tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29080945836876854252024-03-05T20:52:48.136-05:00What KnottsPlease visit my more recent posts at: http://livefrom5b.blogspot.com/jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.comBlogger39125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-84802812096827480782011-03-28T10:53:00.007-04:002019-06-12T08:19:07.374-04:00Introducing Jack's Flash!<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">As of March 1, 2011, my new posts will appear at:</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.jacksflash.blogspot.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">www.jacksflash.blogspot.com</span></span></a></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Prior posts may continue to be viewed at:</span></div>
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<a href="http://web.me.com/jamclean1/jackmclean.us/Live_From_5B/Live_From_5B.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">5B (and me)</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> 3/19/2010 - 7/26/2010</span></div>
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<a href="http://livefrom5b.blogspot.com/"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">5B (and me)</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> 7/22/2008 - 2/4/ 2010</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=2908094583687685425&postID=8480281209682748078"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #cc0000;">What Knotts</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> 2/2/2008 - 7/23/2008</span></div>
jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-64672418151955748902010-02-24T08:31:00.002-05:002019-06-12T08:19:27.521-04:00New Blg Location<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkrhqg25q8cxf_Uj6g_H7nWHHwRY_eTWdrXQ94HxqiJyJlO0lrEmLEXs9X697IMo9IVkPFGQ-1iGo5L7jJ7gKlIbMRdjVH-wPOOyBekqJKheenzsn_3Qn3B6b-MlrpQD03M-SxCoE3rlE/s1600-h/P1000926.JPG" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5441802446597563282" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkrhqg25q8cxf_Uj6g_H7nWHHwRY_eTWdrXQ94HxqiJyJlO0lrEmLEXs9X697IMo9IVkPFGQ-1iGo5L7jJ7gKlIbMRdjVH-wPOOyBekqJKheenzsn_3Qn3B6b-MlrpQD03M-SxCoE3rlE/s320/P1000926.JPG" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin: 0 10px 10px 0; width: 240px;" /></a><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51 , 51 , 51); line-height: 25px;">To my most excellent and loyal blog readers:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51 , 51 , 51); line-height: 25px;">Going forward, my blogs will be posted on:</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51 , 51 , 51); line-height: 25px;">Thank you for your continuing readership and undying support!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51 , 51 , 51); line-height: 25px;">Jack</span></div>
jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-38521483503218838232008-07-23T10:42:00.011-04:002019-06-12T08:21:06.415-04:00"These little town blues, are melting away...<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"I</span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">'ll make a brand new start of it in old New York..."</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">After nearly a year in Knotts Island,</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><br /></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8z0zl-xFq0nfx7DkBxJOMHFUt_dhdIebwCsXGyqxfzH4k6UrmNlt6BTnKvzIiaRTkMAAoPRTmq7IoA-DLKnt__6WyrXIhqwL9lJ8ISts7qsb0u9Eo9GhagBVIJJ9uT_g2htDC2__9hBw/s1600-h/Untitled.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="font-family: times new roman;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226225419292562114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8z0zl-xFq0nfx7DkBxJOMHFUt_dhdIebwCsXGyqxfzH4k6UrmNlt6BTnKvzIiaRTkMAAoPRTmq7IoA-DLKnt__6WyrXIhqwL9lJ8ISts7qsb0u9Eo9GhagBVIJJ9uT_g2htDC2__9hBw/s400/Untitled.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 281px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 321px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial";"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I'm moving to the Big Town.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial";"><br /></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDUWkNK3koZMWJauvVDbkDn_3kt_GhzJNM5os8pJvpxdD0oGu4e_S5v80EaCA1JSNtJxwfoqotfGysUSSuUBb3W9NMaw_-tpRayGIqPQ8BgCsrlZobe7P4d2HBafZJQRzLKNky6-tt_hA/s1600-h/washington-bridge-red_~506616.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="font-family: times new roman;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5226225425457520034" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDUWkNK3koZMWJauvVDbkDn_3kt_GhzJNM5os8pJvpxdD0oGu4e_S5v80EaCA1JSNtJxwfoqotfGysUSSuUBb3W9NMaw_-tpRayGIqPQ8BgCsrlZobe7P4d2HBafZJQRzLKNky6-tt_hA/s400/washington-bridge-red_~506616.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">It's hard to imagine a greater contrast.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: "arial";"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What will become of </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What Knotts</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">??!!</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">My cousin Tom suggested </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-style: italic;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Not Knotts</span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. Very good, Tom, but I felt it best to go forward with a more positive moniker.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Here forward you may visit me at:</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">http://livefrom5b.blogspot.com</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thank you for your support of the only known blogger from Knotts Island. I wonder if there are any bloggers in New York? Perhaps, but I will be the only one Live from 5B.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: times new roman;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Bookmark the new link and join me from my perch high above the George Washington Bridge EZ Pass Lane.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";"><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thank you for visiting.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />Jack</span></span>jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-45083892769839311072008-06-04T20:56:00.013-04:002019-06-12T08:22:18.473-04:00"Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk to you again"<div align="center">
<em></em><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI-2_l5HninShznNaDf1-B4K4Jkz5KYpcjXsjWex4H5qlTyp8c4eCQs9hHRaLRp6LcBXUL3rFVPjD8W_ZOTd9LpEDyhQKoygFutWtwV3xiV58yw2uaR4TkS8E9wNDHt4QDMGH6Lxlm8qk/s1600-h/Loon.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5208208001619923090" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI-2_l5HninShznNaDf1-B4K4Jkz5KYpcjXsjWex4H5qlTyp8c4eCQs9hHRaLRp6LcBXUL3rFVPjD8W_ZOTd9LpEDyhQKoygFutWtwV3xiV58yw2uaR4TkS8E9wNDHt4QDMGH6Lxlm8qk/s400/Loon.JPG" style="cursor: hand; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a> <br />
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We Remember </div>
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L.Z Loon</div>
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June 4-6, 1968<br />
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Barbour, James Wesley, PFC 6-5-68 New Rochelle, NY<br />
Brazier, John Kenneth , S/Sgt 6-6-68 Baltimore, MD<br />
Carbaugh, Woodrow Franklin, Sgt 6-5-68 Thurmont, MD<br />
Eaton, Clifford Lyman, PFC 6-5-68 Cortland, NY<br />
Garcia-Figueroa, Juan F., L/Cpl 6-5-68 Yabucoa, PR<br />
Haralson, William Scott, PFC 6-4-68 Everett, WA<br />
Kilderry, Michael J., L/Cpl 6-6-68 Philadelphia, PA<br />
King, Jr., George Louis, PFC 6-5-68 Clatskanie, OR<br />
Klein, Joseph, Cpl 6-5-68 Highland Park, NJ<br />
Langston, Melvin Doyle, PFC 6-6-68 Valentine, NE<br />
McDorman, Darl Kenneth, Cpl 6-4-68 Lyndhurst, VA<br />
Morrissey, Jr., Thomas, J.Cpl 6-5-68 Dover, NH<br />
Ortiz, Eliezer, Pvt 6-5-68 Bethlehem, PA<br />
Uutela, Derris Lee, PFC 6-5-68 Duluth, MN<br />
Wilson, Eugene, PFC 6-6-68 Water Valley, MS<br /><br />Burgard, Paul Edward, PFC 6-6-68 Portland, OR<br />
Casares, Manuel, PFC 6-6-68 Tehachapi, CA<br />
Enix, Jack Gene, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Lorain, OH<br />
Frankenstein, Jackie, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Cincinnati, OH<br />
Frazier, Jr., Timothy Joseph, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Cohoes, NY<br />
Roberts, Gary Kenneth, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Summerville, SC<br />
Smith, Donald Lee, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Ino, VA<br />
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Ebright, William Raymond, Cpl 6-6-68 Miamisburg, OH<br />
Flores, Felix Frank, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Los Angeles, CA<br />
Hannings, William Elwood, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Lansdale, PA<br />
Harper, Ralph Lewis, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Indianapolis, IN<br />
La Plant, Kurt Elton, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Leneza, KS<br />
Morelos, Jr., Catarino, PFC 6-6-68 Sanger, CA<br />
Palacios, Luis Fernando,L/Cpl 6-6-68 Los Angeles, CA<br />
Porter, Lawrence Eugene, L/Cpl 6-6-68 Dalton, OH<br />
Sanchez, Jose Ramon, PFC - 6-6-68 New York, NY<br />
Satter, Donald Stephen, PFC 6-6-68 Minneapolis, MN<br />
Stoops, Jonathan Lynn, PFC 6-6-68 Union City, IN<br />
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Rest in Peace, Brothers</div>
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Semper Fideles </div>
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jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-38001159716844311162008-04-17T18:31:00.011-04:002019-06-12T08:22:43.122-04:00"I love to take a photograph, so mama don't take my Kodachrome away"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-u7CyowGp1mzFcHWEDrW0b1YZ9cq3qHqIbbJPMlGlYwpwS6GSuFgjWJt_MriSY7ZTxbxEKYwzjvTkS4gHkRGlLOsikPbGawHNNuYrGRiynBc1nxcJwoyo2_UVk-m-xX3sVxd3Zcjw6KE/s1600-h/random+house"><img alt="" border="0" height="198" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5190349510077448354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-u7CyowGp1mzFcHWEDrW0b1YZ9cq3qHqIbbJPMlGlYwpwS6GSuFgjWJt_MriSY7ZTxbxEKYwzjvTkS4gHkRGlLOsikPbGawHNNuYrGRiynBc1nxcJwoyo2_UVk-m-xX3sVxd3Zcjw6KE/s320/random+house" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" width="243" /></a> "No pictures, sir. Please put the camera away."<br /><br />The guard's admonition did not surprise me. I'd been snapping pictures with my cell phone camera in the lobby of The Random House Publishing Group for several minutes. The space is anchored by a large security desk surrounded by walls of enormous glass-enclosed bookcases that, given the vintage of some of the contents, may have included every book ever published by Random House.<br /><br />In a year, my book would be slid in among the thousands. Having just returned to the lobby from meetings upstairs, I could not resist the temptation to record the scene for posterity. I had, after all, just become the newest author in the Random House Group.<br /><br />Wow.<br /><br />Pippy Longstocking and me. Now THAT will impress my three daughters.<br /><br />The day dawned at the legendary Algonquin Hotel, home to visiting authors for nearly a century. I'd stayed there before - perhaps with hope that some of the fairy dust would rub off on me one day.<br /><br />In the previous month it had.<br /><br />I met my agent at her 62 Bleaker Street office, a classically preserved Louis Sullivan treasure from the 19th century. I later met my publisher for the first time 60 blocks uptown, across from the Random House corporate headquarters. He subsequently took me through the office and introduced the individuals who had acquired<em> Loon</em> and will publish it next year. It was a dream. The praise for the book was without condition.<br /><br />Among the players was the head of publicity. We talked about Terry Gross, Oprah, and Imus.<br /><br />We talked about a book tour.<br /><br />He said I needn't be concerned about going to (for example) Cedar Rapids, Iowa. They no longer invested in whistle-stops for turn outs that drew less than 10 people.<br /><br />Wayne Wood is from Cedar Rapids. Woody was the most severely wounded survivor of the Battle for LZ Loon. He received the Last Rites of the Catholic Church three times and survived. He returned to Cedar Rapids to marry Jan, his high school sweatheart. They now have children and grandchildren.<br /><br />Cedar Rapids?<br /><br />I'd <em>begin</em> in Cedar Rapids.<br /><br />Woody Carbaugh was from Thurmont, Maryland. Joe Klein was from Highland Park, New Jersey. Cliff Eaton was from Cortland, New York. Jim Barbour was a 19 year old PFC from New Rochelle, New York. George King, a 19 year old PFC from Clatskanie, Ohio. Tom Morrissey was from Dover, New Hampshire.<br /><br />They all were killed during those three horrific days in June 1968. They were joined by several dozen others.<br /><br />Where to start?<br /><br />Take some pictures, Jack.<br /><br />Mark the moment.<br /><br />Know that now - thanks to my agent, thanks to Random House, and thanks to so many supportive friends - what happened outside of Khe Sahn, Vietnam during those three days in June 1968 will never be forgotten. Years, decades, a century from now, a new Random House author will note my weathered book behind the glass case as he too proudly joins the legendary house that told the world about the Charlie Company Marines of LZ Loon.<br /><br />Thank you for visiting.<br /><br />Jackjamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-67965059236755079262008-04-09T09:51:00.021-04:002019-06-12T08:24:02.693-04:00"And it's one, two, three, what are we fightin' for?"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXhFAstFYUO_2TbddQNtrKopfvhZozK-V_QUw1vvfH_36y7fjT5HaTJNgpnke8UH2r7fENv-ZaZ22rDu9R65vsSmdLx2dHWNJnYt8J7KI1XnKR-PBtueU2RmtdesOd0_cbPnx4GEboEdg/s1600-h/joe+m.gif"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5187276405306229666" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXhFAstFYUO_2TbddQNtrKopfvhZozK-V_QUw1vvfH_36y7fjT5HaTJNgpnke8UH2r7fENv-ZaZ22rDu9R65vsSmdLx2dHWNJnYt8J7KI1XnKR-PBtueU2RmtdesOd0_cbPnx4GEboEdg/s400/joe+m.gif" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a>Woodrow Wilson won reelection as the 28<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">th</span> President of the United States in November 1916. With war raging in Europe, Wilson campaigned on a neutrality platform as the man who "kept us out of war."<br /><br />Five months later, he asked and received from Congress a declaration of war on Germany.<br /><br />Franklin Roosevelt won reelection as 32<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">nd</span> President of the United States in November 1940. With war raging in Europe, Roosevelt campaigned on a neutrality platform saying that he "would not send American boys into any foreign wars."<br /><br />Thirteen months later, he asked and received from Congress a declaration of war on Germany.<br /><br />Lyndon Johnson won election as the 36<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">th</span> President of the United States in November 1964 (he was not technically reelected as he was completing the first term of the assassinated President John Kennedy.) He pledged that he would not commit "American boys to fighting a war that...ought to be fought by the boys of Asia..."<br /><br />Days later, he asked and received from Congress approval for the Gulf of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Tonkin</span> resolution which, in effect, began the War in Vietnam.<br /><br />Richard M. Nixon won election as the 37 President of the United States in 1968. With war raging in Vietnam, he pledged that he a had a "secret plan" to end it. He of course could not tell us what the "secret plan" was or it would not have been secret anymore.<br /><br />The war continued for another seven years during which time - INCREDIBLY - he was reelected.<br /><br />George W. Bush won election as the 43rd President of the United States in 2000. Openly critical of Clinton administration's efforts in Somalia and the Balkans, he pledged that United States troops will never "be used for what's called nation-building" during a Bush administration (you just can't make this stuff up!)<br /><br />Months later, with Congressional approval, he invaded Afghanistan and subsequently Iraq and has mismanaged nation-building in both countries ever since. Let’s just put aside that 17 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Egyptian and Saudi and that there were no weapons of mass destruction. We now know that there never was an attack in the Gulf of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Tonkin</span> that night either. <br />
