Author Archives: onlyspartanwomen

Rest in Peace Dad. I love you.

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Dad died on Thursday, May 9, 2013. I originally wrote this tribute on Facebook the night he died.  I wanted to share it here as well.  This is an appropriate place since dad and I shared the whole Army thing.  He didn’t talk to me for a month after I told him I was enlisting, but he got over it eventually.  

The world lost a profoundly unique man today, my father.  He was a legend in his own right, and he will be so deeply missed by those who loved him. He was a rebel, a math wiz, a visionary, and let’s not ever forget highly dexterous;) He was a man who skipped school for two weeks when he was 12 until his father caught him hustling all the hustlers out of their money at the pool hall, a man who changed his birth certificate so he could join the Army as an Infantryman when he was 16 basically because he was bored, who couldn’t believe that with a statistical probably of 66.6 of being stationed in Germany or Italy, he got stuck in Panama, who got pulled out of the jungle and promoted to Corporal because he could type faster than the Guinness Book record at that time (120 wpm), and who taught me to type when I was about 5 years old because he was so proud of this ability. He was a man who looked at a junk yard on Central Avenue, which was practically vacant, and saw the perfect location for a Traveler’s Motor Inn, but he couldn’t find a bank to agree with him, so he used his own savings to build what was one of the most successful motels on the strip for over a decade. He would tell you his father invented the continental breakfast at the little Blue Bell Motel down the street, and he was rightfully proud that everyone knew his family name because during the depression, his grandfather the grocer “forgot” about tabs and literally gave the food away. Anyone who ever met Mr. Magoo will tell you what a kind and generous man he was, but I will tell you he was one tough SOB, especially if you messed with his family. He lived by his own set of rules, but he was very proud to say he had scruples. Everything my father ever did was for the sake of his kids, and I can’t believe he’s gone. He wasn’t religious, and he believed when he passed, he would live on only through his children, but dad, just in case you were wrong, if you can hear me know, I love you and miss you so very much.

Women in Combat: Part I

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So I know yesterday was supposed to be my Swan Song of sorts, but I am hearing so much nonsense on the topic of women in combat lately, I just can’t keep my mouth shut.  So I’m going to write a series of posts that address some of the main points of this discussion, as well as some points that I wish were being talked about and just aren’t:

I. Surprise!  We’re already there! Serving in Combat vs. a Combat MOS

II. Politics vs. Necessity: why we’re there

III. Boys and Girls are Different

IV. The physical issues

V. The hygiene issues

VI. Unit cohesion and the psychological issues

Out on Patrol with Artillery (the Iraqis usually assumed I was a man!!)

Out on Patrol with Artillery (the Iraqis usually assumed I was a man!!)

I. Surprise!  We’re already there! Serving in Combat vs. a Combat MOS

This week one of the top stories in the news has been that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has lifted the ban against women serving in combat. There appears to be a great deal of confusion, however, over what that means exactly. I am growing a little impatient with the perception that this is some revolutionary, experimental idea that has come way out of left field, or the lack of awareness, which is now so painfully obvious, regarding what service women have actually been doing for the last 10 years in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The number one misconception I am observing coming out of the public dialogue is that that up until now, women have not been serving in combat.  This is my number one pet peeve when the subject of “allowing women to serve in combat” comes up because it is clear that civilians don’t realize there is a difference between serving in combat and holding a combat MOS, and the military is doing a terrible job of explaining the difference. So before anyone espouses their opinion about what a great idea or what a terrible idea this is, before you go any further in your thought process, please make sure you understand this point clearly:

The Pentagon has had a policy in place that has officially banned women from serving in combat on the ground since 1994.  Notice that I said officially and not effectively. This ban places rules and restrictions on what roles women can serve in terms of their Military Occupational Specialties (MOS) and what size units they can be assigned to. But there is a pretty major work around these rules, and that is to say that while women are not officially allowed to be assigned below the brigade level to fight on the ground, nothing says they can’t be attached.  And believe me, they have been attached.

Women are already allowed to fill all kinds of roles that put them directly in the line of fire right next to their male counterparts. There are women Military Police, who frequently conduct raids and go out on missions and are often tasked out as Infantry when necessity demands it. There are women Medics and Truck Drivers who are in convoys that get blown up and attacked.  There are female Intelligence Collectors and Public Affairs Officers who are attached to Infantry units and go out on foot patrol and walk through cities and villages where they risk getting shot or blown up and have in fact been killed.

There are a handful of jobs that women are not allowed to fill, the most controversial ones being Infantry and Special Forces. Now here is where it is really important to make the distinction between being in combat and being allowed to have a combat MOS. It is also where we have to ask what, in reality, does Secretary Panetta’s decision actually change?

It is sometimes helpful to look at the Army in terms of Infantry and everybody else. The Infantry is kind of like the Army within the Army. They are the guys on the ground conducting missions, going on raids, ruck marching through mountains, etc., etc. Everybody else is technically considered support.  That is to say, everybody else’s job is essentially to make sure these guys have everything they need to do their job.  And here is where I tell you most soldiers—the men included—are NOT infantry.

Everybody from the Supply guys to the Medics have an important job to do, and many of them are directly in the line of fire, but they are NOT Infantry. That does not mean they don’t serve in combat. On top of that, when you have an all volunteer army that is a little short on manpower, you increasingly have soldiers who are not Infantrymen being tasked out to fill the role of Infantry.  My husband and I were both attached to an Artillery unit that got pulled out of their tanks and off the firing line and told they were going to go live out on a patrol base and conduct foot patrols every day instead.  So it is important to understand when we are talking about women serving in combat, just because they aren’t allowed a combat MOS, that doesn’t mean they don’t have a job that puts them there.

