanley
CMR 416 Box 1441
APO, AE 09140
(Now, for those of you who aren't fans, I refer you to USPS Guide to Mailing. You'll note that about 2/3's down, it lists prohibited items. So, no ammunition or explosive devices.
I'm sure that Ellicia will appreciate anything sent that cheers her up, and you all are sweet for thinking of her.
So, here it is:
Ellicia Stanley
CMR 416 Box 1441
APO, AE 09140
(Now, for those of you who aren't fans, I refer you to USPS Guide to Mailing. You'll note that about 2/3's down, it lists prohibited items. So, no ammunition or explosive devices.
I'm sure that Ellicia will appreciate anything sent that cheers her up, and you all are sweet for thinking of her.
11 December 2005
Day 2... or is it 3?
Spent yesterday with Ellicia at the hospital. It's difficult. Full isolation treatment - protective clothes, mask, gloves, cap...
She can't keep anything down, not for a lack of trying. Fever has subsided (good news?), but headache, nausea, and dizziness are still there. White Blood Cell count is still in the low hundreds (i.e. not really there at all).
She's tired, but lucid. Read her a card sent by PJ (from Web of Support). She liked it.
Hope to pick up kids tonight. Stayed up until 0600 last night working on house. HAVE to eliminate boxes, if just to make it safe for the kids to be there.
(Took a peek at Ellicia's email account, see if anything important in there... her ex sent a blustery e-mail about how Kira had missed a webcam appointment and that she, meaning Ellicia, had better have a good excuse! Hmm, I sure hope we can think of one.)
I'm about to be off to the hospital again. Slept for 4 hours last night... well, 3 and a half, really. But, am semi-rested. Hoping to hear good news.
Thank you for all of well-wishes and support.
She can't keep anything down, not for a lack of trying. Fever has subsided (good news?), but headache, nausea, and dizziness are still there. White Blood Cell count is still in the low hundreds (i.e. not really there at all).
She's tired, but lucid. Read her a card sent by PJ (from Web of Support). She liked it.
Hope to pick up kids tonight. Stayed up until 0600 last night working on house. HAVE to eliminate boxes, if just to make it safe for the kids to be there.
(Took a peek at Ellicia's email account, see if anything important in there... her ex sent a blustery e-mail about how Kira had missed a webcam appointment and that she, meaning Ellicia, had better have a good excuse! Hmm, I sure hope we can think of one.)
I'm about to be off to the hospital again. Slept for 4 hours last night... well, 3 and a half, really. But, am semi-rested. Hoping to hear good news.
Thank you for all of well-wishes and support.
10 December 2005
Hospital
Ellicia is in the hospital. She is currently stable, but still fighting. Here’s the story:
Our moving began on Thursday. That afternoon, Ellicia went from up and about and busy to crashing and curling up on the sofa, very quickly. She stayed down except for trips to the bathroom to vomit.
I checked on her throughout the evening, and she just seemed a bit ill. Nothing serious.
When I finally went to bed (unpacking all night what I could), I touched her forehead, and immediately hopped right back out of bed. She was burning up. Thermometer said 103.7. Started pushing fluids, and called for an ambulance. [LONG story skipped here, I’ll save it for later.]
She went to the local hospital, and was admitted. They began giving her IV fluids, and tried to contain the fever. They placed her in isolation due to the fact that her white blood cell count (Immune System Gauge) was EXTREMELY low. No one allowed in without masks, disinfection, etc. She was allowed no drink, no food, no movement… everything through IV.
The doctor made the decision that she should be transferred as she needed more care than the local hospital could provide. She has been transferred to the University Hospital in Erlangen (about an hour – hour and a half – from here). Initially, they took her to the Intensive Care Unit of the Neurology department to check for meningitis. She was given CT scans, X-rays, spinal taps, plus much more, and placed into an isolation room (even MORE sterile and strict than previously). She doesn’t have any of the major problems.
She was then transferred to the Women’s clinic which handles gynecology. Yes, I know… that’s not an issue for us right now. However, in Germany, the gynecologists handle more than just “down there”. They also care for the breasts, and when applicable, breast cancer. These are the docs for her.
She has her own private room, sterilized, masks, etc. Guarding against future infection. When I left her last night, her fever was still dangerously high. I’m on my way to see her again.
She has not lost consciousness. She is stable. She is coherent. She is very weak. The doctors are concerned, but mostly want to get the fever down. Language is not a barrier here as all the docs speak fluent English.
Why did I leave her? Had to. Our children are staying with others, cats are in the old apartment – need food / water, and in our new apartment, almost everything we own is in boxes. I had to come back to at least get enough going to support the children for another day or so (clothes, diapers, baby food, etc.)