Incidentally, not one of these countries - Germany, Vietnam, <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Afghanistan</span>, or Iraq, ever directly attacked the United States (in fairness to FDR, I don't begrudge his declaration of war on Japan which came three days prior to the declaration of war against Germany.)<br /><br />So what?<br /><br />Next month, I will participate in the American democratic process for the first time in eight years (I have heretofore been a resident of the unrepresented District of Columbia - a blog for another day.) Let's pretend that I have the opportunity to choose between the three presidential contenders which, of course given their party differences, I don't.<br /><br />I am a one issue voter. My issue is war. I will not vote for the candidate(s) who gets us into war or promises to keep us there. I will vote for the candidate(s) who promises to get us out (for this very reason, I once voted for Richard Nixon two months after I returned from Vietnam.) All things being equal, I will always vote a veteran, especially one who served in harm's way. McCain would have had my vote in 2000 had he not been <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">slimed</span> out of the race. Kerry got my vote in 2004 despite being <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">slimed</span> out of the race.<br /><br />I will never vote for a draft dodger or anyone who actively tried to avoid Vietnam service. Thereby, I voted for neither Clinton ("the famous draft board letter") nor Bush (the Texas Air National Guard was the preeminent Vietnam dodge of the 1960's.)<br /><br />By my own rules, however, I can no longer vote for McCain, given his support of the war, nor can I vote for Clinton given her own vote in favor of entering the war. That leaves <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Obama</span>. He seems like a good fellow and he meets my criteria.<br /><br />All that being said, Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson, Nixon, and Bush II have all demonstrated that "words", in the lexicon of my former wife, "are just words." On this score, she is, sadly, correct.<br /><br />History and the Constitution teach us that foreign policy (including war) is about the only arena in which an American President has the leverage to do whatever he pleases. All domestic issues (education, health care, transportation, social security, etc) are so bound, tied and regulated that, no matter what promises are made, the machinery of government will simply slog along through them all. But foreign policy? War? Now those are places where a President can make his mark with little interference from the electorate or a helpless Congress.<br /><br />History has taught us that those Presidents who pledged to keep us from getting into a war haven't (Wilson, Roosevelt, Johnson, Nixon, and Bush II) and he who pledged to get us out of war didn't (Nixon.) <br />
<br />Thank you for visiting.<br /><br />Jack<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">Editor's Note: Boomers will recognize this <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">blog's</span> title as coming from Country Joe McDonald's "I-Feel-Like-I'm-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Fixin</span>'-To-Die Rag." Since the 60's Joe McDonald has been a tireless and selfless supporter of Vietnam Veterans issues for which we owe an enormous debt. Thanks Joe, and best wishes to the Fish. </span>jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-21763671646209526342008-04-03T18:31:00.008-04:002019-06-12T08:25:01.094-04:00"Don't punish me with brutality. Talk to me, so you can see what's goin' on"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6R2EiqCNmlfsOiazFsnAxON3k_DQwSM7qciQfz3YVgYtIeJLisUQkM7ajDXF8MXiaPdz5kAyEE7EjglL3c-M_dOaAOmSih_btZT1jRITkNzwNweailM92xXzLT59IG-nvZDFasvCUHY4/s1600-h/king.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5185682989619282818" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6R2EiqCNmlfsOiazFsnAxON3k_DQwSM7qciQfz3YVgYtIeJLisUQkM7ajDXF8MXiaPdz5kAyEE7EjglL3c-M_dOaAOmSih_btZT1jRITkNzwNweailM92xXzLT59IG-nvZDFasvCUHY4/s320/king.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;" /></a>Forty years ago I was serving with C Company of the 1st Batallion, 4th Marines near Con Thien, Vietnam. I wrote in an earlier post, that numerous events to which we were horrifically exposed as a Marine company and as individuals occurred during the spring of 1968. <br />
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Several of these occurred back home and gave us pause to wonder what it was that we were fighting for.<br />
<em></em><br />
<em>Early on the morning of April 5, 1968, as we dragged our filthy, smelly, exhausted bodies inside the perimeter through the south wire, fresh from an all night ambush emplacement to the west, we were greeted with the most awful of the escalating bad news from home. </em><em>The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., while spending a day working at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis to plan a Poor People’s March on Washington, DC, was killed with a single shot from a 30.06 rifle. </em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>Despite pleas for calm and a powerful extemporaneous eulogy from Senator Robert F. Kennedy, we heard that rioting had broken out in cities throughout the United States killing dozens of people and causing untold millions in property damage.</em><br />
<em>That morning, I became aware of a thin line that began to divide the black Marines from the rest of us – nothing that ever manifested itself in combat – but a “something” that began to appear in a thousand little ways in our day-to-day lives.</em><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">© Loon - A Marines Story</span><br />
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Thank you for visiting.<br />
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Jackjamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-44613963491541631682008-03-31T21:47:00.023-04:002019-06-12T08:25:20.213-04:00"She's got a light around her and, everywhere she goes, a million dreams of love surround her. Everywhere<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184091545322324850" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSlT7drWbLNrpUG-x-mZHz9zTd80eVTIBYTFWkKnsGA9oFRrx5ca4lpxe78L4lOG6461dXxLMMhFXwiTKoxIYn_tyz8JV-CJFYei3L6SrIlOtOVFwS_qd5ExZARVqeMTuVSr0ULDfi-ow/s400/DSC_0047.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" />Thank you Margaret, Sarah, and John for the time of my life.<br /><br />It has been remarkable for me, as father and grandfather of daughter and child to see them together, separately, and as one.<br /><br />Margaret <em>is </em>Sarah and that makes me laugh and cry all at once.<br /><br />Margaret's morning coos are Sarah's.<br /><br />Her wet diapers are Sarah's.<br /><br />Her brand new giggles and laughs are all Sarah's, but of course they really belong to Margaret.<br /><br />Wherever did the time go?<br /><br />It has been an extraordinary three weeks filled with our cherished past, loving present, and hope that the future forever brings.<br /><br />I am at a loss to describe my feeling about the woman that Sarah has become in my life, so I will close by again resorting to Billy Joel:<br /><em>She comes to me when I'm <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">feelin</span>' down<br />Inspires me without a sound<br />She touches me and I get turned around. </em><br />
Thank you, Sarah.<br /><em></em><br />And thanks to all visitors.<br /><br />Jackjamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-53354803437862739242008-03-28T18:29:00.013-04:002019-06-12T08:26:04.975-04:00"And when I touch you I feel happy inside. It's such a feeling that my love I can't hide"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCXZTA2ExapUkOlOkZpyna2zDN0GdYLagOB4ZtdI7G13Am6Spa5xCQJnWf-sBLCAe1GLXTzgBkQhg94nBFjtng6FwdXKPIEp8L6QnWlrGXftwn2oe0KMwSP29EW6CmKZSjxcBRS9PM4YA/s1600-h/IMG_2873.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5182926733011780450" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCXZTA2ExapUkOlOkZpyna2zDN0GdYLagOB4ZtdI7G13Am6Spa5xCQJnWf-sBLCAe1GLXTzgBkQhg94nBFjtng6FwdXKPIEp8L6QnWlrGXftwn2oe0KMwSP29EW6CmKZSjxcBRS9PM4YA/s400/IMG_2873.JPG" style="cursor: hand; display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center;" /></a><br />
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Thank you for visiting.</div>
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Jack</div>
jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-89519117203425754692008-03-26T22:53:00.023-04:002019-06-12T08:18:01.732-04:00"It's Just the Luck of the Draw, Baby, the Natural Law."<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDHv-NLocm4_Otzv-BQsuzmvOSRiwFumAuClp10X4Y1DslquyXyheLdxewmdqbGSfpHx7paQznNPHqEVN2fM35YVwKdgmhi75s_-JnFKtr9zXJXNQLwi0Ekas6LJTNT66NfKxOx8L-Xt8/s1600-h/venetian_macao.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="140" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5182300741528388434" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDHv-NLocm4_Otzv-BQsuzmvOSRiwFumAuClp10X4Y1DslquyXyheLdxewmdqbGSfpHx7paQznNPHqEVN2fM35YVwKdgmhi75s_-JnFKtr9zXJXNQLwi0Ekas6LJTNT66NfKxOx8L-Xt8/s200/venetian_macao.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; height: 154px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 180px;" width="186" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBBy-tua1P0yWgWN88Efb6GtINjWjIXDZGaUVRiC_NkfH_MW4dnHU-eqdICkCmuu7KCBrpJfI8qxd9UZVYLEqAYcFXR54PbcXEv_en2KR8AQG3hHZOjtuSR7GPFmnzIM6sNgnvlvEXcqQ/s1600-h/mgm-grand-macau.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="123" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5182300612679369538" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBBy-tua1P0yWgWN88Efb6GtINjWjIXDZGaUVRiC_NkfH_MW4dnHU-eqdICkCmuu7KCBrpJfI8qxd9UZVYLEqAYcFXR54PbcXEv_en2KR8AQG3hHZOjtuSR7GPFmnzIM6sNgnvlvEXcqQ/s200/mgm-grand-macau.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 136px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 185px;" width="187" /></a> Images that enter our eyes do so upside down.<br /><br />It is, thereby, up to the brain to sort things out. What we know to be true is that, for the most part, the brain then turns things right side up. The two go on to form an impressive partnership that allows most of us to stay alive (hot stoves bad, smiling babies good.)<br /><br />Occasionally, our brain cannot make sense of what our eyes are seeing - it can find no experiential context. This happened to me occasionally in Vietnam. My brain had a tough time knowing where to put a pile of dead bodies or a 122mm rocket incoming at close to the speed of sound.<br /><br />Such a happenstance occurred to me again about ten years ago while driving through the Connecticut countryside. I was lost, late for a meeting, while on a beautiful stone wall-lined New England back road that was going nowhere. Then, all of a sudden, I came around a bend and - whoa! - There was Oz...No, Xanadu...no Oz <em>and</em> Xanadu in one.<br /><br />What I was seeing for the first time was the Foxwoods Casino – now the largest single gaming facility on the planet. It was so enormous, so completely misplaced, and out of context that I could do little but pull over to the side of the road and gape.<br /><br />Gambling. Wow!<br /><br />I'd been to Las Vegas years ago and ogled at what I thought was a well regulated local phenomenon. I have a vivid recollection of older normal looking people dropping money without restraint at all imaginable venues. It was sort of cool, but mostly scary - particularly the scale of it. I knew that politicians hoped that gambling would save decaying Atlantic City. Most states had by now begun to rely on lotteries to augment revenue. I knew that Native Americans were using loopholes to build casinos on their land with little concern about local laws, regulations and, obviously, community standards.<br /><br />But this? My eyes were blinded on that October morning in 1997. Foxwoods was beyond all imagination. I understood that if this could be happening in Ledyard, Connecticut, it could be happening anywhere.<br /><br />And it is.<br /><br />Yesterday I visited the former Portuguese colony of Macao, an hour south of Hong Kong by jet ferry. The guide books say it is a good one day trip to see several worthy historic sights and dine on Portuguese cuisine. I knew that gambling was legal in Macao as was prostitution. I knew they also had an annual Formula One automobile race. The idea of it all seemed sort of James Bond-sy.