As far as I understand it, the military branches, even after the ban on women in combat is lifted, are being allowed to file for exceptions, and I suspect the Infantry MOS will be first in line. While lifting the ban may open the door to allow women to serve in these roles, until all of those exceptions have been filed and reviewed, whether or not women will fill those roles is still yet to be seen.

So if the net effect of the Secretary’s decision may not, actually, change the reality of what has already been taking place, what is all the hubbub about? Well for starters, because women have not been officially allowed to serve in combat, they have not been recognized for their service in combat either. This is a formality that has some very real consequences. For many years, women were denied disability for PTSD because, as the argument went, if women are not allowed to serve in combat, how could they possibly have combat-induced stress? Even after the Department of Veterans Affairs reversed their policy regarding female veterans suffering from PTSD, it is my understanding that they did so while issuing the statement that you do not have to serve in combat to have deployment-related PTSD, still failing to recognize that many women have returned home from these wars suffering the ill effects of combat induced stress.

So to wrap this point up, what we have here are two very different debates.  One is the question, should women be allowed to serve in combat, meaning should they be allowed to be integrated into units that will come directly under fire, subjecting them to attacks, putting them in the position where they may have to kill or be killed, putting them alongside men who may have to watch them be horribly maimed or wounded?  And if you are going to engage in that debate, I ask only that you recognize that the Secretary’s decision has virtually no affect on this scenario because many women have already been serving in that very capacity for the last ten years.

The other debate, which is really a very different discussion altogether, is whether or not women should be allowed to fill some of these roles that have been closed off to them, mainly Infantry, Artillery, Combat Engineer, etc.,?  I think that is an important discussion to have, and there are no quick and fast answers to that question. Again though, I ask only for you to recognize that the secretary’s decision may not, after all, have much affect on the status quo here due to the exceptions that have yet to be filed. I also ask that you take into consideration that while, up until now, these so-called combat MOS’s have been closed to women, numerous other MOS’s that put women directly in the line of fire have not, including Military Police, Medics, helicopter pilots, supply route truck drivers, etc., etc., etc.

As far as what this decision will actually, in reality, change, my basic feeling so far is that this is a formality that recognizes the role women have already been filling in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last 10 years. If the Infantry MOS does open up to women, that will be uncharted territory, but before everybody gets all up in a tizzy over it, let’s see if that’s even go to happen first. I think what’s more important is that the recent debate clearly shows that not only do civilians have absolutely no idea what women are doing on the battlefield, but apparently many of our service members don’t either!

I am absolutely astonished at the number of female Marines who I have heard come out against the decision, and it’s not that they are opposed to women serving in the most forward positions that shock me—I’m not sure I think integrating women into the Infantry is a good idea either—it’s that they seem to think putting women outside the wire is some kind of social experiment that has never been tried before. I cannot speak to what it is like to be a woman in the Marines.  I honestly didn’t see too many marines while I was in Iraq, so I have no idea what roles are open to female Marines.  I think some of the arguments they have voiced against putting women on the battlefield are legitimate. But I don’t understand why many of them are talking about it like it’s not already happening.

I am going to write several more posts addressing some of the arguments against putting women in combat MOS’s.  Like I said, I think some of them are perfectly valid.  But my one wish is that whatever your position may be on women in combat, please understand that we’re already there.

So Long, Thank you, and Please Stay Tuned

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So much has transpired since my last real blog entry, I’m not even sure where, exactly to begin.  The truth is, I initially wrote this update by hand almost two months ago, and even more has transpired since then!  But I will do my best to pickup where I last left off …

The Cliff

The last time I wrote, I was in a desperate position. Not only did my life seem stuck on a track to nowhere, trapped by the slow and steady tug of inertia, but my fellow passengers had become destructive forces that increasingly threatened the health and wellbeing of my family on multiple levels.

My husband and I were as cash-strapped as ever.  Our job prospects were mediocre. We had burned through most of our savings and amassed a ridiculous sum of debt. The thought of moving out of my parents’ house and acquiring a whole new set of huge bills that we had no idea how we would pay for was more terrifying than ever. And yet, it had to be done.

I had come, once again, to a crossroads in my life that called for nothing less than a complete leap of faith. I could either continue safely, securely, down the same path we had been on for years now, or I could close my eyes and leap off a cliff screaming “I can fly!” to the horror and astonishment of onlookers who were convinced I would fall crashing onto the pavement.

I love my parents deeply, and I am forever grateful for their help and the assistance they’ve provided us since we’ve been home from Iraq, but my parents were not the only people we shared their house with, and my father is not the easiest person in the world to live with. I had reached the point where I was no longer willing to raise my son in an environment where there were too many variables out of my control. But what was so astonishing to me is how many people around me didn’t see it that way.

My husband and I had a free place to live, and to some outside observers, it didn’t seem to matter how deeply dysfunctional the household had become. To the onlookers, leaving the security of that house to go struggle even more financially was just way too risky. But I had complete faith that protecting my child from the dysfunction was the most—the only—important consideration. As long as that was my guiding light, I believed as deeply as I have ever believed anything in my life that God would help us along the way.

The Leap

New York is not an easy place to live, or even just to survive in for that matter. Insanely high property taxes drive up the price of just about everything, from rent to gas to groceries. Like California, just about everything here is two or three times more expensive than it is just about anywhere else in the country, and the small bump labor sees in wages doesn’t even come close to making up for it.

