Sagepaper

This is the URL of a Website that tells the unpublicized story of a marine who won the Navy Cross, the second highest medal in the armed forces. I have long had an interest in studying medal citations for the Medal of Honor. This sounds an awful lot like one of those stories to me. I don't know whether he will receive the Medal of Honor, or if he has even been nominated. Regardless, this is the tale of an American Hero.

http://www.wtv-zone.com/Mary/THISWILLMAKEYOUPROUD.HTML

If you wish, please pass this on to people you think might care. There has not been much press coverage at all. His hometown newspaper only gave him two paragraphs.

I did something I thought was funny, but there was no one around to laugh. My dog was there, but he didn't really react. So, you get to read my tale.

I had just walked Zack, and we were headed back into the house. I stopped on the back porch, because there was a large bug smacking itself all over the walls and deck. It wasn't a June Bug, it hit harder than that. I got a look at it, and it appeared to be a Carpenter Bee. It continued to fly insanely about, though.

I couldn't time an entry to the house that would keep it out. Finally, I decided to just go in, since any moment was as good as the next. As I reached for the storm door, the bug hit me in the chest.

I leapt back several feet, full of frightened adrenaline. The bug dropped straight to the porch, and began to screech, almost like a scream. I looked down at it, and said, "Well at least we are agreed on that!"

It must belong to the locust family, but I have never heard anything like that before. It still haunts the back porch. I will walk Zack out the front door for a while. Any guesses on what its life expectancy might be?

I read an upsetting article on AOL. The military, at all levels, are becoming demoralized because they are the only ones making sacrifices in the War on Terror. They feel like all they get is lip service from home. Politicians think we won't back the War on Terror if we are asked to do anything more than show up a couple of hours early to get through airport security.

The troops are right. What's frustrating, though, is that they do enjoy a solid sentiment of support from the citizenry. The politicians are letting us all down. I am not the only one who wants to contribute, but doesn't know how. We need the government to ask us for specific sacrifices. We need to be organized, so we can harness our shared desire to prosecute the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Below is a note I left on Americasupportsyou.mil:

I read a disturbing article. It says that you are becoming discouraged, feeling that you are alone in carrying the burden of the War on Terror. To my frustration, I agree with you.

I have three magnets on my car -- two American flags, and one yellow ribbon that says, "Support Our Troops." That's a magnet or two more than I see on most cars. Everyone wants to support you, but we don't know how.

I'm sure you would rather have me do something that actually helps you and your family. I want that, too. I think the politicians do not give the public enough credit for being willing to make sacrifices. We need the government to help focus our desire to help in ways that are meaningful.

This official Website bothers me. I came here to help, if at all possible. I read about celebrity events, speeches, individual family members sending packages, etc. I finally found a place that lists what you most need and want to have sent from home. I would gladly buy things and send care packages for you. They didn't tell us how to address the packages.

I want direction, so I can do more than run around in a patriotic-looking car. Perhaps some of the officers could suggest members of Congress to contact. I hope this Website will become more than a correspondence site. I want it to help us all do our part in the War on Terror.

Just because you aren't seeing a show of support doesn't mean the people aren't behind you. We are willing to give what we can. So far, all we can offer are words. Maybe the USO could sell car magnets. It bothers me that the proceeds from the sale of all these magnets don't even go to you.

God bless you each and all! Come home safely!

I read an article that said there are between 10,000 and 20,000 homeless in Phoenix. A record number of them are dying in unusually blistering heat. Their total homeless shelter capacity is in the hundreds. City officials are being criticized for not opening a 500 bed, winter-only public shelter.

These people aren't seeing things the right way. This is not a social work problem. Police say some won't go into shelters that require drug and alcohol testing for admission. Others refuse help because they are mentally ill. These are references to individual problems about placing individual people in the most appropriate program or facility. This isn't about social programs to help homeless people get back on their feet.

People are dying. This is a natural disaster with many people suddenly in need of shelter. Why aren't the hallways of every floor of every downtown office building lined with these thousands of people who are facing death if not sheltered? Because the people in SUDDEN need of shelter are labeled "homeless" they are thinking small -- business as usual, only a little worse. This is NOT business as usual.

