Iraq: Weapons and Tactics

This came to me from one of Maria’s coworkers and it’s apparently making the rounds. I think it’s a must-read if you want a clearer perception of what’s going on in Iraq.

Got this from a former Marine first sergeant - thought you might be interested in his son's assessment of weapons and enemy tactics in Iraq (the boy is home from his first tour, going back in early 2006, and early re-enlisted for another 4 years.)

Hello to all my fellow gunners, military buffs, veterans and interested guys. A couple of weekends ago I got to spend time with my son Jordan, who was on his first leave since returning from Iraq. He is well (a little thin), and already bored. He will be returning to Iraq for a second tour in early '06 and has already re-enlisted early for 4 more years. He loves the Marine Corps and is actually looking forward to returning to Iraq.
Jordan spent 7 months at "Camp Blue Diamond" in Ramadi. Aka: Fort Apache. He saw and did a lot and the following is what he told me about weapons, equipment, tactics and other miscellaneous info which may be of interest to you. Nothing is by any means classified. No politics
here, just a Marine with a bird's eye view's opinions:


1) The M-16 rifle: Thumbs down. Chronic jamming problems with the talcum powder-like sand over there. The sand is everywhere. Jordan says you feel filthy 2 minutes after coming out of the shower. The M-4
carbine version is more popular because it's lighter and shorter, but it has jamming problems also. They like the ability to mount the various optical gunsights and weapons lights on the picattiny rails, but the weapon itself is not great in a desert environment. They all hate the 5.56mm (.223) round. Poor penetration on the cinderblock structure common over there and even torso hits can’t be reliably counted on to put the enemy down. Fun fact: Random autopsies on dead insurgents shows a high level of opiate use.

2) The M243 SAW (squad assault weapon): 223 cal. Drum fed light machine gun. Big thumbs down. Universally considered a piece of shit.
Chronic jamming problems, most of which require partial disassembly.
(that's fun in the middle of a firefight).


3) The M9 Beretta 9mm: Mixed bag. Good gun, performs well in desert environment; but they all hate the 9mm cartridge. The use of handguns for self-defense is actually fairly common. Same old story on the 9mm:
Bad guys hit multiple times and still in the fight.

4) Mossberg 12ga. Military shotgun: Works well, used frequently for clearing houses to good effect.

5) The M240 Machine Gun: 7.62 Nato (.308) cal. belt fed machine gun, developed to replace the old M-60 (what a beautiful weapon that was!!).
Thumbs up. Accurate, reliable, and the 7.62 round puts 'em down. Originally developed as a vehicle mounted weapon, more and more are being dismounted and taken into the field by infantry. The 7.62 round chews up the structure over there.

6) The M2 .50 cal heavy machine gun: Thumbs way, way up. "Ma deuce" is still worth her considerable weight in gold. The ultimate fight stopper, puts their dicks in the dirt every time. The most coveted weapon in-theater.

7) The .45 pistol: Thumbs up. Still the best pistol round out there.
Everybody authorized to carry a sidearm is trying to get their hands on
one. With few exceptions, can reliably be expected to put 'em down with
a torso hit. The special ops guys (who are doing most of the pistol work) use the HK military model and supposedly love it. The old government model .45s are being re-issued en masse.

8) The M-14: Thumbs up. They are being re-issued in bulk, mostly in a modified version to special ops guys. Modifications include lightweight Kevlar stocks and low power red dot or ACOG sights. Very reliable in the sandy environment, and they love the 7.62 round.

9) The Barrett .50 cal sniper rifle: Thumbs way up. Spectacular range and accuracy and hits like a freight train. Used frequently to take out vehicle suicide bombers ( we actually stop a lot of them) and
barricaded enemy. Definitely here to stay.

10) The M24 sniper rifle: Thumbs up. Mostly in .308 but some in 300
win mag. Heavily modified Remington 700's. Great performance.
Snipers have been used heavily to great effect. Rumor has it that a marine sniper on his third tour in Anbar province has actually exceeded
Carlos Hathcock's record for confirmed kills with OVER 100.

11) The new body armor: Thumbs up. Relatively light at approx. 6 lbs. and can reliably be expected to soak up small shrapnel and even will stop an AK-47 round. The bad news: Hot as shit to wear, almost unbearable in the summer heat (which averages over 120 degrees).
Also, the enemy now goes for head shots whenever possible. All the bullshit about the "old" body armor making our guys vulnerable to the IED's was a non-starter. The IED explosions are enormous and body armor doesn't make any difference at all in most cases.

12) Night Vision and Infrared Equipment: Thumbs way up. Spectacular performance. Our guys see in the dark and own the night, period. Very little enemy action after evening prayers. More and more enemy being whacked at night during movement by our hunter-killer teams. We've all
seen the videos.

13) Lights: Thumbs up. Most of the weapon mounted and personal
lights are Surefires, and the troops love 'em. Invaluable for night urban operations. Jordan carried a $34 Surefire G2 on a neck lanyard and loved it.

I can’t help but notice that most of the good fighting weapons and ordinance are 50 or more years old! With all our technology, it's the
WWII and Vietnam era weapons that everybody wants! The infantry fighting is frequent, up close and brutal. No quarter is given or shown.

Bad guy weapons:

1) Mostly AK47s The entire country is an arsenal. Works better in the desert than the M16 and the .308 Russian round kills reliably. PKM
belt-fed light machine guns are also common and effective. Luckily, the enemy mostly shoots like shit. Undisciplined "spray and pray" type
fire. However, they are seeing more and more precision weapons, especially sniper rifles. (Iran, again) Fun fact: Captured enemy have apparently marveled at the marksmanship of our guys and how hard they fight. They are apparently told in Jihad school that the Americans rely solely on technology, and can be easily beaten in close quarters combat for their lack of toughness. Let's just say they know better now.

2) The RPG: Probably the infantry weapon most feared by our guys. Simple, reliable and as common as dogshit. The enemy responded to our
up-armored humvees by aiming at the windshields, often at point blank range. Still killing a lot of our guys.

3) The IED: The biggest killer of all. Can be anything from old Soviet anti-armor mines to jury rigged artillery shells. A lot found
in Jordan's area were in abandoned cars. The enemy would take 2 or 3
155mm artillery shells and wire them together. Most were detonated by cell phone, and the explosions are enormous. You're not safe in any
vehicle, even an M1 tank. Driving is by far the most dangerous thing our guys do over there. Lately, they are much more sophisticated "shaped charges" (Iranian) specifically designed to penetrate armor. Fact: Most of the ready-made IEDs are supplied by Iran, who is also providing terrorists (Hezbollah types) to train the insurgents in their use and tactics. That's why the attacks have been so deadly lately. Their concealment methods are ingenious, the latest being shaped charges in Styrofoam containers spray painted to look like the cinderblocks that litter all Iraqi roads. We find about 40% before they detonate, and the bomb disposal guys are unsung heroes of this war.

4) Mortars and rockets: Very prevalent. The soviet era 122mm
rockets (with an 18km range) are becoming more prevalent. One of Jordan's NCOs lost a leg to one. These weapons cause a lot of damage "inside the wire.” Jordan's base was hit almost daily his entire time there by mortar and rocket fire, often at night to disrupt sleep patterns and cause fatigue (It did). More of a psychological weapon than anything else. The enemy mortar teams would jump out of vehicles, fire a few rounds, and then haul ass in a matter of seconds.

5) Bad guy technology: Simple yet effective. Most communication is
by cell and satellite phones, and also by email on laptops. They use handheld GPS units for navigation and "Google earth" for overhead views of our positions. Their weapons are good, if not fancy, and prevalent.
Their explosives and bomb technology is TOP OF THE LINE. Night vision is rare. They are very careless with their equipment and the captured GPS units and laptops are treasure troves of Intel when captured.

Who are the bad guys?

Most of the carnage is caused by the Zarqawi Al Qaeda group. They operate mostly in Anbar province (Fallujah and Ramadi). These are mostly "foreigners", non-Iraqi Sunni Arab Jihadists from all over the
Muslim world (and Europe). Most enter Iraq through Syria (with, of course, the knowledge and complicity of the Syrian govt.) , and then
travel down the "rat line" which is the trail of towns along the Euphrates River that we've been hitting hard for the last few months.
Some are virtually untrained young Jihadists that often end up as suicide bombers or in "sacrifice squads". Most, however, are hard core terrorists from all the usual suspects (Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas etc.) These are the guys running around murdering civilians en masse and cutting heads off. The Chechens (many of whom are Caucasian), are
supposedly the most ruthless and the best fighters. (they have been fighting the Russians for years). In the Baghdad area and south, most of the insurgents are Iranian inspired (and led) Iraqi Shiites. The Iranian Shiia have been very adept at infiltrating the Iraqi local govt.s, the police forces and the Army. The have had a massive spy and
agitator network there since the Iran-Iraq war in the early ‘80s. Most of the Saddam loyalists were killed, captured or gave up long ago.