The irony, of course, is that these ridiculously high property taxes are supposed to fund services for those with fewer means, except the net result is that those of lesser means are the ones who suffer the greatest consequences of the higher taxes. In other words, it is infinitely more difficult to survive in this state on a shoe-string budget than it is to survive, say, in Iowa, where my husband grew up.

Now I’m from here, so I’m used to the rat race. When I was a kid, it didn’t matter how much money your parents had—if you wanted stuff, you better get a job because shit was expensive.  My husband, on the other hand, grew up a little different. He’s used to not having much, but he’s also used to it not mattering much.

Even if you don’t make much money in Iowa, you probably live somewhere that gives you all the space you need (as opposed to having to choose between a shoe box in a nice neighborhood or a roomy place where you have to look over your shoulder while you unlock the door to your apartment). A gallon of gas cost $2.99 in Iowa today, not $3.60, and a carton of eggs costs $1.00 not $2.50, so you’re not going to loose sleep wondering where your grocery money is going to come from or if you’ll need to fill the tank again before you get your paycheck.

So when my husband and I set out to find an apartment we could afford that gave us the space we need in a neighborhood we felt good about raising our son in, as fast as possible no less, it quickly became an overwhelming task.  (Before I go any further, I want to point out that I’ve heard it said before that “safe neighborhood” is code for “white neighborhood.” It shouldn’t be relevant at all, but to head off any such accusations, I should point out that of the four families who live on our end of the block, we are the only white one, so when I say that a safe neighborhood was one of our most important criteria, I am not talking about race.)

The Landing

We looked at crappy apartments with paint peeling off the walls in lovely neighborhoods, great big spaces in the middle of nowhere, and just about everything in between. And that is when I stumbled onto a Craigslist ad for an apartment I just knew was the one. It was a typical Schenectady flat on Goose Hill, which used to be a Little Italy of sorts back in the day. I’ve been told that not so many years ago, if you took a walk through Goose Hill on a Sunday afternoon, you’d smell nothing but the thick and heavy aroma of pasta sauce permeating the air. Now, like most parts of Schenectady, it’s dotted with nice areas butted up against ghetto sections you wouldn’t want to live in.

The pictures of this flat, however, left me hopeful that it was on one of the nicer streets still  left. Beautiful hardwood floors, dark stained molding around the doors, and a kitchen that was dated but at least didn’t look like a health-code violation.

I got on the phone immediately, and an older-sounding woman with a thick Italian accent picked up. She was highly skeptical and wanted my life story. She wanted to know what my husband and I did for a living, how old my son was, and who takes care of my son while we work. The highly personal nature of her questions felt intrusive, but instinct told me to oblige her.

She sounded traumatized. She was going to be very picky, she explained, about her next tenant. She wanted lots of references. She had to evict the last tenant—twice—to get her out. The tenant and her kids did thousands of dollars worth of damage to the place. We couldn’t see the apartment for at least a week because she was still cleaning and painting and fixing it up. She asked me three times about my income. She wasn’t accepting any more Section 8 tenants, not after her last experience, she said. And she needed good references, she repeated, over and over again.

I took the woman’s name as an omen. Her last name is a reference to those medieval angels who “burn with the fire of charity.” (I didn’t know it at the time, but she also shares her first name in common with a devastating hurricane, which seems equally appropriate to our circumstances).

When I finally got off the phone, I told my husband about the eccentric Italian lady. He didn’t like all her questions. I laughed and told him she was going to be our new landlord.

Scheduling a viewing of the place was tricky. She had shown the apartment to a woman who was a GE executive and who was very interested in renting it, but the landlord was holding off until we had a chance to see it. She had a feeling about us, she said. She explained that her mother, who had died recently, owned the building and that she herself grew up in the beautiful apartment that the last tenant trashed. She had been praying to her mother to send her a good tenant, and when I finally met her to to see the apartment, she was convinced her mother had sent me to her. (This, of course, was all very hocus-pocus for my Iowa husband, but very much in keeping with my own Italian upbringing).

The apartment was perfect! Well, by my standards anyway. The outside of the building left much to be desired. The white aluminum siding was coated in a dark gray film. The porches were hanging crooked, and the tub was so old, it looked dirty even when it was clean. But I didn’t see any of that.

What I saw were beautiful hard wood floors and plenty of space for all of us and my soap making equipment! The kitchen was old but it was big and in decent shape. There was an old-fashioned, walk-in pantry like I have always wanted, and a big back yard for the baby to play in.

In the course of the conversation while looking at the apartment, the landlord began to tell me about the region in Italy she was from. She had trouble pronouncing my last name. Was it German, she wanted to know? Yes, I said, although my husband is mostly English and I am mostly Italian. I told her my maiden name, and we spoke some more about Italy. I told her that my brother’s in-laws are from the same region of Italy that she is from, and she wanted to know their last name. When I told her who the family was, she almost fell to the floor. She is dear friends with my brother’s father-in-law, she told me. They are both on the board of the non-profit Italian American organization she belongs to. That was it, she decided!  It was an official sign!  I was meant to rent the apartment!

At that moment, she showed me the attic, which she wasn’t sure if she was going to give me access to because the last tenant let her kids go up there to smoke and drink, but any lingering skepticism she may have had withered away in that moment! (And so did any doubts I had about the apartment as soon as I saw the huge attic). Maybe I could even buy the place someday, she said. She could help me with the VA loan process. There was no more need for references—my in-laws were the only reference I needed!

The only thing left to do was drag my husband down to Schenectady and try to talk him into living in the city. That is a story, perhaps, better left for another time, but I will say, to my great surprise, he took much less persuading than I anticipated. In fact, he fell in love with the place—and even the eccentric landlord—almost as quickly as I did.