Our moving began on Thursday. That afternoon, Ellicia went from up and about and busy to crashing and curling up on the sofa, very quickly. She stayed down except for trips to the bathroom to vomit.
I checked on her throughout the evening, and she just seemed a bit ill. Nothing serious.
When I finally went to bed (unpacking all night what I could), I touched her forehead, and immediately hopped right back out of bed. She was burning up. Thermometer said 103.7. Started pushing fluids, and called for an ambulance. [LONG story skipped here, I’ll save it for later.]
She went to the local hospital, and was admitted. They began giving her IV fluids, and tried to contain the fever. They placed her in isolation due to the fact that her white blood cell count (Immune System Gauge) was EXTREMELY low. No one allowed in without masks, disinfection, etc. She was allowed no drink, no food, no movement… everything through IV.
The doctor made the decision that she should be transferred as she needed more care than the local hospital could provide. She has been transferred to the University Hospital in Erlangen (about an hour – hour and a half – from here). Initially, they took her to the Intensive Care Unit of the Neurology department to check for meningitis. She was given CT scans, X-rays, spinal taps, plus much more, and placed into an isolation room (even MORE sterile and strict than previously). She doesn’t have any of the major problems.
She was then transferred to the Women’s clinic which handles gynecology. Yes, I know… that’s not an issue for us right now. However, in Germany, the gynecologists handle more than just “down there”. They also care for the breasts, and when applicable, breast cancer. These are the docs for her.
She has her own private room, sterilized, masks, etc. Guarding against future infection. When I left her last night, her fever was still dangerously high. I’m on my way to see her again.
She has not lost consciousness. She is stable. She is coherent. She is very weak. The doctors are concerned, but mostly want to get the fever down. Language is not a barrier here as all the docs speak fluent English.
Why did I leave her? Had to. Our children are staying with others, cats are in the old apartment – need food / water, and in our new apartment, almost everything we own is in boxes. I had to come back to at least get enough going to support the children for another day or so (clothes, diapers, baby food, etc.)
07 December 2005
Loss of a Great Man
Carroll Campbell, former Governor of the State of South Carolina, died on the morning of 7 December 2005.
It is a loss, as he was widely recognized as both a popular and effective Governor.
I've always felt a connection to him, partly because of his success as a Governor, but mostly out of a touching gesture from him one year.
He and I attended the same high school,The McCallie School. I remember getting cards from him, and it certainly seemed special and made an impression at the time.
Gov. Campbell had been suffering from Alzheimer's for the past six years. A terrible disease, he was mercifully spared the final effects.
Go in peace, Governor... you are missed.
It is a loss, as he was widely recognized as both a popular and effective Governor.
I've always felt a connection to him, partly because of his success as a Governor, but mostly out of a touching gesture from him one year.
He and I attended the same high school,The McCallie School. I remember getting cards from him, and it certainly seemed special and made an impression at the time.
Gov. Campbell had been suffering from Alzheimer's for the past six years. A terrible disease, he was mercifully spared the final effects.
Go in peace, Governor... you are missed.
Remembering Our Vets - 2
With a hattip to Miss Birdlegs, I encourage ALL of you to listen and watch this music video of Before You Go.
It's not the best song in the world, but it is touching and sweet. Have your speakers on, if possible.
Thank you.
It's not the best song in the world, but it is touching and sweet. Have your speakers on, if possible.
Thank you.
7 December
Today is 7 December. Pearl Harbor Day. I hope you remember. As Americans, we tend to have tragically short memories, as evidenced by some already forgetting 11 September.
Let's pause to reflect and remember the other time in recent history (there are still survivors walking and talking amongst us) the US was viciously attacked. It was, until 11 September, the worst attack ever suffered by the US. On that day, over 2,100 American servicepersons died in the space of a few hours (can you imagine today's media back then? Decrying the loss of life and how we would need to appease the Japanese freedom fighters?).
Every US Navy ship pauses to remember when entering Pearl Harbor.
Perhaps, today, we can pause and remember, too.
06 December 2005
Support the Troops
Yesterday, Two Babes and a Brain broke a story that will warm you to your very core.As you know, Soldiers get wounded in war. If you're seriously wounded, you often end up at Landstuhl (in Germany). If you're gravely wounded, you'll be in Walter Reed.
Soldiers there get a lot of support. Yes, there are the protests held outside its gates, but people DO support the troops.
And here they report on the touching Get Well Card that was sent to a Soldier at Walter Reed.
What is WRONG with people? We have third grade teachers assigning writing anti-war letters as homework, people protesting Soldiers' funerals, and now this.