Bad Guy Tactics:

When they are engaged on an infantry level they get their asses kicked every time. Brave, but stupid. Suicidal Banzai-type charges were very
common earlier in the war and still occur. They will literally sacrifice 8-10 man teams in suicide squads by sending them screaming and firing AKs and RPGs directly at our bases just to probe the defenses. They get mowed down like grass every time. (See the M2 and M240 above). Jordan's base was hit like this often. When engaged, they have a tendency to flee to the same building, probably for what they think will be a glorious last stand. Instead, we call in air and that's the end of that, more often than not. These hole-ups are referred to as Alpha Whiskey Romeos (Allah's Waiting Room). We have the laser guided ground-air thing down to a science. The fast movers, mostly Marine F-18's, are taking an ever increasing toll on the enemy. When caught out in the open, the helicopter gunships and AC-130 Spectre gunships cut them to ribbons with cannon and rocket fire, especially at night. Interestingly, artillery is hardly used at all. Fun fact: The enemy death toll is supposedly between 45,000-50,000. That is why we're seeing less and less infantry attacks and more IED, suicide bomber shit.
The new strategy is simple: attrition.
The insurgent tactic most frustrating is their use of civilian non-combatants as cover. They know we do all we can to avoid civilian casualties and therefore schools, hospitals and (especially) Mosques are locations where they meet, stage for attacks, cache weapons and ammo and flee to when engaged. They have absolutely no regard whatsoever for civilian casualties. They will terrorize locals and murder without hesitation anyone believed to be sympathetic to the Americans or the new Iraqi govt. Kidnapping of family members (especially children) is common to influence people they are trying to influence but can’t reach, such as local govt. officials, clerics, tribal leaders, etc.).
The first thing our guys are told is "don't get captured". They know that if captured they will be tortured and beheaded on the internet.
Zarqawi openly offers bounties for anyone who brings him a live American serviceman. This motivates the criminal element who otherwise don't give a shit about the war. A lot of the beheading victims were actually kidnapped by common criminals and sold to Zarqawi. As such, for our guys, every fight is to the death. Surrender is not an option.
The Iraqis are a mixed bag. Some fight well, others aren't worth a shit. Most do okay with American support. Finding leaders is hard, but
they are getting better. It is widely viewed that Zarqawi's use of suicide bombers, en masse, against the civilian population was a serious tactical mistake. Many Iraqis were galvanized and the caliber of recruits in the Army and the police forces went up, along with their
motivation. It also led to an exponential increase in good intel because the Iraqis are sick of the insurgent attacks against civilians.
The Kurds are solidly pro-American and fearless fighters.

According to Jordan, morale among our guys is very high. They not
Only believe they are winning, but that they are winning decisively. They are stunned and dismayed by what they see in the American press, whom they almost universally view as against them. The embedded reporters are despised and distrusted. They are inflicting casualties at a rate of 20-1 and then see shit like "Are we losing in Iraq" on TV and the print media. For the most part, they are satisfied with their
equipment, food and leadership. Bottom line though, and they all say this, there are not enough guys there to drive the final stake through the heart of the insurgency, primarily because there aren't enough troops in-theater to shut down the borders with Iran and Syria. The Iranians and the Syrians just can’t stand the thought of Iraq being an American ally (with, of course, permanent U.S. bases there).

Gas for under $2/gallon!

Maria just phoned to say she was gassing up at a station selling regular for $1.99 a gallon.
Two months ago, I fully expected to be paying $3+ by this time.
Now, if we can just get natural gas prices down for the winter...

Cream (the first time around)

Now that Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce are revisiting their days as Cream, this seems like a good time to trot out some images from that period.
It was the night of March 22, 1968, at Clowes Hall on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis.
The opening act was the American Breed whose bright pop sound attracted lots of younger kids and their parents or grandparents. They were having a splendid time until Cream hit the stage and Eric cranked up the sound.
That first number - I don't recall the set order - sorted out the crowd. All of the old folks headed up the aisles to the exits.
I was there with my Pentax Spotmatic and f/1.4 50mm lens to record the proceedings on Tri-X for The Indianapolis News. My friend Bob Basler, also a Newsie, was there to write the review.
We went backstage to the dressing room after the show to meet the guys, take photos and ask inane questions, although I'm sure Bob's were more incisive than everyone else's. (He went on to a stellar career with Reuters and, at last report, was in charge of their online content.)
So here are three of my favorite images of the evening: a group shot, a tight shot of Ginger looking kinda scary, and a barely recognizable (by today's look) Eric.
Enjoy.

The Fabulous D200

While I was in Cincinnati Saturday morning, Maria was checking out one of only four new Nikon D200 digital SLRs presently in the U.S.
It's the next generation of our D100s (10.2 MP, vs our 6.2, a much larger monitor screen and lots of other improvements) and, at $1,700, is a killer bargain. We will almost certainly buy two of them in the next few months.

I dunno!

Granddaughter Lisa has a new move.
She does this gesture when you ask her a question she can't answer. Turns out the folks across the street taught it to her.
It's paralyzingly cute, but then she's off-the-scale cute anyway.

Deranged at Denny's

Looking deranged at Denny's - waiting for my Sausage Lover's breakfast.
We were seated across the aisle from a couple who didn't think it was important to control their two young sons. The kids alternately complained in piercing whiny voices and drummed on the tabletop with their silverware.
They were all mouth-breathers and the mother, who was left to settle up the bill, was somewhere between "dull normal" and retarded.
God keeps hurling these challenges to my egalitarian nature into my path and I keep failing.

Sonny Landreth

"He’s probably the most underestimated musician on the planet and also probably one of the most advanced." - Eric Clapton on Sonny Landreth.

My son Steve and I took in Sonny Landreth's performance last night at the Southgate House in Newport, Ky.
I first heard Sonny this summer on XM Satellite Radio and promptly downloaded his live album, Grant Street, from Napster. It was pretty much all I listened to in my car for about two months.
This guy from Lafayette, La., does stuff with a slide guitar that has to be heard to be believed.
The 90-minute set he played last night was pretty much what's on the Grant Street album, with a couple of other tunes added.
If you like blues with a Cajun flavor, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Billy Gibbons and Jimi Hendrix, I strongly recommend you check him out. His website is a good place to start.

Who would you rather be captured by?

Just so we're clear about who's doing what to whom, here are illustrations of what we do to them:

What happened at Abu Ghraib amounted mostly to psychological abuse. I know guys who endured worse as fraternity pledges in the 1960s.









And what they do to us:
The beheading of Nick Berg and those that followed had no tactical military value. They were not done to extract information. They were meant to intimidate the weaker among us and make us fear an essentially cowardly enemy.

A thoughtful comment deserves a thoughtful response

One of my readers took issue with my previous post. I urge you to read his comment.
I believe it requires a response:
I once shared your perspective and in a war between civilized nations, mutually agreed-upon humane treatment of prisoners is a wonderful thing.
But the Geneva Conventions make sense only if your adversary has some compelling reason to observe them, be it concern for the fate of his own people who fall into our hands or a concern about world public opinion.
Our present enemy has neither. We've seen repeatedly in the revolting beheading videos how he treats prisoners.
I doubt that our treatment of captured terrorists comes anywhere close to that level of savagery.
Also, implicit in your argument is the kind of moral equivalency that suggests that Islamic fundamentalists are somehow justified in their attacks on Western Civilization because of some perceived injustice we have done them. That's the kind of foolishness that is being foisted upon the World Trade Center survivors in the form of an International Freedom Center at Ground Zero that makes excuses for the 9/11 attackers.
We're talking about people who are sitting up nights trying to find a way to murder you, your wife and your child.
This is not a gentleman's war and it cannot be prosecuted with gentlemen's rules. We have to extract every bit of intelligence any way we can, no matter how distasteful the means. You can be sure that any kindness we show to captured enemy combatants or terrorists will be lost on those still free to attack us.
The point of this war of self-preservation is to win, not to die feeling good about ourselves.

Not worried

PANAMA CITY, Panama (AP) - President Bush on Monday defended U.S. interrogation practices and called the treatment of terrorism suspects lawful. “We do not torture,” Bush declared in response to reports of secret CIA prisons overseas.
Bush supported an effort spearheaded by Vice President Dick Cheney to block or modify a proposed Senate-passed ban on torture.
I'm not even remotely concerned that the CIA may be leaning hard on the terrorist types it's holding outside the U.S.
And I'm not at all concerned about the legal rights of the detainees at Guantanamo or elsewhere.
As far as I'm concerned, if it takes the application of a little electricity or other forms of discomfort to extract the information that will keep me, my sons and their families safe, then go for it, CIA.
We face an irrational implacable enemy and there will be no accommodation with these hate-filled berserkers.
The French are reaping the fiery fruits of their efforts to accommodate Islamic fundamentalism. The results look a lot like what happened when they tried to accommodate Nazi Germany.
These people cannot be appeased.
It's like the exchange with the alien in Independence Day. In response to the question, "What do you want from us?" the alien replies, "We want you to die."
They don't want free trade with us. The don't want handouts from us. They don't want anything from us other than our deaths.
We can't afford to lose this one and it that means inflicting some pain on the occasional prisoner, so be it.

Running out of cash & good weather

The trick, at the moment, is to balance cash flow against the seasonal need to spend money.
This month's check from our rental property almost covered the fall property tax bill on the place. We need to buy and apply paint to the rehabilitated porches before the cold rains of November intervene. We got a $390 bill from Maria's attorney for his less-than-impressive efforts to protect us from her ex-husband's greed. And we got a $103 overdue dentist bill that her ex was supposed to pay for their daughter.
Fortunately, we've done six photography jobs since Oct. 17 - something that has kept us afloat and optimistic about someday making some serious money with our cameras.
At the moment, I'm in the newsroom at Maria's paper waiting for the reporters to write something for me to edit.

--
Sent from my Treo

Report from the road...

Warm and windy weather, 100 miles of back roads and a big ice cream cone. Life is good.

An audience! Who knew?

I've often wondered how many people are visiting my egocentric little outpost on the internet, but it wasn't until this week that I visited freestats.com and signed up for their free website monitoring service. (Their banner is at the bottom of this page.)
Imagine my surprise when the data started rolling in, indicating I average more than 40 hits from more than 20 unique visitors every day. The peak so far was 64 hits on Tuesday.
If I hadn't spent most of my adult life writing for publication, I might feel a little self-conscious.
So, welcome friends. Feel free to comment if something resonates with you or annoys you.