<br /><br />Macao was both the oldest and the last European colony in China. It was settled by Portuguese traders in the 16th century and returned to China in 1999 - two years after Hong Kong. Like its neighbor to the north, Macao enjoys the political status of a Special Administrative Region. What this means, in both cases, is that anything anybody wants to do to make loads of money for China is O.K.<br /><br />For Hong Kong? International finance.<br /><br />For Macao? Gambling<br /><br />Prior to turnover, Macao gambling was tightly controlled by Stanley Ho to his enormous benefit. Ho kept things in check. Revenue poured into him and growth was modest. After turnover, the Chinese felt that the only way to break Ho's hammerlock was to open Macao gaming to international competition. Since then, all hell has broken loose.<br /><br />There are 34 casinos in Macao. Enormous new palaces by the giant American gaming companies such as MGM Grand, Steve Wyn, and the Sands have sprung up almost overnight. There are at least 8 more under construction by my count. Like Las Vegas, each is trying to outdo the other in scale and perceived opulence. Huge areas of the old colonial city have evaporated as massive casino construction abounds. As with my first sight of the Foxwoods Casino a decade ago, there was little for me to do during my day-long visit than simply walk around and gape. Busload after busload of Chinese tourists poured in forming an endless stream that no doubt continued day and night. There was no integration with the old Macao, architecturally or otherwise. The whole place had had the look and feel of a mad, greedy, pathetic free-for-all.<br /><br />I read the papers. Banks are in trouble, the world financial system is teetering, and credit is tight. There appears, however, to be no shortage of cash for casino construction in Macao and no shortage of people to fill them when they are completed. I suspect the situation is the same the world over.<br /><br />You may want to take another look at that little innocent town down the street from you that you just found out was largely owned by a long forgotten Indian tribe. You may also want to take another look at your own town council or state government. It can happen in a heartbeat.<br /><br />Strapped localities need cash. Gambling is a simple solution.<br /><br />Ledyard, Connecticut<br /><br />Macao, China<br /><br />The power and appeal are enormous.<br /><br />Like global warming, the trend will not be reversed in our lifetimes or those of our children<br /><br />Thank you for visiting<br /><br />Jackjamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-4706945300286650592008-03-25T23:16:00.018-04:002019-06-12T08:17:43.391-04:00Wannabes, Valor Thieves, Poseurs, Fakes, Frauds, Scumbags, Low Lifes, Imposters,Charlatans, and Cheats<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzdQKG3uBW7TLOcnszvP8hRY85CJig0vQf7xC4e7O1b-NxhuBz-QB5JdGiBAgHwmEYi5h0nV7N6_Lxs7fICTH9CbA2AiElo8qE10bfk120PghfAT4eJn_pv41K48QdTUWOSq9WsvIyETo/s1600-h/IMG_0106.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181923282622546690" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzdQKG3uBW7TLOcnszvP8hRY85CJig0vQf7xC4e7O1b-NxhuBz-QB5JdGiBAgHwmEYi5h0nV7N6_Lxs7fICTH9CbA2AiElo8qE10bfk120PghfAT4eJn_pv41K48QdTUWOSq9WsvIyETo/s400/IMG_0106.JPG" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a> When I served with the Marine Corps in Vietnam, I was part of an infantry company that spent a predominant amount of time in harm's way. That's what infantry companies do.<br />
<br />
Of all of those who served in country during the Vietnam war, it is estimated that perhaps only 30% or less were involved in actual day to day combat activities. The rest were engaged in the critical support functions. That percentage may be higher with the Marines, but still.<br />
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Shortly after my 19th birthday, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Parris Island was as tough as its reputation. Infantry training was unbearably long and taxing beyond anything that even my fertile mind could have conjured. Then, one day, over a year later, I stepped off a plane in Danang and spent most of the ensuing year shooting or being shot at. It wasn't every day. There were times when we'd go weeks with little or no action at all. But they were always out there looking for us and waiting for their moment. At those rare times when we found each other, the dance was macabre.<br />
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It was a long year. Friends were killed and injured. We were exposed to cancer and diabetes causing Agent Orange. Most from my unit carry government disabilities for mental and physical wounds received. Lives were never the same.<br />
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To a man, however, we are proud that we served, honored that we served with each other (living and dead,) and will ever stand tall that we <em>earned</em> the title of United States Marine. Consequently, we get angry - VERY angry - when some poser wannabe tries to hitch a free ride on our bus.<br />
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An article in today's New York Times triggered me. Senator Hillary Clinton admitted that she lied about being exposed to sniper fire while visiting Bosnia with her husband, the President, in 1997...check that...she didn't "lie" she (in the current hot lexicon of Washington, DC) "misspoke."<br />
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Speaking from my own experience and that of my many brothers - trust me on this - when a sniper is shooting at you, it is not a "kind of pregnant" sort of deal. Every orifice opens and closes and opens again, adrenaline spews and you instantly make yourself so small that, in the lexigon of the day, you'd have to look up to look down. It is the scariest fucking moment that you can possibly imagine.<br />
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Mrs. Clinton has now joined the vomitously long list of wannabes who would like to make the public think that they stood tall in harm's way. You may say or believe whatever you will about Senator John Kerry and his swift boat experience in Vietnam. There is not one person who questions that he was there, got shot at, and served with honor. Medals? No medals? Wounds? No wounds? Big deal. He served.<br />
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War Wannabes are obviously a subject about which I feel strongly, so let's pull back the rocks and see who climbs out.<br />
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Iowa Senator Tom Harkin (at the time a Congressman) said at Congressional Vietnam Veterans' Caucus that "I spent five years as a Navy pilot, starting in November of 1962. One year was in Vietnam. I was flying F-4s and F-8s on combat air patrols and photo-reconnaissance support missions. I'm proud of my Navy service. I put my ass on the line day after day. (WSJ 12/29/01)<br />
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Liar liar pants on fire. Mr. Harkin's Navy record shows his only decoration is the National Defense Service Medal, awarded to everyone on active service during those years. He was never within half a world of Vietnam.<br />
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Professor (and Pulitzer prize winning historian) Joseph Ellis of Mt. Holyoke College fabricated his alleged war record for years. According to the Boston Globe (6/20/01) he told students and anyone else that would listen, that, while serving under General Westmoreland, he saw action clearing out the area around My Lai as a platoon commander of combat paratroopers from the legendary 101st Airborne.<br />
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Liar, liar pants on fire. Ellis never left the states. He also lied to his students and in numerous television and press interviews about his work as an anti war activist (not), a civil rights worker in Mississippi (not) and as the scorer of the winning touchdown in the last game of his senior year in high school (not.) He wasn't even on the team. Oh, and during the Vietnam War? Ellis was teaching history at the United States Military Academy.<br />
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Incredibly, then Mt. Holyoke president Joanne Creighton supported Ellis and said he was a "man of great integrity, honesty and honor." No kidding, you can't make this up. How can a blatant liar be a man of "great integrity, honesty, and honor." Where was <em>she</em> educated?! I remained stunned that he wasn't tossed out on his ear. Where were groups like the American Legion when we needed <em>them</em> to defend <em>us</em>?<br />
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The American Legion? Oops.<br />
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Paul A. Morin is the National Commander of the American Legion. In the lead sentence of his campaign biography, according again to the Boston Globe (12/3/06) he describes himself as a "Vietnam veteran of the US Army." When he testified before the House Veterans' Affairs Committee that fall, he was also introduced as such. He went on to say, "When we came home (from Vietnam), life was a little different. We do not want to see any veteran ever returning to what we did, so we'll be there to be welcoming them home with open arms,"<br />
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Liar, liar pants on fire. The closest he got to Vietnam was Ft. Dix, NJ.<br />
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Had enough?<br />
<br />
I haven't.<br />
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Former Toronto Blue Jays manager Tim Johnson fired up his baseball teams with bloody tales of his days as a U.S. Marine in Vietnam. He had killed a little girl and her brother who happened into the line of fire.<br />
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Liar, liar pants on fire. He served in the Marine Reserves. An exemption for baseball players had kept him out of combat.<br />
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Former U.S. Rep. Wes Cooley told reporters he'd fought in Korea as a Special Forces demolition expert trained in mountain climbing and escape tactics. The Oregon Republican said he'd engaged in countless secret missions.<br />
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Liar, liar, pants on fire. He never left the states. He hadn't even finished his training when the Korean conflict ended.<br />
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Actor Brian Dennehy said he served five years in Vietnam. He'd been hit by shrapnel. Combat, he told Playboy magazine, was "absolute f---ing chaos."<br />
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Liar, liar pants on fire. Dennehy had been a Marine, but his only overseas assignment had been as a football player on a service team in Okinawa.<br />
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There are groups and individuals who are ever vigilant for Wannabes. One among them is Stephen Burkett, co-author of "Stolen Valor: How the Vietnam Generation Was Robbed of its Heroes and its History." My hat is off to all who are vigilant for evidence of such unspeakable fraud. I encourage each of you to join the ranks. Posers are your friends, neighbors, and co-workers. It has been said that there are more people who falsely claim to have served in harm's way in Vietnam than those that actually did. <br />
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I feel strongly that an early post World War II American public would not have stood for the swift boating of Senator John Kerry in 2004, the "unpatriotic" moniker hung on Vietnam War triple-amputee Senator Max Cleland during the Georgia primary the same year, or the Republican sliming of Senator John McCain (former prisoner of war) during the South Carolina primary in 2000. To this day, few people stand tall to protect and defend the service of those who served in harm's way during the Vietnam War.<br />
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We have the power to change that.<br />
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Perhaps a good way to begin is to boycott all books written by Joseph Ellis. To Vietnam Veterans, he holds a dubious place of honor that heretofore had been the exclusive domain of Hanoi Jane Fonda. <br />
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He lied about himself, for goodness sake. <br />
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Did he lie about Jefferson? <br />
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This Imposter is teaching our kids.<br />
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The list follows:<br />
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Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation<br />
His Excellency: George Washington<br />
American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson<br />
American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic<br />
Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams<br />
After the Revolution: Profiles of Early American Culture<br />
Thomas Jefferson, Genius of Liberty<br />
School for Soldiers: West Point and the Profession of Arms<br />
Something That Will Surprise the World: The Essential Writings of the Founding Fathers<br />
What Did the Declaration Declare?<br />
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Thank you for visiting.<br />
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Jackjamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-72646492697695592632008-03-22T22:55:00.005-04:002019-06-12T08:16:16.401-04:00"Oh, I Wonder, Wonder Who, Mmbadoo-ooh, Who, Who Wrote the Book Of Love?"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNmIn-ZyVhcWl23aaE5ivAxmShOy27GS15K6ulXbT-CT2isZ1LBarMxDgGxtUa3I0iRvYqsUYevfbH44sn0CQVAdgjvgUEW05RL8mfHdQu4A3AkRwGZt3Fmj3zCvDUwUA1j-0sDiiPpD8/s1600-h/IMG_0241.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5180802227438813922" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNmIn-ZyVhcWl23aaE5ivAxmShOy27GS15K6ulXbT-CT2isZ1LBarMxDgGxtUa3I0iRvYqsUYevfbH44sn0CQVAdgjvgUEW05RL8mfHdQu4A3AkRwGZt3Fmj3zCvDUwUA1j-0sDiiPpD8/s400/IMG_0241.JPG" style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: left;" /></a><br />
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Jackjamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-34142437261321267362008-03-21T05:29:00.043-04:002019-06-12T08:15:17.365-04:00"So Remember, Every Picture Tells a Story Don't It?"Hong Kong March 21, 2008 <br />