The landlord, as it would turn out, soon lived up to her name—part angel, part pain in the ass, but always my saving grace. My mother hated the neighborhood, and my brother thought we were paying too much, but I was so very grateful to find the apartment, I could swear my guardian angel appeared in the form of a crazy old Italian lady wearing sweatpants and slinging a Gucci handbag.

We moved in so fast, there was still tons of cleaning to do. There was black funk built up in all the window locks, and a thick layer of grease coated the kitchen cabinets. But there was a moment when I was down on my hands and knees, scrubbing the filthy kitchen floor that really just needs to be ripped up and replaced, that I looked down the hall toward the great big windows in the family room, where the light came crashing in, and in that dirty, sweaty moment, I tell you, I felt sheer bliss.

For the first time since my husband and I were married and my son was born, we had a place of our own. It was dirty and old and our downstairs neighbor would turn out to suck, but it was a space we would never have to share with anyone we didn’t want to. It was a place where we would make all the rules we felt were necessary to keep our son safe in our home and we were free to tell anyone who didn’t want to follow those rules to get out.

Our new apartment was a completely empty, blank space, just waiting to be filled with our possessions and nobody else’s. For the first time since we were married, we could finally unpack the wedding presents that had been for years waiting ever-so-patiently in the basement for their new home. We didn’t have to worry if the toys were in anybody else’s way, or where we were going to put our junk because all the drawers and closets were already filled with somebody else’s junk. We could finally step out of the bathroom naked without having to worry about somebody walking through the front door unannounced, and we could hang whatever the hell we wanted to up on the wall without feeling like we were overstepping someone else’s boundaries in the place where we reside.

Schenectady is a city that the rest of the Capital Region views as having gone completely down the tubes. It is the poster child for the aforementioned high-tax dilemma.  The city kept hiking and hiking property taxes until it drove GE right out of town, and the rest of the job creators soon followed.  Many of the neighborhoods in the city that once lit and moved the world have now become the very definition of urban blight.  To the surrounding towns, the entire city is the ghetto. No one says they’d like to move to Schenectady, and when I told people we had, the response I usually got was, “You moved to Schenectady?!”

And all I can say is that those people have no idea. If they cannot imaging how truly, deeply, blissfully happy we are to have our little flat in Schenectady–not because it is some Bohemian lifestyle choice, or because we are trying to vanquish Bourgeoisie guilt through self-imposed austerity—if those people simply cannot imagine that right now, Schenectady is just the best we can do, and we are blissfully happy to have it, than those people are truly, deeply deprived of true happiness.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying everything in life is all better because we moved to a run-down apartment on the edge of the ghetto. I still have plenty of days where I feel like I’m banging my head against the wall, running in place trying to improve our lives and getting nowhere. But In those moments, I try to stop and take a look around, and I try to remind myself of what it once felt like on those days to look around the room and see someone else’s home.

Drowning in Laundry and Blissfully Happy

Drowning in Laundry and Blissfully Happy

I began this blog on 20 August, 2011 with the stated goal of preserving my sanity while I felt stuck living at home with my parents.  We finally took the giant leap of faith we needed to and moved into this apartment on 18 August, 2012.

Almost exactly one year to the day later, my life came full circle. My mission in creating this blog was to reflect on motherhood from the perspective of a combat veteran in hopes that it would help me look at my situation with a little levity, but also in the hope that a blog would help me move forward and change the circumstances I found myself in. If you’ve been with me since the beginning of this journey, you know that I dedicated this blog to any of our service men and women who sometimes wrestle with living a “normal” life after the war. If you haven’t, you might find the About Me page interesting (it’s the shortest thing I’ve ever written, so really, it’s worth a second to take a look at it!)

Of course my journey in life continues, but the particular journey this blog was dedicated to is finally over. I could continue to blog about my personal life, but I think there are other projects I need to dedicate my time to right now. One of the things I have discovered along this journey, however, is that OnlySpartanWomen is a concept that resonates with many of my fellow sisters in arms. Rather than shut the blog down, I’m thinking maybe it’s time to invite others in. So instead of keeping this a space all about me, I think my plan is to open it up to other female vets and soldiers in hopes that it will turn into a safe place for them to tell their stories as well.

If you are one of my sisters who follows this blog, this is an open invitation for you to contribute to OnlySpartanWomen. If you know other vets and soldiers who might care to reflect here on their experiences as women in combat, please share with them my contact info. If you are a female vet or soldier who is interested in helping me grow this space, you can leave a comment or email me anytime at onlyspartanwomen@gmail.com.

If you are a follower, please stay tuned! I will be making some changes to the About Me page and hopefully we will have some new voices here in the upcoming months.

I want to thank my followers—all 47 of you ; ) —for your love and support. I have not amassed a huge following over the last year because stats have never really been my driving force behind this blog, but I hope if I open the doors to outside contributors, this will turn into a space where we are able to dispel some myths, illuminate some mysteries, and share with the rest of the world what it is truly like to not just be a woman in combat, but also what it is like to live your life after having lived that experience.

In Memory of SGT Mason Lee Lewis

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Reblogged from onlyspartanwomen:

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SGT Mason L. Lewis

26 February 1981 - 16 November 2007

When I lived in NYC, I was always aggravated by the subway ads, not only because I was very cognizant of myself as a captive audience, unable to look away, but because my mild OCD made it impossible for me to not read every banner sign as I rocked along the dark corridor doing the daily grind.  