Indian Summer

A glorious period of Indian Summer is upon us this week. The warm weather and deep blue skies coincide with the peak of the fall color, so I was compelled to load my camera stuff into the del Sol and head out in search of colorful vistas.
I found what I was looking for at Turkey Run State Park in western Indiana.
Turkey Run is one of Indiana's best parks and I was pleased to see that the usual $4 admission fee is waived Monday-Thursday this time of year.
Nevertheless, the park was busy with retired folks like me and a few hundred kids from some Pentecostal school or schools.
One of my favorite vistas at the park is the suspension bridge over Sugar Creek, so here's one of my shots of that scene.
I used the trusty Nikon D100 with the 12-24mm lens and a polarizing filter to punch up the color saturation.
The weather is expected to be even nicer - i.e., warmer - tomorrow, so I may be forced to go for an extended motorcycle ride.

Off we go, into the wild blue yonder...

Forty years ago today, I received my Honorable, albeit medical, Discharge from the United States Air Force.
I closed my 41 days of service as an Airman Basic and earned a marksman ribbon for my skill with an M-1 carbine. The M-15 was in short supply, so we qualified with the obsolete .30 caliber carbine.
I don't remember a lot about basic other than I got really good at shining shoes. I'd been in marching band in high school, so the parade ground maneuvers that seemed to hard for some of my buddies were second nature to me.
I remember going through an obstacle course that seemed more like a playground. The teargas building was out of order the day we were scheduled to experience it, so I never got to feel the sting of it.
As basic training flights go, we were pretty good. We earned the status of "honor flight" early on and hung onto it through basic. That meant we got a black-and-white TV in the barracks, had base liberty more often and even got to go into San Antonio on a couple of occasions. I remember the downtown was infested with little Mexican kids offering killer shoeshines to Air Force trainees. I'd been warned that their shoe stuff would wreck a good shine, so I kept my money in my pocket.
Oh, yeah. I remember my first payday. Standing in line to pick up $22 in cash from a sergeant who had a .45 automatic on the table in front of him. And being coerced to give $1 of my hard-earned military pay to the United Fund of Greater San Antonio. I've resented the United Way to this day.
(When I was pressed to donate at the newspaper where I worked years later, I opted to give $5 in 10-cent increments over 50 weeks. It was my way of protesting the pressure tactics by making it cost more in bookkeeping time to get my donation than the donation itself. After about five years, the company banned the practice of spreading out small contributions, but I think I made my point.).
I spent my last 10 days or so in what was called a "casual barrack," a building set aside for those of us who were being processed out of basic training and the Air Force. I was one of the few going home with any honor. Most were discipline or psychiatric problems or just plain fuck-ups.
As I've detailed here before, my ticket home was a slew of allergies revealed during a physical exam. Apparently the Air Force decided that, medically anyway, I would be more trouble than I was worth.
At any rate, I turned in all of my uniforms, shoes, boots, overcoat - everything but my USAF underwear and physical training shorts and t-shirt. I also signed a statement stipulating that I would never apply for veteran's benefits. Okay by me. I don't feel like a 41-day vacation in San Antonio, Texas, entitled me to any government freebies.
Except the flight home.
Braniff Airlines flew me home and I spent my first night of freedom with my girlfriend - later my first wife - at the Antlers Hotel in downtown Indianapolis. My dad drove down the next morning, picked me up and took me home to Delphi.
I was none the worse for my adventure, having lost a few pounds, built a little muscle bulk and learned a bit about what I didn't want to do with my life.
Here's a photo my mother took of me and the family dog in the back yard the day I got home.
I often wonder about the guys with whom I went through basic. How many of them are still alive today? Are any of their names on the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C.?

Seems cheap, but not by last year's standards...

Hey, this almost looks like a good deal. This was the price of gas this morning at the Admiral station in Crawfordsville, IN.
Shot with my Treo 600 smartphone camera.

Health Department

Got my blood test results today. Looks like studying for the test paid off...
Cholesterol: 197, down from 222 six weeks ago (anything under 200 is cool)
Triglycerides: 113, down from 158 (under 150 is good)
Hdl: 48, up from 45 (good range is 40-90)
Ldl: 127, down from 145 (needs to be under 100)
Not too horrible for an overweight omniverous 60-year-old.

Ruh-roh!

Nikon announced a new digital camera today - the D200 - which fills the niche between high-end amateur and low-end pro previously occupied by our pair of D100s.
Maria forwarded the announcement e-mail to me and I did some Googling and confirmed that it has 10.2 megapixels, compared with our 6.1, and can shoot up to five frames per second. List price is a nickel under $1,700. And they make a vertical grip for it that holds two rechargeable Nikon batteries or 6 AAs.
Very tempting.
I'd rather have the new D2X, Nikon's flagship digital SLR that has 12 megapixels, but it retails for about $3,350. Considering how quickly these cameras become obsolete - we were cutting edge with our first D100 three years ago today - I think we'd have to be doing a helluva lot of business to justify the D2X.
Of course, it's our goal to do a helluva lot of business, so it's not out of the question.
We had two senior photo shoots - the daughter of Maria's publisher on Saturday and the grandson of a neighbor on Sunday - so things are picking up a bit...

Conserving energy

With the prospect of substantially higher heating costs this winter, I decided it's time to conserve energy. We haven't started our caulking campaign yet, but I installed a couple of Honeywell CT3200 programmable thermostats today that I bought on sale last night at The Home Depot (yeah, they prefer it with the word "the" included in the name). Normally $49.97, but on sale for $32.78. Hey, I'm saving money already.
We needed two thermostats because our big old (c1903) Queen Anne Victorian house has two furnaces and two air conditioning units - one pair for downstairs and the other for upstairs. It's a consequence of retrofitting a house that was built before there was forced-air heating. While it gives me twice the number of furnace filters to change, it also allows for a bit more fine tuning when it comes to managing our energy resources.
Since we don't spend much time downstairs on weekdays - briefly for breakfast and then again from about 6-11 p.m., I'm programming the downstairs to maintain 68 degrees when we're there and 58 degrees when we're not.
I spend much of my day in our upstairs office, so we'll maintain 68 degrees from about 6:30 a.m. til 11 p.m. and 58 or 60 while we're asleep.
The changeover was simple - just yank the old thermostats off of the wall, remove the color-coded wires from them, mount the baseplates for the new units, reconnect the wires, snap on the new units, pop in some AA batteries and set the time and programs.
At the end of the 2004-05 heating season, we had piled up about $250 worth of credit with our natural gas supplier by paying on the budget plan. So when it began to cool off again, I took us off of the budget plan and we've had two months with no gas payment while we use up the credit. Unless the weather goes to hell soon, the December bill should be little or nothing as well.
Then, armed with the programmable thermostats, we'll take on the winter heating season.

Happy Birthday, Steve

My son Steve is 35 today.
He was born on Halloween, 1970, and scared the hell out of his mother and me on several occasions during his growing-up years.
A professional jazz musician, Steve graduated cum laude from the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music.
He married a beautiful, brilliant doctor and they have a beautiful little girl who is already a Force of Nature.
Here's how he looked 35 years ago.
Happy Birthday, Steve.

Reed

I got an e-mail from fraternity brother Reed McCormick this afternoon. Reed and I were the only Delphi High School grads in the fraternity during our time there. He was a charter member and was instrumental in me pledging Alpha Tau Omega.
Reed was a skinny hell-raiser with a kind heart and an outrageous sense of humor. His face was almost skeletal and we often kidded him that he had been the model for the skull on the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity badge.

Those, as I've probably related earlier, were the Animal House days for American fraternities. Lots of drinking and plenty of what would be considered criminal hazing by today's standards.
The Tekes, whose house was next door to ours, had a grease pit in the garage. One of their favorite games was to crowd their entire pledge class - could be as many as 20 guys - into the grease pit, giving each pledge an onion and a cigar. Then they would cover the greasepit with boards and lay a piece of carpet over the boards. Nobody came out until everyone had eaten his onion and smoked his cigar.
Over at the ATO house, my pledge class had it considerably easier. Mostly we got to do endless push-ups, "happy time" (back against the wall, knees bent in a sitting position and arms straight out in front of us until our muscles screamed in pain and failed us), and lineups where we stood at attention while the actives got in our faces with generous amounts of "constructive criticism."
One or two pledge classes later, someone came up with the idea of "ice baseball." The playing field was the fraternity house basement and the bases were three cakes of ice. The bat was a fraternity paddle. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.
Anyway, there was also a tradition of "road-tripping" in which pledges abducted actives or vice-versa, drove them miles out into the countryside and dumped them.
I was among a group of pledges who got road-tripped one cold March night. I think there were six or eight of us. We were bound, blindfolded and driven many miles from campus before we were released far up a remote southern Indiana valley at the foot of one of the world's longest wooden railroad trestles. It was a moonless night and the temperature was well below freezing, but we'd been gifted with extra sweatshirts and coats, so frostbite wasn't an issue. The first three houses we stopped at didn't have telephones - it was that deep into the boonies. We finally hiked into a small town, found a storefront hotel lobby that was open and phoned one of our pledge brothers who lived with his parents in Terre Haute. He rescued us and we were back in town in plenty of time for me to use my starter pistol to awaken the actives, slumbering in the third floor dorm at the house.
So this is all leading up to a story about the time some pledges bagged Reed and were preparing to road-trip him. According to the gentlemanly rules of road-tripping, if you were abducted alone you could request a buddy or a bottle. Reed chose the bottle. They provided him with a fifth of whiskey and he drank most, if not all, of it. He got so drunk and so sick that his abductors were panic stricken, worrying that he would die. Obviously, he didn't die, but it made everyone think twice about offering a bottle to a road trip victim after that.
Reed went on to a career in education in Arizona and Indiana. At present, he's at a cutting-edge charter school in Arizona and presumably has maintained a respectable front for many years.