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<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFDbOgLYL4Vi2fq2ILDFRihxBUbQwzyBTcd_jKk57POwKOvC1R04HOx0IhjnlEBHn72exZaQCQIDSKLY5ngr4reXbrpR0NYN2OFzIV5JfiaFWstm9RxnH-1L_QjBnpZInNEMvgjUZiFTA/s1600-h/IMG_0133.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="200" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5180167573006385858" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFDbOgLYL4Vi2fq2ILDFRihxBUbQwzyBTcd_jKk57POwKOvC1R04HOx0IhjnlEBHn72exZaQCQIDSKLY5ngr4reXbrpR0NYN2OFzIV5JfiaFWstm9RxnH-1L_QjBnpZInNEMvgjUZiFTA/s200/IMG_0133.JPG" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 239px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 222px;" width="238" /></a><br />
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Thank you for visiting.<br />
Jackjamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-70335287650919702022008-03-17T22:21:00.000-04:002008-03-21T00:00:58.815-04:00"Glory Days"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipI8uqHGizKXxnzQlXdbGqNPoEcTOiz9m_wLi2hl_QyZ4Rj6Yw19LpLHuRoQy0FKAAjUDZmgPdntQida_5p1IA_g5rrReIImNlVXHiHUZg6CXdJ5I70uwhjXV2rALNh4ugKQ5_I-LAHD8/s1600-h/library-b02.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5179233469549072514" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 274px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 184px" height="202" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipI8uqHGizKXxnzQlXdbGqNPoEcTOiz9m_wLi2hl_QyZ4Rj6Yw19LpLHuRoQy0FKAAjUDZmgPdntQida_5p1IA_g5rrReIImNlVXHiHUZg6CXdJ5I70uwhjXV2rALNh4ugKQ5_I-LAHD8/s400/library-b02.jpg" width="308" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;">Most tourists are eager to see that which they ought to see in the first several days (given they have the luxury of time that I have in Hong Kong.) Guidebooks understand this and customarily outline the first 48 hours in detail (lunch here, shop there, ogle at this, be sure to see that, etc.)<br /><br />New York? The Statue of Liberty.<br /><br />Boston? Old North Church.<br /><br />Hong Kong? The Peak.<br /><br />Delving more deeply into a guidebook, hotel concierge, and in my case family, tourists next want to know where the locals hang out. Where do they eat/shop/do local stuff? Where can I go to see locals doing what ever it is that locals do so that I might better understand the fabric of the place?<br /><br />Hong Kong is all about money, so it is easy to spot a local financial type bursting out of an enormous office building, yakking on his cell phone, sucking down a cigarette in two drags, while knowing that civilization itself may hinge on his next deal. In fact, given the state of the U.S financial market this week and its impact internationally, for once he may be right.<br /><br />Hong Kong is also about eating. There are more restaurants per capita here than anywhere else in the world. Getting to them is another matter. The early evening streets and intersections in the more popular destinations are unimaginably clogged with people. As in Tokyo, cars drive on the left. People are encouraged to move in the same fashion (IE., 'up' escalators are always on the left.) Left to their own devices, however, pedestrians walk wherever they please on whatever side they want. There is no right side, so to speak. Pedestrian traffic is chaos everywhere - all the time.<br /><br />My first look at locals hanging out occurred during my walk through Victoria Park on Sunday. Sunday is nanny's day off. Most of the nannies are either Philippino or Indonesian. The Philippinos flock to the Catholic churches. The Indonesians, on the other hand, flood to Victoria Park. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. Along every pathway, in every nook there were clusters of a dozen or so brightly-clad, head-covered Muslim women on plastic sheets reading, praying, laughing, talking on cell phones, and eating volumes of exotic (to my eye) foods of all colors from every imaginable kind of container. Were such clusters spotted in an American park, the Homeland Security level would instantly go to red.<br /><br />Yesterday, with Margaret's help (you knew I'd work her in <em>somehow</em>,) we took the #25 bus up the hill to see where the locals go to school. Coincidentally, her mother also teaches there. It was a win-win deal for Margaret and me. She got a mid-morning feeding and I had a chance to burst with pride as I walked around Sarah's (empty - remember the flu) classroom. It expressed the energy and excitement of a vital 5th grade class. Her creativity and style oozed from every corner. On the hall wall, just outside of her door there is a plaque with her name written in both Mandarin Chinese and English. Father-wise, it does not get any better than that!<br /><br />The most popular local spot that I have identified to date is the Hong Kong Central Public Library. This morning, I arrived 30 minutes prior to opening. What I saw when I escalated to the plaza, were about 800 people (really, I counted) waiting eagerly in a line that wrapped around and through the plaza in a manner reminiscent of the security operation at LaGuardia Airport on the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving.<br /><br />Officials patrolled the scene to be certain that order was maintained. When the doors opened, people poured in as though it were festival seating at a Springstein concert. Half shot for the three elevators and the rest to the escalators. My goal was a window cube overlooking the harbor on the 9th floor. The elevator was chancy, the escalator a sure thing. I joined the throng tearing up the escalator steps two and three at a time. When I arrived, I got the last spot - the others already comfortably occupied by the more seasoned elevator people.<br /><br />There is nothing particularly special about the 9th floor. There are probably 1,000 working cubicles in the library and each has power and an Internet connection. By 11am all were filled and, based on past experience, will remain that way until closing time at 10pm.<br /><br />There is no mention of the Hong Kong Central Public Library in my Fodor's guidbook, and yet here may lie a clue about that in which the locals are engaged.<br /><br />Where can I go to see locals doing what ever it is that locals do so that I might better understand the fabric of the place?<br /><br />The Hong Kong Central Public Library is such a place and serious learning, education, and self improvment are the activities. </span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Thank you for visiting.</span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Jack</span></span>jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-6765057597407053242008-03-16T06:21:00.002-04:002008-03-24T05:13:23.041-04:00“As you wish”<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP25ke8VJvQqPq1aMBQfYVP7u_xZPdqqoqB7vY5vcvqPWFIBbD9zImYgDwmDlumuSRWLh_oVaNOLGQPecSVhyphenhyphen77nkF4myUyXNAnl40Xu3TfT9nRgvYVE4zMiIAwvZWbXuZpL9ROSNOVik/s1600-h/date+night+-+junk.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5181065989970395890" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP25ke8VJvQqPq1aMBQfYVP7u_xZPdqqoqB7vY5vcvqPWFIBbD9zImYgDwmDlumuSRWLh_oVaNOLGQPecSVhyphenhyphen77nkF4myUyXNAnl40Xu3TfT9nRgvYVE4zMiIAwvZWbXuZpL9ROSNOVik/s400/date+night+-+junk.jpg" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-size:130%;">In the closing scene of <em>The Princess Bride</em>, Wesley asks swordsman Inigo Montoya about his plans, having avenged the death of his father. "You know,” Montoya responds, “it's very strange -- I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it's over, I don't know what to do with the rest of my life."<br /><br />I know how he felt – not about revenge, but about achieving a long sought, all consuming singular goal.<br /><br />Five years ago, I set out to become a writer, although I didn’t know it at the time. I was unemployed, recently married, and struggling with the dormant torment of my United States Marine Corps service in Vietnam. My writing career began with the transcription of the 102 letters home written during my two year enlistment. Somewhere along the way, the letters began to morph into a book and I dared to dream that I could be a writer.<br /><br />Slowly, I became consumed – some might say possessed – by the book and the process. Six months later, I got a job. During lunch and after work, I worked on the book and thrived in the writing process. After a year, I lost the job.<br /><br />I continued to write, research, and network the book while looking for another job. It had now become a product that I wanted published, both for my own validation and that of my fallen brothers in arms.<br /><br />Two years later, I got another job. During lunch and after work, I worked on the book and thrived in the writing process. After a year, I lost the job. A month later, my marriage ended. She said "I never want to hear the word 'Vietnam" again."<br /><br />Oh well.<br /><br />Broke and now homeless, I accepted the generous invitation of Nancy and Terry Tillery to live over their garage in North Carolina. The completion of the book was near and, as throughout the process, I was filled with hope. My family, friends, and Marine Corps brothers believed in me without condition. They provided the enormous positive strength that I required to complete the book.<br /><br />Over time I had acquired the services of a brilliant editor and a top New York literary agent. Three months ago, with the book completed to the satisfaction of my editor and me, I hand delivered the finished product to my agent. Last week, thanks to her efforts, we received word that Random House will publish the book in May, 2009. It will be positioned as “a good beach read.”<br /><br />The story will be told.<br /><br />Now what?<br /><br />I am sitting in a cubicle on the ninth floor of the new Hong Kong Central Library, listening to Bonny Raitt, and looking out at the full expanse of the magnificent waterfront and skyline. I will be visiting with my daughter and her family for two more weeks before returning home to a wonderfully uncertain future.<br /><br />Another book? A writing or teaching position? A carpenter’s assistant?<br /><br />I have never been happier.<br /><br />Amid the ferries, container ships, and mammoth cruise liners that I can see plying the harbor below, an ancient Chinese Junk with two red masts is slowly working it’s way northward with the wind. It is an incredibly incongruous site. It ignites my fertile daydreaming mind to a career idea that makes me smile – laugh.<br /><br />“Have you ever considered piracy?" Wesley responded to Inigo in the closing scene of <em>The Princess Bride</em>. "You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.”<br /><br />A pirate?<br /><br />Of course.</span><br /><br />Thank you for visiting.<br /><br />Jack</span>jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-52589471401832548342008-03-14T06:06:00.000-04:002008-03-18T20:52:52.302-04:00"Well rock my so-oul, how I love to stroll"<img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5179248948611207330" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 284px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 255px" height="268" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu323-eSK6hKMzGTKUuaDKWHYnTw3P0gQtVcTXIz3aIOThwJK1ZbdkJ2v6CSCTAeRED7YOORaQ3clr2y7qJWEo54dnqKUSocj6cGDhh3AvRZSLmFmg3tshfxjUxtDaLED7JQdd4e-gf1M/s400/IMG_0119.JPG" width="312" border="0" /><span style="font-size:130%;">Margaret and I went to Victoria Park this morning in her stroller.</span> </span><div><div><br /><div><span style="font-size:130%;">We used to take Margaret’s mother to the park in what we called an umbrella stroller – a flimsy fold-up piece of canvas held together by a cheap aluminum frame. It moved, so to speak, on four Stone Age era wheels for which every pebble or poorly laid brick was a major obstacle. But, it was the latest in baby stuff. What did we know about space age metals and aerodynamics?<br /><br />Margaret’s stroller is the modern kind with which you are familiar. It moves with the smooth precision of a monorail and has more stuffed stuff hanging off it than a Christmas tree. Little Margaret is strapped in like a flight attendant on airplane jump seat.<br /><br />The Hong Kong that I have seen so far is stroller friendly. Our outing was impeded by not so much as a curb. Here’s one for you old-timer stroller pushers - Victoria Park actually has a “pebble walk.” People of all ages take off their shoes, and walk around a lovely path of smooth rocks and pebbles. Perhaps its something one does after Tai Chi to maintain Fung Shui. Remembering the old umbrella stroller, I took off my shoes and pushed Margaret in her stroller along the pebble walk because…well, because I could. I thought it was a riot until the bumps gave Margaret the grumps. Then it wasn’t funny anymore.<br /><br />The park was particularly busy since all of the elementary schools are closed due to a flu outbreak (don’t say epidemic!!) Additionally, Victoria Park is the site of the annual Hong Kong Flower Show, so groups of mostly elderly ladies in bright color-coordinated baseball caps were being led around by a tour director with a similarly colored flag. We see this all the time in Washington DC this time of year, but the groups tend to be comprised of school aged kids wearing bright color coordinated tee shirts that might say, “The East Jefferson Tigers Annual Cherry Blossom Special – April 2008.”<br /><br />Lot’s of people were playing tennis in the park and there was evidence that a tournament was in progress. We also passed playground after crowded playground (schools closed,) each more beautifully laid out than the last. I gave passing thought to giving Margaret her first swing ride in one of those baby plastic seats, but decided it best that her first emergency room visit not occur on my watch.<br /><br />We took an elevated walkway across to the harbor to look at some old Chinese house boats and paused to drink the most spectacular city view on earth. Hong Kong, built as it is on a steep hill, is remindful of San Francisco in that you walk a block, turn a corner and <em>whammo</em> – you are hit with one breathtaking view after another. Hong Kong – for architecture, scale, culture, parks, and overall civility - gets my vote as the most beautiful city in the world (I’ve now been here for two days).<br /><br />My last visit to Hong Kong was in 1965 on a trip with my family. Dad had business and we all got to come along for the ride. It was a different Asia then. The war in nearby Vietnam was just beginning and Hong Kong was still a British Crown Colony. I remember how big and crowded it was even then. I remember the Peninsula Hotel in Kowloon with the bell boys in the funny hats. I remember the near blinding phosphorescence in the water during a late night boat excursion. I particularly remember the ride up the funicular railway to the Peak – the highest point on Hong Kong Island. The views were and remain, absolutely breathtaking. The area around the Peak was developed by the British during colonial times as a resort of sorts where they could escape the stifling summer heat on the water far below.