Read more… 2,395 more words

Today is 16 November 2012, exactly five years since the passing of SGT Mason Lee Lewis. This morning my husband lit one of the three white candles I bought yesterday and placed it in the holder by his picture on our shelf. I wrote this piece about Mason last year, and I would just like to republish it this year in honor of his memory. Rest In Peace Mason. You are honored and missed by many.

In War

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That immortal place
in time and space …
There is no human experience
more solid,
concrete,
real.
There is no experience
here,
in this place we call life,
that reaffirms more,
you exist,
with and without limitation,
all at once,
endless and boundless,
defined and tied,
inextricably
to not your pain,
but your exhaustion,
until there is nothing left,
not a single choice,
there,
to push you forward,
one
last
step.
But until then,
until that terminal moment,
all you have,
all there is,
is the choice,
the one that defines you,
your decision
to move,
reaffirming your essence,
what it means to be,
the soul of the beast.

No skin holds tighter
than the uniform.
No foothold grounds
like the boot.
Defining you,
my weapon,
my holster,
my companion.
If ever man knew
his own limitations,
it were cloaked in armor.
If he ever understood
his limitless potential,
strength unimaginable,
ability,
it were hard on his back
recovering from the mission.

Only in war
does man discover
the truth of his self,
of not why he exists,
but how,
in what form,
what is and is not possible.
On a plank of plywood,
hair and face,
greased,
dirty,
sweaty,
I lay,
I exist,
immortal,
forever.
Pain throbbing,
relishing one more victory
over self,
conquered and defeated,
altogether,
all at once.
There I exist,
there I am real,
everything else
temporal,
a passing dream,
soon to be forgotten.

I did not go
in search of this truth,
although,
I knew men
who went before me
spinning yarn around this core.
This isn’t what I came for,
but it is,
after all,
what I found.

Being American: The Massacre & the Olympics

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Reblogged from Call Me Bookish:

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If you're anything like me, then you're "over" the Colorado shooting that claimed the lives of 12 people. It's depressing, it's scary, and, thanks to the media, it's everywhere. That being said, I welcomed the Olympics as more than just a sporting event; for me and my fellow Americans, the Olympics are serving as a much-needed distraction from this tragedy.

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Reblogged from Bookish ...

You’re an Idiot

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Not you of course! No you, my reader, I love and adore and would never insult that way. And I haven’t actually resorted to calling anyone an idiot, yet, but there have been a few moments when I was deeply tempted. So here’s the thing …

Once upon a time, I would have argued that nothing good comes from hurling personal insults, that calling someone an idiot isn’t an argument, and that devolving into name calling simply isn’t productive.  Unfortunately, however, the internet—the comments section on many blogs in particular—has made me realize that sometimes the only thing left to say is, in fact, “You’re an idiot.”

Our Idiot Brother

Our Idiot Brother (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Category 3: The Category I Strive For

You can’t force a man to open his eyes by screaming into his face, or even by gently pleading with him to at least take a peek at yours.  Of course it still stands that calling someone an idiot isn’t making an argument, but sometimes making an argument is a waist of time and energy.  Sometimes, rather than spending your efforts trying to persuade someone to open up to a new point of view, it’s just better to tell them to eff off instead.  As much as I hate categorizing human beings, I have found that people can generally be pigeon holed into one of three categories:

1. Seekers of truth

2. The fools who think they’ve already found it

3. The smart ones who don’t bother looking for it

I strive for category three, but hubris, ego, and good dash of OCD always pull me back into category one.  Category two is a bitch though.  We all slip into it every now and then, but there are some people who really could care less about altering their own perspective of reality and insist instead on shouting it from the mountaintops and belittling anyone who sees the world through a different lens.  I often find that these are the same people who claim to embrace individuality, free thought, acceptance of other cultures, and moral relativism.  (Everything is relative and therefor acceptable as long as it doesn’t conflict with my world view).

You are probably wondering more specifically what inspired this little tirade, and sadly, it is no one event.  It is more of a culmination of my own failed exchanges and quiet observations of how other people communicate in the blogosphere.  I almost shared a link on my Facebook page yesterday to a ridiculous story about a man who was fired for fear his actions could have led to a lawsuit—until, that is, I read through all the comments.  By the time I was done getting through the insults and the disdainful, condescending remarks directed at either specific individuals, amorphous entities, or archetypical human beings who exist only in the mind of the commentator, I was too disgusted to bother.  The worst part is, like most of the people leaving the comments, I thought the firing was ridiculous, but by the time I got done reading through what everyone had to say about it, I didn’t even want to share a position with them.   

Sometimes people think it’s okay to say horribly offensive and vile things just because they view a certain group as within bounds, so to speak.  They say things that they would be mortally offended by if you made the same comments towards an individual or a group of individuals they happen to view as off-limits, for whatever reason, and yet, they act so above the outrage they receive in response to their statements. 

insults [default recourse of the ignorant]

insults [default recourse of the ignorant]  Photo credit: the|G|™ (Because when I do it, I use multisyllabic words, and that makes me smarter than you!)

Still others like to pretend that coming out and personally insulting someone or using vulgar language to do it is somehow more offensive or ignorant than the nasty vile things they themselves have said couched in the “civilized” vernacular of intellectualism.  An insult is an insult, I don’t care how flowery or verbose you make it.  Pretending you are above name calling or too smart for four-letter words while at the same time you’re spitting in another person’s face with pretty language doesn’t make you superior.  It just makes you a pretentious asshole.  (Oops—there goes my potty mouth again).