The Lisa Report

My granddaughter Lisa was released from the hospital in Chicago this morning and she and her parents are back home in Cincinnati.
My son Steve called yesterday to give me an update on her condition following palate reconstruction (or would it just be construction?). He said she was in some discomfort but was playing and doing great.
He also said something that choked me up.
"She can say 'Dad' now. She makes the 'd' sound perfectly."

Another one bites the dust

Maria and I must have been sleeping lightly about 3:30 this morning because we both heard the mousetrap under her dresser go "whap!"
We both chuckled and went back to sleep.
I promised her she wouldn't have to look at our most recent victim, so I waited until she went to work before I retrieved the trap and attached mouse.
After photographing the deceased rodent, I tossed its body into the bushes for disposal by Mother Nature.
Next.

Operation successful!!!

Steve called me about noon today to say the palate repair operation was successful and he and Nicky were getting ready to go see Lisa.
Maria phoned him this evening and he reported Lisa is in some discomfort, but was on her second viewing of the evening of the "Finding Nemo" DVD on Steve's Powerbook.
Needless to say, we're all breathing easier now.
Thanks to everyone for your kind words and supporting thoughts.

Trapper John

My wife is deathly afraid of mice.
So I knew there would be trouble when some movement over by the paper shredder caught my eye this afternoon. I turned to see a little gray mouse gazing back at me, sitting up on his haunches and twitching his nose.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" I asked him. He responded by scurrying out of the office door and out of sight.
I waited through dinner to broach the subject with Maria, who had me setting traps upstairs and down a few weeks ago after she glimpsed a mouse in the bedroom.
She was upstairs on a cordless phone making family Thanksgiving plans with her paramedic brother a few minutes ago when I heard her shriek. I knew right away what was up, even before I heard the word "mouse."
She insisted that I rebait the traps and set them near her closet, which is where the mouse fled after she shrieked.
Retrieving the trap from under her dresser, I discovered a very dead and somewhat smelly mouse, the steel bar of the trap having caved in his little skull. I hadn't looked at the trap for several days and, since we didn't hear it snap, we just supposed our trapping efforts were fruitless.
I carried the trap and the fruit of our trapping out to the far side of the driveway and dropped the dead mouse where I hope a neighborhood cat will find it.
The trap has been re-baited with Jif smooth peanut butter, reset and positioned near Maria's closet.
I am confident the trap will claim the most recent offender within the next day or two.
I hold no particular malice toward mice, but I think catch-and-release is a stupid waste of time. So I have no problem with killing things that don't belong in my house.
*************************
Update, 90 minutes later: We came upstairs after watching TV and found a dead mouse in my freshly set trap. This one went down the toilet.

Heading for Chicago

My son Steve, his wife Nicky and their daughter Lisa just left here for Chicago where Lisa will undergo palate surgery tomorrow morning.
Here are Steve and Lisa with their drinks for the road.
Send some positive thoughts their way, please.

Dyslexic D's?

I suspect this is an unintended validation of the name of the Crazy D's truck stop on I-74 at Crawfordsville, Ind.
Or maybe it should be called Stupid D's, or Illiterate D's or Dyslexic D's.
Or was the sign-maker subconsciously thinking of the word "imbicile?"
At any rate, this sign appears on each of the dozen or so gas pumps at the car fueling area.
I made a point of staying with my vehcile while fueling.

Another Day, Another Calendar

I told you I was getting lots of ideas for calendars.
Today's effort is called Back Home Again in Indiana 2006 and features a dozen photos from rural and small-town Indiana - real Heartland stuff.
The trick, of course, is to promote these things and get enough eyes on them to generate sales. I'm still working on that.
I spent an hour or so today looking up Civil War re-enactor websites and e-mailing people associated with them, asking them to pass the URL for our calendar around to their members.
Here's a small-scale preview of the Indiana calendar.

A Good Day

Yesterday was a good day.
I got word that I've won a spot news photo award from the Hoosier State Press Association (won't know if it's a 1st, 2nd or 3rd until the state convention on Dec. 3) and I published a Civil War re-enactor calendar..

I'm a computer geek and a devoted viewer of Leo Laporte's "Call for Help" on the G4 channel. The other morning, they did a piece on Lulu.com, a self-publishing website where you can create books, calendars, music, video, all kinds of stuff. The printed matter only gets created in paper form when someone orders a copy, so there's no inventory to worry about and the Lulu folks let you keep 80 percent of the profit.
After I checked out their website, my head was full of ideas for calendars drawn from our extensive photo archives. My first effort was the 2006 Civil War Re-enactor Calendar, which I put together over about a three-hour period yesterday and got posted. If you're a Civil War buff, or know someone who is, check it out.

Creep-o-Rama

Meet the creep my stepdaughter somehow found attractive.
I think he's a high school graduate, but I can't substantiate it. At last report, he was unemployed, living with friends in Bloomington, Ind.

After months of mental and emotional abuse from this jerk, my stepdaughter finally wised up and decided she was done with him. After all, she's a dean's list business major at Indiana University and he's a loser with at least a juvenile record.
So she told him it's over and now he's stalking her.
I fully expect he will assault her before this business is over.
This is the little puke Maria chased out of the driveway with a garden hose this summer.

Senior Portraits

We did a photo shoot for a girl's senior portrait(s) on Saturday - our first for pay.
Every job we do, we conclude that we're underchaging.
The original deal was an hour's on-location shooting for $100, which gets the client CDs with all of the images and then it's up to them to get prints made.
This gig ran three hours, but we stuck with the contracted $100 price. It looks like most of our business will be by word of mouth from satisfied clients, so we resolved to suck it up and give it our best shot and charge more up front next time.
The original plan when the mother contacted us a couple of months ago was to wait for the leaves to change to their fall colors and we penciled Saturday, Oct. 15 in as a possible date. By late last week, it was obvious that the colors would just not be there yet, so I assumed we would reschedule. The mom called at 8 a.m. Saturday to confirm that we were going to be at their plate at 9 a.m. I noted that the trees were still pretty green, but she felt we should go ahead because it was a bright sunny day.


Bright sunny days may be nice for landscape photography, but they make for deep facial shadows and lots of contrast that is bad news for portraiture. Nevertheless, we threw all of our gear into the back of the Subuaru Forester and drove to their place.
The girl and her family live on a farm near us and have horses, so they went with mostly equestrian themes.
The first outfit they had for her was a white satin gown straight out of Lord of the Rings and the plan was for the girl to wear it while walking her snow-white horse through a field. Sounds fine in concept, but white horses and white satin gowns in brilliant sunlight make for a huge tonal range that exceeds the capacity of our digital cameras and is way beyond the even more limited total range of film.
Consequently, about two-thirds of those images were so blown out with light overload that they were unusable, although we did get a few that are pretty decent.
Then she changed into jeans, t-shirt and vest and we did a series of shots of her riding the white horse.

Next, we put her in a cowboy hat and posed her at the door to the horse's stable.
The girl is a classical pianist, so her mom next dressed her in a red satin gown and we posed her at the keyboard of their baby grand in an impossibly small music room - thank God for wide-angle lenses. Then mom put her on top of the piano in a Jessica Rabbit-type set of poses.
Finally, the girl changed into a t-shirt and cammo pants to pose with her cat.
We ended up shooting about 900 images, which we ended up paring down to about 670 usable pictures, including 63 that we recommended as candidates for the final selection.
I've not done the math to figure out how much we made per hour, counting shooting and photo prep, because I know I would be very depressed. I'm pretty sure it would be less than the current Federal minimum wage.
But what the hell? It's a start and, if they like our work, they'll show it to friends and that could lead to more (appropriately priced) business.