<br /><br />In returning to Hong Kong, I am making my first true visit to China. The British have been gone for a decade. The Peninsula Hotel still exists, but without the colonial swagger. My daughter Sarah looked askance when I mentioned my memory of the phosphorescence. Perhaps pollution has taken its toll on one of nature’s magnificent spectacles. Suffice to say, tourists no longer come for the midnight glow of the water.<br /><br />The funicular railway IS still here, however, literally unchanged in 45 years. The guide books insist that it is THE first morning outing, so off I went yesterday (without Margaret.) I took the subway to Central and found my way up the hill to the terminus. The bottom terminal is all new and fancy, but the railway cars, tracks, cable, and employees remain frighteningly unchanged. As with a San Francisco cable car, I’d have preferred more evidence of investment in the actual cable operation. Not to be outdone, the new terminus on the actual Peak is crowned by an enormously precarious edifice that is right out of the Jetsons.<br /><br />I took the funicular up, gasped at all the views, and dodged a formidable gauntlet of 21st century marketing madness (Bubba Gump’s Shrimp Company??!!) Prior to my descent, I took a magnificent wooded walk of several miles around the top of the mountain. Every hundred yards, a break in the trees would expose yet another breathtaking unbroken view. I was lost in a once colonial refuge of extraordinary peace and beauty. It was simple to close my eyes and pretend that it was one hundred years ago. Unlike the rest of busy Hong Kong, there are areas on the Peak where time has in fact stood still.<br /><br />Later in the evening, after Margaret had been bathed and retired, I recounted the events of my day to Sarah and her husband John, who were excited about what I had seen. They shared stories of their own visits up there shortly before Margaret was born. There had been some hope that the air, the altitude, and the breathtaking beauty might somehow induce labor.<br /><br />The Peak will, consequently, always be a part of Margaret’s life, regardless of how long she lives in Hong Kong. She will hear these stories from her parents and pass them on to her children, much as the tales of Sarah’s early days in New York have become the stuff of our own family lore.<br /><br />There is, however, a sobering side to the Peak as family history. One hundred years ago, when Hong Kong was under British colonial rule, Margaret would not have been permitted on the Peak, because she is Chinese.<br /><br />Margaret and I were now making our way back through Victoria Park from our foray to the waterfront. We watched the earlier scenes take on a more frenetic pace as the morning approached noon. The playgrounds were busier, the paths more crowded, and the baseball capped flower show groups were now being herded into holding pens designed to manage the overflowing crowd.<br /><br />Nearing the end of the park, I lost Margaret. Glancing down, I saw the eyes gently closed and the little head listing lightly to one side. I wanted the moment to last forever, but knew that she would need her mother in time. As we approached the large lawn bowling green, I decided to make our final stop of the morning. There were several teams of Chinese men intently playing a game, brought over and left by the British colonials over a century before. Lawn bowling was no longer for whites only. I wasn’t certain if this was fitting, ironic, or something else. I found a nearby bench and watched the activity (as in paint drying) for nearly an hour as Margaret snoozed away.<br />Margaret and I had a most excellent first morning together.<br /><br />Thank you for visiting.<br /><br />Jack</span></div></div></div>jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-70731268381286811082008-03-07T09:03:00.000-05:002008-03-07T11:08:05.175-05:00"And my China doll down in old Hong Kong, waits for my return."<div align="left"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Bj8EDB042pKR8hEi4TejtsfvOaNmtV66jpij9q7PmXG9iCMRbCS4IPVU9Cb8A5NvG6Dn4Rr7ZsQGiENjxOu23xChW74vrIK54OwG-YSMKQhUqy7mJmPSkSP3TOz-o_Y5dRNYRRZAYcU/s1600-h/IMG_0017.JPG"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5175004636159496162" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Bj8EDB042pKR8hEi4TejtsfvOaNmtV66jpij9q7PmXG9iCMRbCS4IPVU9Cb8A5NvG6Dn4Rr7ZsQGiENjxOu23xChW74vrIK54OwG-YSMKQhUqy7mJmPSkSP3TOz-o_Y5dRNYRRZAYcU/s400/IMG_0017.JPG" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;">Why would a sane person leave Knotts Island for three weeks on the cusp on the most beautiful season of the year??!!<br /></span><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXI7runEmMyk3x7pzQoRNO2Hv2Vr8psc07gys4RLYB4Xr44YvkJA7qOXJHNERfex0HVhq_TZV6PgaGERuQrP92wxEi2dbepAUXom2T8kPMzC8CWP7ADl4X46me0ZL-t-uvWFWpfm6_hlk/s1600-h/DSC_0018.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5175004760713547762" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXI7runEmMyk3x7pzQoRNO2Hv2Vr8psc07gys4RLYB4Xr44YvkJA7qOXJHNERfex0HVhq_TZV6PgaGERuQrP92wxEi2dbepAUXom2T8kPMzC8CWP7ADl4X46me0ZL-t-uvWFWpfm6_hlk/s400/DSC_0018.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">May I introduce you to Sarah and Margaret (John not pictured.)</span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-size:130%;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br />Thank you for visiting.</span></div><div align="left"><br /></div><div align="left"><span style="font-size:130%;">Jack</span></div>jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-25608912541297442612008-03-05T18:09:00.000-05:002019-06-12T08:14:39.872-04:00"And we would all go down together"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVg0TkWE06oUSIyqiqMJKXRlmXnwyZwwch6MRdW2gQnxsuLXtSy7gB20_Qg6k59fXLe8YpzCX5Ym0FlknIO-plAwgDnTQ4CZ4JTfG5DlGBJ8vAaXHV5QyEBcahjZ6sXUZAwDkq1g-4RhI/s1600-h/IMG_0041.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="278" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5174433201778729330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVg0TkWE06oUSIyqiqMJKXRlmXnwyZwwch6MRdW2gQnxsuLXtSy7gB20_Qg6k59fXLe8YpzCX5Ym0FlknIO-plAwgDnTQ4CZ4JTfG5DlGBJ8vAaXHV5QyEBcahjZ6sXUZAwDkq1g-4RhI/s320/IMG_0041.JPG" style="cursor: hand; float: right; height: 206px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 164px;" width="204" /></a> Forty years ago, I was a Lance Corporal serving with a United States Marine Corps infantry company in Gio Linh, South Vietnam. Gio Linh w<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5-0u5w52h7OVK6HQJCna6mR_U2BvG1A8DlBiz74H6Lj8WAnGQL1nTqatwWkjvdEryqMNLKdcHXCD0gOPRDQB_l_EtJw3Gmt4VY_bnm-vro3PuO3q9-WXBimriyIETNXBlz83XLpSvwC8/s1600-h/Dano+and+Till"><img alt="" border="0" height="175" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5174432652022915426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5-0u5w52h7OVK6HQJCna6mR_U2BvG1A8DlBiz74H6Lj8WAnGQL1nTqatwWkjvdEryqMNLKdcHXCD0gOPRDQB_l_EtJw3Gmt4VY_bnm-vro3PuO3q9-WXBimriyIETNXBlz83XLpSvwC8/s320/Dano+and+Till" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 184px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 203px;" width="261" /></a>as a coastal outpost hard on the DMZ that separated the two Vietnams. <br />
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I remember two things about Gio Linh. First, forty years ago last Saturday, I scrambled into a bunker during an enemy artillery barrage. The bunker, which we had been reinforcing, sustained a direct hit and, incredibly, barely held. Being on the receiving end of a direct artillery hit is, well, indescribable, so I won't try. </div>
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My second recollection of Gio Linh was the ongoing the aerial spraying of the dioxin laced defoliant Agent Orange around us, on top of us - everywhere. Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara had decreed that the entire DMZ be defoliated so that enemy penetration could be monitored.<br /><br />Where was Rachael Carson when we needed her?<br /><br />This past weekend also marked the annual Knotts Island Hunters' Feast - several thousand men wandering around the bay eating all manner of meat and game, drinking beer, and generally having a good time. It is a fundraiser for a local children's home. The gross this year was over $100,000. The weather was spectacular.<br /><br />Several years ago, Terry Tillery decided that he would use the Hunter's Feast as a destination for our Charlie Company brothers. This year we attracted brothers in arms from California, Oklahoma, Texas, North Carolina, and Virginia. We had a blast.<br /><br />The group began arriving Wednesday. I spent the morning having routine blood work done at the Veterans Administration in Hampton, then beat it over to Norfolk airport to begin grabbing the guys. By Thursday evening we were assembled in a small hunting lodge not far from my garage. Knotts was and is a serious place for duck hunters.<br /><br />I thought it might be fun to have everyone over to show off my new grill, but I was seriously trumped by Johnny Barnes, son of the lodge proprietor, denizen of the pool house without a pool (across the way from the lodge), and without argument, griller extraordinaire. It would be easier to describe the aforementioned 155 mm enemy artillery round than to even touch that which Johnny produced for us over the following days.<br /><br />Thursday was fish - fried fresh (like just pulled from the water) scallops, ma hi ma hi, some things I wasn't sure of, and grilled fresh tuna steaks with a freshly made crab sauce. Add to that corn bread, cole slaw, beans, etc. All but the tuna were deep fried. The tuna was cooked in a cast iron skillet over flame (this is all outside, now.) We stayed up most of the night dancing and keryokiing to an Eagles concert CD on John's home theatre setup (we're still in the pool house without a pool.)<br /><br />Friday morning was bacon, hash browns, and eggs on the skillet (I'm sure I forgot something.) Friday night was steak night. Pound upon pound New York strip thrown on the Green Egg (oval green grilling device heated with some special wood.) Baked potatoes, backed beans and - well - please forgive any gastronomic details that I may have overlooked.) Somewhere in there we spent several hours with a tape recorder laughing and mostly crying about the grand young sons with whom we served. Each year it becomes increasingly unimaginable for me to process that these were all teen aged boys.<br /><br />Saturday was the Hunters Feast on nearby Blue Pete Haven. It was a glorious day.<br /><br />As the sun set, after a needless stop at Pearl's Bay Marina, we struggled back to Johnny's to be greeted with Egg fired Italian sausage slathered with his outrageous caramelized onion thing that he does on the skillet. </div>
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Incredibly, we all eat again and that is that.<br />
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Nobody moves.<br />
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Nobody speaks.<br />
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The Eagles concert is running on a closed loop, but few are singing.<br />
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We've all been had.<br />
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Sunday, the trips to the airport began anew. My last drop was Tuesday morning. Limping back to Knotts Island, I stopped by the post office to say hi to Bonny and pick up my mail for the first time in a week. I was greeted by two envelopes. I opened the one from the Veterans Administration without interest or curiosity to scan my lab results from the previous week.<br />
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Several sentences on the second page struck my eye, "your diabetes is directly related to you Agent Orange exposure..." "you will get a meter to check your blood sugar at home," I've referred you to our diabetes support group."<br />
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Blah, blah, blah.<br />
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I have diabetes.<br />
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Forty years ago this week, as I ran for cover, all of our young lungs absorbed the deadly dioxin around us. I survived an enemy artillery attack, but my real enemy was in the air, just as surely as if it had been a 500 pond bomb.<br />
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Forty years from today, a 60 year old Iraq/Afghanistan combat veteran is going to walk into a local Veterans Administration Hospital because he doesn't feel right.<br />
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Then it will be his turn.<br />
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This does not stop.<br />
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As long as we insist on fighting wars in strange faraway places, we will expose our troops to strange faraway ailments - like those eminating from the dioxin laced defoliants and napalm manufactured by the Dow Chemical Company of Midland, MI, USA. </div>
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Thank you for visiting.</div>
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Jack</div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoPfTzs3Q-fWBSguNQ-vSrjXcoPaFFu8K9KsB2fpYYs_k8l3UH0yeNMrm07dQkQ6AFwm9WQqTXn_sxLPhBqekZ4Xx0qU7Vy-Yzkumz7oB35AmqNBgQcgeLI8Fg8PMkmB9leaIkB_Iszdo/s1600-h/Dano+and+Till"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjepaOfsIJRF-DPxGv1mr086UFE71EubuSqaX-YPNDvu26I5SJsLt-JSm1NQqbXD7W5mbDDrlhRMbEM4g8g_lzPPfOgf4BKtrk4kFn0AvMxq2mOOza4FejRs3fyu-qtOhhwDJgG_nR0qsw/s1600-h/IMG_0008.JPG"></a>jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-91558101515099160422008-03-04T17:42:00.000-05:002019-06-12T08:14:08.224-04:00"Days of Future Passed"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw13_lnT20KRoiQ6TaX716RqtkNyUsUMs3_2ktQR3OCzpGevpRY2kkjeaUOpeXqr8yx0OT3IWwf9xsNfZTV7WolszQfl4rhf9gKpOrFtzmGAYMTgV4vk_BUimHa3n5Bw0z71uNGAVl7j4/s1600-h/salk.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="226" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5174097833552388386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw13_lnT20KRoiQ6TaX716RqtkNyUsUMs3_2ktQR3OCzpGevpRY2kkjeaUOpeXqr8yx0OT3IWwf9xsNfZTV7WolszQfl4rhf9gKpOrFtzmGAYMTgV4vk_BUimHa3n5Bw0z71uNGAVl7j4/s320/salk.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; height: 180px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 131px;" width="184" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTCPBj12fpR3jc1HjeUhlwoa65w0Ir9TEs5qRJBTuWHcAZcWvh7jQJH2KlSsILOXnNpRRjlox5J59fApHSrMn1vbag0tJKVhVC8XigiFJqCv8ZV5DRrK-vfhsX3UJTtczMH_kO9zDHKvc/s1600-h/178px-T_Jefferson_by_Charles_Willson_Peale_1791_2.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" height="160" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5174097494249971986" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTCPBj12fpR3jc1HjeUhlwoa65w0Ir9TEs5qRJBTuWHcAZcWvh7jQJH2KlSsILOXnNpRRjlox5J59fApHSrMn1vbag0tJKVhVC8XigiFJqCv8ZV5DRrK-vfhsX3UJTtczMH_kO9zDHKvc/s320/178px-T_Jefferson_by_Charles_Willson_Peale_1791_2.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 182px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 139px;" width="144" /></a> I was in the second grade at <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Brayton</span> Elementary School in Summit New Jersey in 1955 when the day came to get our polio shots. Our class was summoned to the auditorium and stood frozen with fear in a line that wound into the nurses office. I recall a conversation with a friend in which I said I'd rather risk polio than get the shot (I <em>hated </em>shots.)<br />
