The Time, It Does Fly By

So, on the Book of Face today, there is a link to a news story out of Fort Lewis. It seems that a LTC Olsen is moving his reserve support battalion to Ft Hood for a year. It is a Reserve mobilization battalion, helps units or augmentees to prepare for deployments.

Okay, nice that we have such an organization. No, the story is that LTC Olsen was 2LT Olsen when we first met, in 1994 (?) at Engineer Officer Basic Course, Ft Leonard Wood, Missouri. That's right, Tom Olsen was in one of my first classes I taught as an instructor of Field Engineering, Camouflage, and Demolitions.

Twenty years. And he is potentially up for full Colonel soon.

My, they grow up so fast, huh?

Northwest Guardian Article

WGOE - Richmond, Virginia - 1970's

Growing up in Richmond, the earliest radio station that I can remember would have been WLEE or possibly WRVA. Good stations, though I do not know if they are still broadcasting. They may be on the air, but the question is if they are still the same format from the sixties and seventies.

No, it was later that I was introduced to the station that still drives my listening memories. WGOE, the highest point on your AM dial, 1590. This was a top forty station that morphed into album oriented rock. Long before we all started listening to FM stations, WGOE was playing what would become FM standard.

The station never really had a huge power output. In the West End, out in Henrico, it was easy to hit hollows and have the signal drop out. But in-town, music like I still want to hear. Music giveaways like getting a plain white cover of J. Buffett's Son of a Son of a Sailor. The various ball teams (softball, flag football, basketball), all named the Nads. So we could all stand on the touchlines and shout, "GO, Nads!" Cheap, sure, but fun.

Right after I joined the Army, WGOE was sold and went about as far from its format as was possible. Christian music.

I think I'll have a drink tonight in remembrance of what was...and still can be on satellite radio.

November 9th, 1989

It had been another day of classes at the Non-commissioned Officer Academy, at Ft Leonard Wood, Missouri. I was there for the Combat Engineer Advanced Non-commissioned Officers Course (ANCOC). Those of us that got a lift in the shuttle van entered the barracks hallway and went to our rooms. We pretty much agreed to meet in the small commons area to head for the dining facility in about five minutes.
Upon entering our rooms, we all pretty much automatically turned on our televisions. They were all tuned to either MTV, the Weather Channel, or a news channel.
Pause.
We were all senior NCOs. All of us had either done one or more tours in Germany or Korea. We all had a pretty good idea of what we could be called upon to do, in the event of a breach of the fences in either place. We jokingly, as had thousands of our predecessors, called ourselves "speed bumps".
We had performed border patrols, practiced our wartime missions (in sector), and generally knew what a terrifing amount of firepower, death, destruction, and pain was awaiting all forces, on both sides of the fences.
But, that was our job, and not a one of us was serving as a draftee. Volunteers all.
End pause.
BANG! CRASH!
Every door on the hallway slammed open.
All of us were standing in our doorways, staring at each other with a Cortezian "...wild surmise."
We moved as a group to the commons and spent the next several hours in front of the big television in that room, watching as The Wall came down. We watched as thousands of Berliners, East and West that morning, but just Berliners now, climbed on, over, and atop that hateful barrier of concrete and wire that snaked like evil thought through the heart of Berlin.
We watched people pick up sledgehammers and chip away at the face of The Wall. We watched whole sections of The Wall pulled thunderously down, to thunderous cheers.
We saw the world turned upside down, the world that we grew up in and served in, flip on its axis and reright itself in a new way.
To this day, I will proudly proclaim that, after forty-plus years of staring at each other, we (the West) outlasted those evil bastards on the other side of the fence.

That is what I remember about November 9th, 1989.

Thank You, Mr. Cannon

Whoo yeah!
I have finally found a professed liberal journalist who seems to get it. Politics Daily Senior Correspondent Carl M. Cannon, in an article posted on July 8th, carefully dissects the press coverage of Governor Palin.
Well written. Take the time to read the whole thing.

Young Women and Men in Richmond

A young woman from here in Ketchikan is headed to Virginia Commonwealth University in the Fall. Just like a thousand or more from all over the world and Virginia.

I came of age in Virginia, in Richmond, during the mid- to late- seventies. I spent a lot of time in Richmond, downtown, WestEnd, and across the River (The James River to you foreigners). Kat is headed there, at almost the same age I was when I left.

I miss Richmond still. Oh, not all the time, but every now and then, especially when I need some sunshine to break up the two weeks of continuous rain here in KTN. But, as Jeff Cooper so aptly put it, the past is another country. We cannot get there by car, or foot, or aircraft. It is so remote, so far over the horizon of memory that it is only available through nostalgia. What we learned then and lived through is what makes us now, but we can no more open the door and walk in to that time than we can visit the Paleozoic. It was just thirty years ago. How far off can that be?

Gas was about fifty-five cents a gallon. The drinking age was eighteen. What we consider muscle cars were new, not antiques. Our parents were our age, doing exactly what we are doing today. World War II was thirty years over and we all knew veterans, perhaps our Dad or uncles.
Viet Nam was still reeling, a fresh wound in our memories, and we probably didn't know anyone who had served there. The Apollo missions were over and we had no idea what or where was next. The shuttles hadn't launched yet.

But what I learned was the power of place. I loved Richmond then, and within the bounds of memory, I love it still. Richmond was a Southern city, covered in the mantle of history, wrapped in a soft focus of gauze that made even the shade on Monument Avenue seem timeless. (Sad to say, I can no longer remember the sequence of monuments as you went downtown, from the far
WestEnd to the Capitol.) Richmond was home, and I have run into quite a few folks in the intervening years that have no place that fits that word. How do you place yourself in the greater world if there is no memory of place? Heck, I still carry a small Virginia flag with me, thirty-one years later. If asked, I am a citizen of these United States. If asked to narrow that down, I am a Virginian, living in Alaska.

Kat, you are going about as far from KTN as you can go and remain on this continent. It is not the same city that I left. It never will be and it never was. Like any place in this world, it has changed, I have changed, we have all changed. Hopefully you will find the Richmond that is timeless. School will take your time and focus, that's why you're going there, but you will find the time to seek out the larger world outside of VCU.

Richmond is good place to do this...if I remember correctly.