Sweet Sorrow

To paraphrase the Bard, parting out is such sweet sorrow.
My 1991 BMW K100RS was a fabulous motorcycle. It was pearl silver, just like the one some Japanese design institute hailed as the most beautiful motorcycle in the world in 1991. I remain in full agreement.
On June 24, 1991, when I rode my new bike out of the parking lot of BMW Motorcycles of Indianapolis, I vowed that one day I'd see the odometer turn over 100,000 miles.
I remember chuckling at the audacity of BMW to put an odometer on their K-bikes that would read so high: Most bikes are junk long before their odometers need a sixth digit. But I knew this bike could do 100 grand and lots more.
I really wasn't in the market for a new bike back in the spring of '91. I had 80,000 miles on my 1981 R100RS and still had big traveling plans for that elegant graphite twin that had shown me so much of the country. I figured I'd eventually replace it with another R100RS, since the RS riding position suits me so well.
One afternoon, just to humor dealer Greg Polzin, I took one of his new 16-valve K100s out for a demo ride. In less than 15 minutes, I was utterly seduced by the power and the handling of the new K. As I headed back to the dealership, I was doing the math to buy one of these amazing machines.
Luckily, this seduction came at a time when my finances made the purchase possible and the new bike was soon mine.
A few weeks later, I headed west for a week in Breckenridge, Colo., with Indianapolis BMW Club friends and then on to the Top O' the Rockies Rally in Paonia, Colo., then down through southern Utah to the BMW MOA National Rally in Flagstaff.
I remember how proud I was riding into the rally at Flagstaff. Heads turned. Riders gathered around to ogle the bike whenever I stopped. This was, after all, the new flagship of the BMW line - the latest example of the legendary BMW engineering prowess.
Over the next 12 years, the bike carried me through 40 states and two Canadian provinces.
We've climbed the highest paved road in the United States to the summit of Mount Evans and we've screamed across the Nevada desert at just under 150 mph.
It performed reliably in temperatures ranging from 20 below zero to 115 above.
Together, we've carved twisties from Deal's Gap to Big Sur, endured savage Kansas crosswinds and Wyoming hailstones. We've split lanes in Los Angeles freeway rush hour traffic and passed solitary hours cruising the Natchez Trace and the Blue Ridge Parkway.
We've raced thunderstorms across the southern Utah wastelands and probed California redwood forests so deep and dense it was dark at midday.
This magnificent machine has carried me across the Golden Gate and down Highway AIA to Key West and up the backbone of the Canadian Rockies from Banff to Jasper.
We've ridden the entire length of historic U.S. 50 from Sacramento, Calif., to Ocean City, Md.
My memory is flooded with images from the saddle:
* Endless fields of North Dakota sunflowers at sunrise, each turning its golden face to the rising sun that warmed my back.
* The haunting tragic sadness of the Shiloh battlefield.
* Riding the white sands of Daytona Beach.
* The incredible intoxicating sweet aroma of desert flowers after a Wyoming thunderstorm.
* Mount Hood shining at the western end of the Columbia River Gorge.
* An unseen Ponderosa pine forest filling my helmet with fragrance as I rode into Flagstaff at midnight.
* The snow-clad majesty of the Colorado Rockies as I-70 ascends to the clouds west of Denver.
* The hellish sulfur pits of Yellowstone.
* Dodging rubber shrapnel as the car in front of me shredded a rear tire on a California freeway.
* Climbing to the snowy summit of Independence Pass before attacking the twisty road down to Aspen and lunch at the Woody Creek Tavern.
To be fair, there were problems. This bike, like many of its generation, had chronic exhaust system problems. It liked to break welds between the header pipes and the muffler and did so in the summers of '92, '94 and '95. In the summer of '93, it broke a baffle in Nebraska. Each time, BMW replaced the $1,800 exhaust system under warranty. Finally, when a weld failed at Mount Rushmore in 1995 and BMW couldn't get a replacement to me quickly, I rode to California BMW at Mountain View and stepped up to a Staintune. A year later, the Staintune ripped itself apart 60 miles west of Oklahoma City. It was replaced under warranty with what was touted as a more robust version. In '97, the header pipe developed a spiral crack a few inches forward of the muffler. Naturally, I was on my annual Mid-Life Crisis Tour at the time - the Fourth of July weekend in Silverthorne, Colo., to be precise. I spent two extra days waiting for BMW of Denver to open on a Tuesday before I could get welded, ride on to the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America rally in Missoula, Mont., and then to Portland and finally to Mountain View to get a replacement. That was the bike's final exhaust crisis and the Staintune held together for the rest of the bike's life.
The top end of the engine, found to have a bad exhaust port, was replaced at 30,000 miles. I replaced the alternator in Portland, Ore., in 1996. The fan quit in Tennessee in 1997, shooting a geyser of coolant out of the right side cover.
When I took delivery of the bike, I only made two minor modifications: I added a front fender extension to protect the radiator and belly pan and I installed a luggage rack.
I loved the clean, sculpted look of the bike and took care that subsequent tweaks preserved the look. I upgraded the headlight with a 100/80-watt bulb, added a Hyperlite flasher to the brake light, replaced the right bar end weight with a Wrist Rest cruise control, swapped the stock clock for a Fuel Plus clock/fuel calculator and replaced the wrung-out stock shock absorber with a Works shock. I also replaced the stock black saddlebags with custom painted matching pearl silver bags.
I estimate I've gone through 42 tires - 26 front and 16 rear - and filled the tank about 900 times.
I could go on to tally the quarts of oil and how much I've spent on service, but that's stuff for the bean counters.
And I hate bean counters.
The odometer reached the 100,000 mile mark at 5:10 p.m. Oct. 19, 1997 in the 2900 block of North Meridian Street in Indianapolis.
But, like the Energizer bunny, the bike kept going and going and going.
I was at the BMW Riders Association rally in Red River, N.M. in July, 2002, with about 153,000 miles on the odometer when I noticed a rattling noise that sounded like it came from deep inside the engine.
The noise didn't go away and, when I had it checked by the guys at BMW of Santa Cruz a few days later they opined it would cost too much in labor to dig that deeply into the engine and suggested I have it checked when I got home.
The final verdict came months later from Phil Forgey, head technician at Revard BMW Motorcycles in Indianapolis. The bushings on the output shaft were disintegrating. By now, the bike had 159,698 miles on it and, considering its age and mileage, the cost in labor and parts to fix it would be greater than the value of the motorcycle. Dealer Bill Revard said I'd be lucky to get $2,000 for a bike with nearly 160,000 miles on it.
I decided to ride it the remaining distance to the 160k mark and then think about parting it out, concluding that there ought to be at least $2,000 worth of saleable parts.
Finally, just before Thanksgiving, 2003, with 160,124 on the odometer, I got out my tools and started removing parts, photographing them and listing them on Ebay.
Over the past two years, I've stripped off the gorgeous pearl silver fairing, removed the starter and alternator, handlebars, engine and antilock brake computers, fuel tank and other stuff, cleaned them up, photographed them and sold them to BMW riders all over the country.
The saddlebags are in Sheffield, Ill.; the seat is in Chelmsford, Mass.; the fuel gauge went to Lusby, Md.; the temperature gauge to Tampa Bay, Fla. The headlight and rear wheel are in the Florida Keys and the tailpiece in Washington, Mich.
The Staintune Sport Exhaust is singing its song up in Wayzata, Minn. Parts of my bike are as far northwest as Bainbridge Island, Wash. I sent the Bosch Motronic Computer to Pierrefonds, Quebec, Canada. The Fiamm horns can be heard in Banner Elk, N.C. The left footpeg is in Pleasant Valley, N.Y., and the right one is in Tiverton, Ontario, Canada.
In July, when I went to the BMWMOA national rally in Lima, Ohio, where about 5,000 BMW riders gathered, I wondered how much of my old bike was there.
Searching the internet, I found and downloaded an Adobe Acrobat version of the K1100RS/LT service manual. It's been a huge help in the more complicated stages of disassembly, since I'm pretty inept mechanically.
The day I shipped my first parts, I told the folks at my local postoffice, "You're going to see an entire motorcycle come across this counter over the next couple of years."
At this point, the engine, frame, front wheel, front brake calipers, front and rear brake rotors, centerstand-sidestand combo, transmission and drive train and other odds and ends remain to be disassembled and auctioned.
And my auction proceeds total $3,504.92, which has been a big help in making the payments on my new bike - an '03 BMW K1200GT.

Freedom!!!!!

I fired my employer five years ago today.
I was working for The Indianapolis Star, which had been hijacked by idiots and fools, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that Managing Editor Tim F. and his fat flunky Chuck were wasting the time I was selling them. So I fired the bastards.
No two weeks' notice. No second chances. Fuck 'em.
I have three people to thank for making this bold act possible: my parents and Maria.
My widowed mother died on Oct. 5, 2000. Her funeral was on Monday, Oct. 9. I reviewed her finances the next day and on Wednesday, Oct. 11, I came to the conclusion that I had been handed a golden parachute.
As I drove to work that morning, I phoned Maria and told her what was on my mind.
"I think I'm going to quit today," I said.
"I dare you," she shot back.
That was all I needed to hear.
When I reached the Metro North Bureau of The Star in Carmel, Ind., I sat down at my desk, picked up the phone and called Human Resources.
"Cash me in today. I'm done," I told the HR woman.
"Well," she said, "since you turned 55 three months ago, you're eligible for early retirement with a reduced pension..."
"Okay, I'm retiring then."
"Do I suffer any kind of penalty for not giving two weeks' notice?" I asked.
"Well, do you think you'll ever need a recommendation from The Star?"
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
"No, I think 34 years pretty much speaks for itself," I said after I quit laughing.
By this time, everyone else in my office had stopped working and were listening to my end of the conversation, amazed by what they were hearing. It shouldn't have come as much of a surprise. I'd been thinking out loud about it for months.
I remember the startled, horrified look on Bureau Chief Dennis Royalty's face one evening when we were grousing about the way Fat Chuck was jerking us around and wasting our resources.
"You know, Dennis, we don't have to do this. We can walk out of here anytime and go do something else," I said.
At that time, Dennis' identity and entire self-image were based on being a newspaperman. It must have been an unthinkable, terrifying idea to abandon that concept of himself. I, on the other hand, was well-along in the process of disengagement.
Most of my career had been on a vastly superior, albeit financially less successful, sister paper - The Indianapolis News. Being the evening paper, we had been steadily losing reader for decades as more and more people turned to TV for their evening news. That forced us to work harder and do more with less staff. Since the only other daily paper in town was The Star, we worked hard at beating them to stories. And when they got the story first, we followed up with a version that was so much better that the readers forgot they saw it in The Star first.
For years, we told ourselves we were much more talented and professional than our opposite numbers at The Star. When the two papers were merged in 1995 and we found ourselveds working alongside Star reporters, we were astonished to discover that wasn't just empty bravado - we actually were better than them. Most, we discovered, were room temperature I.Q., marginally competent and generally lazy.
There were, of course, some notable exceptions, but they were few.
The merger actually hastened the demise of The News, since it now functioned with a further reduced staff and contained a lot of the same stories as The Star. I folded in the autumn of 1999.
For me, things became intolerable when Tim F. became managing editor and set about reinventing wheels that worked just fine before he got there.
I had high hopes when he showed up. But when he called us all together for a mass meeting in the ballroom of the Indianapolis Athletic Club and gave us his vision of what The Star could be, my heart sank. Maria and I stared at each other in horror when he used "effort" as a verb in response to a staffer's question - "We'll effort that..."
Naturally, we all had to re-apply for our jobs - something we'd had to do several times in the previous five years because all of our new leaders felt compelled to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. Never in all the time I worked for The Star or The Indianapolis News did a managing editor ever take the time to learn the hidden strengths and interests of the staff. We had an office full of people with incredibly varied interests and knowledge that went untapped because management saw them as "units" to be used more or less interchangably. Somewhere along the line, we had stopped being a newspaper and were now a newspaper factory. Writing was no longer a craft worthy of personal pride; we were just laborers knocking out piece work.
When Gannett bought the paper in mid-2000, many of us older staffers hoped for a buy-out - some kind of early retirement incentive - but none was offered. There was no need to reduce the staff with such offers because people were already leaving in droves.
So I didn't have to think twice about using my golden parachute. I had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life, but I sure as hell wasn't going to waste another day doing something I had grown to loathe.
I like to think I inspired some of my friends to leave.
Within a year, Dennis was gone to a corporate PR job, my longtime News friends Art Harris and Diane Frederick bailed out and a little later Scott Miley - one of the few Star people I admire - quit to take a school PR job.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some writing to do for Maria's paper - a medium-sized daily with a newsroom of quirky talented misfits who haven't forgotten how to have fun with newspapering.