Makes me SICK.
Another One...
Yet another statement from John Kerry, who has supported troops as far back as Vietnam, has come out with more support of our troops. Apparently, even though troops are meticulously taught the Rules of Engagement (there being no such thing for the other side), and even though troops are engaged in combat and fighting a war, he accuses them of "...terrorizing kids and children...".
Nice.
I have more I'd like to write, but... in truth, such comments by people make me nauseuous.
04 December 2005
Soldier Gifts for Christmas
It's getting to be the time for the holidays... and yes, there's Hannukah, Kwanzaa, Winter Solstice, Ramadan (already passed), "Two Week Break from School", and "Excuse to go massively in debt to give presents no one wants".
But, most of us think of Christmas.
Many of you have been sending boxes upon boxes of wonderful treats, supplies, books, dvds, snacks, and other assorted goodies.
Don't know what to get for Christmas?
What DO you send to a Soldier downrange?
Or an injured one in Landstuhl or Walter Reed or elsewhere?
Well, check out this site (note: rare AAFES plug).
This gives the chance to send AAFES gift certificates to Soldiers all over the world, and if you have no specific Soldier in mind, you can gift to the Armed Forces Relief Societies or even the American Red Cross.
Soldiers can use these in PXs and BXs all over the globe. Soldiers families can use them as well. An excellent opportunity and something that will certainly be valued by the troops.
And something for families...
You can also give certificates for Commissaries. (Commissaries are the ubiquitous grocery store for troops and their families. Often, at overseas locations, these are the only place they have to get familiar foods at US prices.) The Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) is offering the chance to "Give the Gift of Groceries".
Another worthwhile program.
But, most of us think of Christmas.
Many of you have been sending boxes upon boxes of wonderful treats, supplies, books, dvds, snacks, and other assorted goodies.
Don't know what to get for Christmas?
What DO you send to a Soldier downrange?
Or an injured one in Landstuhl or Walter Reed or elsewhere?
Well, check out this site (note: rare AAFES plug).
This gives the chance to send AAFES gift certificates to Soldiers all over the world, and if you have no specific Soldier in mind, you can gift to the Armed Forces Relief Societies or even the American Red Cross.
Soldiers can use these in PXs and BXs all over the globe. Soldiers families can use them as well. An excellent opportunity and something that will certainly be valued by the troops.
And something for families...
You can also give certificates for Commissaries. (Commissaries are the ubiquitous grocery store for troops and their families. Often, at overseas locations, these are the only place they have to get familiar foods at US prices.) The Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) is offering the chance to "Give the Gift of Groceries".
Another worthwhile program.
8,000+
Wow.
We've topped 8,000 visits. Not bad for a blogger who's not even IN Afghanistan anymore!
I'm honored and humbled that you all take time out of your busy days to visit my lil' ol' corner of the world.
Thank you.
We've topped 8,000 visits. Not bad for a blogger who's not even IN Afghanistan anymore!
I'm honored and humbled that you all take time out of your busy days to visit my lil' ol' corner of the world.
Thank you.
Feeling Guilty
I have GOT to find a way to beat this.
Have been feeling very guilty and depressed lately. Now, before anyone psychoanalyzes me through e-mail, please don't...
Anyway, what's been getting me down is simple: I'm home, and the unit isn't. It feels a lot like I felt back in March when the unit deployed without me.
I'm getting the priviledge of spending Thanksgiving and Christmas with the family - easily the two hardest holidays to spend apart. I have celebrated one birthday I'd have missed and will get to do another. I will likely get to see Thomas pull himself up any moment now.
And it all feels... unearned. I feel tremendously guilty. They're not home yet (and don't think my antennae didn't twitch when I heard of two more Storm choppers down) and I am.
Lucky me.
Don't get me wrong, I AM happy to be here. My wife and kids ARE my mission now. Just feel really guilty. Should be there.
Have been feeling very guilty and depressed lately. Now, before anyone psychoanalyzes me through e-mail, please don't...
Anyway, what's been getting me down is simple: I'm home, and the unit isn't. It feels a lot like I felt back in March when the unit deployed without me.
I'm getting the priviledge of spending Thanksgiving and Christmas with the family - easily the two hardest holidays to spend apart. I have celebrated one birthday I'd have missed and will get to do another. I will likely get to see Thomas pull himself up any moment now.
And it all feels... unearned. I feel tremendously guilty. They're not home yet (and don't think my antennae didn't twitch when I heard of two more Storm choppers down) and I am.
Lucky me.
Don't get me wrong, I AM happy to be here. My wife and kids ARE my mission now. Just feel really guilty. Should be there.
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