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Foolish?<br />
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Completely.<br />
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Polio was the scourge of the 20<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">th</span> century. It was one of the most feared of many childhood diseases that, to a great degree, no longer exist. Polio epidemics crippled thousands of people, mostly young children. All related to polio was horrific. In April, 1955, Dr. Jonas Salk announced the development of a vaccine and, within a year, nearly every American child had been vaccinated. Within a decade, the disease was largely eradicated from the United States.<br />
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Those were the days.<br />
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We were the first wave of the baby boom. Our fathers had defeated the Japanese and saved Europe. Anything was possible. We would have men on the moon and bring them safely home prior to my college graduation. To us, the power of American scientific achievement and (<span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">occasionally</span> blind) hope for the future wasn't really amazing, it was assumed.<br />
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Five years after my first polio shot, while having a Coke at a diner across from the Strand movie theatre in Summit, I made the idiotic decision to have my first cigarette. Not long into my tenure as a smoker, the Surgeon General of the United States announced that there was a direct link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer. I remember saying to a friend at the time that, by the time I got lung cancer, science would have found the cure. It was not a preposterous assumption, given the times. It was my own blind hope for the future. It also allowed me to continue smoking cigarettes in full denial of the personal <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">repercussions</span> (and, as we've come to find out, the significant second hand smoke <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">repercussions</span> of those that were around me.)<br />
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Unlike polio, however, lung cancer was not cured. Our school headmaster, who announced the Surgeon Generals report to us at an assembly in 1963, died of lung cancer nine years later. He never quit. My father died of lung cancer twenty years later. He quit only near the end. These were two <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">intelligent</span> and accomplished men. Several years later, I finally quit. Science was not going to win this one.<br />
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Smoking = death. It still does.<br />
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So much for blind faith in the future.<br />
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I was in denial about polio (I'll take my chances rather than the shot) and cigarette smoking (science will figure it out.)<br />
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Man defeated polio, cigarettes defeated man.<br />
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So now I am thinking of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson is one of history's great individuals - on a par with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">Da</span> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Vinci</span>, Gandhi, or Shakespeare. He was an accomplished diplomat, farmer, scientist, architect, inventor, and author. We all know Jefferson as the drafter of the Declaration of Independence.<br />
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"All men are created equal."<br />
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Jefferson was also a slave owner and fathered children by at least one slave (Sally Hemming.) He was not a wealthy man. He felt that he needed slaves to live a life that permitted him to be all of the things that he was and aspired to be. Many historians agree that Jefferson, although tormented by the institution of slavery, felt that, over time, it would die a natural death in the United States. This hope was based on my <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">aforementioned</span> cigarette <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">argument</span>. Somebody would think of something.<br />
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The ideals which Jefferson espoused were incompatible with his personal behavior. And, as far as his prognostication about slavery, he could not possibly have been more wrong. Slavery did not did a natural death. Its hideous end cost hundreds of thousand of lives and very nearly destroyed all that Jefferson envisioned.<br />
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Because the cure for polio came at my young age, I had reason to believe that lung cancer too would be defeated. Jefferson had drafted the Declaration, defeated the British, and achieved almost unimaginable personal accomplishments during his young lifetime and yet died alone as the owner of slaves.<br />
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So what?<br />
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Days when I drive the 25 miles from <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Knotts</span> Island to Virginia Beach to do errands, I pass several enormous sand quarries with holes in the earth that are nearly unimaginable in scale. Sand is used for everything in road and housing construction. This is where it comes from. Sometimes I pretend that those holes contain granite, or oil, or coal, or all of the other natural resources that we consume to an <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">unfathomable</span> degree. The end products are in the skin of my car, my tires, the gas, the book on CD to which I listen, and the very the road upon which I drive.<br />
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Dr. Jonas Salk is nowhere to be found to cleanly solve that which we are bringing upon ourselves.<br />
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Like Jefferson, we will all be dead prior to the time of <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">reckoning</span>. </div>
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Thank you for visiting.</div>
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Jack</div>
jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-22130985882999007992008-02-23T15:24:00.000-05:002019-06-12T08:12:33.609-04:00"Food Glorious Food, Hot Sausage and..." organic chicken?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3npSVJEgelqGoqdlXJQXDISVapiOcqEFICf5DLeqARXBWk-9e7XA5PnV4Dp0ADs6s3hVQtLzHGWCL1hZEpklzIw95eLrHVthkdRy30oZfzWiEvd10tA5XR2LZvyppjA-ERXTv8jOv_pA/s1600-h/IMG_0007.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" height="300" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5170306602851600386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3npSVJEgelqGoqdlXJQXDISVapiOcqEFICf5DLeqARXBWk-9e7XA5PnV4Dp0ADs6s3hVQtLzHGWCL1hZEpklzIw95eLrHVthkdRy30oZfzWiEvd10tA5XR2LZvyppjA-ERXTv8jOv_pA/s400/IMG_0007.JPG" style="cursor: hand; float: left; height: 161px; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; width: 231px;" width="288" /></a> My sister Ruth can cook.<br /><br />
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The other day she told me that she had made three kinds of soup, a batch of spaghetti, and some chili. My stomach grumbled. I asked that she send some over, but alas she lives in Oregon. However, she said it was easy, really. </div>
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All I had to do was take an organic chicken, throw it in a pot with a lot of water, cook it until "you have nothing better to do", stop cooking it, take the bones out, throw in anyting that is in the fridge, plus barley, carrots, onions, celery, squash, spinach, garlic, and mushrooms.</div>
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Ruthie says that it is good for whatever ails me and lasts a long time - two weeks at the least. </div>
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Great. </div>
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She wasn't too far into the instructions before it became apparent to me that this simple exercise would certainly require a stove. For all of its hospitable amenities, the Tillery Garage on Knotts Island does not have a stove. Given the space limitations of the "kitchen area," the garage would, in all liklihood, never have one either. Such an addition would require the elimination of either the bathroom or the Harley Davidson motorcycle workshop. I knew better than to even ask. </div>
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What to do?</div>
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I headed 25 miles up the road to look at gas grills. All this talk about boiling an organic chicken had me starved for a completely inorganic rib eye steak.</div>
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My first stop was Home Depot, as it was the closest. After some casual looking around, I had three wonderful revalations. First, gas grills don't have to cost a lot of money. I set my budget at $300 (gas can not included) and actually stayed within it. Neat. Second, most grills now come with a separate gas burner on the side. That meant that I could grill my steak <em>and</em> boil an organic chicken <em>at the same time</em>. Wow. The third point was heaven. All of these stores now assemble the grills for <em>free!</em></div>
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My now son-in-law Brad Elmer and I once undertook to assemble a new gas grill right out of the box at night by flashlight in the middle of winter. We were guys. We were hungry. How hard could it be? Nearly impossible, as it turned out. I finally completed the assembly in the spring, months after Brad and his appitite had departed. Throughout the winter and early spring, as I toiled away, I'd occassionally call Brad with revelations that I felt certain would be as astounding to him as they were to me (hey, Brad, remember that funny screw that was left over after we realized we'd put the upper assembly on backwards again...?)</div>
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Having set my budget, identified the necessary features (4 main burners, 1 side burner), I set out to find my grill. Those who know me will not find the following behavior to be out of character. I left Home Depot grill-less, headed across the lot to Wal-Mart, went up the street to the new Super Target, went around the construction fence to Costco, drove down the road to Sears, and finally marched into a Lowes store which I was sure had not been there two weeks before. In point of fact, not one of these stores had been there even a year ago.</div>
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Despite my rigid "I'm a guy who knows what he's doing, don't fuck with me" exterior, a pleasant and knowledgable sales associate appeared and, within minutes, had sold me a Char Broil Gas Grill (Commercial Grade!!!) for $299 (gas can not included.)</div>
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Two days later, I drove back up the 25 miles to Lowes and picked up my grill. Planning ahead, I had already swung by Costco and purchased $234. worth of steak, pork, and chicken, and everything else on hand that might relate in some way to a grill. I also grabbed a case of plastic freezer bags to store it all in. </div>
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Within the hour, back at the garage, the grill was unstrapped from the back of the car (I might ask for help, next time), the can was connected, and the tank turned on.<br /><br />With the turn of a dial and the push of a button...<br /><br />...woooosh…<br /><br />I was in business.<br /><br />Thanks for the inspiration, Ruthie.<br /><br />Thanks to the rest of you for visiting.<br /><br />Jackjamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-83683464617301330372008-02-21T17:37:00.000-05:002019-06-12T08:12:06.615-04:00"Beautiful Boy"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio_WhGOTdOKXtNyqAWbuGjyebvwgZXMrv7bpaB73VInSdU1wDiDCh7R4SmHWxlA1AfOtVGcoaTpSb6TF22re0sVcwF8qT_trG_3rKuffdcbaka85NaSAi59OPDD7Us8exLO57s60Oetos/s1600-h/mechams.bmp"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5170320067574073394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio_WhGOTdOKXtNyqAWbuGjyebvwgZXMrv7bpaB73VInSdU1wDiDCh7R4SmHWxlA1AfOtVGcoaTpSb6TF22re0sVcwF8qT_trG_3rKuffdcbaka85NaSAi59OPDD7Us8exLO57s60Oetos/s400/mechams.bmp" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a> <em>Before you cross the street,<br />Take my hand,<br />Life is just what happens to you,<br />While your busy making other plans,<br /><br />Beautiful, Beautiful, Beautiful,<br />Beautiful Boy,<br />Darling, Darling,<br />Darling Sean.</em><br />
John Lennon "Beautiful Boy"<br />