I don’t feel quite old enough to be reflecting on my golden years yet, but the truth is, I went through school during the pre-information age.  I had one super-geek friend in high school who had a computer with a modem and he used to chat with people on these things called bulletin boards that most kids today have never heard of.  It was a pre-chat room, pre-AOL, definitely pre-blog form of communication. 

When I was in college, professors urged students to familiarize themselves with this new Internet thing and how to cite online references.  I had a Juno email account and the only people I communicated with using it were my super geek friends and, for some strange reason, one of my big sisters who had discovered email.  I hated the Internet.  I found it slow and useless.  It took twenty minutes to load a page, there was no Google, and the existing pre-cursors to search engines never returned anything even remotely relevant to what you were searching for.

I recently heard someone refer to today’s culture as over-informed.  I liked the descriptor, but I would argue that today we are dangerously ill-informed while operating under the illusion of being well-informed.  In college, one of my history professors felt the need to explain to us the difference between primary, secondary, and tertiary sources of information.  It seems so obvious and simple, and yet, I think if we gave this lesson in elementary school, the world would be a remarkably different place.  In journalism, the concept of not just citing, but evaluating your sources is absolutely central to the profession, and yet, so many journalists today seemed to have missed that part of the curriculum. 

Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

Reading Reserved for the Super Cool (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was growing up, being informed wasn’t cool (DYSU if you’re out there, I know you feel me on this one!)  Kids who read were called nerds, geeks, and freaks.  Jocks used to throw them in garbage cans.  Only the truly super cool could get away with reading, and it had to be stuff like Ayn Rand or even Sigmond Freud so they could maintain that mysterious, anti-establishment, misunderstood genius persona like Motorcyle Boy in Hinton’s Rumble Fish.   For the rest of us just trying to survive the social jungle that was adolescence, we kept our books in the closet and only talked about interesting stuff with the kids who got thrown in the dumpster when nobody else was looking.  (I actually walked the fine line, and the only reason I didn’t get thrown in a dumpster was because I was the crazy chic who knew how to throw a punch.  Well that and the Daisy Dukes.  But that’s a story for another time).

It always aggravated me when people failed to distinguish between being informed and being intelligent.  You can load a hard drive, or a parrot for that matter, with more information than I can fit in my little head, and it still doesn’t make either one smarter than me.  Desktop computers do not posses the quality referred to as intelligence.  If they did, there would be no use for terms like artificial intelligence or the resulting fear and hysteria they tend to generate.  Again, when I was growing up, there was little need to differentiate.  Typically the only people who bothered to collect data were the smart kids.  The informed kids were the intelligent kids.  Today, not so much. 

I recently watched the hysterically funny new 21 Jump Street,  which depicts this shift in teen culture.  You can’t help but feel completely sorry for the old school jock who shows up to the new world high school and turns out to be the outcast.  But the bizarro world satire rings true.  Suddenly, being informed is cool. 

Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill in 21 Jump Street. Hysterical. (Photo Credit: Photo by Scott Garfield – © 2012 Columbia TriStar Marketing Group, Inc. )

Everybody today fancies themselves an expert.  They think citing other blogs as their source of information is a valid reference.  I’ve seen long strings of links pasted into the comments section all leading to stuff written by folks who are all getting their information from the same single source.  Some people seem to have absolutely no idea how to evaluate where their information is coming from, unless of course it is the “mainstream media,” in which case they automatically write it off as not being credible, but slap a picture of Che Guevara on the virtual cover, and suddenly you have the gospel truth.  There is no effort to trace back to the source  of the source, and most of the people I find deeply entrenched in a position online certainly have never heard of primary, secondary, or tertiary sources. 

The 10 different blogs all citing the same source of information would be tertiary sources.  Wikileaks is a secondary source, and the actual physical document or file that Wikileaks feels free to circulate would be the primary source.  Or in some cases it would still be the secondary source, and the source who made the statement in the document would be the primary source.  Either way, citing 10 blogs that all reference Wikileaks does not mean that you have discovered the secret of the Illuminati or the master plan for the New World Order. 

Here’s where I’m going with all this.  Before I joined the Army, I spent the two years following September 11th (9-11 included) in a 24-hour newsroom.  For those of you who are not familiar with newsradio, let me just say that cable news has nothing on radio.  T.V. news is show business.  Print and radio journalists are purists.  Radio is non-stop news.  I mean non-stop. 

If you’ve never been in a newsroom, it’s an impressive sight.  Picture six television sets all tuned into different news channels, all blaring the major networks (from MSNBC to CNN to FOX) and all the local stations all at once.  Over all that noise, you have radio news coming over the speaker system.  At least one copy of every major and not-so-major newspaper, from The New York Times to your local Alternative Newsweekly, is thrown on the print table.  Almost everyone in the station is seated at a computer that has two or three news wires feeding stories to the assistants and the producers who are sifting through the deluge of information and trying to figure out what to put on the air.  Most of those stories the public will never see or hear, not because there is some grand conspiracy to suppress the truth, but because it simply isn’t physically possible to get it all out there.  There is just too much information coming over the wire. 

In walks the Jerry Garcia news anchor lookalike, rockin’ a full head of crazy grey hair and a new tie dye T-shirt for every day of the week.  If you think you’ve guessed this guy’s political bent or media bias, I’m gonna put up 10 bucks that says you’re wrong.  After countless decades in the news business (probably beginning somewhere in the ‘60’s),  this is the guy who has no problem looking you dead in the eye after 9-11 and telling you that he’s glad Bush won the election “because Gore wouldn’t have done jack shit about it.”  Out walks crazy semi-famous news anchor while fiercely liberal, young, budding journalist scratches her head. 