October in the High Country

My friend Tim, who lives at 10,500 feet in Alma, Colo., sent me this shot of his snowbound bike a few minutes ago, lamenting that his riding season is probably over.
That's quite a contrast to the scene out my window where the trees haven't even begun to change into their fall colors yet.

Days and bikes gone by

I came across this photo this morning - a flashback to my first real touring BMW and the summer of 1990.
The bike was an '81 BMR R100RS and I bought it used from the former Cycle Werks in Indianapolis in the late summer of 1985 with about 17,000 miles on the odometer. It had sat on the showroom floor for a year or so, apparently waiting for me to decide to buy it. The previous owner had installed an aftermarket tinted windscreen that was tall enough to provide more wind protection but also tall enough to look really stupid and compromise the bike's beautiful lines.
I bought the bike with proceeds from WWII Nazi regalia I'd received from my then-father-in-law. I sold a dress cap for a Third Reich Diplomatic Ministry uniform and the accompanying brocade tunic belt for about $2,000 to a woman in Somerset, Ky., who was a dedicated collector of Third Reich Diplo stuff and had written a reference book on the subject.

I left the too-tall windscreen on the bike through the winter, but replaced it with a stock windscreen the next spring.
At the time, I had three other motorcycles in my garage: My first, a 1977 Kawasaki KE175 dual-purpose two-stroke, a 1978 Kawasaki KZ650 and my inaugural BMW, a '71 R50/5. The R50/5 was a fine machine for one-up riding as long as you weren't in much of a hurry. It had classic lines and looked the part of an elegant gentleman's motorcycle.
But the R100RS was the obvious next step for me, since my tastes were beginning to run toward sport touring. I still think it's one of the most beautiful motorcycles ever designed.
This was the bike that opened up the world of long-distance touring for me. The following July, it took me on a three-week ride to the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America National Rally at Laguna Seca race course near Monterey, Calif. I rode out with BMW Club friends Tim and Linda Balough and can remember with remarkable clarity every road we took and every overnight stop. It was truly a transformational experience.
That autumn, I rode it to New Orleans and Baton Rouge and rekindled a relationship with a woman I'd known since 1966. It was the beginning of a cycle of turmoil that would eventually destroy my marriage and leave the taste of ashes in my mouth for a long time after. I haven't blogged about that pivotal episode in my life, but I probably should.
At any rate, I rode the RS to Colorado every summer from 86 to 90 and it took me to BMWMOA national rallies in Madison, Ind., and Rapid City, S.D.
It was during the 'MOA rally at Rapid City in 1990 that this photo was taken during a day ride with friends to Devil's Tower. After the rally, we rode down to Breckenridge, Colo., where we spent our traditional Indianapolis BMW Club Colorado Week riding the Rockies.

I parted company with the RS and the rest of my fleet of motorcycles - it was costing a lot in insurance and excise taxes to maintain a bunch of bikes I wasn't riding - the following June when I got seduced by a pearl silver 1991 BMW K100RS.
I had 80,000 on the odometer of the gray RS by the time I sold it to a young fire fighter for $1,900.
I saw it a couple of years ago sitting outside the service department of Revard BMW Motorcycles in Indianapolis. It had about 100,000 miles on the odometer and had not been treated kindly. The windscreen had been partially cut away with a Saws-all, leaving a jagged edge. The fairing showed scrapes and scars from crashes.
But I knew it was my old bike because of the aftermarket stuff - the heated handgrips, the oven-thermometer oil temperature gauge, the Reynolds Ride-off centerstand and the mudflaps. I toyed with the idea of buying it back and restoring it, but it just didn't feel right. I concluded that whatever karma I had with the bike had been worked through and I should let it go.
Even so, I have lots of fond memories of what this motorcycle did for my personal development and this Devil's Tower shot underscores one of them.

Motorcycle therapy

Even though I didn't make it to the BMW RA rally in Tennessee this weekend, I got in a little motorcycle therapy this afternoon.
My wife was stuck writing a couple of stories for her newspaper and I was hanging out in our home office keeping her company when she observed that it was a beautiful, sunny fall day and I should go for a ride.
Sounded like a splendid idea.
So I suited up, put in my in-ear monitors and plugged into my XM satellite radio Roady and hit the road.
I ended up doing a 103-mile look through west central Indiana - almost as far as the Illinois border.
It was great to get out and blow out the cobwebs, even though I really should have been doing yardwork or getting organized to paint the front porch.
Other than a short romp on I-74 from one exit to the next, I did the entire ride on secondary roads, which I had pretty much to myself. It was also a perfect day for harvesting and I saw dozens of farmers out combining soybeans. A couple of them returned my waves.
I left home about 1:45 p.m. and returned about 3:30 p.m., so I guess I made fairly good time for being on backroads.

Gander Mountain

Maria likes the Arctic Cat 4-wheelers at Gander Mountain.

Barnes & Noble

Interesting. I just sent a photo from the camera program of my Treo 600 and ran into a character limit on the text accompanying it. I hope no such limit applies to the e-mail. It appears not.
I'm sitting at a Barnes & Noble, with my vente caffe mocha and typing away with my fold-out Treo keyboard, just as if I had my laptop. This is way cool.

--
Sent from my Treo

Caffe Mocha!

While Maria is at her Second Saturday quilt meeting, I'm enjoying my customary vente caffe mocha at Barnes & Noble.

Or not...

Hurricane Tammy kept me home this weekend.
The prospect of rallying in the cold rain in Tennessee just didn't appeal to me, even though I would have had a chance to visit my cousin Sam, who lives in Nashville.
Maybe I'll paint the front porch this weekend.

One last road trip

Tennessee is calling me.
Well, it's actually the road and my bike calling and Tennessee is the destination for what may be my last road trip of the year.
The BMW Riders Association's national rally is this weekend in Shelbyville, Tenn. and the weather looks good enough - seasonably cool with no rain in the forecast.
My trip planning software tells me that if I leave at 9 a.m. on Thursday, I'll arrive about 4 p.m. in Shelbyville, but it'll be 5 p.m. there because they're on Eastern Daylight Time.
Several members of my local BMW club are going, but I prefer to ride alone. Group riding is a hassle unless I'm in the lead because I like to use my electronic cruise control. If I'm trying to maintain position in a group of bikes, I have to keep adjusting the cruise setting because of the fluctuations in everyone else's speed.
Riding alone, I can set the cruise on 75 mph or so, punch in a favorite XM Radio station and watch the miles roll by.
This is my first road trip with the new Treo 600 and its keyboard, so I expect to be able to blog from the road. We shall see.
I've been among those earning the club's >10,000-mile award almost every year I've been a member, but I'm going to have to push to make the 10k mark this year. Last time I checked, I was around 6,000 miles since Jan. 1. I've been riding Maria's K75S to commute to her office some 18 miles west of here, mainly to save the tires on my bike for long rides. It also keeps her bike in good running order. We made the mistake of letting it sit idle for several months a couple of years ago and the result was about $750 for rebuilt fuel injectors to replace the ones that were corroded by water condensation in the gas tank.
Even though it's Maria's bike, she hasn't ridden it for nearly two years. The experience of getting hit head-on in our Buick by a blind woman did a number on her confidence. At the same time, other activities competed for her riding time and won.
I'm due for a 12,000-mile service interval on my K1200GT, so I'll book that at the dealership in Savoy, Ill., after I get home from Tennessee.
I've managed to get through most of a year without needing the services of a BMW motorcycle dealership, our local dealer having gone out of business last December. But the bike needs service and I must now contemplate a 100-mile ride to suburban Champaign, Ill. But not until after Tennessee.

A favorite quote

"The job of the newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."

The famous quote is about a hundred years old and can be traced to the work of Finley Peter Dunne, one of the great journalists of the day, who wrote about politics and culture in the voice and persona of an Irishman named "Mr. Dooley."