Ordinarily, the homeless are okay in the summer. That's why they have a winter-only shelter. Their need for shelter has shifted dramatically. It's not a matter of finding a place with a bed, showers, good quality used clothes and job placement services. People will die if they stay outside.

How do you step over someone, hoisting your briefcase, to walk into a shelter that could house many, many people? Part of the problem is we aren't used to third-world practicality in saving lives. You don't let those things into law offices, don't be absurd!

These people had homes: on the streets. Their homes have been destroyed by a natural disaster, and no longer provide adequate shelter. Were it not for the heat, the natural disaster, they would not be without adequate shelter. When a natural disaster suddenly leaves thousands without homes, they at least open the school gymnasiums.

Wake up, Phoenix, and smell the corpses!

I found the following in someone's profile on a Blog: Born in Tokyo. I am basically a coward, which causes me to think about peace and freedom. Here is my reply:

I was really into Gandhi when I was 12, and he's still one of my heroes. Pursuing "peace and freedom" takes courage, not cowardice. I suspect you are not actually a coward, but if you are I suggest you live under a fairly firm dictatorship.

Dictatorships tend to have less street crime, because the punishments are so severe. While you hear horror stories of things that happen to people, the fact is most people are never harassed by the government. The problem, though, is that everyone is afraid. No one knows for sure they won't be next. So, everyone cowers. This is where a coward belongs.

It took guts for Gandhi's followers to line-up and approach a British checkpoint and, without even blocking, get beaten with police batons. Peace is not an easy path, though it is worth it. Gandhi's followers were far more courageous than soldiers armed with guns.

Freedom isn't free. Throughout history, freedom has been available only to the most determined fighters. This includes the backing of civilians, as well as the battlefield victories of the soldiers.

Once freedom is won, the people are confronted with real responsibility. They must have the courage to speak-up for what they believe is right. Often, this takes more courage than keeping your mouth shut in a dictatorship. Freedom is not for cowards.

The freak-out below has been postponed until Thursday. I should be much more stable by then. Now I have to go soothe my tattered nerves. My entire smoking-addiction-apparatus was activated to go to the store and buy cigarettes. Fortunately, Dad called before I took off my patch.

Now I have to go convince my nicotine receptors that they will be all right because of the patch, and we can cancel the whole store thing. First, I'm going to get into PJ's so my addiction understands we are not leaving the house. If that sounds faintly nuts, don't worry. I tend to recover from my stress reaction after a week if I fail to quit smoking, and after two weeks if I succeed.

I bought some groceries, and might splurge on getting something delivered. I am not leaving this house unless I absolutely have to go. Unfortunately, we are experiencing some rough weather. I will not deploy as part of Skywarn until I think I can go out without bringing cigarettes home -- or even smoking that infamous "just one" and throwing the pack away.

Last week I got my lungs in a mess while hyper-smoking while senior-sitting some from Monday to Wednesday. Thursday, I smoked more than my norm, but much less than I had the previous few days. Friday, I cut back to normal, but was coughing-up little flecks of blood again. I was sick and worried, and had the luxury of my husband being gone. I smoked a single pack of cigarettes from Saturday to Monday afternoon. I quit smoking when I ran out, and slapped a patch on. Today I changed the patch.

I need to go senior-sit tonight again. This was sudden news. It's okay, I can do it, and I even have the first Harry Potter book to read to them. Here's the catch: I have to remove the patch and buy a pack of cigarettes. Now this whole line of thinking is probably just my addiction borrowing the rest of my brain to direct its own thinking and writing. However, I have a history of being terribly irritable when quitting smoking, even with a patch or other nicotine source. Now, I get upset when I get irritable with my husband, and he's used to it. I cannot subject my elderlies to the full-wrath of Day Two withdrawal.