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An early morning phone call from an old friend can set the stage for a terrific day.<br /><br />Plans to be made?<br /><br />Laughs to be had about old times?<br /><br />Old friends provide a unique leveling balance.<br /><br />Such was not the case this morning. Vietnam buddy Terry Tillery called to tell me that Sean Mecham, the 31 year old son of our former Navy Hospital Corpsman, had died yesterday. The cause of death was reported to be a staff infection run wild.<br /><br />I had breakfast, put on a jacket, and went for a walk.<br /><br />I am in Cheshire, Connecticut. Although it was bright and sunshiny outside, one glance at the tightly closed rhododendron leaves told me that it was very cold. Undaunted, I turned down the street, and headed off in no particular direction while thinking of the Beautiful Boy that I had never known.<br /><br />After years of searching, I’d reconnected with Mac four years ago. He was living in Sacramento, not far from his childhood home. He was happily married, had two grown children (a boy and a girl), and had a good job. On the surface, all was well – even better than well. We loved having each other back in our lives.<br /><br />I walked through Cheshire’s suburban neighborhoods, cut through back yards, was stymied by several dead ends, and was soon largely lost. My mind was elsewhere. How does a 31 year old man just die from an infection? We have become so inured to the miracle of modern medicine that early natural death is nearly incomprehensible.<br /><br />I pointed myself back in the general direction of Cheshire’s Main Street and, some time later, reemerged a mile south of town between the 7-11 and Dunkin' Donuts. Braced against the wind, I headed north, up the hill towards the center of town. As surely as he had lived, Sean Mecham was now dead. I could not walk away from that terrifying fact.<br /><br />Once back in town, I noticed a curved wall in front of the brick City Hall. It was the Cheshire War Memorial. It contained the names Cheshire residents who had served their country in conflicts going back to the Civil War. It is impressive. To one side, was a bronze plaque honoring 1st Lt. H.C. Barnum, USMC, a son of Cheshire who had been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for service with the Third Marine Division in Vietnam the year before Mac Mecham and I arrived in country. I knew Barney, as he is known. He and I had met on occasion in Washington and had friends in common, including Bill Negron, Mac’s and my company commander in Vietnam.<br /><br />Wow, I thought, small world.<br /><br />Prior to our recent reunion, I had last seen Mac in the summer of 1968 at the Oakland Naval Hospital where he and other comrades were recovering from horrific wounds suffered while our unit was under heavy attack months earlier. Mac recovered, met and married Lise, and several years later, had their first child – a boy - who they named Sean.<br /><br />I never met Sean, but knew that he had had a difficult life. He suffered from severe addictions that had torn at his family, friends, and community for most of his adult life. Mac and Lise struggled as parents in ways that few of us can imagine. Some times it was scary, some times it was a nightmare, but at all times it was their beloved son, struggling with unspeakable demons deep within his soul.<br /><br />Standing in the cold, staring at the bronzed name of my friend Barney Barnum, I realized that towns do not build memorials to young men like Sean Mecham. His brief life, unlike those commemorated on the Cheshire Wall, was one that we as communities try to forget rather than extol.<br /><br />Where is the glory in the life of a young man who clawed every minute of every day to get past the inbred monsters that precluded him from living a normal life? In 31 years, he never even got to the starting line that the rest of us assume and expect.<br /><br />This day, we rightfully continue to honor Barney Barnum as we have for 43 years. His service was extraordinary and stands as a paragon. Mac and I were Marines. Barney was a <em>great</em> Marine.<br /><br />May we now add Sean Mecham and the thousands like him living and passed who so inspire us all, often by executing such seemingly simple tasks as getting out of bed each morning, dusting themselves off, and trying to get back in the game.<br /><br />That is how I define courage. <br />
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Thank you for visiting.<br />
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Jackjamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-45965803497236274552008-02-11T13:17:00.000-05:002019-06-12T08:08:53.889-04:00"You did not desert me, my Brothers in Arms"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAulpWX1pZ-c4hh2HGt0FHWGMsYUKdFITt-o1LP9plOOZVp-fBEC9MtXRyV3HvISt7HxLFuhuoPuN1S3vaWk0Zib9xTPzGsZ6RzE9-KewINJHIj47gHugXJlr6M7FAzrpGoL1f-A4wmvo/s1600/UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_13093.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAulpWX1pZ-c4hh2HGt0FHWGMsYUKdFITt-o1LP9plOOZVp-fBEC9MtXRyV3HvISt7HxLFuhuoPuN1S3vaWk0Zib9xTPzGsZ6RzE9-KewINJHIj47gHugXJlr6M7FAzrpGoL1f-A4wmvo/s320/UNADJUSTEDNONRAW_thumb_13093.jpg" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Bill Negron called to remind me that it was the 40th anniversary of the Tet Offensive. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Every day is now the 40th anniversary of something that happened to us in Vietnam.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Our company was fortunate during Tet. We were near Con Thien doing bridge security at a position we called the "Washout." Cam Lo, a small village several miles south of us, was the northernmost civilian location in South Vietnam. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Vietnam veterans often did not get the positive recognition that veterans of America's other wars received. Today, in honor of Tet, I'd like to recognize Corporal Larry Leonard Maxam, then a 20 year old boy from Glendale, California. He was my Brother in Arms. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "times new roman";"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial";">Days after the beginning of the Tet Offensive, I accompanied a sergeant on a trip down to Cam Lo to get a situation report for the Skipper on some recent activity. Two squads from Delta Company had been sent down from the Washout the previous afternoon to bolster security following the NVA ambush of an Army convoy.</span><span style="font-family: "arial";"></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">We had stood lines in Cam Lo for several days shortly after my arrival, so I was familiar with the layout. Nothing, however, could prepare me for what I saw on this sunny February morning. Coming into the tiny village, we spotted six U.S. Army trucks on the side of the road, still smoking from the rockets that had leveled them the previous afternoon. Their frames were twisted. Several were on their sides. Blackened bodies lay in the cabs, burnt into the seats, all but irremovable. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">We paused for a brief moment, and then moved on. There was nothing there for us to see and nothing there for us to do. As we drove around the corner, another horrific sight came into view. There before us was a pile of dozens upon dozens of dead bodies stacked as high as they could be thrown. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Gooks? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">Yes, thank god they were all gooks. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial";">The Marines from the two squads of Delta Company that had come down from the Washout the day before to provide security were now methodically grabbing body after body from the barbed wire that encircled the small perimeter that they had established. The only sound was that of our idling motor. The only smell was the omnipresent stench of cordite – the detritus of modern battle. The bodies had only been dead for short hours. It was a remarkably surreal scene - indescribable and instantly etched into my permanent memory. </span><span style="font-family: "arial";"><br /><br />Years later I was sure that it had only been a dream.<br /><br />The previous evening, those two squads from Delta Company had held off a vastly superior force of NVA that had targeted the previously defenseless Cam Lo village as part of the Tet Offensive. In one night, these thirty-five boys confirmed 160 N.V.A. dead (with dozens of others certainly carried away.) Enemy body counts in Vietnam were routinely inflated by the higher ups. In this case, however, you could walk over and count them one by one. Thirty five other NVA were captured along with several enemy trucks and a flag signed by all of the troops that was to have been raised over the village after their anticipated victory.<br /><br />Delta Company lost one Marine killed.<br /><br />Nearby, the Army lost several more in the passing convoy that had been ambushed to begin the attack.<br /><br />The entire scene was so far beyond anything that my sane mind could comprehend that, after a time, I forgot the incident but for recurring nightmares that continued for decades. Like many grunts, I had dozens of such memories that hung between the real and the surreal. They became part of our DNA. Therapy could bring some out over time. Most however were destined to remain right there, deep inside, as surely as if they inhabited a bone. They would not depart my body before I did.<br /><br />A Delta Company Marine, Corporal Larry Leonard Maxam, was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his valor that night. It was awarded posthumously. The citation reads as follows:<br /><br /><em>For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a fire team leader with Company D, First Battalion, Fourth Marines, Third Marine Division in the Republic of Vietnam. </em><br /><br /><em>On 2 February 1968, the Cam Lo District Headquarters came under extremely heavy rocket, artillery, mortar, and recoilless rifle fire from a numerically superior enemy force, destroying a portion of the defensive perimeter. Corporal Maxam, observing the enemy massing for an assault into the compound across the remaining defensive wire, instructed his Assistant Fire Team Leader to take charge of the fire team, and unhesitatingly proceeded to the weakened section of the perimeter. </em><br /><br /><em>Completely exposed to the concentrated enemy fire, he sustained multiple fragmentation wounds from exploding grenades as he ran to an abandoned machine gun position. Reaching the emplacements, he grasped the machine gun and commenced to deliver effective fire on the advancing enemy. As the enemy directed maximum fire power against the determined Marine, Corporal Maxam s position received a direct hit from a rocket propelled grenade, knocking him backwards and inflicting severe fragmentation wounds to his face and right eye. </em><br /><br /><em>Although momentarily stunned and in intense pain, Corporal Maxam courageously resumed his firing position and subsequently was struck again by small arms fire. With resolute determination, he gallantly continued to deliver intense machine gun fire, causing the enemy to retreat through the defensive wire to positions of cover. In a desperate attempt to silence his weapon, the North Vietnamese threw hand grenades and directed recoilless rifle fire against him, inflicting two additional wounds. </em><br /><br /><em>Too weak to reload his machine gun, Corporal Maxam fell to a prone position and valiantly continued to deliver effective fire with his rifle. After one and a half hours, during which he was hit repeatedly by fragments from exploding grenades, and concentrated small arms fire, he succumbed to his wounds, having successfully defended nearly one-half of the perimeter single-handedly. </em><br /><br /><em>Corporal Maxam's aggressive fighting spirit, inspiring valor and selfless devotion to duty reflected great credit upon himself and the Marine Corps and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.” </em><br /><br />Corporal Maxam was just one of us. He had been a corporal, a fire team leader, a veteran of December 6, 1967. Until the day before, he too had been at the Washout, digging pissers, burning shitters, filling sand bags, and going on endless perimeter patrols. He was now the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, as surely as if he’d been Audie Murphy himself.<br /><br />In point of fact, Corporal Maxam could have been any one of us. This realization and the horror of what our Delta Marines had endured, snapped many of us in Charlie Company back to the reality that, although times were slack, the war was all around us, and it a matter of minutes we could again be in the very thick of it.</span>© Jack McLean 2007 All Rights Reserved<br />
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Thanks, Larry. We all miss you a lot.<br />
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Semper Fi and God bless.<br />
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Jackjamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-13658504799006083662008-02-03T15:08:00.000-05:002019-06-12T07:38:09.961-04:00"Sunshine Superman"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwjZvlaD9vE8w4kOlUhZII-MOyf-G2oHkQUi51hIppIJU_XSDcpJwBuS9OrdSShneoLSRiDKtYngdQmzllu5QiiannfjKhnOGt9jIS6HUZymRwlkEeBr4CfGSzNlpsE6SuNWZseC2c53Y/s1600-h/New+Image.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5162872373689706898" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwjZvlaD9vE8w4kOlUhZII-MOyf-G2oHkQUi51hIppIJU_XSDcpJwBuS9OrdSShneoLSRiDKtYngdQmzllu5QiiannfjKhnOGt9jIS6HUZymRwlkEeBr4CfGSzNlpsE6SuNWZseC2c53Y/s200/New+Image.JPG" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a> SUPER SUNDAY!!<br /><br />O.K., it's not Christmas or the Fourth of July, but it has been around long enough to conjur memories.<br /><br />This is my first Southern Super Sunday in years (I don't aknowledge McLean, VA to be Southern.) I've been invited to Bill and Barb's pool house next door to watch the game. Chili and beer will be served. Excellent.<br /><br />An interesting insight into Knotts Island is that one need not have an actual swimming pool to have a pool house. Bill and Barb do, but Johnny Barnes down the street does not (Johnny is just completing a major renovation of his pool house to include a small bedroom.)<br /><br />Pool Houses are places where guys go to drink, watch football, and fall asleep in big lounge chairs. They are decorated to look like island tiki bars. I wasn't introduced to the concept until I was too old to get away with it in my own life. Happily, however, I now have an entire garage that serves as my personal pool house. All my stuff is here and <em>I</em> can fall asleep with the TV on and no one gets on my case.<br /><br />It is warm. Pool house doors are open, guests are arriving (see photo above), grills are being fired up, bags of ice are being dumped over buckets of beer, and all seems right with the world. I'm looking forward to the game and am glad that Bill and Barb invited me over. Who wants to be alone on Super Sunday!?!<br /><br />I spent my first Super Bowl Sunday in the South and I was, for the most part, alone. I was stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, the sprawling east coast anchor for the United States Marine Corps. I was a Private First Class, attending supply school, and learning the one transferrable skill that I took from the Corps - typing.<br /><br />That Saturday morning I was granted a 48 hour pass and decided to visit Andover friends that were attending the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. I rose early, took the base liberty bus (known as the "vomit comet") into the neighboring town of Jacksonville, and boarded a Greyhound bus for Durham. Eighteen stops and 6 hours later I arrived to transfer and take the final three stops to Chapel Hill on a connecting bus.