Chasing ghosts

I’ve only partially processed the experience of the last two days, so this post will be a bit unfocused.
I spent Friday evening and a good portion of yesterday with about 50 of my Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity brothers. The occasion was the dedication of a new fraternity house at Indiana State University at Terre Haute. It’s the first purpose-built fraternity house in the school’s history and stands conveniently at the north edge of the campus. The old house was what passed for a mansion 110 years ago in Terre Haute in heavily treed neighborhood about a mile south of the campus. When I was a student, it was part of a “fraternity row,” of sorts. Tau Kappa Epsilon was next door to the south, Lambda Chi Alpha was a couple of doors north and Theta Chi was across the street.
Over the subsequent 40-plus years, the old house managed to outlive its usefulness. It was too small, too costly to heat, too expensive to maintain and too far from campus.
The chapter was chartered in 1963, so it’s taken four decades to grow an alumni base with the wherewithal to raise $1.3 million for a new house.
I signed up for the Dedication Weekend activities in the hope of catching up with a lot of old friends. Other than being on hand for a significant event in the chapter’s history and providing a photographic record of it, I might as well have stayed home.
With the exception of one guy, none of my old friends – and no one from my pledge class – showed up.
Maria came along and was an astonishingly good sport throughout.
As I looked around me at the dedication banquet last night, it occurred to me that I was in a room full of millionaires. Considering that I’m halfway there, on paper at least, being worth $1 million isn’t that big of a deal for a diligent college grad in his late 50s or older.
Especially for this crowd. When I enrolled at Indiana State, it was called Indiana State College – a transitional name the school bore for only a couple of years as it ramped up from Indiana State Teachers College to Indiana State University.
So a lot of the guys in my fraternity, the newest and most vital on campus at the time, were there to become educators and most of the others were business majors. Now that I think of it, I only remember one music major, no writers and no artists.
During my era, at least, Zeta Omicron of Alpha Tau Omega was cranking out ambitious, serious young men who were prepared to work hard and achieve the American Dream.
I, on the other hand, was the poster boy for underachievement. I set the record for SAT scores at my high school, had a state scholarship and a projected graduating GPA of 4.0.
But I found too much at Indiana State to interest me outside of the classroom – hanging with friends, learning everything there was to know about the student newspaper, drinking and carousing… While I was flunking out twice and dragging down the chapter cumulative GPA, ZO had the best GPA of any fraternity on campus and was the top ATO chapter in the nation academically.

While I was way out of tune with the fraternity’s academic life, I gloried in the pranks, road trips and drunken revelry that constituted the male bonding social side of the coin.
This was the early ‘60s Animal House Period for American college fraternities and I recognized myself and a lot of my friends in the movie.
So I guess that’s the ghost I was chasing when I sent in my reservation for the Dedication Weekend festivities.
I’d also hoped the weekend would give Maria, who was born the year I pledged ATO, some insights into my personal history.
Nope.
We found ourselves in the company of friendly strangers with whom we had very little in common.
The guys I would have enjoyed seeing are either disconnected from the fraternity or disconnected from life, i.e. dead.
Like Jerry Chud, a brilliant happy-go-lucky vagabond who was in grad school in Missoula, Mont., when he saw a note on a bulletin board advertising an opening for a high school music teacher in Selawik, Alaska. Selawik is a tiny Eskimo village situated where the Arctic Circle crosses the Alaskan coastline. Jerry took the job, taught himself to play all of the band instruments and had a successful life as an Alaskan music educator until a brain tumor took his life in the mid-1990s.
Like Jan Eglen, a brilliant guy who gave up his goal of following in his physician father’s footsteps when he encountered his first med school cadaver. He went on to found a hovercraft company, have a practice as a psychologist and launch several internet businesses. He was also my best man at my first wedding, but I have never held that against him.
Like Oz Morgan, who gave up trying to teach English to junior high school kids after about three years and went into banking. He’s president of a medium-size bank now and we get together every few years.
Like Jim White, a high school track star who majored in math and graduated from ISU with a 4.0, only to piss it all away on drugs and debauchery starting with the 1967 Summer of Love in San Francisco. The last time I heard from him, he was homeless and living on the beach at Ft. Myers, Fla.
Like Bill Broadstreet, a trumpet-playing music major who went on to become a music teacher in the Indianapolis Public Schools system. Bill followed in his alcoholic father’s footsteps and died about 10 years ago.
And like Reed McCormick, who graduated from Delphi High School two years ahead of me and was a pivotal influence in my pledging ATO. Reed, for years a respected educator – most recently at a charter school in Arizona – was an absolute wild man in college.
Sure, it was great to see the new house and meet some of the current crop of Zeta Omicron guys. And it was interesting to see how the ISU campus has morphed into something barely recognizable as the college campus of my misspent youth.
The purpose of the weekend was to thank those who made the new house happen and to formally transfer it to the care of a new generation and the organizers did it well. I’m glad I was there to see it.
But I was mostly politely bored.

Illegitimate son of my alma mater

I'm returning to the scene of my meteoric college career this weekend for the dedication of my fraternity's new house. And, while I'm eager to see my brothers from that period, I have mixed feelings about visiting the Indiana State University campus.
In case you missed the pertinent earlier posts, I flunked out twice and never earned a degree. Despite the fact that I had a state scholarship and the top SAT scores in my high school.
It's like Bob Dylan says in the new Martin Scorsese film biography: "I was enrolled, but I just didn't go to class."
I managed to eke out five semesters of ever lower grades as I pursued my own course of independent studies, years before the folks in charge of the school ever thought of it. I spent most of my energies on my work at the student newspaper. I couldn't be bothered with going to class - I had a newspaper to get out.
Fortunately, I was on a career path that - at that time, anyway, didn't put much stock in college degrees.
Sadly, that's not true today. The Gannett newspapers, at least the one I fled five years ago, required a degree and X number of years' experience on a medium-size daily, as criteria for hiring.
So why is the paper written so poorly and so full of mistakes?
With only one or two exceptions, all of the good writers I've known were without degree.
My point is that when it comes to creativity and general competence as a writer, a degree is pretty much meaningless.
As support for my thesis, I offer this list of academic failures and no-shows who would be dismissed out of hand if they applied for a reporter's position at The Indianapolis Star:
James Baldwin
Ambrose Bierce
Erskine Caldwell
Truman Capote
Agatha Christie
Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain)
Joseph Conrad
Theodore Dreiser
William Faulkner
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Dashiell Hammett
Ben Hecht
Ernest Hemingway
William Sydney Porter (O. Henry)
Jack Kerouac
Jack London
Henry Miller
Dorothy Parker
Edgar Allan Poe
Geneva Grace Stratton (Gene Stratton Porter)
William Saroyan
Mickey Spillane
John Steinbeck
Dylan Thomas
Hunter S. Thompson
Leon Uris

Getting serious

The fold-out keyboard for my Treo 600 arrived today, along with an adapter plug that lets me use my Walkman headphones to listen to MP3s on the Treo.
This really is turning into a do-everything device that's light years ahead of the Treo 300 I used for about a year.

Now that I have the full-size portable keyboard and the new go.blogger.com mobile connection, I'm good to go for motorcycle trip blogging, illustrated with the built-in camera. Ok, so it's just barely a camera. You should see the low-res black & white Logitech digital camera I paid $700 for back in about 1992. This is a freaking Hasselblad compared with that primitive piece of crap.
Here's a photo of my mother and my son Sean taken with the Logitech museum piece back around 1993. Mom died five years ago next week. Sean's first wedding anniversary was today.

On the fly...

This is a test post using the new mobile blogger link

A test blog entry from my wife's newspaper office. I'm wearing my BMW Savanna motorcyle jacket because they had the AC cranked to arctic levels.

Testing, testing, testing...

Test transmission

Me, looking deranged in a Treo camera self-portrait from the driver's seat of my del Sol.

An anniversary

Forty years ago today, I raised my right hand in the Indianapolis Armed Forces Induction Center, along with maybe 50 other guys, and took the oath of enlistment in the U.S. Air Force.
I had lost my student deferment and faced with the prospect of being drafted for the Army or the U.S. Marine Corps. That scenario almost certainly assured I'd be fed into the meatgrinder that the Vietnam War had become.
So, recognizing that the Air Force has no infantry, I reckoned my best chance of surviving this unfortunate episode in our nation's history was to wear Air Force blue for the next four years.
As it turned out, I was back home with a medical discharge (allergies) in a scant 41 days.
I didn't hide out in the National Guard or flee to Canada or declare myself a conscientious objector.
I'm neither proud nor ashamed. I played the game by the rules. I rolled the dice and I won.
But I have an undying admiration and respect for those of my generation who did go, especially the young men and women whose names are inscribed in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.
One of their most valuable legacies, in my judgment, is today's all-volunteer professional armed forces.
The politicians learned it is political suicide to squander the nation's conscripted youth on a limited war.
Today, we have fielded the finest fighting force the world has ever known. They are exactly where they should be, serving as a magnet to draw the world's most dangerous Islamist terrorists into combat in Iraq, rather than on our shores. And poised to meet the next threats to our security from Iran and North Korea.
The lesson they died for was simply: 1. Take only those who aspire to the profession of arms and 2. Fight to win.
o

Hey, I can see my house from here!

Google's mapping site is getting better and better.
They've incorporated aerial photography/satellite imaging into maps.google.com. Not all locations are covered - you get maps only if you check out Breckenridge, Colo. and environs - but a remarkable portion of the U.S. is available, including my little town.
That's my house under the red X, down at the east end of Mills Street.
Just over the treeline east of my house is the local Farm Bureau Co-op with its prodigious supply of anhydrous ammonia and fleet of nurse tanks.
That's where a methamphetamine maker left a valve open and flooded the neighborhood with ammonia vapors, forcing the crowd at a baseball game (in the park southwest of my house) to disperse.
The big complex of buildings on the south side of Mills is the local elementary school.

Time for an upgrade

I bought a Handspring Treo 300 smartphone on Ebay about a year ago and quickly became a smartphone devotee.
I congratulated myself for getting in so cheaply - about $70, I think - by buying what amounted to a two-year-old (obsolete) model.
Now, after a year's good service, the old Treo 300 isn't holding a charge very well and I decided it was time to retire it in favor of the next model up - still one model behind the cutting edge and soon to be two back from the front.
The Treo 600 was the top of the Handspring food chain when I came aboard in August 2004. It was supplanted a few months later by the Treo 650. Now there's word of a forthcoming Treo 670 and beyond that, the Treo 700.
Whatever.
The 300 was a better PDA than it was a phone and I was in constant fear that the flip-up clamshell cover, which held the phone's earpiece, would break a hinge. They're notorious for that and I figured it was just a matter of time before it happened. But it turned out that the battery was the real Achilles heel for me.
The last straw was a couple of weeks ago when the battery crapped out on me in Woodland Park, Colo. as I talked with my dentist at home. I discovered a crown adrift in my mouth while eating at a Mexican restaurant and phoned Dr. Stegemiller for advice. Fortunately, one of my riding companions was able to hook me up with a dentist in Fairplay, Colo., who had it glued back in place within two hours of the dental failure.
But it soured me on the 300. When I got home, I installed a replacement battery, but it didn't work right and I started looking on Ebay for a good deal on a 600. I found one and snagged it for less than $200. It arrived today and, while it's not the top of the line, it's light years ahead of the 300.
It has a camera, more memory, accepts SD memory cards and I can attach a folding fullsize keyboard to it for more efficient blogging on the road.
I figure I can enjoy the fruits of techology quite cheaply if I'm content to have last year's model.