Ideally, I would take a "wait-and-see" approach, and try to continue abstinence. If that proved to be a problem, I could then decide to give up and get cigarettes. But, I can't leave the ladies to go to the store. So, here comes the same reasoning posted once earlier. If I won't be able to smoke, and have a raving nic-fit, it will be awful. The awful would be worse than usual, because the symptoms of needing to smoke would be unpleasant for two very pleasant elders. So, I must ensure that does not happen. The only way to do that is to buy a pack of cigarettes. I am a Space-Cookie, as a friend has nick-named me. You can't smoke with the patch. Patch removal is just the type of thing I would forget. Soooo, I have to go ahead and take the patch off while I'm thinking about it. But, it is an hour and a half until I am supposed to arrive with dinner. They only live ten minutes away. Soooo, aaarrrgh!!!

Tomorrow is another day. I'm worried that I might be giving-up unnecessarily. I have had a meds tune-up since the last time I tried to quit. I am likely to be less irritable. So here's the plan: I will leave the patch on, then I will buy cigarettes, then I will pick-up carry-out, then I will go to their house and eat with them and read Harry Potter to them. I will hope for divine intervention to prevent me, a hopeless cigarette addict, from smoking the cigarettes I bought.

So, I will make-believe I am trying, but we all know I am flopping again.

That's okay, though. The reduced smoking weekend, and slightly over 24 hrs. cessation has given my lungs some much needed recovery time. This exercise has not been in vain.

(Isn't it amazing how I can find a way to pin the responsibility-for-my-actions tail somewhere other than on my own ass.)

The short answer is I think he is lying now. I think he did intend to leak the identity to the press, regardless of who actually called a reporter first. Often, intent defines a crime, and I think he had criminal intent as well as criminal action.

If he had already heard that Valerie Plame had been outed by the media, why didn't he refer to her by name? If it were--in his mind--no secret, why be round-about with it? Why talk about "Wilson's wife?"

There is, perhaps, a legitimate answer to that question, but it would raise another just as serious. People who deal with sensitive material are discouraged from discussing even public-domain knowledge. Not everyone is Tom Clancey. Most people don't know how to obtain sensitive information, so a comment at a party about something you know is not classified could still be of use to a spy or enemy.

Even the lowliest enlisted man with no special clearance knows, "Loose lips sink ships."

To protect our open society, our people who are cleared to work with classified information are taught to keep their mouths shut, even if they think what they would say would be harmless. Besides, it would be too easy for someone to play a game with you to see which questions you would answer, and which questions you would be coy about. That alone is information.

Perhaps he thought he should be oblique, just out of a habit of protecting information. But if he felt uneasy about speaking on the topic, he should have stonewalled and terminated the conversation. If he has been trained in the handling of sensitive material (and I can't imagine he has not been, at his level) he must surely have known he was in dangerous waters, approaching the falls of a criminal disclosure.

If the information were already in the media, let the people read it for themselves. They do not need his input. Simply offering a verification of classified material is an unauthorized release of information. (Well, let's hope it was unauthorized.)

I do not believe that any portion of his conversations with the press were accidental slips. I think he knew what he was doing, or was criminally negligent for not knowing. He decided to disclose material, and did not appear to have believed it was already in the media. If he did believe it was in the media, his conscience was sending him a clear signal that he was straying considerably from the straight-and-narrow.

I am tempted to tell you the whole grueling story of what I had to go through to get "Sagepaper" as my clickable name for this Blog instead of "TaiChimp." I have been wanting to post as Sagepaper, but when I do, you can't click the name and navigate to my blog. I would have to use TaiChimp for that. I don't mind "TaiChimp," I do a lot of online stuff with that name. I just wanted a breath of fresh air for my new venture into Blogging. I had no idea what I was doing when I started this account. I must confess, I harbor some hope that I will see more comments here, since other bloggers can now find my site.

Monday through Wednesday I spent the late afternoons and evenings "senior sitting." I have a 90-year-old grandmother, and an 83-year-old great aunt. They live together at my father's house. They have a paid care-taker, but she has been ill this week. Dad is normally home on Tuesdays, but had an important meeting to attend. So, I was the pinch-hitter.