If you spend any length of time in this environment and you do not slowly begin to re-evaluate your own political assumptions, regardless of what your persuasion is, then you are a dogmatist, plain and simple.  If you spend any length of time in a newsroom like this and you do not eventually come to the conclusion that you don’t really know half as much as you thought you did, then you’re an idiot.

I’m not saying that people shouldn’t have opinions, or even be passionate about them.  I’m definitely not saying I’m smarter than anybody else.  What I am saying is that it seems like all of a sudden, the world is full of pseudo-intellectuals and self-appointed experts.  Everyone is so eager to outdo each other in the data pool.  They are so eager to show off how much they know.  I am the first person to say I don’t know much, but I’m smart enough to know the difference between information and intelligence.  I’m smart enough to know that no matter how many hours I spend at the computer reading news stories and leaked documents that have been chewed up, spit out, and regurgitated by countless others before it ever even reaches my desktop, I will not have discovered the truth. 

I may have some sense of it, catch some glimpse, some semblance of the bigger picture, but it will be so incomplete, so far removed from the primary source, it will never be anything I can draw any reliable conclusions from.  And it is because I know this that lately, when I encounter someone who is not only so sure of themselves and what they perceive the truth to be, but is so sure of it that they feel it puts them in the position to denigrate, belittle, and talk down to anyone who doesn’t share the same world view as them, I’d rather not waist my time arguing with such a person.  It may not be a very intellectual response, but these days, the only thing I really feel like saying to people like that is, “You’re an idiot.”

You're Not Special

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Reblogged from LIFE and Leadership by Chris Brady:

Someone sent me the transcript from a commencement speech.  The title and beginning featured a slightly shocking pattern interrupt. In other words, they caught me by surprise. I found myself so intrigued I read further, and eventually realized that, unlike 99% of everything else I ever receive, I could not stop reading this. I have included it below in its entirety for your enjoyment and pondering.

Read more… 1,955 more words

In case anyone was wondering what all the hubbub was about over the "You're Not Special" commencement speech, here is the full script reblogged from Life and Leadership by Chris Brady. It's really quite good, and for many of us, I suspect quite relevant on more than one level (I know it is for me anyway!) ...

Have You Ever Been In a Firefight? (part I)

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Some time ago, I thought about writing a post titled “Have You Ever Been In a Firefight?” It is one of the many annoying and sometimes infuriating questions I often receive as a female veteran, but this post isn’t about me.  It is Memorial Day Weekend, and some recent events have made me realize that this title is also quite appropriate in honor of many of the fallen soldiers I deployed with who never got to come home.

I understand that for most civilians and those who have never been to Iraq or Afghanistan, what happens over there is largely a mystery.  There is a general sense that wars are not fought the way they used to be, that there is no front line, that there is no cozy safe spot in the rear, that the military is now one almost fully integrated fighting force of men and women (does anyone remember the WACs?), but the details of the modern day battlefield are largely left out of the public discourse.

As a female veteran, I am often asked questions like, “You were in a safe area though, right?” and “Yeah but you’ve never really been in a firefight or anything, right?”  These questions are infuriating for both obvious and not-so-obvious reasons alike.  The first question is mindboggling because the answer is an emphatic “No! I was not in a ‘safe’ area!”  The second question makes me want to spin my head around and spit green pea soup because wile the answer is also “No, I have never been in a firefight,” it is usually followed with the clarifying statement, “and neither have most of the men I served with.” The men, of course, don’t usually get asked, which makes the question all the more infuriating.  But all of these inquiries are understandable and easily forgiven when they come from civilians who have been largely kept in the dark about the alternate universe that is OIF and OEF.  As far as enraging points of view go, these more-or-less well intended, albeit naïve, perspectives of the role of women in the modern-day combat environment pale in comparison to the inexcusable jockeying for street credit that often takes place amongst veterans and service members.   Allow me to elaborate …

There is sometimes a tendency for combat veterans to disparage each other’s service based on MOS (military occupational specialty—basically your job description) or whether or not someone has gone outside the wire (essentially left the comfort of the base).  While it is understandable that a civilian who knows little of the details of the modern battlefield would measure the effects of combat in terms of things like firefights, service members and veterans should know better.

I recently, just this weekend of all weekends, read something written on a military Facebook page I follow that almost sent me through the roof.  It was written by a woman who referred to herself as a “milispouse” who was angry and venting about her daughter’s custody battle with her ex son-in-law who was discharged from the Army for malingering.  According to this woman, the former soldier has violent mood swings that he claims are the result of combat-related PTSD.  While I have no issue with her anger over his misrepresentation of his service (apparently this veteran tells people he’s still in the Army and goes to the recruiting station to talk to potential recruits), what I was aggravated by was her commentary on his deployment.  It went something along the lines of “[He has] no combat time.  None.  Downrange, yes.  Combat, no.”  She went on to say that he spent most of his deployment on guard duty and whining about getting yelled at.

This was a civilian who wrote this mind you.  She herself has never been deployed.  She established her own authority to speak on the subject by stating that her father was a Vietnam Vet and her husband is an infantryman with multiple deployments under his belt.  She has attended many funerals in recent years.  In her words, “So I get to call a douche a douche, fair?”

Again though, her opinion I can blow off.  The string of some 50+ comments that followed, most of them validating her perspective of POGs (people other than grunts—non-infantry) I cannot forgive so easily.  Someone who has never stepped foot in a war zone gets this perspective from somewhere, and that somewhere can only be from other service members.  I initially kept silent on the thread, but all the bashing of FOBBITS (people who never stepped foot off the forward operating base while they were deployed) that ensued following her comment slowly ate at me over the course of the night and right into the next morning.