A glance at the rear-view mirror of my life

60 Years Ago Today
I was 8 weeks old. I weighed 10 pounds 6 ounces and was 21" tall, according to my mother's record keeping in my baby book.

50 Years Ago Today
I had just started the fifth grade in Mrs. Carigan's class at Monroe Street Elementary School in Delphi, Ind. The desks were the old row-style where the back of one desk supported the front of the one behind it. They were impossibly old, had hinged lid writing surfaces and a hole for an inkwell in the upper right corner.

40 Years Ago Today
I had flunked out of Indiana State University at the end of my sophomore year and had been working all summer at the RCA TV and stereo cabinet factory in Monticello, Ind. Having lost my student deferment from the draft at a time when Vietnam was heating up, military service was inevitable. Consequenty, I enlisted in the U.S. Air Force as a way of preserving at least some measure of control over my destiny. After all, the Air Force didn't have an infantry and that fact alone made it unlikely that I'd get thrown into combat. I was 13 days away from my date with the Armed Forced Induction Center in Indianapolis and I was resigned to spending the next four years in uniform.

30 Years Ago Today
I had been married eight years and had two sons - aged 7 and 4. I had nine years of newspaper work behind me and was a reporter on the state/suburban desk of the largest evening daily in the state. I had a mortgage, was driving a green 1971 VW Karmann Ghia convertible and was smoking three packs of Viceroy cigarettes a day.

20 Years Ago Today
I had just bought my fourth motorcycle - a graphite gray 1981 BMW R100RS, which was my first real sport touring motorcycle and the one that introduced me to the pleasures of transcontinental rides. I had quit smoking and was in my third year as an instructor with the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, as well as my 19th year with the newspaper. I had been running a suburban bureau, covering the fastest-growing area of the state since March of that year.

10 Years Ago Today
I was nearly two years divorced and was involved in a pointless long-distance relationship with a woman in Sayville, NY, who I had met on American Online. I was living in a two-bedroom apartment and was eight days from the merger of my paper and its sister morning daily - a development that meant I was folded into a larger suburban bureau representing both papers. I was driving a black '94 Honda del Sol and my motorcycle was a pearl silver '91 BMW K100RS which I'd already put about 70,000 mile on. I eventually reitred it at 160,000 miles.

5 Years Ago Today
I had just completed my 15th Annual Mid-Life Crisis Tour - a three-week, 6,086-mile motorcycle jaunt on my K100RS and was back at work in the suburban news bureau, hoping the new owners of the paper would offer senior staffers like myself an early retirement package. I was living in a condominium and was managing my mother's affairs after my then-girlfriend, now-wife, Maria and I were forced to move her out of the home she shared with my father since 1953 and into a retirement/nursing home. None of us realized, on this day in 2000, that my mother had less than a month to live.

1 Year Ago Today
I rode my newish '03 BMW K1200GT to Saturday morning breakfast with my BMW Club friends and Maria went to her Second Saturday quilting meeting.

Today
Maria and I drove home from a delightful overnight visit with my son Steve, his wife Nicky and our granddaughter Lisa in Cincinnati. We're driving an '03 Subaru Forester, but I still have the del Sol, which is running fine after 11 years and 180,000 miles.

Something more to worry about...

I found this cheery post over on MemoryBlog.
It discusses the horrifying prospect of any number of horrible diseases escaping from New Orleans area biological research labs.

Infectious Disease Research in and Around New Orleans
Summary: At the very least, there are two Level-3 biolabs in New Orleans and a cluster of three in nearby Covington. They have been working with anthrax, mousepox, HIV, plague, etc. There are surely other labs in the city.


Here's a great tip for all reporters looking for a completely new - and extremely important - angle on the situation in New Orleans. As far as I can tell, no one has yet mentioned the biological research labs located in and around NOLA. For example, in nearby Covington, Tulane University runs the Tulane National Primate Research Center, a cluster of Level-3 biological labs containing around 5,000 monkeys, most of which are housed in outdoor cages. According to an article in Tulane University Magazine, "The primary areas of focus today at the Tulane National Primate Research Center are infectious diseases, including biodefense related work, gene therapy, reproductive biology and neuroscience. The Tulane primate center is playing a key role in the federal strategic plan for biodefense research."

So what happened to these diseased monkeys living outside in cages? Granted, Covington didn't get hit nearly as hard as NOLA, but it still got hit.

According to the Sunshine Project, which digs up grant proposals and other primary documents from the US biowarfare effort, "Tulane scientists are working with anthrax, plague, and other biological weapons agents." [read more]

And how much of this kind of research was going on within New Orleans itself? Apparently quite a bit.

-- Louisiana State University’s Medical School has a Level-3 biolab in the Clinical Sciences Research Building located at 533 Bolivar Street. According to grant applications, LSU’s facility was the site of research involving anthrax and genetically-engineered mousepox. And that’s just what we know about.

-- The State of Louisiana has a Level-3 biolab in New Orleans.

-- It seems highly likely that an institution the size of Tulane has biolabs in New Orleans itself, not just Covington.

-- Then there’s the University of New Orleans, Loyola University, Xavier University of Lousiana, and others. I don’t know whether they’ve been engaged in bioresearch or have high-level biolabs, but it’d be worth finding out.

-- And let’s not forget the New Orleans Medical Complex, which contains over 40 blocks of hospitals and biomedical research facilities. According to this website, it’s been severely flooded.

So with all the known and probable Level-3 biolabs in and around New Orleans, what's happened to the infected animals? Are they free and roaming? Are they dead, with their diseased bodies floating in the flood waters? And what about the cultures and vials of the diseases? Are they still secure? Are they being stolen? Were they washed away, now forming part of the toxic soup that coats the city?

And take a look at this. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has a “Select Agents Program” for any facility that handles highly dangerous germs, including Ebola, Marburg, ricin, avian flu, and anthrax. At the top of their website is the following notice:
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Announcement for Entities Impacted by Hurricane Katrina

Entities that are registered with the Select Agent Program who have been impacted by Hurricane Katrina may contact the CDC Select Agent Program for guidance on actions that should be taken to transfer Select Agents to another registered entity or report the theft, loss, or release of select agents that might have occurred due to storm damage. The CDC Select Agent Program will expedite any special requests from registered entities as a result of Hurricane Katrina. Contact the Program via email at lrsat@cdc.gov, phone at 404-498-2255, fax at 404-498-2265, or call your designated CDC representative.
----------------------------------



I encourage journalists to pursue these worthwhile questions. Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project helped greatly with this post, and if reporters would like some more background on this, they should contact him here.


Thanks to NE for the initial tip.

Very politically incorrect generalizations

Did you ever notice that whenever black people feel uncomfortable, they play the race card?
Did you notice that most of the New Orleans rescue footage was white people rescuing black people?
Last week, we saw government moving slower than we would have liked. What's new about that? That's how government works.

Live from New Orleans, it's Friday morning...

Once again, blogging citizens reporting from places where the TV news celebrities fear to tread: http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/

Some observations from 10,500 feet

I've spent an inordinate amount of time watching the Katrina Show this week - time I should have spent riding my motorcycle on my favorite Rocky Mountain roads here in the Colorado high country.
My hosts and their other guests don't share my fascination with what's happening on the Gulf Coast, most likely because they aren't in the news-gathering business.
I think the coverage has been pretty good, although there have been a lot of stupid and inane things said by the folks at CNN and FOX and the major networks, but that's mostly a consequence of having to maintain a running commentary with limited information.
I'm not particularly surprised at the anarchy in New Orleans and elsewhere. All of the intelligent and productive people got out of town when the evacuation orders came down and it became obvious that it was too dangerous to stay. So what we were left with were the uneducated poor and a hard core of dirtbags who may have remained in anticipation of a looting opportunity. And, of course, those desperately unfortunate people who were stuck in hospitals.
So when the flooding started, we had a situation where government agencies had to divert critical resources to snatching people from rooftops - people who should have gotten the hell out of town in the first place - rather than put all of their efforts into stemming the rising waters.
The fact that armed looters and other dirtbags are now shooting at rescue helicopters concerns me because they will have to be dealt with harshly - possibly by sending in battle-hardened Iraq vets who are not novices to urban warfare. TV images of looters getting wasted will not play well in other urban black communities because most of the looters are black. I'm sure this is a troubling fact to TV news producers who are trying to be politically correct and are searching the camera footage in vain for images of white looters. There are, unfortunately, plenty of blacks around the country who are eager to sieze on such images as evidence of organized racisim and stirr up riots similar to those that followed the Rodney King incident as well as the Watts and Patterson, N.J., riots of the mid-1960s.
There are plenty of people in this country who think class warfare would be a good thing and New Orleans could be the catalyst.
On the subject of gas prices and availability, I see the prospect of a return to the dreaded national 55 mph speed limit as a fuel conservation measure. Just when my home state finally bumped the speed limit on rural interstate highways to 70 mph - the point where it stood before the fuel crisis of the 1970s.