I smoke entirely too much when I am over there. There are two primary reasons for that. First, I can smoke in the house. I do not smoke in my own house. Second, I get nervous and worried about how to talk to them. These two sisters are very different. It is not easy to do something with them which will be engaging for both of them.

I think I found the answer to the second problem. The first night, I came prepared with a bunch of jokes from the Internet. I didn't bring enough, so I started reading them Reader's Digest jokes. The second night, Dad's meeting came up suddenly, and I was unprepared. I don't remember why the subject came up, but I told them the story of Trotsky. They were very interested.

On Wednesday, the caretaker was still ill, and I had to rush after an appointment to get there in time to sit with them. I was upset and worried. I have fragile lungs, and had just spent two nights in a row smoking like a chimney. I didn't know if my lungs could take three nights in a row. I was completely out of ideas. I had no plan for interacting with them, and thought I had already exhausted the possibilities for the time being.

We had caught up on some news before my telling them about Trotsky. There were no new significant news developments that I knew about. Asking them what was going on flopped. They hadn't seen any news that day. I told them my husband wanted to see a late movie after dinner, but I wasn't sure what might be available that we hadn't seen.

I said we were keenly interested in seeing the new Harry Potter movie, but that I didn't think it was out yet. They didn't know about Harry Potter. I told them how Harry Potter had become so popular, and about how adults were really enjoying the stories, too. Aunt J wanted to know if it was just about some little boy. I told them the story of Harry Potter up to his arrival at Hogwarts. There was enough interest that I stopped and told them I would come read to them. Besides, it was dinner-time.

I did not eat with them. I was waiting to eat with my husband, before possibly catching a late movie. The explanation for my just keeping them company through dinner led to another surprisingly easy way to talk to them. I wanted to know how the new War of the Worlds movie I saw compared with the original broadcast and 1950's movie.

I asked if they remembered how War of the Worlds ended, saving humanity from the invasion. Neither of them did, in fact, neither had heard the initial broadcast nor seen the 1950's movie. I told them I would go ahead and spoil that story for them, since they were unlikely to get to the theater themselves. So I told them the story of War of the Worlds.

It was sometimes difficult to tell if Grandma N was listening. She has been very depressed and withdrawn lately. She does not make eye contact much, but she is hard of hearing and tends to position her head for optimal hearing. She falls asleep in that position, too, though. I was pleased, though, that she made short, but relevant and insightful statements at the end of each thing I discussed. She was listening!

Now, we have the makings of a match made in heaven. I am a born story teller. In fact, in my cosmos, it is okay for something bad to happen to me, as long as it makes a good story. If I had a flat tire, and pulled into a convenient place, and changed the tire without incident, I would be very unhappy about it.

On the other hand, there was a time my roommate and I followed a deteriorating dirt road down the side of a mountain in West Virginia. The road turned into a dry stream bed, and we had no hope of turning around -- it was too narrow. Our hopes waned as we began driving down steps in the stream bed. Even if we could turn around, we would have to move some considerable rocks to get back out.

Finally, we got to a ford across a medium-sized, swift moving stream. Upon evaluation, it was clear that my little Toyota SR5 Sport coupe was not going to make it across the river. There was, however, enough room to turn around with a lot of backing-and-filling. We started back up the stream bed and went to our first impasse.

I got out and got some tools from the trunk that I thought would help us. I went forward to examine the rock, and wanted another tool from the trunk. My roommate said the trunk was closed, so she needed me to get it. I got a lump in my throat that fell through my heart and stomach and into my ankles. I had locked the keys in the trunk.

Believe it or not, that is just the introduction. The real story starts from that moment when I locked my keys in the trunk. Here's the point, though: I would rather have that event in West Virginia than the ho-hum tire change. Most folks aren't like that. If they had a choice, they would take the simple tire change over the predicament in Somewhere, West Virginia. (My roommate had been upset that we were lost long before we took that dirt road. She soon lost interest in where we were, since, in her mind, we were never going home again anyway.)