It didn’t bother me because I was a FOBBIT—I wasn’t.  I may have never been in a firefight, but I lived on the most underserved patrol base in our area of operations, I went out on foot patrol daily, I spoke to more Iraqis than Americans while over there, and I drove up and down one of the deadliest highways in Iraq on a regular basis for months.  Don’t get me wrong—my exposure to “combat” was extremely limited, but that had a lot more to do with luck and timing than it did my proximity to the line.  So the whole thing didn’t bother me because I was a FOBBIT; it made me sick to my stomach because almost every person I knew who died over there was.  After waking up with the dialogue still on my mind, I knew I couldn’t keep quiet.  This is the comment I left on the page (I was pretty upset when I wrote it, so please excuse my flowery language):

“I don’t usually comment on this page, but this has been bothering me since I read it. I’m sure your son in-law is a DB, and I’m not arguing that he wasn’t a shit bag soldier, but Taylor is right. You don’t get to call a douche a douche. I’m not denying you your insights or experiences—your relationships to your husband and your father and the Army in general give you an insiders perspective on the war and the military that most civilians will never understand, I will give you that, but it still doesn’t give you “street credit” (for lack of a better term) to judge whether or not someone’s deployment makes them a combat veteran or not. It’s bad enough when soldiers do it to each other; it’s unacceptable when it comes from people who have never deployed (civilians or soldiers).

I know infantrymen have a tendency to think they are the only ones who experienced combat, but the dick swinging contests amongst veterans have got to stop. My first month in country, an interrogator (FOBBIT) was blown up by a Katyusha while she was asleep in her can. I ran into our company clerk (FOBBIT)the next day, who happened to be in the vicinity and was one of the soldiers who tried to put out the fire. I never saw anyone more shook up than he was trying to tell me how he couldn’t get the site of the blown up pieces of what was left of her body out of his head. Six months into my tour, I was on a FOB that got hit with 14 Katyushas in one attack. Some poor kid (DB?) on extra duty got blown up doing police call in front of the TOC. My team and I were huddled up next to a T-wall during that attack, and we were pretty sure we were going out with him. Our vehicle got totaled by a Katyusha later that night. It was on one side of the T-wall, we were on the other. One lousy month before we got to go home, an MP I spent my first 3 months in country sharing a tent with stuck her 9 mm in her mouth and blew her brains out. One fucking month left. One of the guys on my team who lived next to her stood guard by her door for what he said felt like an eternity until her body was removed from her can. These soldiers—FOBBITS and DB’S among them—gave their lives in a war zone that less than 1% of Americans have seen. And before I get attacked for my service, I wasn’t a FOBBIT. I lived on a PB and went out on foot patrol every day with an artillery unit tasked out as infantry. I made routine runs up and down Route Tampa, but I would never tell someone who never went outside the wire that they weren’t really a combat vet. My husband was a line medic. He lives every day with not only the effects of watching his brothers die, but being the one who wasn’t able to save them. He would never tell a FOBBIT that their service didn’t count as much as his, and a civilian has no place evaluating what someone did or did not do while they were deployed.

It’s Memorial Day Weekend. Like I said, only 0.5% of Americans have contributed to the wars of this last decade. 99.5% of the population has absolutely no idea what it is like to be over there. We shouldn’t be competing for honors or who has the right to claim PTSD and who doesn’t. I will be spending this Memorial Day Weekend remembering the soldiers I knew and who never got to come home with us, FOBBITS and DB’s alike. D__, I am truly sorry for what you’re going through. I know custody battles are ugly and vicious, and I have no doubt your son-in-law is the dirt bag you describe him to be, but his dishonorable discharge speaks for itself. Any commentary you have to add about his time in Iraq is just going to make you look bad, not him.”

If my descriptions of the fallen come off as overly vivid or blunt, it is not intended to disrespect or disparage the memory of these soldiers in any way.  My vulgarity is intended only to emphasize the point that FOBBITS are sheltered from neither PTSD nor death itself.  Surprisingly, the only response I’ve received so far is from the milispouse.  To her credit, she didn’t reply, but she did “like” my comment, so I guess I managed to get my point across without offending the person I was addressing (this may be a first for me!)

I often think of Vietnam and World War II and I am in total awe of what those men endured.  I simply can’t fathom it.  I don’t understand how anyone, no matter how good a soldier, made it off the battlefield alive.  Just knowing some of the fears and anxieties I experienced during my deployment, which was like a trip to Disneyland compared to the wars of previous generations, I cannot imagine going through that without being utterly gripped with fear.  I am a religious woman, but I still have to wonder, how much of their fate was determined by dumb luck?  If the veterans of my generation are engaged in a pissing contest, I’m pretty sure we all loose.

My grandfather was an E5 (sergeant) who served in Germany during World War II, but he never spoke of the war.  My mother said he was the strangest man she ever met.  Never really connecting the dots to his service, she thought he suffered from depression.  He was very successful in life and his marriage, but he had no hobbies, no interests.  He sat in his chair, and he went for long walks.  He was good with small children and enjoyed his grandkids, right up until we got a little older and started to talk like little people.  Then he kind of lost interest.  I always thought the way my mother described him was strange.  It never even occurred to me that he had PTSD until a few years ago when my brother said he thought grandpa was shell shocked.  Now that I’m a veteran, it doesn’t seem strange at all.  Now I understand.  War takes something from those who survive it, and that hole cannot be filled, but only augmented with the memories of those who did not.

In Memory:

SPC MJJ

SGT CAJ

SGT MLL

SGT TLM

PFC TJS

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