<br /><br />I was young, excited, and free so have little recollection of the journey. I arrived, found some friends, drank a lot of beer, and flopped on a dorm sofa. Had I remained on base, I would have found some friends, drank a lot of beer, and flopped on my rack. The contrast seems less obvious to me now that it did at the time.<br /><br />Sunday morning I was given a brief campus tour that included the college basketball stadium. I was stunned. Basketball was nothing at Andover. Even with the Glory Celtics, basketball was nothing in New England either. Hockey ruled! And yet, here was the home of the legendary North Carolina Tar Heels - a college gym bigger than the fabled Boston Garden itself.<br /><br />I felt as though I was in a foreign land. Why ever would so many people want to watch a basketball game. Even my former classmates had been converted. Twenty years later, I moved with my young family to Charlotte. Several months after that, I began to understand the allure (the Tar Heels suck - a subject for a future blog.)<br /><br />Super Bowl I must have begun around 3 in the afternoon as it was being played in L.A. It wasn't all that big a deal. In fact, it probably didn't become known as Super Bowl I until the next year when some genius decided to call the second rendition Super Bowl II. The Vince Lombardi Packers were playing the Hank Stram Kansas City Chiefs. Everybody was a Packer fan.<br /><br />At halftime, I had to head back. I took a cab to the bus station, retraced my steps to Durham, and after a wait, boarded a Greyhound bus for the eighteen-stop six-hour journey back to Jacksonville. This trip I remember vividly. Every stop.<br /><br />Raleigh. Zebulon. Bailey.<br /><br />We reached Wilson at twilight.<br /><br />I was now the only white person on the bus. It was a foreign country. We'd stop every few miles. People would get on and people would get off. I was miles removed from the Marine Corps and an entire light year from Andover or Chapel Hill, for that matter. The towns were small and ramshakle and the ground was perfectly flat. A single naked light bulb marked the bench that comprised the bus stop in each town.<br /><br />Goldsboro, Kingston, New Bern.<br /><br />New Bern?<br /><br />My great-great grandfather came to the United States from Scotland with his brother. They were stone masons. When they arrived, my great-great grandfather went to Patterson, New Jersey (birthplace of the Industrial Revolution and consequently the epicenter of brick) and his brother came to New Bern, North Carolina. New Bern had been the capital of North Carolina prior to present day Raleigh. I made a point to return to New Bern in the daylight to review my great-great uncle's work. I've yet to go.<br /><br />Pollocksville. Maysville. Belgrade. Jacksonville.<br /><br />I disembarked with several other Marines who had joined the trip along the way. The Comet arrived around 11pm and we made the lonely last leg to Mountfort Point, Camp Lejeune. I flopped on my rack and during the brief instant before I fell aspeep, I wondered about what a long strange trip it had been.<br /><br />Seven hours later, I was sitting tall in Sgt. Lerma's Monday morning class.<br /><br />"Type 'A', you worthless motherfuckers, type 'A'.<br /><br />It was good to be back.jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-77357430617591573362008-02-02T15:15:00.000-05:002019-06-12T07:37:32.998-04:00"Songs For Beginners"<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5162486221770058114" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF5yibbKRLXx0gXa1tKqT9M_8sqAueGVqYGTHcAfaHxPQSJBwCLDf5mfxCjxqaAreD9YcRy0be8Nf5-iq4SZteFkzGtS5RxOGkLERt-4BImneqpvo3wFaWYA4fYUvXmyD2SDzPOTQFGVc/s200/NewMarineCorpsRecruitingPoster.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" />My Nursery School teacher was Miss MacMaster. The class met three mornings a week in a small brick building adjacent to the Memorial Field playground in Summit, New Jersey.<br /><br />My memories of Nursery School are fond, or at least uninvasive.<br /><br />On one particular morning, workmen were banging and sawing away next door while we were singing, of all things, the <em>Marine Corps Hymn</em>. The louder they banged, the louder Miss MacMaster would have us sing. It was lots of fun. We were all singing and screaming at the same time, with her approval and encouragement.<br /><br />Needless to say, I have never forgotten that moment. One thought that occasionally recurs is that we were in Nursery School and ALL of us - boys and girls - knew the words to the <em>Marine Corps Hymn.</em><br />The Fifties were like that.<br /><br />When I was little, we weren't all that far removed from World War II. There were war movies, war heroes (Audie Murphy), war ship models to be built, old Army uniforms stuffed in the attic, and endless war games to be reenacted with friends throughout the battlefields of the Watchung Reservation.<br /><br />So why was it a surprise when, during my senior year in prep school, I enlisted in the United States Marine Corps? It had been my childhood. It was how I was brought up. Patriotism, guns, war, and the Marine Corps were all very cool. Given the opportunity, the choice seemed obvious.<br /><br />That being said, I’d like to turn you my readers, into you my listeners, for a peak at Miss MacMaster’s Nursery School class circa 2007. You can almost hear the workmen next door.<br /><br />Semper Fidelis.<br /><br />Thank you for visiting.<br /><br />Jack<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxuGhBYspHOWt6qpZ-IOXZ0pg4AVNopRQ4Jx7CL0aU0iczurt49BCuiOu0Jkuq76My1Qn07eaOxapCNvU8t-g' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2908094583687685425.post-12273047358201720072008-02-02T10:08:00.001-05:002019-06-12T08:11:34.994-04:00"It's a Small World, After All"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk1ol7o8n-zQwOGWIw1FS7j0z59EsETGtyBXST4SRri4LpKaPeu6WDKzxS04ObJtCWS8rTMnGRFPG0ujuzR5nhvvdDdaj5TKfPX_MjdH2hEONa6ZmQD77qxGzYSOVo4PZbIgNrBHUn7gQ/s1600-h/Margaret+usmc.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5162462784133523794" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk1ol7o8n-zQwOGWIw1FS7j0z59EsETGtyBXST4SRri4LpKaPeu6WDKzxS04ObJtCWS8rTMnGRFPG0ujuzR5nhvvdDdaj5TKfPX_MjdH2hEONa6ZmQD77qxGzYSOVo4PZbIgNrBHUn7gQ/s320/Margaret+usmc.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px;" /></a><br />
Perhaps your young family endlessly sang this Disney classic. Mine did. It was a reminder that, despite our differences in culture and appearance, we are one as people of the world. Years later, Tom Friedman wrote <em>The World is Flat</em> in which he set forth our global economic interdependence. It had nothing to do with culture or appearance and everything to do with money.<br />
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Either way, for better or sometimes for worse, we are one people inextricably interconnected.<br />
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November 10, 2007 was a day that continues to remind me of the global village which Disney and Friedman acknowledged. Were I to write the movie trailer, I say that "it was a day of war and peace, love and hate, wealth and power, birth and death, honor and tradition, family and friendships spanning generations, with an all star cast."<br />
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My camera would then zoom in on the stars - My Granddaughter, Terry Tillery, Bill Negron, Tim Heck, and - reluctantly - me, all sitting around a table at Tun's Tavern in Philadelphia. The United States Marine Corps was founded at Tun’s Tavern on November 10, 1775. Hence, that day in 2007 was the Corp's 232nd birthday.<br />
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To mark the occasion, several survivors of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division were celebrating at a reunion in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Coincidentally, the day also marked 40 years since several attendees (me included) had arrived in Vietnam.<br />
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Others were busy that day as well.<br />
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In Hong Kong, 7,600 miles to the west, on that very day, my first Grandchild was born.<br />
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In Baghdad, Iraq, 7,300 miles to the east, on that very day, an American and a Marine Corps flag were being flow in my honor over Firebase Spiteful in Camp Fallujah - the definition of hell on earth for a new generation of United States Marines. I only became aware of this yesterday when the flags and accompanying citations arrived in the mail.<br />
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Margaret came first. Given the time difference, we awoke to the wonderful news. Most of our day was spent visiting Angel Fire, a stunning memorial near Taos created by Victor Westphall to honor his son David, a 4th Marine brother who was killed on our watch in 1968.<br />
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That evening we celebrated. Marine Corps Birthday rituals were followed to the letter. I rose to toast Bill Negron, our company commander on this his 71st birthday and Margaret on her birth day. I also read an email that I’d just received from 1st Lt. Tim Heck detailing the activities of his unit during the previous week at Camp Fallujah, Iraq. Bill, Margaret, and Tim each received a standing ovation.<br />
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After dinner, a raffle was held. The prize item was a Marine Corps baby quilt beautifully created by the wife of one of our group. In addition to the Vietnam service ribbons and eagle globe and anchor, the date and our unit markings were embroidered in. The winner was Terry Tillery. Terry wasted little time in quietly presenting it to Bill Negron in honor of his birthday. Several minutes later, Bill walked over and, without fanfare, handed the quilt to me.<br />
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“Here,” he said in a whisper. “Please give this to Margaret with love from all of us.”<br />
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The evening ended, but I had yet to see the actual conclusion of the day until yesterday. In the mail, I received a package from Tim Heck. Tim was a Georgetown neighbor during his undergraduate years. Each fall, as new students arrived to reside on our street, I’d ring several doorbells wearing my Marine Corps sweatshirt to let my new neighbors know exactly how it was going to be for the upcoming year. It was a stunningly effective strategy which gained me hours of additional weekend sleep.<br />
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Tim opened his door, gave me a quiet Indiana up and down and remarked,<br />
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“I’m going to be one of you.”<br />
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I was stunned. This was a first. “One of me,” I responded?<br />
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“”Yes sir, one of you. I’m in Naval ROTC. When I graduate, I’ll be commissioned a 2nd Lt. in the United States Marine Corps.”<br />
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My first reaction was to ask the poor misguided soul if he was in full possession of his faculties. There would soon be a war going on and Tim wanted to be an infantry officer.<br />
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“Semper Fi, brother” were my only words.<br />
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“Semper Fi, sir,” he responded.<br />
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Tim and I became friends and have stayed in touch. He loves the Marine Corps and thereby, by extension, loves me. I love Tim as well. It’s one of the reasons that the United States Marine Corps is older than the country itself.<br />
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Yesterday, a package from Tim arrived. It included a Marine Corps flag, an American flag and two documents. The first document was a formal citation that read:<br />
<em>This Flag was flown over Sierra Battery Gun line at Camp Fallujah, Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom 06-08.1<br />Presented to:<br />Jack McLean</em><br />
It included appropriate seals and signatures. I was, needless to say, blown away.<br />
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The second document was a memo to me, Cpl. Jack McLean C/1/4, on the unit’s letterhead from Gunnery Sergeant M.D. Hamby, Position commander of Firebase Spiteful, Camp Fallujah, Iraq. It reads as follows:<br />
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Subj: For Your Loyal Service to the Marine Corps</div>
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The enclosed flags were flown in your honor by First Lieutenant Timothy G. Heck of Battery S, Fifth Battalion, Tenth Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team Six, aboard Firebase Spiteful, Camp Fallujah, Anbar Province, Iraq on November 10, 2007. </div>
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The flags were flown with the ideals of General Lejeune’s original birthday message animating our thoughts and actions. The Marines of Spiteful Battery are currently carrying on the legacy set forth by the Marines that have preceded us on the battlefields both here and elsewhere and the warrior ethos you have passed on to us. The Marines here are the successors to the legacy of Chapultepec, the walls of the Peking Legion, the wheat fields of Belleau Wood, the volcanic sands of Iwo Jima, the frozen expanse of the Chosin Reservoir, and of your own battles in the DMZ. </div>
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We hope these flags will be a small token of our appreciation for the heritage and standards you have established for us. The Marine Corps is in good hands as a result of your work. </div>
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May the Marine Corps enjoy many more birthdays as our legacy for honor, courage and commitment continues to be built daily by the Marines of Spiteful Battery.<br />
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Semper Fidelis!<br />
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Semper Fidelis to you as well, Gunny, and to Tim and to Terry.<br />
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To Bill, Margaret, and the United States Marine Corps, Happy Birthday! </div>
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Thank you for visiting.</div>
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Jack</div>
jamcleanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03171094413596644967noreply@blogger.com4