Anyway, everyone in my family is sick of my stories, dislikes my intensity, and is too wrapped-up with other things too listen. My dog knows most of my biography. Here, though, are two potential victims -- they LIKE stories. They are used to the good old days when the family would gather in the living room around the radio and listen to stories. There is enough of a generational difference that I actually get higher ratings than the television.

Someone posted a comment on TSHSMom's Blog praising her for her honesty. TSHSMom responded by saying honesty is a curse in their family. In response, I wrote the following:

Honesty is one of the symptoms of Tourettes. It is a disorder of
disinhibition. You are likely to blurt out the truth at anytime. It could happen
driving a car alone, or it could happen at a business cocktail party.

Given the risk of blurting out the truth, it behooves us to try to lead
exemplary lives. That way we don't blurt a truth that reflects ill on us, or
would be offensive to others. Not offending others is kind of hard, but at least
you can maintain a respectable reputation.

It should be noted that this does not prevent Tourettics from being reliable confidants. We can flag something in our minds as something not to be disclosed at all, or to certain people. However, it is impossible to classify everything as confidential. It is our own skeletons in the closet that we are apt to blurt out.

I have also on a few occasions blurted out something about someone else's skeletons, if they did not tell me not to tell others. That has improved with age. I tend to classify as secret anything I am uncertain about. Still, I get in trouble for blurting something someone wishes I hadn't blurted.

I have depression, which is fairly well managed. I do get out of sorts and have to battle the beast at times, but it is much tamer now. Unfortunately, I was recently confronted by the Depression Monster on steroids!

I had a very bad allergic reaction to dust disturbed by husband's relocation of much of our library. Nothing was working, so I started a course of steroids. That fixed my allergies up, but I took a dramatic and inexplicable nose-dive in my depression. I was at one point afraid I might require inpatient care. Fortunately, that wasn't needed.

Almost as quickly as I had gone down, I bounced back. Unfortunately, I ended up with a little more serious respiratory trouble at the end of the course of steroids. It looks like I will be quitting smoking again. Wish me luck. Maybe, just maybe, I can actually do it this time.

(Cover your mouth when you snicker!)

Following is my response to a post by a British man on an AOL message board. He was fed-up with knee-jerk racist reactions. He emphasized that the terrorists were not typical of Muslims generally, nor of British Muslims. He pointed out that causing society to turn on itself was precisely the kind of outcome desired by the terrorists. Indicating that the terrorists had no regard for whom they killed, including Muslim commuters, he appealed for national unity.

From the other side of the Atlantic, I heartily agree with the sentiment that we not turn on one another when it is terrorists, regardless of ideology or religion, who are the perpetrators of this monstrous crime. Multi-culturalism is indeed a fact, and it's emergence has been a great advance for the civilized world. We benefit from the best that good people have to offer.

I would encourage you to take a small step I took in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks: I phoned each mosque in my community and told them that while they might be receiving hateful calls and threats, bigots were not in the majority. I spoke up for the "silent majority."
Unfortunately, sympathetic and concerned citizens were not making such phone calls. I was the only caller in Atlanta, Georgia to contact any of the mosques, let alone each of them. I was touched by the appreciation expressed by those on the other end of the line.

We did have some positive vigilante actions in the city. There were groups of citizens who went to Muslim-owned businesses and stood-by to deter anyone from vandalizing these properties. Elsewhere in the country, groups of citizens gathered outside of Mosques in a show of solidarity with our Muslim countrymen. These gatherings prevented a lot of violence that was feared might happen.

God bless each and every one of you!

I was just catching-up on some news about the attacks today in London. I went to an AOL message board to post a message for those in the UK. That might sound like a corny thing to do, but I read boards like that on September 12, 2001 (I was glued to the TV on 9/11). It was actually a great comfort to me, and seemed to be for other US responders. The messages of solidarity were heartening.

While I was at the message board to write a post, I read one that seemed to me to hit the nail on the head. A British lady wrote, "If my religion required me to kill innocent people, I would change my religion. I have a mind of my own!" I think Margaret Thatcher was right when she remarked, "We are one people." This basic view of things is what binds us together, and then separates us from extreme fundamentalists -- regardless of location or denomination.